Today I am so pleased to welcome Marie Sexton to Joyfully Jay. Marie has come to talk to us about her latest release, Trailer Trash. She has also brought along a great giveaway. Please join me in giving Marie a big welcome!

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Hello, everybody! I’m Marie Sexton, and I’m here today to talk about my New Adult novel, Trailer Trash. Trailer Trash is an ‘opposites attract’ story of two high school seniors in small-town Wyoming in the mid-1980s.

One of the things I really wanted to capture in writing Trailer Trash was the myth of small-town America. I spent the first eleven years of my life in small-town Wyoming. Now, my hometown wasn’t anywhere near as small as Warren (my setting for Trailer Trash), but it wasn’t very big, either. I think the population topped out at just over ten thousand people at the height of the oil boom. By the time we left in 1984, the boom was over, and the population was falling. There were empty houses on every street. A whole subdivision of not-quite finished homes sat on the hill above our neighborhood, abandoned when the bottom fell out of the boom.

My parents (mom and stepfather) moved to Colorado, much to my dismay. I was eleven. I wanted to stay in Wyoming where my grandparents, my cousins, and my father and stepmother lived (although the latter pair moved to an even smaller town in Alaska a year later).

It didn’t take me long to realize that living in Fort Collins, Colorado was infinitely better than my small hometown. Here in Colorado, we had malls. We had MTV. We had four movie theaters, one of which had four screens! (Back in my hometown, there was one theater, with one screen. They showed a family-friendly movie at 7:00, and a rated R movie at 9:00, except when Star Wars was showing. It was allotted both slots.) Here in Colorado, we had a roller rink, several arcades, miniature golf, a go-kart track. We had everything! And what we didn’t have could certainly be found just down the road in Denver or Boulder.

When we went back to my hometown to visit, or when I visited my father in Alaska, I began to realize just how few options teenagers in those small towns had. There seemed to be two choices on weekends: go out and get drunk with a bunch of boys who were anywhere from five to fifteen years older, or stay at home. Go out to the rock quarry, drink a keg, smoke a joint, get laid…. Or stay at home. There didn’t seem to be much in between. It’s certainly possible there were sides of the teen life that I just didn’t see, but it always felt very claustrophobic to me.

I also began to notice as I grew older how the myth of the wholesome small town didn’t apply to the adult world, either. My hometown became known in the 80s for its position in a rather lucrative drug trade. Years later, when I was out of college and working, I met a woman who’d grown up in Rock Springs, which isn’t far from my hometown. She was ten or fifteen years older than me. When she heard where I was from, her response was, “Oh yeah, that’s where all the cocaine was, back in the day.”

So, in writing Trailer Trash, one of my goals was to capture that severe lack of options, and to debunk (to some extent) the myth of the wholesome, picturesque small town. But of course along with that, I wanted to capture the excitement of first love. My hope is that the two things combined will make for a fun and memorable story.


Blurb

Trailer TrashIt’s 1986, and what should have been the greatest summer of Nate Bradford’s life goes sour when his parents suddenly divorce. Now, instead of spending his senior year in his hometown of Austin, Texas, he’s living with his father in Warren, Wyoming, population 2,833 (and Nate thinks that might be a generous estimate). There’s no swimming pool, no tennis team, no mall—not even any MTV. The entire school’s smaller than his graduating class back home, and in a town where the top teen pastimes are sex and drugs, Nate just doesn’t fit in.

Then Nate meets Cody Lawrence. Cody’s dirt-poor, from a broken family, and definitely lives on the wrong side of the tracks. Nate’s dad says Cody’s bad news. The other kids say he’s trash. But Nate knows Cody’s a good kid who’s been dealt a lousy hand. In fact, he’s beginning to think his feelings for Cody go beyond friendship.

Admitting he might be gay is hard enough, but between small-town prejudices and the growing AIDS epidemic dominating the headlines, a town like Warren, Wyoming, is no place for two young men to fall in love.


Bio

Marie Sexton lives in Colorado. She’s a fan of just about anything that involves muscular young men piling on top of each other. In particular, she loves the Denver Broncos and enjoys going to the games with her husband. Her imaginary friends often tag along.

Marie has one daughter, two cats, and one dog, all of whom seem bent on destroying what remains of her sanity. She loves them anyway.

Connect with Marie:


Giveaway

To celebrate, Marie is giving away a $50 gift card to either Amazon or All Romance Ebooks, winner’s choice. Leave a comment to enter the contest. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on March 26, 2016. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries. Thanks for following the tour, and don’t forget to leave your contact info!

  • By entering the giveaway, you’re confirming that you are at least 18 years old.
  • Winners will be selected by random number. No purchase necessary to win.  The number of eligible entries received determines the odds of winning.
  • If you win, you must respond to my email within 48 hours or another winner may be chosen. Please make sure that your spam filter allows email from Joyfully Jay.
  • Winners may be announced on the blog following the contest. By entering the contest you are agreeing to allow your name to be posted and promoted as the contest winner by Joyfully Jay.
  • Prizes will be distributed following the giveaway either by Joyfully Jay or the person/organization donating the prize.
  • All book prizes are in electronic format unless otherwise specified.
  • By entering you are agreeing to hold Joyfully Jay harmless if the prize or giveaway in some way negatively impacts the winner.
  • Readers may only enter once for each contest.  Duplicate entries for the same giveaway will be ignored. In the event of technical problems with the blog during the contest, every effort will be made to extend the contest deadline to allow for additional entries.
  • Void where prohibited by law.
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