Into The Fire Cover Reveal!

Ta daaaaaaaa!

I love this cover! Look – he’s grabbing her butt! They’re making out! Don’t you want to join them? Wait – that didn’t sound right…

I mean don’t you want to know their story?

You can! June 1oth! If you are into semi-immediate gratification, pre-order links are up at AMAZON, BARNES & NOBLE, GOOGLE, iTUNES, and more. If you want a little something to whet your appetite, I’ll be giving away Chapter One excerpt booklets on FB and Twitter for the next few weeks. Follow me there for more details.

Meanwhile, here’s the blurb:

Jackson Calabrese has a lot of nerve. He beat Lila Grant in the Culinary Academy competition using her recipes. Now, he’s opening a restaurant and wants her help? Fine, she’ll fix his menu, but it’s going to cost him.

Heir to the Calabrese restaurant empire, Jackson can buy anything he wants, except creativity, so he buys Lila’s instead. He can craft perfect paella, but to take New York by storm he needs her innovative spark.

Skillets aren’t the only things hot in the kitchen, and an uneasy truce ignites into passion. They’re great in bed, but Jackson doesn’t trust her, and Lila is contemplating revenge. The restaurant opening approaches, the menu is completed, and the tables are set for one final act of betrayal. How can love bloom in the midst of such a hot mess?

Flower-shaped ice cubes! My kids love ‘em!

Also – the sexy/foodie/cover reveal contest runs through May 20th, so I hope you’ll get in on the fun. There are about a zillion easy ways to enter right here: a Rafflecopter giveaway
The main reason to enter the giveaway is the flower-shaped ice cube maker, though…well, that and I don’t know about you, but I totally needed new measuring cups and spoons. And I’m sick of grabbing a paper towel to cut apples on when I make the kids’ lunches. But mostly the flower-shaped ice cubes…YAY! Thanks for celebrating INTO THE FIRE with me!

 

INTO THE FIRE Cover Reveal Contest!

INTO THE FIRE has a hot cover! It’s spectacular. I love everything about it – the lush, warm colors, the kissy faces, and the kitchen in the background (no health codes broken, I promise!). I love it so much I decided to have a party and invite six fabulous friends…and you. We’re serving up puzzle pieces of the cover and guessing the heroine’s favorite dessert. Visit each of the blogs listed below and gather one ingredient. Enter each ingredient into the rafflecopter (there are a gad-zillion other ways to enter, too). We’ll pick a winner next week, but I’ll post the entire gorgeous cover right HERE tomorrow!

The prize! All this plus an exclusive peek at the first chapter of INTO THE FIRE! Click the pic to visit the RAFFLECOPTER!

I was so excited about our party, I rushed to the kitchen store and bought prizes. I’ll be honest, I put one of each into the prize box and one into my cupboard. I figure if I want it, someone else might, too! My kids love the flower-shaped ice cubes, and I love having the ever-elusive 1/8 cup measure. I also love the 1 1/2 Tablespoon measure. I just can’t help it. I’m a kitchen geek. However, I REALLY adore the excerpt booklet I made especially for the giveaway. SO CUTE. I felt like a formatting GENIUS when I figured out how to print it. For those of you already waiting for INTO THE FIRE to be released on June 10th, the excerpt contains a sneak peek of Chapter One. Spoiler: it’s hot! My editor asked me to get Jack and Lila hot and heavy…fast!

I hope you will celebrate INTO THE FIRE with me and join today’s party!

Visit these amazing blogs to gather ingredients:

Carribean Accent Book Reviews

Stella Ex-Libris

Book Sniffers Anonymous

Stitch Read Cook

Cocktails and Books

Romance Novel News

Then plug them into the Rafflecopter (on any of the sites). If you mix the six ingredients together in a special way, they make my heroine’s favorite dessert…and another entry in the contest! A big thanks to the participating bloggers, my Entangled publicists Jessica and Cameron, my cover artist Pamela (whom I’ve never met but want to tackle hug), and YOU for celebrating with me! Let’s start the party!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

On Happy Birthdays, Lovely Hobbits, Rabbit Holes, Recriminations, Validation, Balance, and Bullshit

I love my birthday with the intensity of a Russian tortoise on a romaine rampage.

I told myself I would never write a book while teaching my intermediate pastry arts course at night ever again. The last time I did that this happened. It wasn’t pretty.

However…when I didn’t hit my wordcount for my WIP, I decided I would finish it during the ten-day spring break I’d have in the middle of my course. Because that’s what normal people do, right? Decide to write a book in ten days? Life never gets in the way.

Riiiiiiiight! But I still wanted to finish and polish the book by May 1^st, so I had no choice but to keep writing while I was teaching – but that’s not the silly part.

Truth: Arthur Dimmesdale has nothing on me. I am harder on myself than anyone else would dare to be. I’ve been beating myself up for most of April because I didn’t get that book done fast enough. Clearly, I lack discipline.

I call bullshit.

When sexy Hollywood bad-boy Teague “T-Rex” Reynolds comes to this quiet Southern town, he needs a fake girlfriend to hide the secret that brought him there. School nurse Kate Riley takes the job, but she won’t fall for a movie star, no ma’am. That’s fine with Teague. He hung a closed sign on his heart years ago.
Convincing the press they’re in love is one thing. Fooling each other they’re not is getting harder each day…

At my Western New York Romance Writers meeting last Saturday, Lisa Scott inspired the heck out of us by sharing her writing journey and offering great tips for weathering the tough road. She was awesome – witty, smart, approachable, savvy, gorgeous – and I am going to buy all of her books. In fact, I’m going to buy No Foolin’ TODAY because it is the Kindle Daily Deal, and it sounds like a fun read. However, one of the tips she suggested to increase productivity was this: write down everything you do during each 15 minute increment of one day to see how much time is wasted on Internet/telephone/navel gazing. Something deep inside me screamed HELL NO! AND I’M NOT GOING TO WRITE DOWN EVERYTHING I EAT, EITHER. (Hey, click the red box just below to read more!)