#MySexySaturday: A Good Ole Sexy Time

by with 2 Comments Excerpts

LynnSexySaturday_bannerDare I say this week’s My Sexy Saturday theme is right up my alley?

This week’s theme is A Good Ole Sexy Time and think about things like the Dukes of Hazzard or maybe Nashville or the Appalachian Mountains. This week is about…well…normal people. You know, the boys next door, the good ole boys, the boys of summer and everything in between. There is nothing more sexy than a man at the beach or getting done with his chores or doing his best at any task.

Fun—and I have just the snippet.

Blind Date Bride | Arlene HittleIn this scene from BLIND DATE BRIDE, Kari is grappling with her new reality. She and Damien, her faux husband of less than a week, have ceded the spare room she was planning to sleep in to the camera crew that will be taping their every move for a new series they’ve agreed to. Thus she finds herself reluctantly sharing his bed.

Damien is about the most normal guy I’ve ever had the pleasure of having in my head. (His buddy Cody is a close second.) He’s a veterinarian, a one-time band geek (trumpet), retired Casanova (he went a little crazy in college when he started running and playing tennis and grew into his gangly body) and armchair psychologist.

Enjoy!

***

“Stop looking at me like you’re on a diet and I’m a hot fudge sundae!” she snapped at him.

Damien rolled his eyes. “You think you’re that irresistible, huh?”

“Well,” Kari began. More concerned with her own response to the look he was giving her, she hadn’t considered how conceited the complaint would make her sound.

“Because I have news for you, sweetheart, I can resist. No problem.”

She stood and sat on the edge of Damien’s bed opposite him, but not before scowling at him. “You don’t have to be such a jerk about it.”

He glowered right back. “Why shouldn’t I be? You’re basically saying you don’t trust me to keep my hands to myself, right?”

“Uh—”

“Because I’ve never had to force my attentions on an unwilling woman before, and I don’t intend to start anytime soon. So until you decide you want my hands on you, you have nothing to worry about.”

Find BLIND DATE BRIDE at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Kobo, and in print at CreateSpace or Amazon.

My holiday novella’s here

by with No Comment Cher & DerrickStories

Cheryl “Cher” Stanton is about to discover home is where the hunk is …

Today has been more than a year in the making, but I can finally say it, loud and proud: HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS is on sale. Just in time for the holidays, it’s available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

My indie publishing debut joins DIVA IN THE DUGOUT, which was released last month by Turquoise Morning Press.

The musician heroine of HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS leapt out at me, fully formed, last year when I read Carina Press’ open call for holiday shorts. I clearly saw the story’s beginning and end … I just wasn’t sure how she got from Point A (singing the blues because she’s forced to return to the hometown she couldn’t wait to get out of) to Point B (singing the town’s praises).

This being a romance, a man had to figure into the transformation. Enter Derrick Mullins, one of her two best friends throughout middle school and high school. Cher had always had a thing for Derrick—and even went so far as to put the moves on him on graduation night—but she left town on the 6 a.m. bus the next morning convinced he didn’t know she existed.

Nothing could be farther from the truth, of course. And now that Derrick’s no longer young and stubborn, he’s ready to pick up where Cher left off all those years ago.

I knew I wanted Cher’s hometown to be a small town, one a high-school girl with big dreams would find stifling. And I knew just the place: Langley, Indiana. I’d already written one story where Langley figured into the equation, so I had a clear picture of the town. Nestled in the Indiana cornfields, it had  just one stoplight. A high school (Langdon High, Cher and Derrick’s alma mater), a barber shop and Dottie’s Diner (the town hangout) dotted the main drag.

It was the kind of place from which Cher couldn’t wait to escape. She returns only because her health demands she get some R&R, and she figures she can hide out at her folks’ house, so far off the beaten path that her fans will never think to look for her there.

And it works. She’s getting her much-needed vacation … until she runs into Derrick. Things heat up and Cher finds herself developing a new appreciation for her hometown.

Why set a story in a tiny Indiana town? Well, they say write what you know. I grew up in small-town Indiana. My high school was in Albion, which had one stoplight—at the intersection of state roads 8 and 9.

Langley is not Albion, but Albion is part of Langley. So are a lot of other small Indiana towns, places I’ve come to appreciate now that I’ve been gone from them for more than a decade.

I hope you enjoy Cher and Derrick’s story, and your stay in Langley. (I have three other stories set in nearby Willow’s Grove, including OPERATION SNAG MIKE BRAD, the manuscript in which Langley was born.)

Pick up your copy of HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS from Amazon or Barnes & Noble. It’s a real steal at only 99 cents.

My Sexy Saturday: Coming home

by with No Comment Excerpts

LynnSexySaturday_buttonIt’s Saturday—time for another installment of everyone’s favorite blog hop, My Sexy Saturday.

A quick reminder of the rules:

Post 7 paragraphs or 7 sentences or 7 words. The choice is yours. It can be from a WIP or something you already have published. Your post should be live by 9 am US Pacific Time on Saturday. Put those lucky 7s to work for you!

Arlene_HomeHolidays_300dpi(1600x2560)This week, I’m celebrating the release of my holiday novella, HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS.

The tale of a singing sensation forced to return to her tiny Indiana hometown just in time for Thanksgiving is a little bit sexy, a little bit sweet and a whole lotta hilarious.

Enjoy this sneak peek:

Derrick didn’t seem to mind her lapse into brainlessness. He merely chuckled and stepped away to strip off his T-shirt, revealing the muscles she’d been fantasizing about all night. Hair dusted his chest, narrowing down to …

Oh my. They weren’t in high school anymore. This Derrick was all man, and finally, all hers. She raised her eyes back to his face too late. He’d caught her looking.

His lips quirked up in amusement. “You looked your fill yet?”

Not trusting her voice, she nodded.

“Good. Now it’s my turn.”

“What?”

“Strip for me, Sweetness.”

HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS, my indie publishing debut, available Monday at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Big changes on the horizon

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I’ve mentioned before that I’m not much for astrology.

Living near Sedona’s well-known psychic vortexes is finally starting to take its toll, though. When I saw the message below in my fortune cookie at Panda Express one recent afternoon, it was the final impetus I needed to take a big step.

That’s right. I’m going to take the plunge into the world of indie publishing.

Now, if you ask the Boyfriend, he’ll tell you “I’ve been telling her for years she should self-publish.”

Yes, yes he has.

But until recently, I wasn’t ready. Now I am. I have stories to tell, and I want to share them with the world. With the indie route gaining more and more devotees every day, I decided to invest the money I’d have spent going to RWA Nationals this summer in getting my first novel ready for release instead.

There’s so much to learn, and I’ve been soaking up all the information I can. I signed up for an indie publishing class, and joined Indie Romance Ink, a yahoo group for self-published romance authors.

I’d planned to make a big announcement about this new direction … but then I accidentally outed myself with a few comments on Twitter, so my big bang became more of a breathy whisper.

Anyway, I’m now trying my best to set up the infrastructure I’ll need to spread the word far and wide.

Want to stay up-to-date?

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Join me on this new adventure. It’s going to be a wild ride.