Love Target Blog Tour (+$30 Amazon GC Giveaway!)

Title: Love Target 

Author: Heidi Hegerich

Series: N/A

Pages: 615

Date Published: May 3rd, 2015

Publisher: Forever Young LLC

Format: Kindle

Genre: Chick Lit/Historical Fiction

Source: Goddess Fish Blog Tours
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Synopsis:
Teenager Ingrid Liebschreiber is devastated when her parents move the family from their native Munich to Los Angeles in the late 1950s. Homesick, she accepts a neighbor's offer to get her a job as a showgirl in Las Vegas. Intent on earning enough money to return to Germany, she must grow up quickly in the neon jungle — where she is pursued by high rollers and headliners, including a vacationing Elvis.
Life's twists and turns land Ingrid in New York in the Swinging 1960s — where she is romanced by Armand: a strong, quiet, handsome businessman in "construction." Most girls dream of Mr. Right, and Ingrid's hard-won independence is challenged when she falls in love.
Will she find true romance — a man who can love her as much as she loves him? Or is "happily ever after" just a crazy fairytale?

~Guest Post~

One of the pleasures readers get from a novel is a vicarious tour of places they’ve never been. In my novel, LOVE TARGET, the protagonist and narrator — Ingrid Liebschreiber — is a showgirl in the golden age of the Las Vegas Strip: the early 1960s, when the Rat Pack reigned and the neon jungle of Vegas was the only place in the nation for casino gambling. People actually dressed up when they went to gamble or attend the shows in the big rooms or lounges. Showgirls were Vegas royalty — as well as the fantasies of American men, the way supermodels are nowadays.

Later in the book, still in the 1960s, Ingrid lives in New York City, where she is an aspiring model. Later still, she returns to Vegas in the 1970s.

Here is a list of Ingrid’s Top 7 favorite spots in LOVE TARGET:

1)                          The Casbar Lounge, at the Sahara Hotel, on the Las Vegas Strip. The Casbar was the lounge of lounges — a jumping joint where rising stars such as Don Rickles would cut his teeth before graduating to the showrooms; where top-notch acts such as Freddie Bell and the Bellboys, or Louie Prima, performed. You never knew who might be sitting at a round table in the shadows: perhaps Judy Garland or Dean Martin, or the great Sinatra himself. It is at the Casbar where Ingrid is approached by a rock ’n’ roll singer/movie actor vacationing in Vegas: Elvis Presley.

2)                          The Arabian Room, at the Dunes hotel-casino, on the Strip. This showroom had been specially constructed for Broadway productions, including Minsky’s Follies. It is in this room that Ingrid would captivate audiences during the late show as she lay topless on a Persian rug wearing only a thong, head propped on hand, as a motorized lift flew her around the room to the wild applause of neck-craning attendees. This magic-carpet ride in the beam of a tracking spotlight was intoxicating to Ingrid — “every cell in my body danced.” The adrenaline rush she experienced would not subside until long after the curtain fell.

3)                          Bell, Book and Candle. This sleepy shop in Las Vegas reeked of fragrant candles and incense, and its shelves were lined with books on metaphysics, packs of Tarot cards, candles, bells and other knickknacks. It is here where Ingrid had her fortune told in a back room by a witch with unruly, silver-gray hair, and left the store with two candles and the witch’s instructions on how to use them to create the spell that would bring the man of her dreams into her life.

4)                          The Copacabana. This swank Manhattan nightclub was New York’s most famous, and it is here that Ingrid and her ex-showgirl girlfriends Kitty, Mandy and Winona, and their Italian boyfriends Vince, Angelo and Biff, got hammered even before the headliner — the great Sammy Davis Jr. — came on stage. The house was packed for him, and he did not disappoint — so classy and sophisticated with his straight greased hair combed neatly back; his dapper black suit, white shirt and black bowtie; his thin mustache and tuft of a goatee with a straight little line running up his chin. His deep, rumbling baritone filled the room as the orchestra behind him swelled and the white audience madly applauded this tiny black singer with the enormous voice.

5)                          The Peppermint Lounge. This was a cubbyhole on West 45^th Street in Manhattan, but a famous hipster joint where young people crammed the tiny dance floor stuck between the stage and the low railing where the tables were — dancing the Twist and the other new, touch-free steps while the house band, The Wild Ones, wailed away on stage. Saucy young women in short skirts and tall black boots stood atop tables swinging arms crazily up and down, heads bobbing and knees pumping, their images reflected in the wall-length mirror next to the dance floor. From them, go-go dancing would evolve. No wonder that movie stars, European royalty, even Jackie Kennedy and the Beatles had popped into the Peppermint Lounge.

6)                          The Shepheard’s Club. This discotheque was on the ground floor of the Drake Hotel on Park Avenue, in midtown Manhattan. The line would stretch around the corner of the block, so popular was this club which was copying the trend of European discos by having disc jockeys spinning records instead of bands playing live. Ingrid had seen Lee Radziwell, the sister of Jackie Kennedy, and actress Julie Newmar, who played “Catwoman” on the Batman television series, at the Shepheard’s Club. The DJ’s spun vinyl for the in crowd to dance Latin steps such as the pachanga and the merengue, plus the silly dances: the Frug, the Swim, the Watusi, all those touchless moves that had grown out of the Twist, after dancers got too tired to keep twisting and just stood in place, bobbing and jerking their torsos and swinging their arms like goofballs.

7)                          The Beverly Hills Hotel. This five-star hotel in Los Angeles had bungalows set in lush gardens beyond the swim pool. David Lowenstein booked Ingrid and himself into Bungalow No. 5 — where tycoon Howard Hughes used to stay. David and Ingrid occupied separate rooms, of course, being friends not lovers. (Hmm, wonder how that arrangement worked out?)

~Try an Excerpt!~

The witch stared past me, lost in thought. Then she shook her head.

“I don’t know,” she began, haltingly. “There will be a man, a husband. Somebody that you’ve known. Somebody” — her voice rose — “with dark hair! And . . . eyes that are lighter. Maybe blue.”

“I don’t know who this man could be,” I said to the witch.

“Trust me,” she said confidently. “Do you have any photographs in your wallet of who this man could be?”

I didn’t have a photo of David. But it didn’t matter, since he was married.

I fished out a photograph of Armand.

The witch held it up in her crooked fingers in front of her hooked nose. She twisted her neck, turning her head this way and that, peering curiously at the photo from different angles.

She handed it back.

“You should have never been with this man!”

I shrugged. “I wish I knew who this mystery man could be.”

“It is not important,” the witch said. “You will know in good time. You can bring him into your life. And I want you to do something.”

She rummaged on a shelf and removed several objects.

“Take these two candles. Write an affirmation on a slip of paper saying that you will be with this man with dark hair that you’ve known. Then put the paper between the candles, and melt the candles together. Light each one, and when they’re soft, mold them together.”

I took the candles. Well, it couldn’t hurt to try. Might even be fun.

~Meet Heidi!~ 

Heidi Loeb Hegerich has lived in places as varied as Munich, Las Vegas, Miami Beach, New York, Los Angeles, Squaw Valley and Reno. She has worked variously as a showgirl, business executive, entrepreneur, interior designer and real estate developer. She has traveled to six of the seven continents, and vacationed in spots as different as the French Riviera, the Andes and Afghanistan. She counts among her hobbies weight training, shooting assault rifles, and racing sand rails; she found skydiving entertaining but not as much of a rush as other pursuits.

A philanthropist for the arts, among other causes, Hegerich is now embarking on her own artistic quest as an author. The novel Love Target is her first book.

Heidi Loeb Hegerich will be awarding $30 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

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