The 2017 NFL draft is just weeks away, and OTAs are kicking off next week, so I decided the time is ripe to run a super sale on my 4 ½ book series, CALLING THE SIGNALS.
I love football. More accurately, I adore hot signal callers, quarterbacks whose stars have shone over three generations of fandom!
Be they fresh out of college or inductees into the Hall of Fame, they’re all my idols, so I decided to write a series about four fictional stars whose careers overlapped my youth, my young adulthood, and my middle age. These highly sensual/mildly erotic romance ideas became Calling the Signals, and a short introductory story sets up a fictional small Texas town that produced all four heroes.
Born in the dog days of Ellora’s Cave Publishing, these books started life as The Gridiron Lovers series there, but they underwent major changes as well as getting new titles and covers. I’m proud of them, and I hope readers will take advantage of the very special prices beginning this very week.
Happy reading!
Ann Jacobs
A passerby could miss it if he blinked at the wrong time, this tiny west Texas town that had only one claim to fame—its amazing record of having produced not one, not two, but three MVP
quarterbacks in the past thirty years. Rumor had it that Bobby Anthony, now a senior at Tulane, would soon become the fourth one.
Some folks said it was something special in the water that bubbled up from a spring outside the town limits, but Bobby’s mom, Melanie, knew better.
Hedgecock was a brawling blue-collar town full of roughnecks and cowboys. Over the years, a dedicated, talented coach had molded a ragtag assortment of boys into teams that won state championships in spite of the school’s small size. Those teams had provided the town with pride—an identity neither drought nor dry holes could take away from its residents
Melanie stared out at the field, the rotting bleachers where so many of her memories had been made, hoping the committee she’d been asked to join would be able to find a way to raise the money to spruce up the fields, and maybe put a spark of life back in a town whose sources of income had all but dried up.
In “Hedgecock, Texas: Home of the Signal Callers,” school secretary Melanie and bank president Cal Tate conceive a moneymaking reunion of the four past, present and future NFL stars—and discover their own second chance at love in the process. Here are snippets from the four novels that tell the stories of each man’s career—and his discovery of lasting love.
THE ROOKIE
Bobby…fresh out of college, multi-million dollar contract in hand, ready to show what he can do on the field—and off
Melanie…football fan, cheerleader, ready to hitch her star to the promising, super-hot Gamblers rookie
After he’d gotten to camp and spent a few minutes thumbing through the biggest playbook he’d ever seen, Bobby decided the chicks would have to wait. He’d have to spend most of his waking hours studying, not checking out the incredibly hot young women who were on one corner of the second football field, trying out for the Gamblers’ cheerleading squad. He noticed one, though. A gorgeous girl with a hot body, creamy skin, big brown eyes and long black hair that looked so soft he wanted to run his fingers through it. And he couldn’t resist making a point of running into her on the training center parking lot.
“Hey there!” he called out, and she turned and shot him a thousand-watt smile.
“Hello to you, too.” She stepped over closer, close enough that the sweet smell of her perfume wafted into his nostrils. “Good luck making the team, rookie.” Her gaze slid slowly up his body, and it was all he could do to resist pulling her close and seeing if he could rest his chin on top of her head.
“Thanks. I’m Bobby Anthony. And you are?”
“Marly Ragusa. Gamblers fan forever.” She paused for a minute, her pretty mouth gaping open. “Omigod, you’re the new quarterback the Gamblers took in the first round.”
THE MVP
Keith…NFL MVP, unbeatable on the field, his private life has known tragedy and disappointment
Tina…hometown girl signed on as nanny to Keith’s motherless baby, knowing he’s way out of her league
Something was bothering Jack’s dad. Tina sensed it, though Keith was going through all the right motions, playing with the baby on the carpeted nursery floor and riding him piggyback before helping feed him an early supper. She hoped it wasn’t something she’d done to upset her moody employer.
Of course it wasn’t. Tina scolded herself for her lack of self-confidence. If Keith was angry with her, she was certain he’d have said so. It must have been something that had happened while he was at practice. And she’d guessed from his silence and his scowl last night that he’d come home unhappy about yesterday’s game. If she hadn’t watched most of it on TV, though, she never would have known he’d thrown two or three interceptions or that the Gamblers had lost, because he hadn’t uttered a word about the game while helping tuck Jack in his bed.
THE CLUTCH PLAYER
Dave…beat-up, playboy quarterback at the twilight of his storied career, who’s hot in the clutch in his final swan song
Diane…Keith’s older sister, victim of an abusive marriage but open to a fling with playboy Dave
Diane knew Dave Delaney, the Savannah Rebels’ quarterback, from way back. Despite being past forty years old, Dave was holding on to a lead in the tight game. Or at least he had been until a minute ago when two Gamblers defenders turned him into the filling for a human sandwich. Without his helmet, Dave looked a lot like she remembered from long ago. Older now, obviously, he still had the wavy black hair and electric blue eyes that proclaimed his Black Irish ancestry. Pain registered on that handsome face as two of his teammates helped him off the field.
Why was he still punishing himself? Diane shuddered as she watched the coach, a doctor and a trainer on the sideline, looking at Dave’s right knee. If she wasn’t mistaken, that was the same knee he’d had surgery on a couple of seasons ago.
THE COACH
Colin…Hall of Fame golden boy, now retired, he can still sling it with the best of them
Susan…small-town bad girl, has it bad for the smokin’ hot coach who’s up for all the games she has in mind
Colin Zanardi leaned back in his desk chair at the Rebels’ Savannah headquarters. He’d obviously been too damn busy lately. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been half hard, wondering if Susan Anderson were as soft and submissive as she sounded on the phone.
During the last few phone calls they’d shared, the sexy widow had clearly been making a play for him. That didn’t surprise him—a good many groupie types still wanted a piece of him even though he’d hung up his cleats thirteen years ago and moved over to the coaching side of football. What intrigued him was the element of raw need he heard in her voice each time they’d spoken—and a hint of the feminine submissiveness that appealed so strongly to his dominant nature.
For the first time since agreeing to take part in this reunion, Colin found himself actually looking forward to his first return to the tiny west Texas town since he’d graduated from high school almost thirty-two years ago.
Website: http://annjacobs.net
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Buy links for Calling the Signals and all of Ann’s available books can be found at her website:
http://annjacobs.net/ (click on individual book titles).
I recently attended the 221BCon in Atlanta. Spread over two and half days (from Friday evening to Sunday late afternoon), fans attended panels on a variety of topics (I spoke on world building, Sherlock in alternate universes, and writing for an anthology), viewed Sherlock Holmes films (continuously running in one room), browsed vendor tables with a variety of Sherlock-inspired items (from full Victorian costumes to autographs of famous Sherlock Holmes actors to items with Victorian-style wallpaper prints), or attended invited celebrities’ talks. This year Curtis Armstrong (Booger from Revenge of the Nerds), Martin Powell (author of both prose and graphic novels), and Lyndsay Faye (author of a collection of short Sherlock Holmes tales) ran panels or Q&A sessions. In all, more than 600 people celebrated their admiration for the great detective.
