Book Tour for Trumpet by Bill and Susan Seaforth Hayes (Interview & GIVEAWAY)

I'm excited today to bring to all of you Bill and Susan Seaforth Hayes talking about their new release Trumpet, a sweeping drama full of emotional highs and lows that keeps you guessing even after the final page is turned.  I'll give you a tantalizing taste of this book today as well as an interview with Bill and Susan, so let's get right to the fun....

TSP:  You've had an intriguing path to becoming writers.  Did you always want to be writers and what's the best part of being a writer?

We’ve been writing throughout our careers.  Bill is a whiz at rhyme, and created scenes in iambic pentameter for Trumpet.  Lyrics, songs.  He’s your man.  During the early years of Soap Opera Digest, we had a weekly column called Days With the Hayes. (What else?)  Now our twitter account is @DaysHayes.  Like Sands Through the Hourglass, our double memoir, was completed in a he said she said style and we finished it in five months.  We’ve worked on Trumpet for seven years!!   We knew good writing takes hard work, but the best part is undoubtedly hearing a reader say “I loved your book, and it was so well written.”  That’s positively ego catnip to us.  

TSP:  Do you think your soap opera background has helped or hindered your writing career?  Do you find any of the old storylines influencing the stories you write now?

After over forty years of acting in soaps, we’ve studied what makes good dialogue for most of our lives.  We read widely and love a juicy memorable exchange between characters that have made their way into our hearts.  It’s so actable!  We read every word of Trumpet aloud together until it felt right, so we’d have to say acting was a help in writing a book that is largely about actors. Real events we’ve lived through, and the most exciting historical events we researched had more to do with Trumpet than any TV storylines.  We like to think Trumpet is fresh!

TSP:  Your first release is a historical romance.  Do you plan on writing more books in this genre or are there other themes you'd like to write about?

When our publisher first read the manuscript of Trumpet she immediately suggested a sequel.  Very gratifying.  Historical romance turns us on, and we have hundreds of books in our research library now to plow through.

TSP:  What can you tell us about your debut release and the path it took to publication?

We were signing for the Days of Our Lives 45th Anniversary coffee table book at the Romance Novel Convention in Los Angeles last spring.  Decadent Publishing in the person of Heather Bennett asked if we had any new work tucked away.  Trumpet was complete.  We reworked it from August 2011 to February of 2012. 

Trumpet is a story of a young woman’s path to maturity through the theater of London and beyond.  We personally traveled to the places where her journey leads, England, Egypt, Italy, the battlefield of Waterloo, and even Charleston South Carolina.  Fascinating historical characters pepper the plot, spun around the real events of the age.  Napoleon makes an entrance, as do Sarah Siddons and Edmond Kean, the greatest actors of their time. Elizabeth Trumpet the gifted heroine becomes entwined with two dark and daring men, one our creation named Jack Faversham, and Giovanni Belzoni, a man whose dazzling life on the stage of Egyptian history is still controversial.  IN addition to all that, it’s also funny.
  
TSP:  How has the digital revolution affected your career and how you market yourselves?

Long ago and far away we used to get world wide fan mail.  (We vividly remember letters from political prisoners in Iran.)  Now its thrilling to exchange greetings and thoughts from readers in Spain or Australia immediately after a book goes online.  Of course we have E readers as well as sagging shelves.  Lately Susan has been going back to books she read twenty years ago and enjoying them again, so much so it’s impossible to let them go.   

TSP:  What's up next for you in terms of writing or any other facet of your careers you'd like to share with us?

We continue to appear on Days of Our Lives, look forward to book tours with Trumpet, and are thrashing out plots for a sequel. Still impossibly happy in our marriage after thirty seven years of bliss the glow continues and writing has really turned up the heat.  Blog tours are fun too, and we plan to answer every request with honesty, not to say candor.  (Who is really out there reading?  Hayes and Hayes want to know.)

TSP:  My blog is all about favorite things.  What are some of your favorite things, the things you can't live without?

For Bill; the sound of music, chocolate, Susan’s sweet lips, all the memories of family both here and gone, singing in the church choir.  Silk ties and handkerchiefs, legal pads and number two pencils, champagne and a little more chocolate.
 
For Susan; scarves.  I must own hundreds of them, and you remember they weren’t always in style, but I took them home from our world travels gleefully.  (Packs flat, weighs nothing I would tell Bill).  Salt.  Pulled pork. Soft sheets. Earrings. Grace before dinner, (a chance to thank God for all our blessings) the novels of Patrick O’ Brian, the perfume of roses in our garden and most of all, my romantic handsome adorable life partner, William Foster Hayes, whom I call Billy.

TSP:  Thanks again for taking time out of your busy schedule to answer my questions.  Both of you have been a part of my life since I was a child and my mother watched your show everyday.  It's quite exciting getting to "talk" with you now.

You are very very welcome.  We are grateful to have given your mother some entertaining times, and hope you will take a few moments curled up with Trumpet.  It’s really the next installment of Doug and Julie. 

Trumpet by Bill and Susan Seaforth Hayes

Brilliant and sassy Elizabeth Trumpet fantasizes starring on the London stage, but to become an actress in 1803 is tantamount to losing her virginity in the most debasing way.

After watching her mother die and her father lose his mind, the courageous sixteen-year-old must find a way to save her family. She scores her first acting job as a fencer—the deadly skill she learned from her brother training for the military. Blessed with talent and a rare singing voice, Lizzie pursues her career, learning from theatrical characters high and low.

When reckless actor Jonathan Faversham sets eyes on Miss Trumpet, he knows he’s found the partner of his life. But Faversham carries ruinous baggage from a dark past. Entangled in lust and ambition, Lizzie gives him her heart and they reach the heights together. Until Lizzie gets more applause than he…

From the magnificence of Regency palaces and the Theatre Royal Covent Garden to the sun-baked pyramids of Egypt and the arms of a real-life Samson, Lizzie is never far from trouble. As her brother rides to glory with Wellington in the Napoleonic Wars, great events threaten her survival. Danger lurks behind stage curtains, when a madman sets fire to take her life and she lifts a sword in revenge.

Will this once innocent girl, with her rise to stardom, be remembered for her art? Or for her shame?

Trumpet is published by Decadent Publishing, and is available from Amazon UK, Amazon US, All Romance eBooks, Smashwords and all other good eBook retailers.

**********GIVEAWAY**********

There are TWO Prizes being given away......Prize 1 is Bill & Susan's double memoir, Like Sands Through the Hourglass, Prize 2 is Bill's CD, This is Bill Hayes.

-To be entered, just leave a comment, along with your email addy.
-This giveaway is tour wide, and the more comments you leave, the more chance you have of winning, so check out the rest of the tour schedule here.
-Giveaway ends at 11:59 PM CST on 6/15.