A Golden Web Blog Tour (& Giveaway)

Please welcome author Barbara Quick as she guests posts as a part of The Teen (Book) Scene tour for her novel A Golden Web. I hope you enjoy!

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For a long time, I had a secret life as a samba dancer. It wasn’t a secret to my friends—they all knew that I’ve danced, paraded and performed for years with a couple of different Brazilian dance troupes in the Bay Area. But my life as a dancer was something I kept strictly separate from my life as a writer.

And then I was outed by Grace Cavalieri, who interviewed me for the September 2008 issue of MiPoesias, a literary magazine. Grace’s final question for me was, “Is it true that you marched an entire parade in high heels?”

Here’s the answer I gave her:

“I’ve danced in, I think, six Carnival parades in San Francisco, with two different samba schools. I have a closet full of feathered headdresses and sequined costumes that would be the envy of any drag queen. The 2008 parade was the only one I’ve ever danced in really high heels—they were gold, by the way. But I think it will also be the last—I could hardly walk by the time it was over! I felt as if someone had hit each of my toes with a ball-peen hammer. The sensation went away quickly enough for me to dance in the stage show afterwards—in my gold-colored sneakers! But I think I’ll dance in next year’s parade in more comfortable shoes…”

I said a lot of other things in the interview, too—about writing and books and research. That last answer was a very tiny part of what I said. I’d pretty much forgotten, by the time the interview was published, that I’d said anything about dancing at all.

Imagine my surprise when I saw the cover of the magazine! There I was, with a big smile on my face, a silver headdress, long white gloves and gold-tipped false eyelashes.

One of the biggest thrills I ever had was when someone I knew from a dance class in Berkeley came up to me after a reading I did at a bookstore in Marin County, wanting me to sign my novel for her. She had an astonished look on her face. “I thought you were a dancer!” she said.

My theory is that there’s a dancer inside all of us—and probably a writer, too. Life is too short not to do it all—or, at least, not to give all of it our best try!

—Barbara Quick

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Giveaway! 

Today I am giving away a finished copy of A Golden Web by Barbara Quick. It is US only as it will be coming from the publisher and not from myself. Use THIS form to enter. (Must be 13 years or older to enter!)

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Look out for my review of A Golden Web coming May 29, 2011.

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Visit author Barbara Quick on Twitter (@bqwriter), on her website, or her blog. 

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Leave a Comment: Did you ever have a secret life? (P.S - comments are appreciated but will not enter you in the giveaway).