Marilyn Brant's Blog, page 7

 HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

It's nearly impossible for me to believe that 2013 is here... It sounds kind of like a science-fictiony date to me, especially since, in my mind, I'm still wandering around so often in the prior century. I've even caught myself, on occasion, starting to write the date on a check as 199_ . (And, yes, I know, even just writing a check is an activity from an earlier decade. ;)

But, apparently, whether I'm fully prepared for it or not, time continues to march onward. I hope this coming year will bring with it only good things for all of you, dear friends!

The New Year is starting off with a big ebook sale, courtesy of several Austen Authors/White Soup Press Writers. Those of us taking part have special deals on Amazon or B&N that are in effect now (or certainly by tomorrow -- sometimes price changes take a day) through January 4th, as a way to "Fill Up Your Kindle or Nook" with new reading material!! The participants include:

Abigail Reynolds
$0.99
Morning Light
A Pemberley Medley
$2.99
Mr. Darcy's Refuge
Mr. Darcy's Letter
By Force of Instinct

Maria Grace
$1.99
Darcy's Decision
$2.99
The Future Mrs. Darcy

Mary Simonsen
$0.99
For All the Wrong Reasons
Mr. Darcy's Angel of Mercy
A Walk in the Meadows at Rosings Park
Captain Wentworth Home from the Sea
Three's A Crowd, A Patrick Shea Mystery (Kindle Only)
$2.99
Mr. Darcy Goes to War (Kindle Only)
Darcy on the Hudson
Mr. Darcy Bites Back
Becoming Elizabeth Darcy (Kindle Only)

Regina Jeffers
$1.99
The First Wives' Club
Second Chances: The Courtship Wars
$2.99
A Touch of Velvet
A Touch of Cashémere
A Touch of Grace
Honor and Hope: A Contemporary Romantica Based on Pride and Prejudice

Shannon Winslow
$0.99
Mr. Collins's Last Supper
$2.99
The Darcy's of Pemberley
For Myself Alone

...and me
Marilyn Brant
$0.99
Double Dipping
$2.99
On Any Given Sundae
Holiday Man
Hope you'll get to sample a few new stories!!

And...I'm happy to share the exciting release news of one of my friends and Magical Musings sisters, Edie Ramer. Her latest book in her wonderful "Miracle Interrupted" series, MIRACLE PIE, is now available on Amazon, B&N and more!! (I just love this book cover and want to hunk off a huge piece of that pie! Clearly, I'm not the only one with that idea, LOL.)

Katie Guthrie has pie magic. Intuition tells her what to bake. Whether it’s a Goodbye Pie or a Welcome Home Pie, it will turn out perfect and be waiting for the person who needs it most.
She cherishes her life in the small village of Miracle, Wisconsin, and has no desire for change. But to help a friend, she agrees to film a cooking pilot show. Only to realize the filmmaker is the dying boy Katie used to call her angel when she lived in Chicago with her junkie mother.

Gabe Robbins is no angel, and he’s no boy anymore. Burned out after a three-year stint building a hospital in Africa, Gabe ignores his demons by living day-to-day and filming wedding videos. Nothing deep, nothing he has to become invested in. Nothing that will get under his skin, until…Watching Katie create her pies from behind his video camera makes him realize what he’s missing. Thanks to Katie and her pies, Gabe discovers his passion again. But will it lead him to his heart’s desire…or will this miracle take him away from Katie forever?

To further celebrate, the first book in the series, STARDUST MIRACLE, is Free on many digital platforms, including Amazon and Apple/iTunes! Congrats, Edie!!!

So, Happy New Year's Day to you all. I'm hoping 2013 will have many blessings in store for each of you :).

To all of you, dear friends, Merry Christmas!

May this season bring you much joy and wonderful memories of time spent with those you love.

For all who celebrate other holidays during this month, I send you the same wishes of peace and happiness.

And I hope the New Year ahead will bring only good things to you all!!  xox

I'm so thrilled for my friend Robin Bielman, who has out her newest novella from Entangled Publishing, Yours at Midnight !!! Isn't the cover gorgeous and sexy?!

Check out the blurb:
Lyric Whetsone only had eyes for Quinn Sobel's brother Oliver, until a car crash took Oliver's life on New Year's Eve. Then, a moment of shared grief between Quinn and Lyric became something more impassioned, something that frightened Quinn so much he ran from Lyric's bed and her life, disappearing for four long years.
Now Quinn's back for another New Year's Eve, struggling for closure, desperate to leave his grief in the past and make amends with the girl of his dreams. But Lyric has a secret--one that could drive Quinn from her life forever. Will Quinn run away from the love and acceptance he's always wanted...or will he claim his New Year's kiss and make her his at midnight? Can't wait to read this -- and you can get your copy now on Amazon and B&N!! Congrats, Robin!!!! (ETA: Giveaway alert!! Robin says that anyone who leaves a comment here is automatically entered in a drawing to win a copy of the book! Woot! Thank you!! We'll choose the lucky winner next Friday. :) And, since I really don't think the world is ending today, but the weather around here has definitely been frightful, I snorted with laughter when I saw this "New 7-Day Mayan Weather Forecast" on Twitter last night:  Too funny!!! I'm blogging today at Magical Musings and humming R.E.M.'s "It's the End of the World As We Know It"... Hope you all have a wonderful (and uneventful) Friday! 

Happy Birthday, Jane Austen!!! (Hey, you look fabulous to my eye, even at age 237... ;)

Hope you're all having a happy start to the holiday season! Here, it's been the usual hecticness, but I love that there is NO SNOW in our area yet. (My sincere apologies to snow lovers everywhere but, really, it's like a huge Christmas present for me NOT to have to scrape and shovel that fluffy white stuff while trying to get everything done.) I remember going to an Austen birthday luncheon a few years back and having to deal with blizzard-like conditions on the drive home, so mere rain in December is always welcome!

I sent out my newsletter this past week and, for those of you who didn't know about this, I'll mention it again here: As a special for the holidays, Double Dipping is on sale right now at both Amazon and B&N for just 99 cents! If you don't have copy yet, I hope you'll consider picking one up for yourself or giving it as a gift to an ebook-reading relative/friend.

Wishing you all a wonderful rest of the month, full of celebrations with those you love!! xox

This is so exciting for me, I actually don't know how to contain it...

Ever since I started writing fiction, it seemed a huge enough dream to get to see my novels published here in the U.S. and Canada. I figured, if I were really lucky, readers in other English-speaking countries or non-native speakers with a strong grasp of the language (i.e., not like my laughable attempts at speaking French...) might just snag a print or digital copy of one of my books and -- in that way -- my stories could travel the globe. Kinda.

But still there lingered this little fantasy I couldn't deny...the one where I imagined how it would be SO INCREDIBLY COOL if a book I'd written were translated into a language other than English, too. That a subrights agent somewhere out there might feel a story I'd written was universal enough to appeal to citizens who were part of another culture, and would think it worth the time and effort to actually translate it.

Well, that happened this week for A SUMMER IN EUROPE... The foreign translation rights were sold for the first time, and the book will be coming out in July/August 2013 in Polish!!! (My editor said the cover wouldn't be available for a while yet, but I'll definitely post a photo as soon as I get one. :)

We have some family friends who are originally from Poland. We went to one of their weddings in September (it was beautiful!), and we got to try a piece of traditional wedding bread dipped in salt. I learned the word for "thank you" (Dziękuję - pronounced something like "jen-koo-yeh"). And, one of my dancing partners from college was Polish-American. Years ago, he brought me some handpainted wooden Easter eggs made in a small village near Warsaw, which I still put out for decoration each spring... But the only other connection I have specifically to Polish culture would be -- of course -- the foods, LOL.

We have a Polish deli nearby and have picked up various delicious sliced meats and sausages and the occasional pastry. But what we really love are the cheese and potato pierogies (Polish dumplings). We buy them frozen most of the time, and just bake them until they're lightly browned. Yum. And I can tell you right now, we'll be having them in celebration this weekend!!

Do you have any favorite foods, songs, traditions or decorations that are Polish? Anything I should be sure check out?? If so, please share!

Also, just a quick FYI for anyone interested: I'm hosting a Fresh Fiction Holiday Contest this month, featuring Godiva Chocolate + HOLIDAY MAN, that runs until December 12th. The giveaway details and prizes are all here!! Wishing you a Happy St. Nick's Day!

My lovely author friend Joan Reeves (NOBODY'S CINDERELLA) tagged me to take part in this blogging meme, and I thought it was such a fun idea! So...here goes: What is your working title of your book? Pride, Prejudice and the Perfect Match
Where did the idea come from for the book? I was thinking about the whole Internet dating world and, having happily met my husband before that phenomena really existed, I've always been pretty curious about it. For fun (and with my hubby's full knowledge, LOL), I checked out a few sites like Match.com and read through a number of profiles. I thought it would be really interesting to have two characters with ulterior motives (not evil ones, mind you, just not exactly "looking for love" as their primary objective) find each other online. And the humor really came into play for me when I imagined twisting some elements from Pride and Prejudice into the story. "Lady Catherine's Love Match Website" is probably one of my favorite online creations!
What genre does your book fall under? Short Contemporary Romance
Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? Ohhh, I love this question! You know, considering my current addiction to "The Vampire Diaries," I've been looking for any reason to cast Ian Somerhalder in something (ha!), so I think he'd make a fabulous Dr. Will Darcy. As for my heroine, Beth Ann Bennet, I think she could be very well played by Willa Holland, who stars as the younger sister of the main character on the new TV show "Arrow."
What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book? A single mother and an ER doctor meet on an Internet dating site—each for reasons that have little to do with finding their perfect match—in this modern, Austen-inspired story, which is a tribute to the power of both "pride" and "prejudice" in bringing two people romantically together, despite their mutual insistence that they should stay apart...
Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? This will be one of my self-published releases, and it'll be out in mid-January 2013!
How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? The first draft took about 3 months, but I always, always need time to revise, and that often takes twice as long as the original writing.
What other books would you compare this story to within your genre? Well, it's a light romance, so it's definitely in a similar vein to On Any Given Sundae, Double Dipping and Holiday Man. Or, for those readers familiar with the Harlequin American Romance line, it's a bit like one of those stories, too, but with an Austenesque twist ;).
Who or what inspired you to write this book? The always awe-inspiring genius of Jane Austen and a great desire to honor the 200th release of her masterpiece, Pride and Prejudice.
What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest? Whether or not a reader knows the ins and outs of Pride and Prejudice, anyone should be able to follow this story. It's only slightly based on the Austen novel and diverges greatly from it in many ways, beyond just being a modern tale. However, for those who are fans, I hope they'll find some of the character names and situations to be particularly amusing!             ~*~*~*~

And now I get to tag a few awesome author friends, too, who'll be posting about their latest projects on their blogs next Wednesday the 28th. Can't wait to hear what they're working on!! Robin Bielman -- Author of WORTH THE RISKMaria Geraci -- Author of A GIRL LIKE YOUVanessa Kelly -- Author of HIS MISTLETOE BRIDEMalena Lott -- Author of SOMETHING NEWEdie Ramer -- Author of MIRACLE LANE

This time of year always reminds me of how many people in my life I'm grateful for and how fortunate I am to get to connect with those I care about -- in person or online. Please know, I count all of you among those wonderful friends. Thank you for being so kind and supportive all year long! I wish everyone who's celebrating this week a very Happy Thanksgiving!!!

p.s. Today, as part of Bookworm2Bookworm's Blogoversary Celebration, Holiday Man is the featured book! And I'm giving away a copy there, so please stop by!

Just had to share that HOLIDAY MAN is officially out! Whoo-hoo!!! I'm having a celebration here in northern Illinois :). Alas, there will be no champagne or shirtless men with abs of steel at my little party...but I've got some chocolate truffles and sparkling grape juice in the house, and I'm more than happy to share them with my friends!!

This is quick story summary of my newest contemporary romance:

A Year of Holidays...

Shannon Quinn is the small-town girl who runs "Holiday Quinn" -- a holiday-themed inn and resort based in scenic Door County, Wisconsin.

One winter evening, wealthy Minneapolis businessman, Bram Hartwick, blows into town along with the fast-falling snow. The sparks Bram and Shannon create succeed in heating up the chilly Midwestern night, not to mention plenty of holiday weekends in the year that follows...

But is their relationship only for special occasions, or might it be the elusive everyday love that neither one thought could be found?

It's available now at Amazon, B&N and Smashwords for only $2.99 -- with Sony, Apple, Kobo and more to come soon! Excerpts from the book are on each of the retails sites, so I hope you'll check it out ;).

Also: A wedding announcement!! At Austen Authors, we're celebrating the double wedding of Miss Elizabeth Bennet & Mr. Darcy as well as Miss Jane Bennet & Mr. Bingley and, of course, you are all invited to join in the festivities. So, Ladies, slip into your favorite Regency gown (or fancy jacket and boots, Gents) and jump into the fun with us!

And, a question -- what's your favorite kind of wedding cake? The classic white? Lemon? Marble? Something with a strawberry filling? (That's what my husband and I had for ours, and it was delicious.) Untraditional but interesting?

Just a quick note to say CONGRATULATIONS to the winners of Eliza Daly's blog contest: Sandra, who won the Godiva chocolates, and Pamala Knight, who won a copy of Eliza's debut novel, UNDER HER SPELL!! Way to go, ladies!

I hope everyone's having a wonderful start to November. Me? I decided to kick off the month by trying this recipe from Tasty Kitchen for *baked* Apple Cider Doughnuts... ["Not fried" means you can eat more of them, right?! Yeah, that's what I thought, too!] All I'll say is YUM!!! And, well, if a picture's worth a thousand words, here are 3,000 ;). 


Next up...I'm gonna try to make pumpkin spiced doughnuts (a girl's gotta have her goals, you know ;). What are you all doing this week??!

Today it's a pleasure to welcome one of my friends and '007 Golden Heart sisters, Eliza Daly, to Brant Flakes in celebration of her debut novel, UNDER HER SPELL! She’s going to tell us a little about her book, share a story excerpt and offer a fun giveaway: one commenter will win Godiva chocolates and another will get an e-copy of her debut story!! (Winners' names to be randomly selected by Eliza on Saturday, November 3rd and I'll post them here by Sunday the 4th.) But first...here’s a little bit about the author and her book:
Eliza Daly’s first attempt at creative writing was in fourth grade. She and her friends were huge Charlie’s Angels fans and she would sit in her bedroom at night writing scripts for them to act out at recess the following day. She was Kelly Garrett. Fast forward to the present, she’s still writing stories about beautiful women who always get their men. The journey from fourth grade script writer to published author wasn’t an easy one, but it was always an adventure and the final destination was well worth it.

When Eliza isn’t traveling for her job as an event planner, or tracing her ancestry roots through Ireland, she’s at home in Milwaukee working on her next novel, bouncing ideas off her husband Mark, and her cats Quigley and Frankie. You can find Eliza on the web at Website, Facebook, Twitter and Goodreads.  UNDER HER SPELL is available at Amazon or Barnes & Noble (coming soon) or iTunes .



About the book:When a series of failed relationships and business ventures have Monica Jackson doubting her self-worth, she turns to spell casting to attract positive energy and the opportunities needed to achieve her goals.  But can Monica’s belief in spells restore her belief in herself? 

Monica creates a spell to find her soul mate, and one to ensure the success of her new romantic event planning company, Enhance Your Romance.  Monica is confident she has found her niche until divorce lawyer Reed Walker opens a practice next door to her office.  The anti-marriage slogan plastered on his office window, and his down-on-love clients, quickly prove detrimental to Monica’s business.  When his arrival appears to trigger a string of bad luck, Monica fears one of her spells sent negative energy into the universe and it has returned to her threefold.  Although Reed is beyond sexy, and she admires his self-confidence, she’ll do whatever it takes to get the universe back on her side, and Reed out of her life. No way is she losing another business.
Reed finds himself attracted to Monica’s beauty and her optimism. His job and his parents’ divorce have made him a pessimist, especially when it comes to love. However, he soon finds that Monica’s pro-love attitude is rubbing off on him, causing him to lose his edge.  If Reed doesn’t distance himself from Monica, he’ll likely destroy his reputation as a pit bull divorce lawyer. Can Monica and Reed look past what they might be losingto realize the love they have found?
***
Happy Halloween! Thank you so much to my friend Marilyn Brant for having me here today and helping me celebrate the release of my first book. Halloween is the perfect time to talk about my new contemporary romance, Under Her Spell, which contains elements of spell casting. I can trace my curiosity in spell casting all the way back to the first movie I ever saw in the theater, Bedknobs and Broomsticks. The thought of my bed whisking me away to exotic places sounded really cool. Maybe that’s where I also got my love for travel.

Practical Magic, with Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock, has become one of my must-watch movies at Halloween. Their ancestor casts a spell cursing any man who falls in love with an Owens woman to an untimely death. Sandra Bullock’s dad dies when she’s young, and she’s convinced in the curse’s power. Not wanting her love to one day be some man’s death sentence, she creates a love spell listing qualities she believes could never exist in a man, so she’d never fall in love. If you’ve seen the movie, you know how well that spell worked for her.

However, a soul mate spell seems to work for the heroine Monica in my book Under Her Spell.  She casts a spell, which includes a letter to her soul mate describing qualities she does hope to find in a man. When divorce lawyer Reed Walker opens a practice next door to her office, he appears to possess all the qualities in her letter. Yet, the anti-marriage slogan plastered on his office window, and his down-on-love clients, quickly prove bad for Monica’s business. Monica fears the Dirtbag Spell she created sent negative energy into the universe and it has returned to her threefold.

I was reading my final galley for Under Her Spell a few days after watching Practical Magic and I found the book’s opening scene with the Dirtbag Spell playing through my head like a movie. My book hadn’t even been published and already I was casting roles for the movie. (It’s part of my creative visualization process.) In the scene, Monica’s cousin Hope wants to cast a spell on her cheating hubby. Monica is reluctant to send negative energy into the universe, yet initially she doesn’t believe Hope will cast the spell anyway. Here’s a brief excerpt.

Monica set down the bowl of salt and grabbed a pencil and pad of paper off her desk and handed them to Hope. “Write this down. It’s called,” she tapped a hot pink nail against her lip, “the dirtbag spell.”
“Like it already.” Hope jotted down the title as she perched on the edge of the bed’s purple floral comforter.
“Take one of Kyle’s socks, fill it with dirt, and add a photo of him. It’s critical you aren’t in the photo.” Monica paced, tightening the sash on her lavender silk robe. “Include something of his like…”
“His new Rolex?”
Personally, Monica would list the watch on eBay and pray for a bidding war. But Hope, no matter how ticked off, was too timid to sell Kyle’s precious watch, and too frugal to risk damaging it by mixing it with dirt.
“That’s fine. Sew up the sock and bury it in your front yard. It’ll warn all women he’s a dirtbag.”
Hope poised the pencil against her lower lip, reviewing the spell. “Don’t I have to say something when I bury it, like a chant?”
What happened to being spell ignorant?
“Bury it in the moonlight while saying…” Monica scrambled for a few rhyming lines, “moonlight, glowing bright, warn all women in your sight, the man who lives in this house, is a dirtbag and a total louse.”
“Perfect.” Hope sprang from the bed, looking inspired. “Kyle’s at work. I’m going over to the house right now to bury that sock.” She turned and marched out, a woman on a mission.
Monica nibbled nervously on her fingernail. Hope wouldn’t seriously go through with casting the spell, would she? A big part of spell casting was psychological, focusing all your energy on making something happen. Monica had never seen Hope look so determined, or vindictive. Hopefully, if she did cast the spell, the negative energy didn’t return threefold.
What was the worst that could happen?
Monica’s question is quickly answered with Reed’s arrival in the next scene.

Not that I’d have a lot of creative input if my book became a movie, but I picture Zoey Deschanel or Amanda Seyfried playing the quirky Monica. Rachel Bilson or Katie Holmes would look the part of Hope. Jake Gyllenhall would be a good fit for Reed, the down-on-love divorce lawyer. He’d fill out an Armani suit quite well. I’d considered Matthew Bomer, but he’d need to bulk up a bit and not sure if he has enough box office appeal yet in his career. The book is set in Milwaukee, which probably wouldn’t fly in a Hollywood movie, even though Bridesmaids was set there. I could picture it being set in San Francisco with al
I once saw James Patterson speak and he mentioned being on the set for the filming of Kiss the Girls. He was surprised when a character appeared, who wasn’t in his book. So if James Patterson doesn’t have much creative input, I’m sure I wouldn’t. But will I really care? My book will be a movie and I’ll be on David Letterman promoting it. There’s that creative visualization at work again. Have you ever seen a movie that was a lot different than the book? If you can't think of one, then what's your favorite Halloween movie?

Thanks for stopping by today. Please check out the upcoming stops on my blog tour, October 22-November 26. I’ll be giving away a variety of gifts, such as e-books, writing journals, and Amazon or B&N gift certificates. If you comment on 5 or more of my 20 blog stops, and are a Facebookfan, you’ll be entered in a drawing to win one of two $25 Amazon or B&N gift certificates at the end of my blog tour. Winners will be announced on my website’s news page the end of November.
***
Thanks again for joining us, Eliza!! It was a treat to have you as a guest :). And to everyone visiting, don't forget to leave a comment in answer to Eliza's question about movies so you can be entered in the giveaway here. HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

There is inevitably at least one week every fall where I spend most of it rhapsodizing about my favorite foods of the season... This was that week. *grin*

On Tuesday, I was at Austen Authors -- check out my post Celebrating the (Almond) Joys of Autumn -- and today I'm at Magical Musings -- writing about The Festivities of Fall. BTW, there's a book giveaway there this weekend as well!

Right now, I'm also the featured guest of Sally Smith O'Rourke (Austenticity), and my autumn-themed book, Double Dipping, is excerpted on her website. (The direct link to the first 3 chapters is HERE.) So, this has been a fun week of getting to talk about that story and all of the foods that signal "fall" to me...

In keeping with this (over)focus on high-caloric delights, I wanted to share a recipe link with you all because...well, I didn't want to be the only one drooling! It's for "Pumpkin Bread Pudding with Spicy Caramel Apple Sauce and Vanilla Bean Creme Anglaise." Oh. My. Goodness. It takes about fifty gazillion steps to make it, so chances of me actually going through all of them to make the recipe are slim...but I'm hoping someone who knows what they're doing in the kitchen will show me an easy version sometime. I'm open to any and all suggestions!

I hope you're all having a wonderful fall Friday. Enjoy the weekend!