Release Week!
Just a quick note to say that many things are happening during the week ahead!
—CAN’T STOP LOVING YOU releases Tuesday, December 6th. It’s an emotional second-chance love story about love, loss, friendship, family, and one woman’s journey to confront her past so she can move on to her future. I hope you’ll check it out!
–I’l be around the blogosphere talking about my book, the holidays,writing, and other fun things. If you’re interested in reading the interviews and blog posts, check my Facebook author page for the schedule.
–Thanks for all your support! I truly appreciate it!
Miranda
Hubby in the Kitchen
“What dessert shall I make for tonight?” I innocently said to my husband before our friends came over a few weeks ago.
As I pretended to contemplate the options…cake, cookie bar, blah blah blah,…he remained engrossed in reading. So then I pulled out the stops. “Maybe I’ll make an apple pie.”
He instantly looked up and got that gleam in his eye that only those two words can conjure.
My husband loves making apple pie. Baking pie to him is what running a marathon is to other people–a challenge, a competition to outdo his previous work, a science experiment, and a race in efficiency. It also reminds him of his dad, a fabulous baker…who like his son, adored kitchen gadgets.
The spaceship has landed!
“I can make the pie,” hubby said.
Yes! I did a secret fist pump and checked that task off my list.
Ten minutes later, the kitchen was abuzz. “Can I help peel the apples?” I asked.
“I think you should just stay out of the way,” he said, not unkindly.
No problemo, I said, backing away. But not before I saw the fancy gadgets he’d assembled.
One was a gleaming little machine that peeled apples–actually, it did nine of them in five minutes. And left the peels in one long string. I could’ve made apple noodles out of them.
My grandma’s tried and true masher.
The other looked like a bright orange alien space ship had landed on our counter. Something called a Dynacube, that chopped all the apples into perfect little square pieces, again, in the blink of an eye.
For my hubby, baking is a chemistry experiment and it’s all about creating the best product in the least amount of time…which in my opinion, sometimes also leaves the most amount of dishes, but hey, as long as he washes the gadgets, I’m okay with helping out.
I am an anti-gadget, take-your-time kind of cook. I’m the person who shuns the salad spinner because it makes three extra dishes to wash and it takes too much time to pick all the leftover lettuce pieces out of the holes.
Mr. Liasson and his biceps…oops, I mean pie.
I’m the one who loves my grandmother’s eighty-year-old potato masher, the most sturdy and solid masher I’ve ever seen, which I still use to this day. No cords, no assembly needed.
Gadgets or no, the pie was spectacular. And the entertainment along the way was priceless. And hey, there’s nothing sexier than having a guy with big biceps make pie for you!
Avon KissCon
Katharine Ashe speaking to the writers of NEORWA (Northeast Ohio Romance Writers of America).
This week I had the great adventure of attending the fabulous event Avon KissCon in Cleveland, where eight amazing Avon authors spoke to the public in a panel and also took part in a smaller reception that many of my writer friends and I got to attend.
Avon publicist Pamela Jaffee with authors Katharine Ashe, Toni Blake, Linda Howard, Linda Jones, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Jennifer Ryan, Jill Shelves, and Shelley Shepard Gray.
Historical romance author Katharine Ashe gave a talk beforehand to our local RWA chapter (NEORWA), where she shared her writing goals, helped us to think about why we write romance and what we wish to achieve from writing, and reminded us that you can’t be happy if you’re trying to achieve other people’s goals. In a very competitive industry, that rang very true! It was an awesome talk!
SEP with my friend and author Cate Grimm
Katharine Ashe, who graciously tolerated my “help,” lol.
The best part of the night for me, besides chatting with SEP and getting some amazing advice from Jill Shalvis, (whom I was probably staring at dumbstruck for the entire time) was being an “author assistant.” My job was to stand behind Katharine Ashe while she signed books and “help” her–by giving her her books, by moving people along who might not want to leave, taking fan pics, etc. Lol, she truly didn’t need my help but it was so awesome to ‘bodyguard’ and essentially be a fly on the wall while she chatted with fans and signed books.
My writer friends and I were in writer heaven. And very proud to be part of this wonderful, generous community.
We went for burgers
My 19 yr. old is a fan of a local drive-up place where they serve burgers right to your car via a tray they stick in your window. Every time my son comes home from college, he heads there with his friends (usually late at night) and returns telling me in stomach-rumbling detail about the billion-calorie meal he just consumed which was often topped off by a milkshake. (And the car he used usually smells like ketchup for a couple of days afterward.)
Recently, after a rough evening of volunteer work (lol), my friends and I found ourselves starving. So on impulse, we pulled into this place. We, who rarely eat burgers and even more rarely fries! (When did we stop eating french fries?!) So there we were, four middle-aged moms sitting in a car eating burgers and fries and talking and laughing like we were a carload of teenagers.
The funny thing was, we felt like we were doing something edgy. Out of character. And it felt so good!
We left asking ourselves, why don’t we do this more often? Yes, why don’t we? Work-life balance is always an issue. Everyone is always busy. It was just funny how stopping the merry-go-round enough to do something like eat a cheeseburger with your girlfriends could be so much damn fun.
Trick or Treat Giveaway and November Fun
I wanted to tell you about a fun Trick-or-Treat giveaway going on on my Facebook author page this weekend. I got early copies of my December book this week (yay!) and I’m giving one away along with a mug and some other swaggy things. Enter the giveaway here. (Giveaway goes until Monday, October 31st, at noon.)
Also coming up, I’m taking part in a fun November celebration over at The Romance Reviews. There are giveaways and prizes all month. I got to write my own multiple choice question (it’s easy, don’t worry). All that is going on here. 
Lastly, CAN’T STOP LOVING YOU is up for preorder for $3.99. Don’t miss this pricing, I’m not sure it won’t go up on release day. You can read more about it here, and the blurb is below. Happy Halloween everybody 🎃!
When it comes to her heart, Arabella D’Angelo has moved on—even though she still lives in Mirror Lake, Connecticut, a little tourist town with a long memory for mistakes. Ever the dutiful daughter of a cantankerous widower who holds grudges, Bella has spent the past twelve years raising her younger brother and making a name for herself as a successful psychologist. Now, when she isn’t counseling a lonely-hearts club for senior women, she’s humoring her matchmaking girlfriends. Bella resists the romancing of their blind dates, yet her friends hope she’ll fall for a local and scrap plans for a fresh start in Chicago.
Then, just before Bella’s thirtieth birthday, her first love, Roman Spikonos, returns to Mirror Lake. When he moves next door to her family’s garden-center business to run his grandparents’ orchard, it stirs up gossip—and a tempest of passions—just in time for pumpkin harvest. As Roman and Bella once again get caught up in a swirl of desire and heartache, not to mention her overprotective father’s fury, Mirror Lake will soon find out whether the Italian hometown beauty and her unforgettable Greek god can stand a second chance.