Anne R. Allen is an "entertaining adult" and she has some books to give away

**Giveaway is now closed**

Anne R. Allen has five romantic comedy/mysteries debuting this fall from two publishers, Popcorn Press (US) and MWiDP (UK). Two were previously published in the UK by Babash-Ryan: “Food of Love” and “The Best Revenge.” The other three, "The Gatsby Game," "Ghostwriters in The Sky," and "Sherwood, Ltd.” are brand new.

"Food of Love" and “The Gatsby Game” are now available in e-book, with paper to follow in about a month. “Ghostwriters in the Sky,” “Sherwood Ltd.” and “The Best Revenge” will launch in November. (“Sherwood, Ltd,” set in an “adult entertainment” factory in Lincolnshire, was inspired by the events below.)

She is currently working with the author of "Pay It Forward," Catherine Ryan Hyde, on a self-help guide for writers. In addition, Anne is a faculty member of the Central Coast Writer's Conference. She lives near San Luis Obispo, CA, the town Oprah calls "the happiest town on earth."

Today, Anne shares with us is her hilarious journey to having "Food of Love" published and "keeping her sense of humor in the adult entertainment factory." She also is sharing three e-books of "Food of Love" to some lucky readers anywhere in the world!

You can find Anne on Facebook, Twitter, and her blog.

Keeping My Sense of Humor in the Adult Entertainment Factory

When I started writing funny fiction for women fifteen years ago, if anybody had given me a realistic idea of my chances for publication, I’d have chosen a less stressful, more rewarding hobby, like do-it-yourself brain surgery, or professional frog herding.

As a California actress with years of experience of cattle-drive auditions, greenroom catfights and vitriolic reviewers, I thought I had built up enough soul-calluses to go the distance. But nothing had prepared me for the glacial waiting periods; the bogus, indifferent and/or suddenly-out-of-business agents; and the heartbreaking, close-but-no-cigar reads from big-time editors—all the rejection horrors that make the American publishing industry the impenetrable fortress it has become. But some of us are too writing-crazed to stop ourselves. I was then, as now, sick in love with the English language.

I had three novels completed. A fourth had run as a serial in a California entertainment weekly. One of my stories had been short-listed for an international prize, and a play had been produced to good reviews. I was bringing in a few bucks—mostly with short pieces for local magazines and free-lance editing.

But meantime, my savings had evaporated along with my abandoned acting career; my boyfriend had ridden his Harley into the Big Sur sunset; my agent was hammering me to write category romance; and I was contemplating a move to one of the less fashionable neighborhoods of the rust belt.

Even acceptances turned into rejections: a UK zine that had accepted one of my stories folded. But when the editor sent the bad news, he mentioned he’d taken a job with a small UK book publisher—and did I have any novels? I sent him one my agent had rejected as “too over the top.” Within weeks, I was offered a contract by the company’s owner/editor—a former BBC comedy writer—for FOOD OF LOVE. Included was an invitation to come over the pond to do some promotion.

So fired my agent, rented out my beach house, packed my bags and bought a ticket to Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, where my new publishers had recently moved into a 19th century former textile mill on the banks of the river Trent—the river George Eliot fictionalized as “the Floss.”

George Eliot. I was going to be working and living only a few hundred yards from the ruins of the house where she wrote her classic novel about the 19th century folk who lived and died by the power of Lincolnshire’s great tidal river. Maybe some of that greatness would rub off on me.

At the age of… well, I’m not telling…I was about to have the adventure of my life.

I knew the company published mostly erotica, but was branching into mainstream and literary fiction. They had already published the first novel of a distinguished poet and a famous Chicago newspaper columnist was in residence, awaiting the launch of his new book. But when I arrived, I found the great Chicagoan had left in a mysterious fit of pique, the “erotica” was seriously hard-core kink, and the old building on the Trent was more of the William Blake Dark Satanic variety than George Elliot’s bucolic “Mill on the Floss.”

I was going to be living in an "adult entertainment" factory.

Some of my fears subsided when I was greeted by a friendly group of unwashed, fiercely intellectual young men who presented me with generous quantities of warm beer, cold meat pies and galleys to proof. After a beer or two, I found myself almost comprehending their northern accents. I held it together until I saw my new digs: a grimy futon and an old metal desk, hidden behind stacks of book pallets in the corner of an unheated warehouse, about a half a block from the nearest loo. My only modern convenience was an ancient radio abandoned by a long-ago factory girl.

I have to admit to some tears of despair....Until, from the radio, Big Ben chimed six o’clock. That’s six pm, GMT. Greenwich Mean Time. The words hit me with all the sonorous power of Big Ben itself. I had arrived at the mean, the middle, the center that still holds—no matter what rough beasts might slouch through the cultural deserts of the former empire. This was where my language, my instrument, was born.

I clutched my galley-proof to my heart. I might still be a rejected nobody in the land of my birth—but I’d landed on the home planet: England. And there, I was a published novelist. Just like George Eliot.

Well, maybe not just like George Eliot. Ms. Eliot probably didn’t have to live amidst pallets of books with covers showing ladies in leather undies undergoing various forms of feigned torture. It was going to take some getting used to. But I figured if kept my sense of humor, I was going to survive just fine.

And even though that publishing company went out of business two years later, I was a published author. Nobody could take that (or my sense of humor) away from me.
And on Sept 18th of this year, FOOD OF LOVE, was re-released in the US by Popcorn Press, and is now available on both sides of the pond as an e-book, and will soon be available in paper in the US.

Thanks to Anne R. Allen for sharing her thoughts with us and her e-book with our readers.

How to win "Food of Love":
Please comment below with your e-mail address.
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Giveaway ends October 23rd at midnight EST.