GUEST: Lisa Lipkind Leibow

Books provide hours of entertainment for me. I love the way a good novel can transport me to another world, allow me to see things from a new point of view. Once, I inadvertently insulted my husband when answering the question, “If you could be any place on Earth where would you be?” My answer, “Alone on a beach with a book,” made him feel slighted somehow. Today, I’m officially editing my answer. My new answer, “Alone on a beach with my husband...and a book.”

I adore the complete, sensory experience of holding a print book – the smell of the pages, the way the paper feels between my fingers, and the look of the ink on the page. I love to dog-ear and highlight my favorite passages as I get lost in the fictive dream a good book brings to me. I savor, I devour, and I love print books.

But a print book is not the only way I can get lost in that fictive dream I crave. E-books offer new ways to love literature. I can adjust the font size of the print as large or small as I like. I can keep a file of “clippings” of my favorite passages. I can perform keyword searches, and gain quick access to material when I’m on deadline.

More than that, e-books are great for impatient people, like me. I agree with Carrie Fisher when she said, “That’s the problem with instant gratification – it’s just not fast enough!” The ability to download a book within seconds of deciding I want to read it is fantastic.

As for why I became an author, before I began writing fiction full-time, I juggled a career as a lawyer with parenting. A series of events beyond my control led me to re-evaluate everything I thought I wanted out of life.After being stuck in my office on 9/11, on alert during the anthrax scare, terrorized by a sniper’s month-long siege on metro-DC by a sniper, and discovering that the other parents at my twins’ preschool thought my au pair was my sons’ mom, I could hear these words echoing in my ears. "If I knew this was what it was going to be like to have it all, I would have settled for less." (Lily Tomlin: The Search for Intelligent Life in the Universe).I didn't really settle for less. I settled for different, and traded the billable hour lifestyle for fiction writing. Now, I can spend more time with my family and more time lost in the world of books. More than that, making up stories is much more fun than negotiating contracts, attending hearings, and deciphering statutes and regulations for clients.

ABOUT THE BOOK:

Not every woman who rides the fertility treatment roller coaster winds up like Octomom!

Who will find friends, family, and fertility?

Three women’s lives are intricately intertwined, as Amelia Schwartz and Summer Curtis struggle with the complex dynamics of intrafamily embryo adoption, and Chandy Markum strives to make her patients’ dreams a reality.After more than a decade, of mourning her parents’ deaths, anal-retentive Amelia Schwartz decides to take control of her life, pursuing single motherhood via embryo adoption. While her fertility doctor, Chandy, is preoccupied with the destruction of the cosmopolitan Cape Town of her youth and her first love in apartheid-torn South Africa, believing all is lost, her niece, a young, married, overachieving attorney Summer Curtis, juggles zealous career ambitions, demanding bosses, and friction with her husband over family and fertility issues. They must confront the painful reality that, no matter what technology humans devise to manipulate reproduction, prolong life, and construct family units, they have not yet mastered control over their beginnings and endings.

Thrown all into this is one story that can make or break. Are you up to it?

DOUBLE OUT AND BACK VIRTUAL BLOG TOUR '09 will officially begin on September 1 and ends on September 25th. You can visit Lisa's blog stops at http://www.virtualbooktours.wordpress.com/ in September to find out more about this great book and talented author!As a special promotion for all our authors, Pump Up Your Book Promotion is giving away a FREE virtual book tour to a published author or a $50 Amazon gift certificate to those not published who comments on our authors' blog stops. More prizes will be announced as they become available.