It was the summer of 1993, and I was fifteen years old when Sleepless in Seattle came out in theaters. I honestly don’t even remember trailers on TV for it, so I don’t remember ever anticipating seeing it, but my parents liked going to the movies as a family and this was the one they chose that weekend. I remember a lot of the movies we saw when I was in high school because back then, there was no internet, no Netflix, no streaming shows of any kind. If it wasn’t on cable or out at the Blockbuster, you didn’t see it. Some of the movies I sat through just because it was something to do, were not my favorites. The Bodyguard (first date I ever went on!). Death Becomes Her. The Nightmare Before Christmas (second date I ever went on and he didn’t even want to see it…). Hocus Pocus (this was magical in the theater!). The list goes on and on. But in the summer after my Freshman year of high school we saw one movie that stuck with me for ever and started me on a spiral of nineties romcom watching that has stuck with me to this day.

I had never heard of Nora Ephron before that day at the theater. But her words mesmerized me from the moment the first line was spoken. Every piece of the film fell together in a way that sunk so deeply into my soul I knew I would never be the same. I fell in love with the characters, the music, the story, the setting, and the romance. I laughed. I cried. I swooned. It filled my heart with joy and made me a believer in love from a young age even more so than Disney ever did for me as a child. I’m not even gonna lie, I wanted to marry me a Tom Hanks. Who freaking didn’t?

As a child I was never that kid dreaming about what I was going to do when I grow up. I honestly cannot remember a single moment in my childhood where I even really sat down and thought about what I wanted to do as a career. I became a mom incredibly young, at the age of nineteen, and stayed home with my children throughout their younger years. When I was sick of watching A Bugs Life or Veggie Tales for the five thousandth time, I would watch romantic comedies. I would buy a DVD every time we went grocery shopping. Father of the Bride 1 & 2. You’ve Got Mail. While You Were Sleeping. It Could Happen to You. I could list a hundred that I seriously know all the words to. But Sleepless and Seattle will forever hold a special place in my heart.

One day after watching the movie, my kids went down for a nap. I think I was about twenty-seven at this point. For some reason, I sat down at my computer and started writing. That ‘story’, if you could call it that, was such a mess. But it was full of the magic that Sleepless in Seattle brought me and even though it would never be published and was lost some years ago when that computer died, the feelings I had when I wrote that book were the same I had way back in 1993 when romcom came into my life. I knew right then and there I was a romantic comedy writer.

Twenty-seven years ago, I had no idea that all these years later Nora Ephron would somehow become my inner voice, pushing me to write my very own romcoms and allowing other people to publish them and read them. It is amazing to think that a woman I have never met, never spoken to, and will literally never know, inspired my entire career. And to her, I am forever thankful.

Love Me Like You Do

A runaway bride. A handsome stranger. Two pasts to put behind them.

Parker is ready to marry the man of her dreams. But he isn’t ready to marry her. When she’s dumped moments before walking down the aisle, she didn’t expect to run into the arms of a handsome stranger. The southern drawl, the dreamy eyes, she can’t fall for another man after being left at the altar – can she?

When Liam agreed to go on yet another blind date, he didn’t expect his escape would lead him to the emergency room with a runaway bride. She might have just been left at the altar, but he’s immediately drawn to her fiery spirit, kind heart and beautiful smile. Liam’s got a whole host of problems and a past that’s haunting him, now can’t be the time to fall in love, but Parker might just be the one to break down his barriers and let him live a little – if she’ll let him in.

Will these two strangers allow serendipity to force them together, or will their fears keep them apart?

From the bestselling author of The Lucky Dress comes a story about love, finding yourself and living your dreams.

Universal Amazon link: mybook.to/LoveMeLikeYouDo

About the Author

Aimee Brown is a writer of sweary, swoony romantic comedies set in Portland, Oregon. She writes closed-door romance (NO sex scenes, light kissing) with humor and crude language. She spends much of her time writing, raising three kids (who are all nearly grown now), binge-watching shows on Netflix and obsessively cleaning and redecorating her house. She’s fluent in sarcasm and has been known to utter profanities like she’s competing for a medal.

Aimee grew up in Oregon but is now a transplant living in cold Montana with her husband of twenty+ years, one of three children, and far too many pets. She is a lot older than she looks and yes, that is a tattoo across her chest.

Aimee is very active on social media. She’d love to have you stop by and say hi!

Aimee’s links:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AimeeBWrites
Facebook: https://facebook.com/AuthorAimeeBrown
Instagram: https://instagram.com/AuthorAimeeB
Website: https://mfeoromance.com/

When I inserted Testing Truth into my schedule two years ago, I had quite a few concerns about this story.

My cyborg series (both the first section and the cyborg space exploration section) is quite dark. It is set during war. Beings die (they ARE Romances and I believe in Happily EVER After so core couples and more are always safe). Bad things happen.

Truth, however, is a fun-loving cyborg warrior. He deals with darkness by making jokes and causing chaos. He has known loss and torture and horror but he chooses to focus on the good, the fun, the laughs.

This means any story featuring Truth won’t be overly dark in tone. He simply won’t allow that to happen. He’ll crack a joke and the tone will become light again.

I worried, two years ago, reading buddies wouldn’t embrace this lighter story.

Then the Great Pause happened.

I know I can’t deal with super dark-toned stories at the moment. The world is dark enough.

I’ve been reading lighter stories. And I suspect many reading buddies have been doing the same.

Testing Truth is definitely a lighter story. There is still a high death count. Bad things DO happen. But Truth’s reactions to these events keep the tone light, the jokes flowing and the chaos happening. His heroine is a princess. Her entourage is…unusual. There’s even a mini-dragon in this story. (grins)

And, of course, Testing Truth IS a romance. There are sexy times and love and those delicious aww… moments I adore in romances. Romance is all about love and hope and optimism, something everyone would benefit from having more of today.

I believe Testing Truth is the perfect Cynthia Sax story for this time. It is the story I was meant to write and the story reading buddies were meant to read. I hope you enjoy it!

Question:  Have YOUR reading habits changed during the Great Pause? Are you reading shorter stories, longer stories, lighter stories, darker stories, re-reading more, reading more new-to-you writers, etc?

Testing Truth

A fun-loving cyborg gets serious about love.

Truth lives each moment as though it were his last. The cyborg warrior rushes into danger, teases beings he shouldn’t provoke, accepts every call of adventure he encounters.

When a prissy little human princess floats into the Rebel structure Truth is occupying, seeking a mercenary to assist her and her unusual entourage, he volunteers to be her warrior. She claims their assignment is dangerous, warns him he might not survive the task.

That is exactly the type of fun he has been seeking.

Princess Nanette of the planet Royaume must rescue her estranged brother from an enemy prison ship. That is her duty, and she has been trained to always place the needs of her planet and her subjects before her own. Nancy doesn’t have the freedom to indulge her passions for a certain dark-haired, gray-skinned cyborg. Not permanently and not publicly.

But she is unable to resist the warrior. Truth, with his laughing eyes, smiling lips, and rough hands, tempts her as no one else ever has. He could be her one fleeting act of rebellion before she’s matched with the powerful ruler her planet requires.

If they survive their current mission.

Their love is doomed. Their lifespans are at risk. This cyborg and his princess will need the help of every ally they have if they wish to see another sunrise.

Buy Now:
Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08BTYN7TT
Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08BTYN7TT
Amazon AUS: https://www.amazon.com.au/gp/product/B08BTYN7TT
Apple Books: https://books.apple.com/us/book/testing-truth/id1520415369
B&N: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/testing-truth-cynthia-sax/1137237855
Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/testing-truth
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1029497

About Cynthia Sax

USA Today bestselling author Cynthia Sax writes steamy Cyborg, Alien and Contemporary Romances. Her stories have been featured in Star Magazine, Real Time With Bill Maher, and numerous best of top ten lists.

Sign up for her dirty-joke-filled monthly newsletter and visit her on the web at www.CynthiaSax.com

Website:  https://cynthiasax.com/
Newsletter:   https://tasteofcyn.com/2014/05/28/newsletter/
Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/cynthiasax/
Twitter:  @CynthiaSax
Blog:  https://tasteofcyn.com/

UPDATE: The winner is Rachel Lerner!
*~*~*

My sincere thanks to Delilah for allowing me to return to her wonderful blog and share an update of Diana Cosby’s Romance Readers Build A Habitat For Humanity Home.

A bit of background.  Romance readers are AMAZING, and SO is Habitat For Humanity, a charity that I love supporting and volunteering for.  Several years ago I thought, why not pair the two and help a deserving family receive a home?  And, the Diana Cosby’s Romance Reader’s Build A Habitat For Humanity House fundraiser was born.

I contacted the Habitat For Humanity office in Grayson County, Texas, where I’ve had the honor of helping with several builds and spoke with Laurie Mealy, Executive Director.  She embraced the project and was thrilled at the thought of pairing romance readers, who love stories where heroes and heroines overcome challenges to make their dreams come true, with making the dream of homeownership for a deserving family a reality.

Goal:  Fund an entire home – $55,000. 

I kicked off the challenge by donating $200.  As I write this, we’ve raised $22,135, which includes donations from several countries.  Romance readers are amazing, and I have complete faith that as the stories they love, they will continue to join together to raise the amount necessary to give a deserving family a home.

How it works:

As readers send donations to Habitat for Humanity of Grayson County for the ‘Diana Cosby’s Readers Build A Habitat For Humanity House of Love,’ the total contributions are updated below the house graphic on the upper right side of their homepage.  Donations can be sent via PayPal by ‘clicking’ on the house, which takes you to the donation page, or by mailing a check or money order to:

Habitat for Humanity of Grayson County
901 N. Grand Avenue
P.O. Box 2725
Sherman, TX 75091

*Please note on your donation: ‘For Diana Cosby’s Romance Readers Build A Habitat For Humanity House.’

Again, my sincere thanks to Delilah for allowing me to return to her blog, and another huge thanks to everyone for helping make an incredible difference in a deserving family’s life.  For when they walk into a Habitat For Humanity house, it’s more thank mortar and wood, but a place where they can call home.

*Photos used with permission of Habitat For Humanity Grayson County, TX.

Contest

***ONE winner will be drawn from everyone who posts on my Habitat For Humanity post on Delilah’s blog between 18 September 2020 – 27 September 2020.  The winner will receive a Mug & Tote.

About the Author

About the Author

A retired Navy Chief, Diana Cosby is an international bestselling author of Scottish medieval romantic suspense. Books in her award-winning MacGruder Brothers series have been translated into five languages. Diana has spoken at the Library of Congress, Lady Jane’s Salon in NYC, and appeared in Woman’s Day, on USA Today’s romance blog, “Happy Ever After,” MSN.com, Atlantic County Women Magazine, and Texoma Living Magazine.

After her career in the Navy, Diana dove into her passion – writing romance novels. With 34 moves behind her, she was anxious to create characters who reflected the amazing cultures and people she’s met throughout the world. After the release of the bestselling MacGruder Brothers series and The Oath Trilogy, she released the bestselling The Forbidden Series.

Diana looks forward to the years of writing ahead and meeting the amazing people who will share this journey.

Diana Cosby, International Best-Selling Author
www.dianacosby.com
The Oath Trilogy
MacGruder Brother Series
The Forbidden Series

The winners are…Candi Kandelas, Colleen C, and Amanda Zook!
*~*~*

Protect: keep safe from harm or injury; what real men do

I guess I have a hero complex because my favorite stories are the ones with strong heroes who have a soft spot and who also will do anything they can to protect women, especially those they love. Protecting Maddie kicked off a series for me in  Susan Stoker’s Special Forces World, and brought to life Hawkeye St. John, one of my favorite heroes. Readers loved the story so much I was urged to keep it going. Well, of course! Writing about real heroes is one of the best things to do. And Maddie’s success brought readers to the other stories.

So here, for you, is a taste of all five books in the series:

Leave a comment for your choice of one of these books!

Get all the links here: desireeholt.com

Protecting Maddie

When Maddie Winslow talked a student out of his gun in her classroom, she never figured it would set off a chain of events that put her life in grave danger, and the lives of her parents.

Hiding in WitSec for thirty years, her parents thought they had beaten the odds—until the image of Maddie, an identical replica of her mother—hits the television airwaves and the people who have been seeking revenge all these years find her. Intent on learning where her mother is hiding, they break into her home and then try to kidnap her. Frightened, she goes to her friend, Zee, who once dated someone in Delta Force. She calls him to explain her friend’s situation, but he’s prepping for a mission and can’t leave the base.

Hunter “Hawkeye” St. John, a Delta Force team member, is on medical leave recuperating in Tampa and chafing for some action. When the he and Maddie meet, the sparks flying between them sizzle the air. But if Hawkeye wants to move forward with Maddie he first has to keep her safe and then eliminate the bad guys.

Protecting Cassie

Injured and discharged, he is lost…

Sam Alvarez is newly discharged from SEALs that had been his entire life. Without the Team he is lost, but a bad injury to his left arm ended his career. His rehab is slow and he resents everything. The tiny isolated cabin in Maine former SEAL John “Tex” Keenan found for him is just what he wants.

Frightened and in hiding…

Physical therapist Cassie Malone had a job she loved, great friends and a man in her life she thought was Prince Charming. Until by accident she discovered he’s one of Boston’s drug kingpins. Now she’s hiding out in tiny Castile and scared he’ll find her.

When Fate throws Cassie and Sam together, it’s a battle for him to let her help him relearn everything. His surliness is in high gear and she’s always looking over her shoulder. But neither of them counted on or expected the hot, hot attraction blazing between them.

When drug smugglers show up and put everyone in danger, including Cassie, it’s up to Sam to use his skills to take them down and save the woman he’s come to love. But can he do it before it’s too late?

Protecting Amy

She thought her past was firmly behind her…

Amy Ressler was a vivacious, outgoing person, looking forward to her first job after graduating college. Until the night her stepbrother slaughtered her entire family and thought she was dead, too. For ten years she’d been living under an assumed name in a house in Tampa with security guards and a security system. Her agoraphobia keeps her a prisoner in the house where she designs sought after video games.

Quinn Molloy couldn’t seem to find a place for himself when he left the SEALS…

He has been part of the teams for eighteen years and suddenly an injury left him with no place to go, except to visit his friends Melody and Tex Keenan. Where they introduce him online to KitCat, Amy in her online disguise, a terrified woman who needs a bodyguard.

The killer is loose…

When Matthew Baker escapes from jail the hunt is on, led by the US Marshals. But with Amy helpless in her self-imposed prison, Quinn accepts the job as her personal bodyguard, and they discover that what starts online can explode n the bedroom. As long as he can keep her alive.

Protecting Arizona

She wasn’t a no-name sex kind of woman but stress had gotten the better of her…

She’d never see him again so she could indulge every need and desire she had with this hot, sexy, intense, troubled man. Now she has to put it out of her mind as the DEA task force she’s on prepares to take down dangerous drug kingpin Luca Vasquez, coincidentally her brother-in-law. When her sister is murdered and her niece disappears, se leaves he task force to find her.

He couldn’t get the memories of the woman out of his mind…

Being a SEAL was the only thing Clint “Razor” DaCosta had known for twenty years until a disastrous mission ended his career. Now dreams of the raw sex with the passionate redhead are the only things that keep the nightmares of that mission at bay. He’s still trying to figure out what to do with the rest of his life when a phone call from a friend brings him to a shocking meeting.

Passion…danger…murder…a lethal combination

No one is more shocked than Razor and Arizona when he answers her call for help. The heat is still there and it’s hard to put aside the memories of their scorching sex. But first, they must find her niece and avenge her sister’s murder. And hope they both don’t get killed in the takedown.

And the newest…

Protecting Terra

When Terra Oenning and Griffin Dunne were paired in a Department of Homeland Security Op, neither of them expected the heat that exploded between them like the cabin they were surveilling. Personal relationships have no place in their lives. Ever. Period. That’s it. Except the night the cabin blows up so does their restraint, the sex between them so hot it sets fire to the sheets.

When the trail they are following takes them to the frozen north of Maine, even that isn’t enough to cool them down, but like experienced DHS agents, they never take their eyes off their assignment. Terrorists, computer hackers and the Croatian Mafia are combining to destroy the United States and Terra and must focus on destroying them. No problem. Despite the addictive, off-the-charts sex, they are trained agents who do their job, surveilling key players and helping to set up the takedown.

But when it goes awry and Terra is caught in the crosshairs, it will be up to Griffin to rescue her, a wake-up call for both of them that maybe, just maybe, what they have between them is real.

During Facebook parties to celebrate book releases, I sometimes ask the readers, “What do you want to know about Hawaii?” As someone who was born and raised here in the islands, I know a few things…

I thought it might be fun to turn it into a weekly thing that I post in my reader group on Facebook each Wednesday and call it Wiki Wednesdays.

UPDATE: The winner is…Eileen McCall!
*~*~*

Yeah, I may be posting more puzzles…

I went to the ER last night because I couldn’t stand the throbbing in my hand. I broke my pinky and sprained my hand. I’m waiting today for a referral to get it casted. The stupid temporary splint is not keyboard-friendly! Swim season is officially over for me now. I’ll be grumpy for a while…

Puzzle Contest

Tell me who they are for a chance to win a $5 Amazon gift card. If you have a snippet of story, too, I’d love to read it!

I mentioned that I fell last Friday night, right? My hand hurt, but hell, I’ve broken two twos in separate instances over the past year, and no big deal. Now, I’m not at all sure I broke my hand—I won’t go to the doctor unless I have to, because when I went for my broken toe the first time, they handed me an ace bandage and said take some ibuprofen, so I did that for toe #2. I’ll follow the same advice for this injury.

The problem is—a toe I can do without. My hand is another thing altogether. Typing with a hand and one thumb is a PITA. I’m slow, make tons of mistakes, and my hand aches, so I’m not inclined to do it for very long. My lovely September schedule of editing and writing is in the toilet, now. I can’t paint (well, I could, but I don’t want to now), I for sure can’t crochet. Making my own bed is painful. Swimming yesterday was painful. Wah-wah-wah.

And let’s not even mention how much I mourn the loss of my computer glasses…

So, if I’m a little more absent than usual, you know why. In the meantime, check out the open contests. I’ll be back with a better mood soon. 🙂

Open Contests and Offers

1. A New Puzzle-Contest!  — Ends soon! Win an Amazon gift card!
2. Landra Graf: Sci-Fi Television Shows (Contest) — Win a FREE book!
3. One Craptastic Night — Puzzle Contest — Win an Amazon gift card!
4. Get your FREE Love in Lockdown stories! — EVERYONE! Get your FREE stories!