Title: The Playhouse (Superpowered Love #7)
Author Name: Katey Hawthorne
Publication Date & Length: May 12, 2015
Summer has been Lily McBride’s favorite time of year since she was a kid, because that’s when the Brookesville Playhouse opens its doors. Now that she’s an adult and works as their tech director, Lily wants more for her beloved Playhouse: a larger audience, a longer season, and exciting shows to draw new patrons.
This year, though, she also wants Genevieve Mason, a pretty starlet-in-the-making from the local university, recruited for the season’s tech crew. Genny throws her heart and soul into the place too, adding her own dreams of representation to the ‘must-have’ list, and using her sweet voice and surprising flare for pyrotechnics to draw the crowds in droves. They work so well together, it’s not long before their summer crush blossoms into a steamy affair.
Lily’s falling hard, but always feels like Genny’s holding something back. And then there’s the dreaded Brookesville Arts Council—supposed to be a support system for all things cultural, instead dragging the Playhouse down with their old-fashioned stubbornness. There are a lot of hurdles to jump and egos to deflate before they can get what they want, both for the theater and from each other.
Hey there, Inked Rainbow, and thanks for letting me drop in to talk about my new release this week, The Playhouse. It’s part of the Superpowered Love series of LGBTQIA romances—so yeah, love stories and superpowers. Two of my favorite things. How could I resist?
There’s some saving the day here, but in The Playhouse, the superpowered character’s pyrokinesis gets a more unexpected use: special effects. The eponymous Playhouse is a local summer stock theater—in a giant barn. Probably doesn’t need saying that Pyrokinetics have never been used before. I was raised in and around a theater exactly like it, but I still had a little question when I started writing.
I sent my brother—who’s a music and theater teacher—a text: I need stage shows and musicals with fire in them. Go!
… and then I ended up not using the ones he sent me, which were all great shows. (…Sorry, Nick!) But it definitely got the ball rolling in my head, which is the hardest thing to do, right? In the end, I went with something super-accessible, as in had a recent movie made of it: Sweeney Todd. (Nick suggested Assassins, so at least I got some creepy Sondheim in there). That blazing oven—oh man, so great for pyrotechnics. And then, I hopped in the wayback machine and chose Pippin for its magnificent “ring of fire” style ending.
And, let’s be honest, the groovy seventies soundtrack.
I’ll leave the rest of the season—which consists of public domain straight shows (aka not musicals), because they’re a poor summer stock theater—for the book itself. But I gotta say, I have rarely had so much fun as I did choosing the season for my imaginary Playhouse. If you’re a theater person, what are some of your favorite shows?
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I know, I know, it looks like I don’t read anything here at GoodReads. But I do, I swear. My reviews and stuff are all over at my other GoodReads thingie, KV Taylor.
