Spring Solstice Blog Hop

Winners of their choice of a book in addition to Champagne for Christmas are: Book Attict, bn100candg@gmail.com, mawmom@gmail.com, marypres@gmail.com, alixtheweaver@yahoo.com. Thank you all who visited, especially those who commented. I have emailed you all and am waiting to send your free book.
Welcome to my blog. Thanks for coming! Summer Solstice Blog Hop means pix of spring and summer in Central Park, New York City and a bit about my books. I'm  having an "EVERYONE WINS" giveaway! All commenters will receive a copy of  Champagne for Christmas. Think cool thoughts!! Plus 5 commenters will be selected to choose any book from all my books as their prize in addition to Champagne for Christmas. Leave a comment to be entered for the grand prize, too!  Don't forget your email addy!!

Spring roses on 77th Street in Manhattan.

Can Callie Richards turn her life of tragedy and heartache around on the campus of Kensington State University? Braving the school on her own, Callie meets the handsome dean, Mac Caldwell. As she and Mac draw closer and she makes new friends, a deadly campus drug ring sets their sights on her with heart-breaking results.  An emotional story, this is not a cookie-cutter romance. You’ll laugh and cry as Callie struggles to make a new life, find love and find her satisfying, happy ending.

Cherry trees in Central Park, New York City

Can an Army expert sharp shooter, killer and womanizer kick PTSD by running away? Danny retreats to a small town to teach English at the local college. He struggles to overcome his post-traumatic stress syndrome and make a new life when his drunken, abusive father is released from prison and seeks him out. Struggling to leave his horrific past behind, Danny attempts to forge a new path that includes love, success, friends and having his own family but dark forces and emotional obstacles block his way. The Book of Danny is a poignant story of love, loss and ultimate triumph that will touch your heart.

A perfect rose growing in front of an apartment building on my block. New York City

 Can a handsome, charming, womanizing professor win the heart of a temporarily blind ballerina? Love comes to the university as Peter Caldwell, dashing Art History professor and accomplished pianist meets Lara Stewart, ballerina.  Peter can’t seduce with her with his devastating good looks because Lara can’t see. Obsessed with the one woman he can’t have, Peter has to learn how to love.

Sam Caldwell joins Peter, Mac, Callie and his grandchildren. Witty and attractive, Sam isn’t looking for a woman but finds love isn’t only for the young but the young at heart as well.

Small town secrets feed a blackmailer and blackmail on campus is paid with sexual favors. Blind Love is a roller coaster ride of twists and turns. This full length novel is three parts love and passion mixed with one part intrigue, stirred up with a twist of mystery and heated up to three flames.

More foliage from Central Park

Can happily ever after start with a list? Grey Andrews thinks so. After ten years of working, saving and investing, Grey finally achieved a level of wealth that allows him to do what he wants with his life. He needs a woman to share it with, but not any woman, the perfect woman. A woman who has the three essential qualities on his marriage list. But after three years of searching he isn’t any closer to finding her than he was when he started out.
 Carrie Tucker, an aspiring mystery writer and divorcée struggling to make it in the world of advertising, turned her focus from men to her career after dating too many creeps and losers. She’s finally earned her big break, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to become the first female creative director in a hot New York ad agency. So what if it means working nights and weekends? It’s not like she has a social life anyway.
Is the marriage list a failure or will a chance meeting at a fiction-writing conference prove the list to be the key to Grey’s happiness after all?

Daffodils in Central Park

 

 Can the swinging bachelor change his ways and become a devoted, selfless and faithful man overnight? Grey's marriage list brought them together. But when Carrie starts her own list, can Grey incorporate her ideas about love into his life? Family issues, jealousy and an icy lake threaten to destroy the happiness Carrie and Grey have found together. An argument, a holiday trip to visit family and confronting an old fear test the lovers who have pledged their love and now must learn to make it stronger every day.

 Weeping Willow in Central Park.

Can a woman run away, back to her past? Do you have someone in you’d like to reconnect with?  Caroline Davis White wasn't looking for Mickey, now Mike Foster, her childhood crush, she was fleeing her philandering husband, seeking peace and quiet, time to reflect on changing her life. But there was Mike, saving her from a mishap...again, bigger than life and even more handsome. 

A well-known artist, Sunny thought she could escape, disappear back to the cabin where she spent her summers as a child. But she was wrong. Her husband refused to let her go. There hadn't been a divorce in Brad White's family...ever! And he wasn't about to break that tradition now.  Could Caroline shake him loose and what about Mike? Where did he fit into her life?

 Flowers at Tricia's house.

How could anything bad happen to a young woman, fresh from graduate school, who strikes out on a new path rather than return to take a job with her father’s firm? April McKenna sets off for an escapade that ends in tragedy. Injured and alone she is taken in by a friend of her mother’s who lives in a small town in the Catskill Mountains in New York.

During her recovery, April resolves to carve out an exotic life of travel and adventure. But she didn’t count on a sexy fireman upsetting her plans. Gavin Dailey has dated practically every woman in the county, but when he meets April, he knows he’s finally found the one he wants.  Only a stubborn man like Gavin wouldn’t let April’s resistance to his charm and his small town change his plans. Determined to win her, he pulls out all the stops until he encounters one stumbling block he didn’t count on. Only a near-tragedy resurrected from the past gives April the tenacity she needs to make the right decision for her life in April’s Kiss in the Moonlight. 

Lilac tree in Central Park.

 Can a craving for mint chip ice cream and a passion for the theater turn a summer romance into everlasting love? Clint is a high school English teacher and a budding playwright. Nina is a former actress, now a beautiful and wealthy widow...who is more than a little lonely. A chance meeting over mint chip ice cream brings them together. Their love of the theater joins their minds while love blossoms despite a gap in their ages. But ultimately, the theater may present the one hurdle they can’t clear. Take the journey with Nina and Clint through their discovery of each other, their joy and the ultimate compromise they must make to live their dream of footlights, fame and love.

 Belvedere Castle in Central Park.
Don't forget to leave a comment to be entered for the big prize! 
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To find out more about my books, go to my WEBSITE.

 All of my books are available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The Now and Forever books can be found at Secret Cravings website. 

The Moonlight Books and "The List" books are also on Smashwords

TUESDAY TALES - PROMPT, MY CITY - NEW YORK CITY.

Thank you so much for stopping by. I have a new WIP begun some time ago that I've just started revising this week. Here is the opening scene from a brand-new work-in-progress titled, To Love or Not to Love. The city I chose for my prompt this week is New York City.

One minute he was running on the bridle path in Central Park, the next he was flying through the air! Penn Robinson landed flat on his back, the wind knocked out of him for a second. He looked up into a pair of soulful brown eyes belonging to a handsome Golden Retriever.

Buddy! Was it Buddy, his beloved golden, who died seven years ago?

He reached up to touch the dog he didn’t believe was real when he heard a voice.

“Are you hurt? Should I call 911?”

Penn switched his gaze from the dog, who had now begun to lick his face, to the most beautiful pair of green eyes, framed in black lashes he had ever seen. Her face with a peaches-n-cream complexion was framed with long hair as dark as midnight.

“Lucky didn’t mean to knock you over. See, he’s sorry.” The dog continued to lick him. “Are you okay? Can you talk?”

Penn pushed himself into a sitting position.

“I’ll live. Is this your dog?” He petted Lucky’s back.

 “I’m his dogwalker.”

“Some dogwalker…can’t keep control of your dog.” His eyes moved from Lucky to the stunning woman crouched before him. His gaze roamed over her luscious figure with curves in all the right places.

“You’re okay?” Her brows knitted.

“No thanks to Lucky, here…or you, for that matter.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. When he sees a squirrel, he bolts. My fault all the way. I’m Miranda Bradford.” She stood up then extended her hand.

Penn used it to pull himself up.

“Penn Robinson.”

“What can I do to make it up to you?” Miranda picked up the dog’s leash.

It was a gorgeous day in Central Park in New York City, warm, with clear blue skies and sunshine so bright it coated all the flowers and leaves with brilliance. It was a day like every other day in early June in New York City. Penn looked at his watch.

“Have breakfast with me at the boathouse.”

“I can’t…Lucky here.”

“We’ll eat outside. He’s allowed to sit with us.”

“Glad to see your injury isn’t fatal. It hasn’t killed your appetite.” She tried to hide a smile.

She wore black bicycle shorts topped by a low-cut turquoise tank top. The outfit molded her figure perfectly, leaving little to his imagination – which kicked into overdrive anyway.

“My stomach…and my appetite…have remained unharmed. Will you join me?”

So has my appetite for beautiful young women.

“Guess so. If you’re a serial killer, Lucky’ll protect me.”

“How? By licking me to death?” Penn continued to pet the retriever as they moved toward the lake. A smile played with his lips.

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FATHER'S DAY SPECIAL BLOG!

This excerpt depicts a special father-and-son moment between Sam Caldwell and his two sons, Mac and Peter from my newest book, Now and Forever 3, Blind Love. Sam is about to tell his sons how and when he lost his virginity.

“Come on, Dad. Confess. This story sounds too good to pass up,” Peter urged.

“So, you all want to hear a juicy story, do you? I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed.” Sam smiled.

The men took their drinks and sat down to listen to Sam. Sam leaned against the arm of the sofa, cradling a glass of tonic.

“Okay, okay. I was eighteen and green as they come. I grew up in a suburb of Philadelphia, with a sister and two brothers. My parents worked hard but they didn’t have much money. My father was a postal worker and my mother taught school. We had food and all, but there was no money for college. So I took myself off to the recruiting station and joined the army.”

“Get to the good part, Dad,” Peter urged.

“I’m getting there. Don’t rush me. I had a girlfriend, Linda, in high school. I kept trying to get her to sleep with me, but she refused. After two years of begging that got me nowhere, I washed my hands of her when I went to war. She cried and said she’d bake me cookies. Cookies!

Hah! She still wouldn’t give me what I wanted…which was a good roll in the hay. She had a body…well, it was unbelievable…but you’ll just have to use your imagination,” Sam said, color creeping into his cheeks.

“When I got to basic training camp in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, I was a tall, skinny, horny kid who didn’t know much about anything, especially women. But several nights a week, I tagged along to a bar with a bunch of guys who went into Pine Bluff looking for a good time. For the first few nights, I got drunk and sick because I wasn’t used to liquor. After a while, I understood my limits. 

“The guys kept getting…finding women. But not me. So they were going to make me a cause célèbre, if you get my drift. The next Friday night, we went to The Sunrise Bar, one of the favorites with the guys because the woman who ran the place, Jeannie, was the widow of a Viet Nam vet. So the guys figured drinking there was like keeping it in the family. Jeannie was a pretty brunette who kept the guys in line by not falling for their crap. They teased her and she teased them back. But no one got to first base with Jeannie.

“That Friday, they all kept an eye out for a girl for me at The Sunrise. None of the girls there were interested in a tall, skinny kid who didn’t know what he was doing when they could go off with one of the experienced guys who had muscles and smooth talk. So it was another lonely night for me,” Sam said, pausing to take a sip of his tonic.

“The next night, I got to The Sunrise earlier than the rest. Jeannie was setting up. She was upset, but refused to talk about it. But I was persistent. Jeannie had always been nice to me and I wanted to help her out if I could. She finally opened up. She had a son, a boy of nine, who was having trouble in school with math. I was a whiz at math, always have been. So I agreed to sit with him and help him for an hour. Jeannie took me upstairs to the apartment they had above the bar. Jeannie’s son, Tommy, was up there, sullen and uncooperative until he saw me in my uniform. He sat up straight at attention. I guess I reminded him of his dad.

“I spent an hour with him. Jeannie was grateful and gave me a couple of free drinks. Before long, it became a regular thing. Every night I showed up an hour early and went to work with Tommy, then I’d go downstairs and get drunk for free. It seemed like a good arrangement.”

 “When did you get laid and with who, Dad?” Peter asked, impatiently.

“I’m getting there, Pete. Just hold on. So one night, I stayed until closing. I had missed my ride back to the base and was swearing because I’d have to walk. Jeannie said she’d drive me.

Tommy was asleep and Arnie, her helper, had cleaned up already. I met her upstairs where she was tucking in the blankets around Tommy.

“Jeannie turned and looked at me in the moonlight coming in the window. ‘You’re a good man, Sam,’ she said to me. The moonlight was shining on her dark hair and for the first time, I noticed how beautiful she was. She just stood there, looking at me. She knew I was a virgin because the guys weren’t shy about teasing me about it in front of her, or anyone else. She stepped up close and put her arms around me, pulling me right up against her. I can still remember the smell of her perfume when she kissed me.”

 “It gets very lonely here, sometimes,” she whispered in my ear. I didn’t really know what she meant, because I was so incredibly stupid and naïve. Then she took my hand and led me into her bedroom, which she kept locked to keep the GIs out. It was a small, simple but beautiful room, very feminine with heart-shaped pillows, a collection of fancy dolls sitting on a bookshelf and pink walls. Jeannie took off her blouse and skirt and pulled me down on the bed with her. I began to get the idea my ship had come in and I was going to learn all about love from someone who actually knew a lot more about it than I did. I was right too. I was in Pine Bluff for only three more weeks, but every night I went to The Sunrise, tutored Tommy and spent several hours learning about love from Jeannie in that back bedroom.

“The guys kept teasing me because they hadn’t figured out what was going on. After all, what would a beautiful, worldly woman like Jeannie want with a skinny inexperienced kid like me? I let them think what they wanted. What Jeannie and I had together was special, so I kept it to myself.

“I was sorry to leave her, not only because I’d miss the sex, but because I was going overseas and I was scared to death. Jeannie refused to say goodbye. She shut down, realizing she had gotten attached to someone else who’d be going to Viet Nam and maybe not coming back. I think it was more than she could handle.

“I liked and respected Jeannie, maybe even loved her, and it hurt when she refused to see me off. I never forgot the things she taught me about how to make love to a woman. I’m not going

into any of that here, so before you ask the answer is no. She was some woman,” Sam said,

sighing at the memory of her body and her sweet soul.

“What a story, Dad,” Peter said.

The men all agreed Sam had had the most meaningful first experience of anyone. It sure beat a too-quick first time in the backseat of a car leaving a young woman frustrated. Sam felt closer

to his sons, man to man, after sharing his story.

“Are you sure you won’t share any of what you learned from Jeannie with us?” Peter prompted.

“Peter, I doubt you or Mac need to learn anything from me about how to make love to a woman. You both seem to be doing very…no…extremely well on your own. You both could probably teach me something.” Sam shook his head and laughed.

Happy Father's Day!

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 For more info about my books click here for my website.