THE MAGIC of FOUND OBJECTS by Maddie Dawson - Spotlight/Giveaway

 

From the bestselling author of Matchmaking for Beginners comes a feel-good story about becoming who you were meant to be all along.

Phronsie Linnelle was conceived at Woodstock in a serendipitous liaison between a free-spirited hippie and a farmer’s son and was born with magical wonder flickering in her DNA and rationality knit into her bones. All her life she’s been torn between the two. But now that she’s been betrayed by both love and the mother she once idolized, her rational side is winning.

So when her best friend from childhood proposes that they give up on romance and marry each other, Phronsie agrees. Who better to spend your life with than your best friend? Maybe the connection they already have is love. Maybe there’s no falling to be done. But immediately after they announce their engagement, she encounters someone who makes a very charming and compelling argument for revisiting romance.

While her even-keeled stepmother argues for the safety that comes with her new engagement and her mother relays messages from the universe to hold out for true love, Phronsie must look to her own heart to find the answers that have been there all along.

Maddie took some time to answer our questions.

1. Tell us about your new book, THE MAGIC OF FOUND OBJECTS. Who is the main character? Tell us about her. 

Phronsie Linnell—35, divorced, and living in New York City—accepts a midnight marriage proposal from her longtime best friend from home, Judd Kovac. She likes him fine, but she doesn’t LOVE LOVE him, which is exactly why he says their marriage will be perfect: they won’t break each other’s hearts. They will be safe with each other forever.

Immediately after saying yes, though, Phronsie can’t help but reflect on her own upbringing and the confusing messages about love she received as a child. She’s the product of an ill-fated liaison that took place at Woodstock, where her parents met for the first time along with a half million other young people, all experiencing peace, love, music, and freedom. Her father was a conservative farmer’s son from New Hampshire, and her mother a free-spirited, fun-loving, outrageous hippie artist who believed in free love. As Phronsie looks back on the ways that her parents’ personalities and their disastrous, short-lived marriage shaped her beliefs about spontaneity, romance and stability, she comes to realize what is most important to her and what chances just might be worth taking.

2. Tell us the biggest difference you've encountered moving from the south to the northeast.

Ah! I was born in north Florida (think: practically Georgia) and then transplanted as a teenager to Southern California (think: every beach movie you ever saw.)  After I got married, my then-husband was accepted to grad school, and he and I moved to the Northeast, thinking we’d stay exactly long enough for him to get his degree and then not one second longer. We were positive about that! 

Forty years later, I’m still here. (He isn’t. He’s back in California.)

Why am I here? That’s the question that gets asked by anybody who hears about the Santa Barbara lifestyle I once had. But I know why I’m here. Despite the fact that the weather here is pretty much impossible—cold, dry winters and hot, humid summers--I have to admit that I’ve come to love the variety life offers here. Believe me, it took me a while to adjust, but now I can mostly appreciate the gorgeous, delicate surprise of spring, the booming thunderstorms of summer, the wild colors of fall, and yes, even the drama of a blizzard that causes us to hunker down in the house, often by candlelight because the power is out waaay too often. 

And I’ve loved being close to New York City and to Brooklyn, too, where I have set several of my books. I live in a small town in Connecticut, with a town green and local bookstores and coffee shops—and even town characters who sit outside on benches and greet everyone who comes by. I love the friendliness of where I live, and its quiet beauty at the shore. I love that the high school students in my town show up on the green on prom night wearing their finest finery, and that everybody else turns out to take their pictures—and that on graduation night, as soon as the last name is read, all the church bells around the green start to peal and chime in celebration. And I love the moment when all the graduates throw their mortarboards in the air, and a cheer rings out across the whole downtown, year after year, marking the moment.  

 

3. Your novels are about life, family, and connection. Where do your ideas come from? Or rather, how do you create a story from so much material?

There’s a crazy little secret about writing novels that most authors I know will sometimes admit to. (Come closer, and I’ll whisper it to you. Ready?)

We don’t know where our ideas come from.

Really. It’s true. Ideas just show up, like little dandelion puffs floating by—and we grab onto one and follow it as far as we can and see if it develops into a story. Sometimes that puff comes from a shadowy memory of a certain character we’ve dreamed of, or a song we hear on the radio, or a fleeting image in a movie we’re watching…or even some snippet of conversation we overhear at the grocery store or while we’re crossing the park. Sometimes an idea shows up with a “what-if” attached to it: What if there was a woman who was in love with a man and they’ve decided not to have children but then she gets pregnant unexpectedly at age 45…and…and…? What if a lonely woman searches for her biological mother and along the way discovers she has a sister…and then together they go and search for their mom…and what if that mom is nothing like they expected?

What if? What if? 

Stories come floating in, but mainly the ones that work out best in my world come when a character simply shows up and starts tugging on my shirt tails, asking me to listen, as she or he strives for connection and love and family…and looking for a place to belong in the world. 

4. Is there any message you hope readers get from your books?

Well, there’s that word: message. Hmmm. I don’t start a book with the idea of a message in mind. (Who was it that said, and I’m paraphrasing here, “If you want to send a message, don’t write a book--write a telegram”?)

 I think books are best when they’re about PEOPLE—men and women and kids bumbling through, trying and failing and trying again, weeping and cursing, and making each other laugh and trying to understand themselves and each other, and then trying again. This may explain why I’ve often gotten up at 2 a.m., and am listening to some character from my work-in-progress explain something to me that she could have let me know during my writing time when I was sitting with my fingers on the keys, waiting and waiting to hear her talk to me—yes, she certainly could have, but was she talking to me then? NOooooo, she was not.

 I guess I want my books to represent real life, or at least real life the way I interpret it—which is a mishmash of characters much like my friends: funny, sad, wonderful, difficult, beautiful, confused, talkative, contradictory…but still trying somehow. I like it best when my books have a little bit of magic in them, because that’s how life is, but not too much, because magic comes in small doses…and oh yes, maybe also a couple of miracles—and lots of laughter, because I think life is inherently funny. And sad. And both at the same time. 

5. Anything you'd like to add?

Yes!! Thank you, Cindy, for inviting me to come onto your blog and talk about writing. It’s been such fun to think about these questions you asked. We’re all coming out of one of the most difficult, traumatic years we could have ever imagined…and yet, there has been beauty and connection, too, in ways we might not have ever guessed. And now that we’re free to move about the country again, I hope books will continue to connect us, and we’ll find our people and learn how to be together once again. Best wishes to you and all of your readers! 

MADDIE'S WORDS:

I'm the author of eight novels about love, crazy families, secrets, parenthood, and--yes, they have reasonably happy endings. Kind of like life. My newest, A Happy Catastrophe, will be released on May 25, 2020. My other novels are: Matchmaking for Beginners, The Survivor's Guide to Family Happiness, The Opposite of Maybe, The Stuff That Never Happened, Kissing Games of the World and A Piece of Normal.

My first novel, What Comes After Crazy, was written under the name Sandi Kahn Shelton.

www.maddiedawson.com

This book will be published August 1st!

Thanks to Lake Union Publishing we have one copy to giveaway. Just tell of which of Maddie's novels is your favorite. We'll announce a winner soon. Good luck.

GIVEAWAY: USA only please