Slow Summer Burn – Cover Reveal!

Today, I am super thrilled to show you all the cover of Slow Summer Burn!

It’s Val to a T! Slim, lean, strong…and oh, those shoulders! I especialy love the patch of sand on his abs. Nice touch, right?

Here’s the official copy:

As the sizzling Star Harbor series concludes, the fourth sexy Grayson brother, a dedicated DEA agent, shows a high-society beauty the true meaning of love.

Cameron Stahl has everything, so why does she feel like her life is incomplete? A beautiful Boston socialite and a successful entrepreneur, she’s just opened her second boutique in Star Harbor and business is booming. But one searing look from Val Grayson sends fire through her body and shows her exactly what’s missing from her life: a real man who doesn’t play games and who makes her feel like the most desired woman on earth.

DEA agent Val Grayson has always looked after his brothers. Now it’s his turn to find love—though Cam is the last sort of woman he ever dreamed he’d fall for. When courageous Cam realizes she has the insider connections to help Val take down a major drug player within Boston’s political elite, he can’t stop her from putting herself in danger. But as the drug bust of his career looms, all Val cares about is saving the woman he loves before it’s too late.

So what do you all think? Love it?

I’ll be sharing some super special sneak peeks of Long Simmering Spring and Slow Summer Burn on my newsletter, so be sure to sign up here (just go to the bottom of the main page).

And in case you’ve missed my interweb sightings over the past few weeks while I’ve been buried in edits, today I’m at Romance@Random talking about endings and beginnings, and last month I wrote two posts with the amazing Jennifer Probst–first at Romance@Random and again at USA Today’s HEA where we riffed on all things mommy-esque.

Sweet, Comic Valentine

Happy Valentine’s Day!

You might have noticed I’ve been gone for a while. Well, go figure, I’ve been busy! My copyedits for Long Simmering Spring were due a week ago, and Slow Summer Burn is due in a couple of weeks, so my time has not been my own. Plus, in between writing and editing, I’ve started working on another manuscript–something I’m really excited about! That being said, it is the day of love, and since I write books of love, I had to share at least a little something with you.

Last year, I started a new tradition which was to give an anecdote from my personal life and try to relate it in some way to romance novels. I intend to continue that tradition this year! Mr. B was a terribly good sport about last year’s post, and I’m hoping he’ll feel the same about this year’s!

Ready? Here goes!

Mr. Barrett is extremely funny. He’s a great joke teller and has spot-on referential humor, which he usually whips up in the half-second you’re using to finish your sentence. Also, he’s a whiz when it comes to world history. Like, a complete whiz. It’s mind-boggling. Personally, I’m not noted for my sense of humor. Nor am I noted for my prowess in world history.  In fact, I’m kind of a dud in both areas.

Now those of you who know me IRL may say, “Why, Elisabeth, what are you talking about? You’re very funny!” All I will say is that there’s a big difference between being oneself and actually being funny. The difference, say, between laughing at me and laughing with me.

But back to the story. Mr. Barrett and I had been dating a few months when he moved to China for a job. “Will you come visit me?” he asked. Yes. Yes, I would. And so I did the bravest thing I’d ever done in my life and booked a ticket to visit a guy I hadn’t known all that long. (Which maybe is a story for another Valentine’s day). At this point in my life, my sense of humor was kind of stunted. As in not fully developed. And I am sorry to say that while I thought Mr. B was kind and handsome and intelligent, I had not laughed at even one of his jokes.

At any rate, one day after I’d joined him in Beijing, we took a trip to a small city called Kaifeng. We were walking around in some garden and I regaled him with a tale of one of my friends, an older man, who had a proclivity for dating much, much younger women.

“So in order to test whether or not they were worthy of dating him, he’d give them the Mao test,” I said.

“What’s the Mao test?” Mr. B asked.

“He’d just casually drop Mao Zedong in conversation, and if he was able to glean that they knew who he was, or even said, ‘China,’ the girl passed the test and he’d date them.”

“Huh,” Mr. B said. “I’ve never heard of the Mao test, but I have one of my own. It’s called the Ho Chi Minh test.”

“The what?” I said.

“The Ho Chi Minh test.” When I didn’t answer right away, he looked horrified. “Oh my God. You don’t know.”

“China?” I offered.

“Uh, no,” he said.

I had no idea what or who Ho Chi Minh was. I swallowed. “Does this mean I fail the test.”

“Yeah,” he said. “It does. Guess we should take you back to the airport now.” He ran his hand through his hair and sighed. “I just wish I’d given you the test before you came out to visit me.”

I stared at him. He stared back. “Are you joking?” I asked.

“I would have taken ‘Vietnam,’” he went on, deadpan. “Or ‘Communist.’”

“Okay, I get who Ho Chi Minh is now, but you’re joking about me failing. Right?”

He let me stew for another minute before a little half-smile curled on his lips. “Yeah, I’m joking, E. I don’t care if you know who Ho Chi Minh is.”

“Oh,” I said relieved. “Then I don’t have to go home.”

Then he started to laugh. Then I started to laugh. Then he laughed even more. “Seriously?” he said. “This is the first time you’re actually laughing at one of my jokes. The Ho Chi Minh test? God.”

“You’re really funny,” I informed him.

“I know.”

“No, really.”

“Damn straight.”

Mr. B is a pretty urbane guy, but I swear he really said that last line.

Over time, I gained more of a sense of humor and now laugh at all of Mr. B’s jokes, and in fact, a few times I’ve been rewarded when after a joke of my own, he informed me that the student had surpassed the master. I will confess to still being hopeless at world events.

But the real takeaway from this story is that it’s not just in romance novels that opposites attract; this kind of attraction happens to real people, every single day.

I wasn’t funny; I knew he was. I liked that. I stink at the blues and yellows in Trivial Pursuit, Genus Edition; he rocks. I liked that, too. And over time, I picked up some humor, and we learned to divide and conquer when it comes to Trivial Pursuit (I take most sciences and all literature and arts, at which Mr. B is completely awful). The differences in our temperaments, personalities and yes, even knowledge bases makes our relationship interesting.

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone! I hope yours is filled with sweetness and love!

Also:

Show me some love! Both Deep Autumn Heat and Blaze of Winter have been nominated for Best 2012 Contemporary Romance at Guilty Pleasures!! Please take a moment to vote for your fave!

#ROFLOL Blog Hop

Ooh, it’s time for another blog hop, this one for Elise Sax‘s debut novel, An Affair to Dismember, which is going to be released later this month. I had the good fortune to meet Elise at RWA12, and we hit it off immediately. She is one funny lady, and I am SO excited for this book, I can’t tell you! (Ask her how she thought up the title for her second Matchmaker series book!) Ahem.

The contest runs from January 14-21, 2013, and for one week only, you have the chance to win, win, win a copy of the book (plus other great prizes)!

Prizes from Random House include:

* A $25 e-gift card grand prize

* Four winners receive one copy of An Affair to Dismember by Elise Sax and Crazy Thing Called Love by Molly O’Keefe

 * Three winners receive a copy of An Affair to Dismember

* One winner receives a Mashup of books from Random House!

Click on the Rafflecopter link here!

Good luck!

And oh, yes, ROFLOL stands for “rolling on the floor laughing out loud,” so here’s something funny for you: Gangnam Style. Psy is a genius, and this song is overplayed but it will never get old. Never!

Blogging, WIPs and Bruises

So I did something absolutely awful to my back. So awful, in fact, that I can barely move without wincing in pain. It’s this lower-back sharp pain/muscle spasm/really-I-have-no-idea, but it’s bad. The worst thing is, I don’t know what I did. It’s not like I felt something tear, or someone jumped on me or I helped a friend move and now I’m paying the price. I just woke up this way one morning late last week. The kids now know my refrain of “Mommy’s back hurts,” and say it to each other when one asks for something from me that would require me to lift. Or stand. Or sit.

When the pain first kicked in, I stretched out, did some yoga and took some Advil. When that didn’t work, I went to get a massage. All that succeeded in doing was in turning my lower back the colors of a dark rainbow. I think at this point, I just need to rest it, because nothing’s helping. I have, however, experimented with body positions and determined that I can work mostly pain-free by lying a certain way on my back on the bed with my laptop balanced over me. This works until I stand up.

Sigh.

On a happier note, I’m cooking along with Slow Summer Burn. As of today, I’m 60K words in and chugging towards the finish line. And today I’m also being hosted by the wonderful folks over at Kindles & Wine, where they’ve reviewed Deep Autumn Heat (and said some lovely things about the book), *and* asked me all sorts of interesting questions which I hopefully answer in interesting ways. Join me over there, leave a comment, and you could win a print copy of the book. Yay!

That’s all I have for today. If anyone has any good suggestions for getting rid of lower back pain, lay ‘em on me. I BEG YOU.

 

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

I wish I could tell you that I was a total slacker and had a completely relaxing holiday, but alas, it was just not to be. I worked my little kazookies off. Writing, editing, work…it all came to a head the last two weeks in December and the first week in January. Throw in some inclement weather and some kids home from school, and well, you know how it went….

I’m beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel, though. Work is tapering off, and will continue to taper more through the end of the month. I’ve completed my line edits on Long Simmering Spring, and after one last look tonight, I’ll be sending it back to my editor. And I’ve kickstarted my work on my fourth Star Harbor Book, Slow Summer Burn. I also got super inspired for another book – this one a stand-alone, I think – which is Silicon Valley-Tahoe based. I’m going to try something totally new for me which is to try to write two books simultaneously, as I’m excited to get back to my Connecticut Contemporary series I started in mid-2012.

This all makes for a very inspiring start to the year!

I don’t have any goals this year except to push myself hard. There are so many things I want to write, that I’m inspired to write, and I’m just raring to go!

I thought I’d whet your appetite, though, with a little excerpt from Long Simmering Spring. Let me just give you a little background.

The characters:

Cole Grayson - ex-military, smoking hot, and kind of tortured, now Sheriff of Star Harbor

Julie Kensington - straight-arrow family doctor trying to keep her practice afloat and doing her best not to get drawn in by said smoking hot sherriff

The plot:

Cole and Julie work together to ferret out bad dudes doing bad things in Star Harbor while falling in love. Plus, the hottest sex scene I’ve written (to date).

This 5-sentence snippet is from Cole’s point of view after he’s had a run-in with Julie and she’s still dodging him:

What he wouldn’t give to run his fingers through her hair, crush her to his body, and see how high he could make her fly. See how far he could push her until she unraveled in his arms. But, clever woman that she was, she hadn’t given him an opening. She’d shied away from him since he’d returned, dodging him for months, and always with the same excuse: work. He took a deep drink of his lager, pushing back against the nostalgia, coupled with a smidge of bitterness.

From Long Simmering Spring, (c) Elisabeth Barrett 2013

Like it? Preorder links are here!

I’m looking forward to a great 2013! Hope your year is everything you hope it’ll be!

Happy Holidays!

I’ve got my jigsaw puzzle, my hot cocoa, and my Jane Austen, so I’m good through New Year’s! I’ll be taking a break from blogging until January to spend time with my family, but before I go, I figured I’d reflect a bit on the events of this year (which isn’t quite over).

For me, 2012 was a big year. My oldest child started kindergarten, I gained significant experience as a writing coach, and generally kept a household of five up and running. Oh, yes, and I debuted as a romance author!

I was thrilled to have Random House publish my first two books as part of its Loveswept line. Deep Autumn Heat kicked off the Star Harbor series, featuring the sexy-as-sin Grayson brothers, and Blaze of Winter followed a few months later. Folks had a lot of wonderful things to say about these books, and I was grateful for all the positive reviews and comments.

I also attended my first conference—Romance Writers of America’s annual meeting in Anaheim, California—where I had a chance to spend quality time with my fabulous editor and equally fabulous fellow Loveswept authors! Through RWA, I also participated in my first book signing (sensing a pattern of firsts here?) and throughout the year, I was honored to speak on several panels covering topics such as writing, editing, and my path to becoming a published author.

There’s a lot more in the pipeline for 2013, as two more Star Harbor books will give the other Grayson brothers ample opportunities for romance. Long Simmering Spring (Cole’s story) is due out in May, and is now available for pre-order on Amazon and B&N. Slow Summer Burn (Val’s story) will be released in August. I love both of these books, and I adore both of these heroes.

I’m also hard at work on a new series. Intimate relationships, secondary characters that pop off the pages, a fabulous Connecticut setting—I’m really psyched about how it’s developing and hope to have more to report next year.

Finally, thanks to the friendships I made at RWA and throughout the romance community, I plan to do more collaborative blogging next year. Stay tuned for more information on this front, as things will start heating up in January.

I also want to thank you all for your support! It is through word-of-mouth (i.e. you telling your friends) that my writing continues to be discovered, and I truly appreciate all the encouragement you’ve given me. Please keep up with all my goings-on through my website, Facebook, Twitter, and of course, right here.

I hope your holiday season is happy, healthy and safe.

All my best,
Elisabeth

Contest Over – Cover Reveal for Long Simmering Spring

Thanks to everyone who stopped by to check out the cover for Long Simmering Spring! You know I am in love with it, and I’m glad you like it, too. Winners are angieia and Kelly Lovato! Thanks! 

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I have been sitting on this for just about a week, trying not to go crazy because I love it so much. Without further ado, here’s the official cover for Long Simmering Spring, the third book in my Star Harbor series featuring the sexy-as-sin Grayson brothers:

If you click on the cover, it won’t make the picture bigger (boo!) but it will take you to the official book page at Random House (yay!). Long Simmering Spring is Cole’s story, and has the distinction of being the first book I ever wrote (and rewrote and rewrote again) so it has a special place in my heart. Here’s the official blurb:

Spring comes to Star Harbor, bringing unexpected passion for a sexy sheriff, as the next Grayson brother finds love with the town’s beautiful doctor.
 
Julie Kensington grew up in the same small town as the Grayson brothers and remembers when the boys were nothing but trouble. As teenagers, Cole’s rugged sex appeal set Julie’s heart ablaze, but she did her best to ignore it. Now a grown woman with a medical degree, Julie still can’t resist her searing attraction to the roughest, toughest Grayson. He’s ex-military, tormented, and sexier than ever, but are his wounds too deep to be healed by her loving, gentle touch?
 
Even back in high school, straight-arrow Julie had a way of making Cole think twice about his bad-boy lifestyle. When Julie decides she’s finally ready to embrace her wild side, Cole knows he is just the man to show her the way, unleashing years of pent-up desire. Neither of them counted on falling in love, but when Cole’s demons threaten to derail their relationship, it’s up to Julie to show him that together, they can overcome the past . . . and build a future.

Includes a special message from the editor, as well as excerpts from these Loveswept titles: Deep Autumn Heat, Blaze of Winter, and Along Came Trouble.

Heroes and Heartbreakers has the exclusive cover reveal – major thanks to all the H&H staff who made this happen so quickly!!!

And because it’s the holiday season and I’m over the moon with excitement, I’m doing a giveaway! I’ve got a copy each of Deep Autumn Heat and Blaze of Winter, so leave your comments letting me know if you like the new cover, and I’ll select two random commenters. Please sign up for my newsletter at the bottom of the home page of my website so I know how to contact you. They’re paperbacks, so U.S. only, please! Contest ends 12/15 at 9 p.m., PDT.