Author Spotlight: Welcome Back, Fortune Whelan!

Debra Pruss, you are Fortune’s winner this week! She will be in touch with you! Thanks to Deb and everyone for stopping by. How we love talking to our readers!!

I’ve met so many fascinating and wonderful people since beginning my career as a writer–it’s been such a ride. One of those is Fortune Whelan, who is a fellow Tule author and a great sprint partner. She’s here today with her latest book and a fun giveaway.

Amazon bestselling author Fortune’s stories are “charming, silly, and emotionally fraught” with “fast-paced plot[s] that keep pages flying”. When she’s not at her standing desk fending off feline invaders, you can find her on her yoga mat or shelving books at the local library. Keep up with her by using  @fortunewhelan everywhere.

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Take it away. Fortune…

Thanks, Nan. As an individual and as a writer, I am endlessly curious about people and the world. I went to school for politics—you know—the study of interactions between people. But like everyone else, my ideas and beliefs are heavily influenced by my education and personal experience. Yours, Mine and Ours, though not overly explicitly stated, follows the development of Andre, G, and Bea’s polyamorous relationship. The reason it’s not explicitly stated is because in my own life, I have many relationships. Not just as an adult but also when I was a child. For me, it’s always been this way.

My grandmother raised me. She fed me, read me bedtime stories, and walked me to school. I considered her my mother. Yes, my mother lived with us too, she worked and paid the bills. She was my provider, but my grandmother was my nurturer. And my grandfather was my protector, the same way, I was my younger brother’s protector. All this within one home. My biological father, though, that relationship is much more complicated.

As an adult, I’m married. My husband is my provider. He cares for me and my daughter—he cooks, he cleans, he’s extremely supportive of everything we do. Is he as emotionally available as I’d like him to be? No. But that’s why I have friends. Am I the best playmate for my daughter? No. That’s why she has friends. Am I the best at expressing my feelings through words—no, this is why I’m a writer and the reason I’m in therapy. It’s impossible to be everything to everyone and still continue to be a whole person yourself. I’m not saying the entire world is a giant polyamorous relationship or that it should be. I’m saying that we depend on one another, value one another, love and care for one another more than is admitted out loud, in general.

I tell my friends I love them as much as I tell my husband and my daughter. I try to support the people I care about in the ways I can and the ways they need. Those don’t always intersect. Trust me, trying to unravel the knots and strings will only turn you into a fiction writer (I kid, I kid. But not really.), with more questions than answers.

If you’ve read any of my other books, a running theme throughout all my writing is how family dynamics plays a major role in how individuals interact with the entire rest of the world. In my idea of a perfect world, each individual would be free to be curious and develop their interests and talents and everyone would grow up loved for who they are or who they choose to be, while they live within a plethora of interconnectedness.

This isn’t the case. Even in a forest, there are hinderances and expectations. Birds will nest in trees regardless of what those trees might think or feel, if they could think or feel. Water will follow gravity and the path of less resistance. The wind blows, seeds germinate, or not. There are distant factors, the heat and intensity of the sun, carbon emissions, cities of industries, and policy makers. And yet, mostly, organisms grow and thrive.

No one lives in a bubble, no one is an island, we live how we live interconnected in intimate ways and yet we seek to differentiate, to control. The push and pull of identity creates so much conflict within ourselves and our interpersonal interactions. Globally, and historically there are many examples of division leading to destruction.

I didn’t expect this post to turn into an essay about world peace. But I’m a writer, and we have ideas to share, like how everyone deserves a happily ever after.

I wish, I wish that the dynamic Bea, G, and Andre find themselves in at the end of Yours, Mine, and Ours is something we can all find for ourselves—a natural harmony. To have people to love and care about us unconditionally, and to love and care for others just the same. I believe, interconnected relationships like theirs, like mine, exist—right now, all the time. Sisters help raise nieces and nephews, as do close friends, and neighbors. Older cousins watch younger ones. Mutual friends pick up each other’s children from school, feed one another, share hugs, and reach out.

In the same way, Bea, G and Andre’s relationship isn’t explicitly named as polyamorous, but for them and for now, they’ve chosen a relationship dynamic that works. As a person who grew up in a large family, and who married into a large family, I find it difficult to rank some relationships over others. Why is one’s relationship to their marital partner more important than their relationship to their mother, or to their best friend? Why can’t relationships simply exist for the reasons they are needed?

What and with whom are some of your most important relationships with? Why are they important to you? I’ll go first… I adopted a dog with one of my friends. In the past year, we collectively put down three dogs and two cats, and we were both missing having doggy love in our lives but we are also very busy with families and careers. So, we adopted Loretta. She stays with Tegan three days a week and with me four days a week. Loretta collectively has three and half parents, one kid, four cats, four really attentive grandparents, and everyone loves her. Co-parenting Loretta has become one of the best and most important relationships in my life.

Like every relationship, there has to be open communication and compromise. Yours, Mine and Ours, only scratches the very surface of this. In a full-length novel, there would have been more insecurity, more separation, more unsolicited opinions, more research and definitely more soul-searching. But like every relationship, nothing is perfect, and Andre, G, and Bea are figuring it all out as they go along. Just like us.

GIVEAWAY!

Win A Paperback Copy of Yours, Mine, & Ours – Enter by adding One Night on Vallejo Street, my next release from Entangled Publishing, to your Goodreads TBR  and receive a bonus entry for following me on Amazon.

Yours, Mine & Ours

A pregnancy will never save a failing relationship…

Loving Bea was never the problem for Andre but there’s something missing from their relationship.

When Bea becomes pregnant, she realizes she can’t wait around waiting for Andre anymore. If he isn’t going to step up, she has to. Having a family is her dream and she will break Andre’s heart to do it. For the sake of her baby.

But she finds that, she doesn’t have to raise a baby alone, nor does the father of her baby need to be involved. Enter G, a former solo-poly turned platonic life partner, who discovers that family is what you make it.

Can Andre, Bea and G work out their individual issues in time for their baby’s arrival? Or was their relationship doomed to fail from the start?

Link to preorder or click on the cover to take you to the Amazon preorder page.