Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Release Blitz ~ Lavender in Bloom by Lily Velez ~ (Guest Post + Giveaway)

Release Blitz ~ Lavender in Bloom by Lily Velez ~ (Guest Post + Giveaway)

 Title: Lavender in Bloom
Author: Lily Velez
Release Date: July 25th, 2016
Genre: Historical, Coming-of-Age Romance
Purchase Link: Amazon
Synopsis: It’s the year 1802 in Avignon, France...
Noah Capet has spent most of his young life living simple and unvaried days in the hushed countryside of southern France. Quiet, reserved, and diffident, his preference for existing is to do so in solitude, keeping to himself both in town and on his family’s farm—a predilection that’s altogether disrupted when a newcomer to town by the name of Jeremie Perreault begins an unremitting quest to befriend him.
Jeremie is everything Noah is not. Charismatic and gregarious, he leaves a trail of charmed admirers in his wake wherever he goes. Expressive and idealistic, he talks without end about his deep love for old books and his spirited dream to one day travel the world on a literary pilgrimage.
Over the course of a single summer, the two form an unlikely friendship, but just as quickly as it develops, it soon entirely dissolves as they’re forced to face the truth of what has unexpectedly emerged between them.
Lavender in Bloom is a tender and tragic coming-of-age story about first love and self-discovery, and a poignant reminder that time is fleeting and always takes with it the choices we’re too afraid to make.

What was your inspiration to write a historical MM, rather than a contemporary one?

For me, writing (and reading) is all about being able to escape the real world. The more foreign a fictional world feels, the better the experience, and with historical fiction, you get the rare opportunity to step into a whole new world that’s often very different from your usual day-to-day routine. Depending on how far back you go, you’ll find differences in the way people dress, in the way they communicate, in the careers they hold, in the leisure activities they pursue, and so on. So I’d say escapism is definitely a big reason for writing a historical story as opposed to a contemporary one.

When it comes to the MM genre, I feel that any relationship has more of that ‘forbidden’ sense when the story’s set far back in the past, too. Of course, there can still be that forbidden sense in this day and age, but when you go back a couple of centuries, it definitely increases. I enjoy the idea of forbidden love. I enjoy reading about it and writing about it, so the opportunity to write it in Lavender in Bloom was definitely appealing.

I also feel life was simpler back then. People lived simpler lives, more peaceful lives. About half the story is set in the French countryside (the home of one of the main characters, Noah Capet), and it’s tranquil and nurturing. These days, society seems to be so fast-paced and busy, and it’s nice to time-travel to an era when people were more connected to the land and to each other.

All the same, it’s also fun to time-travel to an era when culture was a lot different. In the latter half of Lavender in Bloom, we see the world that Jeremie Perreault (one of the main characters) has grown up in. This is a world of dinner parties and chateaux and world travel. It was a lot of fun to research what high society people did back then and lose myself in their world for a short time—especially when it comes to the way they dressed! I kind of wish we could go back to those times…elegant dances, handsome men in tailcoats, women feeling like princesses in their gowns…yes, please! ;)




Author Bio: Lily Velez has been writing stories since she was six years old. Not much has changed since then. She still prefers the written word and her overactive imagination over the ‘real world’ (though to be fair, her stories no longer feature talking dinosaurs). A graduate of Rollins College and a Florida native, when she’s not reading or writing, she spends most of her days wrangling up her pit bulls Noah and Luna, planning exciting travel adventures, and nursing her addiction to cheese. All this when she isn’t participating in the extreme sport known as napping. You can learn more about Lily and her books at www.lilyvelezbooks.com.

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