Donna Simonetta Author of Riverbend Series SALE!
Give a warm welcome to Donna Simonetta, author of A Sweeter Spot and Love is Lovelier. Their part of the Riverbend Series on sale now for 99 cents. You’re going to want to grab a copy!
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 Donna and the Riverbend Series.
I love reading small-town romance, and I especially love it when it’s a series set in the same locale—think of the Fool’s Gold books by Susan Mallery. When I decided I wanted to try my hand at writing a series set in a fictional small town, I decided to create one in Virginia, on the border with Maryland.
I plopped Rivers Bend down along the route my husband and I drove many times in years gone by, between our home in Maryland and his late mother’s home in Virginia. Right after you cross the Potomac River into Virginia, you find yourself surrounded by beautiful, green, rolling fields, which are dotted with horses and cows.
The series is centered on the Braden family of Rivers Bend. The first book in the series is A Sweeter Spot, which is about Jeff Braden, a widowed, former NFL player, who has settled back in the hometown he loves with his tween daughter, Sam. Next is his sister Heather’s story––Love is Lovelier. When her first love, and the cause of her first heartbreak, moves to Rivers Bend, old feelings between them don’t seem quite ready to be done.
I am currently polishing up book 3 of the series, and getting ready to submit it my publisher. It’s the story of the wild child of the Braden family––youngest son, Jason. He just might be ready to stop his playboy ways, and settle down with one woman. Shocking, I know!
I’ll be sorry to leave Rivers Bend behind, when I’ve finished the trilogy, but I have ideas dancing around in my head for a spin-off with some characters we’ve met in the first three books, although maybe not set in Rivers Bend. And I do have some thoughts about maybe telling the stories of some of the younger generation in town, as they get older and find their loves. Hmm….maybe we haven’t seen the last of Rivers Bend just yet.
Click on the cover to read more or purchase.
Lets take a look at A Sweeter Spot first:
Magda knows a 28-year-old shouldn’t run away from home, but Rivers Bend is the ideal escape. Helping out her best friend will get her away from her uber-wealthy, controlling grandmother and duplicitous ex. She doesn’t expect the quirky little town to feel so much like home. Add in hotter-than-the-sun Jeff and his daughter, and leaving seems as unthinkable as it is inevitable.
Raising Sam alone, Jeff knew he wanted her to grow up in his supportive hometown. The arrival of a feisty new tenant sends Jeff’s world spinning. Magda fills a void in his life that he’d like to make permanent.
Will love triumph over the most powerful woman in the country, and can they figure out how to make this happy-for-now in Rivers Bend into their happy-ever-after?
A peek between the page of A Sweeter Spot:
“Being cheated on is no fun. It happened to me once. Up here,” he tapped his forehead. “You know it’s not your fault. But here,” he tapped his chest over his heart. “You feel like it has to be your fault – like you could’ve done something to prevent it. But you couldn’t have. It’s all on him, Maggie. Not you.”
She picked a dandelion, whose flower had turned into a puffball, and blew on it, scattering the fluff to the wind. “Maybe. Maybe not. But thanks for the support.”
She pushed to her feet and took a couple of steps toward the river. Jeff rose and followed.
How could he be so angry at a man he didn’t even know? How could this Pierce jerk have slept around on a woman like Maggie? And the prick had even made her doubt herself in the process. It was written all over her anguished face.
He stood behind her and gently kneaded her shoulders. He turned her to face him and cupped her face in his big hands.
“This Pierce guy is the biggest fool on earth to go to someone else when he had you at home, Maggie.”
She blinked away tears, and he felt his heart constrict. Before he could think it through and decide it was a really bad idea, Jeff dipped his head and captured Magda’s lips in a gentle kiss.
Buy Links: Amazon The WIld Rose Press Barnes & Noble Amazon UK Kobo
Click on the cover to read more or purchase.
Now tell us about Love is Lovelier:
Heather and Mick have a long history together, and Heather wants to leave it in the past where it belongs. Yet, here Mick is, very much in her present, thanks to her brother Jeff, who hired Mick to be her boss at the Retreat at Rivers Bend.
It wouldn’t be so bad, except Heather and Mick are still attracted to each other like metal to a magnet. Oh, and her brother is considering offering Mick a partnership in the Retreat, which by rights should be hers. And even if they act on their attraction, Heather is a small-town, country girl, and proud of it, whereas Mick can’t get far enough from his West Virginia coal-mining roots.
Will they be able to get a second chance at their first love and find their happy ending together in Rivers Bend?
A peek between the pages of Love is Lovelier:
“Stick close. I’ll get you out of here.”
He used his broad shoulders as a wedge to propel himself though the crowd; Heather scurried to keep up with him so she could take advantage of the gap he created, not wanting to be so close that she could feel the warmth of his body through his elegant suit, but because she needed somehow to beat this crush of people to the Retreat to make sure that everything was in place for the post-christening party she’d planned for Bethanne – only perfection would do for her BFF.
She watched Mick’s back as she stuck close to him; he looked so strong and fit – it was hard to imagine him the way he was ten years ago, when he’d suffered his NFL career-ending injury, but the same business acumen that kept him with the Portland Pintos organization back then was the reason Jeff and Cisco hired him at the Retreat.
He’d be good for business – she’d just have to keep chanting those words in her head like a mantra, or else she’d do one of two things she’d regret – kill Mick, or kiss him, and she’d gone the kissing route with him before. It did not end well. And tempting as the killing option was at the moment, it probably wouldn’t end any better.
Buy links: Amazon Barnes & Noble The Wild Rose Press Amazon UK
About the Author:
Donna Simonetta career has been a winding road. She worked in the business world for years, got her MLS and worked in a school library, and she is now living my dream as an author. Donna love to read and write contemporary and fantasy romance. She lives in Maryland, with her husband, who is her real-life romance hero. They both enjoy traveling to visit their far-flung family and friends, and spending time on the beach with an umbrella drink and a good book.
Author Links:
https://www.facebook.com/donnasimonettaauthor
https://twitter.com/donna_simonetta
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15422407.Donna_Simonetta
https://www.amazon.com/Donna-Simonetta/e/B06X415TWW/
https://www.bookbub.com/authors/donna-simonetta
It was wonderful having you with us today. Please feel free to stop by anytime. Good Luck with your 99 cent sale on the Riverbend Series, including A Sweeter Spot and Love is Lovelier!
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Posted in Authors' Secrets Blog and tagged A Sweeter Spot, Contemporary Romance, Donna Simonetta, Love is Lovelier by Tena Stetler with 7 comments.
Smoking Sale on Truth and Solace by Jana Richards
Give a warm welcome to Jana Richards, author of Truth and Solace, the final book of her My Love at Solace Lake 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 Mary and her smoking hot deal on Truth and Solace.
Five things you need to know about Truth and Solace
- TRUTH AND SOLACE is the third and final book in my Love at Solace Lake Series. Each book in the series is a stand-alone romance, but for the best reading experience, and to uncover the mystery of Solace Lake, the series is best read in order.
- Maggie Lindquist and Luke Carlsson have a history. They were each other’s first loves, but at fourteen Maggie was far too young for a relationship with an eighteen-year-old boy. Her grandparents disapproved of their relationship, and made sure they didn’t have a future together.
- Luke is facing some major changes in his life. He learns some truths about his parents that change everything he believed about them.
- Maggie also learns some life-changing truths. Her new knowledge tests her capacity for forgiveness. If Maggie can’t forgive and understand, she and Luke have no future together.
- TRUTH AND SOLACE has a countdown deal going on right now. June 4/5 the book is on sale for .99 cents. June 6/7 the price rises to the still great price of $1.99. On June 8/9, you can get the book for $2.99 before it goes back to the regular price of $3.99.
Click on the cover to read more or purchase!
Tell us a little about My Love at Solace Lake Series, including Truth and Solace.
Well, the series is all about love is worth the risk….
When their grandfather dies, the Lindquist sisters, Harper, Scarlet and Maggie, inherit the northern Minnesota fishing lodge that had been in their family for three generations. The inheritance is bittersweet. They were raised at the lodge by their grandparents. The natural beauty of the place hasn’t changed, but the building itself is crumbling and desperately in need of repair. The lodge also reminds them of what they lost. Twenty-two years previously, their parents died there in what was ruled a murder/suicide.
As the sisters struggle to breathe new life into the failing lodge, old fears and questions rise to the surface even as new love presents itself. Why did their father murder their mother? What truths did their grandparents keep from them? The sisters must fight to keep the wounds of the past from putting their futures, and their fledgling relationships, in jeopardy.
Truth and Solace brings to bear the truth could destroy them. Or set them Free.
Maggie Lindquist left Solace Lake determined never to return. Circumstances have pulled her back and she’s helping to restore her family’s dilapidated fishing lodge. When she agreed to the plan she didn’t expect to have to work side by side with the man who abandoned her ten years earlier. She didn’t expect to like him, or want him ever again. But can she trust him as she once did?
Luke Carlsson rushes home to tend to his ailing mother. Her lengthy illness means he needs to stay, at least temporarily. And to stay, he needs to work. Solace Lake Lodge offers him a job and an opportunity to work with the woman he’s never stopped loving. But the restoration is unleashing secrets hidden for decades and no one is left unscathed. Especially not Maggie and Luke, whose love needs to be resilient enough to forgive, and strong enough to build a future together.
Truth and Solace Buy Links:
US: http://www.amzn.com/B079WFZXV2
UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B079WFZXV2
CA: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B079WFZXV2
Au: http://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B079WFZXV2
A sneak between the pages of Truth and Solace?
The organist began to play Pachelbel’s Canon in D, signaling the bride’s imminent arrival. All eyes turned to the staircase. Cam’s daughter Tessa led the bridal party. She wore a red lace dress and carried a basket of flowers in one hand.
Following Tessa, Maggie began a slow descent down the stairs, one hand on the railing and the other holding a bouquet of white roses. All the air rushed from Luke’s lungs. Her full length, lace dress in dark red fit her perfectly. The low bodice that skimmed the sweet swell of her breasts nearly undid him. Her dark hair shone in the glow from the fireplace, her smile wide and happy.
When her gaze connected with his, his heart squeezed with unexpected longing. He swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry, his heart hammering. Maggie’s smile faltered. She quickly turned her attention to the men standing in front of the fireplace. She walked toward them, taking her place on the bride’s side, opposite Drew, her smile firmly in place once more. Only the slight trembling of the ribbons cascading from her bouquet hinted at any nervousness.
He was aware that Harper and Scarlet had descended the stairs and now stood with the others in front of the fireplace. He was sure they were both lovely, but he couldn’t take his eyes off Maggie. In her chef’s whites, her face pink with the heat of the stove and her hair dampened with perspiration, she was beautiful. Always had been.
But today, she was stunning. He’d never seen her more exquisite.
The ceremony went by in a blur. Scarlet and Cam exchanged vows and wedding rings, and sealed their union with a lingering kiss. They looked at each other as if they were the only two people in the room. The bond between them, the sense they knew without question they belonged together, and would always be together was profound. No matter what life threw at them, they would endure, as long as they stood side by side.
I want that, Luke realized with a start. He wanted to be with a woman who truly understood him, loved him. Someone to share his dreams, his hopes, his fears. His gaze drifted to Maggie once again. They’d had that once, that special bond, but they’d been far too young to appreciate it. Or at least he had.
When such a bond was broken, could it ever be mended? If Maggie knew the truth…
He pushed the guilt away. Tonight, he wanted to forget.
About the Author:
When Jana Richards read her first romance novel, she immediately knew two things: she had to commit the stories running through her head to paper, and they had to end with a happily ever after. She also knew she’d found what she was meant to do. Since then she’s never met a romance genre she didn’t like. She writes contemporary romance, romantic suspense, and historical romance set in World War Two, in lengths ranging from short story to full length novel. Just for fun, she throws in generous helpings of humor, and the occasional dash of the paranormal. Her paranormal romantic suspense “Seeing Things” was a 2008 EPPIE finalist.
In her life away from writing, Jana is an accountant/admin assistant, a mother to two grown daughters, and a wife to her husband Warren. She enjoys golf, yoga, movies, concerts, travel and reading, not necessarily in that order. She and her husband live in Winnipeg, Canada with their Pug/Terrier cross Lou and several unnamed goldfish. She loves to hear from readers and can be reached through her website at www.janarichards.com.
Want to connect with Jana, check out her social media sites.
Blog: http://janarichards.blogspot.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/JanaRichardsAuthor
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/JanaRichards_
Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/author/janarichards
Amazon UK Author Page: http://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B002DEVWWG
Newsletter Signup: http://janarichards.com/contact.html#newsletter
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2892274Jana_Richards
Google+ Profile: https://plus.google.com/100820406211390323245
Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/jana-richards
It was wonderful having you with us today. Please feel free to stop by anytime. Good Luck with Truth and Solace!
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Posted in Authors' Secrets Blog and tagged bit of paranormal, Contemporary Romance, Jana Richards, Mystery, Small town romance, Truth and Solace by Tena Stetler with 7 comments.
J.L. Sheppard author of Riding Blind
RIDING BLIND
by J.L. Sheppard
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Posted in Authors' Secrets Blog and tagged Contemporary Romance, J.L. Sheppard, MC/Biker Romance, Riding Blind by Tena Stetler with 5 comments.
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.
