The Great #ChickLitMay Scavenger Hunt

Welcome to the #ChickLitMay Scavenger Hunt!

This blog post features the letter ‘L’ and . . .

. . . the L-word you need to collect is ‘LURCH’.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to visit all 26 blogs featuring letters of the alphabet and collect 26 chick lit words. It’s worth it, I promise. You could win a KINDLE PAPERWHITE and A $100 AMAZON GIFT VOUCHER. Sorry, am I shouting? I’m just so darn excited!

Anyway, why L = LURCH? I bet you expected me to choose LOVE because it’s the obvious L-word, right?

I’ll be honest. I did consider it. But then it wouldn’t be Chick Lit; it’d be straight romance.

My word is LURCH because Chick Lit is all about women lurching through life the best they can. Which is what we all do, right?

Dang it!

Inevitably, Chick Lit heroines fall flat on their face—figuratively, but sometimes literally as well—and that’s okay because, let’s face it, we’ve all made spectacular fools of ourselves at one point or other. Where else can you read about someone else’s halo-frizz hair disasters, public displays of idiocy, ’embarrassing bodies’ discoveries, and foot-in-mouth faux pas?

Yep, it’s cringe-y, but that’s life. Nobody’s perfect.

Chick Lit may come across as a light, fluffy read, but scratch beneath the surface and you’ll inevitably find more. Tragedy and loss and life-changing events . . . Our Chick Lit heroines lurch through all manner of gritty life issues, learning who they are and what they want, and finding their own happy endings. (Yay for the happy ending!)

Chick Lit heroines are fighters. It may take them a while to figure it out, but I love that Chick Lit chicks become their own hero, pick themselves up, learn from their mistakes, and get on with their life.

And, of course, it’s always done with humour, because that’s the Chick Lit way.

That’s why I love Chick Lit. I want to read stories that make me laugh! Stories that promise me life isn’t going to always be terrible! Stories that reassure me, as in, ‘Heck, if that heroine can lurch through her life crisis and find her happy ending, so can I!’

If she can do it, so can I. Love that thought.

Take Becky, the heroine of my novel, A Heat Of The Moment Thing. She has flaws and insecurities—plenty of them, just like us—and she lurches her way through her life crisis, eventually finding her happy ending. But it’s not easy. She doesn’t know what happy ending she wants, for starters. And that’s part of the fun, isn’t it? Sometimes our happy endings are completely different from what we expected.

When you read one of my books I hope you’ll become the main character for a while, feeling all their excitement and despair and yearnings and love as if they were your own, rooting for her to hero up and win.

To me, that’s what reading is all about: escaping into a fun new world for a while, enjoying a satisfying happy ending, then heading back to reality, refreshed and ready for whatever life throws at me.

Ready, Set, Lurch!

PS  Bonus Extra Alert! If you’d like to hear when my next book (the sequel to A Heat Of The Moment Thing) is released, simply submit your email address in the ‘newsletter’ link on the right sidebar of this page. (Aaaaand if you do this before the Scavenger Hunt ends (Sunday 22nd May, E.D.T.), here’s your bonus extra: I’ll send you a ‘Yay for #ChickLitMay’ copy of The Fling Thing – A Christmas Quickie. It’s the prequel to Heat.)

Ooh! Now, don’t forget . . .

This is a Scavenger Hunt! And there’s a Kindle Paperwhite and Amazon Gift Voucher to be won. Full details below.

The next stop on the Scavenger Hunt is the letter ‘M’, which you can find here: http://www.spajonas.com/2016/05/15/chicklitmay-scavenger-hunt/

And if you’ve just joined the hunt, or want to go back to the start, here’s the link to the letter ‘A’ so you can grab all the Scavenger Hunt words: http://katieoliver.com/ko/2016/05/chick-lit-a-to-z-scavenger-hunt/

GRAND PRIZE!!!

Want to win a Kindle Paperwhite and a $100 Amazon Gift Card? Here’s what you need to do:

1. Visit each of the 26 stops on the #ChickLitMay A to Z Scavenger Hunt and collect the alphabet word at each stop (A, B, C, D, etc).
2. Submit the A-Z list of words via email to traciebanister [at] gmail [dot] com with the subject line “A to Z Scavenger Hunt Entry”. Entries will be accepted until Sunday 22nd May at midnight E.D.T.
3. Wait with bated breath! The winner will be drawn on Monday 23rd May. Good luck!