PLAYING ARMY Nancy Stroer

Please welcome Nancy Stroer author of Playing Army

A randomly drawn winner will be awarded a $25 Amazon/BN gift card.

PLAYING ARMY

Nancy Stroer

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GENRE:  UpLit / domestic war

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BLURB:

It’s 1995 and the Army units of Fort Stewart, Georgia are gearing up to deploy to Bosnia, but Lieutenant Minerva Mills has no intention of going to war-torn eastern Europe. Her father disappeared in Vietnam and, desperate for some kind of connection to him, she’s  determined to go on a long-promised tour to Asia. But the Colonel will only release her on two conditions—that she reform the rag-tag Headquarters Company so they’re ready for the peacekeeping mission, and that she get her weight within Army regs, whichever comes second. Min only has one summer to kick everyone’s butts into shape but the harder she plays Army, the more the soldiers—and her body—rebel. If she can’t even get the other women on her side, much less lose those eight lousy pounds, she’ll never have another chance to stand where her father once stood in Vietnam, feeling what he felt. The Colonel may sweep her along to Bosnia or throw her out of the Army altogether. Can you fake it until you make it? Min is about to find out.

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INTERVIEW:

What is your favorite ice cream flavor?

I’ve been fortunate to be able to work and travel in Italy a little, and when I’ve been there with my family we try all the different flavors of gelato we can find (except my husband, who is on a quest to find the perfect pistachio gelato so that’s what he always gets). The best, most unusual flavor I ever tried was pignoli (pine nut)! It was so smooth and rich, and not too sweet. Don’t wrinkle your nose at me. You know you want to try it now! I had lavender once, too, and that was delicious.

Which mythological creature are you most like?

An ogre. The Shrek kind – grouchy, and I like my swamp the way it is, thank you very much. But like Shrek I think I’ve got a pretty good heart underneath the stompy exterior.

First book you remember making an indelible impression on you.

My sisters and I were absolutely obsessed with two Rumer Godden books – The Doll’s House (illustrated by Tasha Tudor!), and Miss Happiness and Miss Flower. Both are books about doll houses (one English, one Japanese), and dolls’ relationships with lonely little girls. We checked them out of the library nonstop. Obsessed, and still am.

How do you develop your plot and characters?

Actually, I think playing with dolls and doll houses as a child gave me the skills to work out plot and characters on the page later in life! Countless hours kneeling in front of the sprawling village of cardboard and tissue paper structures that we made our doll houses out of, deciding which dolls would be our main characters that day, and how they’d interact, and what we’d need to make for them so they could do what we wanted them to do was perfect preparation for a future novelist.

Describe your writing space.

Don’t tell the sleep experts, but I write in my bed almost all the time. It’s just so cosy and warm, when England is damp and cold. I also have an oversized, overstuffed white chair that is my “office.” The ottoman is big enough that I can spread my notes and notebooks out on it, and I curl up in the chair under a blanket to work. When I’m outlining I need a big, open floor to spread all my notes and worksheets over. I kneel on the floor to work and to move things around, physically. None of this would photograph very well on Instagram or Pinterest! My writing space is literally the entire house.

EXCERPT:

I sucked in my gut and forced the top button of my BDU trousers through the hole. Pounds never melted off me like they did in the diet pill commercials. As I wrestled with my body’s ill-fitting container the latrine door opened and two pairs of boots tromped in. Specialist Pettit’s voice floated over the sound of running water. “Not to be mean or anything, but female commanders are the worst. And Lieutenant Mills is the absolute worst. I worked for her for two years in Personnel and she ragged on me the whole time.”

Whoa, shit. Enemy inside the wire. I stopped breathing altogether and leaned so close to the stall door my eyes crossed.

“Hey, now.” That was Lieutenant Logan, my replacement at my old job. Female soldiers carved their hierarchies along different lines, never straight down the military ranks, and new alliances were being tested. Would Logan stick up for me, officer to officer? “It’s a short-term thing. She won’t be here long.” Instead of reproach, Logan’s voice was edged with mirth. “The colonel needs a body in that chair until a real commander comes in, and now that I’m here, Lieutenant Mills is over strength. She’s the body.”

My face grew hot. Real commander? Body? I clamped my lips shut against the urge to burst out of the stall, roaring. I imagined inhaling the entire room then blowing them away with the release of my torso, all tightly packed plastic explosives and buckshot. These two, Logan especially, had no freaking clue.

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Nancy Stroer grew up in a very big family in a very small house in Athens, Georgia and served in the beer-soaked trenches of post-Cold War Germany. She holds degrees from Cornell and Boston University, and her work has appeared in the Stars and Stripes, Soldiers magazine, Hallaren Lit Mag, Wrath-Bearing Tree, and Things We Carry Still, an anthology of military writing from Middle West Press.

She’s a teacher and a trainer, and an adjunct faculty member of the Ellyn Satter Institute, a 503(c) not-for-profit that helps individuals and families develop a more joyful relationship to food and their bodies. Playing Army is her first novel.

Social media links:

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/49311942.Nancy_Stroer https://www.facebook.com/nancy.stroer/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nancy-stroer-86213089/

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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION and RAFFLECOPTER CODE

A randomly drawn winner will be awarded a $25 Amazon/BN gift card.

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/28e4345f4902