Book Tour: Sweet by Alysia Constantine

Author: Alysia Constantine

Book Name: Sweet

Release Date: February 4, 2016

Praise for Sweet by Alysia Constantine from Publisher’s Weekly: http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-941530-61-0

Pages or Words: 246 pages

Categories: Contemporary, Fiction, Gay Fiction, M/M Romance, Romance

Goodreads Link: http://www.goodreads.com/AlysiaConstantine

Publisher: Interlude Press

Cover Artist: C.B. Messer

For Jules Burns, a lonely baker, it is the memory of his deceased husband, Andy. For Teddy Flores, a numbed-to-the-world accountant who accidentally stumbles into his bakery, it is a voyage of discovery into his deep connections to pleasure, to the world, and to his own heart.

Alysia Constantine’s Sweet is also the story of how we tell stories—of what we expect and need from a love story. The narrator is on to you, Reader, and wants to give you a love story that doesn’t always fit the bill. There are ghosts to exorcise, and jobs and money to worry about. Sweet is a love story, but it also reminds us that love is never quite what we expect, nor quite as blissfully easy as we hope.

Interlude Press

Amazon

ARe

“Speakerphone.”

“What?”

“Speakerphone. Put me on speaker so you can use your hands. You’re going to need both hands, and I won’t be held responsible for you mucking up your phone. Speaker.”

Teddy set his phone on the counter and switched to the speaker, then stood waiting.

“Hello?” Jules said. “Is this thing on?”

“Sorry,” Teddy said. “I’m still here.”

“It sounded like you’d suddenly disappeared. I was starting to believe in the rapture,” Jules said, and Teddy heard, again, the nervous chuckle.

Their conversation was awkward and full of strange pauses in which there was nothing right to say, and they focused mostly on how awkward and strange it was until Jules told Teddy to dump the almond paste on the counter and start to knead in the sugar.

“I’m doing it, too, along with you,” Jules said.

“I’m not sure whether that makes it more or less weird,” Teddy admitted, dusting everything in front of him with sugar.

“It’s just like giving a back rub,” Jules told him. “Roll gently into the dough with the heel of your hand, lean in with your upper body. Think loving things. Add a little sugar each time—watch for when it’s ready for more. Not too much at once.”

Several moments passed when all that held their connection was a string of huffed and effortful breaths and the soft thump of dough. Teddy felt Jules pressing and leaning forward into his work, felt the small sweat and ache that had begun to announce itself in Jules’s shoulders, felt it when he held his breath as he pushed and then exhaled in a rush as he flipped the dough, felt it all as surely as if Jules’s body were there next to him, as if he might reach to the side and, without glancing over, brush the sugar from Teddy’s forearm, a gesture which might have been, if real, if the result of many long hours spent in the kitchen together, sweet and familiar and unthinking.

“My grandmother and I used to make this,” Jules breathed after a long silence, “when I was little. Mine would always become flowers. She would always make hers into people.”

Teddy understood that he needn’t reply, that Jules was speaking to him, yes, but speaking more into the empty space in which he stood as a witness, talking a story into the evening around him, and he, Teddy, was lucky to be near, to listen in as the story spun itself out of Jules and into the open, open quiet.

When the dough was finished and Jules had interrupted himself to say, “There, mine’s pretty done. I bet yours is done by now, too,” Teddy nodded in agreement—and even though he knew Jules couldn’t see him, he was sure Jules would sense him nodding through some miniscule change in his breathing or the invisible tension between them slackening just the slightest bit. And he did seem to know, because Jules paused and made a satisfied noise that sounded as if all the spring-coiled readiness had slid from his body. “This taste,” Jules sighed, “is like Proust’s madeleine.”

They spent an hour playing with the dough and molding it into shapes they wouldn’t reveal to each other. Teddy felt childish and happy and inept and far too adult all at once as he listened to the rhythmic way Jules breathed and spoke, the way his voice moved in and out of silence, like the advance and retreat of shallow waves that left in their wake little broken treasures on the shore.

Only his fingers moved, fumbling and busy and blind as he listened, his whole self waiting for Jules to tell him the next thing, whatever it might be.

Alysia Constantine lives in Brooklyn with her wife, their two dogs, and a cat. When she is not writing, she is a professor at an art college. Before that, she was a baker and cook for a caterer, and before that, she was a poet.

Sweet is her first novel.

Blog: www.Alysiaconstantine.com

Twitter: @ConstantAlysia

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alysia.constantine.1

Tumblr: http://alysia-constantine.tumblr.com

Today I’m very lucky to be interviewing Alysia Constantine, author of Sweet. Hi, Alysia, thank you for agreeing to this interview.

What is the biggest thing people think they know about your subject/genre that isn’t so?

If the subject is stories themselves, then I think we all take a lot of pleasure in knowing how a story is going to go and having our expectations fulfilled (I knew she was going to end up with that person!). Maybe this comes from the disappointing talent I seem to have at guessing the entire plot of a film after the first 15 minutes… I hate knowing. I guess I find it more interesting when you have expectations, the story seems to be aware of what your expectations are, and then resists fulfilling them. I think a lot of our reactions to stories (fulfillment, suspense, disappointment, pleasure) have to do with whether or not—or how—a story fulfills our expectations.

What are some references you used while writing this book?

My recipe box, for sure! When I originally wrote Sweet, I did so by basing each chapter on a recipe, and originally I had included the recipes at the end of each chapter. In the end, that seemed too much like Like Water for Chocolate, which did that so beautifully, so there was no need for Sweet to do it. But the trace left behind by the recipes (the flavor, the style, the sweetness or bitterness or richness) remains in the chapters, I think.

Do you recall how your interest in writing originated?

I absolutely don’t. Both my parent had been language teachers, and I was never very good at math, so writing became my thing. I remember in fourth grade being admired by my peers for my poetic ability. Boy, I could rhyme anything. I wanted to be the next Shel Silverstein. I do know that what was originally fun and easy for me became more important to me because other people started calling me a “writer” and asking me to write things. Then, as I got older and had a bit of publishing success, I got scared and stumped by all the pressure I put on myself about it. Now, I’ve managed to get back to the fun part.

What do your plans for future projects include?

Right now, I’m working on a new novel that takes place in the circus, among circus performers and sideshow folk. I’d say more, but I really don’t know much more than that right now, except that the novel starts with one character’s parents, who are trapeze artists, disappearing midair during their act. And I know that it’s two women, one who is an aerialist and contortionist, and one who is a “danger eater” (she swallows swords and eats fire). So, in a sense, they are both people who have had to train their bodies to behave in abnormal and uncomfortable ways. They are both, in a certain sense, contortionists.

Do you have anything specific that you want to say to your readers?

I feel like when I was young and being scolded into apologizing for some Bad Thing I had done, and an adult would say, “And what do you want to say to this lady, whose toes you just trod on?” I’m sorry? No, that seems wrong in this situation. I think whatever I’ve been interested in saying, I’ve tried to say it in the novel. Except thank you to anyone who’s invested themselves in the book. Writing can be so solitary; it’s really nice to know that people are reading what one wrote.