Wendy Chen and Her Liar's Guide

LEAVE A COMMENT WITH YOUR E-MAIL ADDRESS, AND YOU MIGHT WIN AN E-BOOK COPY OF WENDY'S LIAR'S GUIDE!

About Wendy Chen:

Wendy Chen has worked at Random House, iVillage, and The Washington Post. Her first novel, Liar's Guide to True Love was written during her frequent (and sometimes severe) bouts of wedding nostalgia. Years after planning her own nuptials, she still gets unduly giddy about attending weddings.

Wendy was a lifelong New Yorker until she decided to try out suburban life a few years ago. She now lives in Northern Virginia with her family. Connect with her on Facebook and Twitter.

http://www.facebook.com/wendychenbooks

https://twitter.com/#!/wendychenbooks

About Wendy's Sweet Romance, Liar's Guide to True Love -

Wedding planner Cassandra Hanley is in the business of making other people's dreams come true. But for some reason, whenever she meets a potential mate of her own, she finds herself telling little (and not so little) white lies. She's not trying to sabotage her relationships on purpose: as a people pleaser, she just naturally tells men what she thinks they want to hear.

When Cassandra meets Nick, she's determined to be herself this time—until she learns he abhors weddings. So she recasts herself as an advertising exec, and now she's scrambling to cover up the lie...with more lies.

Into the tangled web wanders Cassandra's college sweetheart, Kevin. Kevin, the one man who knows the real Cassandra, and loves her anyway. Could he have been The One all along?

Torn between the past and the present, Cassandra is about to learn that you can't plan the perfect life the way you can plan the perfect wedding.

Buy Links:

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Liars-Guide-True-Love-ebook/dp/B005UPRT9A/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1319650297&sr=8-1

Carina Press: http://ebooks.carinapress.com/FEF5A809-7497-4108-9539-278A5C033863/10/134/en/ContentDetails.htm?ID=4A61953A-ED9C-4C26-86BC-022D2BC5CB49

iTunes: http://tinyurl.com/7lejm5o

B&N: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/liars-guide-to-true-love-wendy-chen/1030430137?ean=9781426892721&itm=1&usri=wendy%252bchen

And Now, Wendy Has Some Confessing to Do:

Confessions of A Wedding Addict by Wendy Chen

“Sometimes I like to wear my tiara around the house. Is that weird?” My friend looked a little sheepish when she said it, but I got it. Years after I walked down the aisle, I still get nostalgic about my own nuptials. I wore the most beautiful dress I will ever own, and spent over a year planning (admittedly) frivolous details. And I missed it (the dress and the planning). When I was writing my first novel, Liar’s Guide to True Love, I would pick up copies of wedding magazines in the name of “research” – I had to get in the head of my wedding planning protagonist didn’t I? Now my outlet for wedding nostalgia is to devour any means of weddingtainment – flicks, lit, whatever. If I can’t live it, I will read/watch it. Some are better than others, but I have to admit, there are few wedding themed books or movies that I truly dislike. Here are some of my favorites, in no particular order:

·    Bride Wars – Beautiful dresses and Bridezillas. But at the end of the day, two best friends learn what’s most important -- true friendship and love.

·    The Bride Quartet series by Nora Roberts – Not just one or two, but FOUR books centered around a wedding planning company run by four best friends. By THE Nora Roberts, need I say more?

·    My Big Fat Greek Wedding – So smart, so funny, and the best parts aren’t about the wedding at all.

·    Made of Honor – Sometimes men are stupid when it comes to love, and don’t see what’s right in front of them.

·    Wedding announcements and the Vows column in The New York Times – the real deal, and you never know when you’ll recognize someone

Yes, weddings can be ridiculously over the top and expensive, and planning them can make us temporarily insane (Carrie Bradshaw: I wore a bird in my hair). But there’s nothing wrong with enjoying the beginning of someone’s Happily Every After. Admit it, you love a beautiful wedding dress on the cover of a book as much as I do. What’s your favorite weddingtainment?

Please leave a comment with your e-mail address and you might win an e-book from Wendy!

Working Behind the Scenes

Jillian Baker, the heroine in my sweet romantic comedy, Girl of My Dreams, is content to work behind the scenes as a temporary assistant to the producer at a TV studio. Only when a crisis occurs, does she ignore her reticence, step up to the plate and be a contestant in a reality show, where all eyes are upon her.

Since this is fiction, my heroine sheds her ordinary persona and gets noticed in a big way. I'm happy for her, but there are so many of us in the real world who never get noticed in our everyday life and jobs. I toiled for years as a secretary, and hardly ever got thank yous from clients or bosses for my efforts. I'm sure others of you can relate as well.

The entertainment world fares no better. I notice who stars in a show, might even remember one or two of the secondary characters, especially if they're cute, pretty or quirky. Still, how about the tons of men and women who toil behind the scenes, yet never get recognized? I know for a fact that I don't bother to look at the movie or TV credits to see who did the lighting, makeup, or any other necessary jobs behind the scenes.

Am I the only one who pays no attention to the hardworkers behind the scenes?

Speaking of Working Behind the Scenes, I'm actually the blog owner of Sweet Not Spicy. I enjoy showcasing the many talented authors of Sweet Romance and Fiction, but every once in a while I like to pop in to let readers know I'm a real person and also have a Sweet Romance available, as well as three other novels.

Girl of My Dreams is on Kindle for 99 cents at http://amzn.com/B0065R11QO
My Amazon Author Central Page: http://amazon.com/author/morganmandel

You can find all of my books, with excerpts and buy links to every electronic media I know of at http://morgansbooklinks.blogspot.com/

Please leave a comment to share your thoughts on Working Behind the Scenes.

Travel in Time With Clover Autrey's Sweet Romance

Why a Time Travel?

I love the idea of a contemporary woman traveling back to a time and place where she is totally out of her element and has none of her support group, friends or family to go to. Surviving depends solely on her own wit and courage—as well as having to trust the not-so-modern-thinking hero.

What’s not to love about that scenario? Throw the heroine back into the arms of a guy in a kilt and I am so there.

Of course I can’t leave a world alone without magic, so I made the bare-kneed hero a sorcerer, tossed in some witches, healers, vampires, dragons and shape-shifters, and I have a whole new universe to play in.

Highland Sorcerer is the first of my Highland Sorcery novels where the heroes and heroines are flung back and forth through time and into alternative universes where all sorts of magical beings reside and history gets mucked up time and time again.

It all begins with Charity Greves who has the gift of healing. So when a wounded bleeding Highlander materializes out of the air into her kitchen, she does what any rational free-thinking herbalist under the same circumstances would do--she heals him. She didn’t expect to be drawn back to the 13^th Century where a dangerous whacked-out witch holds the jaded Highlander captive.

Excerpt:

Charity Greves barely plunked her purse down on the counter when a mini-cyclone rippled through her kitchen, lifting her hair and zinging an electrical current down her spine—and a naked bleeding man materialized out of thin air.

And dropped to the linoleum.

Hey. She'd just mopped that floor.

She frowned. Sorcerer.

Had to be a sorcerer. They were the only magic wielders around who had the ability to travel a rift from one place to another.

A powerful one by the looks of him. There weren't many who could tune in and sense a healer across distances and fewer still who could open and travel through a rift while in the weakened condition he appeared to be in.

Her pulse kicked up a notch in fear. Backing up toward the door, she grabbed her cell phone to punch in 911, wondering just how dangerous the sorcerer could be, except…he didn’t look all that dangerous sprawled on her floor, bleeding all over it. Kicked puppy was more like it. And she was a healer who couldn’t exactly explain how a naked guy ended up in her apartment in that condition. Geez, get a grip and take care of the man.

He’d obviously come for help. Which was mildly flattering that someone within the magical community had actually heard of her for him to seek her out. Unless he had simply let his senses pick a healer out at random. All right, that wasn’t so flattering.

Charity pulled a stack of hand towels from a drawer and knelt down beside the guy. After all, it wasn't everyday she came home from the herb shop to have a wounded sorcerer travel across space especially for her world-renowned healing abilities.

Okay, so she wasn't world-renowned, and she’d only been sought out maybe three times before. At most. And one of those was a sorcerer seeking her mother, but technicalities. She'd been present when he came.

"All right, big guy, what's going on with you?" Yikes. These were not wounds of the stubbed-my-toe variety. He was covered in welts and gashes, blood and grime across his torso, hips and legs. Some of those cuts looked pretty deep. His eyes remained closed though the thick lashes fluttered with each pain-filled rise of his chest. His wrists were torn and chafed as though some kind of bindings had encircled them for a long time, some kind of thick band, not rope. Since nothing inorganic traveled through a space rift she couldn't be sure.

Whatever he'd endured, it had been horrible and her heart went out to him. What on earth had this sorcerer gotten himself into? And a more troubling thought: Would whatever he’d gotten himself into follow him here? She really didn’t want to get into any magical squabbles.

She lifted his head off the floor to get a few of the folded towels beneath him and then smoothed a lock of sweaty dark hair off his cheek.

He flinched at the touch, eyes snapping open, and before she knew what hit her, Charity was rolled onto her back with two hundred pounds of disoriented naked male on top of her, pinning her wrist against the floor.

His gaze tracked around her kitchen, dark brows scrunching together at the shiny red trash compactor before settling back on her.

"Are ye the Healer Enchantress?" he rasped and promptly passed out.

A little about Clover:

Clover’s books have been referred to as “Romance in the Safety Zone.” The pages are chock full of adventure, attraction, fantasy and love, safe enough to read with your daughter or your grandmother, yet not so sweet it will put you in a sugar coma. Clover calls Texas home and the world her backyard.

Highland Sorcerer on the Nook   http://bit.ly/bnhighlandsorcerer 

Paperback  http://amzn.to/HighlandSorcererPaperbk

Kindle  http://amzn.to/highlandsorcerer

Clover’s Blog  http://clovercheryl.blogspot.com

Texas Hearts Romance Author, Lisa Mondello, Shares Her Writing Insights and an Excerpt

Lisa is giving away 1 ebook copy of her Sweet Romance,

HER HEART FOR THE ASKING,  to one commenter.

Please remember to leave your email address when you comment.

Now, Lisa shares some thoughts on the writing process, plus an excerpt from her other Sweet Romance, HIS HEART FOR THE TAKING.

Baby Steps in Writing by Lisa Mondello

I was reminded this week, as I often am, about the different processes of writing for each author. Too many times we seek perfection the first time out, wanting each and every word we put on the page to be magic.

In reality, it's rarely like that. There are moments when the words flow freely and a scene that I've written seems to write itself all on its own. I love those moments of being in the zone. But "the zone" is not something you can snap your fingers and instantly call up on demand, although I'm sure most writers wish it to be that way.

Although many readers can read a story in a few hours, a story is not created overnight.  Far from it.  The final project doesn't miraculously come out of the creative mind and onto the page of a book (or in the case of an eBook, the eReader) in perfect form. Most writers must take baby steps through their stories and each baby step leads to the final product.  Step one, idea.  Step two, plotting and fleshing out the story.  Step three, researching.  Step four, writing.  Step five, revising.  Depending on the kind of writer you are, those steps may be jumbled up a bit. 

Just like a baby, writers stumble and fall and need to pick themselves up when the words don't come out just right, they get stuck in research that moves the story in the wrong direction, or they just don’t know how to write themselves out of a situation.  There are plenty of do overs that happen before a bookcover is wrapped around our words or the final digital file is made. But in the end, all successful writers show the same determination as a baby learning to walk for the first time. You get up and you keep going toward that goal. The end result and reward is the satisfaction of having a reader tell you they loved the story.

About Lisa:

Lisa Mondello is the bestselling author of 13 published books. Her first published book, the award winning ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS YOU, was recently reissued as an ebook and has had over 350,000 downloads worldwide. In addition to publishing her Fate with a Helping Hand series, which includes THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT and THE KNIGHT AND MAGGIE'S BABY, she is releasing her popular TEXAS HEARTS  Romance series as ebooks, which include HER HEART FOR THE ASKING, HIS HEART FOR THE TRUSTING and THE MORE I SEE. She currently writes for Harlequin Books and is collaborating with a film producer/screenwriter on a screenplay.

She loves to hear from readers. You can email her at LisaMondello@aol.com, find her on her blog talking about writing, movies and music at http://www.lisamondello.blogspot.com or chat on Twitter at @LisaMondello.

 HIS HEART FOR THE TRUSTING (A Sweet Romance)

Book 2 Texas Hearts

Ever since Mitch Broader set foot in Texas, he dreamed of owning his own ranch. Now that he’s bought a share in the Double T Ranch, he’s one step closer to the dream. Then his past greets him in the form of a baby basket, complete with infant and birth certificate naming him as the father. He can’t change diapers and work toward his dream at the same time.

When Sara Lightfoot, “Miss Hollywood” in Mitch’s eyes, rescues him with her particular knack for handling his precocious son, he hires her on the spot as a temporary nanny. No matter how much Sara’s dark eyes and warm heart make this bachelor think of making their arrangement permanent, she’s made it perfectly clear she has other plans that don’t include him or his dreams.

Sara Lightfoot never thought she’d return to her home on the reservation. Now she plans to reclaim the life she left by going back to the reservation as a Native American storyteller, teaching the Apache children stories of their culture. She didn’t expect Mitch Broader’s sexy smile or job offer as a live-in nanny to derail those plans. After all she’s been through to come home, can she open up her heart once again to love?

EXCERPT: Still dancing in circles, Midnight eyed Mitch, seemingly aware of his every move. Mitch turned his back to the mare and played with the bridle, as if ignoring the horse. Finally, Midnight stopped running and with cautious steps, she moved forward, stopping every so often and taking a side step, bobbing her head or giving a neigh, as if calling Mitch to pay attention. Eventually, she stepped up alongside him and gave him a quick nudge with her nose. Then another until she was settled alongside Mitch.

Ever so softly, Mitch stroked her head and neck and front legs with long, easy strokes. He smiled his pleasure and crooned softly.

Without even realizing how he'd done it, the bit was in Midnight's mouth and the bridle was around the mare’s head. Mitch let the reins fall and allowed Midnight to get use to the bit.

Such trust.

“That's amazing,” Sara said quietly.

“Not really,” Mitch said, glancing up at her as he kept his attention on the mare.

She turned to him. Mitch was looking at her, his eyes filled with the same questions she’d seen in the kitchen.
Then he said, “She still could bolt at any time.”

Sara gripped the splintered rail. “But she hasn't. She came to you when she could have easily just kept running in circles.”

“Trust isn't an easy thing for her. She still doesn't know what to think.”

“She let you put the bridle on her. You didn't have to chase her. She came to you.”

“I have to win her trust. And when I have it, I can't abuse it or she'll never give it up again.”

Mitch carefully took the bridle off Midnight and took a few steps away. Midnight followed like a stray dog.

“Does she trust you now? Enough to ride her?”

Mitch shook his head. “We still need a little time together before she'll allow me put a saddle on her. Right now, she's letting me know her boundaries.”

“She let you put a bridle on her as if she didn't even know you were doing it.”

His face was bright with a smile. “Oh, she knew. But she's still making up her mind. She wants to trust me. I can tell. And maybe one day she will.”

“Mitch?”

He looked up at her again from across the corral. He was incredibly handsome. His dark hair was the color of mica in the fading light, and his eyes had turned from blue to a smoky gray. He stood tall, his weight shifted to one hip as he held the reins of the bridle.

Such strength.

Sara remembered all too well how it had felt earlier to be in Mitch's arms. Her heart still raced with the memory.

“What if she's never ready to trust you?”

Mitch's expression grew serious, pulling her into his gaze. He took a few steps closer, his boots kicking up dust from the ground as he walked. He stopped a good ten feet from where she was standing and said, “I can wait as long as it takes, Sara.”

Available at:

AMAZON http://amzn.com/B0077AWZGSM

Barnes and Noble http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/his-heart-for-the-trusting-lisa-mondello/1005039937?ean=2940013956841&itm=12&usri=lisa+mondello

SMASHWORDS for Kindle in Mobi and Nook in ePub http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/134008

Please welcome Lisa Mondella by leaving a comment, including your email address.
Maybe you'll be the one to get HER HEART FOR THE ASKING!

Designations: Sweet or Sweet, Discreet

I've had a few authors ask me if their books would qualifty to be included here, so maybe this will answer their question.

Accepted are Romance and other Fiction following one of the two guidelines below. For clarification to readers, each author should designate which one it is.

Sweet - Attraction to a member of the opposite sex, feeling good about being with that person, wanting to pursue or continue a relationship, sweet kisses, putting an arm around that someone, but not going any further in the sex department.

Sweet, Discreet - Feeling an attraction to a member of the opposite sex. If it's followed through, it's either understood to be behind closed doors; or, if it's mentioned in the here and now, no graphic and/or overly long details dwelling on body organs and body responses.