Please help me welcome the talented BABETTE JAMES! She's offering an e-copy of her wonderful release, CLEAR AS DAY!(( All you Contemporary fans take notice ;)
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Thanks for being here, Babette!
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Hello, everyone. Thanks, Jennifer, for letting me guest blog today and I’m delighted to be visiting with you all as I celebrate the release day of Clear As Day, my spicy contemporary romance from The Wild Rose Press.
As part of today’s celebration, several of my friends and co-workers are taking me out after work for a release party. Their excitement for me over the past months, leading up to this exciting day, prompted me to think about all how invaluable and encouraging all my friends’ support has been on my journey to publication, as well as the roles that friendships play in my stories themselves. Friendships have been an integral part of Clear As Day reaching publication, both the good friends around me here at home and on-line and the friendships of the characters in the story itself.
Writing is often considered a commonly solitary adventure, but it’s so much richer when the journey is shared with friends. I frequently write while in an online chat with my critique and goals group and other writing friends. My friends hail from different states and countries, different romance genres, and different stages of our writing careers. They are a critical editing eye, encouraging sounding board for ideas, mentors, cheering squad, shoulder to whine and cry on, and very great friends, and I can’t thank my lovely Ratters enough for helping me make Clear As Day the story it is today.
I also belong to New Jersey Romance Writers, and without the support and friendship (and not a little nagging and genial pushing) of my friends at NJRW, I might not have made those first terrifying efforts to pitch and submit.
As for my romance stories, whether contemporary or fantasy, it seems no matter the couple, the conflict, or the world, my stories revolve strongly upon all kinds of friendships and the support that you get from them, or just the learning experiences: from friends turning to lovers, and old friends that are closer than family, uncovering unknown facets of once-familiar friends and understanding them in new lights, and the pleasures, and sometimes complications, of new friends.
In Clear As Day, and the stories that I’m currently writing as sequels, each couple develops out of a core group of friends that vacation together each summer. My heroine and hero, Kay and Nate, two good friends “with benefits”, painfully discover, despite those years of close friendship, just how much they didn’t know about each other and had left to assumption. Nate is faced with just how hard loving can be and Kay finds denying love doesn’t keep it from happening to her. They now needed to learn to really talk and listen to one another, take risks, and truly trust one another, if their friendship was to survive and love they’d always really shared have a future. I also enjoyed writing their close-knit circle of friends, who grew to be far more than simple secondary characters walking through Kay and Nate’s story, and their lives intersecting and affecting one another in their relationships with Kay and Nate brought layers and depth to this story world that I had not expected when I first began the original first draft.
I hope you enjoy Nate and Kay’s journey as much as I have.
Blurb:
What’s a girl to do when her summer lover wants forever?
Haunted by dark memories of her parents’ volatile marriage, artist Kay Browning keeps her heart locked behind a free-spirit facade and contents herself with the comfortable affair she has every summer with easygoing photographer Nate Quinn.
The only trouble with her plan? This summer Nate’s come to Lake Mohave to claim the lover he can’t let go. He’s done with the endless traveling and settling for temporary homes and temporary loves. Kay’s always been more than just a vacation fling, and now he must convince this woman, who sees love as a course to certain heartbreak, to take that leap of faith and learn how safe love with the right man can be.
Excerpt:
“Kay!” That male voice was not her imagination.
“Oh, shit!” She twisted and dropped into the water, sinking neck-deep.
Mother always said, among other things, that a lady never goes skinny-dipping and must always wear a proper hat. Kay was only half skinny-dipping, but she fervently wished she’d worn something a bit more substantial than a baseball cap and the bottom half of the quintessential teeny-weenie yellow polka-dot bikini.
Shit, oh, shit, oh, shit. She so hated when Mother was right.
Okay, time to find out who’d just gotten an eyeful. The guy had called her name, so she should know him. Oh boy, if she’d flashed old George…
She wiped water from her face, sucked in a breath against her pounding heart, and peeked around.
Nate.
She must be sun-dazed. Nate? With a beard? Hair curling over his ears? No way.
Just because a familiar slouchy fishing hat topped those unruly, sun-bleached blond curls and just because this guy possessed the same deep-water tan and footloose taste in clothes as Nate with his electric blue Hawaiian shirt, bright orange swim trunks, and beat-up deck shoes didn’t mean—
“Hey, babe. Now that I’ve finally caught your attention, how about a hug from my girl?” He opened his arms. “Am I coming in after you or are you coming out?” Only Nate’s voice held that mellow timbre like chocolate for her ears.
“Nate! What…” Giddy delight flushed over Kay, clearing her shock. She dashed from the water and into strong arms, a wonderful hug, and a better kiss that launched her mind into a blissed-out whirl of oh, yes and why?
The oh, yes won out until the need to breathe forced them apart.
Nate gave her a long look, his usually easy gray eyes holding a new, simmering heat.
Wow. Whoa.
Bio: Babette James writes contemporary and fantasy romance and loves reading nail-biting tales with a satisfying happily ever after. When not dreaming up stories, she enjoys playing with new bread recipes and dabbling with paints. A teacher, she loves encouraging new readers and writers as they discover their growing abilities. Her class cheers when it’s time for their spelling test! She lives in New Jersey with her wonderfully patient husband and three extremely spoiled cats.
Links:
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Come fall in love at the river.
