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Phoebe Conn: Why I Love Reviews (Contest)
Wednesday, November 6th, 2013

WHY I LOVE REVIEWS

I learned to read before I went to kindergarten and have always loved books. When I began to write, I knew how to create a memorable story because I had read so many. Every book provides a lesson of its own.

Book clubs are great places to make friends and read books you might not have chosen on your own. I belong to three book clubs and each has it own personality and focus. One group loves mysteries and sci/fi. Another reads women’s fiction, and the third has potluck dinners and selects a lot of nonfiction. If you have never belonged to a book club, you might want to join one or form one with your friends. You’ll be surprised at the different reactions to books. Some people will love a book and call it a favorite while others find it too tedious to finish.

This month, one book club read THE FAULT IN OUR STARS by John Green. It’s been on the bestseller list for more than a year. It’s told by 16-year-old Hazel Grace who meets 17-year-old Augustus at a cancer support group. It’s a poignant story about life, love and death, important issues at every age. There are sure to be tears when you read it, but it’s also one of the best books I’ve read this year, or ever.

Most of the book club also loved the book, but one woman who is a hospital lab technician said some of the hospital details weren’t accurate, and that spoiled the book for her. We accept everyone’s opinion without asking them to justify it, but she made me wonder what the reviews were for the book on Amazon.

As of today, there are 5,795 reviews posted with the majority being 5 stars. Those who didn’t love the book often thought the teens were not realistic, and yet there were 5 star reviews written by teens. Obviously, not everyone loves the same thing. I once dated a man who ate only vanilla ice cream. Vanilla! When there are so many delicious flavors to try, why would anyone stick with vanilla? We didn’t argue over it, however, because there is no point in arguing over tastes, but I digress.

Many authors are so sensitive they cannot bear to read a poor review of their work. Should I receive one, I study it to learn why the reader didn’t enjoy the story. Many people leave lengthy, detailed reviews to categorize every aspect they found objectionable. Some comments are simply due to taste. Others are helpful if they point out something I should have caught, or could improve in later books. Perhaps I didn’t make motivations clear enough, or show why the heroine’s attitude toward the hero changed over time. Whatever the problem was, I give it a lot of thought and hope each of my books is better than the last. Thank you to all of you who take the time to write thoughtful reviews.

Do you buy books based on the reviews? Or will you buy a favorite author’s new book even if the reviews aren’t entirely positive? What if a friend recommends a book, but it has very few positive reviews? Do you write reviews?

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My latest book, FIERCE PASSION is a November 5, 2013 release from Samhain Publishing. It’s the story of Ana Santilan, an haute couture model who has lost the great love of her life, a famed matador. She finds a new love, who comes with serious complications, and a stalker who wants her all to himself. With both passion and danger, it follows the Aragon family introduced in FIERCE LOVE, and FIERCE PRIDE.

I will be happy to give an ebook copy to someone who comments, and I hope you’ll want to write a review of FIERCE PASSION.

Teresa Noelle Roberts: Cougar’s Courage (Contest)
Monday, November 4th, 2013

tnglamour me croppedThanks, Delilah, for letting me visit today and talk about my new book, Cougar’s Courage (Duals and Donovans: the Different, Book 3).

I love world-building. Long before I fell in love with romance novels, I was a fantasy reader, and I loved escaping my little central New York hometown by immersing myself in the lush, vivid exotic worlds of Middle Earth, Pern, Narnia, and more. And of course, since then I’ve become engrossed in many other imaginary worlds. In creating the paranormal Duals and Donovans: the Different series, I looked for inspiration not to the complex mythological realms of  Tolkien and other epic fantasy but to  the nearly real worlds of urban fantasy authors such as Jim Butcher and Patricia Briggs, worlds that might pass for ours…for a few pages, before the weirdness hits again.

I didn’t steal their worlds. But I did shamelessly adopt the notion that little touches of reality highlight the oddity of a dangerous world where magic is part of life and beings out of mythology might just end up either eating dinner with you or eating  you for dinner.

Thus Cara, my heroine in Cougar’s Courage, starts out in the very real city of Toronto. She has a smart phone and isn’t thrilled when it doesn’t work in Couguar-Caché, the mysterious village where she ends up. (Turns out her cell phone coverage stops when she left this dimension. Important safety tip: check your contracts for this detail if you’re planning to plane-hop!) Jack is a shape-shifting cougar Dual who’s also a shaman—not exactly the guy next-door— but he attended Queens University, a very real place where my college roommate did her graduate work. The characters miss Tim Horton’s coffee because they can’t get it easily where they are. Cara’s grandfather is a magical powerhouse…who loves old school Saturday morning cartoons and flannel shirts.

But the real-life details, in the long run, don’t matter as much as real-life emotions. Cara and Jack may have powers most of us lack, and may spend a lot of time in an alternate dimension. But they’re people, if not exactly humans. The most important challenge was to keep their path from uneasy allies to a couple looking forward to Happily (and Crazily) Ever After believable.

I think I succeeded. I hope I also succeeded in making even the most bizarre residents of Couguar-Caché emotionally accessible. Even an ancient nature spirit can mourn a lost lover and regret a disastrous relationship with an evil ex. In this case the evil is on a scale beyond “ran up your credit cards and slept with your best friend” or even “beat you up.” More like “wants to destroy everything you hold dear including the land and has the power to do it.” But the pain of loss is universal, as is anger at being duped and regret for bad decisions that come back to haunt you years (or in this case centuries) later.

Let me know if I succeeded in making the bizarre believable!

Series blurb: Welcome to an America where the non-human Different and magically gifted humans live among ordinary people. Witches are both feared and honored, but shape-shifting Duals are treated as second-class citizens. The Agency, a government agency that’s supposed to monitor illegal uses of magic and Different abilities, has developed its own dangerous agenda. But when Duals and witches join forces, the Agency and other bad guys aren’t going to know what hit them.

And neither are the witches and Duals. Witch magic grows from the positive energy of love and sex–and the only thing better than one Dual is two of them! And then there are shamans, who work their chaotic magic to comfort the afflicted and shake up the comfortable. Once shamans get involved, everything gets weirder…and sexier.

tnCougarsCouragesmallerBlurb: Toronto cop Cara Many-Winters Mackenzie is still reeling from her fiancé’s murder when her orderly life takes a turn toward the weird, complete with voices in her head and phantom bleeding wounds.

This violent awakening is the rise of her Different gift—a chaotic, Bugs-Bunny-on-crack magic that she must learn to control before it destroys her. There’s only one place to get help: her mother’s ancestral village, and a mentor who seems to have stepped straight out of the smoke of her erotic dreams.

Cougar Dual Jack Long-Claw reluctantly agrees to take Cara under his wing, though he’d much rather take the beautiful city girl into his bed. As he guides her through a crash course in shamanic magic, sparks fly—some sexy, some snarky. But when an ancient enemy attacks the village, they must work together to hone a magical weapon against certain destruction.

Common sense tells them it’s a terrible time to fall in love. Their spirit guides have other ideas. And shamans who don’t listen to their spirit guides are dead shamans…

Warning: Hot shape-shifting feline hero. Strong but shell-shocked heroine. Snarky, meddling spirit guides. And lots and lots of sex: angry sex, crazy sex, magical sex, and just plain sexy sex.

Amazon US/Amazon UK/Kobo /Barnes & Noble Nook/Samhain

Like the sound of this? I’m running a contest on my own website for a chance to win this book and the first book in the series, Lions’ Pride. Commenting here or at my site enters you. Comment here and there, get two entries.

Rachel Kramer Bussel: The Big Book of Orgasms
Sunday, November 3rd, 2013

69 stories means 69 treasures in The Big Book of Orgasms

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Why are there 69 stories in The Big Book of Orgasms? Well, the first reason is the most obvious, an allusion to the sex position 69. But for me as editor, it’s much deeper than that. The thing I hate most about editing anthologies, which makes me consider quitting every time, is sending rejection letters. I despise it, because I know what it’s like to get them. It’s no fun not to be able to include stories that are wonderfully written but I don’t have room for, or that are too similar to another story.

With The Big Book of Orgasms (and its predecessor, Gotta Have It: 69 Stories of Sudden Sex), I had more room to include a wider variety of stories than I normally do. I could include masturbation stories like Tess Danesi’s excellent “Steamy” (read an excerpt HERE and Logan Zachary’s technology and gender-bending tale “Remote Control.” I had space for very short stories, such as “The Park” by Elise Hepner, which is only 249 words, and “Her Lover is a Flame” by Cecilia Tan, which has only 308. It’s pretty amazing to realize how few words an author needs to tell a story that’s erotic and evocative and memorable. All of the stories are only 1,200 words or less, which means you always have time to read one before bed.

It also means there’s room for diversity in terms of gender and sexual orientation. There are more male authors than I usually get in my submissions, many of whom, such as David Salcido of Blue Food fame, I’m publishing for the first time in one of my books (side note: I’d love to see more submissions for future anthologies from male authors and authors of any or no gender!). Check out “Baxter’s Boy” by Xan West (who is reading November 6th in San Francisco, see last paragraph) for a wonderful take on gender and desire.

I’m not saying The Big Book of Orgasms has every single type of orgasm a person could possibly have or way of achieving one, because that would be impossible for one book (I think?), but it does have a wide variety, and if it does well, I’d love to do another book like it. I love the creativity and playfulness and passion the authors brought to the stories. Some, like Lady Cheeky, who wrote “The Massage,” have even publicly admitted their stories are true (mine, “I’m on Fire,” is not, though hot wax play does intrigue me). There was room for stories ranging from romantic and sensual to down and dirty (and stories that combine those elements!).

There’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and heterosexual characters. There’s sex toys aplenty, book lovers, forced orgasms, cross-dressing, bondage, spanking, students and teachers, sex as a headache cure, BDSM, flogging, exhibitionism, voyeurism, ice play, movie theater orgasms, a very tight pair of jeans and so much more. There are easily orgasmic characters and ones for whom orgasm is more of a challenge. And even though orgasm is the organizing principle, these stories are truly about the passion shared by these characters, for their lovers and themselves.

The book is also, if I may brag not humbly at all, a beautiful one. I’m always in awe of the gorgeous covers Cleis Press finds, but I think this one is especially lovely—not too over the top, but gets the point across that this woman is either about to have an orgasm, in the middle of having one or has just finished having one. If you happen to be in San Francisco, please join me and 9 of the contributors for a free reading this Wednesday, November 6tha t 6:30 at Good Vibrations, 1620 Polk Street at California; details are on Facebook but no RSVP is necessary. If you’re not nearby, please tell someone who is. There will also be a New York City reading January 3rd at reading series Between the Covers at The Museum of Sex. You can keep up with the book on Tumblr, where you’ll find excerpts from all 69 stories and the table of contents and intro and @BigBookofOrgasm on Twitter, and me @raquelita on Twitter. And if you do read the book, I’d love to hear what your favorites are!

Karen Stivali: Leave The Lights On
Friday, November 1st, 2013

I’d like to thank Delilah for offering me a guest spot on her blog so I can talk about my new contemporary romance Leave The Lights On.

One of my favorite things about writing romance is that it gives me the opportunity to explore what happens when people get a second chance with someone they crushed on in the past. In this story Parker and Sophie were childhood friends who, for several reasons, never got together when they were younger. Now that they’re adults they find themselves neighbors once again. Their friendship is instantly rekindled, as are the old feelings of longing. Sophie is a wedding planner and she invites Parker to accompany her to a food show. He’s more than happy to have any excuse to spend more time with Sophie, so he accepts, wondering if it’s a date or if they’re just hanging out. After a day of sampling all sorts of decadent creations offered from the vendors at the expo they stop at one final dessert display where Sophie tempts Parker with a chocolate treat. Here’s an exclusive peek at what happens next…

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When love throws you a curve, swing for the fences.

Parker Wood’s dreams of becoming a professional baseball player are shattered when he’s injured in a devastating car crash. After two years in hospitals and physical rehab facilities, he’s ready to move back to his childhood home and take over the family landscaping company. The house and business are his, now that his father has passed.

Sophie Vaughn has suffered through a hellishly public divorce from a husband who couldn’t manage to stay faithful for two months of marriage. Determined not to let her personal drama impact her successful wedding and party planning business, she buys her parents’ old house, hoping the comfort of familiar surroundings will help her heal.

When Parker and Sophie discover they’re neighbors once again, it’s as if time has stood still. Their friendship is quickly rekindled, along with the decade-long crush neither of them ever admitted having. Then the heat between them exposes a long-held secret that threatens to tear them apart…unless they can detach from their painful pasts and move forward—together.

Warning: Contains sultry summer nights, steamy pool-side encounters, and you’ll never look at a jar of peanut butter the same way again.

Excerpt from Leave The Lights On:

Caramel and sea salt flooded his mouth as soon as he bit into the dark chocolate shell. “Jesus. I’ve got to get myself invited to some weddings. This stuff’s amazing.”

Sophie laughed, the shimmery sound sending tingles through Parker’s limbs. “Or you can be extra nice to me, and maybe I’ll bring you home goodie bags from all the ones I go to.”

She grabbed two sample boxes off the table and tucked them into one of the tote bags.

Parker chuckled. “Now there’s officially more food in these bags than in my entire kitchen.”

“That’s just because I haven’t taken you grocery shopping yet. We’ll get your kitchen stocked soon enough.”

“Sounds good.” Anything that involved more time with Sophie sounded good. His gaze was drawn to the saunter of her hips as she made her way through the crowd. Jesus.

“I think we’ve hit every booth. You ready to go?”

“Sure.”

Parker held the door as they left the convention center. As they headed down the street, the sky darkened with deep blue clouds. Thunder rumbled long and deep. “Think we’ll make it to the car before the storm starts?”

No sooner did the words leave his mouth than the sky opened up.

Sophie shrieked, “No. Run.”

They tore down the sidewalk, fat raindrops pelting them faster by the second. One of Sophie’s sandals slipped off, and she started giggling. “Wait, my shoe.”

Parker stopped, slicking his hair back off his face. “Got it?”

“No.” She laughed harder, grabbing Parker’s arm to steady herself as she wiggled her foot back into the shoe. “There.”

Her eyes sparkled as she gazed up at him, her breath coming fast from laughter, her rain-soaked shirt clinging to her every curve. Parker smoothed her wet hair off her cheek. The feel of her skin, warm and inviting, was too much. He couldn’t wait another second.

His lips touched hers mid-giggle, for just a second. He held his breath, his fingers still woven into her hair, waiting to see if she’d pull away. She hesitated, the sweet scent of her making him dizzy, then her mouth was back on his.

Sophie went up on her toes, leaning in toward him, her lips parting beneath his. She tasted like the chocolate they’d had and red wine they hadn’t, a decadent blend of the richest flavors he’d ever savored. He no longer noticed the rain or heard the thunder—his whole world had condensed into the kiss. The only word his brain could form was Sophie.

* * * * *

Author Info for Karen Stivali:

??????????????????????Karen Stivali is a prolific writer, compulsive baker and chocoholic with a penchant for books, movies and fictional British men. She is a multiple award winning author of contemporary and erotic romances for Ellora’s Cave, Turquoise Morning Press and Samhain Publishing.

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads
Amazon | Barnes and Noble | AllRomanceEbooks

Cynthia D’Alba: Texas Tango (Contest)
Wednesday, October 30th, 2013

D'Alba RT BooksigningHi All! Cynthia D’Alba here. Mega thanks to Delilah Devlin for being the Kick-Off blog for my Texas Tango Release Tour.

Today is Halloween Eve. Growing up, Halloween was always one of my favorite holidays. I loved the dressing up, the becoming someone totally different from who you are every day. I’ve been everything from Jeanie from I Dream of Jeanie, to the standard hobo to Ms. Arkansas. Now, I have to confess, the year I played Ms. Arkansas I was twenty-five and teaching at a school of nursing! And before you ask…NO! I was never Ms. Arkansas. My singing and piano playing would have cleared the room…talk about scaring the poor children to death. 😀

Even today, I love to dress up in my cowboy hat, boots and denim. Makes this city girl feel just like a real cowgirl.

In TEXAS TANGO, both my hero and heroine are wearing masks to the outside world. Travis, as the long-suffering widower and Caroline, as the happy-go-lucky doctor with nothing to tie her down. Sometimes a costume can be fun, like the one I’m wearing in my picture for a book signing. But other times, the costume and mask are hiding true feelings from the world as well as the wearer, as in TEXAS TANGO. I wanted Travis and Caroline to have to face what they really want out of life and have to confess it to themselves as well as to the world.

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TEXAS TANGO releases from Samhain Publishing in one week. It’s the second book in the Texas Montgomery Mavericks Series. Here’s a little more what it’s about.

Their wedding might be fake, but there’s no faking the mutual attraction.

Texas Montgomery Mavericks, Book 2

Dr. Caroline Graham is happy with her nomadic lifestyle fulfilling short-term medical contracts. No emotional commitments, no disappointments. She’s always the one to walk away, never the one left behind.

But now her great-uncle is gone and her grandmother is on her deathbed, more concerned about Caroline’s lack of a husband than her own demise. What’s the harm in a little white lie? If a wedding will give her grandmother peace, then a wedding she shall have.

Travis Montgomery has one dream left—to build the ranch he and his wife planned before he lost her to cancer. There’s just one thing standing between him and the last bit of acreage he needs—a last living heir who has one traveling foot out the door…and an unusual request that challenges his determination to never again place his heart at risk.

The land he wants in exchange for a faux marriage. Everyone wins. Until things start to snowball…and the hearts they stand to lose are their own.

Warning: This book contains a tortured widower who doesn’t want a wife and an independent doctor who doesn’t want a husband. Hot stuff between the sheets and failed efforts to avoid emotional involvements.

Want more? Click HERE for the opening of Chapter One.

TEXAS TANGO can be pre-order now from any of the stores listed below or check your favorite online store to purchase.

Amazon | Samhain  |  Barnes & Noble  |  Kobo

Thanks again to the Delicious Delilah Devlin for having me here today. I love love love to hear from readers and there are lots of ways to find me. Online, you can find me most days at my website or my group blog.

Follow me at Facebook, Twitter, Google +, Goodreads or Pinterest. Or email me at cynthia@cynthiadalba.com

To send me snail mail, write to:
Cynthia D’Alba   PO Box 2116     Hot Springs, AR71914

Now for the fun stuff! I have an exclusive two-day giveaway running today and tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll be here. You can sign up both days. So what might you win? Check out the Rafflecopter below! Good luck.

A Rafflecopter Giveaway

AND as my Release Tour moves into November, I have incredible jewelry prizes and some personalized prizes. So be sure to check my personal blog every day. It’ll remind you where I am that day so you can earn lots of entries.

And last, but not least, I have freebies for the asking. Texas Tango Cowboy Hat jar openers, Texas Two Step Cowboy boot jar openers, pens, postcards, trading cards. Drop by my contact page and let your request there.

daWestern Ornaments

One lucky person who leaves a comment here today will pick up a western-themed Christmas ornament, so be sure to leave an email address so I can find you.

Thanks Delilah for inviting me over today! Hope to see some of you on my upcoming tour stops.

Angelique Armae: Ghosts and Haunted Houses + Giveaway
Sunday, October 27th, 2013

Ghosts and Haunted Houses

Let me start by saying thanks to Delilah for having me on the blog today!

Since Halloween is right around the corner,  I wanted to talk about ghosts and haunted houses.  I lived in a haunted house for numerous years.  It was a very beautiful, historical house, but never really felt like a true home.  Over the years several visitors had said they’d seen or felt the presence of someone standing in their room at night.  We didn’t talk much about these events until after I had moved to a new house. That’s when the stories were confirmed by relatives and friends.

There were two places, specifically, that visitors had had these experiences.  The first one was the guest room. The door leading to the sitting room was originally an outside door.  Everyone who stayed in that room said they’d been awakened in the middle of the night due to hearing the door slam. But it never opened.  I had heard the noise myself on numerous nights, but never spoke about it.

The second hot spot in the house was the upstairs.  In my bedroom, I ‘felt’ the presence of what I perceived to be a young woman in a long white gown standing by the windows.  I also felt her in the master bedroom turret, again by the windows.  What confirmed her existence was a conversation I had with my grandmother who  lived next door.  I had never discussed this ‘woman’ before with anyone.  But one day, my grandmother asked me if I had any idea who was the woman in the white gown at the windows.  She had seen her.  I had only felt her.  And despite me never telling my grandmother this, she saw what I had sensed.

There were other ghost tales from the house as well, including a old, bearded man seen in the kitchen, a civil war era ghost in the hallway,  and a ghost in my brother’s room.

I had one cat who refused to go into the guest room at night. She would stand at the step leading up to the room from the family room and hiss.

I did discuss the situation of my haunted house, including additional details, with one of the founders of T.A.P.S. / Ghost Hunters.  It was a very interesting conversation. He felt the same as I did, that the spirits in the house were not bad, but I did have a connection with them.

Nothing bad was ever felt in the house, but it was strange knowing we weren’t the only family/inhabitants there.

In my book SHADOWS OF THE SOUL I have a little ghost girl.  I enjoyed writing her into the plot.  Perhaps living in a haunted house sparked the idea for this character.

Do you have a haunted house or ghost story to share?  I’d love to hear it.

 

Thanks for stopping by the blog.  Have a Happy Halloween!

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SHADOWS OF THE SOUL
(Book 1 of the Paradisian Chronicles)
By Angelique Armae
ISBN: 978-0-9845151-4-1
Publisher: Diversion Books

When Hell’s sexiest bad boy–Nicolai Valentine–defied Lucifer, he lost everything.

Now Heaven’s fearless human warrior–Isabel Heart–has come to Nicolai’s rescue.

When the two meet…

A haunting past is reborn…

Isabel Godfroie Heart is a Paradisian Scholar-an immortal human trained in the ways of Heaven and Hell-who’s suffering from memory loss. During her last battle, a dark force erased specific portions of her past life memories. Now she remembers little of times past, save for the fact she’s a demon slayer mentored by the archangel Gabriel. When ordered to a new post to help translate a volume of ancient text from a forbidden verse, Isabel is forced to work with the dark prince Nicolai Valentine, a soul who may or may not be responsible for her memory loss. If only she didn’t find the tempting creature so hard to resist…

Born to a fallen angel and a mortal mother, Nicolai Valentine is a prince of the Grigorcov, the children of the fallen sons of God. Searching for the lost chalice that will save his kin from eternal damnation, Nicky unknowingly unleashes the Hadean Virus, a dark entity targeting members of the Grigorcov. Now the entity has been unleashed on man’s world and Nicky’s in a race against time to find the antidote that will stop this deadly parasite. But in order to keep the Hadean virus from attacking again, Nicolai must enlist the help of Isabel Godfroie Heart, the Paradisian Scholar he was unable to save from the wrath of Hell centuries ago…

Buy Links:  Amazon | Barnes & Noble

Giveaway:   A set of book cover  magnets for Shadows of the Soul and The Bride Wore Demon Dust 

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Send your name and email address to:  aarmae@angeliquearmae.com  to enter the drawing.  Please put ‘magnet contest’ in the subject line. One winner will be chosen at random from the list of entries.  US and Canada residents only, please.

Website Links:
Website:  http://www.angeliquearmae.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AngeliqueArmaeFans
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AArmae

Author bio:

Angelique Armae is a native New Yorker who’s as zany as the city she grew up in. As a child her favorite toy was Emerald The Witch, a small doll with green eyes, green hair and purple skin.

Miss Armae is published with Diversion Books and ImaJinn Books.  Her books have garnered numerous awards and nominations, including the Sapphire Award, P.E.A.R.L. Award and Word Weaving Award. Angelique’s first novel, COME THE NIGHT, made Fictionwise’s Best of the Best list, rounding out the top five best selling dark fantasy books of the year.  Her current book SHADOWS OF THE SOUL, a novel about angels, demons, vampires and the humans who interact with them, made Amazon’s Kindle Bestsellers list.

Aside from writing, Angelique also dabbles in digital art. She is the recipient and two time nominee of the Dream Realm Award for best cover art.

When not working, Ms. Armae enjoys traveling, learning about the ancient Celts, exploring history and learning new languages. Angelique studied history and French literature at SkidmoreCollege.

Maggie Wells: Gone Country
Wednesday, October 23rd, 2013

I’ve never been a country girl. I grew up in a small city. My father covered his back yard in asphalt and made it a half-court basketball court for my five brothers. I listened to WLS radio out of Chicago. My influences were more Saturday Night Fever than Urban Cowboy. My teenage years were spent with The Cure, Duran Duran, and Depeche Mode. So how the heck did I end up with all this country music on my playlists?

mwLove Letters 6 revised conceptI discovered it purely by accident. Earlier this year, I wrote my very first short story featuring a cowboy hero in V Is for Vindicated — my contribution to Love Letters Volume 6: Cowboy’s Command. Where does a certified city slicker trying to write about a rough and tumble rodeo guy turn for inspiration? Music, of course.

And what I found in my own iTunes library shocked me.

I didn’t even notice it was happening. In a true testament to the power of the crossover hit, I found that my playlists were already loaded with country (or country-flavored rock) tunes. Some old and some new, and a few nothing more than a guilty pleasure.  There they were, ready and willing to inspire. Proof that not only could I step out of my comfort zone, but I already had.

Here are just a few of the tunes that fueled V Is for Vindicated. What are some of the surprises lurking in your music library?

Crazy ~ Patsy Cline
Need You Now ~ Lady Antebellum
Look What You’ve Done to Me ~ Boz Scaggs
Grow Old With Me ~ Charles Kelley
Somebody’s Crying ~ Chris Isaak
This Kiss ~ Faith Hill
Witchita Lineman ~ Glen Campbell
Bad Things ~ Jace Everett
Hate To Lose Your Lovin’ ~ Little Feat
Blue Bayou ~ Roy Orbison

MaggieWellsMaggie Wells is a deep-down dirty girl with a weakness for hot heroes and happy endings. By day she is buried in spreadsheets, but at night she pens tales of people tangling up the sheets. The product of a charming rogue and a shameless flirt, this mild-mannered married lady has a naughty streak a mile wide.

Fueled by supertankers of Diet Coke, Maggie juggles fictional romance and the real deal by keeping her slow-talking Southern gentleman constantly amused and their two children mildly embarrassed. They are the food purveyors to three dogs, a passel of fish, and one impertinent house rabbit she claims is the love of her life. Shh. Don’t tell her husband.

You can find her online at http://www.maggie-wells.com, on Twitter @maggiewells1, or on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/AuthorMaggieWells.