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Here Come the Grooms–2012!

Monday, February 13th, 2012

Happy Valentine’s Day!

I hope you and your beloved are enjoying the day wherever you are and whatever you’re doing.

My beloved is teaching today and I’m up to my eyeballs in a run-through of my book which, I hope, will be out for Christmas.

It’s been something of a devil to write because there were so many things that needed to fall in exactly the right order – and it was only through trial and error that I discovered what they needed to be.

Lots of trials and lots of errors.

But that’s the future (or my present). What’s important to day is that it’s the first day of this year’s Here Come The Grooms! contest.

The contest will run until Sadie Hawkins Day on February 29th. If you don’t know about Sadie, please read what I posted on the Tote Bags ‘n’ Blogs site last week.

So, here’s the lowdown about the books, heroes and questions that Kate Walker, Liz Fielding and I are featuring this year:

SAVAS’S WILDCAT

That’s my book – about Yiannis, the youngest of the Savas brothers and his heroine, Catriona MacLean. Yiannis and Cat have a bit of a history – or a lot of history, depending on which of them you ask.

The book is coming out in both UK (as an M&B Modern) and the US (as a Presents Extra) in April. But if you enter the contest, answer all three questions correctly and your name is drawn, you could get your copy a month early when Mitch and Micah draw a winner on February 29th.

According to the back cover:

Yiannis Savas, the irresistible playboy of the Savas dynasty, was every girl’s dream. But he quickly turned into Cat’s nightmare when his idea of a relationship was no more than a fiery affair.

Now Cat MacLean has grown up and out of her girlish fantasies. Determined not to fall prey to smooth talk and fast charm again, she’d engaged to someone sensible.

Then she’s forced to spend a week with the one man she’s never been able to forget . . .

THE DEVIL AND MISS JONES

That’s Kate’s book – about – you guessed it – the Devil – aka Carlos Diablo Ortega, polo player and vineyard owner, and the very exemplary and decidedly enticing Martha Jones who – until now — has never done a daring things in her life.

Nothing like jumping in at the deep end, Martha!

According to the blurb:

Martha Jones has never taken a risk in her whole life. Until the day she runs out on her wedding and succumbs to the magnetism of a man she has only just met! A man she knows only as Diablo.

Lone wolf Carlos Ortega won’t promise Miss Jones more than one searing-hot night.

Yet Carlos is shocked by Martha’s sweet innocence. This runaway bride is a virgin, and it seems the repercussions of their sizzling encounter could last forever . . .

FLIRTING WITH ITALIAN

That’s Liz’s book – which has just been short-listed for the Romance Novelists’ Association’s RoNA award this year!

Her hero is Conte Matteo di Serrone, the owner of a great vineyard, a plant breeder who is working with the UN’s Food and Agriculture Office. The lady in Matteo’s life is Sarah Gratton, a history teacher, who is picking up her life after her fiance falls for someone new and she finds herself working in an international school in Rome.

The blurb for Liz’s book says:

Bag: packed. Flight: booked. Soon I’ll be in Rome and experiencing life in a foreign language! Watch this space…
Newly single Sarah Gratton is about to jump start her life and a just-for-fun romance with dark-eyed Matteo di Serrone could be just what the doctor ordered! This Italian count is ideal flirting material—if Sarah’s brave enough to make a move!

Well, she might not be—but luckily Matteo is! Matteo decides to keep this mysterious woman close—no hardship at all, given their spine-tingling awareness of each other and for a while it’s like something out of a fairy tale—until Sarah realizes she’s made the most rookie mistake of all: falling in love with her holiday fling….

Yiannis, Carlos and Matteo would like you to check out their books. You can access them by clicking on the book tab at the top of each of our web pages.

If you’d like to enter this year’s Here Come the Grooms! contest, read the blurbs and/or our blogs and find the answers to the following questions and send them to each of us (all three answers to all three of us). You can contact us via our blogs (check the sidebar).

Hope to hear from lots of you! If you have questions or don’t understand what I said, read Kate’s explanation or Liz’s. Maybe they are clearer!

Here are the questions:

Yiannis’s question is: Who’s Harry?

Carlos’s question is: What is Martha wearing – and holding when Carlos first sees her?

Matteo’s question is: I asked Sarah if she’d found someone. Who was it?

Good luck!

Posted in Authors, Contest, Flirting With Italian, Here Come The Grooms!, Heroes, Kate Walker, Liz Fielding, Savas's Wildcat, The Devil and Miss Jones, Yiannis | 3 Comments »

Almost Time for the Grooms Contest!

Sunday, February 12th, 2012

On Valentine’s Day Kate Walker, Liz Fielding and I – and our respective heroes – will be hosting our annual “Here Come the Grooms!” contest.

Stop by any or all of our websites to get the contest information, but basically, if you were around last year or the year before or . . . you know the drill.

Each of our heroes asks one question. You can find the answers on our blog or in the excerpt to each hero’s particular book (on our websites). Send all three answers to each of us for THREE chances to win a copy of each other our books.

That means (for the math-challenged among us) that there will be three winners, each of whom will get three books.

My hero, Yiannis Savas, has been waiting in the wings for a long time for his own book. He pretty much despaired of me ever getting around to him.

I pointed out

Yiannis has his work cut out for him. But he has a lot of help – Cat’s grandmother, his cousin Milos, his meddling mother and Harry.

Who’s Harry?

That’s what Yiannis wants to know!

Stop back soon and enter the contest. Check out the excerpt. Meet Yiannis. He’ll be blogging soon. And he’d appreciate some comments. He doesn’t like talking to the wall.

See you soon!

Posted in Authors, Contest, Here Come The Grooms!, Kate Walker, Liz Fielding, Savas's Wildcat, Yiannis | No Comments »

A Middle-of-the-Heart Cat

Saturday, September 24th, 2011

We love our pets. They make our lives richer, better, more complicated at times (try finding a dog-sitter for Thanksgiving weekend at the last minute), and one of the worst things on earth is when we lose them.

It’s awful when it happens, when we lose one of our own. It’s not supposed to happen with other peoples’ pets.

But it happened this past week to me when Sid died.

Most of you know Sid. He was the light of my dear friend Kate Walker’s life. He waltzed into her house one day and simply took over. There was life Before Sid, and Life During Sid was totally different.

He was the cat who made sitting and writing for hours in an office worthwhile – because, quite simply, he was there.

He could be snoozing on the chair or lying in the window or studying the effects of batting the mouse. It didn’t matter. He was endlessly entertaining – even when he slept.

I ask myself why. I asked Kate why.

Of all her cats, he was the most memorable. Of the four who were there when I first visited, Sid was the one who interacted with us. The others were lovely (well, Dylan, not so much. He was cantankerous and gruff, but he did have his soft spot).

Sid had a whole flabsack of soft spots. He tried to pretend he wasn’t interested in people, but he could never quite pull it off. He was too busy being in the center of things.

I read a book once that said that Maine Coon cats were “middle of the room” cats. If so, Sid was a Maine Coon cat in disguise. More than an Maine Coon cat actually because he wasn’t so much a middle of the room cat, as a “middle of the heart” cat.

You couldn’t help but fall in love with Sid.

I probably had half a dozen visits with Sid in my life. Each one was special. I frequently offered him hospitality on this side of the pond. I told him that the d.o.g.s. would be happy to see him. And they would.

But he’d done his wandering as a youth, and when he got to Kate’s, he made up his mind that that was where home was, and he wasn’t about to stray. So he never visited in person (in cat). But he frequently dropped into my email in-box.

He had a way with words, did Sid. He had Opinions and Views, and he didn’t hesitate to articulate them. He also had Standards – and he worked hard to bring Flora and Chaz (that’s Charlie) up to the mark. He never bothered to try with Dylan. Even Sid had his limits, and there are just some cats you know you can’t shape up.

I will miss his correspondence. There will be no more letters from Sir Sidney St John Willoughby Eamonn Portly-Lummox, DLitt Oxon, Bart., Earl of Blubberhouses and I forget what else (HE never forgot).

I will miss the new and wonderful photos that Kate would send when he was feeling photogenic. One year he sent me a calendar called A Year Of Sid – with a photo of Himself for each month. I still have it. I cherish it.

I also have a t-shirt with his picture on it (Can you tell that Sid didn’t need a marketing department. He had self-promotion down pat – not that he needed it. He got plenty of ear rubs and head scratches just by being himself). I have been wearing Sid’s t-shirt a lot these last few weeks because it made me feel closer to him.

He was, he used to tell me, A Cat of Superior Breeding. He even had an email address that was, in part, SidACOSB, because, well, why wouldn’t he?