Roxanne Rustand's Blog, page 2

Things that go bump in the night…

Have you ever done something that ought to be in a book?

If I wrote horror fiction books instead of clean romantic suspense, I would have ended up with some good research during a family trip! 

The Airbnb rental we stayed in was lovely, a home that could be featured in a magazine. We were awed by how beautiful the house was inside, with a formal dining room, high ceilings, two bathrooms, and a totally updated kitchen. It looked perfect. And it was, until…

The lights began brightening, fading, brightening, fading.  They’d work normally for hours, then start this routine again. The microwave abruptly snapped and blew out. The air conditioner stopped working. 

Next,  one of the toilets quit working…and then a light fixture hanging from the high ceiling suddenly sizzled and went out with a POP.  

For the final hurrah, the night before we checked out, I reached up to place a single cup in a cabinet, and the entire, long, heavily loaded shelf of glassware collapsed. 

As if on a children’s slide at a park, all of it sped toward me, the weight of it unstoppable, shattering on the counters, stove, sink, and floor, breaking plates and glassware on the shelf below as well. If I hadn’t been wearing shoes, I would have been marooned in a sea of broken glass!

I don’t believe in poltergeists or other paranormal activities, but looking back, the stay sounds like something out of a horror story, where the travelers end up in a perfect place that’s too good to be true, and then things start to happen. LOL! 

Have you ever had a weird experience like this?

I have a new release this month, that–by sheer coincidence–involves some events in an eerie old Victorian house!

CLICK HERE to learn about DANGEROUS SECRETS. 

The last thing she’d expected was to see her husband back in town.
He’d wanted to start a family. Jill wanted to wait. Just for a while, so she can establish her medical practice in this small town. But in the midst of that uncertainty, he’d simply walked out.  Or was it really that simple? Maybe not…

Can there ever be hope for a second chance?
Maybe. But now, an unknown enemy’s threats are escalating against them both—an enemy determined to see them die.

And then one night changes everything…
Their eerie old Victorian home is shrouded in mystery from events long, long ago.  Can that mystery help save them both?

It is FREE on Kindle Unlimited, and at a low price for those who prefer to buy.

Leave a comment here,  you’ll be entered to win a free copy of any title in my Northern Pines Suspense series.  Good luck!

The post Things that go bump in the night… appeared first on Roxanne Rustand.

Unexpected blessings…and a free book drawing!

Have you ever made plans, then found out that they turned out far better than you’d expected?

My daughter and her husband needed to be right on the Gulf Coast for nine days in mid-July.

I was delighted to join them and help with their newborn and two-year-old, especially needed during the times when Daddy was working.  Because who wouldn’t want extra grandma time?

But I wasn’t looking forward to stifling heat and oppressive humidity.  To this gal from the Upper Midwest, how else could it be in Southern Mississippi?

But oh, those were lovely days. The heat and humidity built every day, then the heavens opened in the afternoon. We loved to watch the rain from the porch swing, as we drifted back and forth with the sleeping baby, and had precious hours to leisurely converse, while Daddy took the two-year-old to the wonderful indoor children’s train museum in Gulfport, or to lovely parks, the beach, and splash pads in the area when the sun was shining.

After those rains, the temperature would cool off for lovely afternoons, then for balmy evenings back on that porch swing, lulling the baby to sleep and talking some more. 

Every moment was a treasure. And ooh..did I mention the wonderful bakeries is this area?!

Have you had plans turn out much better than you’d ever expected?

 

[image error] In my new clean, small-town romantic suspense, DANGEROUS SECRETS, are second chances ever possible when one thinks everything has been lost?

CLICK HERE to find out more, and to order!

                        ~~~~~~~~

 

 

 

Leave a comment  by clicking “Comment”, and you will be entered in a drawing for a free e-book copy of any of my books released within the past three years!
To see all of those titles, CLICK HERE.

 Wishing you all my best for a wonderful summer,

Roxanne Rustand

 

The post Unexpected blessings…and a free book drawing! appeared first on Roxanne Rustand.

New release: DANGEROUS MOVE, and a prize drawing!

 

A NEW RELEASE, and a prize drawing!  

Is your summer starting off as quickly as mine? It seems like the time has flown!

Part of that is because we had a new grandbaby in May.  She’s already out of newborn size!  I spend a lot of time preparing meals for our daughter’s family to help them out, and then adore spending as much time there as I can.

And then there was a book deadline, too. It had been well edited and proofed, and I had gone over it dozens of times, But at the last minute, to my dismay, I found a small timeline issue.

Sounds like a simple fix, right? Well, nope. Not always. Because if even a small part of the plot needs work, it can end up being hard to fix. Plot threads can run throughout a story like octopus tentacles…and some can be hard to find.  I’m so glad that I discovered it! All writers work so hard to create stories readers will enjoy, and we don’t want to let our readers down in any way.

DANGEROUS MOVE (release date 6/18/24)  on Amazon, is FREE on Kindle Unlimited or just $3.99 to buy.

CLICK HERE  to read more about it and to buy.

Here’s a quick blurb:

Has she just made the worst decision of her life?

Her husband walked out on her and their three, recently adopted children–children who desperately need a sense of security.

The children are her world, and she will do anything to keep them safe.
So now she has moved far away to a quaint small town in Northern Wisconsin, to start her new career as the administrator of Blackberry Hill Hospital.

But all is not what it seemed when she took the job.

The hospital death count is rising. And when a man from her past shows up, she must keep a dark secret from him…or risk everything she holds dear.

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

 

Leave a comment on this post at  https://roxannerustand.com/blog   (where you will see this same post)  and you will be entered in a drawing for a free e-book from my backlist.

I hope you are having a wonderful summer!

Roxanne Rustand
https://roxannerustand.com

The post New release: DANGEROUS MOVE, and a prize drawing! appeared first on Roxanne Rustand.

Summer sunshine, plans…and free books!

Despite recent severe weather in our state, we now have brilliant sunshine, temps in the seventies, and—after several years of severe drought—the grass is green, and perennials are blooming. And now…the busy summer begins!

What are your plans for this summer? Time with family and friends? Travels?

Weddings and graduations are ahead for us, then some travels to see our relatives up north in Wisconsin and Minnesota. It’s so much fun to spend time with everyone.

If you could go anywhere in the world this year, where would your dreams take you? 

Some news:  I have a new book coming out in June, and here is the newly updated cover!

DANGEROUS MOVE, a clean romantic suspense.   CLICK HERE  to pre-order.  Here’s a quick peek:

Has she just made the worst decision of her life?

Her husband walked out on her and their three, recently adopted children–children who desperately need a sense of security.

The children are her world, and she will do anything to keep them safe.
So now she has moved far away to a quaint small town in Northern Wisconsin to start her new career as the administrator of Blackberry Hill Hospital.

But all is not what it seemed when she took the job.

The hospital death count is rising. And when a man from her past shows up, she must keep a dark secret from him…or risk everything she holds dear.

                                                                              * * * *

More great news: Here is my monthly offer for you to receive a  FREE book by a wonderful author! 

If you haven’t yet read a book by bestselling author Camy Tang, you have been missing out! Click the following link to receive your free book. I promise you will be so glad you did!

https://bit.ly/wedding-kimono

 

 

Be sure to check out my newsletter next month, because I will be featuring a free book by another bestselling author.   You’ll also find some links to several BIG author promotions where you can find lots of books at bargain rates!

Leave a comment, and you will be entered in a drawing for a free e-book—the title of your choice from my backlist!

Have a wonderful June,
Roxanne Rustand

The post Summer sunshine, plans…and free books! appeared first on Roxanne Rustand.

An Easter weeked in three states…and a drawing for a free book!

Did you travel anywhere for Easter, or were you at home?

Usually, our family holiday celebrations are at our house, and I do love all the food prep and having everyone gathered under our roof.  We might have 20-25 people, and it is such a joy to have them all here.

But this year was quite a change! On our way to Minnesota, we dropped off Easter baskets for our two-year-old granddaughter at our daughter and son-in-law’s home in this state.

We spent a Good Friday in the Twin Cities (MN) to take my brother out for his birthday dinner. Then we drove onward to Wisconsin for church and Easter dinner with our oldest son and his family. What fun!

After my parents passed away, my husband and I then became the hub for holiday celebrations, so such holiday travel is now rare. I just pray that our kids and their families will still gather for at least some of the holidays when we are gone. It’s tricky though, since they all have in-laws to visit as well.

How does your extended family handle the various holidays?

I just had a brand-new release this week, FINAL TRUTH.

A lot of you helped me decide on the cover art, and now here it is!  I really enjoyed writing this one, as the llama definitely added a different dimension.   

CLICK HERE to see it on Amazon and read about it.
I hope you will enjoy it!

Leave a comment, and you will be in a drawing for a free copy of FINAL WITNESS, another book in this series.

 

Wishing you all my best for a wonderful spring,

Roxanne Rustand

The post An Easter weeked in three states…and a drawing for a free book! appeared first on Roxanne Rustand.

Happy Easter! And a question: what’s in a name? Roxanne Rustand

Easter blessings to you all!

This season is filled with such joy and hope, as we move through the weeks of Lent toward the suffering Jesus endured and his glorious resurrection.

It has even more meaning to me this year. I was adopted at three and have been a lifetime church member. My parents were told by the social worker that I had been baptized and they believed it. But was I? There were no documents, and I always wondered.

So this winter, when our Lutheran church had a weekend of open baptism when anyone could walk forward on the spur of the moment, I did. And now I know. I felt such joy at that moment, and now feel so blessed and reassured!

On a completely different note, after I find and buy books by my favorite authors on Amazon, my gaze always drifts to the rows of book covers below the book’s description, called “Products related to this item” and “Based on your recent views.” Then farther down to “Books you may like.”
Do you do this, too? Just by looking at a cover, book title, and subtitle, I often find books I want to explore.

I know those details have been carefully planned by the authors (at least those who are experienced) to show a great deal about the book–and avoid misleading buyers into a purchase they might regret. Even the font used on a cover can convey useful information. Is it fun and swirly? Intense?

I was so naive when I first started publishing with Amazon.

I found photos of lovely flowers or landscape scenes, and asked my cover artist to use them.

I also came up with what I thought were pretty titles, without a thought about actually conveying what the book was about. And I didn’t know how to write book descriptions for Amazon, either.

When I look back at my abysmal sales during those early years, I actually feel gratitude. No one would have guessed those books were romantic suspense! And if readers bought them expecting to read a nice contemporary romance novel, they would have been deeply disappointed.

It’s all about branding, really. A way to convey information about a specific book, a book series, and also about the author.

For example, I write both Christian Romantic Suspense and Clean Romantic suspense, so I use those labels as my book subtitles. The book titles themselves are meant to convey that the book is a suspense.

If you do a search on Amazon for any category, such as “Top 100 Christian Romantic Suspense,” you can see how authors do this. Clarity is important, for the best reader experience!

My brand (my promise to readers) is that in addition to suspense and romance, they will find a warm thread involving family relationships, and a thread of faith–but with a lighter touch in the books labeled “Clean romance.” And I always include an animal of some kind that makes a difference to a character in the story.

I hope including that animal on my book covers visually alludes to deeper emotion and warmth, as opposed to covers promising a gritty or far more intense read. Usually, it’s a dog. My new release is just a bit different–with a nosy llama!

Here is a quick link to FINAL TRUTH in case you would like to buy or just take a look.

What are your thoughts about book titles and cover art? Do they help spur your interest in looking at a book’s Amazon page, or do you mostly go by author names?

Wishing you all a happy Easter!

Roxanne Rustand

The post appeared first on Roxanne Rustand.

Reaching the end…

Do you ever reach the last book in a series, or the end of a series on television, and wish it would go on and on? 

I’ve been watching the tenth and final season of Doc Martin on public television. The doc is a curmudgeonly sort with an abrasive lack of people skills, but the series has been filled with humorous characters and subplots that I have come to love and I will miss them when the series ends.

Another series (among many PBS shows I enjoy) I am grateful for is All Creatures Great and Small.  Being an avid animal lover, this series has been a joy. The setting is a delight as well, because I love reading fiction set in Ireland, Scotland, and England. The series is still running, and I wish it would never end. But that time will come, too.

What about you? Do you have some favorite, ongoing television series to recommend on television or a streaming service? I would love to hear about them! 

As a writer, writing the final book in one of my Christian Romantic series is a little sad, too. Creating characters and writing multiple books in that world becomes part of me–as if some of those imaginary folks have become friends.

DEADLY EVIDENCE will be released on January 30th. It is the fourth and final book in my DEA Agents series, and is available for preorder HERE. The good thing, is that the books can be read in any order. So if you missed the other releases this past fall, it’s not too late!

Leave a comment, and you will be entered in a contest for a free e-book copy of  DEADLY BETRAYAL (read about it HERE.)

I hope you had a wonderful, blessed Christmas and that the coming year will be a blessing as well.  

All my best,

Roxanne Rustand
www.roxannerustand.com

The post Reaching the end… appeared first on Roxanne Rustand.

Momma told me there would be days like this!

Have you ever had a crazy day when everything went wrong? When you had a dozen things to do, but then disruptions began to pile up, and the clock was ticking, ticking, ticking…

Sometimes, I find myself humming to an old song with lyrics similar to what my own mother used to say in jest.

Crazy days happen often enough in my daily life, because I have a tendency to write long to-do lists and then find that most of the tasks take longer than expected. That, I can work around. But when it comes to book deadlines, the stress is real.

This past week I needed to do a final proofing of DEADLY BETRAYAL, a new Christian Romantic Suspense book being released on November 14th. CLICK HERE to see it on Amazon and to buy on sale during its release day!

Yes, I should have had this all completed much earlier. And I thought I had. The book had been finished, then edited, and re-edited under five sets of eyes. Five! A main editor, a line editor, a copy editor, a final proofing editor at the very end, and me (again).

The content was all mine, of course, but editorial steps take care of things like inconsistencies, timeline problems, and even missing words in a sentence. How easy it is to think about a two or three-word while typing, yet not actually get it typed!

So just before submitting DEADLY BETRAYAL, I took one last, painstaking trip through the manuscript again, line by line. It all looked good. I set it aside for a day, then went through it again, and found an error! A comma instead of a period that had eluded us all. I fixed it, double-checked, and now the book is on Amazon. I am so relieved to have it done!

When you think of writers who are writing the books you like to read, it might seem like it’s easy for them: they just need to dream up a plot and characters and then it will all fall into place, right? But it’s actually a lot of work, even after the last page is written.

But my author friends and I do it because we love the joy of writing, and love sharing our stories with readers.

Have you had any crazy days when everything just piled up and drove you crazy? Leave a comment, and you will be in a drawing for a free Kindle copy of DEADLY NOEL (a book in the same DEA Special Agents series as DEADLY BETRAYAL.)

Best wishes and a Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

Roxanne Rustand
USA TODAY Bestselling Author

The post Momma told me there would be days like this! appeared first on Roxanne Rustand.

Help! Can you help me decide on a book cover?

Hello again!

October is finally here! I’ve been counting the days, looking forward to sweater weather and beautiful autumn leaves here in the Upper Midwest. The blazing colors can take one’s breath away!

But as much as I want to be outside to enjoy every second of that glory, I’ve been madly working in my office working and questioning why I ever imagined having three books out this fall (and one more in January) was a good idea.  As the refrain of a current Western song goes, “What was I thinking!”

New release!  DEADLY NOEL, the second book in my DEA Special Agents series, will be at a special discounted price throughout its release day, October 18th.

Up next:  DEADLY BETRAYAL will be a special discount price until its release date on November 14.

Just click on the titles above to read about them. They can be read in any order.

I have a question for you! My Christian romantic suspense and mystery novels almost always include a dog, and I ask for that dog to appear on the cover. I’ve hoped this hints at the warm emotional tone in my books.

But…while DEADLY NOEL includes a retired drug dog on the cover, DEADLY BETRAYAL does not include its Basset. I forgot to ask for him—and now I’m worried. Do you think Betrayal’s cover is okay as is, or should I request a new cover? Do details like this matter to you when you are considering your next purchase?

Thank you in advance for your thoughts! Leave a comment, and you will be entered in a drawing for a free e-book copy of any title in my Wyoming Courage series!

Have a wonderful autumn,

Roxanne Rustand

 

 

The post Help! Can you help me decide on a book cover? appeared first on Roxanne Rustand.

Danger in Texas Hill Country…

SILENT DECEPTION  is my new Christian Romantic Suspense novel, releasing today, May 23, 2023.    Click the book title to read more about the book, or to order!

Here’s a quick description:

Has she just made a terrible mistake by returning home?

Single mother Kristin Cantrell has moved back to the Texas Hill Country, needing a fresh start. She never expected to find that Ryan Gallagher had returned as well. Their painful past goes way back, and neither ever expected to see each other again.

She’s also shocked when she learns that most folks in town still despise her late father, and wish she had never returned. And now one of them has his sites on her…

Are old memories best forgotten, or can she and Ryan help each other change the past…and keep her young son safe?

We are looking forward to a very quiet summer, with no long trips.  What are your summer plans?I  Leave a comment, and you will be entered in a drawing for a free Kindle copy of COLD CASE DANGER , the first book in my Wyoming Courage series, or LETHAL PURSUIT.

 

All the best to you!

 

Roxanne

* * * *

HERE’S  A LINK FOR AN ONLINE BOOK FAIR, where you can find some great new-to-you-authors and some great bargains!

SOME LIKE IT CLEAN
https://books.bookfunnel.com/somelikeitcleanmay2023/axlomqhsse

THIS MONTH I’M FEATURING WONDERFUL AUTHOR LAURA SCOTT AND HER NEW RELEASE!

Midnight Abduction by Laura Scott $3.99 (Released May 2, 2023)

Walking the line between danger and love…

  Kidnapped in the dead of night!

Grace Ramsey is horrified when she realizes her six-year-old son Caleb has been snatched from his bed at midnight. The only man who can help her now is FBI Agent Brady Finnegan, Caleb’s biological father. She had good reasons for keeping Caleb a secret, and while Brady does not agree, they decide that the main priority is to find Caleb and bring him home.

Brady is furious to learn he’s been betrayed by the woman he once loved, but manages to thrust those feelings aside in order to find the missing boy. As he and Grace follow one lead after another, his anger and resentment fades and they grow closer together in their shared mission. They can’t go back and change the past, but they can rebuild their future. If they can find Caleb in time…

Here are the links:

Amazon B&N Apple Kobo GooglePlay Laura’s Website

A NOTE BY THE AUTHOR….

I’ve always wanted to be an author, but my parents insisted I get a “real” job. Thankfully, I loved science so I chose nursing. I loved my critical care nursing career, but writing books, especially romances, still called to me.

When I finished my MBA it seemed like I had more time on my hands (despite working full time and having two kids? Hmm) so I decided to try my hand at writing again. I wasn’t an overnight success by any means, but I published my first book in 2003 and have written 100 books in the twenty years since! I retired from my “real” day job after 38 years and am thrilled to be writing full-time.

I love writing Christian-themed suspense stories that keep the reader guessing until the last page. I live in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin with my hubby of 38 years. I’m blessed to have a wonderfully supportive family, and to have amazingly supportive readers! Here’s to the next 20 years…

Laura Scott – USA Today Bestselling Author

Seeking Justice 2/23

Protection Detail 3/23

Shielding the Baby 4/23

 

The post Danger in Texas Hill Country… appeared first on Roxanne Rustand.