Guest Post & Giveaway with Author Gale Martin

Today, I have author Gale Martin here with us talking about the lure of the bad boy. Welcome to The Book Vixen Gale!

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Bob Marley sang about him. Classic writers such as Leo Tolstoy and Margaret Mitchell wrote him into their fiction.

Who is this classic archetype of story, of song, of life?

The cad. The rake. The alpha male. The bad boy—a man who behaves badly, especially towards women.

Whatever you call this rogue, every woman knows him by his swagger whenever he appears on the page. We know the havoc he wreaks in women’s hearts and lives, and yet we still become involved with him … or secretly long to in the stories we read.

What is it about the bad boy that women find so hard to resist?

In an interesting article at Self-Growth.com, writer Chris Williamson lists seven reasons why women love bad men. Basically, Williamson says bad boys are confident, adventurous men who appear to be in control but are always testing the boundaries–yours, theirs, and everyone else’s–all qualities most women find very appealing.

Grace Savage, the female protagonist in my latest novel Grace Unexpected, has had a lifelong weakness for the kind of guy no one would ever confuse with a choir boy. The kind women rarely take home to Mother. As the book opens, Grace is in a relationship with an attractive, virile young man (ironically) named Christian who can’t quite be trusted in a long-term relationship.

Why would a well-educated, professional thirty-something woman like Grace get involved with a man who would rather go bald, or broke, than say, “I do”? Psychologists say that women like Grace stuff most of their evil impulses as they mature but long to “let them out” when they’re in league with a bad boy.

Writers often include bad boys in their novels because rebellious and reckless types create instant tension in women’s fiction. Though Grace is hardly a saint, despite the beatific name, she deserves better than she gets in Grace Unexpected. But then, we love to put our main characters in peril. Our readers count on it.

Will women ever stop being attracted to bad men? Hard to say. Maybe, like me, they prefer to marry good men in real life.

I have a hunch they will still long to escape with a bad boy in a good book once in a while.

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Gale Martin is an award-winning writer of contemporary fiction who plied her childhood penchant for lying into a legitimate literary pursuit during midlife. She began writing her first novel at age eleven, finally finishing her first book three decades later.

Her debut novel, DON JUAN IN HANKEY, PA, published in 2011, is a humorous backstage novel inspired by Don Giovanni, Mozart’s famous tragicomic opera about the last two days of Don Juan’s life. It was named a Finalist in the 2012 National Indie Excellence Awards for New Fiction.

Her second novel GRACE UNEXPECTED is wryly witty women's fiction that features a protagonist who can hear her ovaries ticking, who has a heart of pure gold, wrapped in lead. But a string of crummy boyfriends would do that to any lovable woman while waiting for Mr. Right.

She has a master of arts in creative writing from Wilkes University. She lives in Eastern Pennsylvania because she has to.

Find the author online: website | blog | twitter | facebook

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Thirty-something Grace Savage has slogged through crummy jobs and dead-end relationships with men who would rather go bald than say "I do." In search of respite from her current job, she visits Shaker Village in New Hampshire. Instead of renewal, she's unnerved to learn that Shaker men and women lived and worked side by side in complete celibacy. When her longtime boyfriend dumps her instead of proposing, Grace avows the sexless Shaker ways. Resolved to stick to her new plan - dubbed the Shaker Plan - despite ovaries ticking like time bombs, she returns to her life in Pennsylvania. Almost immediately, she's juggling two eligible bachelors: Addison, a young beat reporter; and True, a venerable anthropology professor. Both men have ample charms and soul mate potential to test her newfound Shaker-style self-control, and Grace appears to be on the fast track to a marriage proposal... until secrets revealed deliver a death rattle to the Shaker Plan.

    

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Thanks to Gale Martin, one lucky winner will receive a SIGNED print copy of Grace Unexpected and one lucky winner will receive an ebook copy (Kindle or Nook) of Grace Unexpected. Good luck to all who enter!

• No purchase necessary.
• Must be 18 years old or older to enter.
• Giveaway for the signed print copy open to US residents. Giveaway for the ebook copy open Internationally. Void where prohibited.
• Comments are appreciated, however, you must fill out the Rafflecopter form in order to enter this giveaway.
• Please read TBV's Giveaway Policy before entering.
• Giveaway ends 9:01 pm (Pacific Time) on 12/27/2012.

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