Shortly after the husband left this morning to log his third oil well of the week, I started thinking about Easter food, and how our family historically has eaten barbecue. Which got me to thinking about the Easter scene in THE SECOND CHANCE CAFÉ. I made sure to time the book around it’s actual release date (I do that a lot) so Kaylie and Ten (and Luna and Mitch and Will) are all in the Easter barbecue scene at Meadows Land, the Meadows’ family sheep farm near Hope Springs. Here’s a snippet from that scene! Enjoy!

Shaking off the strangeness of the moment, she saw Ten walking toward her, a sugar cookie frosted with thick yellow icing in his hand. Flutters of unexpected delight tickled her as she breathed in, then worked their way lower to coil in her belly and burn. They made the next breaths she took a struggle, yet she held on to them anyway, digging her nails into her palms, letting the flutters fill her.

Ten said nothing as he stopped beside her, watching with her as the kids lined up at Luna’s command. She raised one hand overhead until all eyes were on her. Then with a flourishing sweep of a scarf, she brought her arm down to signal the race was on, jumping and clapping as the kids nearly mowed her down.

Kaylie was pretty sure the other woman was having more fun than the children. She bumped her elbow against Ten’s. Accidentally, she told herself, though she wasn’t sure that was the case. “Did you ever hunt Easter eggs when you were a boy? You and your brother and sister?”

He grunted. “Is this your way of getting me to talk about them? Or to find out why I don’t talk about them? Except, it seems, to you.”

“Either. Both.” It had actually been neither. She’d only been asking about eggs. But to know that he felt free to talk of them to her… Her heart tumbled at that, the honor, the privilege. She felt flushed with a satisfaction almost too intimate to bear.

Ten popped the rest of the cookie into his mouth, talked around it. “How ’bout I just say yes? My brother and sister and I hunted Easter eggs as kids.”

“That’s it?” she asked, looking up.

Brows furrowed, he looked down. “What more do you need?”

She was hungry for everything about him. His hair in the sun. His eyes on hers. His tongue flicking out to catch cookie crumbs. His Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed. “Did you hunt them at home? After Sunday school? With the other children in the neighborhood?”

“Again. All of the above,” he said, and turned back to watch the kids as if having changed his mind about sharing things about his family with her.

Fine, but he was the one who’d opened the door. “If you don’t talk to your sister, why did you ask her to come by?”

“Because you wanted to put in a garden,” he said, shrugging as if it were obvious. “And no one knows gardens like Indy.”

He’d done it for her. Put what she needed for her café above his desire for the separation from his family even Indy wasn’t clear on—a thought that had her returning to Winton and May and the way each looked to the other’s needs first.

“Thank you,” she said, asking, “What?” when he responded with a weighty sigh.

“Nothing,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “You’re welcome.”

She reached for his arm, tugged him to face her. “No, it’s not nothing. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong.” He puffed out his cheeks, then puffed out a gust of air. “I just don’t want you to think it was a tit for tat thing. I’m not expecting anything in return.”

“Anything?” Oh. “Like another kiss?”

“I’m not expecting another kiss, no.”

But the way he said it… “Do you want to kiss me again?”

“Kaylie—”

She raised her chin, looked up at him, shading her eyes from the sun when it got in the way of her drinking him in…the way he ground his jaw, the stubble of beard he hadn’t bothered to shave, the curl of hair that cupped his ear because it wasn’t as long as the rest hanging over his collar.

She remembered the feel of it in her hands, the strands coarser than corn silk, and textured, like raffia, or hemp. She remembered his scent, and caught hints of it now, spicy and fresh and of the woods. His mouth had been fresh, too, wet and warm and sure. And the discoveries she’d made of his body…

She used the hand at her eyes to push her hair from her face, catching back strands stuck on her lips where she’d slicked them with her tongue. “I want you to kiss me again,” she said into the moment bubbled around them, close and fragile. “I want to kiss you.”

He said nothing as he lifted one hand, hooking a flyaway lock of her hair behind her ear. She leaned into his touch, the bubble tightening, the holiday crowd and noise and watercolor eggs fading into the watercolor distance.

She nuzzled her cheek to his hand, and he swallowed hard, his throat working around the words caught there. “You’re making it hard to say no.”

“Then don’t say it,” she said, wondering what he had done to her, because she was not herself at all.

“Time and place, sweetheart,” he finally said, as if it had taken him longer than he’d expected to find a response. “Do you think either is right?”

“No.” But that didn’t change any of what she was feeling.

“Later,” he said softly, leaning closer to whisper, “Promise,” against the shell of her ear. “You and me. No distractions.”

Digital: Kindle

Print: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository | Books A Million | Indigo/Chapters

Audio: Amazon – CD | Amazon – MP3 | Barnes & Noble | Books A Million | Indigo/Chapters

I was so super excited to see Amazon Publishing’s Montlake Romance imprint show so well in the 2013 RITA contest though honestly, anyone who doesn’t think Montlake titles can’t compete hasn’t been reading them. The editorial team is top-notch, whipping us into shape. ;) I have the ongoing scars to prove it, heh.

Anyhow, I thought to celebrate, I’d give away one Kindle copy of each of the four titles. To be eligible to win, just leave a comment telling me which book you’d like to have – and there should be something to interest everyone as several categories are represented. You can see the four books below, and you can click on the authors’ names to learn more about them!

Post by Sunday, March 31, 2013, 11:59 p.m. CDT. I’ll draw the winners sometime on Monday, April 1, 2013.

Best First Book Finalists

Crazy Little Thing by Tracy Brogan
Amazon Publishing, Montlake Romance
Kelli Martin, editor

Forged in Fire by Trish McCallan
Amazon Publishing, Montlake Romance
Lindsay Guzzardo, editor

Contemporary Romance Single Title Finalists

Sugar Springs by Kim Law
Amazon Publishing, Montlake Romance
Kelli Martin, editor

Paranormal Romance Finalists

Edge of Oblivion by J.T. Geissinger
Amazon Publishing, Montlake Romance
Eleni Caminis, editor

Romantic Suspense Finalists

Forged in Fire by Trish McCallan
Amazon Publishing, Montlake Romance
Lindsay Guzzardo, editor

I’m hearing from many of you who’ve read me for the first time with THE SECOND CHANCE CAFE. Amazon is really good at sending out emails with book suggestions, and I know some of you gave the book a try because of that email hitting your inbox. I’ve also heard from several people that the book is a screensaver on their Kindle, so through Amazon’s amazing marketing efforts, it’s reaching more readers than I ever could on my own. Yay, Amazon! And yay readers! You’re the ones making this happen, and I thank you! It was certainly not my doing that put the book in the Kindle top twenty! Yes, it’s a good book (if I do say so myself), but word of mouth and discovery are out of my hands. One reader on Twitter told me she baked a batch of brownies using one of the recipes in the book and took them to work, prompting two of her coworkers to buy the book to get the rest of the recipes! I love this so much!

A lot of you are asking about my next book, and are looking into my previous releases, prompting this post. You see, THE SECOND CHANCE CAFE is a bit of a departure for me. My previous books have mostly been sexy, even erotic, and Kaylie and Ten’s story is a much softer one. I would hate for anyone to grab up UNDENIABLE or UNBREAKABLE and be put off by the more explicit nature of those characters’ relationships.

Thing is, their relationships are just as romantic, just as emotional, and possibly even more wrenching. But because those two books in particular are billed as erotic romance, much of the conflict is played out in bed. If you enjoy the sexuality in Sylvia Day’s books, or Lauren Dane’s or Jaci Burton’s, you will most likely enjoy my previous titles. Lauren, Jaci and I all write for Berkley Heat. Sylvia and I both used to write for Kensington Brava, and shared the wonderful Kate Duffy as our editor. That’s not to say the character dynamics or even the plots of our books are similar, but the openness of the sexual encounters are. In fact, Sylvia and I wrote completely different books for Brava. Sylvia wrote lush historical romances, and I wrote gritty romantic suspense.

If you’re not a fan of the spicier reads, you might prefer my Carina Press novella, THIS TIME NEXT YEAR. It’s available digitally now, but will be released in print in the HOLIDAY KISSES anthology later this year. I also have a short story, 21 HOURS, written in the same softer vein as THE SECOND CHANCE CAFE. My earlier books, all available digitally from multiple retailers (LOVE ME TENDER, LOVE IN BLOOM, PLAYING LOVE’S ODDS) are less explicit, but those books are also older, my writing style less … refined, and maybe not as good as it is now, heh.

I love writing books with a sexier tone. I love the vulnerability of a hero whose physical connection to the heroine brings him to his knees. I love the beauty in the expression of emotions through hands on backs, and soles on calves, and mouths measuring heartbeats at the base of a neck. I love the fire in a hero’s eyes as the heroine watches him undress. I love the anticipation between two characters meant for each other who don’t learn that or understand that until their bodies show them.

My Hope Springs series, however, lent itself to a softer feel without the sexual explicitness. Luna’s book, BENEATH THE PATCHWORK MOON, and Indiana Keller’s book, THE SWEETNESS OF HONEY, will both be out sometime next year. My final Dalton Gang book, UNFORGETTABLE, hits shelves in August.

So let me invite you to check out my bookshelf page. There you can find links to all the books and novellas I’ve written, and each book’s page has an excerpt. As always, feel free to use my contact page, The Faqs, to email me with questions, and that page also has a sign-up link for my newsletter which I use only to announce new releases.

Again, thank you so much for enjoying THE SECOND CHANCE CAFE.

THE SECOND CHANCE CAFE released on Tuesday. On Tuesday, I was busy playing Grammy to a couple of pancake-loving munchkins and didn’t have time to post. I didn’t have time to do much of anything, really, but feed and listen and entertain and supervise and referee and enjoy. (There’s a reason I had my first kid at 21. I had the energy then to keep up with his nonstop days.) Anyhow, Kaylie and Ten’s book is out in the wild. Here on the book page are links to buy it at several retailers. Only Amazon has it available digitally, but you can get a Kindle app for your tablet or smartphone or pc, meaning anyone can take advantage of the $4.99 price tag! It’s been great fun watching the Kindle rankings on this one (even though I’m banned by a group of friends from looking at reviews and rankings, heh). It’s published by Amazon’s Montlake imprint, so having the publisher also be the retailer offers a lot of perks. Also, Montlake sends flowers for first releases. How cool is that?

The book is getting some really nice reviews, and I’m so excited about this. I’ve been writing faster-paced and sexier romances for so long, I wasn’t sure how readers would receive a softer sort of story from me. So far so good. I really loved this recap at Heroes and Heartbreakers which talks about the second chances everyone in the story – including Magoo, Kaylie’s dog – receives. It’s also nice to see comparisons to Robyn Carr’s Virgin River series as VIRGIN RIVER was the book that made me want to try my hand at a story of this tone. Originally, the second book was scheduled for September, but it’s been pushed back. I don’t yet have a new release date for BENEATH THE PATCHWORK MOON or one for the third book, THE SWEETNESS OF HONEY, but I can tell you that these two books tell Luna’s and Indiana’s stories.

After the cut, there’s an excerpt showing that even in a softer romance, there can still be plenty of steam. And I’m going to pick five commenters to this post to receive a Kindle copy. Deadline to comment is noon CST tomorrow, Friday, March 8, 2013. Just leave a comment telling me how you feel about soft romances and steamy romances, and if you prefer one over the other, or if you read anything as long as the book is enjoyable.

Read the rest of this entry »

21 HOURS was my story in the SEAL of My Dreams anthology. It’s available now for purchase as an individual title. The monies for the anthology, which is still on sale and will continue to be, goes to charity as explained on the SEAL of My Dreams website. The money for this solo title does not. It comes to me. ;)

If you’ve read UNDENIABLE or UNBREAKABLE, you’ll have read about Teri Gregor, daughter of Nora and Gavin Stokes who own the Blackbird Diner in Crow Hill, Texas. 21 HOURS is her story.

You can download the story at Smashwords, at Barnes & Noble, and at Amazon. Eventually, Smashwords will have the story distributed to Kobo, Sony, Apple, and Diesel, but you can get the compatible file directly from them in the meantime.

And nice cover, eh? Thanks to Croco Designs for this one!

The best parts of writing are the magical moments, those unexpected that turn a book into what an author wants it to be. The excerpt below was the magical moment for UNBREAKABLE (< --another excerpt and buy links on this page). Originally, I'd only planned for Casper to find Kevin. But then Clay opened the door, and the rest of the book fell into place. I can't even imagine this book without Clay! Enjoy! Oh, yeah. This one released today. Feel free to buy as many copies as you need to wallpaper your room with that cover!

Before heading from the bank back to the ranch, Casper swung once more by the house. He wasn’t sure why he bothered. Nothing in the last hour had changed. The place was still the nightmare it had been for years. Paint peeling. Shingles ripped away by high winds and branches. Weeds and rotting wood and broken windows and heinous neglect.

It was a home fit for rats and rattlesnakes, spiders and cockroaches—all apt descriptions of the woman who’d had no interest in bringing him up.

He shook his head free of childhood memories no adult should have stuck there, thinking it strange the neighbors on either side hadn’t gone to the city to have something done. Or maybe they had. Before returning to Crow Hill for good this summer, he’d only stopped by twice in sixteen years. Neither time had been to catch up.

The house had seemed an obvious place to recover after getting hung up to a couple of rank bulls. He’d stayed out of sight and mostly drunk. He hadn’t wanted anyone to see him busted all to hell. He sure hadn’t wanted any curious sorts offering to nurse him back to health, coming into the house where he’d lived to do so, sniffing around, getting all nosy and breaking out their holier-than-thou.

Snorting under his breath, he climbed down from his truck and hopped onto the roller coaster of a sidewalk, tripping once before getting his feet solid under him. Most likely, the city had finally found his old lady plying her wares in Vegas, instead of on the interstate at Bokeem’s, and told her to do something with the property before they did. As always, her solution had been to pass the buck, this time leaving him the one in a bind.

And because of that bind, if Faith was willing to talk tonight about the money he needed, because he couldn’t imagining her wanting to talk about fucking him, it might be a good idea to decide where to start spending it rather than jumping into a time-suck of a renovation with no plan. Though really. Talking about the money was easy. Coughing it up was going to be the hard part. The woman was tight with a capital T.

Read the rest of this entry »

In April of last year, I wrote this post explaining why I often take extended breaks from the wonder that is the Internet. Oh, how much fun is the Internet! So much to do and to learn and to distract me from my work. Social media is the worst. Authors are encouraged to engage our readership through our blogs and Facebook pages and on Twitter. And I love doing all of that. Need a recipe? Ask on Twitter. Readers know EVERYTHING. Alas, readers are so interesting, I lose time chatting and look up and realize I’ve lost hours I should’ve spent deep in the cave of my mind. So it’s nice to find other writers recognizing that sometimes holing up in the brain cave for awhile is a good thing.

From J.A. Konrath’s annual resolutions for writers post:

Trust me, it is liberating to be free of the opinions of strangers. We all need to focus on our writing. Because the millions of readers out there don’t care about your blog. They aren’t searching for you on Twitter and avoiding your books based on the comments of others. They aren’t taking one star reviews seriously.

It’s very easy to obsess in this business. But I haven’t seen a single shred of evidence that obsession helps careers.

The thing that I have seen, over and over, is people finding success by writing good books.

I really think it is possible to make a very nice living by writing and not worrying about anything else.

We all want to believe we’re doing something good for our careers, so we abuse social media, buy ads, rigorously defend our good name, cultivate media contacts, make appearances, and celebrate our own very minor celebrity.

Let it all go. Spend your time working on your books. That’s the only thing that really matters, and the only thing you have control over.

From Chuck Wendig’s 25 Writer Resolutions for 2013 (And Beyond):

7. STOP LETTING PASSION FERMENT INTO POISON

Passion can be a paintbrush — or it can be a gun. It can be a warm cup of go-go juice or an icy syringe jacked up with blowfish toxin. Passion is a horse that either carries you racing across the sunlit plains or stomps you bloody into the mud. Creators are passionate people; they have to be. Passion drives us to do what we do. But that passion easily goes septic and next thing you know, instead of pointing it toward our work and our desires, we’re instead letting it fuel some bullshit argument or be the rope that binds us into some crass emotional tangle. Writing the next great story from the deep of your heart is so much more valuable than EGADS SOMEONE IS WRONG ON THE INTERTUBES I WILL EXPEND MY CREATIVE ENERGON CUBES ASSERTING MY SUPERIORITY.

14. FIND SIGNAL IN NOISE

We can either fill our lives with meaning, or bog it down with distraction. The latter is easier, frankly: it’s so much simpler to lose ourselves to the Internet or video games or stupid arguments or Russian elk porn. But a life of writing requires focus. It demands that we tune out the noise and zero in on the signal. Signal will save us. Noise will drown us.

From Paul Ford’s 2005 Followup/Distraction post (I found this via a Twitter link from author Jeff Abbott whose Sam Capra novels are must read suspense!):

It is a wonder of the world, the Web. I have facts at hand by the thousands about everything from the different kinds of government to the names of the stars of television shows I’ve never even seen. I’m smarter, then, with my computer on, but not much deeper. I worry that my knowledge of the world is actually growing shallower, in fact, because for every idea there are a dozen articles and Wikipedia entries to read that allow me to avoid thinking for myself. And it’s not like any of that is going away, nor will I be staying away from it. Just putting it aside for a few hours a day so that I can think without the world humming in my ear, sitting in front of my blue screen with gray text, or stretched in bed with my little portable keyboard, a working setup so bland it’s actually inspiring.

Actually, this final post is worth reading and reading and reading. There’s so much to think about (the kitten analogy especially) here and I love that this was written in the infancy of social media, proving distraction has long been an issue for those of us who need to keep our brains engaged elsewhere!

Ooh, SHINY!

So when I disappear, don’t worry. I’m still here. Slaving away. ;)

One of the crazy things that happened during the last month is that my editor at Montlake left the company to pursue her own writing dreams, and I was assigned to a new editor, who was so lovely to send me the full cover of The Second Chance Cafe. If you buy the book in print, you’ll get this gorgeous wrap-around version! Of course, the front cover will be the same on the Kindle copy. I LOVE this cover so much!

Isn’t it pretty? You can read a short excerpt at this link and find some pre-order options!

It’s New Year’s Day. As is tradition, we eat black-eyed peas and cabbage. The husband is in the kitchen with the peas in the pressure cooker and putting together Smitten Kitchen’s cabbage roll-ups (minus the parsnip because I didn’t have any, plus jalapeno and ancho peppers, feta and parmesan cheese). (On Sunday, I made Deb’s Jacked-Up Banana Bread (minus the bourbon which I did not have) and it was great! I’m noshing on a chunk while I type this!) The smells coming out of the kitchen… Mmm-mmm. There’s a reason I married this man. :) Oh, and now he’s making pecan pie (registration required to view that recipe, sorry)!

The last several months have been insane around here, so there has been no blogging, very little posting to Facebook, and only recently have I been active on Twitter after taking a break. There were SO many family things happening, immediate family, extended family, that I’ve had time for nothing but work. Almost no TV or movie watching (though we did see The Hobbit), and very little reading at all (finished The Quiet Game (LOVED all 640 pages) and am currently loving The Survivor by Gregg Hurwitz).

I’m working on BENEATH THE PATCHWORK MOON, the second Hope Springs book, and I finished UNFORGETTABLE, the third book in the Dalton Gang series. Everyone here is fine, but I’ve been inside too many hospitals lately, visiting folks following surgeries. And I did every bit of my Christmas shopping online this year because I’ve been nursing an injured knee now for weeks and walking sucks. And that sucks because I’d been walking three or four miles a day when I hurt it. And the suckage increases because this is the best time of year for walking because there is no risk of heat stroke!

While waiting for the fireworks to die down last night, I read a sample of a new romance, one by a very popular author readers love. The sample bothered me a lot. If the book was edited, it was done poorly. If it wasn’t, well, I won’t even go there. Yes, we all miss things. I don’t read my finished books for this very reason. But this was no more than ten pages, and these ten pages should’ve seen copious use of a red pen.

Obviously, this author is a great storyteller because readers eat her up, but as a reader and as an author, I want great storytelling done with clean, exacting, polished prose. I strive for that in my own work, though I know I don’t always succeed. This year marks the twentieth anniversary of my first sale, and yet I am still learning how to write with every word I put on the page. Which brings me to the piece I’ve been posting every New Year’s Day now for seven years. I love this piece, what it says about craft, about reading everything (ergo, my midnight sample) with “grinding envy or weary contempt.”

This is John D. MacDonald’s introduction to Stephen King’s NIGHT SHIFT. Enjoy!

I am often given the big smiling handshake at parties (which I avoid attending whenever possible) by someone who then, with an air of gleeful conspiracy, will say, ‘You know, I’ve always wanted to write.’ I used to try to be polite.

These days I reply with the same jubilant excitement: ‘You know, I’ve always wanted to be a brain surgeon.’

They look puzzled. It doesn’t matter. There are a lot of puzzled people wandering around lately.

If you want to write, you write.

The only way to learn to write is by writing. And that would not be a useful approach to brain surgery.

Stephen King always wanted to write and he writes.

So he wrote Carrie and Salem’s Lot and The Shining, and the good short stories you can read in this book and a stupendous number of other stories and books and fragments and poems and essays and other unclassifiable things, most of them too wretched to ever publish.

Because that is the way it is done.

Because there is no other way to do it. Not one other way.

Compulsive diligence is almost enough. But not quite. You have to have a taste for words. Gluttony. You have to want to roll in them. You have to read millions of them written by other people.

You read everything with grinding envy or a weary contempt.

You save the most contempt for the people who conceal ineptitude with long words, Germanic sentence structure, obtrusive symbols, and no sense of story, pace, or character.

Then you have to start knowing yourself so well that you begin to know other people. A piece of us is in every person we can ever meet.

Okay, then. Stupendous diligence, plus word-love, plus empathy, and out of that can come, painfully, some objectivity.

Never total objectivity.

At this frangible moment in time I am typing these words on my blue machine, seven lines down from the top of my page two of this introduction, knowing clearly the flavour and meaning I am hunting for, but not at all certain I am getting it.

Having been around twice as long as Stephen King, I have a little more objectivity about my work than he has about his.

It comes so painfully and so slowly.

You send books out into the world and it is very hard to shuck them out of the spirit. They are tangled children, trying to make their way in spite of the handicaps you have imposed on them. I would give a pretty to get them all back home and take one last good swing at every one of them. Page by page. Digging and cleaning, brushing and furbishing. Tidying up.

Stephen King is a far, far better writer at thirty than I was at thirty, or forty.

I am entitled to hate him a little bit for this.

And I think I know of a dozen demons hiding in the bushes where his path leads, and even if I had a way to warn him, it would be no good. He whips them or they whip him.

It is exactly that simple.

Are we all together so far?

Diligence, word-lust, empathy equal growing objectivity and then what?

Story. Story. Dammit, story!

Story is something happening to someone you have been led to care about. It can happen in any dimension – physical, mental, spiritual – and in combinations of those dimensions.

Without author intrusion.

Author intrusion is: ‘My God, Mama, look how nice I’m writing!’

Another kind of intrusion is a grotesquerie. Here is one of my favourites, culled from a Big Best Seller of yesteryear: ‘His eyes slid down the front of her dress.’

Author intrusion is a phrase so inept the reader suddenly realizes he is reading, and he backs out of the story. He is shocked back out of the story.

Another author intrusion is the mini-lecture embedded in the story. This is one of my most grievous failings.

An image can be neatly done, be unexpected, and not break the spell. In a story in this book called ‘Trucks,’ Stephen King is writing about a tense scene of waiting in a truck shop, describing the people: ‘He was a salesman and he kept his display bag close to him, like a pet dog that had gone to sleep.’

I find that neat.

In another story he demonstrates his good ear, the ring of exactness and truth he can give dialogue. A man and his wife are on a long trip. They are travelling a back road. She says: ‘Yes, Burt. I know we’re in Nebraska, Burt. But where the hell are we?’ He says: ‘You’ve got the road atlas. Look it up. Or can’t you read?’

Nice. It looks so simple. Just like brain surgery. The knife has an edge. You hold it so. And cut.

Now at risk of being an iconoclast I will say that I do not give a diddly-whoop what Stephen King chooses as an area in which to write. The fact that he presently enjoys writing in the field of spooks and spells and slitherings in the cellar is to me the least important and useful fact about the man anyone can relate.

There are a lot of slitherings in here, and there is a maddened pressing machine that haunts me, as it will you, and there are enough persuasively evil children to fill Disney World on any Sunday in February, but the main thing is story.

One is led to care.

Note this. Two of the most difficult areas to write in are humour and the occult. In clumsy hands the humour turns to dirge and the occult turns funny.

But once you know how, you can write in any area.

Stephen King is not going to restrict himself to his present field of intense interest.

One of the most resonant and affecting stories in this book is ‘The Last Rung on the Ladder.’ A gem. Nary a rustle nor breath of other worlds in it.

Final word.

He does not write to please you. He writes to please himself. I write to please myself. When that happens, you will like the work too. These stories pleased Stephen King and they pleased me.

By strange coincidence on the day I write this, Stephen King’s novel The Shining and my novel Condominium are both on the Best Seller List. We are not in competition for your attention with each other. We are in competition, I suppose, with the inept and pretentious and sensational books published by household names who have never really bothered to learn their craft.

In so far as story is concerned, and pleasure is concerned, there are not enough Stephen Kings to go around.

If you have read this whole thing, I hope you have plenty of time. You could have been reading the stories.

UPDATE: The winners were Susan T., winnie, and Nickie. Congratulations!

October 2012

Cassidy Clarke once climbed the world’s highest mountains, but after an unexpected illness ends her career she’s back in her hometown, broke and hoping for a little luck. But the townsfolk aren’t exactly putting out a welcome mat for the woman who once snubbed them in the media, despite her apologies now.

Mitch Anders knows someone has set up camp on the grounds of his plant nursery, and he’s surprised to find his sexy high school crush ducking questions about where she’s staying. Though he’s sworn to stop cleaning up other people’s messes, Mitch offers Cassidy a job and a place to stay—his place. Bedsharing optional, but definitely welcome.

Out of options and too attracted to Mitch to keep things platonic, Cassidy says yes to his offer. She wants to get back on her feet financially and start a new career. She never expects to suffer a different kind of fall, one that has her believing Mitch just might bring her something bigger and better than luck.

A Kindle copy, or a Nook epub copy. Winner’s choice. Post a comment here telling me which version you’d like by 10/25/2012 noon CST and I’ll draw three names to win.