Living Canvas, Karla Brandeburg

I think I would say this was a romantic mystery. In the begining we meet Audrey MacDougall as she is fearing a pink slip from her arrogant ‘s new boss. Braeden Templeton is cleaning house and to make matters worse, Audrey gets a feeling and starnage signals about him. She tried to Google him and discovers that more than 20 years before he was implicated in the death or disappearance of Cameron “Cammy” Hughes. Audrey meets Templeton and feels he is a “person of interest” in the disappearance of a Cammy 20 years ago.

Greg Ellison is a man on the train she meets ion Scotland. He comes from the states, she feels connected to him immediately but doesn’t really understand it. They talk and they are from Chicago, Elk Grove, wow neighbors. She could not shake the connection, to her surprise, Greg could not either. They go on a few dates and when things heat up either she backs off or he does. After talking about his photography and her job as an event coordinator they talk about their “dream” of a Bed and Breakfast. He gives Audrey a chance to share the dream and start a new joint venture. Audrey just cant commit. She is fearful of his wife who passed away and the fact that he has two sons. Se makes her pro and con list and still with the help of Cinda can’t decide.

Several chance meetings occur and Greg speaks of a future. Her best friend Cinda is mixed up in her fiance and his dealings with this Templeton guy and the culmination of terror, mystery and love unfolds. The intuition she has is so strong and he feels it too and uses it in the end.

What I loved about this was the steam was there but not over the top. I fell in love with Greg when they were in Florida and were getting close to making love he stopped. He told her that she has a few drinks and they should think this over and talk the next day. How romantic is that? I can’t give any reveals but, I say read it, you will definitely enjoy!

Got this one and will review this week. Stuck in sleepy New Smyrna Beach one last summer, Raine socks away her camp pay checks, worries about her druggy brother, and ignores trouble: Cal Koomer. She’s a plane ticket away from teaching orphans in Africa, and not even Cal’s surfer six-pack and the chinks she spies in his rebel armor will derail her.

The artist in Cal begs to paint Raine’s ivory skin, high cheek bones, and internal sparklers behind her eyes, but falling for her would caterwaul him into his parents’ life. No thanks. The girl was self-righteous waiting to happen. Mom served sanctimony like vegetables, three servings a day, and he had a gut full.

Rec Director Drew taunts her with “Rainey” and calls her an enabler. He is so infernally there like a horsefly—till he buzzes back to his ex.

Raine’s brother tweaks. Her dream of Africa dies small deaths. Will she figure out what to fight for and what to free before it’s too late?

For anyone who’s ever wrestled with her dreams.

From Pamela Clare’s blog follow her: http://www.twitter.com/Pamela_Clare

Check her Amazon page  http://www.amazon.com/Pamela-Clare
Sorry I’ve been away so long! I left you stuck with that shackling scene forever. Not deliberate, I assure you. I find it very hard to keep the flow of my story in mind when I’m doing other things. I’ve spent the past couple of weeks realizing I need to rework aspects of Striking Distance, freaking out over that realization, and then getting down to work.

This time, I really had to pull out all the stops to figure out what I needed to change, even hanging a clothesline across my living room and putting note cards on it with clothes pins.

I finally came to grips with the situation, went back to Chapter 1 — yes, Chapter 1 — and included an element of backstory I hadn’t wanted to include because it was just too emotional. It took an email from a friend who independently came up with the same backstory element and suggested I consider it — to which I replied “NO!” — for me to realize that this just had to be the way it was.

Now I’m back up to Chapter 3. And when is this book due? Now?

But in the midst of this, I got an email from my wonderful editor sharing with me the art for the reissue of Ride the Fire, which may be my best book of all time. Everything about that story was inspired, every moment on the page clear. I wrote it in five months while working full time — close to a record for me. And when I was done, I was so devastated by the emotional toll of the story that I could do nothing but cry for six weeks. I was a hot mess.

Ride the Fire has been out of print since I got the rights to the story back from Dorchester, which originally published it in 2005. This version will include the as-yet-unwritten epilogue, as well as some tweaks to bring it into alignment with the author’s cut of Carnal Gift. If you remember, Dorchester cut 100 pages out of Carnal Gift to make it fit the company’s maximum page count. It broke my heart and really hurt the story. It also made me revise Ride the Fire before I was even finished with it. When I self-published Carnal Gift, I restored those pages, but that meant that Ride the Fire was now out of sync.

When this version of Ride the Fire is released in February 2013, the Kenleigh-Blakewell trilogy will be as I intended it to be. The first two books are available as ebooks. Ride the Fire is being published by Berkley so it will be in both print and ebook format.

One of my favorite authors is Josie Brown. She makes me laugh and writes the best woman in power books. Here is a blog entry from her Goodreads page and the link to buy Impossibly Tongue Tied. Seriously recommend it.  Follow her here:

Josie Brown’s Blog

Amazon.com

For novelists, all of our books are our children. As a parent of nine of them (and counting!), I can honestly say that I don’t play favorites, even if one or more has done better than the others.

Until recently, authors shared parenting responsibilities with their publishers. We write the books and in many cases promote them as well, while the publishers edit, create covers, print, distribute and promote the books to bookstores and readers.

Sometimes it’s a wonderful collaboration. The book is nurtured by both, and flourishes out in the hard, cold world. But in many cases, the book is neglected by one parent or the other.

Sadly, this was the case with Impossibly Tongue Tied, my second novel. The publisher admitted they had no plans other than to toss the book onto the shelf.

Hearing this broke my heart.  At the time I wrote it, I was going through a family crisis, and put all my energy and angst into creating a fun, dark farce on the world of Hollywood fame and celebrity. I cried and laughed the whole time a wrote it. (Sort of like Diane Keaton, as she processed Jack Nicholson out of her system via her play, in Something’s Gotta Give; I’ve got that clip, below…)

From the letters I received from readers, I was happy to hear I’d accomplished my goal.

Thankfully, the publisher only has rights to the book in North America (for now, anyway; my publisher will only allow me to  buying leftover inventory at a price that is worse than wholesale, and shipping above that; bookstores get free shipping, whereas the authors do not; go figure).

For those of you who live in other parts of the world, I’ve created a digital eBook version ofImpossibly Tongue Tied, and I’ve priced it at a very reasonably. In Amazon.uk, you’ll only pay£1.96 and throughout the other Amazon online stores, EUR 2,68.

If you enjoy it, please do review it within Amazon (it will be up soon, in the Apple iTunes Bookstore as well) and on GoodReads.

My baby deserves to be loved. It takes a village to love a book,

Josie

http://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/show/2808421?utm_medium=email&utm_source=author_blog_post_digest

Well that was another fab story! I love Dani and the dynamic of Mark Ocean was just so cool. It just ended too fast. I still miss Finn and now I miss Dani and Nathan and Kayla. Another reminder our Indie authors are great sand we gotta support them.

Relatively Famous delivers Hollywood with heart. Meet Dani McKinley: A typical teen whose world is rocked when she finds out that her father is a famous Hollywood action star. Now meet Mark Ocean: A self-serving actor with a floundering career who sees that a daughter is just what he needs to reinvent himself as a family man and get back on track. When the two decide to spend the summer together, they must not only wrangle their own love lives, but try to figure out who they really are to themselves and to each other.

Now armed with credit cards, club memberships, and a new wardrobe, Dani learns that what Mark has in wealth, he sorely lacks in parenting skills. Trying to show Mark that parenting is about more than loading her up with Prada bags and taking her to movie premieres is challenging enough, but she’s also got her hands full with her new friends. Oh, and the boys… Dani meets Jason, a gorgeous young personal trainer who is easy on the eyes and wildly flirtatious. But is this smug hottie the one for her? Or will she ignore her friends eye-rolling and go for the goofy but sweet surfer?

While juggling her own complicated love life, Dani tries to set her father up with someone less likely to appear on a VH1 reality show, and someone more… well, normal. And age-appropriate. And dressed in anything but a thong bikini. But whether Mark is able to heal old wounds and move forward with anything more than a meaningless fling remains to be seen.

Can Dani fit in with this new, fast-moving California crowd without losing herself? With the world at her fingertips and hot boys now after her, staying grounded gets tough. And can Mark drop his egocentric approach to life and learn to appreciate how truly wonderful his daughter is? As driven as he is to get that A-list acting role, he’s willing to do whatever it takes to get there, even if it means using his daughter. Or is he…? Mark and Dani’s relationship hits a few highs, but the question becomes whether the lows are too much.

I loved Natalie!!  She may be my favorite heroine in this series now.  She was smart, willing to push herself to help Zach while they were prisoners. That part was so real I was so scared. I liked how she was able to deal with her past demons too. Very realistic and touching. Zach was also a damaged soul in need of healing and believing again – how can you not love a guy like that? even though he said he was not a good mate, or could never be a spouse, I knew that was not true. He had lost all his friends and his Mom and the severed relations with his Senator Dad were just among the obstacles. This story had many layers, which kept me guessing and the pages turning. It moved at a fast pace and never slipped on the details. You feel like you are right there. This is just one more reason why I love this series. You are guaranteed an exciting, believable, sexy, and emotional read. Breaking Point was another fantastic addition to the series. Fans are going to have a hard time picking their favorite among the series, but no one will be disappointed. It was that good!

“Brad, Angelina, Britney and Kevin may want to check out Josie Brown’s new novel, Impossibly Tongue-Tied, for its ripped-from-the-headlines plot that mixes their scandals together…”
– PAGE SIX, New York Post

“Josie Brown gives us another page-turning guilty pleasure.” – Marin Magazine

All over Hollywood, men are dialing O—for orgasms. Her steamy naughty talk fills them with lust and longing, and helps them perform like the studs they claim to be.

In truth, the industry’s favorite “erotic phone operatrix” is Nina Harte, a struggling actress who has put her career on hold so that her husband, Nathan, can pursue his own dreams of stardom.

When Nathan’s career takes off, so does he, leaving Nina and their four-year-old son, Jake, for his diva costar, Katerina McPherson. Then “Kat ‘n’ Nat” are crowned the media’s newest celebrity sweethearts, and Kat labels Nina an unfit mother in order to win custody of Jake, just so that she can have that highly-coveted celebrity accessory—an adorable child—sans any unsightly stretch marks.

The one person who does care about Nina is Nathan’s agent, Sam Godwin. In fact, he’s in love with her. And because he has both a heart and a conscience, Sam feels guilty for having put Nat in Kat’s path in the first place . . .

So, how will he feel when he learns that Nina and O are one and the same?

Just what I needed to read. Complete with love, lust and sex. AHHHH I will sleep well tonight! Emma Willis never saw herself as a model — especially for a sensual fantasy calendar — until she has to do a photo shoot in her twin sister’s place. When Emma puts on barely-there lingerie in front of the photographer, hottie Rafe Delacantro, she feels sexy…and more uninhibited than she’s ever been. Before she knows it, she’s enticing him to let off a little steam with her!

The minute Emma shows up, Rafe knows she’s not the model he’s expecting. She’s too fascinating, too tempting for him to resist. Fine. They’ll share a steamy fling that will end when the shoot is finished. But the more time he spends in Emma’s seductive presence, the more involved he gets…and the more he wants of her. He now has to convince her that their affair can last after the camera is put away