Exposure: A Novel – author interview and excerpt – Therese Fowler

Exposure Virtual Book Tour

About Therese Fowler

Therese Fowler is the author of Souvenir and Reunion. She has worked in the U.S. Civil Service, managed a clothing store, lived in the Philippines, had children, sold real estate, earned a B.A. in sociology, sold used cars, returned to school for her M.F.A. in creative writing, and taught college undergrads about literature and fiction writing—roughly in that order. With books published in nine languages and sold worldwide, Fowler writes full-time from her home in Wake Forest, North Carolina, which she shares with her husband, four amiable cats, and four nearly grown-up sons. Her latest book is Exposure: A Novel. You can visit Therese Fowler’s website at

You can find Therese at www.theresefowler.com

Visit her tour page at Pump Up Your Book!

Interview

Q:  Do you write on a computer or with pen/pencil and paper?

A:   All my actual storycrafting happens on my computer, but I do a great deal of “thinking” by using pen and paper. I buy leather-bound journals and fill them with character and plot sketches, questions to myself, summaries, intentions. The process never fails to help me work through sticky spots and to come up with new observations and ideas.

Q:  Biggest Career Surprise:

A:  Having my debut novel sell at auction, and then also to multiple publishers around the world.

Q: Nicest rejection you’ve ever received?

A:  One agent, after reading my first-ever (not first published) novel, called me to say that while she didn’t feel the manuscript was quite what it needed to be, she wanted me to know that it was close, and that I absolutely had writing talent.

Q: Writer’s Block – If you have ever experienced it – how did you resolve it?

A:  I’m in the camp that doesn’t believe in Writer’s Block. An inability to write simply means you’re not sufficiently prepared. Figure out what it is you need to know about a character, scene, or situation, and you’ll suddenly find you’re able to write about it.

Q:  Have you ever abandoned any books/novels in progress?

A:  Yes; in fact, I put aside the book I’d been writing before Exposure because I was so inspired to write Exposure instead. Sometimes the stories seem to choose you, rather than the other way around.

Q:  Advice for the audience, first time authors, those choosing the writing life:

A:  Learn to be a perfectionist about your own work, and generous about everyone else’s.

About Exposure

In Exposure, Therese Fowler has written her most gripping novel to date—a ripped-from-the-headlines story of ardent young love and a nightmarish legal maelstrom that threatens to destroy two families.

Amelia Wilkes’s strict father does not allow her to date, but that doesn’t stop the talented, winsome high school senior from carrying on a secret romance with her classmate Anthony Winter. Desperately in love, the two envision a life together and plan to tell Amelia’s parents only after she turns eighteen and is legally an adult. Anthony’s mother, Kim, who teaches at their school, knows—and keeps—their secret. But the couple’s passion is exposed sooner than planned: Amelia’s father, Harlan, is shocked and infuriated to find naked pictures of Anthony on his daughter’s computer. Just hours later, Anthony is arrested.

Despite Amelia’s frantic protests, Harlan uses his wealth and influence with local law enforcement and the media to label Anthony a deviant who preyed on his innocent daughter. Spearheaded by a zealous prosecutor anxious to turn the case into a public crusade against “sexting,” the investigation soon takes an even more disturbing and destructive turn.

As events spiral wildly out of control and the scandalous story makes national news, Amelia and Anthony risk everything in a bold and dangerous attempt to clear their names and end the madness once and for all.

A captivating page-turner, Therese Fowler’s Exposure is also a deftly crafted, provocative, and timely novel that serves as a haunting reminder of the consequences of love in the modern age.

Read an Excerpt!

Nine hours before the police arrived, Anthony Winter stood, barefooted and wild, on the narrow front porch of the house he shared with his mother. The painted wooden planks were damp and cool beneath his feet, but he hardly noticed. In his right hand he held a fallen maple leaf up to a sun that was just breaking the horizon. In his left he held his phone. He squinted at the leaf, marveling at its deep blood-orange color, amazed and happy that nature could make such a thing from what had, only a few weeks earlier, been emerald green, and before that, deep lime, and before that, a tight, tiny bundle of a bud on a spindly limb, waving in a North Carolina spring breeze. He’d always been an observant person; he hadn’t always been so romantic. It was Amelia. She brought it out in him. She brought it out in everybody.

Read more at her tour page;