Friday, August 27, 2010

Breakfast in Bed

Riding the Waves
 Tawny Weber

* Harlequin Blaze
* September 2010
* Miniseries: Forbidden Fantasies
* Category: Passion
 
Back of the Book



All uptight workaholic Drucilla Robichoux wants is to experience incredible sex, at least once in her life. So she heads off to Mexico for some sun, sand and sin. And she finds the perfect playmate in sexy surf instructor Alex. Her temporary boy toy teaches Dru to ride the waves, all right…

…right into the most intense climaxes she's ever had!
But all vacation flings must end. When Dru heads home, she buttons up tight again. Might as well keep this delicious fantasy right where it belongs… in her naughty memories.

So it sure is a shock when she walks into work Monday morning and finds her secret fling is her new boss! And he's definitely still interested in catching the big one with Dru. Read Excerpt
THOUGHTS:

What a fun story, smooth, easy to read, and lots of laugh out loud moments. Oh, and some characters that generate enough heat between them no wonder there’s global warming.

Dru is a brilliant scientist very focused on her career (Tawny has the details on this career nailed) and being a success. She’s not truly a risk taker. In making her career the center of her life she has neglected such things as interpersonal skills (Actually, if you’ve watched Bones, on TV, she reminds me of Temperance).

“Blond, cool and contained, Dru knew she put off a don't-touch-me air. She didn't mean to, but couldn't seem to change it.” Dru is attractive but tends to hide it behind severe hairstyles and the color beige.

Dru’s idea of sex, so far: “Drucilla wanted to love sex. Better yet, she wanted a sex life worth loving. She was a firm believer in maintaining a healthy balance between mind and body. Her mind was top-notch and she worked to keep her body the same. Good food, regular exercise. And sex, dammit. She'd read plenty of studies that claimed that regular, satisfying sex was important to good health…Maybe self-gratification would be enough if she increased her beta-carotene intake?”

She has a best friend, Nikki, who is determined to expand her narrow world. I love Nikki’s one liners and deadpan ways of making her point. Nikki deftly maneuvers Dru (enlisting the aid of the boss) in taking a vacation with the instructions to find a hottie.

Enter said hottie, Alex, whom Dru thinks of as nothing more than a bit above average in smarts, surf-boy and perfect for a hot, no strings, fling. Sparks fly and even more when she comes home to find that her wild sexy lover, the man who gave her the most blowing sex on every available surface, is the Rock Star of the science world and her partner on a major project.

I love to read Tawny’s stories. She has a way of creating realistic conflicts and setting an excellent set of characters in place to solve them. Tawny’s characters are fun and characters you truly enjoy reading about. I love the way she fashions her Happily-ever-after.

If you like a fast paced story, and entertaining plot, with a dose of hot sex you’re going to love reading this one.  


Please welcome back one of my favorite people, romance writer Tawny Weber. Tawny  was willing to share an indulgence with us--recipe for French Toast. I will be trying it out this weekend. Sounds heavenly.
 

Woot! I’m excited to be hanging out here with Sia. And I figured, with a title like Over Coffee, what better topic than breakfast, right?

I am a firm believer in indulgences and breaks. Those little rewards that make it so much easier for us to get through the hard work of whatever task we’re focusing on. But like any reward, it’s only special if it’s, well, you know, special. As in not indulged in very often.

In my latest Blaze, RIDING THE WAVES, my heroine is on vacation and, in the spirit of vacation indulgences, has a decadent breakfast she’d never have at home. Her choice? Stuffed French toast, chorizo and spicy fried potatoes. Oooooh, baby, doesn’t that sound like the perfect yummy caloric indulgence? Add a mimosa or three, and you have one heckuva delish breakfast. Drucilla, my heroine, didn’t have hers in bed –she had other bedtime treats instead ;-) But for me, if I were to indulge in something like this I’d definitely want it served on a tray while I lounged on silk sheets with a huge cloud of feather pillows behind my back and a view of the ocean out the door. Or… Well, to be honest, I’d take this indulgence in my own bed, with my own flannel sheets and the view of a maple tree out the window. For something this yummy, why be picky?

So – here’s a recipe for Drucilla’s French toast.

Cinnamon-Apple Stuffed French Toast


· 1/4 c. butter
· 2 Granny Smith apples, peeled and cubed
· 2 T. brown sugar
· 2 t. cinnamon
· 4 oz. cream cheese, room temperature
· 6 slices extra thick brioche bread
· 6 eggs
· 1/2 c. milk
· 1 T. vanilla
· 1/4 t. cinnamon
· 1/4 c. toasted pecans, chopped (optional)
· Extra butter for the skillet


1. Melt 1/4 c. butter in a small skillet. Add apples, brown sugar and cinnamon. Cook for 5-8 minutes until apples start getting tender.
2. In a bowl mix cream cheese with apple mixture. Stir until well combined.
3. On the bottom edge of each piece of bread, slice a pocket, leaving a 1/2 inch border on 3 sides. Fill the pockets with about 2 T. filling. Repeat with the rest of the bread slices.
4. Whisk together eggs, milk, vanilla and cinnamon. Soak filled bread in egg mixture for one minute. Cook in a hot, greased skillet, 3-4 minutes per side.


Serve with powdered sugar, syrup or warm caramel topping. Sprinkle with toasted pecans.


And how about you? Are you a fan of indulgences? How about breakfast – in or out of bed? What’s your favorite breakfast treat? Care to share a recipe?
~*~*~*~
Tawny's usually found dreaming up stories in her northern California home, surrounded by dogs, cats and kids. When she’s not writing hot, spicy stories, she’s testing her latest margarita recipe, shopping for the perfect pair of boots or drooling over pictures of Johnny Depp (when her husband isn’t looking, of course). Her alter ego, Mom, also spends a lot of time scrap booking and playing in the garden.

Please visit Tawny at her home on the Web at www.TawnyWeber.com. She loves to hear from readers.




Wednesday, August 25, 2010

CUTTING THROUGH THE CLUTTER WITH A CLEAR BRAND

You solidify your brand by contributing something new or fresh to the conversation of your genre or theme...

It's my pleasure to have New York Times bestselling novelist, Thomas Greanias, as my guest. As a former journalist he uses his knowledge of politics, national security, and real life conspiracies to write tightly woven thrillers of international intrigue and mystery. 

Tom's topic is one that many are chatting about these days, pro and con, branding as an author.



A lot of writers are worried about their "brands" these days. Even Brand Name authors.


One fellow New York Times bestselling author, who has sold millions more books than I have, confided to me just how hard it is to "break through the clutter" in the paradoxical world of fewer print sales for authors and more titles for readers than ever before. "You don't get it, Tom. You have your Atlantis series, and you're the No. 1 name in eBook adventure. You were the first to break through big-time in the digital space. I can't claim that leadership position. Now the digital space is where publishing is going."

The answer, this author decided, was to launch a new series, which has done well, and on top of that add a young adult series. The workload is so heavy that this Brand Name author is close to the next predictable stage: taking on co-authors like James Patterson did.

I think there's a better way to build your brand, a better brand for you to aspire to, and that brand is you.

The reality is that your name IS your brand. And the most powerful way you define your brand is through the novels you write. Each new title adds an association to your name, associations that hopefully strike a positive chord with readers. Positive emotions usually come from writing a damn good novel that delivers on its promise. If you're writing a suspense novel, for example, you need to deliver suspense to your readers. A romance novel should deliver romance. A thriller should deliver thrills. Your voice in how you tell your story fills out your brand.

So you build your brand by writing your books. You solidify your brand by contributing something new or fresh to the conversation of your genre or theme.

For example, I contributed to the conversation about Atlantis to advance it to the 21st century. Everywhere I looked in fiction and Hollywood, it was the same old underwater fantasy that had little to do with Plato’s 4th century BC account. For starters, I went back to the source and asked, “What if it were literally true?" That led to Raising Atlantis, my novel about rogue archaeologist Conrad Yeats, beautiful Vatican linguist Serena Serghetti, and a secret U.S. military expedition that discovers ancient ruins two miles under the ice of Antarctica. Sequels such as The Atlantis Prophecy and The Atlantis Revelation then established that Atlantis is more than a lost continent. It’s a centuries-old global conspiracy playing out before our eyes even now. The Atlanteans, in short, are among us.

You, too, can rise above your genre or subject matter by adding something new to the conversations that you’re passionate about. You get your brand, and we all benefit.

  • Question for readers: Do you prefer the familiarity of the same character in a series of books (Harry Potter, for example), or the same type of character (poor rookie lawyer from South) in different one-offs (John Grisham's legals thrillers).

Tom is offering two chances to win either a copy of his special edition Atlantis Legacy (first two books combined) or a hardcover of The Atlantis Revelation. If you're interested in being considered, please either leave me a way to contact you in your comment or send me an email: siamckye at gmail.com
 
Back Cover Blurb:
 
Deep beneath the ancient city of Jerusalem lies a secret that knows no bounds, devastating enough to reach across time. History’s greatest spy story begins here.

For a millennium, Jerusalem’s Temple Mount has been at the center of war and death. There’s never been a time when blood wasn’t spilled upon this ancient, sacred site. Flash forward to present-day Jerusalem, where 35-year-old Israeli counterterrorism agent Sam Deker has just thwarted the most recent act of violence—an attempt by radical Palestinians to blow up the Dome of the Rock mosque and pin the blame on right-wing Orthodox Jews. The threat, however, is a diversion. Deker himself is the real target. He is captured and taken to neighboring Jordan, where he is tortured because of his deep knowledge of Israel’s most closely guarded state secret.


Deker escapes with his comrade Uri Elezar, making it all the way to the border, only to be taken down at the banks of the Jordan River. This time, however, Deker wakes up in the middle of the ancient Israelite army on the eve of its historic siege of Jericho. Deker doesn’t know if he is dead, in some torture-induced psychosis, or really back in time. But General Bin-Nun has declared a colossal holy war, and he’s sending Deker and Elezar on a dangerous mission to spy on the Promised Land in advance of the invasion.


For Deker, it’s his only hope to escape this genocidal hell. Then he finds himself in the arms of a beautiful enemy named Rahab, caught in a web of deadly betrayal, as he struggles to unlock the truth, secure Israel’s future and his own, and save the twenty-first century from The Promised War.  EXCERPT

Hardcover and digital

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

New York Times bestselling novelist Thomas Greanias is one of the world's leading authors of adventure, No. 1 in eBooks, Audiobooks and the World Wide Web. His tightly woven thrillers of international intrigue and mystery first exploded online before thrilling readers in print in dozens of languages and countries around the globe.
 
A former journalist, Greanias has reported on issues of national security as an on-air correspondent in Washington, D.C. for NBC affiliates, and he has advised the White House, Congress, and Fortune 500 corporations on the future of digital media. His work has appeared in newspapers, magazines, radio and television, and his top-ranking sources in governments, intelligence agencies and supernational organizations continue to inform and inspire his plots.  Thomas Greania on Twitter  On Facebook


Monday, August 23, 2010

We Have Book WINNERS!!


I figured I'd better post our winners of books in July and August (so far). Congratulations to the those who won books and thank you for stopping by OVER COFFEE. I appreciate all the readers who stop by and especially those who give support to the authors with comments.

As you can see, I've brought in the Clan Piper to salute the winners. 


The Insider:  Helen Ginger, Malcolm Campbell

Exchange:  Nancy Parra, Alex Cavanaugh

Seduced By The Wolf: Judi S (Sidhe Vicious Reviews), Cat 

To Conquer A Highlander:  Houston A.W. Knight, Kat Sheridan

Hero:  Vivian Archer, Stephanie McCarthy

AT HER COMMAND: Sherilyn Winrose

Wild Irish Sea: Elle J Rossi, Fedora

Cowboy Trouble:  Tonya Kappes, Wanda Huges             




I love this piece. He's a gifted player. Full of energy and joy. Of course I love bagpipe music at anytime and this one will have you tapping your feet. :-)

SOME OF MY UPCOMING GUESTS:

Thomas Greanias
Tawny Weber
Erin Kellison
Janice Hardy
Kylie Brant
Steve Tremp
Alex J. Cavanaugh
Glenda Larke