About Love Like That…

Meet Dalton Moss: quick-witted, impulsive, aggressively unambitious; a halfhearted assistant to a Hollywood events planner, she’s haggling over the price of chicken Florentine and waiting for the workday to end.

Meet Dalton’s boyfriend, Roman: charming, intellectual, worldly; he lands in L.A. just long enough to slip a two-carat diamond on her finger before flying right off again.

Now meet Dalton’s other boyfriend, Jeremy: perfect in his imperfection, surly in his attraction to her and can match her beer for beer; she doesn’t want to love him, but can’t help herself, despite Roman — and despite Jeremy’s other girlfriend.

Confused? So is Dalton.

Now that she’s engaged, twenty-five-year-old Dalton figures she should temper her penchant for dive bars, abusing her mother’s credit card and her fiery, furtive relationship with Jeremy. After all, this is her chance to shed her bad-girl habits and live happily ever after.

But that diamond ring seems to wink at her in defiance, representing everything she’s ever, and never, wanted. Roman’s offering a rescue from her drowned existence in L.A., but Jeremy could be her twisted ticket to wonderland. She’s been holding out for a crushing feeling, a love like that, but will she figure out which man she has it with before she loses them both?

 

What reviewers said…

“I loved the premise of the book and the characters were phenomenal…”
~romancereaderatheart.com

“Doll is a strong character who keeps questioning the direction of her life, wondering if she is doing the right thing, trying to make sure that she doesn’t miss out on anything. The secondary characters with their individual quirks are an integral part of the story and help move it along.”
~romrevtoday.com

“Ms. Hill deftly entertains with this refreshing chick lit novel…Ms. Hill serves up secondary characters that are just as colorful and problematic as Dalton. This novel ranks as one of my favorites from Red Dress Ink.”
~theromancereadersconnection.com

“Amanda Hill catches the life of so many young people of today. Love Like That is worth putting on your to-be-read list.”
~writersunlimited.com

 

Love Like That Q&A

Why do the characters in Love Like That have such hard-partying lifestyles? People don’t really live like that…do they?

Well, let me start by saying that I lived in Hollywood from the time I was 23 until I was 28 and partying was the main form of social interaction. LA is a city with a very young mentality and nobody really “grows up” until they’re out of their twenties…if then! There are so many bars, clubs, so much nightlife, there’s so much access to booze and drugs and it’s so exciting and hip and everybody wants to look good and have fun and be a part of the city and its reputation as one of the hottest places in the world. Maybe it’s uncommon for young people outside of Los Angeles to live like that, I don’t know, but I can assure you I wrote completely from personal experience as a young woman living in Hollywood. These characters haven’t yet figured out their lives. They have yet to fully evolve from how they were in college. Adulthood is still new to them and they still view it as a time of self-gratification. They live for the moment.

Why does everybody in Love Like That use such vulgar language?

Don’t most people? No, again, in both my experience as an individual and my career, I tend to find that “fuck” is actually very commonly used word, among others.

Cheating seems to be a common theme in Love Like That. Are you trying to glorify infidelity?

Absolutely not, and I hate that anybody would think that! I do, however, find cheating to be a common theme in most of my books. I think people have so many possibilities today, and are so encouraged to live for themselves that they tend to become selfish in some ways–and that concept fascinates me. I also like writing about duality and the struggle of having to make a final choice between two options, the hesitation and the fear of making the wrong choice. Not everybody has tunnel-vision, not everybody sees only one way to get somewhere. How great for the ones that do, but then there are the rest of us who are pulled in different directions. One thing that really bothers me, though, is that a lot of other authors in the genre (and outside of it) have written around cheating as a theme and haven’t taken nearly as much criticism.

In Love Like That, Roman’s working in Cameroon. What made you choose that particular country?

I used to get this email newsletter about job opportunities overseas and there were always all these positions offered to do relief work in Cameroon. That’s actually where I got the inspiration for Roman’s job as a relief worker.

At the end of Love Like That, Dalton goes to Cameroon. Have you actually been there?

No, (laughs), and I got a little bit of shit for that. My publisher asked a well-known author to blurb Love Like That and she was all for it until she got to the Cameroon scene and said it was unrealistic because she’d actually spent some time living in Africa. I also saw on an Internet post somewhere that a reader didn’t agree with my portrayal of Cameroon. I read backpackers’ accounts and travelogues of Cameroon to help me write the scenes there, but I guess you really have to visit a place to know it well enough to write about it. Oh, well. People who’ve never even been to Los Angeles write about it all the time and get it completely wrong. I find that more offensive than Dalton and Roman going to a real-life hotel in Cameroon and going on safari to a real-life wilderness park!

You also write a lot of scenes in Ventura, California. Have you ever been there?

Yes, I lived the majority of my childhood there. All the places I write about in Love Like That are real places, including Lily’s beach house.

Okay, but at the beginning of Chapter 26 you write that Dalton “raced north on the 101 freeway.” If she was driving from Ventura to LA, then she would have been going south, right?

Right. I can’t believe I didn’t catch that!

Dalton is kind of an anti-heroine in a way. She’s often hard to sympathize with because she’s so brash. Why did you write her that way?

What’s wrong with a girl who takes it to the limit, without an excuse? Should every heroine be cutesy, in a clumsy sort of way? I don’t think so. I like to write about tough women with tough attitudes. A lot of Dalton’s character, too, is a play on what living in Los Angeles can do to a person. If it doesn’t change you, it still gets to you–by watching what it does to everyone else.

Will there be a sequel to Love Like That?

Yes, definitely. I never felt that Dalton’s story ended when Love Like That ended. Love Like This, the continuation of Dalton’s tale, will be out in early 2008.

Is Love Like That still available for sale?

On Amazon it’s available through resellers but it’s probably pretty rare to find it in stock at a bookstore unless you special order it. It can, however, still be ordered as a regular purchase on the Barnes & Noble website and it’s always for sale on eBay and Half.com.

 

Something Different!

Of Quidditch and Sarcasm: A Harry Potter Tribute in the Style of Love Like That

 

Love Like This Q&A

What’s Love Like This about?

Love Like This is kind of the yang to the yin of Love Like That. It’s about Dalton’s “grown up” life after marriage versus her immature life as a single girl–and her adjustment and acceptance of this other side of herself. In Love Like That, we mostly got to see what she was like with Jeremy–but now we get the complete version of what she’s like with Roman. Also, it’s about what it’s like to move from one environment to another and what that experience is like. Everything has changed for Dalton in Love Like This–she’s left her home, her friends, her job and her familiar lifestyle–and swapped them out with new versions of all of the above.

Why did you write Love Like This?

I never thought Dalton’s story ended in Love Like That just because she figured out that she wanted to be with Roman. Also, I liked them together and never thought there was enough of them in Love Like That to show what they were really made of. I also wanted to give Dalton a chance to kind of vindicate herself. I wanted to show what she was like in a situation that made her feel insecure so she didn’t come across as selfish and bitchy, like she may have in Love Like That. I started writing Love Like This when I still lived in the D.C. area but only got about 30 pages into it. Then, about six months ago, I gave a copy of Love Like That to one of my younger coworkers and when she finished it, she wanted to know what happened after the book’s conclusion. I thought to myself, so do I! So I sat down and just wrote it.

How has Dalton changed in Love Like This?

Well, she still has her same sass but she’s a lot less jaded. In the beginning of the book she’s still a lot like her old self, and that’s because when Dalton figured out that Roman was her future in Love Like That, she didn’t immediately morph into the well-adjusted woman she was always hoping to become. It was only the first step toward that version of herself. In Love Like This, she’s still pretty vague and foggy at first. Something still hasn’t clicked for her. But after a bit she starts realizing that times have changed and she needs to catch up. She still has a lot of growing up to do–but she’s well on her way, now.

How do you feel about Love Like This in comparison to Love Like That?

I think it’s a far superior story, actually. I absolutely love this book. I loved writing about Dalton in a different environment.

Are the characters from Love Like That in Love Like This, too?

Almost all of them reprise their roles, actually–just in a different capacity. But there are a lot of new characters, too.  

Dalton lives in Washington, D.C., now. Do politics play a role in her new life?

Actually, yes. Dalton works for a liberal think tank in Love Like This, and develops a close relationship with a high-level Democrat–even though she’s a Republican.

Why is Dalton a Republican?

I figured as a woman who always strives to go against the feminine trend, it only made sense for Dalton to be a Republican. That really horrifies a lot of women and if there’s one thing Dalton’s always taken pride in, it’s horrifying other women.

Why did you self-publish Love Like This?

There were a number of factors. Love Like That, Love Like This’ predecessor, came out almost three years ago. It’s pretty close to being out of print. Editors are buying for 2009 and 2010 right now. Agents take months to sign new clients. Most agents probably would not be interested in representing a novel that’s a sequel to a book they didn’t represent to begin with. My former agent felt that an editor probably wouldn’t want to buy a sequel to a book that wasn’t a commercial bestseller. In essence, it seemed like the best way for me to tell the “other” side of Dalton’s story.

Will there ever be a third version of Dalton’s “Love” series?

I’m not sure yet. There’s something that happens toward the end of Love Like This that could lead to that, but I’m not making any promises.