It Don’t Mean a Thing
Genre: Romance, Historical
Publisher: SilkWords
Date of Publication: August 4,
2014
ASIN: B00MG4C1E6
Word Count: 20,535 pick-your-path story
Book Description:
Ruby dreams of Hollywood. A
chance encounter with The Harmoneers, an all-female jazz group, offers the
opportunity of a lifetime. Follow the gang as they scheme and double-cross.
And love?
Well, it don’t mean a thing.
Excerpt:
Sycamore Grove, California
1931
“I’m not marrying you, Audie
McCardle. I most certainly am not.” Ruby Banks crossed her arms, pressed her
lips tight, and gave a definitive shake of her head. She leaned toward the
mirror over her hand-me-down vanity and stabbed a pin into her blonde curls.
She twisted her head left and right, and fluffed the back of her hair. A
strange tint of pink ran loose through the strands and waves. Maybe she should
have been more careful with the mixture of peroxide and ammonia she’d used the
previous night.
But between her mother running up
the stairs and hugging her close, her father taking his pipe from his mouth
long enough to yell that the hair potion was causing him an onset of lung
disorder, and her little sister, Charlotte, jumping around and squawking
nonsense about weddings weddings weddings, Ruby botched the dye job.
Never mind, she thought. If
anyone asked, she’d say it was exactly the color she was hoping for.
Or she wouldn’t say anything at
all. Jean Harlow wouldn’t say anything. Of that Ruby Banks was sure.
She snatched her apron from the
end of her bed, bounded down the narrow stairs, and ignored her mother calling
from the kitchen. Ruby pushed open the front gate and darted down the sidewalk.
She was late (as usual) for her morning shift at the diner, and she still had to
pick up the pies from Mrs. Jensen on the next block.
The early morning sun promised
another day of horrible Central California heat. The sky would soon brown with
the upturned soils of the fields, and the air already stank from the cows.
A beat-up Model T stake-bed truck
rolled past Ruby. She heard the tires slow on the hard-packed soil of the
street. Gears ground, and the truck reversed and pulled next to her.
John Mayer shifted his stub of a
cigar to the other side of his mouth, tilted back his fedora, and smiled. His
skin was bronze and wrinkled. He rubbed a weathered thumb across his chin.
“Guess congratulations are in order.”
“I have no idea what you’re
talking about.” Ruby lifted her head and continued walking. John Mayer kept the
truck rolling slowly in reverse.
“Fine boy, Audie is.”
“So everyone says.”
“You make a sweet couple.”
“We’re not a couple.”
He scratched the shirt on his
chest. “You don’t say.”
“He can buy any house he pleases
in the Sears Roebuck catalog, but that doesn’t mean we’re a couple. And it
certainly doesn’t mean I’m going to marry him.”
“You don’t say.”
“I do say. I have plans of my
own.” She blew back a curl that had come loose. “Don’t you have some hogs to
tie or something like that?”
“I don’t have hogs.”
“You know what I’m saying.”
He chewed his cigar then shifted
the gears. The truck took a jump and shimmied. “You got a mean streak, Ruby.
Yes, miss, you do.” With that, he was off down the road in a swirl of dirt.
Ruby wiped her mouth with her
handkerchief. She patted her hair and strode up the wood steps to Mrs. Jensen’s
porch. She knocked three times on the screen door frame and stepped back. Mrs.
Jensen shuffled to the door, balancing five boxes of peach pies.
Only the top of half of her face
was visible above the stack. She passed the boxes to Ruby and wiped her hands
on a flour-coated apron. “I hear congratulations are in order.”
“Aw, nuts.”
Ruby’s heels cracked against the
pavement. She passed the Esso station and VFW Hall and drew near the two blocks
that made up Sycamore Grove’s downtown. The neon spire of the Odeon dwarfed the
squat brick of its neighbors. She glared up, worried that this upcoming
non-wedding would be splattered in black and white across the marquee. Luckily
not. It remained safely Gable and Harlow in Red Dust.
Maud Riley stood under the awning
of Rexall Drugs, waiting, as she always did, for Ruby. Her gray felt cloche sat
low on her head, the nutmeg tufts of her bob feathered under the soft rim. She
shifted from foot to foot, tapping her fingers against her black-and
mustard-checked skirt. As Ruby neared, Maud narrowed her eyes and blinked fast
before shaking her head. She pursed her lips and twisted them into a strained
smile.
“What’s wrong with you?” Ruby
asked.
Maud’s eyebrows met in a frown.
“Nothing. Not a thing.” She waved her hand for no reason that Ruby could
ascertain and fell in step beside her. “I guess I have to wish —”
“Don’t you start.” She shifted
the pies to her hip. “I can tolerate all the little gifts he gives me. I mean,
a girl does need emery boards and cologne. But buying a house? That’s called
unbounded impudence.”
“I think it was just a down
payment.”
“It’s still a lot of cheek. What
does he think? I’m going to roll over like a, like a starving dog and do
whatever he commands?” Ruby stopped in front of the diner, set the boxes on the
cement and faced Maud. “He hasn’t even asked me to marry him. And you know
what? When he does, I’m going to laugh like this — HA-ha. Because I’ve got all
that money Aunt Caroline left me, and come September, I’m going to take the bus
to Merced and then the train to Hollywood. And in neither of those vehicles can
you fit a Sears and Roebuck house and an ego the size of Audie McCardle’s. And
when he comes in for breakfast, I’m going to tell him so.”
Maud crossed her arms over her
thin frame and swayed back and forth.
“You got something to say, just say it.”
Maud bit her lip and shrugged.
“What does that mean?”
“It means nothing.” Maud swung
her gaze around the street and up at the Odeon spire and then stared over her
shoulder at the empty diner. “You like my skirt?”
“What?”
“I wore it just for you. So you
could see how the pattern came out. And such.” She gave that funny wave again,
as if she were swatting a big bug. “Never mind. I’ve got an early piano lesson
to give.”
“Well, don’t let me keep you.”
Ruby bent to pick up the pies. “Would you mind opening the door for me? I mean,
if you have time.”
“I always have time for you.”
“Are you all right?”
“Of course I’m all right. Why?”
“You’re red as a beet.”
Maud put the flats of her palms
against her cheeks, turned on her heel, and rushed away, the bell of her skirt
flapping against her knees.
“But the door, Maud … ”
About
the Author:
Kim Taylor Blakemore writes
historical fiction and romance that explores women's lives and brings their
struggles and triumphs out of the shadows of history and onto the canvas of our
American past. She wishes to share the stories of women whose lives are untold,
who don’t exist in textbooks: the disenfranchised, the forgotten, those with
double lives and huge hearts filled with weakness and courage.
Her novel Bowery Girl, set in
1883 Lower Eastside Manhattan was recently re-released in Kindle and paperback.
Under the Pale Moon, is due for release in Fall 2015. Set in post-World War II
Monterey, California, it explores the relationship of a married woman breaking
the bonds of conformity, and a combat nurse haunted by the ghosts of war.
Her interactive historical
romances The Very Thought of You and It Don't Mean a Thing, are out now on
Kindle and SilkWords.com. She is also the author of the novel Cissy Funk, winner of the WILLA Literary
Award for Best Young Adult Fiction.
She’s a member of the Historical
Novel Society, Women Writing the West and Romance Writers of America. In addition
to writing novels, she facilitates workshops for PDX Writers in Portland,
Oregon.
Facebook: www.facebook.com/kimtaylorblakemore
Twitter: @kimrtaylor
Interview
Where
are you from?
I'm
originally from the Monterey Peninsula on the Central Coast of California, but
have lived in Portland, Oregon for the past eight years. I consider both areas
my "hometown". They fill my heart.
Tell
us your latest news?
In
January, my novel "Bowery Girl" was re-released. It's set in the
Bowery of New York in 1883 and follows two young women, the pickpocket Molly
Flynn and the prostitute Annabelle Lee and their fight for survival on the
streets. It was a complicated and interesting time period to research. I am so
glad the women's stories are being read again.
The
biggest news? We rescued a kitten who had been hit by a car, named him Chester,
and he now thinks he's one of the dogs. I think his name should be Heffalump,
because he's not the most quiet of cats.
When
and why did you begin writing?
I've been
writing since I was little, the typical stories with haunted houses and ponies
and girls with swords. After college and a drama degree, I tried my hand at
playwriting, discarding it for acting. I always wanted to be a writer - I was
and am an avid reader - but it wasn't until I stuck in my house in a snowstorm
and bored out of my gourd that I actually wrote the beginnings of a novel. And
the snowstorm stopped, but the novel kept going. And I was hooked.
When
did you first consider yourself a writer?
I think it
was with the sale of that first book, Side Dish. It was a light and silly
romantic comedy, now out of print and the company that published it defunct.
Wait, now
that I think about it, it was the writing of the first book that made me feel
like a writer. Because I sat down every day and worked with words.
What
inspired you to write your first book?
Boredom.
And the fact that I needed to somehow come to terms with my awful life in Los
Angeles, the one I'd run to Colorado to get away from. I wanted bad memories to
become funny fiction.
Do
you have a specific writing style?
My first
book was the only contemporary I wrote. I turned to historical fiction, and I
try to have the style of my writing reflect the tone of writing from the
periods in which they take place. For instance, "It Don't Mean a
Thing" is set in 1930s California and has the rhythm of comedy films from
that time. My other historical romance for Silk Words, "The Very Thought
of You" is set in the mid-1950s, and as it is about the experience of a
lesbian woman in that time, has a more measured and slightly repressed tone. My
novel "Bowery Girl" uses a bit of the stylistic narrative that you’d
find in novels of the late 1880s, with the point of view moving from tight 3rd
person to omniscient.
How
did you come up with the title?
I thought
it would be great fun to have the titles for both Silk Words stories be that of
a popular song from the year the story takes place. I pored through lots of
top-40 lists, listened to the music, read through the lyrics, then settling on
songs/titles that reflected the pace and mood and plot of the stories.
Is
there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?
I'm not
sure I think in message, or write toward messages. I am much more interested in
how women lived in and experienced those times.
How
much of the book is realistic?
I do a lot
of research for a time period, to ground the reader and the characters into the
setting. "The Very Thought of You" has a lot of realism of what a
woman's life would be in Portland, Oregon in the 1950s, particularly the
lengths she would need to go to hide her true self. In "It Don't Mean a
Thing", there was more leeway, more of a feeling of what it would be like
in a small town in the 1930s.
Are
experiences based on someone you know, or events in your own life?
My books
and stories are purely fiction. Although, there is the teacher in "Bowery
Girl" who might have some qualities I have as a teacher...
What books have most influenced your
life most?
The list
would be long! I think I’ll list those that have stuck with me a long time.
That would include (but not be limited to): “Little Women”, “Little House on
the Prairie”, “Gone with the Wind”, “Life and Fate”, “The Book Thief”, the
Thursday Next series by Jasper FForde, and anything by John Steinbeck.
If you had to choose, which writer
would you consider a mentor?
Any writer? From any time? Wow. Steinbeck for his
efficiency of language and deep love of wayward characters. Sarah Waters for
her impeccable dialogue and complicate characters. Virginia Woolf for, well,
everything. Sharyn November, my editor for “Bowery Girl” for teaching me how to
build the novel.
What book are you reading now?
I'm
reading a sweet contemporary F/F romance, “Zero Visibility” by Georgia Beers
(wonderful writer – her novel “96 Hours” about the hours after 911 is intense
and amazing), and “Shadow of Night”, a rip-roaringly cool fantasy by Deborah
Harkness.
Are
there any new authors that have grasped your interest?
I’m not sure they’re new by the time I read them!
Elizabeth Wein is amazing. She wrote “Code Name Verity”. If anyone wants to
send me some recommendations of new authors, I’d love it! PS – I love
historical fiction with strong women…
What
are your current projects?
I'm hard
at work on another historical novel, "Under the Pale Moon", set in
Monterey in 1946. It explores the lives of Irene Dodd, a woman frustrated by
the constraints of her life after her responsibilities during World War II, and
Kath Walker, an Army combat nurse haunted by the ghosts of war. It's due out in
Fall 2015.
What
would you like my readers to know?
Tour
giveaway
3 Kindle copies of Bowery Girl
3 ebook copies It Don’t Mean a
Thing
SilkWords is
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