Guest post: Joanne DeMaio

I’m so happy to welcome author Joanne DeMaio to the blog today. Joanne’s new novel Blue Jeans and Coffee Beans was published last week. I loved her first book Whole Latte Life and look forward to reading her second:

In my new novel, Blue Jeans and Coffee Beans, the main character Maris Carrington is a denim designer. Her denim specialty connects her to the summers she spent at a close-knit beach community while growing up, to memories of her and her mother walking the sandy shoreline, to the breeziness of the whole beach essence that has long been a part of her life.

 So today, let’s take a fashion quiz to see how blue jeans connect to your life. I think that our denim preferences say a lot about our personalities, and I hope you’ll give it a try. Which jean style represents the true-blue you? Feel free to stitch another style into the mix, too.

 

Bootcut ~ You’re relaxed, easy-going, a bit bohemian.

 

Flares ~ You’re a Free-spirit, love live music and the arts.

 

Straight-leg ~ You’re classic and dependable, a good friend.

 

Skinny ~ Fun and upbeat, you’re the life of the beach party.

 

Boyfriend Jeans ~ Artistic, comfortable, confident … You enjoy lazy reading days.

 

Trouser Jeans ~ You’re professional and polished, a go-getter.

 

Cropped Jeans ~ Cheerful, sunny, calming … Walking along a beach is your perfect day.

 

Carpe Denim!

 

~Joanne

Thanks so much for visiting today, Joanne. I wear bootcut the most but choose trouser jeans when I want to dress up a bit and can still get away with wearing denim. I also have a pair of white denim cropped jeans that I love to wear in the summer months.

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Joanne DeMaio is the award-winning author of Blue Jeans and Coffee Beans and the bestselling novel Whole Latte Life, which won First Place in the 2012 Discovery Awards and was named a Kirkus Reviews Critics’ Pick. It has also been featured in USA Today, The Huffington Post and other outlets. Blue Jeans and Coffee Beans is her second novel. Both books explore the intricate relationships between mothers and daughters, sisters and friends. In addition, her music essays have appeared in literary journals, celebrating her passion for song. Joanne lives with her family in Connecticut, where the coffee and stories are always brewing. She is currently at work on her next book.

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After years of pursuing a denim design career, Maris Carrington never imagined trading her Chicago studio for a New England shingled cottage. But a forgotten home movie tucked inside a dusty attic box leads to an unexpected summer . . . One of uncovering family secrets while settling her father’s estate, one of inheriting a forlorn German Shepherd, one of reconnecting with old friends on a weathered boardwalk, beneath starlit skies on a beach nestled in a crook of the Connecticut coast. Her design career had become a shell, curving around her like the intricate whorls of a conch, shielding her until now. Until fried clam dinners and carousel rides beckon a lost love. But can Maris ever really go back? Can these beach friends ever be who they were to each other all those summers ago? Now one of her circle is dead; another unemployed and struggling in a tenuous marriage; another regretting a fateful decision; while one is missing a mother, ever seeking a connection she longs for. To the backdrop of seaside cottages and a boarded up beach hangout, to the soundtrack of whispering lagoon grasses and a vintage jukebox, Blue Jeans and Coffee Beans asks if we can really design our own lives, or if our fate lies somewhere in the stars.

You can buy Blue Jeans and Coffee Beans here.