Mar 25, 2015 | Blog, March 2015
In The Brit, the Brooch, and the Blizzard by Caitlenn T. Ainnsley we meet Olivia DuBois who is dealing with a family illness, a man who claims to only have eyes for her but really doesn’t, and a penchant for finding herself in embarrassing situations at the most inappropriate time!
When her so-called boyfriend professes his desire to go on to Hawaii without her even though she’s facing the most difficult moment in her life she can’t seem to wonder if he’s truly the one for her. In a fleeting moment her Grandmother passes down the family brooch in hopes that her granddaughter will truly find happiness and her beloved. Will this be the catalyst for her to change course and discover a life she’s meant to live?
A run-in with a Brit in a most unexpected place leads her on a journey of the heart, mind and soul. Travel along to discover what happens when you mix magic with a raging blizzard and a sexy man with an accent. This one is sure to leave your toes curling too!
After reading Caitlenn T. Ainnsley’s novella I am hoping that she too will expand and give us more! What a great way to end an amazing idea and concept for a novella – one that must certainly be revisited soon!
Check back tomorrow when Caitlenn stops by to join me for coffee.
BIO:
Caitlenn writes edgy, sexy chick lit stories about fabulous women, hot men and the often crazy situations they encounter on the road to love.
She won her first creative writing contest in the sixth grade and has always found pleasure weaving stories.
A big fan of Harlequin’s Intrigue series, her first novel was a romantic suspense. Its rejection was a blessing because it challenged Caitlenn to explore other genres. When she scribbled a single scene to enter in a Romance Writer’s of America editor’s critique and all three editors said they wanted more from her, she knew she’d found her voice in chick lit.
The Brit, The Brooch, and The Blizzard is her debut novella.
Caitlenn is a pen name for Leah Grant. Leah is a Business, Life and Spiritual Coach having a diverse set of skills as a Master Certified Coach, a Certified NLP Practitioner, a Certified Emotional Intelligence Practitioner and an Ordained Minister. Leah Grant speaks, teaches and is a published best-selling non-fiction author.
Leah is also known as Lotus. As Lotus, she sings Sanskrit chants and has released a CD: Ecstatic Meditation – One available at www.ecstaticmeditation.com
When she’s not traveling, which she does very frequently, Caitlenn lives in Las Vegas.
Mar 23, 2015 | Andrea Laurence, Blog, March 2015
Feeding the Fire, by Andrea Laurence, is a story of a friendship, love, hope and a few secrets. Rosewood, Alabama might be a small town but it has lots to offer – lots of gossip and really cute fireman.
When the town organizes a fundraiser, a Bachelor Auction for a Valentine’s Day Date, the single women are ready! A chance to date a few sexy men, including local firefighter Grant Chamberlin. For Pepper Anthony, a hairstylist at the town hair salon Curls, the last thing she can afford to do is make a sizeable donation. Right now she needs to save as much money as she can to fix up her house, not spend her money on a date. Even if the money is for a great cause and the prize is someone she can’t get out of her head.
Unfortunately there is a “situation” at the auction and Pepper finds herself the winning bidder for a hot date with Grant. What complicates this unfortunate event is that they have an unresolved issue to contend with. What will Pepper do? When Grant learns the truth about her winning bid he decides to make it up to her, and you won’t believe what he does!
This fantastic series explores friendships, secrets, and family. It proves that with trust and honesty, anything is possible. I received this ARC from the publisher for a fair and honest review. This is the second book in the series and I find myself in dire need to discover what happened in the first book while anxiously waiting for the next book. Discover Rosewood, Alabama and the residents who live there. It’s a must for your next read!
BIO:
Andrea Laurence is an award winning author of contemporary and paranormal romance. She has been a lover of reading and writing stories since she learned to read at a young age. A dedicated West Coast girl transplanted into the Deep South, she’s working on her own “happily ever after” with her boyfriend and their collection of animals including a Siberian Husky that sheds like nobody’s business.
Mar 22, 2015 | Blog, March 2015
Imagine a town where secrets have no chance of staying hidden for long, most of the time. There’s a strong possibility your childhood nemesis will wind up falling in love with you or a past transgression will re-surface and you’ll have an opportunity for redemption later in life.
There is something magical and comforting about a small town setting for a knitting group, a book club, a resort by a lake, anything to draw us in where we know everyone!
Debbie Macomber? Nora Roberts? Grace Burrowes? Suz Ferrell? Andrea Laurence? There are so many authors that have stories to choose from, what’s your favorite book and author?
Mar 20, 2015 | Blog, Crystal Green, March 2015, Spicy Latte
Hot and Bothered (Rough and Tumble, Book 3) by Crystal Green is a spicy latte that sizzles and surprises you when you least expect it. Renowned author, Rochelle Burton returns to the outskirts of Las Vegas, Nevada for a publicity tour and to be closer to family. Rochelle’s latest story is about a struggling actress that was once in an Elvis Presley movie and the mystery surrounding her death.
After a close call during a book signing, Rochelle’s publicist insists she hire a bodyguard to ensure her safety. Gideon Lane, a childhood friend and former soldier, is the only man her family approves for the job. There’s just one teeny, tiny problem. The last time she saw him was disastrous and they haven’t spoken since. Will he take the job, especially since she was the one to walk out on him almost twenty years ago? Aching for answers and closure, Rochelle finds herself in a few hilarious situations that involve a sexy cowboy and a few glasses of tequila.
Discover a golden nugget just past the lights and sparkle of sin city that will capture a piece of your heart, a gritty Vegas saloon, the Rough and Tumble. Drive over, pull up a chair and enjoy a shot of whiskey. There’s a lot to be discovered at the saloon and from the people who walk through it’s door!
While I received this ARC for a fair and honest review I would purchase this for a friend. I look forward to more adventures at the Rough and Tumble and you will too!
I give this book two peppers because there is just enough sizzle to make you tingle. For a mature audience, 18+.
BIO:
You can call her “Crystal,” “Chris,” or “Christine”—she’s the same person, even though her different pen names reflect different writing personalities.
Under “Crystal Green,” she writes romance. “Chris Marie Green” is in charge of the urban fantasy series Vampire Babylon, which features six full-length books, three novellas, and one short story. Chris Marie has also indie published a New Adult Single Girl/Geek Lit hybrid with illustrations by Billy Martinez called The She Code, along with other shorter works that follow the rules that all girls should know in life.
Crystal used to be an 8th grade teacher of reading, writing, and US History, but she promised herself if she ever sold 3 books in a year, she would take a chance and write full-time. Ten years later, she is still feverishly writing and loving it!
Webpage: https://www.crystal-green.com/index.php
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chrismarie.green
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CrystalGreenMe
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/32522.Crystal_Green
Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21468473-hot-and-bothered
Mar 19, 2015 | Blog, Coffee With, March 2015, Sandra Lake
Rae: First, if we were meeting at a Coffee shop I’d be drinking a Latte.
What would you be drinking?
Sandra: Mint tea, please. My naturopath guru has taken me off dairy and everything else delicious. I call it the ‘Non-Dairy, Non-Fun Program’. Before the health nutter ruined my taste pallet, it would have been a hot and creamy latte along with you.
Rae: Thank you so much for taking time to sit down and answer a few questions. I LOVED The Warlord’s Wife. Your story was absolutely spellbinding! I found it so engaging and breathtaking, as if I were truly in 12th century Sweden and Finland. What inspired you to write this story?
Sandra: The basic outline of Lida, my heroine, came from my grandmother. She had this terrible tragic life, a widow at twenty (with my mother on the way), disowned by her in-laws, she then worked tirelessly for ten years to support herself as a single mom. At 30, she remarried and had four sons. She died of breast cancer at the young age of 48.
Lida’s early years are pretty much torn from my grandmother’s diary. The glaring difference in the story I give Lida, is that her second husband wasn’t a bleep-bleep-bleep or a son of a bleep. So, in my imaginary world of Tronscar, I gave Lida a real man, Magnus, a man that starts out rough around the edges, but treats her and her daughter with love and respect.
Rae: How did you research for it?
Sandra: The setting of Sweden came to me when I hijacked my son’s school project of his family tree. My husband is half Swedish, and since I’m basically a mutt, having no ethic group to latch onto, I picked Sweden as my people. I always did love meatballs and smoked salmon. The history nerd in me then took over and for years I read any and all ‘Viking’ fiction and non-fiction.
Rae: I’m so excited to see that this is a series, how many books do you anticipate?
Sandra: Sink or swim in sales will probably answer that question better than me. I have several more completed manuscripts, following the lives of Magnus and Lida’s ‘Sons of the North’.
The one I am most entrenched in right now is book 3, Hök, Magnus and Lida’s second son. At the tender age of eighteen, he gets his heart trampled on by a beautiful, highborn Norwegian girl who is used in a ‘honey pot’ scam to extort Magnus. Years later, Hök and Sovia meet up again, she’s seconds from having her head cut off for selling secrets to Sweden’s enemies. She’s been labeled a whore by the Swedish Queen and does not shrink from the title but bolding argues that if her actions render her guilty of low morals, then so be the definition of all men. Fearing igniting a new war with Norway, the last war has just ended, Hök petitions the King to let him wed Sovia for her inherited land. The king agrees, granting this favor to Hök as a returning war hero. Their marriage begins as a battle ground, him not trusting her, disgusted with her past, Sovia using a false front of arrogant pride to cover up her deep inner pain and feelings of worthlessness. Their marriage quickly simmers into something much more…oh and Hök of course has to avenge the warlord that tries to take her from him.
I’m obsessed with Sovia at the moment. She’s damaged, been treated harshly by the world since she was a little girl, but she has an unbreakable spirit that Hök, nor I, cannot help but admire. Fingers crossed they will one day see the light of day. I really hope that there will be at least two or three more books in the series.
Rae: When is the Iron Princess being released? I’m not sure I can wait that long 🙂
Sandra: I was told this week the release date is 6/6/15. I just finished my last touch ups and I admit, I didn’t want to send it back and let Katia and Lothair go. The story is very different from The Warlord’s Wife, which I would hope classifies as a family drama, where The Iron Princess is an adventure, coming of age story for both main characters. I had so much fun writing it. It didn’t feel at all like work, more like my alone time with my best friends…did that sound as corny as I think it did?
Rae: Not at all 🙂 Thank you again- I had a great time!
8 Tantalizing Tidbits:
1. A Must read book and why? I have a hundred Must reads, but for the past few years, The Outlander Series has been on a constant rotation on my kindle; Gorgeous, crisp, poetic writing of adventure, guys in kilts, true love, marital bless one chapter and marital warfare the next. Oh, did I mention the kilts?
2. What is one place that I should see if I visit your hometown? Equestrian and nature trails are what set our small town apart. Most every day you’ll find me on a trail being dragged behind my unruly husky. A lot of my neighbors own farmettes and keep horses. At the local cafe, it’s not unusual to see women and young girls in their riding pants and boots coming from their Saturday morning riding lessons.
3. When you plot out your book do you know how it will end or do you figure it out as you go? For the majority of my stories, they are fully formed in my head before I type one word. At night, or when I’m vacuuming or doing something mindless, the entire story just pieces together and plays out, and after I have the opening scene tidied up in my head, I start to write it down. It usually comes out pretty fast after that, but then the real ‘work’ part of the process begins, edit and polish.
4. Do you watch a TV show weekly or binge watch? I find I binge read romance series more than watch TV. But it does depend on if Vikings (History Channel) or Outlander (Starz) are on, then yes, I watch weekly and take the batteries out of the remote so my husband doesn’t ‘accidentally-on-purpose’ switch it to hockey. Other than that, I don’t watch much TV. I do binge watch on Netflix from time to time, or as I call it, ‘Taking a mental health day’.
5.What is the craziest souvenir you picked up while traveling? Do you collect things when you travel? That would be the giant wood giraffe from the side of the road in Swaziland, Africa. Its head stuck out the window of the car for days, my husband and his buddy (who lives in South Africa and was touring us around the country) were not impressed, nor was the flight attendant that I begged and pleaded with to have it shoved in the first class closet. Being polite with a big smile has served me well. Overall, I try to bring back smaller tokens of local art and pottery.
6.When you are traveling do you road trip it or fly it? Both and several times a year. I caught the incurable traveling bug when I was young. Fortunately, I married someone who is equal parts gypsy and nomad. For the first fifteen years of our marriage, we worked together in his trucking company. I still have a valid trucker license to this day. We literally lived the Johnny Cash song, ‘I’ve Been Every Where Man.’
So for work, we have driven to every state and major city in Canada and the USA, several times. We travel with our kids and make summer family holiday adventures out of every town we work in. I could write a book on the best children’s museums in North America. When work slows down, in the winter, we hop on a plane and go, usually somewhere hot. We’ve seen a good chunk of the globe and forever keep finding new must see destinations.
7. If you could pick a book you’ve read and make it into a movie, which book would it be? Heather Graham’s MacAuliffe Viking Trilogy Series is probably to blame for my medieval/ Viking addiction. For me, she writes the perfect balance of an aggressive, alpha male, who are flawed but never failing. Her heroines are all stubborn beauties paired against hot, brave men sailing, righteous crusaders fighting for their families, material is gold for a movie or mini-series.
8. Do you like to cook or go out to eat? I am a chef by default. My husband is allergic to the grocery stores and all things ‘food prep’. It’s a rare medical condition that I’ve seen other husbands ailing from. My sons will not have this affliction. We regularly cook together now that they’re older…although, my Waterloo is baking. I’ve never mastered a piecrust. In ‘The Iron Princess’, Katia pitches a fit in the kitchen trying her hand at baking. It’s a tale taken from personal experience. For the most part, I’m not shy to say I’m a competent cook, ‘master of the ultimate brunch’ and host friends and family nearly every weekend.
BIO:
Sandra Lake was raised in rural Canada. She married her childhood sweetheart (who during her childhood resembled more like her childhood nemesis) and is currently living happily-ever-after along with their kids and unruly husky in eastern Canada.
Caitlenn writes edgy, sexy chick lit stories about fabulous women, hot men and the often crazy situations they encounter on the road to love.
