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#4 In the Top 100 Indie Authors for May. Click
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"Some of the smartest, sassiest, and sexiest contemporary romances around."
--Judith Flavell, The Romance Reader
New e-book:
"An addictive novel"
-- Romance Reviews Today
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Recent e-book:
"A superb story"
-- Rendezvous Magazine
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Love to hear from you ...
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May, 2012
Dear Readers,
First: thank you for your wonderful response to my release of A CHARMED PLACE in eBook format. It reached a charmed place of its own -- #5 -- on Barnes & Noble's NOOK Book Bestseller List and has remained on the list for the past two months. Some authors might feel ho-hum about that, but I was -- and am -- astonished. And grateful. And ... just happy. Thank you!
My latest release is A MONTH AT THE SHORE. It's been out for two weeks and is #6 on the NOOK bestseller list as I write this. (Still astonished, still happy.) I know that the low introductory price has a lot to do with the success of those releases, but I hope that readers are enjoying the stories themselves. When I began to write, I decided to include what I myself like to read. So each book is a love story, but one that's caught up in a mystery and with a good dose of family drama. I have one overriding goal in mind: to make my characters real and believable. Superheroes need not apply, and neither do vampires, angels, girls with dragon tattoos, or shapeshifters. (Okay, once in a while I might have an opening for a ghost.) But I want you to be able to relate to the characters -- a sister, a mother, a son, a brother. A husband, a boyfriend, an ex. Love them or hate them, I want you to know them. As one reader wrote in her review: "I feel as if they're extended family."
I got the idea for A MONTH AT THE SHORE after dropping in at a small garden center in a town in Massachusetts. The nursery was such a forlorn affair: pots of dried plants thrown haphazardly on a table; shrubs in bone-dry containers; a paint-peeled shop with absolutely no curb appeal. Maybe they were short-handed, maybe someone was ill. Maybe they were exhausted and just didn't care anymore. I wanted to sprinkle magic dust over the whole nursery and make it all better. And so was born this novel.
It's the story of three outcast siblings who band together to try to save Shore Gardens, the family nursery that was allowed to slide into ruin by their tyrannical father. He's gone now, and foreclosure looms while developers wait like vultures. Laura and Snack Shore, who have long since fled the town, have promised their sister Corinne, who stayed, that they'd give her a month to try to restore the place to its former charm. One month! So the last thing that Laura needs are the attentions of privileged Kendall Barclay, president of the local bank -- or his appalling discovery at the nursery that leads to a murder investigation.
A MONTH AT THE SHORE has my trademark blend of romance, mystery, and family drama. Hope you enjoy it!
Warm wishes,
March, 2012
Dear Readers,
Okay--anyone who's ever wanted to live in a rose-covered cottage by the sea, raise your hand.
Yep. Me, too. Of course, if you've read my "bio" on this website, you know that I've lived on the sea, in an old wood boat. And now I live overlooking the sea, in a cottage up on a hill. But for as long as I can remember, I've wanted to live by the sea--close enough to hear the waves lapping on a shore not far from my bedroom window. When a dream is that intense and that long-lived, there's only one thing to do about it: write a book about it. And so was born A CHARMED PLACE, set in a sleepy beachfront town on Cape Cod in Massachusetts.
Maddie Regan and her family share a summer house there that's been passed down for generations. Rosedale cottage is nothing fancy (Hyannis and the Kennedy compound are several towns away) but Maddie grew up with happy memories in the house, and she'd like nothing more than to keep on enjoying them.
However.
She has a teenaged daughter who's straight from the pages of Reviving Ophelia; a brooding and bitter ex-husband who's changed his mind and wants back in to the marriage; and a mother who's still grief-stricken over the unsolved murder of Maddie's father. Maddie's plate, in short, is overflowing with touch-and-go emotions. The last thing she needs is for her college sweetheart to rent the local lighthouse for the summer. The fact that her family blames the man for just about everything except the erosion of the beach in front of their cottage is just one more complication in Maddie's life.
There are long-buried secrets here, and lost passion waiting to flare all over again. If you've ever wanted to live in a rose-covered cottage on the shore ... if you've ever been driven up one wall and down another by an impossible teenager ... if you've ever had to deal with the heartache of a shut-down marriage and the friction of a difficult relationship with a parent ... if you've ever wondered about that man from your past who might have been The One--then this book is for you.
Click here for previous eBook blog entries.
Enjoy!
P.S.
As anyone who's visited this site in the last several years knows, I've
fallen victim to the first and only hobby of my life: collecting
antique cardboard Christmas houses and little tin figures to populate
them. Every year a kind of Christmas Brigadoon appears on my fireplace
mantel; the accompanying stories I write for the villages I arrange are evolving
into a miniature Christmas saga of its own. To enter my holiday site,
just click on the village.
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