Guest Posts

I’m pleased today to welcome Robin Kaye, the author of Breakfast in Bed, her newest book out! back to Peeking Between the Pages. I’ve been lucky enough to read the first two books in this great contemporary romance series: Romeo, Romeo and Too Hot to Handle and enjoyed them immensely. They all center around the Ronaldi family and they’re funny, full of hanky panky and just a great way to spend the afternoon. I look forward to reading this one of her’s as well. In the meantime, let’s sit back and relax and see what Robin has to say in regards to the question – Does she know any Domestic Gods?…

A queston I get asked a lot about my series is if I know any Domestic Gods—men who cook and clean and take out the trash and LIKE doing it (and they just so happen to be the heroes of my books!)… Of course I know real Domestic Gods, heck, I’m married to one. Some of the things he does show up in my books. He’s my own personal hero, but he’s definitely not a hero in any of my books.

My husband is a passable cook, cleans like nobody’s business, does the laundry, takes great care of the kids, and can build/remodel a house, a football stadium, or anything in between. I have to admit he looks just as good in an apron as he does in a hardhat and tool belt.

There was one scene in Romeo, Romeo when Rosalie awoke to find Nick lifting her couch to vacuum under it. That came from real life. When my husband and I were dating, he lived 60 miles away, so under the watchful eye of my mother, he would spend every weekend at my house sleeping on the couch. Saturdays were my cleaning days and Stephen would always help. Okay, I’d help him since he did a much better job than I ever would. One day my mother and I walked into the living room and caught him holding up our huge couch with one hand while vacuuming under it. My mother turned to me and said, “Marry him.” So I did.

A few years later, my mother, a marriage and family therapist, met George, another Domestic God. He would invite himself over to fix things around her house, cook her dinner, and generally made himself indispensable. They fell in love and my mom took her own advice and married George. He does all the cooking, cleaning, and laundry, and is her part-time secretary at the office. Needless to say, she’s a very happy woman.

In Breakfast in Bed, the third book in my Domestic Gods series, coming out in December, Rich Ronaldi, the hero, is the anti-Domestic God. He’s the only son of a very Italian family and is the prince his mother raised him to be. When his girlfriend dumps him because he’s not marriage material, he takes a page from his brother-in-laws’ books and decides to become a Domestic God to win her back. All he needs is a coach.

When by some fluke, Becca and Rich sublet the same apartment, the two find themselves fighting over who is the rightful tenant. Rich offers to let Becca and her three-legged killer cat stay for a few months until her brownstone apartment is remodeled on one condition: She has to coach him on becoming more domestic. Becca accepts the deal figuring that she could live with anyone for a couple months and since Rich is so interested in learning, she’d get out of cooking and cleaning for as long as it lasts. All she has to do is put up with Rich Ronaldi who has three post-secondary degrees and can’t figure out how to cook a grilled cheese sandwich. He’s cocky, arrogant, and too good-looking for words, and worse, he’s completely adorable every time he makes a fool of himself. It’s a good thing Becca doesn’t like him, because she thinks a man like him should come with a warning sign. Danger!

All but one of Rich’s foibles came from real life. The only one that didn’t took some research on my part. I called a friend who trains Maytag Repair Men to ask how to start a fire in the drier. He just laughed at me and told me that most people try to avoid that but since we’ve been best friends since I was 15, he wasn’t surprised. He gave me several possibilities and one was perfect! Now you have to read the book to find out exactly what happened. And let me tell you, the dryer fire was nothing compared to the sparks flying between Rich and Becca.

So, do you know any Domestic Gods? I’ll be checking in to hear your fabulous stories in the comments!

Breakfast in Bed by Robin Kaye—in stores January 2010
The third funny, sexy, contemporary romance from a fresh new voice in romance fiction

Rich, the epitome of “anti-domestic,” can’t cook to save his life, and his idea of cleaning his apartment is to invite his mother over. But he’s ready to settle down, and he can’t stop thinking about the ex-girlfriend who got away. When he notices that his soon-to-be-married friends cooked and cleaned their way into their women’s hearts, he asks his friend Becca to help transform him into a nurturing man to win back his ex.

Rich is the only guy who’s taken the time to know Becca for herself. She decides she’ll give him the makeover he’s asking for, though she’ll be damned if she’s going to turn him into a domestic god for another woman. She wants Rich for herself, but how can she convince him that her kitchen and her bedroom are the only domestic locales he desires?

About the Author

Award-winning author Robin Kaye is a professional writer and winner of the Romance Writers of America Golden Heart award for her first novel, Romeo, Romeo. Once it was published, Romeo, Romeo won the 2008 Best Contemporary itRom (Italian Romance) Award by Romance B(u)y the Book, the 2009 HOLT Medallion Contest First Place Winner for Best Romantic Comedy and the 2009 NJRW Golden Leaf Award Winner for Best Single Title. Her romantic comedies feature sexy, nurturing heroes and feisty, independent heroines. She lives with her husband and three children in Mt. Airy, Maryland. For more information, please visit Robin Kaye’s website.

Thanks so much Robin for this terrific guest post! I could sure use one of those wonderful Domestic Gods!

GIVEAWAY DETAILS

I have 2 copies of Breakfast in Bed by Robin Kaye courtesy of Danielle at Sourcebooks to share with my readers! To enter…

• For 1 entry leave me a comment with a way to contact you.
• For 2 entries follow my blog. If you do, thank you and let me know so I can enter you for the extra entry.
• For 3 entries blog or tweet this giveaway.

This giveaway is open to US & Canadian residents only (no PO boxes) and I’ll be drawing for the winners on Sunday, February 7, 2010. Good luck to you all!

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I’m really excited to welcome author Catherine McKenzie to Peeking Between the Pages today. Her debut novel Spin is fantastic! (check out my review). I really enjoyed it and look forward to reading more from Catherine in the future. In the meantime Catherine is here with us today to share her thoughts on How her Ideas for her novel Spin came About…

The initial idea for Spin came to me in the fall of 2007. Certain young, female celebrities were going in and out of rehab and the paparazzi were going crazy. I read a story about one actress hooking up with someone while she was in rehab. Either a fellow patient or a staff member had leaked the story. I remember watching footage of a hoard of paparazzi sitting outside a rehabilitation center, hoping for a glimpse of her. I had a thought. “I wonder why no one’s ever followed a celebrity into rehab. Imagine the stuff they’d hear!” This was soon followed by another thought. “What a great idea for a book!”

That night I had trouble sleeping. Ideas were coming fast and furious. Why would any journalist accept this assignment? How would they get picked for it in the first place? OK, wait. What if the journalist kind of needed to be in rehab herself? But how would the magazine know that? What if she showed up drunk to a job interview, not for this job, but for a related job … etc. The next morning, I do what I always do when I get an idea for a book – write the ideas down in a computer file, and let them germinate. Some premises seem great but don’t lead anywhere. Others don’t seem big enough to fill a whole book. I can only tell after I spend a couple of months thinking about it, collecting pieces, stringing them together.

This one stuck. The ideas kept coming. All of my books contain a lot of music and cultural references, but I’d been wanting to take it to another level for a while. Really, I wanted to write a book that was a musical, if that makes any sense. I wanted to use music in a book the way it’s used in the movies. So the main character, Katie, became a music-writer, obsessed with music. I also wanted to explore our fascination with celebrities and how it seems OK to us, as a society, to know the personal details of strangers’ lives simply because they’re famous. Sounds serious, right? But I didn’t want to write a super-serious book. I wanted it to be funny, fun, but not so light that I skipped the whole point of the book.

And so. One day in early January, 2008, I sat down to write. Katie was speaking to me, loud and clear. Other characters appeared – some planned, some organic. I laughed, I struggled, I listened to a lot of music. Six months later I had a first draft. Four drafts later I had a book deal. And now it’s in your hands, gentle reader. Enjoy.
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Thank you Catherine for sharing with us today! Best of luck to you in the future! Be sure to take a peek at Catherine’s website and check out the Browse Inside feature for Spin at HarperCollins Canada to learn more about the novel.

GIVEAWAY DETAILS

I have two copies of Spin to share with one of my lucky readers. One copy is courtesy of Diane and HarperCollins Canada (thank you!) and open to Canadian residents only! and the other is my very gently read copy and that’s open to everyone! What do you need to do to enter…

• For 1 entry leave me a comment with a way to contact you please. Please le me know if you are a Canadian entrant as you will be going on a separate list.
• For 2 entries follow my blog. Let me know in your comment if you already do.
• For 3 entries blog or tweet this giveaway to spread the word.

I will draw for the winners of this giveaway on Sunday, February 7, 2010. Good luck to all!

AGAIN PLEASE NOTE THAT WHILE 1 COPY IS CANADA ONLY, THE OTHER IS OPEN WORLDWIDE!

Be sure to check both of my sidebars for other great giveaways!

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I’m really pleased to welcome Michael Baron back to Peeking Between the Pages. He visited with us a while back in conjunction with his novel When You Went Away and he wrote a terrific guest post. Now he’s back this time with his newest novel called Crossing the Bridge which released on January 5. One of the reasons I like having Michael here is because of his really wonderful and heartfelt guest posts and today he shares with us another one about how A Single Kiss can Change Your Life…

Much of the action in my new novel, Crossing the Bridge, stems from a single, monumental kiss. This is no normal kiss (how sad would it be if an essential moment in my novel was a “normal” kiss?). It’s a spontaneous, surreptitious one that has profound meaning for Hugh, the protagonist, but must never be repeated. This kiss literally changes his life — and while the kiss is revelatory, the changes are unfortunate, at least for a very long time.

I know from experience that a single kiss can have this kind of impact. Happily, my own path to this discovery was much less fraught than Hugh’s. I was walking on a Manhattan street with Anne, a woman who had, over the past couple of years, become my very best friend. We shared a fascination with books, music, food, and coffee, she regularly made me laugh, and she was one of the few people I’d ever met who could get me to open up about the things that were really important to me. She was also beautiful and I was very definitely attracted to her. Still, I had never pursued a romantic relationship with her. When we’d become friends, I was married, so romance wasn’t a consideration. My marriage ended about a year later, but by that point, Anne and I were such good friends, and I so completely needed a good friend, that I wasn’t willing to risk what we already had.

This night, though, as I walked her back to her apartment, something felt different. We’d been to a Mexican restaurant we frequented, and I could have attributed this feeling to the Margaritas, but I’d only had one and the restaurant used criminally little tequila in their drinks. In all likelihood, it had something to do with the conversation we’d had during our enchiladas. She told me some new things about her family that night and that got me talking about some long-undiscussed memories, and it just seemed as though we’d gotten to know each other at another level. As we walked down her block, I thought about how I’d feel if Anne got a serious boyfriend. She’d dated a number of men since we’d been friends, but hadn’t stuck with any of them for very long. The notion that she might fall in love with someone — and mind you this was all in my head; she hadn’t mentioned a guy in months — devastated me. By the time we got to the door of her building, I was filled with an entirely fabricated sense of loss.

So when we moved to hug goodbye as we always did, I kissed her instead. Remarkably, she didn’t seem surprised by this in any way. Even more remarkably, the kiss exceeded any anticipation I had for the kiss. It was eternal and electrifying at the same time. In the days and weeks that followed, we came to realize that any fears we had about romance screwing up our friendship were unfounded. The depth of our friendship was an indicator of how much we were meant to be together, not a barrier. Anne and I got married a year and a half later and we’ve been together ever since.

The memory of that kiss remains one of the strongest memories I have. It was then that I realized that a single kiss can change your life.
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Thank you so much for that guest post Michael and what a wonderful story! Being married to your best friend is awesome!

Here’s a bit about Michael’s newest novel Crossing the Bridge from Amazon.com:

Hugh Penders has been stuck in neutral for nearly a decade since his brother Chase died in a car accident. He carries with him two secrets that he has never been able to share with anyone: that he believes he might have been able to prevent the accident, and that he was deeply in love with Chase’s girlfriend, Iris.

When Hugh’s father suffers a debilitating heart attack, Hugh must return to the New England home he’s been running away from for the past ten years. One day, he encounters Iris – who has long since moved away – on the street. They begin a friendship and Hugh believes he’s falling in love with Iris all over again.

But the ghost of Chase haunts both of them. And when each reveals a truth the other never knew, their lives, their vision of Chase, and their chances for a future together will change forever.

Charged by the power of desire and the impact of loss, Crossing the Bridge is a soulful, romantic novel that will speak to you deeply.

*To purchase Crossing the Bridge you can go here in the US and here in Canada.

GIVEAWAY DETAILS

Now this giveaway is going to be a little different in that it isn’t for Michael’s newest novel, Crossing the Bridge which just released. It is actually going to be for a signed advance copy of his next novel, The Journey Home which is due out in May 2010. Isn’t that just awesome! It sounds like another terrific novel from Michael Baron. Take a peak at what The Journey Home is about over on Amazon.

To enter for a signed advance copy of The Journey Home by Michael Baron available May 2010…

• For 1 entry leave me a comment with a way to contact you please.
• For 2 entries follow my blog. If you’re already a follower just let me know in your comment.
• For 3 entries blog or tweet this giveaway and spread the word.

This giveaway is open to US & Canadian residents only and I’ll be drawing for the winner on Sunday, January 31, 2010. Good luck to you all!

Be sure to check both of my sidebars for other great giveaways!

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I am very pleased to welcome Karen White, author of The Girl on Legare Street to Peeking Between the Pages today. I’ve read a few of Karen’s books and am a loyal fan now. She has a wonderful writing style that I really enjoy. I just reviewed this book yesterday and you can peek at my review right here to see what this lovely novel is about. Let’s sit back and relax with our favorite drink of choice and see what Karen has to say about how she finds time to write and where she writes…

Two of the most frequently asked questions I get during my book club rounds are how do I find time to write and where do I write? Believe it or not, the answer to both questions is the same—whatever works!

I’m the mother of two active teenagers, have a husband who frequently travels for work, and am responsible for the care and feeding of a dog and guinea pig. It’s a wonder I can find time to write the grocery list, much less two 100,000+ word books each year.

We’ve all heard the old adage “necessity is the mother of invention.” I realized that if I wanted to carve out a career as a writer out of my already very busy life, I would have to figure out how to squeeze more time out of the day—sort of like the way the IRS squeezes money out of me that I didn’t think I had. I’m not a big believer in “I don’t have time.” We’re all given twenty-four hours each day to make of it as we wish. Well, minus the demands on my time of two children who shall go nameless…

In the beginning, when I was just starting out and didn’t have a contract, I wrote in my home office on my desktop computer while my children were napping. When they woke up signaled the end of my daily writing time. After I signed my first contract and had a deadline to meet, I’d wake up half an hour earlier and once a week paid somebody to pick them up from preschool to give me a couple of extra hours.

Then the kids grew a little older, got a little more active and I got my first laptop. I’d bring it to swim lessons, horseback riding lessons, football practice, piano lessons. I joke that I should credit my car for helping me write during those years.

Still I struggled with being forced to write during times that I didn’t always find productive. My best writing time has always been—and still is—first thing in the morning when no other thoughts besides my book have entered my head. By getting up two hours earlier than the rest of the bed-hogs in my house on Saturdays and Sundays, I can get more writing done during that time than I usually accomplish during the week.

But now that I have two big deadlines each year, I’m writing all the time. For instance, I’m in the car right now (don’t worry—my daughter’s driving ) going to our Pilates class. It’s about a 20-minute drive and I figure I should be able to whip up a blog post in that amount of time. It’s finding time like this that makes a difference.

I no longer wait for the muse to hit me—I can’t afford it! I write every day whether or not I want to. Especially now with a book due in about a month. Writer’s block? Can’t afford that either. I just sit down and write. It’s always easier to fix a bad page than a blank one.

This end-of-book time is always the hardest. My favorite time is starting a book. I sit out on my huge screen porch that overlooks woods and horse pasture with a notepad and pencil—the only time I don’t use a computer—and just jot down what comes to my head. At least until the phone rings, or the dryer buzzes, or one of my children comes home from school and tells me they think they have strep. Nope—things haven’t changed all that much in the years since I first sat down and started to write my very first book. Except now I know that I can write at least a page while sitting in the pediatrician’s waiting room.
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Karen, thank you so much for joining us today with this terrific guest post. I certainly look forward to reading your next novel! All the best to you!

GIVEAWAY DETAILS

I have two copies of The Girl on Legare Street by Karen White, courtesy of Joy (thank you Joy), to share with my lucky readers. To enter…

• For 1 entry leave me a comment with a way to contact you.
• For 2 entries follow my blog. If you already do, thank you and let me know please.
• For 3 entries blog or tweet this giveaway to spread the word.

This giveaway is open to US & Canadian residents only as the publisher will be sending the books out. I will be drawing for the winners on Sunday, December 27, 2009. Good luck to you all!

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I am so pleased today to have John Shors visiting Peeking Between the Pages. I reviewed Dragon House yesterday and it is definitely a novel that will be one of my favorites of 2009! You can grab a look at my review here if you’d like. So without further delay here is the fantastic guest post from John Shors on How Street Children Inspired Dragon House.

Happy holidays, everyone. I’d like to offer a post on how my new novel, Dragon House, came to be.

I’ve been fortunate enough to do a lot of traveling. A time existed, after I graduated from college, when I taught English in Japan and then backpacked around Asia. I had little money and tended to stay in rooms that cost a few dollars a night. With nothing more than a couple sets of t-shirts and shorts in my backpack, I visited places such as Vietnam, Thailand, Nepal, India, Indonesia, Hong Kong, and Korea. Some of these countries I grew to know quite well. I’d find a cheap room, rent a scooter, and explore as much of an area as possible. Sometimes my future wife or my friends were with me, though I was often alone.

I saw so many beautiful things throughout these adventures, sights such as the Taj Mahal, the Himalayan peaks, and white-sand beaches unspoiled by humanity’s touch. But I think that I witnessed the most beauty within the street children I encountered. These children seemed so similar, country to country. They were out at all times of day and night, selling their postcards, their fans, their flowers. For many nights in Thailand, I played Connect Four with a boy who wasn’t older than seven or eight. We bet a dollar each game. Some travelers told me not to play with him, convinced that his parents were nearby and were sending him out at night to work. But I never saw his parents, and one night I spied him sleeping on a sidewalk, a piece of cardboard his bed. I don’t think I ever beat him in a game.

Throughout these travels I met hundreds, if not thousands, of children who lived on the street. Sometimes they were sick or had a physical deformity. But most of them were simply homeless—abandoned into extreme poverty. Bright, eager, and unafraid to laugh with a stranger, they taught me so much. I owe them so much.

My encounters with street children inspired my new novel, Dragon House. Set in modern-day Vietnam, Dragon House tells the tale of Iris and Noah—two Americans who, as a way of healing their own painful pasts, open a center to house and educate Vietnamese street children.

I’m quite excited about Dragon House. David Oliver Relin, who lived in Vietnam, and is the best-selling author of Three Cups of Tea, let me know that he thought it was “a sprawling, vibrant novel.” Robert Olen Butler, who fought in the Vietnam War, and won a Pulitzer Prize for his collection of short stories about Vietnamese Americans, told me that Dragon House is “a strong, important work from a gifted writer.” Such feedback from two wonderful writers, and two people who spent a significant amount of time in Vietnam, means a great deal to me.

It is my hope that Dragon House will be a success, and out of that success something good can happen. I am donating some of the funds generated from my book to an organization called Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation. This group works with children in crisis throughout Vietnam. Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation offers disadvantaged children a wide range of services and support to help them break out of poverty, forever, by getting them back to school and helping them achieve their best. If you would like more information on Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation, and what I am doing to help, please visit www.dragonhousebook.com.

What’s especially wonderful is that many readers, after finishing Dragon House, have made direct contributions to Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation. To date, we’ve raised enough money to buy complete sets of school books for 400 street children.

I appreciate the support of everyone who reads Dragon House because the success of my novel will allow me to continue to help street children in Vietnam, and to raise the level of awareness of the perils that street children face around the world.

My very best wishes to you.
John Shors
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John, thanks so much for the wonderful post. I think it’s so important to help children all over the world so I wish you every success with helping these children! I’d also like to thank you for a really terrific novel!

GIVEAWAY DETAILS

I have two copies of Dragon House to share with two of my lucky readers. What can you do to enter…

• For 1 entry leave me a comment with a way to contact you.
• For 2 entries follow my blog. If you do already, just let me know and I’ll put you down for an extra entry.
• For 3 entries blog or tweet this giveaway to spread the word.

This giveaway will be open to US & Canadian residents only for 1 of the copies as it’s coming from the publisher and internationally open for the other copy as it is my review copy that I’ll be putting up for grabs. I will draw for the winners on Saturday, December 19, 2009. Good luck everyone!

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