Guest Post & GIVEAWAY: Effortless With You and Perfectly Messy by Lizzy Charles

Title: Effortless With You
Series: Effortless With You #1

Author: Lizzy Charles

Publication Date: October 29th, 2013

Publisher: Swoon Romance

Genre: YA Romance, Chick Lit

Pages: 344
ISBN: 0615876250

Synopsis (from Author):

School is out and Lucy is ready for the perfect summer: lazy days at the pool, invitations to the most exclusive parties, and romantic dates with her hot new boyfriend. That is, until she lands in trouble one too many times and her parents issue the ultimate punishment: a summer job. Suddenly, the summer can't end fast enough.

To make matters worse, the job is painting houses with Justin, the most popular, egotistical guy in school. Spending all summer with Justin might be other girls' dreams, but definitely not Lucy's. After all, Justin is cocky, annoying, and a jerk. So what if he's the most beautiful jerk Lucy's ever seen? Or that his grin makes her forget she’s mad at the world? Or that maybe, just maybe, there's more to Justin than Lucy realizes. Only one thing is certain: it won’t be the summer she wanted, but it might be exactly the one she needs.

 

Title: Perfectly Messy
Series: Effortless With You #2

Author: Lizzy Charles

Publication Date: May 27th, 2014

Publisher: Swoon Romance

Genre: YA Romance, Chick Lit

Pages: 308
ISBN: 0692233830

Synopsis (from Author):

Popularity isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be. Justin Marshall knows this better than most. For the captain of the basketball team, small business owner, and son of Minnesota’s next governor, life can get pretty overwhelming. But Justin can handle anything as long as he has Lucy, the girl who fell for the man he’s trying to be.

But for Justin and Lucy, finding time together proves challenging. Stolen kisses and whispered promises just aren’t enough. That is, until scandalous photos of the couple are leaked to a press intent on creating a juicy scandal during Justin’s dad’s gubernatorial campaign. And when Lucy becomes fair play for the tabloids and gossip pages, Justin does the only thing he can to protect her: he breaks her heart.

For Lucy, junior year is everything she hoped it would be: new friends, second chances, and a boyfriend she can’t stop kissing. That is, until the boy she’s pretty sure she loves chooses the life his family wants for him, over her.

Now it’s up to Lucy to teach him what it really means to have everything. Because for Justin, being who everyone needs him to be just might cost him the one person he can’t live without

 

Lizzy’s debut novel Effortless With You was published August 2013 and has become an international  mulit-category Amazon bestselling novel. The sequel, Perfectly Messy, releases May 2014.

Writing is the beautiful secret hidden in the pages of Lizzy’s soul. When she’s not scrambling to raise her spunky toddlers and newborn or caring for premature and sick babies as a neonatal intensive care nurse, she’s in a quiet corner writing or snuggled up with her favorite novel, Pride and Prejudice.

She graduated from the University of Minnesota, where she crammed children’s literature and creative writing courses into her vigorous nursing degree schedule. With a background in health, she writes about childhood health and development as her contribution to a popular MN public policy blog.

Lizzy caught the writing bug in first grade and hasn’t stopped jotting plot lines since. She married her high school sweet heart, a heart-melting musician, so it’s no surprise she’s fallen in love with writing contemporary Young Adult romance novels.

Lizzy Charles is represented by the amazing Dr. Jamie Bodnar Drowley of Inklings Literary Agency.

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What’s in a Name? (Naming Characters)

Hi! Thank you so much for having me on the blog. I’m thrilled to be sharing insight on how I named my characters in the Effortless With You series!

Naming my characters is very important to me. I put a lot of time and effort into it. I’m around the “naming” process all the time as a neonatal intensive care nurse. One of my favorite moments is when a parent whispers their child’s name to them for the first time. Or helping them choose their names as they look at their little baby through the isolette. The moment the name is settled, it’s magical. I can honestly feel a shift in the air.

 

 The little life that I cradle in my hands just became a Robert Henry. How cool is that? The same thing happens when characters of a novel are named. Here are the five steps I generally take when naming a character:

Five Steps to Naming Characters

1. Choose the Vibe. Do you want it to be a modern name? An eclectic name? A classic name? 

2. Hit up baby naming lists and blogs. Look at what’s popular now and up to ten years prior. This is important to me as I absolutely want to connect with my audience, which are readers ages 13+ (we are all young adults at heart, aren’t we. 

3. Run said names against your own name prejudices you picked up from your schooling years. Noah is always a name I try to seriously consider for a main love interest but I can’t make the leap--- not after playing cello in front of the most boogery Noah on earth for eight years. That’s right. EIGHT YEARS OF BOOGERS. Yuck. 

4. Take the name and run it by people that are dear to you. This is key when I choose my guy names. I’ll tell my friends, “okay, this guy is supposed to be that frat-boy you hate.” Together we’ll play with my top names, perhaps tweak spelling and do whatever it takes to find a way to portray just that. 

5. When it comes down to it, naming characters is like naming a baby. So what does that mean? Just name them what feels right once you meet them. ☺ 

Sometimes you actually have to start writing your characters before their name materializes. I’ve actually changed names out a few chapters in once I realized that my Tripp was actually a Beckett, etc. So how did this add up to finding Lucy and Justin for Effortless With You and Perfectly Messy? I named my characters the summer of 2010. I knew I wanted my female lead to be strong, a bit of a spitfire, but incredibly kind. At the time, I’d recently moved into a townhome association and was fascinated with this ninety three year old woman who lived across the courtyard named Lucy. This woman was up at dawn and went to bed past midnight. I don’t think a week went by where she wasn’t throwing a party for all the ladies on the block. Lucy was that type of person who made you feel like you were the most important person on Earth when she spoke to you. She was that amazing.
 
 So, Lucy became my female lead. And Justin? Well … I did all the baby name searches but when it came down to it, I had a small dose of Bieber Fever (please remember that this is 2010).


 So, naturally, I named the love interest in my romance Justin. Thankfully, once I started writing, my Justin strayed far away from being even close to Bieber-ish.


Source Credit Pinterest and http://blogss4fun7437.blogspot.com

What are your favorite character names? Can you imagine what Twilight would be like if Edward was actually named Todd or Eustice? See, names count! Thanks so much for having me on the blog!

Interested in Lizzy Charles' novels Effortless With You and Perfectly Messy? They are available on Amazon, Nook, iBooks, and most ebook readers. Prefer a book you can actually hold in your hand and smell? Both novels are available in print via Amazon and available to order through many local bookstores if you ask. :)

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