Category Archives: Cindy’s Blogs

Black Friday Shopping – NEVER

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I’m giving away a $5 Starbucks card to one lucky commentor and a paperback copy of Tame A Wild Bride to another. In order to qualify for the Grand Prizes listed below you must leave your EMAIL ADDRESS IN THE COMMENT.

I know people who get up at Midnight to hit those first Black Friday sales. That’s INSANE. What in the world is worth that? Are the deals and the attitudes you encounter worth that? Not to this person. Maybe I’ve never wanted anything that badly.

I hear the horror stories not only from the nightly news but from friends and family who brave the wilds of the shopping malls or Walmart, to save $50 on an iPod or something. I suppose $50 off an iPod would be a really BIG discount but is it worth standing in line, in the cold with a bunch of cranky strangers?

Not to this girl.

How about you? Do you shop on Black Friday? Why?

We have THREE grand prizes. You as a reader can go to EACH blog and comment with your email address and be entered to win. Yep, you can enter over 200 times! Don’t forget that in order to enter for these prizes you must LEAVE YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS IN THE COMMENT.

Now what are those prizes?

1st Grand Prize: A Kindle Fire or Nook Tablet
2nd Grand Prize: A $75 Amazon or B&N Gift Card
3rd Grand Prize: A Swag Pack that contains paperbacks, ebooks, 50+ bookmarks, cover flats, magnets, pens, coffee cozies, and more!

Here is a short excerpt from my latest book TAME A WILD BRIDE. I hope you all have a great time today, whatever you choose to do.

EXCERPT
Rosemary Stanton stood patiently on the train platform, sweat rolling down her back and between her ample breasts. Waiting. Sweating because it was an unusually hot day in late April. Waiting for her husband. A husband she wouldn’t recognize if he were standing right next to her.

She’d been desperate when she answered the advertisement for a mail order bride. Wanted: Single woman to cook, clean, and care for children on a cattle ranch in southwestern Colorado. Will marry upon arrival.

Well, she was twenty-six with no prospects. Her brother just got married and his new wife, Beatrice, didn’t want Rosie around. She could answer the advertisement or become a governess. Help someone else’s children grow up into adults. Live in someone else’s house. For the rest of her life, she’d have nothing she could call her own.

Rosie wanted a home. Her own home. She wanted a husband and children. All the things she’d never have if she stayed in Philadelphia. When she’d seen the ad in the morning paper, she’d nearly shouted with glee. However, she managed to restrain herself until she retired to her room before she giggled with delight as she pressed her back against the door. The advertisement was tailor-made for her needs. It got her away from Beatrice and got her her own home all in one fell swoop.

Her brother, Robert, though was not happy with the idea of his baby sister traveling across the country to marry a stranger. He grudgingly agreed to give her her dowry to take with her. Five thousand dollars. She’d take the draft to the bank as soon as she arrived in Creede, Colorado, and married Mr. Thomas Harris. Cattle rancher. It was her “in case it doesn’t work out” money. Though she supposed it would belong to her husband once she married. Perhaps she just wouldn’t tell him about it.

Her conscience spoke up. That’s no way to start a marriage. With lies and secrets. Oh, all right. She’d tell him and have him take her to the bank. But not until after she’d taken his measure. She could tell by how he treated his animals what kind of man he was. A man who was cruel to his horses would also be cruel to his wife. If he was a cruel man, she would leave and she sure as heck wouldn’t tell him about her money.

Even the substantial size of her dowry couldn’t seem to provide marriage prospects for Rosie back in Philadelphia. She wasn’t pretty in the conventional sense. She thought her face with its big brown eyes and full lips was pleasing enough, but men apparently hadn’t. Her one beau told her that her eyes were the color of warm brandy. That was before he left her to marry another more suitable woman. More suitable, hah! Richer was more like it.

He’d had expensive tastes and had married a rabbit-faced girl, heir to a substantial fortune to which he’d have access. Well, good luck and good riddance.

She hoped her new husband wouldn’t be as snootish as Paul had been. As a cattle rancher she didn’t know what to expect but the idea of a more earthy, less frivoless man appealed to her.

Rosie did have one extraordinary feature. Her hair. Waist length, wavy and a clear, golden blonde. Right now, standing on the train platform in Creede it was bound up in a loose bun on top of her head under her hat. It, like the rest of her, was covered in white dirt and a nasty grayish soot from the train. Her suit would never be the same again.

She’d discovered on the second day of her trip, she could minimize the grime by sitting in the front of the car with the window closed. But sooner or later the heat and mugginess of the car would force her to open the window. The air came rushing in, cooling her, but bringing with it the dirt and ash from the train’s boilers and whatever the wind picked up along the way.

On the long trip, she’d told herself again and again she’d made the right decision. She was right to make the difficult trip. This was her life and she had to take her future into her own hands.

“Excuse me. Miss Stanton?”

Rosie shaded her eyes from the late afternoon sun and looked up at a tall man with dark hair. His hat was pulled low, hiding his eyes. He had a strong jaw covered with a shadow of whiskers.

“Yes. I’m Rosemary Stanton.”

He took off his hat and held out his hand. “I’m Tom Harris.”

Rosie took his hand. It engulfed hers with a shock of warmth. Her pale skin stood in stark contrast to his tanned one. Calluses rubbed against her soft palm though the touch was not unpleasant. She looked from their clasped hands up into the bluest eyes she’d ever seen.

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Harris.”

“Tom. Call me, Tom.”

“And I’m Rosie.”

“Where are your trunks, Rosie?”

“Oh, I don’t have any trunks. I only brought what I thought I would need out here.”
He picked up the two valises at her feet. “Doesn’t seem like much for an Eastern woman. I’m glad to see you’re practical.”

Rosie felt the heat in her cheeks and knew she blushed at his praise, undeserving as it was. “Well, I didn’t think you’d have any balls.”

He cocked an eyebrow.

Purchase Links

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Smashwords

Apple

Six Sentence Sunday

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From my new WIP, The Capital Bride.

On the other side of the door was her last resort. Either this or prostitution and prostitution was not a choice. She couldn’t raise MaryAnn in that environment, nor if truth be told, could she lower herself to live like that. At least this way there would be some stability in her little girl’s life.

Sarah turned the knob, took a deep breath and walked through the door to a better future for her daughter and, if she was lucky, for herself.

The office was small and neat.

Leave me a comment for a chance to win a copy of Tame A Wild Bride, ebook or paperback. Ebook includes international. Paperback is for US only

Autumn’s Harvest Blog Hop

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What do you think of when you think of autumn or fall? I think of crisp evenings and warm days. Of new clothes for school and Halloween.

It’s my favorite time of year. Autumn. I’m a September baby and my birthday is usually the first day of fall, so I guess I was predestined to like autumn the best. I love the smell of fall, portending the coming of Ol’ Man Winter. I love the changing colors of the leaves and even putting my garden to bed before winter is upon us.

I still buy new clothes in the fall. Like I’m still getting ready for school. Only now, I get to buy what I like, not just what fits. I was extremely lucky as a child because my mother could sew. I would show her what I wanted in a magazine and she could make it for me. She made her own patterns, so the sky was the limit. Of course, she had to approve it as well. My dresses were always longer than the current fashion of miniskirts, but now that I think back to it, she always dressed me well. The other kids didn’t tease me about my clothes because they were just like theirs. I was a fat kid so I didn’t have the choices that the other kids did when it came to buying clothes, but my mom made sure I had clothes that I liked to wear and that were in current fashion, too.

And Halloween. What can I say? I love it. Seeing the little ones dressed up as princesses and cowboys and bumble bees. I love it. I decorate our house. I dress up every year and give out the candy. LOTS of candy. I give out a handful to each child. I remember when I was a kid and only got one little piece. I thought it was so chintzy, unless of course, it was a full size bar. Then WOW! I’d hit the jackpot. Now when Mom said I could have only one piece I had a major one to spring on her. LOL

Then there is Thanksgiving. A favorite holiday because I get to spend it with my chosen family. Not just the family I was born into but the one I choose to belong to.

Let’s face it there are so many things to love about fall. And I love them all.

I’m giving away two $5 Starbucks cards and 2 paperback copies of TAME A WILD BRIDE. In order to be entered in the drawings for my prizes and for the Grand Prizes of a Kindle Fire or Nook, a $50 giftcard, and a HUGE swag pack, you MUST LEAVE YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS IN YOUR COMMENT.

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Eight line Saturday

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These are the first eight lines of my upcoming book. It is the third in the Swords of Gregara series and is call Honora. I’ll be giving away a ecopy of the 2nd book in the series, Riza to one person and a $5 Starbucks card to another. Just leave me a comment to get an entry.

From Chapter 1

“Ohh” a woman’s voice awash with pain reached his ears.

“You disappoint me, Honora. You continue to try to escape me. When will you learn?” asked a whiney voiced man.

The whip struck flesh and the woman moaned but didn’t scream. She didn’t scream.

When he woke again he was not alone. Chained across the room from him, hung by her wrists, was a woman. He could see the lash marks on her back.

The Alpha Male – take him or leave him

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What is an Alpha Male?

We all love to read about an Alpha male. Our best heroes are Alpha males. But in real life would we really want our men to be totally Alpha? Do we really want a guy that takes charge of everything? Probably not. A true Alpha male would not allow us or our heroine to have our own lives. To do and be what we need to be.

Sure, in our books an alpha hero is great. We want him to take charge and keep our heroine safe but in the best books he also has a soft side. A heart that we can reach. A part of him that is not alpha but is as vulnerable as the rest of us. He wouldn’t be our hero without the part of him that we can capture and hold close to our own hearts.

A perfect Alpha male is tough and gentle, hard and soft, stern and giving. He’s all the things we need him to be. He cares for us but allows us our freedom to become all we can be. He loves us enough to let us spread our wings and fly without him, knowing all the while that he’s there to pick us up after we fall and will protect us with his life if we need him to.

What is your idea of an Alpha male and would you want to marry one? Or like me do you want a man who is the best of both the Alpha and the non-alpha male.

Leave me a comment, WITH YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS and be entered into the drawing for one of three $5 Starbucks cards and a copy of my newest book, Tame A Wild Bride. Also, you will be entered in the drawings for the Grand Prizes of 1st prize, a Kindle Fire or BN Nook; 2nd prize $130 gift card to Amazon or Barnes & Noble; 3rd prize a huge swag bag prize. The 1st and 2nd prizes are included in international entries. The swag prize is only for US entries.

Where do you get your ideas from?

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The question I get asked most often is where do you get your ideas from? They can come from anywhere. My first western was inspired by my parents love story. My first scifi romance was based on a dream I had as a teenage. My last western was again based on my parents who corresponded after meeting one summer, until Dad asked Mom to marry him. That made me think of mail order brides and Tame A Wild Bride was born.

My new series is also a mail order bride series. There are so many opportunities for stories there because there were so many different reasons that women would offer themselves up as brides. The most common of course was the lack of men in the east and surplus of them in the west.

As to the men, they were as desperate as the women. They needed women to have children to carry on their names, to make the territory grow and eventually become a state. They needed women to civilize the west not just settle it. They also needed women for companionship and yes, sex.

Some of these unions lasted for fifty years and were happy ones. Others lasted only one hour. Yes, you heard me an hour. The woman in question discovered as she and her new husband that he was the one who robbed her stage on the way to town. She recognized the scar on his hand. She screamed ran from the room and locked herself in the bedroom. When she finally came out, her new husband was gone and the poor bewildered preacher and his wife were told that it never happened. The woman went back to her home, unmarried.

So there you have it. Ideas come from anywhere and can hit you anytime. I carry a notepad in my purse for just such occasions

If you’re an author where do you get your ideas from? If you’re a reader, have you ever seen something or someone and asked yourself, what if? That’s what author’s do. What if so and so met such and such and did this and that. It all starts with What if?

Leave me a comment to be entered into a drawing for a $5 Starbucks card.

Seven sentence Sunday

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I’ve seen the blogs for six sentence Sunday’s and decided I’d do something similar. So I thought, seven sentences for seven days of the week. So here are the first seven sentences of the book.

I’m also including the blurb and a short excerpt from later in the book. I’d love some feedback. Leave me a comment and tell me what you think of the excerpt and be entered into a drawing for and ebook copy of TAME A WILD BRIDE.

TAME A WILD BRIDE

Rosemary Stanton stood patiently on the train platform, sweat rolling down her back and between her ample breasts. Waiting. Sweating because it was an unusually hot day in late April. Waiting for her husband. A husband she wouldn’t recognize if he were standing right next to her.

She’d been desperate when she answered the advertisement for a mail order bride. Wanted: Single woman to cook, clean, and care for children on a cattle ranch in southwestern Colorado.

BLURB

Rosie Stanton climbed on a west-bound train to answer his ad for a wife and mother, everything she wants to be. But Tom Harris lied. He doesn’t want a wife, merely a mother for his two abandoned children and a cook and cleaner for his ranch. Betrayed once, he’s vowed never to let another woman into his heart. Sexy Rosie upsets all his plans and threatens to invade his scarred heart. How will he maintain his vow to keep his hands off her as she charms his children, his cow hands, his life?

EXCERPT

The marriage ceremony was short, thank God. Rosie stood next to Tom, grime covering her from head to toe. No place to even wash her face. Sweat formed in rivulets down her temples. She’d tried to keep her face and hands clean while traveling, but they came upon Creede, the end of the line, without her being able to check her appearance and wash up again. Not that it would have made much difference. Her traveling gloves, normally black, were ash colored from the dirt and grime of the last five days. Thanks to her gloves and the fact she wore them most of the time her hands were relatively clean.

Tendrils of hair hung down all over having escaped from their restraints. She’d so carefully put up all of her hair into a bun high atop her head at the start of the trip. Now she was sure she looked like some sort of rag-a-muffin and this was her wedding day. Her dreams about her wedding didn’t include her being dirty and wearing a traveling suit that was four days past feeling fresh. She’d brought her dress thinking she’d have a real wedding. But that’s all it was, a dream. Mentally slapping herself, she remembered this wasn’t a dream this was reality. A reality she’d chosen, so she lifted her chin a little higher and made the best of it.

When they got to the rings, Tom placed a plain gold band on her finger. She had her father’s wedding band to give to him, it was also gold but had scroll work etched into it.

Then the preacher said “You may kiss the bride.” Tom looked at her and, as if he were seeing her for the first time, searched her face probably trying to find a clean place to kiss her. He finally leaned down and gave her a chaste kiss on the lips. Quick, but not so fast she didn’t feel the warmth of his lips on hers all the way to her to her toes. She could get used to that.

Book Tours. Have you tried one?

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I just got off a virtual book tour for Tame A Wild Bride. It was a fantastic experience. One that I highly recommend. The first stage of my tour happened the last two weeks in August. For ten days my blurb, my bio and a short excerpt were blasted to my stops, one per day for ten days. Nothing else. Just that. I provided it once and they, Black Lion Tours, http://www.blackliontours.com, did the rest.

The second part of the tour happened starting September 10th. Every couple of days I would have a review or an interview or a blog that I wrote (they gave me the topic so it was super easy) or some combination of the three go up on the tour hosts blog. So there was always something new up for my book. Then all I had to do was promo the blogs and answer any comments I got. I got quite a few. These are all things I do for myself on my blog and now someone else was doing it for me.

My blog ended yesterday. My sales are booming and I have Black Lion Tours to thank for that. I highly recommend that you, as an author, do a virtual book tour with each of your books as they come out. I’m even thinking of relaunching some of my titles because the tour was so effective for me.

I’d like to know your opinions of virtual book tours. Are you in favor of them? Would you build your own or have someone else do the hard work like I did with Black Lion?

I have a $5 Starbucks card for one lucky commenter today, so be sure and leave me a comment answering my questions in the paragraph above

Excerpt from Tame A Wild Bride

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Here’s a brand new excerpt of Tame A Wild Bride. Hope you enjoy it. Leave me a comment for a chance to win a $5 Starbucks card. Then when you’re done here, drop on over to MK McClintocks blog for another chance to win a Starbucks card and a copy of Tame A Wild Bride, too. Here’s the link: http://mkmcclintock.blogspot.com/2012/09/tame-wild-bride-on-tour-with-cynthia.html

Rosie took his hand. It engulfed hers with a shock of warmth. Her pale skin stood in stark contrast to his tanned one. Calluses rubbed against her soft palm though the touch was not unpleasant. She looked from their clasped hands up into the bluest eyes she’d ever seen.

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Harris.”

“Tom. Call me, Tom.”

“And I’m Rosie.”

“Where are your trunks, Rosie?”

“Oh, I don’t have any trunks. I only brought what I thought I would need out here.”

He picked up the two valises at her feet. “Doesn’t seem like much for an Eastern woman. I’m glad to see you’re practical.”

Rosie felt the heat in her cheeks and knew she blushed at his praise, undeserving as it was. “Well, I didn’t think you’d have any balls.”

He cocked an eyebrow.

“No, I didn’t mean…I meant…well, no need for fancy gowns or dresses.” Mortified clear down to her toes, she hoped the platform would just open up and swallow her now. “I’m sorry, I’m rambling. I do that when I’m nervous.”

“Do I make you nervous, Rosie?” His deep baritone swept over her, caressing her, soothing her.

“Yes. No.” She shook her head hoping to jiggle something sensible loose. “It’s the situation which makes me nervous.”

He nodded knowingly. “The wedding ceremony. Well, that is one thing you don’t have to worry about anymore. We’re going to the preacher’s house now to get it done.”

Rosie was surprised. Shocked was more like it. “Now? I mean I thought we might talk a while. Take a couple of days….”

“No time for that. I have to get back to the ranch. We’ll stay tonight at Peabody’s Boarding House. The owner, Mary Peabody, is a friend of mine. The rooms are always clean and she serves the best food in town. I always stay there, if she has an opening, when I come to town. Tomorrow, we’ll go pick up my kids from the McKenzie’s and head to the ranch. By the time we get home you’ll barely have time to cook supper before it’s dark and time to put Ben and Suzie to bed.”

Rosie had hoped they’d have some time to get to know each other before they got married. Heck, she’d have been happy with a bath before her wedding. She understood she couldn’t go live at his ranch without being married to him. It would be unseemly. Her reputation would be in shambles and who would want to marry a woman with a bad reputation? Especially if you had children. It would rub off on you but more importantly, on them. So an immediate marriage was necessary. She understood all of that but it didn’t change what she wished for.

“You can cook. Can’t you? In your letters you said you were a good cook.”

She nodded her head. “I am a good cook. I’ve never had a complaint.”

“Good. Glad to hear it. Shall we go?”

She took a deep breath, scared out of her wits she was making a mistake. “Yes. I suppose we should.”

They walked to the waiting buckboard. He put her bags in the back and then helped her up on to it for the trip to the preachers. She was much relieved to see that his horses were well cared for.

*****
Available at Amazon http://tinyurl.com/cauchyv

Barnes & Noble: http://tinyurl.com/cpns4ot

Apple: http://tinyurl.com/d5vg2c2

Kobo: http://tinyurl.com/9gpkf8c

How to decide where to place your books

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I’m going to be starting a new series where my heros, members of an Intergalactic Police Squad come to earth. I didn’t know where I wanted to set them in someplace I’ve been or could go and get the flavor of the city. I want to be accurate when I show them at the capital building or chasing the bad guy through Disneyland.

To to this I need to research it. I need to be able to see it in my mind. I need to go there. Just like with my the Tame books, my western series, are set in Creede, Colorado, I had to go to Creede to get the flavor of the town. I talked to the locals and to my mother who lived there about 60 years after I set it. I got books about the history of the town and talked to a historian, who happened to be a family friend. But the main thing was that I went there. I lived it. I felt the history all around me.

For my new series I need to have these guys chase around interesting cities. The first one will be San Diego. I think I could have all sorts of fun with him at the Wild Animal Park or Seaworld. Now I have the vision in my head, the maps, the pictures of San Diego to help me in the writing of my book.

What I want from you, is for you to tell me where you think one of the books should be set and why you think so. One lucky person will win a full set of my Tame series in paperback or as a gift card from Amazon and a $5 Starbucks gift card.