TRADE THE DAY Guest Author: Bryn Greenwood

By - August 14, 2013

On August 23, starting at midnight, I will be hosting a special event called Trade the Day: Spotlight on Team Alaina. During this twenty-four hour blog-a-thon, proceeds from sales of my new book, The Trade, made on my publisher's website at stairwaypress.com will go to benefit Team Alaina for the Leukemia Lymphoma Society. In the weekdays leading up to the big event, I will continue to introduce you to two of the day's scheduled special guests, some which will be guest blogging, some who will be hosting giveaways of autographed books and other goodies, and some who will be doing both!  Get to know this fantastic group of people right here, and come back on August 23 to join us for a day of 24 hours, 23 guest authors, and 1 goal...a cure.

I'm happy to showcase the next guest author:

BRYN GREENWOOD

ABOUT BRYN (IN HER OWN WORDS):

I grew up on the mean streets of Hugoton, Kansas, where the only traffic light in town went to flashing red at dusk. Alright, the streets weren't exactly mean. They were gravel and named after presidents. Not even all the presidents, because Hugoton at the time was only ten blocks by ten blocks.

When I was little my family often accused me of being a storyteller, which is a polite way in Kansas of calling someone a liar. Later I found out it really doesn't matter whether something's true, as long as it's a good story. The first story I ever wrote in kindergarten was a thinly veiled autobiography about a family of aliens. In the story's illustrations my older sister looked suspiciously like the Great Gazoo from the Flintstones.

For several years, I thought Jesus was my grandmother's invisible friend. After all, the girl next door had invisible friends. Although my grandmother didn't invite Jesus to tea parties or claim that he was sitting in the chair you wanted to sit in, she did talk to him. He never talked back and you couldn't see him, just like the girl next door's invisible friends. How was I supposed to know? Then I found out that a lot of people had the same invisible friend named Jesus. It didn't bode well for me in a conservative town.

I was lucky I never got burned at the stake, although my biology homework did get torched over a bunsen burner, after I gave my class presentation on evolution. I didn't so much drop out of high school to go to college as I ran away to escape the torments of prom and church youth groups. At least at college no one minded that I was an unsaved heathen, likely to suffer the torments of Hell after a wasted life of debauchery and sin. That actually sounded pretty attractive after so many years in Hugoton.

Somewhere in there, I got a BA in English, a BA in French Literature, and an MA in Writing. (Yes, that strange, elusive beast: the MA in Writing. A cousin to the MFA, but requiring a longer period of indentured intellectual servitude.) Faced with the terrifying prospect of a PhD or reality, I chose reality.

At any rate, I chose to take a teaching job in Japan. I came home and wasted what were probably the prime years of my life fondling an erect silicone penis in front of high school students and prisoners. Such is the existence of sexuality educator. After that came a number of years wandering in the desert. Well, in Florida anyway. Swap locusts and honey for Cuban cheese toast and cafe con leche. Then came a few years teaching at community colleges, and several more working at non-profits, before I came back to the promised land. Kansas.

I'm hiding in plain sight. My thinly veiled autobiography would still be about aliens, and I've mastered the one skill that every writer-in-hiding needs: slack. The work for the day is done, the computer is there, so what am I stealing? My own time.

ABOUT LAST WILL

Bernie Raleigh fails at everything he touches. The victim of a kidnapping for ransom as a child, Bernie has spent his adult life trying to avoid being noticed. That’s impossible once he inherits his grandfather’s enormous fortune. The inheritance comes complete with a lot of obligations, a mansion, and a problematic housekeeper named Media Amos. Beauty queen, alien abductee, crypto-Jew, single mother – Media is all those things, and she may also be the only person who can help Bernie survive his new and very public life.

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT BRYN AND LAST WILL

Visit Bryn's Website

OR

Click Here to buy Last Will on StairwayPress.com now!

Be sure to come back August 23 to read a special guest post from Bryn and a chance to win a signed copy of Last Will during the BREAKFAST WITH STAIRWAY PRESS segment of TRADE THE DAY (between 5:00 a.m.-8:00 a.m.)!