Alyssa Embree Schwartz's Blog

Kate at Verb Vixen is one of our favorite bloggers and a diehard Georgetown Academy fan!

Check out our contribution to her Reading Road Trip Tour. First stop, D.C.!"

http://verbvixen.tumblr.com/post/54909204680/readingroadtripdc

Not only are we book addicts, but we’re also TV addicts! And since so many of our favorites seem to take place inside the Beltway, we wanted to share a few important things we’ve gleaned from our list of must-see D.C. TV.

Homeland: There are lovely cabins right outside D.C. if you’re looking for a quick getaway. Just don’t accuse your significant other of being a terrorist while you’re there. Total vacay buzz kill.

The West Wing: People in the White House are incredibly eloquent at all times. Especially when speed walking through hallways.

House of Cards: Never get in the car alone with the House Majority Whip. EVER.

Scandal: If you tell everyone in D.C. that your gut is never wrong, chances are you’re going to jinx yourself and end up in the middle of one shitstorm after another. (Bonus Lesson: Carl from Ghost makes a seriously hot POTUS.

The Real Housewives of D.C.: It’s pretty awesome to be able to attend a State Dinner at the White House. Even when you’re not invited.

Veep: We feel REALLY bad for Joe Biden.

If you are making your way through the Georgetown Academy books and finding it hard to keep all the relationships straight, this awesome character and relationship flowchart by Nara at Looking for the Panacea will be your best friend!

To celebrate the launch of the Georgetown Academy Season One bundle (books 1-4), we are doing a once-in-a-fashion-lifetime giveaway!

Behold Brinley’s Bag of Swag, a collection of uber-luxe items from the GA fashionista’s favorite brands:

A Marc Jacobs “Dreamy” Computer Case

A Prada “Infusion d’Iris” Bath and Shower Gel

and it because it wouldn’t be Brin without Chanel…

A Chanel Levres Scintillantes lipgloss

Total value: $200!

Just write a review for the Season One bundle on Amazon and send the link to reviews@georgetownacademyseries.com with the subject line: Brinley’s Bag. We’ll be picking one lucky winner at random!

Giveaway ends 6/25.

You can buy Season One on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Google Play.

Hi guys!

We are super excited about the launch of books 1-4 of Georgetown Academy as a Season One bundle!

When 1000 people add Georgetown Academy Season One to their “To-Read”or “Reading” shelves, we’ll release a never-seen-before, “lost” scene from the series on the Season One Goodreads page!

If 2000 people add it, we’ll release a brand new Book One scene from one of the GA guys’ perspectives — finally a chance to get inside their heads!

Join the group now!

Thanks for loving Georgetown Academy!

A & J

Hi guys!

We are super excited about the launch of books 1-4 of Georgetown Academy as a Season One bundle!

If 1000 people add Georgetown Academy Season One to their “To-Read” shelves by June 11, 2013, we’ll release a never-seen-before, “lost” scene from the series on the Season One Goodreads page!

If 2000 people add it, we’ll release a brand new Book One scene from one of the GA guys’ perspectives — finally a chance to get inside their heads!

Join the group now!

Thanks for loving Georgetown Academy!

A & J

While Brinley Madison may not be a fan of celebs and their self-serving faux-humble activism (her words, not ours!), even she couldn’t turn her nose up at the recent brilliant New York Times op-ed piece by Angelina Jolie in which she detailed her difficult decision to get a preventative double mastectomy to reduce her risk of later getting breast cancer.

Disclaimer: We, the authors of Georgetown Academy, have been huge Angelina fans from the beginning. We’re talking Gia, Playing by Heart beginning. (What? Never heard of Playing by Heart the amazing moving starring Jolie, Ryan Phillippe, Jon Stewart and Sean Connery? Watch it and thank us later). Today we celebrate 38 years of her brilliance!

Now that Angie’s safely recovered and globe-trotting in stunning gowns with Brad Pitt on her arm, we thought we’d celebrate her triumph and promote breast-cancer prevention by sharing A Proper Send-Off, a short film we wrote for the Glamour Reel Moments Film Festival in 2011.

The dramedy stars Jacinda Barrett, was directed by Eva Longoria (with a cameo from George Kotsiopoulos for all you Fashion Police fans out there), and is based on the true story of one Glamour reader who, like Angelina, tested positive for the BRCA gene…and the somewhat, let’s just say, unexpected route she took to make her decision.

Hope you enjoy! xx

One for every day of the month, counting down to the Fourth of July!

Book 4 and the Season One bundle come out June 11th. Mark your calendars!

We are giving away one book from the series EVERY DAY! RT for a chance to win!

30 Reasons to Love Georgetown Academy:

30. The Girls: Four young women, each dealing with public pressure and scrutiny in her own unique way.

We are thrilled to present the winners of the Georgetown Academy Fiction Writing Contest we ran with Figment last month.

Participants were given a free copy of Georgetown Academy Book One and asked to write a story about two of their favorite Georgetown Academy characters at a DC monument in 1000 words or fewer. Two grand-prize winners will have their story published in a special section of Georgetown Academy: Book Four coming June 11th, 2013. The two grand-prize winners will also be invited to submit a manuscript to Coliloquy, the publishers of Georgetown Academy, to be considered for publication.

Runners-up will receive the Georgetown Academy Season One bundle (Books 1-4), launching June 11th.

So without further ado, here are the winners:

Grand Prize:

Magic Hour by mquixotic

Another Side to the Story by Alison Ryu

Honorable Mention:

Face of a Hero by Paige S.

Runners-Up:

Reflecting Pool by Jacqueline Fauni

Hidden Agendas by Emily R

Honestly by Adrianna M

Twice is a Trend by Kate Treadway

The judges, GA authors Alyssa and Jessica and Coliloquy’s CEO Lisa Rutherford were super impressed by all the entries and certainly had a hard time picking the best ones. Thanks to everyone who participated and congratulations to all the winners!

With so many high-profile pregnancies these days, it’s impossible to escape the glossy spreads analyzing celebrity pregnancy styles in more depth than we analyze a presidential candidate. But while so many websites pick apart these women with the same kind of disdain we personally reserve for scrunchies and clear strap bras, no one bothers giving real women any advice on how to do it right. So we’ve broken it down with four easy tips so even if you’re feeling like a cow, at least you won’t look like one.

Tip #1: Just because it’s expensive doesn’t mean it looks good on a pregnant body (a.k.a. what we’ve learned from Kim Kardashian). Unless we never got the memo, Valentino, YSL and Balmain have not started a maternity line. You know who those fabulous designer clothes look good on? A 15-year-old model from Russia whose last meal was a pack of cigs and a line of coke. You know who they don’t look good on? Someone whose stomach is four times the size of their head. Under most circumstances we enjoy being label whores as much as the next gal, but this isn’t the time.

That being said, we get that maternity clothes are fugly and we believe they are only completely necessary during the last few months of pregnancy (the exception being maternity jeans which we wish we could wear year round). But when you shop off the rack for non-maternity clothes while you’re preggy, you’re going to have much better luck walking past that Barney’s Co-op and strolling through Zara and H&M instead. High-waisted leggings from American Apparel are great as are the long column skirts from Splendid. And when in doubt, buy a great pair of black maternity jeggings and pair them with a simple and chic black non-maternity top and you’ll pull it off Angelina pregnancy-style. As for shoes, that brings us to the next tip…

Tip #2: Embrace heels. Your hips, back, legs, butt and god knows what else are already going to be sore while you’re pregnant so you might as well look good while you’re bribing your significant other to give you a foot massage later because your feet kill. Under normal circumstances heels elevate an outfit to a much hotter level, but during pregnancy it can be the difference between looking like that blueberry chick they had to roll out of the room in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and looking like Natalie Portman pregnant at the Oscars. The only things worth investing in anyway during pregnancy are shoes and bags. Notice we are not mentioning jewelry. That’s because you should save up the jewelry buying for a really good push present.

Tip #3: Patterns are not your friends. After you see the fifteenth patterned wrap dress at Pea in the Pod, you might start to convince yourself it could be cute on you. It won’t be. You will look like a walking kaleidoscope.

Tip #4: Find five cute outfits and rotate them. We hate repeating outfits too, but it’s so difficult to find chic ones while you’re pregnant that you shouldn’t press your luck. Not to mention, who wants to spend a ton of money on a wardrobe you’ll never wear again? And don’t forget that people have extremely low expectations of your ability to look cute while pregnant so even if they’ve seen the outfit before, they’ll be impressed all over again.

We admit, this tip is a hard one to accept right away. Pre-preggers, we used to stand in the middle of our closets and whine, “I have nothing to wear,” to ourselves, our roommates, our boyfriends or our husbands (the latter of whom have tuned this phrase out by now which is preferable to their previous automated response of “But you have a huge closet full of clothes!”). For once in your life, you truly won’t have anything to wear, but the sooner you accept those five chic outfits as your entire wardrobe, the happier you will be. Besides you have a lot more important things to obsess about. Like how you’re going to dress your baby.