Diana Rubino’s Bootleg Broadway

Please help me welcome Diana Rubino with a fun new release…

BOOTLEG BROADWAY
Booze, music, sex, murder, Prohibition New York. What a time to be alive!
Now on audio with the expressive voice of Nina Price.

After FROM HERE TO 14^TH STREET, set in 1894, I needed to set this a generation later, which happened to be the 1930s-­with Prohibition and the Great Depression as the backdrop. This is the first book I ever wrote where I created the characters first, with nothing to do yet. The plot developed the way it did because of who they are. My goal was to get the protagonist Billy McGlory into one mess after another. This era couldn’t have been more suited to Billy’s adventures, a few of which he barely escaped with his life.

Fun Fact:
As in FROM HERE TO 14^th STREET, a lot of characters have nicknames like Piggy Balls and Dirty Neck Bruiso. I sat around the table with my surviving aunts and uncles who were then in their 80s and 90s, and they rattled off these nicknames from ‘the old days’ in Jersey City like they made them up yesterday. That was a standard Italian neighborhood custom, everybody had a nickname. Some were more descriptive than others. But you didn’t just ’get’ a nickname. You had to earn it.   
 
Some more nicknames from the old neighborhood:
 
Bruno Chicken Body
Butta Jeans
Charlie Burp
Chick a la zoo
Dirty Dicky
Dirty Neck Bruiso
Floody
Frankie Butch Butch
Gravel Gertie
Hoo Hoo
Jazzy Lou
Jijji Balls
Jinji
Vigi-Leak

My fav passage from BOOTLEG BROADWAY (which made my aunt cringe):
 
Pru had kept closemouthed all day about what she was giving him for his birthday. He badgered and hounded her, but she wouldn’t give in.
As Ma began divvying up the rum cake, the doorbell rang, and Da came back with a long box. “This thing’s heavy. What’s in here, Pru? Billy’s tombstone?”
Billy cut the ribbon with the cake knife and slid the lid off. Wads of tissue paper filled the box. As he removed the last layer of covering and revealed what was inside, they all gasped­-a sculpture of a naked man, in all his masculine glory ­and fully aroused. He had one hand on his hip and one foot upon a pedestal on which was inscribed in bold letters, ’BILLY. ’
“Oh, crap.” His face turned red hot.

About Me

My passion for history and travel has taken me to every locale of my books and short stories, set in Medieval and Renaissance England, Paris, Egypt, the Mediterranean, colonial Virginia, New England, Washington D.C. and New York. My urban fantasy romance, FAKIN’ IT, won a Top Pick award from Romantic Times. I’m a member of Romance Writers of America, the Richard III Society and the Aaron Burr Association. My husband Chris and I own CostPro, an engineering firm based in Boston. In my spare time, I bicycle, golf, play my piano, devour books of any genre, and spend as much time as possible living the dream on my beloved Cape Cod. 

Contact Links

My Website
www.dianarubino.com
 
My Blog
www.dianarubinoauthor.blogspot.com
 
Facebook 
https://www.facebook.com/DianaRubinoAuthor/?ref=hl

Twitter
https://twitter.com/DianaLRubino

Goodreads
http://bit.ly/1V3GCgt

Amazon Author Page
http://amzn.to/1EQWdfJ
 
Chat and Promote … Fans of Historical Fiction and Nonfiction
http://bit.ly/2HrCOEQ

Purchase BOOTLEG BROADWAY
getbook.at/NewYorkSagaBookTwo