Sotto Voce
by Erin
Finnegan
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BLURB:
New
York-based wine critic Thomas Baldwin can make or break careers with his column
for Taste Magazine. But when his publisher orders him to spend a year profiling
rising stars of California’s wine country and organizing a competition between
the big name wineries of Napa and the smaller artisan wineries of Sonoma, his
world gets turned upside-down by an enigmatic young winemaker who puts art
before business.
Sotto
Voce is the story of love and wine, and how both require patience, passion, an
acceptance of change—and an understanding that sometimes, you have to let
nature take its course.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Excerpt:
Firing up the grill to feed family, friends and crew at the
end of the harvest had become a tradition at Rhapsody. It had started as a
simple dinner to feed and thank the people who had helped harvest the crop.
Then it morphed into a casual, annual party with the closest of Greg’s friends,
a break from the backbreaking work with food, wine, music and a traditional
grape stomp.
Greg always held back a bushel of grapes that didn’t quite
make the cut for the year’s vintage and, in a discarded old oak half-barrel,
set up a stomp that let everyone work out their stress by smashing the slippery
mass into grape pulp. It was messy, slightly feral and dizzyingly fun.
After the party settled into a comfortable groove, Greg
lifted Tom into the cask, jumped in behind him and held him around the waist as
they stomped in time to an up-tempo R&B classic on the stereo.
Their stomp became a dance, their feet synchronized and
their legs aligned, Greg holding Tom’s hips and leaning into his shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered in Tom’s ear.
“Why?”
“You know why.”
“For getting grape juice all over my pants?” Tom teased.
This drew a smile, and a squeeze.
“For ignoring you. I’m sorry, and I won’t—”
“Don’t. I get it. This is your deadline.”
“It’s going to get worse before it gets better, you know. I
pretty much live in the barn during primary fermentation.”
“Then we’ll set up an extra cot, or I’ll make you coffee, or
we’ll take shifts punching the caps while you get some sleep,” Tom offered.
“But I want to help, and I want to be with you.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BROODING HEROES AND WHY WE LOVE THEM
When I first started to draft Sotto Voce in the fan
community, there was a lot of talk about the Greg Kennedy character, and how he
was "dark, brooding and hot."
Dark. Brooding. Hot.
Two of those three make perfect sense when we're trying to sort
out what we find attractive in a hero. But what is it about brooding men that
we find so hot?
In concept, that shouldn't be an attractive character trait, not
really. Because "brooding" is really just another word for
"grumpy".
But here we are, time and time again, talking about
"brooding heroes". And I won't lie—I
fall for them like everyone else.
So what gives? How is it that a brooding man is hot, while a
grumpy man is just annoying?
I suspect that a brooding hero suggests that there is something
underneath that grumpy external layer—that
there is depth to his concerns. And if it's a "brooding hero," it's
likely that those layers will reveal something in his back story or in his
priorities that make him complex, relatable and maybe even a bit vulnerable in
ways we did not first suspect.
That's certainly the case with Greg Kennedy, the winemaker in Sotto
Voce. When we first meet Greg, we know him to be smart, hard-working and a
bit reclusive. We also discover that he is moody, somewhat volatile, and
stand-offish. But we also discover that he is generous with his colleagues,
protective of the people he cares about, and yes, a bit lonely.
"That day in the vineyard, when you asked about Rhapsody
being isolated?...It is. It was, especially when I was first getting my footing
here. I just really felt alone," Greg tells Tom, the wine critic to
whom he is drawn, confessing a long-ago fling that haunts him. "He was
someone I knew, someone familiar."
And eventually, we find that there are reasons why he has
isolated himself from the world, and that vulnerability is what ultimately
opens him up to love.
Ah. There it is. Peel back the layers, and underneath than
moodiness we find a man we can love.
So for me, at least, it isn't necessarily a brooding nature that
makes this character hot, but the suggestion created by his moodiness that
there is something more to him that makes me want to know him more.
That, and maybe I have a thing for denim shirts, open-top trucks
and dark aviator sunglasses.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Erin Finnegan
is a former journalist and editor. She was born and raised in Southern
California, where she lives with two sheep dogs and grows, ferments and drinks
Syrah and Zinfandel in the foothills outside Los Angeles.
Sotto Voce is
her first novel.
Connect with
Erin at erin-finnegan.com, on Facebook at facebook.com/ErinGoFinnegan, on
Goodreads at Goodreads.com/ErinFinnegan and on Twitter at @eringofinnegan.
CONTEST
Erin will be awarding a Multi-format Sotto Voce eBook to 10 randomly drawn winners and a Grand Prize of a $25 B&N gift card will be awarded to one randomly drawn winner, all via rafflecopter during the tour. A $25 B&N gift card will be awarded to a randomly drawn host.
Please follow the tour and comment; the more you comment, the better your chance of winning. The tour dates can be found here:
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