Wednesday, 19 March 2014
Brook Cottage Books is thrilled to have a guest post by Barbara Berger!
Chick Lit meets Self Help in “The Adventures of Pebble Beach”
by Barbara Berger
http://adventuresofpebblebeach.com/
I like to
say “Chick Lit meets Self Help” in my newly released novel “The Adventures of
Pebble Beach” because the book is the fictional version of some of the many
themes I explore in my self-help books. You see my name is Barbara Berger and
if you Google me or check out my Web site (www.beamteam.com)
you’ll see that I’ve written 15 self-empowerment books including the
international bestseller “The Road to Power / Fast Food for the Soul” (which is
now published in 30 languages) and “Are You Happy Now? 10 Ways to Live a Happy
Life” (18 languages) which was recently released in the US and UK.
And now finally
my novel “The Adventures of Pebble Beach” has just been released by Roundfire
Books in the US and UK and the rest
of the English-speaking world. The book is a high-spirited tale of a newly
divorced, 40-something woman with two teenage sons who is trying to take
control of her life, her sex-crazed body, and her new relationships with men –
while struggling to build a career in advertising in the big city. It’s a fun
read and I’m sure you are going to enjoy it!
The reason
I’ve had so much fun with Pebble
Beach is that I’ve taken
many of the “usual suspects” we women worry about and put them in this book.
Subjects like our frantic desire to keep our good looks even though we’re
getting older, the way we look for validation of our worth from other people, how
we often desperately want a man because we believe we must have a partner to
live a happy life, and then (oh God no) the way in which we often choose poorly
when we do hick up with someone! You get the idea! And well Pebble Beach
– the name of my heroine in this book – worries about all of these things and
more. And so in the book, we get to see how she manages after she gets divorced
– in terms of her love life, her sex life, and her career in the big city.
Finally – when things really begin to come to a head – dear Pebble Beach
decides to go to therapy!
And believe
it or not, I wrote the original draft of “The Adventures of Pebble Beach”
almost 30 years ago in 1987. But at the time I wasn’t a famous author and so I
didn’t show the manuscript to anyone. I just stuffed it away in a drawer
somewhere and forgot about it!
Needless to
say, it wasn’t until 2007 that I rediscovered the book quite by accident. It
happened in the very hot summer of 2007 after I’d just been through a painful
breakup with my on-and-off boyfriend of almost seven years. Then one day, when
I was looking for something on my computer, I must have hit the wrong key and
up came Pebble Beach. And as I said, I’d completely
forgotten about her and her adventures and on that day in 2007, I started
reading what appeared on the screen before me. And wow, I was amazed at what I
read. I was amazed by what I had written 20 years earlier about a woman who was
also floundering and trying to come to terms with her disastrous relationships
with men! I was stunned by my discovery. Did I really know all that in 1987?
And then I
thought, well it could be fun to try and update the manuscript and see if I
could make it an even better book than the original manuscript was. And so that
became my 2007 summer project and part of my own healing journey out of the
problematic relationship I myself had been in for so long.
Because yes,
even though “The Adventures of Pebble Beach” is a fun read, it’s also a lot
about a woman floundering in unhealthy relationships and yes, in the book, the
heroine Pebble Beach does go to therapy to try to understand her insecurity and
neediness and her inability to take care of herself when her better judgment is
telling her that a relationship is not good for her.
And now finally
Pebble Beach has been published! Exciting
indeed! So I hope you’ll enjoy Pebble
Beach and her journey to
freedom as much as I have!
Links:
Purchase
links:
Special
release offer: Only 5 US dollars.
Beamteam.com:
http://shop.beamteam.com/product.asp?product=120
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