Laid Bare by Lauren Dane – Giveaway!

It’s been ten years since clean-cut, sexy-as-hell police officer Todd Keenan had a white-hot fling with Erin Brown, the provocative, wild rocker chick next door. Their power exchange in the bedroom got under his skin. But love wasn’t in the cards just yet…

Now, life has thrown the pair back together. But picking up where they left off is tough, in light of a painful event from Erin’s past. As Todd struggles to earn her trust, their relationship takes an unexpected and exciting turn when Todd’s best friend, Ben, ends up in their bed—and all three are quite satisfied in this relationship without a name. As the passion they share transforms Erin, will it be enough to help her face the evil she thought she had left behind?

We are giving away 4 kindle copies of LAID BARE, book 1 in Lauren Dane’s Brown Siblings series! For a chance to win, just leave a comment below. Winners will be drawn on Sunday. Good luck! 😀

LAID BARE (digital) is currently discounted to $6.99 at Amazon and Kobo

*Giveaway sponsored by Novel Thoughts

Read Full Post »

Fearless Love: Chickens. Why Did It Have To Be Chickens? by Meg Benjamin

All of my Konigsburg books include animals. I’m not sure how this happened, it just did. Starting with a diabolic cat and a sweet-natured Chihuahua in Venus In Blue Jeans, I had a greyhound in Wedding Bell Blues, a mostly coon hound puppy in Be My Baby, and a largely Maine coon cat in Long Time Gone and Don’t Forget Me, and an iguana named Doris in Brand New Me.

When I got to Fearless Love, the choice was already clear, and so, as it turned out, was the animal. Chickens. My heroine, MG Carmody, inherits a chicken farm from her grandfather. MG doesn’t have much else she can depend on in the way of income—she’s a struggling singer trying to regain her confidence after some bad experiences in Nashville. So she decides to sell her eggs. And I had to find out how you raise chickens.

Fortunately for me, Denver (where I live now) had just passed an ordinance allowing urban farmers to raise a few chickens in their backyards. All of a sudden chickens were in the news, and it turned out I actually knew a few people who were raising them. Plus Denver wasn’t the only city in the country where people had decided that having backyard chickens was a good idea. I found Web sites galore with loads of chicken information.

So what did I learn? All sorts of stuff. Hens usually lay only one egg a day and they may not come through every time (so my heroine’s twenty-five chickens wouldn’t necessarily produce twenty-five eggs). They don’t lay while they’re molting, and they stop laying altogether when they age (two to three years). This creates all kinds of dilemmas for the soft-hearted urban chicken farmers who can’t bring themselves to do what traditional farmers do with aging hens—make chicken soup. I also found out raising chickens is a lot of work, which fit in with my story. Between her job in a restaurant kitchen, her reborn music career and her chickens, MG is frequently exhausted.

Although most of the chicken authorities cautioned against naming your birds (you don’t want to get too attached), I decided that I’d have at least one chicken with attitude, a rooster named Robespierre. He has a run-in with a coyote and the result is based on a similar story I picked up from a chicken blogger (yes, Virginia, there are chicken bloggers).

MG finally triumphs, with the help of my hero, Joe LeBlanc, a chef who turns out to know a lot about chickens himself. And I’ve now got enough information about chickens to know for sure that I’m not going to be raising them myself any time soon!

Here’s the blurb for Fearless Love:

Fearless Love, Konigsberg, Texas, Book 7

Sweet music doesn’t come without a few sour notes.

MG Carmody never figured her musical dreams would crash against the reality of Nashville. Now the only thing she has going for her is her late grandfather’s chicken farm, which comes with molting hens that won’t lay, one irascible rooster, and a huge mortgage held by a ruthless opponent—her Great Aunt Nedda.

With fewer eggs to sell, MG needs extra money, fast. Even if it means carving out time for a job as a prep cook at The Rose—and resisting her attraction to its sexy head chef.

Joe LeBlanc has problems of his own. He’s got a kitchen full of temperamental cooks—one of whom is a sneak thief—a demanding cooking competition to prepare for, and an attraction to MG that could easily boil over into something tasty. If he could figure out the cause of the shy beauty’s lack of self confidence.

In Joe’s arms, MG’s heart begins to find its voice. But between kitchen thieves, performance anxiety, saucy saboteurs, greedy relatives, and one very pissed-off rooster, the chances of them ever making sweet music are looking slimmer by the day.

Warning: Contains hot kitchen sex, cool Americana music, foodie hysteria, and a whole lot of fowl play.

Buy link: http://store.samhainpublishing.com/fearless-love-p-7011.html

 

Meg Benjamin is an award-winning author of contemporary romance. Her Konigsburg series for Samhain Publishing is set in the Texas Hill Country. Book #3, Be My Baby, won a 2011 EPIC Award for Contemporary Romance. Book #4, Long Time Gone, received the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award for Indie Press Romance. Book #5, Brand New Me, won the Holt Medallion from Virginia Romance Writers and was nominated for Book Of the Year at Long and Short Reviews. Meg lives in Colorado with her DH and two rather large Maine coon kitties (well, partly Maine Coon anyway). Her Web site is http://www.MegBenjamin.com and her blog is http://megbenj1.wordpress.com/. You can follow her on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/meg.benjamin1), Pinterest (http://pinterest.com/megbenjamin/), and Twitter (http://twitter.com/megbenj1). Meg loves to hear from readers—contact her at meg@megbenjamin.com.

 

~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~

Meg Benjamin will be giving a $10 Amazon gift card to one lucky reader. Comment for a chance to win!

 

Read Full Post »