That’s the number of loads of laundry I have to do every week. As a stay at home mom and writer, I struggle every day finding the balance between it all. Since the home is my office, I can’t stand when it’s a mess. If the dishes are piling high, the laundry room door won’t shut, or if there is dirt all over the floor, I find it hard to concentrate. Then let’s add three screaming, singing, dancing kids in the mix with their wails for more milk and their toys with wheels, bells and whistles that are so loud I can’t hear myself think. Cliché, but so true.
But, yesterday, as I stood in my kitchen and folded, and folded and folded, I realized if it were any different I might not like the reality so much. If I didn’t have all those clothes to fold it could mean a number of things.
The best possible scenario would be that I’ve become filthy rich from my book sells and I’ve hired someone to do my laundry. Yah! That might not be so bad.
The other scenarios aren’t so great. They could mean that we’ve lost everything we have, so we don’t have any clothes. Worse, it could mean that my little people are no longer around. The thought of something bad happening to my children was too much to bear, so I began folding with a little more gusto.
Now, when I look at all those dirty clothes, I say “Bring It On.” Always try to find the silver lining in life!
Cupid’s Angels
Ellie Childs isn’t looking for love. She’s looking for an AC technician for the Forest Wood Senior Center. But, when the repairman happens to be tall, dark, and handsome, he has the goods to make her change her mind. Unfortunately, he’s taken by a blonde Barbie.
David White moved to Cupid, Arkansas, to be closer to the woman he loves, his grandma, and away from his ex-fiancée. Believing his broken heart would never work again, he’s proven wrong. Ellie’s shimmering auburn curls and compassionate nature sends his heart thumping. His mind soars with thoughts of giving love another shot. But as luck would have it, she’s taken, and the guy she’s seeing is a real jerk.
When David’s grandmother sees how perfect Ellie would be for her grandson, she gathers the troops. She and her three friends form Cupid’s Angels. Their mission, to bring David and Ellie together. Despite their best efforts, the Angels’ plans backfire, pushing David and Ellie farther apart and into the arms of others. Or, so they think.
Will the Angels’ good intentions win out, or will their plots and schemes undermine what could have been the love of a lifetime for David and Ellie?
About the Author
Erin Bevan was born and raised in Southwest Arkansas. She spent her teenage years working for her aunt at the local gas station flipping burgers and making milkshakes dreaming of the day when something better would come her way.
Fast forward ten years later, she found herself stuck inside an apartment in South Korea while her daughter went to preschool and her husband went to work. Alone and unable to speak the local language she turned to books for a friend. After reading a few hundred in such a short time, she decided to try her hand at writing one.
That first one sucked, but by the fifth and sixth book, Erin started to get the hang of this writing thing. Getting the first contract in the mail was a dream come true. Now, with three babies at home, she squeezes in stories one word at a time, one sentence at a time, one day at a time. She’s a full time mom, a full time wife, with a little writer sprinkled in whenever she can get the chance.
Think about that person who drives you nuts. You may want to like them, maybe you do, maybe you love them, but they do this…thing that absolutely drives you up a tree.
Wow, this has been a great year so far with releases and it hasn’t slowed down a bit. I’ve been so busy writing it’s hard to find time to get the word out about the books that I’m writing! So here’s what’s happened/happening/gonna happen. I have something for everyone and a lot of somethings for those who love all the romance genres!
LOVE ON THE ROCKS
This is a Kindle Worlds view into Melissa Foster’s Remingtons Series with a cameo appearance of Kurt Remington on Cape Cod. Amazon
Grieving widower, John Decker, commemorating the two-year anniversary of the day he lived and his wife died, is dragged back into life by a riptide and a blonde he can’t get out of his thoughts. Plagued with survivor’s guilt, he’s reluctant to enter a new relationship, until he meets a feisty bartender with attitude and curves to go with it.
Roxi Lanier was the typical young teen in the city, happy, full of life and bulletproof, until she became the victim of a violent crime. Her mother moved her to Wellfleet on Cape Cod, away from the scene of her misfortune to start over. Fourteen years later, she’s still afraid to date and be intimate with a man, the scars of her past overriding the happiness she craves. Though she’s an independent owner of a thriving beach bar, she has yet to find success in love. Tides change when she witnesses a suicidal widower diving headfirst into a riptide.
Decker and Roxi struggle to stay afloat through the wreckage of their pasts and the storms of the present to sail into a future together.
Navy SEAL “Rip” Cord Schafer is officially missing and presumed dead. It’s the perfect cover until he can catch the traitors supplying Honduras terrorists with American arms. It’s not a one-man operation, but never in his wildest dreams did he imagine teaming up with a woman—Covert Cowboy operative Tracie Kosart.
Posing as wealthy newlyweds, Rip soon discovers Tracie is as skilled at playing his sensual “bride” as she is at covering his six. Despite their jungle-hot attraction, Rip senses Tracie’s reluctance to trust him. But when her cover is blown, Rip knows her life depends on his SEAL instincts and her love depends on his unwavering commitment as her “husband.”
FOURTEEN stories of thrilling romance to benefit the American Heart Association. These full length, Romantic Suspense stories come from NEW YORK TIMES, USA TODAY, AND NATIONAL BESTSELLING AUTHORS!
***Limited Time Offer!***Read the rest of this entry »
The contests from my blogs on Friday and Saturday are still open!
So you still have time to enter!
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It’s rare I have the last day of the month open for myself, but I do now! May passed in a whirl. I think I refound my mojo. The last couple of weeks I’ve been focused like I used to be when I was juggling a full-time job, the Guard, and writing. And I finished working on some things.
Works I completed:
I finished writing my m/m firefighter story, Hotter With a Pole, a Firehouse 69 story for Samhain.
I wrote a couple of short stories.
I wrote Her Next Breath for the SEALs of Summer anthology.
And I finished revising Truly, Madly…Deadly, the next Night Fall installment.
May’s Releases:
Click on the Covers to Purchase
June will be super-busy as well…
I will release:
Truly, Madly…Deadly, Night Fall series
Lily’s Last Stand (tentative title), a new short story
Knight in Transition, Knight Fall series
Bad Moon Rising, Cat Tails story
I’m planning to do the following:
I hope to write the remaining chapters of my Cat Tails story.
I’ll write a story for the Across the Universe box set.
I’ll write Controlled Burn for the 12-Alarm Cowboy box set.
And if I can, I hope to write the next Lone Star Lovers book.
And around all of this, I am still helping my daughter. She can’t lift anything heavier than 5 pounds until the end of July, so I have to park at her place and come every time she needs the baby changed, etc. Very distracting, but what can you do?
One good thing is that we finally have the new pool liner installed. The water is only at 80 degrees right now. It takes about half an hour before I break out in welts from the chill (I have cold urticaria). But the water is warming up!
Okay, kind of boring, I know. But it’s nice for me to be able to recap. I can see I had a very productive May. And I’ve said out loud now what I want to do in June. If you see me goofing off, you know what you can nag me about. 🙂
UPDATE: The winner of the free download is Heather S!
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The other night I was at a Facebook party and I asked the question that went something like, “What are your favorite reunion stories, either in film or book?” And then I sat stumped because I couldn’t think of one. I had to think hard whether I had ever written one, and I mentioned one of my Lone Star Lovers books, Unforgiven. But it wasn’t until this morning, when I was trying to figure out what golden oldie I could offer as a flashback, that I remembered I had another…
So, I’ll ask again… What are your favorite reunion stories?
Comment for a chance to win In Too Deep or a short story on this carousel!
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Some things never change. And some things change everything.
Triple Horn Brand, Book 2
Gabe Triplehorn can think of no better getaway from his heavy responsibilities at the ranch, than to go back to a time and place where he didn’t have a care in the world. When there was just a campground, a river and a girl.
When he gets to Red Hawk Landing, the campground and the river are still there. He just never expected the girl would still be there too. Only now she runs the place.
Lena Twohig can think of no better place to raise her young son than the family-owned campground that holds so many memories. Especially the romance with Gabe that lit up one long-ago summer like a wild electrical storm. Now he’s back, with a ranch-hardened body she knows she shouldn’t want so badly.
No amount of lies or the years that have passed can tame this tidal wave of passion.
Warning: Contains a flash flood of passion between a cowboy who knows how to pitch a tent and a woman who isn’t afraid to get a little dirty.
Excerpt:
The cowboy glanced back through the window and caught her looking. Lena whirled around and stepped off the porch. Her toe caught in the lattice next to the step and she went down hard, bumping down two steps. She landed on one hip, gravel digging into a palm.
Tears pricked her eyes, and she winced at the pain. Worse, the door behind her slammed and heavy booted footsteps stomped down the steps.
When the handsome cowboy came down on a knee beside her, Lena wished the ground would open up and swallow her whole.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
The deep timbre of his voice did a number on her nerves. She shivered.
Something he must have taken for shock, because before she knew it, his hands were under her thighs and behind her back and he lifted her high against his chest.
Seven is the Magic Number. Six, and I’m wanting a nap in the middle of the day. Eight, and I’m feeling groggy. What am I talking about?
Hours of sleep a night! I need seven! I got them last night and this morning I feel fabulous, and since today’s guest blogger bailed on me, I decided to talk about the thing that was at the top of my mind. Lucky you!
So what is your magic number?
Tell me, and you’ll be entered to win a free short story from the carousel below. I’ll choose two winners!
And if you didn’t know it, I published a new, very sexy shortie yesterday. Here’s a short excerpt…
Click to Buy
A New York commuter shares lustful daydreams with another subway passenger…
Excerpt:
When he rose again, he shifted her, urging her to the center of the bed. He cloaked himself then turned her and licked a hot trail down her spine. At her bottom, he bit each cheek. Just hard enough to make her quiver. He kissed her cunt and moved behind her, his cock prodding her then plunging into her.
Sophie screamed, unraveling in a moment. His girth stretched her, his length plundered. Moisture flooded her channel as she bounced back to greet his strokes.
A clap landed on one side of her ass. Loud, but not really hard. It surprised her, made her freeze.
He leaned over back and whispered in her ear. “Did you like that, Sophie? Do you want another?”
Her pussy flooded with moisture, as much from the silky texture of his voice as the warmth of her ass. “Please.”
He straightened and began to thrust into her again, smooth, deep glides that had her passion rising steeply again. A slap landed on the opposite cheek, sharper than the first one. Her pussy clenched his cock. She lowered her middle to lift her ass, begging silently for another.
Again and again, he placed slaps, some hollow-sounding and not too sharp, others flat and stinging. She sobbed, dropping her head to rest it on the cool sheet. This was pure bliss.
At last, he went still and bent, encircling her with an arm and raising her to sit, still impaled on his cock. His hands roamed her breasts, massaging then pinching her nipples. “Use your fingers to tug on them, pull them far and let them bounce back. I want to watch.”
These are all free to Kindle Unlimited subscribers and just $0.99 for everyone else!
To see more of my currently available short stories, check out this page: Short Stories
Readers who know my work may be a bit surprised to learn that my latest book, Thrill-Kinky, is science-fiction romance. Or maybe they’ll wonder what took me so long to venture into yet another subgenre. I already have paranormal, contemporary and fantasy romances under my belt (and one short historical romance in Delilah’s Conquests anthology), not to mention dark fantasy and short erotica featuring every possible combination of consenting adults having naughty fun.
So why add science fiction romance to this conglomeration, other than the already obvious “I like variety”?
I blame and thank my husband.
I’ve always flown my geek flag proudly. In seventh grade, I turned in a paper written in Tolkien’s Dwarven runes. (My handwriting was too bad to pull off Elvish script.) My first several novels were heroic fantasy, which still live in boxes in my closet, awaiting the time I’m brave enough to reread them and see if there’s anything there to salvage. I worked at Del Rey Books in the eighties and binge-read every fantasy book they published and a lot of the science fiction. But while I went through a stage of reading just about anything that involved wizards, witches, dragons, or people with swords fighting evil, I was fussier about science fiction. A lot of what I picked up seemed to be more focused on technology and (admittedly cool) world building than on characters. The male characters were two-dimensional, the female ones even flatter. With a few exceptions—Ursula LeGuin comes to mind—I preferred my fantasy. Sure, some of the women of fantasy were basically plot devices waiting to be rescued, but Mercedes Lackey! Anne McCaffrey! Guy Gavriel Kay! Even going back to my roots, Tolkien had some impressive women characters and some emotional arcs as epic as the adventures involving swords and sorcery. And of course, there were his delightful, down-to-earth hobbits thrown in among the fierce and mighty.
And then I met Himself, who realized I’d managed to miss out on Star Trek when I was growing up and got me watching both the original and the various spin-offs. From there, we branched out into other science fiction TV shows: Farscape, Babylon 5, and what became my favorite, Firefly. In these series, action was important, but interaction was even more central. You cared about the firefights and the capers and the narrow escapes because you’d come to care about the team of characters, not just because Spaceships are Cool and Aliens are Awesome. I mean, both of these things are true, but Firefly’s spaceship was the space equivalent of someone’s rickety but much loved first car held together with duct tape and bubble gum, and there were no aliens—and the show still captivated me. Himself also got me watching anime, enjoying the completely goofy plotlines and random bits of humor and sexiness in dark scenarios. And then there were the superhero comics and movies…
With all this imagery in my head, it was inevitable I’d try my hand at science fiction sometime—but science fiction my way. With wacky aliens because they’re fun, political complications worthy of Babylon 5 because those interest me more than space battles, and an independent freighter with a motley crew I can imagine drinking with Malcolm Reynolds and the rest of the crew of Serenity at some seedy spaceport bar. There’s also a cat-girl sidekick, thanks to too much anime. Of course there are tough women, handsome men, hot sex and true love, because all that kind of inevitable if I’m writing the book.
And the name of my rickety independent freighter? It’s the Malcolm, a direct bow to Joss Whedon’s wonderful series and its hero, Malcolm Reynolds, a.k.a. Captain Tight-Pants—who would have gotten into different and more fun kinds of trouble if he’d been my character!
Thrill-Kinky
Chronicles of the Malcolm,Book 1
Sexual freefall is like a game of chicken, except the first one to let go wins.
Humans may have expanded to the stars, but they still have the annoying need to work for a living. Which is why Rita, crew member of the space freighter Malcolm, is stuck collecting recyclable slag rather than attending her favorite festival celebrating love and sexuality.
Things go from boring to interesting when she discovers a badly injured man who’s been thrown into a recycling bin to die. The catch, he’s gorgeous, winged, and naked.
Drax Jalricki, reformed (mostly) art thief and reluctant covert operative, is on an undercover mission to protect three planets when someone in his own government brands him a traitor. By virtue of association, Rita and her crew are going down with him.
From their first, hide-in-plain-sight quickie, the erotic spark between Rita and Drax is fueled by danger and adrenaline. But their growing suspicion that there’s more to their connection than lust may not matter if they don’t live through the night.
Warning: Hero and heroine who straddle the line of criminal behavior—and definitely violate public indecency statutes. Exhibitionist, dangerous sex. Dark, sordid pasts. Wild risk-taking. Giggly cat-girl sidekick who’s not just another pretty…tail. And the greatest risk of all: true love.
Excerpt (Adult)
Definitely something in the danger-as-aphrodisiac theory, because in a fetid alley, with the law and outlaws both after them and her no doubt out of both a job and a home when the guys found out she’d dumped the slag and abandoned the floater, Rita was getting more turned on than she ever remembered being. She’d been excitable to start with, from the kiss, and from simply being around Drax’s dangerous good looks, but now she could feel herself getting slick, hot, ready for the cock that she could now feel all too well against her bare skin.
And his wings—marling stars, she’d never felt anything like the soft, sensual caress of all those feathers against her back, her ass. So good. His hands gripped and kneaded, and his wings stroked and soothed, and all the while he was kissing her, exploring her mouth with his tongue, sending sparks down the connections from her lips to the mouth of her sex. Her common sense told her they needed to move, couldn’t take the time to play there when the overpriced thugs in the Fiero might show up at any second.
Her common sense lost the argument with her libido.
Teresa Noelle Roberts started writing stories in kindergarten and she hasn’t stopped yet. A prolific author of short erotica, she’s also a published poet and fantasy writer—but hot paranormals and BDSM-spiced contemporaries were her favorites until she realized science-fiction romances offered new possibilities for outrageous adventure, wild sex and love that overcomes serious obstacles, including being from different species! Find her at www.teresanoelleroberts.com, on Facebook, or on Twitter, where she hangs out as @TeresNoeRoberts.
This is a Kindle Worlds view into Melissa Foster’s Remingtons Series with a cameo appearance of Kurt Remington on Cape Cod.
Her common sense lost the argument with her libido.
