Interview with Ava Greene - Hollywood Novels

      After a five hour flight, Tonya and Brenda catch up with Author Ava Greene in the restaurant at the Chateau Marmont, located in West Hollywood. Surrounded by beautiful ruins, Ava sits patiently waiting with Pernod in one hand and a pen in the other. She's just gone shopping down the street at Sunset Plaza, and her face looks especially fresh because she had a facial, too. Dressed head-to-toe in tight black leggings, and sheer skin coat from Russia, Ava wears thigh high stiletto boots, the monochromatic outfit broken by a diamond ring and yellow broach.

      We featured her book Pandora's Box two weeks ago. Come join us as we now chat with Ava. BTW, there will be a drawing for a free eBook to one lucky commenter. Details below.

Naughty Reader’s: Hi Ava! We so excited you've invited us to Hollywood this week. Tell us a bit about yourself that our readers might not know.

Ava: I grew up in Hollywood where I started working at a very young age. First, modeling which lead to commercials, and then roles in tv and film. I decided to make a career switch, and now work behind-the-scenes. So writing a New Adult Novel set in Hollywood made perfect sense.

Naughty Reader’s: What made you want to become a writer?

Ava: I had seen so much from such an early age, and those stories stayed with me and I needed somewhere to put them down. I love stories about Hollywood that pull back the curtains on the world of beautiful people blessed - or, cursed - with youth and fame?

Naughty Reader’s: Please share a bit about your new release without giving away any spoilers.

Ava: "Pandora's Box: A Hollywood High Novella": American Icon and Hollywood Superstar, eighteen year old Melani Lamé, and hunky action Star, Rocky Rhodes, are locked in a battle for dominance while partying the night away in the Hollywood Hills above glittering Los Angeles. Blessed with youth, beauty, and fame, these two master manipulators fight to the death to see who ends up on top. Winner takes all.

Naughty Reader’s: Do you write under a pen name?

Ava: Yes.

Naughty Reader’s: What types of hero or heroine do you like best?

Ava: Strong, sexually confident women. A man who had hair on his chest, and swagger to his walk because he has a lot of ... confidence.

Naughty Reader’s: Tell us about a typical day in your life as a writer.

Ava: Grapefruit, & the gym. Then I get to work. Much past five hours, and my brain stops working. I try to eat sensibly (diet tip: sugar, ANY sugar, is stored by the body as water weight) and keep a supply of protein (nuts) nearby for snacks. Night time is when I set out and explore the world, and see what happens. I'm always open to surprise.

Naughty Reader’s: Do your books have a common theme or are they all different?

Ava: Yes, because "Hollywood High" is about Hollywood as high school, a theme that everyone in America can relate to. Also, because I see Hollywood High as a series so also defines the work, thematically. I'm interested in how men and women love, fight, and struggle to find a way to live together. In Hollywood, those battles are fought with money, sex, and power.  But this being Hollywood, no one is who - or, what - they appear.

Naughty Reader’s: How long does it take you to write and then edit a story?

Ava: I am a big fan of rewriting, and believe prose should be beautiful and evocative.

Naughty Reader’s: Do you have to be alone to write?

Ava: I need to see people so, no, it's not a stay at home process.

Naughty Reader’s: How do you go about naming characters?

Ava: I knew who they were from day one.

Naughty Reader’s: Is it easier to write about the characters if you find pictures of them before you write or do you write then find character pictures?

Ava: I've met so many performers - dancers, actor, singers - through work that I have a gallery of faces in my head to draw upon. 

 

Naughty Reader’s: How do you pick locations for your stories?

Ava: Hollywood picked itself. There is something so seductive about Los Angeles, the city is a character unto itself in "Pandora's Box: A Hollywood High Novella." Also, because I've been to the Oscars / Academy Awards, Golden Globes, and other award ceremonies or, on set of television and film, and lived in the Hollywood Hills, I have many locales to draw upon for settings.

Naughty Reader’s: What are you working on now and what should readers be looking forward to from you in the future?

Ava: Another paranormal romance, with some time travel elements. It's longer than "Pandora's Box: A Hollywood High Novella," and I've spent more time on the hard-copy edits. I'm focusing more on New Young Adult - stories for people who are eighteen to twenty-six. It's a really intense time of life, and one that I still very much relate to.

Naughty Reader’s: Where can readers find out more about you and your books? 

Ava: Below are the links to connect with me and find my books online: 
   

Twitter: @AvaGreeneAuthor

Facebook: Facebook profile

Wattpad: AvaGreene

Manic Readers         

Smashwords 

Amazon

      I'd like to give a free book to one lucky commenter. Tell me what movie you would like to play the main actress/actor in and why. I'll pick the most interesting comment on Saturday, January 26. Leave your email address so we can easily contact the winner. Good luck!

Enjoy an excerpt from Pandora's Box:

     Melani picked up the Tiffany lighter (Rock Hudson’s initials were monogrammed on the silver surface.)
      ‘Smoking is bad for my skin,’ she thought. ‘But I really need that cigarette. To calm myself. To think. To scheme. To plot. To plan. To get Rocky’s script. Fuck it.’
      She lit the Kool. Inhaled. Paused.
   “Rocky?” Tiny puffs of white smoke erupted from her mouth.
     “Yeah?”
      “I need to reinvent myself,” she said and exhaled, blasting his face with a steam engine’s worth of smoke. “Ugh, I really hate smoking. You got a joint?”
      “Sure,” Rocky said, expertly rolling, licking and sealing the blunt.
      “Tight,” she said. Her lips closed on the joint, he lit it, and she in-hay-hay-hay-hay-eld, working the Jamaican THC deep down, and into her lower lungs. “Niiiicccceeee.”
      “Yeah,” Rocky said, looking at her and giving her the lewd eye. “But nowhere near as nice or tight as you, babe.”
      Melani laughed, and smiled. She didn’t believe anything Rocky said. Except his last statement which was true.
     “Back to this idea that I need to reinvent myself. Like how Al Gore claimed he invented the intranets?”
      “Naw, more of a Madonna reinvention with a light Lady Gaga gloss. I need that one script Dork Boy wrote in a cafe while dreaming about me playing the lead. But how do I pluck said script from Dork Boy’s hands? Where is Dork Boy hiding? Under which twinkling light of the millions of twinkling lights does Dork Boy reside? To which light do I … fly?”
      Rocky lifted his head, semi-famous green eyes looking at Melani. She’d said The (Truly) Magic Word - S-C-R-E-E-N-P-L-A-Y - during her impromptu reinvention rant.
       Good. This meant she’d moved closer to his goal (read his screenplay, say, ‘Yes, I’ll do it,’ a statement that would single-handedly move him out of AA into the WGA.)
       ‘I’ve misunderstood,’ he thought, suddenly doubting her words, and his conclusion. ‘Melani’s teasing me. Torturing me. Toying with me. She would do that. Because she can.’
      Did she really just say all that? Or, was it his imagination, fantasy run riot? An auditory hallucination brought on by exhaustion and drugs?
        In truth, their goals were on the verge of a merge. A head-on Hollywood collision of, You-see-me, I-use-you. Everybody Wins!
      “You know what else?”
      “No, I don’t.”
      “Those other biatches,” she snarled. “They all get paid twice as much as me! Twice!”
      “Yeah?” Rocky stood, and swayed, unsteady on his feet.
      He stepped forward, headed towards Melani, but tripped, and cut his calf on the glass table’s sharp, metal edge. Blood gushed out the wound, trickled down his leg, pooled around his foot, and seeped into the rug. Red blossomed on white.
      ‘Great,’ Melani thought. ‘There goes the deposit.’
      ‘I’m a Luke Skywalker,’ Rocky coached himself. ‘Bro’s always had to leave home base (in this case the white, shag carpet.) Launch themselves into space. ‘I’ma Save the Princess!’
      “Rocky?”
      “Yes!” Rocky said.
      “I haven’t asked you the question.”
     “Doesn’t matter,” he said, ready with the perfect answer. “I already know exactly what you mean.”
     His eyelids felt heavy. He started to nod off. Then, a voice in his head shouted, ‘Rockster, rouse thyself!’
     Rocky forced his eyes open, and looked at Melani: she pulsed with passion. His natural born hooker fused with his desire for success. The sexual athlete in him refused to give into physical exhaustion: he’d “go the distance.”
      Rocky had been schooled by Hollywood High’s rigid rules. Here, success equaled survival. One was either a “winner” or a “loser.”
      Tonight wasn’t just about Melani reading Rocky’s screenplay but life and death. Rocky had ridden the Hollywood merry-go-round before, and knew what it was to reach out and grab its golden ring. It had required doing, “Whatever is necessary.”
      Hollywood High’s survival / success were three, basic lessons. Sex and money, sex and power, sex and beauty. In Hollywood, whatever was considered worth having was some combination of that basic DNA.
      But knowledge was nothing without connections. Rocky knew that leap frogging himself out the mud of mediocrity meant allowing himself to be used as a human dildo. This would transcend degradation, and qualify as doing ‘Whatever is necessary’ if it lead to Melani saying, “Yes, I’ll do it.”
    Rocky knew he could only accomplish this by screwing her with super-human repetition. Over and over. Tonight was a human endurance test that required forgetting what he was doing while remembering he was doing it for the kids.
      Nobody knew Rocky’s true desire was far from his image as sex on a stick. A necessary part of Rocky forgetting what he was doing in the present tense (sex, servicing Melani, foreswearing sobriety from drugs and alcohol) meant projecting himself into the future. There, in the future, Rocky lived with his nice family (wife and five children) in a modest, San Fernando Valley mansion.
      Fucking Melani tonight was the price he was required to pay to get his. He’d resigned himself to that deal’s dubious ethics. “Shirelle” (real name: Lenora Claire), was a Louisiana based, 976 phone sex operator who served as Rocky’s “therapist” and had given him permission to whore himself out.
      He forced himself back to the white-on-white living room. To Melani’s house Ground Zero of Hollywood High. In this movie, the script required they fucked.
       Everything would be even “better” if they fucked a lot. Predestination, ejaculation, whatever, it didn’t matter neither of them wanted to have sex. They “did it” - again, and again and again - because those sex acts sealed the deal, the one where they agreed to sell every part of themselves to get what they “wanted.”
      Melani might obviously “moan” with fake “pleasure” while Rocky pumped on top of her but that was beside the point. The act was everything. She closed her eyes, and took another drag off the marijuana cigarette, and felt her head spin off her body.
     Rocky felt his blood quicken. After a short commercial break, and message from the program’s sponsors, it would soon be Melani’s time to get fucked again. Rocky had been cast as The Stud, the one scheduled to service Her Need For You Know What.
       Rocky, he would Just Do It! As in, do the deed, slip it in, etc. If only he hadn’t snorted all those drugs because closing in on his target, he felt himself stutter and lose focus.
       “Uh … “ He stalled for time. “I - I - I’ve got that script! The one you’re looking for!”
       “Really?” Melani cooed, and batted her long lashes. Her voice sounded warm and lovely. The ice cold bitch tone was gone, replaced by friendly interest. “You do? I had no idea!”
       “Yes, that one,” he said. Bingo. Open Sesame. C’mon down, Melani Lamé, The Price is Right! “The Screenplay You Are looking for.”
       “You brought a copy?” Melani said, parted her lips (the ones on her face), widened her eyes, and slipped into Every Girl mode. Shocked, Rocky watched her transformation.
       Every Girl wielded secret powers that worked on all the boys. Call it charisma or plain ‘ole p****y power, Melani’s had some Bermuda Triangle quality mojo.
       Watch out world, here she comes, Melani ‘n her Mojo! Wielding some powerful s**t. Like, light saber powerful.
       Zong! Zong! She gon’ slice ‘ya like buttah!
     Melani sat up, spine straight. She felt Kundalini energy surge through her vertebrae. Sex with Rocky had been physically exhausting, but energized her, too, and now it was about to all pay off.

About the Author:

      Ava Greene grew up in Hollywood where she performed in numerous tv shows, commercials and variety acts before retiring to work behind the scenes. "Pandora's Box" is her first novel in a series "The-Hollywood-High-Novellas."