New Novel by Megan Edwards
By: Judy Shields
Los Angeles, (The Hollywood Times) 1/31/17 – “This is my first to be published novel, I have actually written several other books.” I finally got one published!” Megan Edwards, author of “Getting off on Frank Sinatra” told The Hollywood Times this afternoon over the phone calling in from Las Vegas, Nevada.
“Getting off on Frank Sinatra” is available for pre-order on Amazon and Barnes and Nobel and will be available wherever books are sold on March 14, 2017 as paperback, e-book and audiobook.
I received the book from Megan’s publicist and once I started reading it, I could not put it down, it was certainly a page turner. The story of Copper Black, new to Las Vegas and living with her brother and his wife, and still learning her way around a city with streets named after its famous people. Copper is pursuing a career as a serious journalist, she takes a job editing the calendar section for Las Vegas Light.
A scorching Las Vegas summer is about to get even hotter. Aspiring journalist Copper Black has just found out that her boyfriend is responsible for his not-quite-ex-wife’s pregnancy. An unexpected house-sitting job at a notorious Las Vegas “party house” should provide not only a private swimming pool but also much-needed distraction.
While researching a story about an exclusive private school, Copper accidentally discovers the dead body of the school’s beloved founder. Now involved in a high-profile murder investigation, Copper turns to her brother, a civic-minded pastor who is overseeing the construction of a center for the homeless. A Paiute medicine man claims the site is a sacred burial ground, attracting hordes of protesters.
A must read for all mystery and crime novel readers, Megan Edwards’ new novel “Getting off on Frank Sinatra.” You will delight yourself in laughter, “get out of here” and “I can’t believe that” type of situations, that Copper finds herself in.
Las Vegas is definitely the right place for this type of mystery story. The characters that Copper finds herself getting to know and wanting to investigate makes us wanting to read more and more.
You can pre-order a copy of the book on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Off-Frank-Sinatra-Mystery/dp/0997236906/?tag=roadtriamericare
and at Megan’s website here:
The book will make a great collection for any book reader out there and just in time for a St. Patrick’s day gift.
Here is the interview:
THT: How much research did you have to do for this book?
Megan: A lot of it came from just living here in Las Vegas and being really curious about Las Vegas. It was completely new to me when I came and I actually came here to work on another novel and I thought in a few weeks I would learn everything I needed to know and this city kind of roped me in and I came to stay a couple of weeks and have now been here for a couple of decades. I also started a blog, now more of a magazine website called “Living-Las-Vegas.com” and for that I was always going out and looking for interesting thing to write about and meeting interesting people, and there’s just no shortage here of both of those things.
THT: When did you decide to become a writer?
Megan: That was about 20 years ago when I was living in Pasadena, CA and not long after I became a newspaper columnist, my house burned down in one of those big fires in the end of 1993. My husband and just moved his business to our house, so he lost everything and I was working for a real estate company at that time and had some things in my office at the house. We did had some clothes from the cleaners, our dog and our cars and that was about it. So we thought, this is kind of a good chance to re-invent was were are doing and we ended up getting a motorhome, because we didn’t have any stuff and we decided to travel around the United States for about six months to see what we would do next. That ended up being almost seven years. We ended up in Las Vegas of all places. It was the place we decided to put down our roots. The whole world comes to Las Vegas.
THT: Do you write part-time or full-time?
Megan: I write full-time because my husband and I also started a website called “Roadtrip America” after our adventures all over the country and we run that and “Living Las Vegas” and I get to write books
THT: How do you structure your day?
Megan: I get up pretty early and usually that is when I start writing. That is the best time for me and usually the least likely to be interfered with. That is my key to get early, get going and get as much writing done.
THT: Where do your ideas come from?
Megan: My academic background is Latin and Greek. I still do mythology and those sort of things. The ancient history and archeology interest.
THT: What are you currently working on?
Megan: I am actually working on the novel that brought me to Las Vegas at the end of 1999-2000. I finished that novel, all those years ago and with that got my first agent and it got shopped, but it did not sell. So I stuck it on a shelf and I thought, one of these days, someday I will rewrite that or do something with it. It is a story I really like and it kept percolating in my head and I finally decided to rewrite the entire thing. That is what I am doing now and I am almost done.
THT: How did the book cover get it start
Megan: The designer, Jennifer Heuer, I believe has not ever been in Las Vegas. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. I admire her work and I thought it was kind of interesting that she captured the Frank Sinatra side of things and little hint of neon with the different colored letters on the cover.
THT: What have your reviewers of the book have to say about the title “Getting off on Frank Sinatra?
Megan: Double meaning! One of reasons that I explain that title, right in the beginning of the book, is that it is kind of a joke! There are so many funny things that people say in Las Vegas that refer to things that are only here. I noticed that one day that somebody was talking about getting off on Frank Sinatra and it made me laugh.
Imbrifex Books is launching the first of three Copper Black mysteries, Getting off on Frank Sinatra with a reading, signing, and party at The Writer’s Block in downtown Las Vegas on March 14, 2017 at 7:00 pm. This event is free and open to the public. Other books in this series by Megan Edwards will be Full Service Blonde and Graveyard Bowling.
The prequel of “Getting Off on Frank Sinatra” is coming out at the end of this year, beginning of next year. The title is “Full Service Blonde”. I took it from a yellow page ad. There is a giant section called “Entertainers” and you are looking through it and there was “Full Service Blonde” and that really cracked me up too!” There are endless titles around here.
THT: Will the character of “Getting Off on Frank Sinatra” Copper Black become a series of novels?
Megan: The prequel will be coming out next and I have a third one planned called “Graveyard Bowling.” That’s the thing here too, many of the big casinos have these huge bowling alleys and they are open 24 hrs. a day and they charge only $1.00 if you are willing to play in the middle of the night and they called that graveyard bowling. I thought that sounded like a good name for a mystery, because it sounds like skeletons, bowling with skulls in the cemetery. I am working on the outline for that one now.
THT: Which famous person, living or not, would you like to meet and why?
Megan: Oh my gosh, there is a person that I am afraid of that I would like to have met because he is in my story and I have had to get into heads to make it all up and this is going to sound really strange, Julius Cesar. He is a little scary since he killed a lot of people. Cleopatra would be the other one. She really is mysterious, we just don’t know enough about her and what she was like and what she really looked like. I don’t think she looked like Elizabeth Taylor.
THT: If you could have been the original author of any book, what would it have been?
Megan: What popped into my heard when you asked me that, when I was young, I loved the Narnia’s books, that would be the books.
THT: What social media outlets do you use?
Megan: I use Facebook, Instagram and I am getting into Twitter. My webpage is meganedwards.com. I am going to add a blog to that website as well.
Imbrifex Books is launching the first of three Copper Black mysteries, Getting off on Frank Sinatra with a reading, signing, and party at The Writer’s Block in downtown Las Vegas on March 14, 2017 at 7:00 pm. This event is free and open to the public. Other books in this series by Megan Edwards will be Full Service Blonde and Graveyard Bowling
Megan said “across the street from the bookstore is an old legendary bar called “Atomic” Liquor” it used to be a liquor store, it’s a bar now. It’s called Atomic because right after WWII, people would go up on the roof and watch the mushrooms from the test sites. It’s been fixed up really cute and the bartender is making a drink called “Getting off on Frank Sinatra” so there is going to be a party there.” See below for info. Tell your friends and family who live in Las Vegas or might be in town on that day:
Thursday, March 14, 2017, 7:00pm – 8:00pm
The Writer’s Block, 1020 Fremont Street, Las Vegas, NV
Book Launch, Reading & Signing for Getting off on Frank Sinatra
“Yes, I’m going to read & sign, but I want you to know this is going to be a PARTY, folks! (If we go past the allotted time, we just might continue the festivities across the street at the fabulous & historic Atomic Liquors…) Hope you can join me for an evening of Las Vegas fun.”
Imagine, losing everything in a fire, buying a motorhome, traveling through the United States, writing a book and having a blog about the adventures and ending up in Las Vegas. Then you write a novel about things you have heard around town and write your first published novel. Now doesn’t that sound like a dream come true. Well, it did for Megan Edwards, after the tragedy of losing her home years ago.
A job well done Megan, “Getting off on Frank Sinatra” is a must read and it will fly off the shelves and into the hands of book readers and tablet readers alike.
About Megan Edwards
I was born around the time cool houses in Las Vegas boasted swimming pools shaped like guitars and sparkles in their ceilings. I would not discover this for several decades, having sprung into being on the outskirts of Chicago. It would be years before I learned about slot machines, the Rat Pack, or even Elvis Presley. Even by the time I finished college, all I knew about Las Vegas was that you could get a cheap prime rib dinner on the Strip on your way to Zion. Beyond that, the place held no appeal. I don’t come from a smoking-and-gambling kind of family. “Sin City” was something to look down on.
Honoring familial respect for the classics, I studied Greek and Latin in school. I spent time in Italy and Greece visiting ancient sites and soaking up the wonders of the past. Not surprisingly, I taught Latin after that. I was following a well-worn, well-regarded path grounded in the past and heading toward a predictable future.
Life has a way of disregarding maps, though. My first marriage imploded. My new husband and I had just celebrated our third anniversary when our house burned down. Suddenly “stuffless,” I focused less on the wonders of the past and pondered the possibilities my own future held.
Long story short, I went from talking about Caesar’s Rome to gawking at Caesars Palace in the space of about seven years. My first book was published during that time. Roads from the Ashes is a memoir about living on the road for six years after all my earthly possessions went up in smoke. I started my first novel. Eager to add detail beyond the stereotypical, I visited Las Vegas to do some research. I’m still here, seventeen years later.
While I could never have predicted that life would introduce me to Las Vegas and that Las Vegas would beguile me into staying, it is now my favorite bit of serendipity. My adopted city, which reinvents itself at least once a decade, provides me with more stories than I could ever hope to tell. Guitar-shaped swimming pools are now “historic.” Elvis has a shrine. “Sin City,” the same place I grew up disdaining, fascinates me with its unique history and unpredictable evolution every day.
