Monthly Archives: July 2015
Talk in an Elevator Day: and why I shouldn’t have opened my mouth
Writers work in a cubicle surrounded by books, computers, and ideas.
We get lonely.
So when we go out (which isn’t often when you’re trying to promote your work online and get through the quagmire of the first chapter in your next book), we get talkative.
And since today is Talk in an Elevator Day, I’m reminded of the time I was in an elevator in a hotel and a guy was chatting me up about his hundred thousand dollar a year sales job and his black BMW. Nice enough, but I wasn’t looking for anything more than an ice machine that worked. The one on my floor was broken.
The convo went something like this.
“You don’t want to drink alone,” he said, observing my ice bucket filled with chilled cubes.
“I have my laptop for company.” I smiled. “Besides, I have work to do.”
“Are you here with the software convention?” he asked warily.
“Well…” I wasn’t, but I decided to play along.
“No way…a pretty girl like you can’t be a techie.”
“Why not?” I shot back. “Can’t women use their brains to get ahead?”
“Not when they have natural attributes…” He eyed my chest. Mind you, I was wearing navy blue sweats and pink bunny slippers with floppy ears. This guy was either desperate or he’d been on the road too long.
“Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m a writer.”
“You’re kidding?” He seemed genuinely surprised, which didn’t help my ego. “What do you write?”
Ooh…I couldn’t resist shooting him the punch line.
“I write sexy novels.”
“Well, you are full of surprises,” he said, edging closer to me. “We should get to know each other better.”
The air in the elevator suddenly got stuffier and I prayed my deodorant didn’t work so he’d get the message. So far, no one else had gotten on the elevator and I had two more stops before we got to my floor.
“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” I said, wiggling the ears on my rabbit slippers, hoping to shoot down this guy’s sex-o-meter. That should have stopped him right there.
It didn’t.
“How about a nightcap in my room? My bottle of bourbon and your–” He paused, wetting his lips. “Ice cubes.”
“You mean research?”
“Oh, yeah…”
“I bet,” I said.
I shouldn’t have opened my mouth, but sometimes we writers just ache to act like our heroines and throw back those snappy remarks. I tried to discourage him, but when he started breathing in my face, I knew I was in over my head. I did what any romance heroine would do.
I dumped the bucket of melting ice on his pinstripe suit.
“Hey, what the–” he called out and thank God, the elevator door opened. It wasn’t my floor, but I didn’t care. One more minute with Mr. BMW and I would have ended up served on a chilled platter. Before he could brush the ice off his shoulders, out I ran. Down the long corridor and then jammed down the stairway to the next floor to my room.
I never looked back.
I imagine that was the last time he tried to pick up a girl in an elevator wearing pink bunny slippers.
~Jina
The book (novella) the girl is holding in the graphic is COME FLY WITH ME, when a bad boy billionaire hooks up with a lonely good girl at 30,000 feet in the air, anything can happen…
It’s one of my favorites…all about family and trying to find your way back home. Link to my Amazon page: COME FLY WITH ME. It’s FREE July 31, 2015
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BONUS:
You can read the Prologue to LOVE ME FOREVER in its entirety at the end of COME FLY WITH ME. So get your free copy and check it out!
If you love Civil War romance and time travel and TWO hunky military heroes, check out my Kindle Scout winner below.
~Jina
She wore gray.
He wore blue.
But their love defied the boundaries of war.
And time.
LOVE ME FOREVER is a Kindle Scout selection and is now available for PRE-ORDER at Amazon.com!
Cheesecake Day: cheesecake or beefcake?
It’s your choice…both are yummy!!
COME FLY WITH ME. It’s FREE July 29-31, 2015
Here’s the blurb:
London’s Heathrow airport
New Year’s Eve
Kacie Bennett is stranded in London and desperate to get home to avert a family crisis. She’s shocked when a tall, dark handsome stranger offers her a first class airline ticket, no strings attached.
What’s a girl to do?
Kacie is the plain sister of the three Bennett girls. Tall and practical, she buries her loneliness in creating unique breads and croissants for the family business, The 3 Bees (Bennett’s Bed & Breakfast). She’s studying at a culinary school in Piccadilly when she gets a desperate call from her sister Emma.
Their baby sister Megan is eloping with a guy twice her age after breaking up with her boyfriend. Kacie is frantic to get back home to Forgotten Valley, California to save her sister from marrying the wrong man.
She can’t believe her good luck when the most gorgeous man she’s ever seen insists she take the ticket.
What does he want in return?
Jace Chantiers is a self-made oil billionaire, a player who can have any supermodel he wants, but he doesn’t believe in love. That would mean opening up about the pain in his past, something he swears he’ll never do. When he has to cancel his date to fly to San Francisco for an urgent business meeting, he overhears Kacie’s panicked phone call from her sister and is intrigued by her plight.
He never expected to ring in the New Year with a gorgeous blonde who needs his help. Kacie gets under his skin with her go-to attitude, hard work ethic, and strong dedication to her family. Something he never had growing up. She makes him wonder if he’s missing out on something, something his money can’t buy.
Can Kacie resist this gorgeous man the British tabloids have labeled the sexiest man alive? Does she dare lose her inhibitions at thirty thousand feet…or will she also lose her heart?
Link to my Amazon page: COME FLY WITH ME. It’s FREE July 29-31, 2015
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BONUS:
You can read the Prologue to LOVE ME FOREVER in its entirety at the end of COME FLY WITH ME. So get your free copy and check it out!
If you love Civil War romance and time travel and TWO hunky military heroes, check out my Kindle Scout winner below.
~Jina
She wore gray.
He wore blue.
But their love defied the boundaries of war.
And time.
LOVE ME FOREVER is a Kindle Scout selection and is now available for PRE-ORDER at Amazon.com!
Milk Chocolate Day and My Chocolate Book Cover
I wish they would make book covers made of chocolate…yummy!
Just think, you could enjoy a satisfying read while eating chocolate…oh, God, it doesn’t get better than that!
So in celebration of Milk Chocolate Day, here is LOVE ME FOREVER à la chocolate:
If you love Civil War romance and time travel and TWO hunky military heroes, check out my Kindle Scout winner below. I’m so excited to have received two 5-star reviews!!
~Jina
She wore gray.
He wore blue.
But their love defied the boundaries of war.
And time.
Come Fly with Me: new cover reveal
I love to fly…I’ve traveled a lot and enjoy the excitement of the airport, watching everyone, wondering what their stories are, where they’re going. I’ve met interesting people in airports…but so far I’ve not met anyone like Jace Chantiers, the hero in my novella, COME FLY WITH ME.
A Bad Boy Billionaire.
I’ve redesigned the cover…and as promised, here it is:
Here’s the blurb:
London’s Heathrow airport
New Year’s Eve
Kacie Bennett is stranded in London and desperate to get home to avert a family crisis. She’s shocked when a tall, dark handsome stranger offers her a first class airline ticket, no strings attached.
What’s a girl to do?
Kacie is the plain sister of the three Bennett girls. Tall and practical, she buries her loneliness in creating unique breads and croissants for the family business, The 3 Bees (Bennett’s Bed & Breakfast). She’s studying at a culinary school in Piccadilly when she gets a desperate call from her sister Emma.
Their baby sister Megan is eloping with a guy twice her age after breaking up with her boyfriend. Kacie is frantic to get back home to Forgotten Valley, California to save her sister from marrying the wrong man.
She can’t believe her good luck when the most gorgeous man she’s ever seen insists she take the ticket.
What does he want in return?
Jace Chantiers is a self-made oil billionaire, a player who can have any supermodel he wants, but he doesn’t believe in love. That would mean opening up about the pain in his past, something he swears he’ll never do. When he has to cancel his date to fly to San Francisco for an urgent business meeting, he overhears Kacie’s panicked phone call from her sister and is intrigued by her plight.
He never expected to ring in the New Year with a gorgeous blonde who needs his help. Kacie gets under his skin with her go-to attitude, hard work ethic, and strong dedication to her family. Something he never had growing up. She makes him wonder if he’s missing out on something, something his money can’t buy.
Can Kacie resist this gorgeous man the British tabloids have labeled the sexiest man alive? Does she dare lose her inhibitions at thirty thousand feet…or will she also lose her heart?
here’s the link to my Amazon page: COME FLY WITH ME.
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And if you love Civil War romance and time travel and TWO hunky military heroes, check out my Kindle Scout winner below.
~Jina
She wore gray.
He wore blue.
But their love defied the boundaries of war.
And time.
Bagelfest Day…what’s your favorite?
Who doesn’t love a warm, chewy, crusty bagel? I’m a sesame girl, and yes, I’d give my kingdom for one right now. Up late last night redesigning a cover for a novella I have out…I spent hours re-doing it…nothing worked…then this morning, bingo! The right pic popped into my head and I did the cover in ten minutes.
I’ll preview the new cover tomorrow…
Meanwhile…
If you love Civil War romance and time travel and TWO hunky military heroes, check out my Kindle Scout winner below.
~Jina
She wore gray.
He wore blue.
But their love defied the boundaries of war.
And time.
Love is a Merry-Go-Round until…
…you catch the brass ring!!
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She wore gray.
He wore blue.
But their love defied the boundaries of war.
And time.
Time Travel 101 Part 2: Magic potions don’t work…what does
There’s no easy way to write a time travel romance.
Contrary to what you may think, there are no magic potions or spells or tricks involved. No rabbit out of a hat, even if there is a handsome magician holding the top hat.
It’s something much more difficult to conjure up.
Imagination.
As elusive as a butterfly catching the wind. Writers often capture that butterfly and hold it in a jar, stare at it, beg their imaginations to work.
Nothing happens.
Then the butterfly runs out of breath and stops flapping its wings…
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So how do you let your butterfly, that is, your imagination, figure out how to write a time travel?
You let it fly…or run free. See the world. Observe. Soar high, then sniff close to the earth, smell the fragrance of sweet jasmine. Feel the soft rain upon your wings.
In other words, do your research.
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Time Travel 101 Part 2:
Time travel can come from anywhere you wish, but it should come out of the story, the setting, the characters. In LOVE ME FOREVER , my heroine finds an old Civil War belt buckle buried in the battlefield along with a fallen soldier’s bones. How I used that buckle to make her travel through time, well…you’ll see in my story.
The bottom line is: if I didn’t do my research, I never would have found my time conduit.
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She wore gray.
He wore blue.
But their love defied the boundaries of war.
And time.
Writers Reach: Chris Patchell with ‘In The Dark’
Riveting…you won’t be able to put this one down!
Congrats, Chris Patchell!! And thank you to Jennifer Skutelsky for this fascinating interview.
On Fridays right here, writers talk about their books, their process, where they’ve been, and where they’re going. Today Chris Patchell joins us to celebrate the launch of her novel, IN THE DARK, a Kindle Scout winner published by Kindle Press.
Marissa Rooney stands in her daughter’s empty dorm room, a half-used vial of insulin clutched in her trembling hand. Brooke has been missing for days. Her roommate hasn’t seen her since that night in the bar. And if Marissa has Brooke’s insulin, it means that Brooke does not.
But Marissa isn’t alone in her terror. A phantom from her past is lurking in the shadows, waiting in the night, and holding her family captive…
In the dark.
- What were the most challenging aspects of writing this book, and what came easily?
The thought of your child going missing is absolutely terrifying, and as a parent, it’s hard…
View original post 1,336 more words
Time Travel 101: Love Me Forever
My Kindle Scout book is up for pre-order on Amazon…
I sneaked a peek at my final m/s for my Civil War time travel romance, Love Me Forever…
I wanted to check some new stuff I added when my heroine dressed as a Confederate officer travels back in time to the Battle of Antietam in 1862. The scene needed more angst when she finds herself pitted against a Yankee soldier determined to blow her away.
I was pleased to read that the scene worked really well with the new stuff…whew!
Which brings me to my point when writing time travel:
Time Travel 101: as thrilled as you or I might be at the idea of traveling back in time, our heroine isn’t. This is a rough moment for her. Let her feel it, taste, fear it. I’m glad I added to the scene. I hope you enjoy it!
If you nominated my book for the Kindle Scout program, you should have rec’d the link to claim your copy. LMF goes on sale August 4th.
Love Me Forever link on Amazon.com
Got any questions about writing time travel? The Civil War? Please ask me.
Thank you!
~Jina
She wore gray.
He wore blue.
But their love defied the boundaries of war.
And time.
Lollipop Day…and love stories
Happy Lollipop Day!! Check out my Kindle Scout book below…TWO great love stories!!
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She wore gray.
He wore blue.
But their love defied the boundaries of war.
And time.
You can read the first 5,000 words HERE. You’ll meet both my heroines and both my heroes in the excerpt. It’s a saga of love and romance and war. Believe me, I walked every road, fought every battle with my characters, even walked around in a hoop skirt to “get it right.”
This is a book of the heart…any questions? Please ask!!
Thanks for stopping by.
~Jina
Once upon a story... 