Christine S. Feldman – Guest blog and giveaway

Tomboy Shannon Mahoney has always been a lot more comfortable with things like power tools than she is with high heels or lipstick, and she often wishes she could reinvent herself and finally tell her perfect boss, Drew Kingston, that she has had a crush on him since high school.  But she is just as tongue tied and awkward around him now as she ever was, and long-familiar patterns are hard things from which to break free…

Until one day Drew’s estranged older brother Michael comes to town, bringing with him a surprising opportunity for Shannon.

Ladies’ man Michael is a former bad boy looking for redemption.  He is desperate to atone for past mistakes that he made with his family, but younger brother Drew has cut him out of his life and refuses to even speak to him.  Which means Michael needs help getting to Drew.

And so he approaches Shannon with a proposition:  if she will get Drew to agree to hear him out, Michael will mentor Shannon in how to win his brother’s heart.  Suspicious of Michael’s motives, Shannon initially enters into the bargain just to make sure Michael isn’t actually in town to cause trouble for Drew, but the two unlikely allies are surprised to discover that despite butting heads at first, they are beginning to enjoy each other’s company far more than either of them expected.

And Shannon starts to realize that maybe love isn’t about reinventing yourself after all.  It’s about finding your perfect match.

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Isn’t It Romantic—Or…Could It Be the Death of You?

            You might think that, as someone who writes romances, I would be prone to seeing opportunities for romance all around me in real life, too.  And I am…to a certain extent.  Problem is, I also like to write things like suspense and even the occasional sinister ghost story.  Which means I have just as great a tendency to see the potential for harm in even the most innocent of situations.

What can I say?  I’m an author.  We’re a disturbed people.

So it makes it hard for me to plan elaborate romantic scenarios for my husband and me even though—in theory—I think date night is a wonderful idea.  Maybe you do, too.  If so, I feel it is my solemn duty to make you aware of some potential pitfalls you may not have anticipated.  Consider these examples:

 

• Go for a horse and carriage ride through the park.  Surely you’re joking.  Didn’t you see that Seinfeld episode?  If you have no idea what I’m talking about, Google it, please.  For your own protection.
• Pass secret love notes in the library.  Very romantic—until your love notes inadvertently get intercepted either by a militant librarian who shames you in front of the whole library…or by a secret government operative who mistakes your love-talk for an enemy agent’s code.  Hey, it could happen.
• Take a leisurely stroll through the woods, hand-in-hand.  According to modern cinema, this is every axe murderer’s dream scenario.  At least promise me you’ll bring pepper spray.  Or a taser.
• Meander along back roads without any particular destination in mind.  Uh huh.  Then your GPS breaks down, your car gets a flat tire, and three days later Search and Rescue workers find you and your sweetie battling it out over who gets to gorge themselves on that lone Tic Tac you discovered in the back of the glove compartment.  Few relationships survive this kind of thing.
• Share an ice cream cone on a scorching summer day.  Certain people may be a tad possessive over their ice cream cones and turn feral if anyone else tries to take a bite.  My husband has the scars to prove it.
• Go for a midnight swim in a lake.  Nothing good EVER lives at the bottom of a lake.  Don’t you ever go to the movies?
• Go singing/dancing in the rain.  Concerned onlookers will likely call 911, and police will gently escort you to the psychiatric ward of the nearest hospital.
• Walk barefoot in the park.  Um…not everybody cleans up after their dogs when they walk them, you know.
• Kidnap your special someone from work.  A coworker gets the wrong idea, makes a call, and WHAMO!—a SWAT team tackles you in the parking lot.
• Sign up for a sculpting class together.  Sure it was romantic in Ghost.  But it didn’t turn out so well in Naked Gun, did it?  And who’s going to clean up the mess, I ask you?  Who?

 

I hope these examples have given you reason to think twice before diving willy-nilly into something reckless like a moonlit picnic or any other hazardous activities with your special someone.  Take my advice:  just stay in, curl up on the couch together, and read a good book.  Like, say…The Bargain, a delightful contemporary romance featuring a socially-awkward tomboy and the reformed ladies’ man she just might sweep off his feet.  No, really, it’s delightful.  My mother said so.

And in the meantime…let’s all be very careful out there.

 

About the author:

Christine S. Feldman writes both novels and feature-length screenplays, and, to her great delight, she has placed in screenwriting competitions on both coasts—and has even won a couple of them.  In 2012 one of her screenplays was featured as a staged reading in New York City at the Gotham Screen International Film Festival, and later that same year she signed her first publishing contract for her debut novel, Coming Home, with a second one to follow this summer.  When she is not writing, she is teaching kindergarten, puttering around in her garden, ballroom dancing with her husband, or doing research for her next project.  Please visit her at her website http://christinesfeldman.com or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/ChristineSFeldman.

 

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For a chance to win a digital copy of The Bargain, just leave a comment below. Good luck!