Ashley Elston is an author who lives in North Louisiana with her husband and three sons. She worked as a wedding and portrait photographer for ten years until she decided to pursue writing full time. Ashley is also a certified landscape horticulturist and loves digging in the dirt. Her debut novel, The Rules for Disappearing was published by Disney Hyperion in 2013 and was a finalist in the Best Young Adult category of the International Thriller Writers Awards. 10 Blind Dates is her first YA rom-com.
Today, Ashley’s on the blog to tell us all about her new novel and just why blind dates are so special to her. Read on!
I could not be more excited about the release of my new book, 10 Blind Dates!
10 Blind Dates is a YA novel about a girl named Sophie, who – for good reason! – breaks up with her boyfriend at the beginning of Christmas break. Her parents are out of town visiting her heavily pregnant older sister, so Sophie finds herself stuck at her grandparent’s house with her big, boisterous family for the break. To help get Sophie over her broken heart, Sophie’s grandmother devises a plan: to send her on 10 blind dates set up by different members of her family.
I mean, what could possibly go wrong?!
Blind dates have always held a special place in my heart. I met my husband on a blind date on Valentine’s Day in 1992. We’ve been together for 27 years (married for 22) and have three wonderful sons. Like Sophie, I grew up in a very large family. My mom was one of seven kids, so every holiday was spent in a house bursting to the seams with aunts and uncles and cousins. It was extremely chaotic and absolutely wonderful.
This book was so much fun to write. I started writing 10 Blind Dates on the side while I was waiting for edits on my earlier novels. Those novels were all mystery thrillers, so it was fun to play around with a story that was light-hearted and fun (this was actually my first book that didn’t have a dead body in it!). I was a little worried my publisher wouldn’t be interested in 10 Blind Dates, since it is so very different from my earlier books, but my editor read and loved it. We’ve now sold it to 23 countries, which just blows my mind, and when we started getting interest from production companies, I was over the moon. We’ve teamed up with Ace Entertainment, the team behind the Netflix adaptation of Jenny Han’s To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. Right now, we’re still in the early stages, but I’m very excited about the prospect of this book being adapted into a film.
So I hope you’re as excited to read 10 Blind Dates as I am to share it with you! Some of these dates are fun and some of them are disastrous, but family is really what’s at the heart of this book. There is so much of my family and so many of my childhood memories weaved into this story and I can’t wait for you to read it!
— Ashley Elston
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10 Blind Dates
Sophie wants one thing for Christmas – time with her boyfriend Griffin.
So when her parents plan a trip to visit her sister over the holiday, Sophie begs to be left behind with her grandparents and her boisterous extended family. But she and Griffin break up and she's devastated. Sophie’s grandmother, hating to see her so upset, devises a (not so) brilliant plan – to distract her from heartbreak. Over the next ten days, different family members will set Sophie up on ten different blind dates...
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