Tena StetlerAuthor of Paranormal Romance/Suspense & Cozy Mysteries With Magic Spark!

Apr 3rd Interview Peggy Jaeger, Author of Can’t Stand the Heat!

Welcome Peggy Jaeger, author of Can’t Stand the Heat, third in the  Will Cook For Love Series! Pull up a chair, grab a drink of your choice from the cooler, a Chocolate Chip or Peanut Butter cookie from the plate, and let’s find out a little about Peggy and her newest release Can’t Stand the Heat.  I truly enjoyed reading this book. Laugh out loud moments and shaking head moments at the teen girl character made the book for me. 

Writing what you know can be easy, difficult, soul-sucking, and mind-bending. Writing about a personal experience you’ve had and incorporating it into your fiction is all those things and one more: intrusive.

Let me explain.

In my newest Will Cook For Love series book, CAN’T STAND THE HEAT, I have a secondary character, a teenaged girl named Melora. Melora is a privileged child of divorced parents, a famous director, my hero Dominick Stamp, and her actress mother Flannery Adair. Melora’s been raised in the lap of Beverly Hills luxury, but with her mother’s past and sometimes erratic behavior, she’s had to adopt a more adult role than she’s equipped for age-wise. When Flannery is killed in a car crash and Dominick is severely injured, the young girl’s protected, spoiled life, changes. As a way of dealing with the emotional turmoil she’s thrown into, she develops a devastating eating disorder, specifically, anorexia with bouts of bulimia. In learning how to help his daughter, Dominick seeks out professional therapy for both of them and for most of the book we see his dedication in helping her heal emotionally and get healthy physically.

Writing a character with an eating disorder is an idea I’ve tossed back and forth for years but always shied away from because it hit so extremely close to home. But in creating Melora, I gave a voice and a face to someone battling the disease that I suffered from for over 30 years.

My bulimia started with an offhand remark by my father during one of my sporadic weekend visitations with to him. His mother had been a very famous fur model when she was alive and he said, offhandedly, to me, “If you lose a bunch of weight you could model and make some money for college. Not be such a financial burden on me.”

At twelve years old, hearing those words destroyed the very little self confidence I had and started me on a downward spiral where my weight went up and down sometimes 50 pounds at a time until I was in my forties. In a weekend I could gain eight pounds from binge eating, then lose ten with laxatives and vomiting. This cycle persisted for decades, exacerbated whenever any kind of emotional distress inched into my life.

With Melora, I was able to finally free the demons plaguing me by having her voice her concerns, her fears, even her anger at the circumstances she’s been forced to face at such a young age. With her words and actions, I was able to shine a light on a disease that waaaaaaay too many children/teenagers/young adults suffer from.

In all honesty, I’m still plagued with issues with food at the age of 57, and writing a character with an eating disorder based on my own experience has at equal times been freeing and mortifying. But as a writer, I need to be able to convey truth in the character’s motivations, movements, and thought processes so the reader believes what she’s reading. Literally, I need to walk in her shoes, talk in her voice.

Intruding into my own personal life and battles is, pardon the pun, fodder ( or food)  for creativity.

Thank you Peggy. I’m sure a lot of us can relate to the issues you brought up in this book.  In Peggy Jaeger’s delectable series, delicious food is just an appetizer for life’s main course: the kind of love that feeds your soul. At little about Can’t Stand the Heat.

Review:  Can’t Stand the Heat!

This is the third book in the Will Cook for Love series.  I’ve read Cooking with Kandy (first book) A Shot at Love (second book) and figured I would enjoy the third book, Can’t Stand the Heat as well. I was right.

What’s it about?

In order to get a chance at her own show, executive producer, Stacy Peters agrees to spend two months on a ranch in Montana wrangling a notoriously difficult director, Dominic Stamp. Yet things are not always as they appear. Underneath it all, he is a loving father to a teenage daughter with an eating disorder, and suffers from an injury received during an accident that killed his ex.

Stacy is a professional with a talent to calm and keep everything running smoothly, even when her words are twisted and motive questioned.  Will Stacy’s personal and professional live survive? Will Dominic and his daughter see through the ruse created by the hateful diva? You’ll have to read the book to find out. I highly recommend Can’t Stand the Heat.

My Take on the Book.

I was invested in the characters and the story from the first page. So much so, that quite often I wanted to shake Dominic for being such a tyrant, but loved how Stacy stood up to him and befriended his daughter. I wanted to strangle the manipulative  #%*# diva that was forever causing problems.  I laughed out loud at some of the pickles Stacy, Dominic (Nikko) and his daughter got into. See what I did there, pickles – food—cooking book. You know you want to smile. LOL

BTW – Don’t miss the great recipes in the back of the book!

 

 

 With three successful TV series under her belt, including her cousin Kandy’s, executive producer Stacy Peters is ready to helm her own show. But to make that happen, she has to do her network boss one favor first—spend two months on a ranch in Montana wrangling the notoriously difficult director of Beef Battles. Apparently, he eats producers for breakfast. Yet all Stacy can think when she meets the lean, rugged man is how hungry he makes her . . .

Dominic Stamp—Nikko to his very few friends—has had enough interference from TV newbies. And when Stacy climbs out of the car in Montana, he’s not convinced she’s even old enough to drive, much less produce his show. But he can’t deny that the long-legged blonde with the stubborn will and the dazzling smile whets his appetite. And as Stacy proves her talent with the crew and the budget alike, Nikko vows to prove to her that love is on the menu for both of them…

Buy links:

Amazon , Apple,  Google, Kobo, and Barnes and Nobel.

A Sneak Peek Between The Pages of  Can’t Stand the Heat!

“I wish you’d do that more often,” he said, his hand circling her upper arm as he turned her, slowly, back to face him.

“What? Leave?”

He stared at her a beat, the line between his brows deepening. “Smile.”

Flabbergasted, she stood, rooted.

“More specifically,” he added, “smile at me. You do at everyone else. From Dixon, to his son; the crew. Even Melora. Everyone, but me.”

“I—”

His grip tightened a little as he pulled her in closer, their torsos almost touching.

“Why? Why can you show everyone else that little piece of yourself, but not me?”

“I…I don’t know how to answer that,” she said. “I know I was thrust on you without you wanting me here. I know you don’t like me, I—“

“That’s not true. I didn’t want to like you,” he admitted. “There’s a difference. You’re a producer. A bottom line watcher.  An annoying necessity. Liking you goes against the grain.”

At that she did smile, because she knew it was true.

“See now,” he said, as he slid his other hand up her arm to settle on the back of her neck, fingers curling up into her hair to hold on. “When you do that? When you smile at me like that, so openly, so…freely? I can’t think about anything else.”

A gentle tug and he had her head pillowed in his spread palms as he bent his own down to hers.

Through her glasses she watched the fine whiskey in his eyes blend with the ink of his pupils as they dilated.

“I haven’t been able to think clearly about anything for the past few days.” His mouth was a whisper from hers. His gaze skimmed from her eyes to her mouth and back again in one slow string of heat. “Except for this.”

She thought she’d be prepared for the feel of his lips on hers again. After all, she’d done little else but reminisce about their texture and taste for days. But she was wrong.

So wrong.

Nothing could have ever prepared her for the way the slight pressure he placed on the back of her neck as he brought her closer sent a shiver of such carnal delight down her spine she almost hummed. Or the way his breath, warm and full, felt as it washed over her cheeks. And she certainly wasn’t prepared for the onslaught of emotions he released within her when he quite expertly parted her lips and deepened the kiss, pulling at her very soul.

No, nothing in her life had equipped her with how to deal with Nikko Stamp’s kiss.

So she simply let go of all thought, fear, and concern, and surrendered to it.

About the Author:

Peggy Jaeger is a contemporary romance writer who writes about strong women, the families who support them, and the men who can’t live without them.

Family and food play huge roles in Peggy’s stories because she believes there is nothing that holds a family structure together like sharing a meal…or two…or ten. Dotted with humor and characters that are as real as they are loving, Peggy brings all topics of daily life into her stories: life, death, sibling rivalry, illness and the desire for everyone to find their own happily ever after. Growing up the only child of divorced parents she longed for sisters, brothers and a family that vowed to stick together no matter what came their way. Through her books, she has created the families she wanted as that lonely child.

Tying into her love of families, her children’s book, THE KINDNESS TALES, was illustrated by her artist mother-in-law.

Peggy holds a master’s degree in Nursing Administration and first found publication with several articles she authored on Alzheimer’s Disease during her time running an Alzheimer’s in-patient care unit during the 1990s.

In 2013, she placed first in two categories in the Dixie Kane Memorial Contest: Single Title Contemporary Romance and Short/Long Contemporary Romance.

In 2017 she came in 3rd in the New England Reader’s Choice contest for A KISS UNDER THE CHRISTMAS LIGHTS and was a finalist in the 2017 STILETTO contest for the same title.

A lifelong and avid romance reader and writer, she is a member of RWA and her local New Hampshire RWA Chapter.

Website/Blog: http://peggyjaeger.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/peggy_jaeger

Amazon Author page: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00T8E5LN0

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Peggy-Jaeger-Author/825914814095072?ref=bookmarks

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/peggyjaeger/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/13478796.Peggy_Jaeger

Instagram: https://instagram.com/mmj122687/

BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/peggy-jaeger

It was wonderful having you with us today.  Please feel free to stop by anytime. Good Luck with Can’t Stand the Heat!

 

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Posted in Authors' Secrets Blog and tagged anorexia, bulimia, Contemporary Romance, Cooking, Eating Disorders by Tena Stetler with 5 comments.