Read Climbing Ivy Covered Walls the new #WomensFiction by Fran Thomas @FrancesOThomas #RLFblog #Romance

Three best friends navigate their opposites attract relationships and campus politics in a small Western Pennsylvania town.

Fran, welcome to Romance Lives Forever. I’m Kayelle Allen, author and owner of this blog. Happy to have you here! Please tell us about Climbing Ivy Covered Walls.

Climbing Ivy Covered Walls by Fran Thomas

Genre Women’s Fiction with strong Romantic Element
Heat rating (based on movie ratings): G

Teamwork makes the dream work.
Three women with the same goal.

Tomasina, aka Tommy, Lombardi has spent her life trying to be the son her dad always wanted. As the special teams coach of the Bolton College Bulldogs football team, she hoped to make him proud when her team won the division championship. Then her head coach assigned her to work with the neurologist from the town’s hospital on his grant-funded study of concussions. She can’t avoid handsome but infuriating Dr. Wu, but she can’t allow him to derail her career.

Tommy’s not the only woman on staff with man troubles. Motorcycle-riding Sandrina Tutko interned at the library at Stratford-upon-Avon, yet it’s a stuffy English professor who was chosen to head the study abroad program, not her. He may be an expert on Shakespeare, but he’s never even been to Great Britain.

Nichelle Washington is the first African American woman Dean of Students at the college. Opposing the town’s popular fast-food hangout isn’t winning her points with its charismatic owner, but she refuses to allow her students to risk the obesity she faced as a child before she became a vegan.

When Tommy discovers Sandrina and Nichelle, whom she hadn’t seen since high school, are now her colleagues, they join forces to navigate the halls of academe. Maybe it’s not a man’s world after all.

Why did you write this book?

I once worked at a local college, so that setting was something I knew about. My dedication gives a clue about a major plot line. I dedicated the book to the memory of the late, great Mike Webster, and to Dr. Bennet Omalu. I am a lifelong fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers, so I was familiar with the sad story of Mike Webster, the team’s legendary center, who sustained permanent brain damage and died far too soon as a result of the many concussions he suffered. When Dr. Omalu performed Webster’s autopsy, he discovered a disease called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, one that hadn’t been connected to football players previously. When he published his findings, he was vilified by the NFL. It took them years to institute better concussion protocols. The movie Concussion told Omalu’s story.

What is your favorite genre to read?

Romance because I can’t deal with unhappy endings.

Who is your favorite character from fiction (not including your own)?

I’ve always loved Scarlett O’Hara. I wish I had her self-confidence and determination.

What are you working on at the moment?

I am brainstorming my next series.

What books will we see from you in coming months?

The series will be set in a fictitious small Florida town. Many of its residents are practitioners of occult sciences. The main character in the first book in the series is a burned out journalist who inherits a house in the town. Her love interest is the contractor who remodels her house.