Jessica Strawser Is Here...plus a book giveaway

Photo by Corrie Schaffeld

We're pleased to have Jessica Strawser here for the first time to celebrate the upcoming publication of her sophomore novel, Not That I Could Tell (reviewed here), and to share a few laughs with us as we get near the end of Humor month. Thanks to St. Martin's Press, we have one copy to share with a lucky reader!

Jessica Strawser (jessicastrawser.com) is the editor-at-large at Writer’s Digest magazine, where she served as editorial director for nearly a decade and became known for her in-depth cover interviews with such luminaries as David Sedaris and Alice Walker. She’s the author of the book club favorites Almost Missed You (reviewed here), now new in paperback, and Not That I Could Tell, a Book of the Month selection and Barnes & Noble Best New Fiction pick for March 2018. She has written for The New York Times Modern Love, Publishers Weekly and other fine venues, and lives with her husband and two children in Cincinnati. Connect with her at her website, on Twitter @jessicastrawser and on Facebook @jessicastrawserauthor.

Synopsis:
When a group of neighborhood women gathers, wine in hand, around a fire pit where their backyards meet one Saturday night, most of them are just ecstatic to have discovered that their baby monitors reach that far. It’s a rare kid-free night, and they’re giddy with it. They drink too much, and the conversation turns personal.

By Monday morning, one of them is gone.

Everyone knows something about everyone else in the quirky small Ohio town of Yellow Springs, but no one can make sense of the disappearance. Kristin was a sociable twin mom, college administrator, and doctor’s wife who didn’t seem all that bothered by her impending divorce—and the investigation turns up more questions than answers, with her husband, Paul, at the center. For her closest neighbor, Clara, the incident triggers memories she thought she’d put behind her—and when she’s unable to extract herself from the widening circle of scrutiny, her own suspicions quickly grow. But the neighborhood’s newest addition, Izzy, is determined not to jump to any conclusions—especially since she’s dealing with a crisis of her own.

As the police investigation goes from a media circus to a cold case, the neighbors are forced to reexamine what’s going on behind their own closed doors—and to ask how well anyone really knows anyone else. (Courtesy of Amazon.)

Your online go-to source for laughter:
Oldie-but-goodie The Onion

Favorite funny video:
The “Dennis Quaid Is Here” hidden camera skit from The Ellen Show—he was in a Starbucks with Ellen’s voice in an earpiece, with instructions to repeat everything she told him to, and… I seriously can’t watch it enough times. If you haven’t seen it, go watch it now. I’ll wait.



Favorite comedy film:
There’s nothing quite like re-watching National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation every December. My brother and I will randomly text each other lines like, “And why is the carpet all wet, Todd?” starting around Thanksgiving.

Funniest misunderstanding you've had with someone:
My husband is a not-great speller who tends to blame autocorrect for a lot of things. When I was pregnant with our first child, he tried to text and tell me his coworkers were pitching in to buy us a BabyBjorn, but the message I received proudly announced that we were being gifted “Big Ron.” (A true autocorrect error? Who can say?) We fondly called the Bjorn “Big Ron” for the years we used it for both kids, and later when we got a bigger carrier for hiking trips, we named it “Giant Ron.”

Favorite joke:
I like old Mitch Hedberg one-liners best, but they don’t translate super well to being retold out of context. (“I don’t need a receipt for a donut. … We don’t need to bring ink and paper into this.”) On the other hand, the impatient cow knock knock joke (where you interrupt the return “Impatient cow who?” with a shouted “MOO!”) gets my kids every time.

Who is the funniest person you know personally? 
My good friend Erin, who lives in Chicago now, never fails to make me laugh until my eyes water. (That’s really the best feeling, isn’t it?) I think we just have a very similar sense of humor, paired with excellent recall for ridiculous things that happened to us many years ago when we were new to “adulting” and had standard weekly happy hours that cemented our friendship.

Thanks to Jessica for all the laughs and to St. Martin's Press for sharing her book with our readers.

How to win: Use Rafflecopter to enter the giveaway. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us. If you have trouble using Rafflecopter on our blog, enter the giveaway here. 

a Rafflecopter giveaway


Giveaway ends March 27th at midnight EST.