There are so many ways to build moments that become memories. It can be something fleeting like just a brief interaction or something that occurs over time. Those moments become memories that I built. Those fond or maybe not so fond things I remember.  This is what happened the end of last year. I had great moments that became memories I will think of often.

I went on vacation. The longest one I’ve taken in years. The vacation was also different because it included two trips during the time frame. I had an enjoyable time on both.

The first part of my vacation, I traveled with my family. Over the years, I’ve become very close to a friend, who along with her siblings, have become family to me. We took a seven-day cruise to Hawaii. It was wonderful. The sights of Hawaii are something I will never forget. The food was great, especially the fruit. But it’s the camaraderie and fun I had with my family-by-choice that made this trip what it was. It wouldn’t have been as wonderful without them there with me. So I added more memories I will cherish for the rest of my life.

The second part of my trip I went home. No matter where I live now I will always call where I was originally born—home. I went to spend the holidays with my family by blood. Whenever I fly into St. Thomas (where I was born and raised), I get a little teary-eyed. As I mentioned, it was coming home. As I landed, I was irritated from the bad plane ride, but still eager and excited to see my family. This trip was special because it was the first time in a long time I was home for Christmas.  I yelled that, too. 🙂 I love being home for the holidays. There’s nothing like Christmas at home. I had such an awesome time, and again made some memories that will last me the rest of my life.

I’ve talked many times about moments and memories and appreciating them. That trip was chock full of moments, which are now memories, that I took time to enjoy. There are many moments you have in life that will add to your memories.  Live and enjoy each and everyone.

* * * * *

Taige Crenshaw has been enthralled with the written word from time she picked up her first book.  It wasn’t long before she started to make up her own tales of romance. With  interracial and multicultural novels set in today, in alternate dimensions, or in the future she writes with adventure, fun sassy heroine’s, and sexy hero’s. Always hard at work creating new and exciting places Taige can be found curled up with a hot novel with exciting characters when she is not creating her own. Join her in the fun, frolic, interesting people and far reaches of the world in her novels.

You can find out more about Taige at her website: http://www.taigecrenshaw.com or blog: http://www.taigecrenshaw.com/blog. Also find her on facebook at her page

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Taige-Crenshaw/110652119026620 and facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/CrenshawCafe/. Or twitter: @ https://twitter.com/TaigeCrenshaw.

Taken By You – When friends learn that sometimes desire doesn’t care about friendships or partnerships and passion can’t be controlled, who will be the first to succumb to being taken?

All Romance Ebook: Buy Taken by You https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-takenbyyou-1949518-149.html

Amazon: Buy Taken by You – http://amzn.to/1Q1qzeN

You may have heard a version of the old saying, “You can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family.” Depending how we look at it, we can find more than one meaning behind the saying.

More than a dozen years ago, my husband and I moved twenty-five hundred miles away from home to a place where we knew absolutely no one. This was a first for me, because even after we were married and moved from our hometown, we lived within a forty-five minute drive of both our families.

After we relocated across the country, I was grateful for the chance to make new friends and really don’t know what I would have done without them in my life. Over time, some of these friends have become just as close as family to us.

That’s the good part about choosing friends that become like family: family can be where you find it—which is the theme of many of my stories.

In one of my books, A Rancher’s Pride, the hero discovers he’s the daddy of a deaf five-year-old girl he has never known about. With the help of the heroine, he learns to communicate with and love his little girl. In another book, Rancher at Risk, the hero has lost his wife and young child in an accident and is now in danger of losing his job and his self-respect. During his story he has to accept a possibility he has always rejected—that he’s capable of finding a new love and creating another family.

On the other hand, there can be another, less happy angle to the saying above…the part about not being able to choose your family. Some of my books address that, too. They would have to, wouldn’t they? Because if family’s where you find it, that includes the family you were born into. As Dorothy says in The Wizard of Oz, “There’s no place like home.”

This is true for the three granddaughters in my current series, The Hitching Post Hotel. It’s also true…though a little frustrating…for the heroine of Family Matters, Kerry MacBride, who comes from a large and somewhat eccentric Irish family. She often wishes she could give up her family—at least temporarily. Here’s a little clue as to why she feels that way:

Kerry knew better than to risk a run-in with a police officer. But Uncle Bren? And Gran? Much as she loved them both, it wouldn’t surprise her to find either of them in trouble.

She burst through the doorway into the game room, skidded to a halt on the polished tile floor, and confronted chaos.

The room overflowed with people, all yelling at once. The loudest roar came from a dark-haired man tall enough to dwarf Uncle Bren’s near-six-foot frame. The man, slim but muscular in a pearl-gray suit, looked ready to split the jacket’s seams with his wide-armed gestures.

Thank goodness, Gran stood safely out of his reach. But Uncle Bren, hemmed in by the crowd, faced the brunt of the stranger’s anger.

Even without her years of artistic training, Kerry would have seen something wrong with this picture.

“Excuse me,” she said, using her project-to-the-back-of-the-classroom tone. “What do you think you’re doing?”  The question drowned out every voice in the room. The shouting subsided and every head turned her way.

As she moved forward, people parted, allowing her to pass.

The man now faced Kerry, his eyes dark with anger. She caught her breath at the fury in his expression but didn’t break stride until she’d reached him.

Looking up–way up–she met his gaze. “What’s going on here?”

After a long, tense silence, he answered, his tone level. “We’re holding a meeting.”

She widened her eyes. “It sounded to me more like having an argument.”

Behind him, Uncle Bren stood unmoving but nodded in confirmation. Trust him to let her pick up the problem and run with it.

*~*~*

Family is where you find it. That could mean bonding with your brother, a distant cousin, your BFF, or a person who’s nearly a stranger to you at this moment.

I’m giving away an autographed print copy of Family Matters to one reader. (US mailing addresses only, please). To get your name in the hat, tell us about a friend you consider as close as family. If that doesn’t apply to you, tell us a quality you look for in a friend.

Leave your comment by Friday, and a winner’s name will be posted in the comments over the weekend.

About the Author

Barbara White Daille lives with her husband in the sunny Southwest. Though they love the warm winters and the lizards in their front yard, they haven’t gotten used to the scorpions in the bathroom.

The latest book in Barbara’s The Hitching Post Hotel series is The Lawman’s Christmas Proposal. The next book, Cowboy in Charge, debuts in July 2016, with other books to follow. Her first book, The Sheriff’s Son, has just been reissued in both larger print and a new e-book version, available exclusively from Harlequin. The original version is also still available at most major e-tailers, including Amazon.

Find Barbara online:
Website  http://www.barbarawhitedaille.com
Newsletter  http://www.barbarawhitedaille.com/newsletter
Twitter  https://twitter.com/BarbaraWDaille
Facebook  http://www.facebook.com/barbarawhitedaille

Find Family Matters online:
http://amzn.com/B0041KLD7E

Thanks for having me as a guest, Delilah.

I’d like to introduce my upcoming release, currently on pre-order, Book 5 in the Beachcomber Investigations romantic detective series, BEACHCOMBER TROUBLE.

The series follows volatile partners Dane Blaise and Shana George as they take on cases that always seem to turn into missions. They also take on each other, battling their irrepressible attraction as they try to maintain their puzzling relationship.

Neither Dane nor Shana are sure why they stay together, but they can’t seem to get along, they can’t seem to squelch their desire and they can’t ever seem to tear them selves away from their commitment to have each other’s back.

Beachcomber Trouble

Out of the blue, ex-special ops legend Dane Blaise receives a CIA coded message for Trouble. It’s a call to help an old associate of his—Oscar. Dane had no idea his partner, ex-Scotland Yard detective, Shana George knew Oscar too. Even though Dane suspects Oscar’s CIA handler, Floyd Parker, is not to be trusted, Dane answers the call.

Dane didn’t know that Shana answered the call too–and that the trap was set and the trouble was about to go from bad to the worst possible trouble of all.

Get your copy here!

About USA Today Bestselling Author Stephanie Queen

A romantic at heart and a writer by nature, Stephanie Queen has the enthusiastic soul of a cheerleader. So of course she loves creating stories where the good guys always win. Although she’s lost count of all the jobs she had before she settled on being a Novelist, her favorite was selling cookies as a Keebler Elf. She is a graduate of UConn (go Huskies!) and Harvard U and lives in New Hampshire with her family, her cat, Kitty, and her (real or imagined?) chauffeur, Myren.

Links:
StephanieQueen.com
Sign up for the SQ Newsletter
Stephanie Queen on Facebook
@StephanieQueen on Twitter
Stephanie Queen on Pinterest

It’s here! Navy SEAL Survival is here! I hope you all run out and get your copy now. This is what you’ll find in the book:

• Hot Navy SEAL
• Strong heroine/former secret agent/bait for a human trafficking ring
• Lush Cancun setting
• Romance
• Suspense
• Escape!
• Great start to a new series

Navy SEAL Survival

SEAL OF MY OWN Series Book #1
by Elle James
Available now!

Amazon | Amazon UK | Kobo | Nook | iBooks | GooglePlay

Sign up for my newsletter for your chance to win these two great prizes! I’m drawing for winners March 3rd. Hurry!

Elle James’s Newsletter

After feeling the heat in Honduras cleaning up a terrorist training camp, Duff Callaway is ready for some serious chilling in Cancun. Fun in the sun becomes a perilous rescue mission when the Navy SEAL saves his beautiful diving partner from an underwater attack. Except Natalie Layne wasn’t chosen at random.

Setting herself up as bait is the only way Natalie can find her abducted sister. But all her survival training can’t prepare the former SOS agent for the irresistible stranger she has to trust with her life. Giving up isn’t an option. Neither is giving into the powerful desire smoldering between them…

 About the Author

New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author ELLE JAMES also writing as MYLA JACKSON is an award-winning author of stories including cowboys, intrigues and paranormal adventures that keep her readers on the edges of their seats. With over eighty stories in a variety of sub-genres and lengths she has published with Harlequin, Samhain, Ellora’s Cave, Kensington and Avon. When she’s not at her computer, she’s traveling, snow-skiing, boating, or riding her ATV, dreaming up new stories.

Elle’s Links: Website | Blog | Facebook | Twitter | GoodReads | Newsletter | Amazon Author Page

For me, the most traumatic scene in Star Wars (the original trilogy) was when Darth Vader took off his helmet and he wasn’t the hot, hunky sex god his voice promised he’d be. I loved Darth Vader’s (James Earl Jones’) voice. I fell in love with it. I dreamed about it. It was deep and low and oh so very dominant.

Forget Luke and his issues. I wanted Darth to be MY daddy. (naughty grin)

In Crash And Burn, the most recent standalone story in my cyborg romance series, Safyre, the human heroine, falls in love with Crash’s, the cyborg hero’s, voice (though she’d never admit to that). They talk for months before they meet face-to-face. She doesn’t know what he looks like but she knows how he thinks and how he sounds.

And, woo wee, does he sound sexy!

When I first met my dear wonderful (now) hubby, we lived in different cities. We met in person and then mostly talked on the phone for the next four months. I fell in love with him at first night but man, oh, man, hours of listening to his sexy voice sealed the deal.

For some women, it’s an accent that does it for them. Scottish accents. (bites fist) Slow Southern twangs. That Irish accent I always associate with bad boys.

For some women, it’s how deep the man’s voice is, that low rumble that rolls along our spines and settles inside us, hot chocolate for the eardrums.

According to Smithsonian Magazine ( http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/why-women-like-deep-voices-and-men-prefer-high-ones-41492244/ ), we subconsciously use voice to determine how large a possible mate is. Women are more attracted to deep voices because deep voices signal that men are physically large. We also like ‘breathiness’, which indicates lower aggression and anger toward us.

My brothers-in-law tell me they always know when my hubby is talking to me, simply by listening to his voice. The caring wrapped around his words is obvious.

Have you ever fallen in love or lust with a person’s voice? What accents do you find sexy? What actors do you think have the sexiest voices?

***

Crash And Burn

Crash was manufactured to be one of the best warriors in the universe. The cyborg has spent many human lifespans fighting the enemy. But, unlike his battle-loving brethren, he doesn’t enjoy killing. When he escapes the Humanoid Alliance, he vows to never end another life.

Then he meets Safyre, an infuriating human female, and he considers breaking his vow.

Safyre will do anything to save her friend, the being she loves like a sister. She’ll ravish a huge hunky cyborg, kiss his best friend, and invoke scorching hot desires the male never realized he could feel. Dark soulful eyes, a quick wit, and a tempestuous passion won’t divert her from her mission.

Love, and a planet-destroying weapon, however, might stop her permanently.

Buy Now: On Amazon US | On Amazon UK | On ARe | On B&N | On Kobo

Excerpt

She paused outside the medical bay and swiped a cleaning cloth under her dripping nose. The fabric sucked up the blood, rearranging the molecules into air, removing all evidence that the device was affecting her.

Tifara would have a solar storm-sized meltdown if she realized the operation had aftereffects. She’d force Safyre to remove the device, and that couldn’t happen. It was Safyre’s only means of contacting Crash.

He wasn’t one of the warriors. Half human, half machine, cyborgs were designed to follow orders. Crash didn’t blindly obey any being.

He was a human conduit, a go-between. His communications device was more modern, having once belonged to an E model cyborg, and he claimed he could access transmission lines she couldn’t reach.

Female, the mysterious male transmitted through the cyborg communications device.

Did you speak with the cyborgs on board the freighter? That intergalactic freighter was her ride to Tau Ceti. It was transporting cyborgs to the planet and had the landing clearance she required.

Yes. The male’s deep voice coiled around her heart and tightened her nipples. A female could come simply from listening to him. If her head wasn’t splitting in two from pain.

Safyre winced. Can you control them? She’d crafted a plan. He’d control the cyborgs, ordering them to subdue the crew. She’d sneak onto the freighter before he arrived and take command of the vessel. That would give her control over Crash.

They’ll follow my direction. The certainty in his transmission reassured her.

Safyre was a pilot, not a warrior. She couldn’t defeat one cyborg on her own. The freighter carried one thousand of the manufactured warriors.

This is a reckless plan, female, Crash told her yet again. Discard it before you cause lasting damage to yourself.

The plan is set. She wasn’t changing it. Worry about yourself, not me. For a male interested in obtaining a cyborg army, he was overly concerned with her well-being. That was a strange experience for Safyre, a war orphan. She didn’t know how to deal with it.

And if I back out of the plan—

I’ll implement plan B. There was no plan B, not yet. She’d been contemplating other options, fearing no being would respond to her communications, when he answered. None of the alternatives were feasible.

You will not implement plan B, Crash barked and her spine straightened. I’ll meet with you on board the freighter in one planet rotation.

The line went silent. He must have severed their connection. Crash had the ability to open and close their transmission line, controlling communications. She hadn’t yet mastered that skill.

Crash would communicate with her again. They’d been conversing several times every planet rotation. She couldn’t sidestep Tifara’s questions and avoid his subtle probing at the same time.

She wiped the cleaning cloth under her nose, stuffed the fabric into the front pocket of her navy-blue flight suit and hurried into the medical bay.

About Cynthia Sax

USA Today bestselling author Cynthia Sax writes contemporary, SciFi and paranormal erotic romances. Her stories have been featured in Star Magazine, Real Time With Bill Maher, and numerous best of erotic romance top ten lists.

Sign up for her dirty-joke-filled release day newsletter and visit her on the web at www.CynthiaSax.com

Website:  http://cynthiasax.com/
Newsletter:   http://tasteofcyn.com/2014/05/28/newsletter/
Facebook:  facebook.com/cynthia.sax
Twitter:  @CynthiaSax
Blog:  http://tasteofcyn.com/

Have you ever stopped to think about that parallel universe where the books you read are set? I’m not referring to science fiction or fantasy titles. What I had in mind was cozy mysteries, romances, all sorts of genre fiction that’s apparently set in the world we inhabit but, when you inspect it closely, it’s a case of “it may be the earth but it’s not as we know it”. Jasper FForde  famously plays with the whole oddity of book characters in his Thursday Next series, but that really is set in an alternative Britain so doesn’t quite count for the purpose of this blog, no matter how amusing the premise is. Except that he makes a running joke of the fact that his characters don’t do ordinary things like use the toilet or have breakfast, because characters in books hardly ever are seen to perform these everyday activities.

Now clearly there is an element of judicious editing that goes on for stories, because the reader really doesn’t want to see every aspect of the leading man’s day, do they? And if it isn’t relevant to the plot then we don’t need, for example, a description of how he drives to the supermarket and what he sees en route. Nor do we really want all the graphic details of that handsome Regency buck performing his morning wash and brush up because he probably wouldn’t pass muster for our twenty-first century noses.

But I do get frustrated, as a reader or viewer, when basic human needs are treated as though they don’t exist. No, I don’t want the minutiae of what goes on when that hostage tied up in the small garden shed or wherever has a desperate need to pee, but it might be nice to have, at least in passing, an acknowledgment that such a need exists.

Do we as readers/viewers have to suspend all disbelief? Like with that Regency buck, who wouldn’t have been in life as clean-looking nor as fragrant smelling as we assume Colin Firth was in his guise as Mr. Darcy. We certainly have to take a lot of things with a pinch of salt in the realm of mysteries, where the home counties of England seem to be the crime centre of the universe. There is a multiple murder every few weeks in the books and shows based on the Morse/Lewis franchise. If that were real life, nobody would allow their son or daughter to study at Oxford University and you’d surely never be able to get life insurance if you lived in the city.

In the real world, Sussex is not awash with mass murderers, little old ladies don’t solve crimes which have baffled the police, and princes don’t disguise themselves as dustbin men then court and marry shop assistants (even if I could name a real live prince who used to sometimes get his sandwiches at a garage). All of which is a shame, really. Some aspects of the fiction parallel universe seem extremely appealing!

Don’t Kiss the Vicar

Vicar Dan Miller is firmly in the closet in his new parish. Could the inhabitants of a sedate Hampshire village ever accept a gay priest? Trickier than that, how can he hide his attraction for one of his flock, Steve Dexter?

Encouraged by his ex-partner to seize the day, Dan determines to tell Steve how he feels, only to discover that Steve’s been getting poison pen letters and suspicion falls on his fellow parishioners. When compassion leads to passion, they have to conceal their budding relationship, but the arrival of more letters sends Dan scuttling back into the closet.

Can they run the letter writer to ground? More importantly, can they patch up their romance and will Steve ever get to kiss the vicar again?

link: http://www.boldstrokesbooks.com/9781626394933e.html

About the Author

As Charlie Cochrane couldn’t be trusted to do any of her jobs of choice—like managing a rugby team—she writes. Her favourite genre is gay fiction, sometimes historical (sometimes hysterical) and usually with a mystery thrown into the mix.

She’s a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association, Mystery People, and International Thriller Writers Inc., with titles published by Carina, Samhain, Bold Strokes Books, Lethe, MLR, and Riptide. She regularly appears with The Deadly Dames.

To sign up for her newsletter, email her at cochrane.charlie2@googlemail.com, or catch her at:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/charlie.cochrane.18
Twitter: http://twitter.com/charliecochrane
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2727135.Charlie_Cochrane
Blogs: http://charliecochrane.livejournal.com
and https://charliecochrane.wordpress.com/
Website: http://www.charliecochrane.co.uk

What was it like to be a woman Army officer and West Point cadet in a male dominated environment in the 1970s? Find out by reading Refined by Fire and Trailblazers, two historical fiction books by Ruth VanDyke and Yvonne Doll.

Book 1: Refined by Fire:

Book 2: Trailblazers

YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rh11Gcpimoo

Except from Trailblazers:

Anne leaned forward a bit as Maura resumed in a reflective, quiet tone, “He told me he had some sparkling mineral water and nuts in his room and a nice balcony with two chairs and a small table we could sit at. I told him that sounded wonderful. We were no sooner in the room when Eric reached over to touch my face and kiss me.” Smiling contentedly, Maura whispered, “I just felt like I was floating on a cloud. He picked me up, laid me on the bed.” Blushing, Maura paused, “Eric ran his fingers through my hair, told me how much he wanted me and asked if I wanted to get undressed myself or have him undress me. That’s when it hit me, and I freaked out a bit.”

“What happened?” Anne asked a bit tersely.

“Well, I hate to admit it, but I started shaking and couldn’t find my voice. He was so sweet and concerned. He asked me what was wrong and I told him that I wanted him very much, but I was really scared.”

Anne realized later that she had bitten her lip in an effort to not scream at Maura for dragging the story out, but managed to stay silent and appear nonchalant as Maura haltingly continued.

“He was so sweet and confused and asked me what he had done to scare me. That’s when I burst into tears and told him, it was nothing he had done. I was just nervous, because this was my first time and I wasn’t really sure what to do.” Maura giggled quietly at the reminiscence of Eric’s reaction to her announcement that this was her first time.

“You’re killin’ me Maura! Did you guys do it?” she asked bluntly.

“Yes, eventually,” Maura giggled again.

Throwing her arms up in mock surrender, Anne said, “Okay, I don’t need every detail, but could you please put me out of my misery and finish this story?”

Maura chuckled quietly, “Sorry I don’t remember all the details, but my confession obviously surprised, no, shocked him. He said something like, ‘Oh shit, no!’ I just nodded yes and he got up from the bed, walked over to the small cabinet that had the mineral water and a bottle of scotch, and took a huge gulp of Scotch directly from the bottle.”

Anne was leaning forward again, listening intently as Maura quietly continued.

“He turned around and told me he was sorry. He didn’t realize I was a virgin and told me to get off the bed, and he’d take me to my room.”

“Oh Maura!” Anne said in a hushed, tone of voice.

Maura nodded, “Oh it gets worse.” Maura was now emotionally ready to share the highly charged atmosphere that night. “I burst into tears and told him I didn’t want him to take me to my room, that I knew he was a big playboy and I wasn’t making any demands on him, but had already decided that I wanted him to be the first.”

Anne didn’t quite know what to say at this point, so she just sat there until Maura resumed her tale.