Guest: Historical Novelist Erika Robuck

I’m delighted to welcome lovely cyber friend and fellow HNSer Erika Robuck to Between the Sheets today. Erika’s novel HEMINGWAY’S GIRL released September 4th and is making a splashy entrance on the publishing scene.

About HEMINGWAY’S GIRL

In Depression-era Key West, Mariella Bennet, the daughter of an American fisherman and a Cuban woman, knows hunger. Her struggle to support her family following her father’s death leads her to a bar and bordello, where she bets on a risky boxing match…and attracts the interest of two men: world-famous writer, Ernest Hemingway, and Gavin Murray, one of the WWI veterans who are laboring to build the Overseas Highway.

When Mariella is hired as a maid by Hemingway’s second wife, Pauline, she enters a rarified world of lavish, celebrity-filled dinner parties and elaborate off-island excursions. As she becomes caught up in the tensions and excesses of the Hemingway household, the attentions of the larger-than-life writer become a dangerous temptation…even as the reliable Gavin Murray draws her back to what matters most. Will she cross an invisible line with the volatile Hemingway, or find a way to claim her own dreams? As a massive hurricane bears down on Key West, Mariella faces some harsh truths…and the possibility of losing everything she loves.

 

SO TELL US ERIKA-

When did you become ‘obsessed with Hemingway?

I became obsessed with Hemingway in college while reading A FAREWELL TO ARMS. After all of Hemingway’s tough soldier-guy talk, there were large, silly, sappy sections of dialogue between Frederick and Catherine. I loved that Hemingway exposed himself that way. That started the obsession, but the power of his body of work cemented my infatuation.

What do you love about the 1920’s and 30’s?

I have always been drawn to the time between the wars and the “lost generation” who lived through hell and back, and tried to live freely at any cost. It seems like the adolescence of American history, and while I understand why so many of those who emerged from that time did so with physical and emotional wounds, I admire their spirit, and pity their legacy.

Do you ever get the writer blues? If so, how do you pull yourself out of them?

Of course! I don’t know a writer who doesn’t. I am blessed to have two extremely intelligent and thoughtful women as writing critique partners who sense when I need them and provide productive, nurturing counsel to me and to my work. I couldn’t do it without their support and the support of my family.

What advice would you give aspiring writers?

It’s so important to take your work to the next level by meeting with other writers. Writing in a vacuum is not healthy to your mind or your work. Start a critique group, join a writer’s association, attend a conference; connect to others in publishing, and you will see your work grow before your eyes.

Speed Round:

MUST SEE BEFORE YOU DIE: PARIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

HIDDEN TALENT: Karaoke

TOP 3 FAVORITE BOOKS OF ALL TIME: POSSESSION by A. S. Byatt, A MOVEABLE FEAST by Ernest Hemingway, and EMMA by Jane Austen.

AUTHOR BIO:

Erika Robuck is the author of the forthcoming novels Hemingway’s Girl (9/4/12) and Call Me Zelda (2013) from NAL/Penguin, is a guest blogger at Writer Unboxed, and is a member of the Historical Novel Society and The Hemingway Society. Connect online at Twitter (@ErikaRobuck) or Facebook (Erika Robuck, Author.)