No Love Allowed (Dodge Cove Trilogy #1) (24 page)
Read No Love Allowed (Dodge Cove Trilogy #1) Online
Authors: Kate Evangelista
I know I’m missing a lot more people. This is like an Oscar speech where you forget to thank your significant other. If I have left you out, it’s not because I have forgotten about
you. It’s most likely my brain is mush. Leia, thank you for those movie dates and obsessing over TV shows. Your OTPs will live on forever. Meann, I miss you. When
No Love Allowed
eventually becomes a movie, I will make sure Chris Pine is in it if only so we can meet him in person and swoon together. Ron, I miss you, too! Your tweets and Tumblr reblogs never fail to make me
laugh.
To Ate Loyce and Kuya Noel, thank you for saving me from burning out. Inviting me on coffee dates or afternoons hanging out with Zoey and Bruno at your house is worth more to me than my weight
in gold. You listen. That is enough.
Lastly, I would like to thank God, the powers that be, the universe, whatever you would like to call that feeling of wonderment that comes from knowing there’s a force greater than us out
there. This book wouldn’t have come to be without some sort of divine intervention. It was a spark in the dark that became a magnificent pyrotechnic show in the sky.
Plan Your Own Roaring Twenties Party
1. You will need a theme. Here are some examples:
a. speakeasy
b. gangsters
c.
The Great Gatsby
d. Art Deco
2. Costumes and accessories are key.
a.
Ladies:
flapper dresses, evening dresses, boas, long pearl necklaces, fans
b.
Gents:
zoot suits, black or white ties on a black shirt, spats (white canvas or vinyl shoe covers), fedoras, gangster hats
*Just for fun, try flipping things around and let the girls be the gangsters and the boys be the flappers.
3. You must have cake! Try:
a. pineapple upside-down cake
b. icebox cake or junket (custard made with rennet)
4. Remember your drinks:
Virgin Mint Julep (serves 20)
• 1 large bunch fresh mint leaves, about 10 stems
• 1 bottle ginger ale (1 quart or 1 liter, they are approximately the same)
• 1 c fresh lemon juice or real lemon brand juice
• ½ c sugar
• ½ c water
Directions
:
Rinse the mint leaves, remove any thick stems, and set the mint aside. Put the ginger ale in the refrigerator to chill. Mix the lemon juice, sugar, and water in a small
saucepan. Heat and stir until the sugar is dissolved. Chill the mixture. In a large pitcher, pour the chilled lemon juice mixture over the mint leaves, and refrigerate it for 30 to 60 minutes.
Mix together the lemon juice–mint mixture, ginger ale, and ice. Stir vigorously until the pitcher is frosted, and serve.
5. Decor options:
a. Fill a tub with ice and stick all your bottled drinks in there. An easier option is to use buckets and bowls instead of the tub. The sink works, too.
b. Put flasks and boxes of candy cigarettes out on the tables.
c. Black-and-white tablecloths add to a speakeasy feel.
d. Feathers, pearls, glitter, and streamers—oh my! You can place them in goldfish bowls.
e. If you must have flowers, calla lilies are your best bet.
f. For an extra touch, place Art Deco posters on the walls.
6. As for music, it’s all about the jazz. The jauntier, the better.
7. If you need activities, here are a few to consider:
a. Post a doorman who demands the password posted on the invitation before letting people in.
b. To capture the swankiest costumes and give your guests a memento of the party, take Polaroids or set up a photo booth.
c. Screen a silent movie like the original it-girl Clara Bow’s
It.
d. Games like Charleston or mah-jongg can be played, too.
8. For fabulous invitation ideas, check out:
http://www.zazzle.com/
*Just search “Roaring Twenties Invitations”
9. And the most important part: HAVE FUN!
*Maybe put this party together for your book club while you discuss
No Love Allowed.
Caleb’s First-Date Playlist
On the flight back to the States, to keep himself from going crazy over missing Didi and the all-consuming guilt of leaving her, Caleb put this playlist together in
anticipation of the date he was planning so he could win her back.
1. “For the First Time” by the Script
2. “Love Somebody” by Maroon 5
3. “Take Me to Church” by Hozier
4. “Miss Missing You” by Fall Out Boy
5. “(Kissed You) Good Night” by Gloriana
6. “Trying Not to Love You” by Nickelback
7. “You’re All I Have” by Snow Patrol
8. “Romeo and Juliet” by the Killers
9. “Stubborn Love” by the Lumineers
10. “Girl You’re Alright” by Paul Otten
11. “The Shape I Found You In” by Girlyman
12. “Not Alone” by Darren Criss
13. “Overjoyed” by Bastille
It would be a great sound track to have playing in the background while reading
No Love Allowed
. Or, if you have your own playlist that you think fits Didi and Caleb’s love story,
post it on Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr and tag @SwoonReads and @KateEvangelista. We would love to listen to what you come up with.
A Coffee Date
with author Kate Evangelista and her editor, Holly West
“About the Author”
Holly West (HW): Let’s start by learning a little bit about you. What was the first romance novel you ever read?
Kate Evangelista (KE):
Suddenly You
by Lisa Kleypas.
HW: Nice. I like Lisa Kleypas.
KE: She’s an automatic buy for me. No matter what I’m reading at the moment—I don’t even care if I love the book to bits—if she has one
that’s coming out on that day, I’d be like, “Drop everything! Lisa Kleypas has a new book out! MUST READ.” And then I’m dead to the world until I finish that book. I
like all her books. She hasn’t come out with one in, I think, close to two years, so I’m having heart palpitations just waiting for the next installment.
HW: Do you have an OTP, like a favorite fictional couple?
KE: From
Suddenly You
, Jack Devlin and Amanda Briars. I think it’s because she’s a writer and he’s a publisher, so I’m kind of wishing,
“Come on, Universe, do this for me, too!”
HW: This is my favorite question. If you were a superhero, what would your superpower be?
KE: I want my superpower to be the ability to grant wishes. Not as a genie; I don’t want to be stuck in a bottle. That would be horrible. I just want that ability to grant
wishes. Like if someone had a wish, I’d be able to say “Okay!” and snap fingers and there.
HW: Do you have any hobbies?
KE: I like to bake. And I watch movies. I watch
a lot
of movies. Because when I’m not writing, I like to be in that visual state. I still like to watch stories
unfold. I like seeing the action, taking apart how that story was told and how the writer would have thought of that. It’s still a learning experience and it’s like a hobby, but at the
same time it’s like, “Hmmm . . . how can I use this for my own writing?” But yeah, I bake. I stress bake. So when you see me on social media taking pictures of a lot of baked
goods, you know I’m stressed. Seriously, when I had to keep the secret of being on the third list, I baked almost a thousand cupcakes. Almost.
HW: I completely understand. When I was in college, there was one time when I just hit a stress point that was so bad I just walked away from my computer before I threw
it out the window, went to Walmart, purchased all the chocolate chips they had and everything else I needed to make the chocolate chip recipe on the back of the Nestle package, and quite literally
made a thousand chocolate chip cookies. I had it set up in an assembly line, and I just had all these cookies. I ended up bagging them all and took them to every class I had afterward. I would call
people and say, “Bring milk. Don’t ask. Just bring milk.”
KE: Yeah, it’s not necessarily to eat yourself. I don’t bake things to eat them. It’s the process of baking and feeling useful. And I may have inadvertently
given several people diabetes. The conversation went like this: “Cupcakes? Cupcakes? Would you like cupcakes?” “What are you stressed out about?” “I can’t tell
you. I’m sorry. Have a cupcake!”
“The Swoon Reads Experience”
HW: After you learned about Swoon Reads, what made you decide to actually post your manuscript on the site?
KE: It’s so weird because I keep saying that this was really divine intervention. I felt it in my gut that the time was right. Because I kept putting it off and putting it
off, and, as I guess you know by now, I write in between projects. I have manuscripts tucked away somewhere that I could just upload anywhere I want with that kind of platform. But you know, you
just feel it. It comes to you and it feels right and then you do it. At that time I was like, “You know what? This is it.” And I hit publish.
HW: What was your experience like on the site before you were chosen?
KE: Addictive. I love how when you have a comment, you get an e-mail notifying you that you have a comment. So when the comments started coming in and the e-mails started coming
in, I was like, “Aaahh! Must go to the website! Must go to the website!” It’s addictive. You check it and check it and check it, refresh, refresh, refresh. It’s Pavlovian.
That whole October of people commenting . . . it was so much fun it’s almost indescribable. The way I saw it, even if I wasn’t chosen, I loved the fact that the readers were leaving
substantive comments. Of course the comments of “I love it, it’s great!” were nice, but it’s
really
nice when you see someone take the time to write more than a
paragraph for a comment just because when they read your story, they were so taken by it, they were so involved with the characters, that it drove them to say more.
HW: Those are the comments that we look for, too. The ones where people loved it enough to really talk about it. You had so many of them that were great. In fact, that
was one of the things that first helped us find your manuscript.
KE: It’s so nice because even if the comments say “You need to fix this,” or “This is what’s wrong with it,” for me, it’s still
meaningful that the person was driven enough to actually say those things. Because a lot of people could just be like, “I didn’t like it,” and stop reading and move on. Instead
it’s, “I read it to the end and here’s what I thought.” And my response is: “Hugs!” If I could hug each and every one of them, I would.