Ute Carbone's Blog, page 41

Happy Holidays!

Wishing you and yours a very Merry Christmas!

#SixSecondSunday: P-Town Proud!

Hi Sunday Sixers! I'm excited to announce that The P-Town Queen has been nominated for Champagne Books Book for the year. I'm blown away, dazzled and gobsmacked.  This must be what the academy awards best picture nominees feel like!


In celebration, today's six is from the book.Nikki, the heroine, has gotten hold of a seal carcass, which she intends to use as shark bait. The hero, Marco, is telling the story:


“That the sheep?” I asked.
“Seal,” said Nik. “The carcass washed up in Boston. Max Groper
procured it for me. It was a very lucky find.”
“Wonder what he’ll do for your birthday,” I said.




Click on link to purchaseNikki Silva feels like she’s blown up her life even as her brothers tease her about blowing up a boat called the Mona Lisa. Divorced, funding for her shark research cut off, she’s moved back to Provincetown to live with her father in her childhood home. Nikki hopes to regain herself. She’s written a grant proposal for the newly formed Massachusetts Bay Commission to fund a study that will get her back to the sort of research she loves. The commission is run by her ex-husband Ned, who would rather have a migraine than give money to his ex-wife.

Marco Tornetti wants to turn a hole-in-the-wall Newark spaghetti joint into a trendy bistro. His silent partner, Fat Phil Lagosa, wants to use the place to meet questionable people for questionable business deals.  When Fat Phil accuses Marco of a double cross and has him taken for a ride by one of his hit men, Marco knows he’s in too deep.

            Marco escapes the hit man and takes the first bus out of the Tri-state area, a bus chartered by the Greater Teaneck Gay Men’s Choir and headed for Provincetown. Marco  figures that Phil would never look for him in Provincetown‘s gay community. But when he meets Nikki and falls hard for her, he finds that pretending to be gay isn’t as easy as it would seem.


For more great six sentence selections, visit Six Sentence Sunday!

Win a signed copy of Blueberry Truth

I'm giving away a signed copy at Goodreads


 
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    Goodreads Book Giveaway
 

   

       
   

   

     

          Blueberry Truth
     
     

          by Ute Carbone
     

     

         
            Giveaway ends January 18, 2013.
         

         
            See the giveaway details
            at Goodreads.
         

     
   
   


      Enter to win

Winter Wonderland Scavenger Hunt

Click on Logo for more information!The Winter Wonderland Scavenger Hunt is in full swing at Night Owl Reviews. Lots of fun and great prizes!

Introducing Dancing in the White Room

Photo by Tina PhillipsI'm excited to announce that my upmarket women's novel, Dancing in the White Room, will be published in early 2014 by Torquoise Morning Press as part of their After Happily Ever line.  The theme is skiing and the winter release is perfect.

Here's a little bit about the book:



Dancing in the white room is slang for skiing or boarding in deep powder snow. The dancer is PD Bell, one of the best extreme skiers on the planet. Mallory Prescott, the woman who lives with him and loves him, is used to Bell’s exploits. A patrol woman at Whiteface Mountain near Lake Placid, New York, Mallory is no stranger to risk. But this time Bell is taking on the West Rib of Denali, highest and most dangerous mountain in North America. It’s a descent that has never been done, though it’s been tried. Five years ago, Bell had tried it. The attempt nearly killed him. Five years ago, he promised Mallory he wouldn’t try it again.     Over the six weeks in which he’s gone, Mallory begins to question her relationship with Bell. Does he really love her? Is he in it for the duration? What has loving him cost her?  Mallory’s life choices are thrown into stark relief when her daughter Emily takes a terrible fall. Together with her life-long friend Creech Creches, she must work her way through a maze of uncharted territory at a hospital miles from home.            Dancing in the White Room is the story of the love we keep, the price we pay for that love, and the forgiveness it takes to hold on to what is precious.

Year End Splash Party

Click on image to go to Romance ReviewsThe year end splash party is on!  There are hundreds of prizes. I'm not kidding--hundreds!! And today, I'm giving away a copy of The Whisper of Time. Why are you still here?? Go check it out already!

##SweetSaturdaySamples: An Afterglow Thanksgiving

Hi Sweet Samplers!  Next Thursday is Thanksgiving here in the US. India, the heroine of my upcoming romantic comedy, Afterglow, is a kindergarten teacher who loves holidays. Her divorce , though, has changed Thanksgiving forever. Here's a bit about the holiday:





Tom called two days before Thanksgiving. “It’s going to be strange,” he said. “not doing the whole family turkey thing. I’m going to miss your turkey.”            I reminded him that he was doing the whole turkey thing. Marissa was coming from Providence. Allie and Liz were coming. I was the one who wouldn’t be doing the whole turkey thing.             Mitch would be working a double shift on Thanksgiving so that the other ER doctor could spend the day with his wife and three children. “It’s just another day,” was Mitch’s take on it. I didn’t agree with his no big deal attitude toward the holiday. It seemed a big deal, maybe because I’d never spent a major holiday alone before.            “I’m sure Sasha will do just fine,” I said to Tom now. I didn’t even choke on her name. I had Mitch, after all, who would come by after his shift ended. I had Mitch, and Tom could have turkey and Sasha and his mother. He could even have the company of Allie and Liz. It would all turn out for the best. I wished the best for Tom.            Well, okay, I didn’t really wish the best for him. Though I might like to be, I’m not that magnanimous. It would probably be a disaster and that would serve him right. I imagined the still frozen turkey that Sasha had forgotten to thaw, and burnt potatoes and undercooked squash.             “We’re having it catered,” Tom said.            “How nice,” I said. I changed the imaginary scenario to Sasha dropping the pre-cooked turkey on the floor and Marissa smiling tightly while sipping her third gin and tonic and Allie introducing all of them to her girlfriend, Liz.             “Would you,” Tom was saying as I pictured Marissa, three gin and tonics to the wind, winding her grandmotherly pearls in her fist while a large gravy stain grew on the plush beige carpet.

Afterglow is coming in January.
  India Othmar isn’t having a great year. Her husband of thirty-one years has left her for their son’s ex-girlfriend. Her grown children have moved home. Her best friend Eva seems determined to set her up with every oddball in their small Massachusetts town. And her most significant relationship these days is with Cherry Garcia.

But India is more resilient than she thinks. And though it will take a broken arm, a lawn littered with engine parts, some creative uses for shoes, and a scandalous love affair of her own, she learns, much to her surprise, that her life hasn’t ended with her marriage. 
Thanks for stopping by! For more great Saturday Samples, please visit Sweet Saturday Samples

Autumn's Harvest Blog Hop

Click on image for more blog stops!Hi and welcome to the Autumn's Harvest Blog hop! Instructions for the hop said "Write a funny, entertaining, enjoyable post about autumn." Easy peezy lemon squeezy (or is that apple cider pressy?) said I. After all, autumn is a lovely season. There are colorful leaves and apples and...
      I sat down and started to write. A strange thing happened; I began to feel like a pupil in Mrs. McGillicutty's fifth grade classroom. Mrs. McG had just given us an assignment: write a theme about Autumn.  I stared at the empty blue book laid out on my desk, blue lines waiting for words. I chewed my pencil eraser.
     "Autumn? Autumn?" I thought to myself. My mind went blank and I began to panic. I stared out the window for a time. A small bird landed on the chain link fence and flitted away. Poetry! I thought. That was it! I would write a poem! A rhyming poem would impress Mrs. McG!
    I made a list: Autumn, Got em, Bought em, onion. I started to write:

There's apples in AutumnThe orchards they got emThe trees got red leaves on emWe're all out of onions     Mrs. McG read over my shoulder and shook her head. "Ute, Ute, Ute. The orchards they got em? That isn't grammatically correct. It's barely English."    I began to erase with my chewed down eraser, leaving skid marks and a hole where the poem used to be. I turned the page and began again. I'd use fall this time. Fall was easier to rhyme than autumn. I made a list: Fall, ball, small, tall, wall, brawl, sprawl. I could've gone  on all day.     Mrs. McG took off her reading glasses. "You're going to write a quatrain rhyme using fall? How very hickery dickery of you. If you're going to write a poem, write a real poem." I'd forgotten. Mrs. McG was a bit of a poetry snob. And I wasn't really in the fifth grade.    A real poem. Okay. What do I associate with Autumn? Death. You know, short days, dead leaves on the ground, All Soul's Day.              The end is near come, Novemberthe last of the leaves is fallen,withered and browndarkness gathers  Mrs. McG  sighed. "Did you not read the directions? They say light and funny. When did dead leaves become funny?"     "It doesn't have to be funny," I told her. "It said entertaining."      "Yes. Readers are always so entertained by depressed poets. Especially during a fun giveaway blog hop. "     There's just no pleasing this woman. I turn another page. I write:      I like the fallthe leaves and allthe trees so talland onions, too.I close the book. Mrs. McGillicutty's going to give me an F. I know it.

Thanks for stopping by! Leave a comment to win an e-copy of The Whisper of Time.

click on image for more about my booksWhen fate offers Gwynn Powell a chance to start over, she jumps at the opportunity. Laid off and living with a husband whose gambling problem has eaten through a good part of their savings, Gwynn buys a farmhouse sight unseen, leaving both her marriage and her old home behind.
But fate has more in mind for Gwynn than just a new home. The farmhouse, tucked away in the Green Mountains of Vermont where even GPS can’t find it, is also a step back in time. And Slate Peck, the farm’s caretaker and part owner, is tied to Gwynn’s destiny in ways she never expected.


Be sure to stop by at the other hop stops. Leave comments here and at other stops for chances to win these great prizes: 1st Grand Prize: A Kindle Fire or Nook Tablet2nd Grand Prize: A $50 Amazon or B&N Gift Card3rd Grand Prize: A Swag Pack that contains 10+ paperbacks, ebooks, 50+ bookmarks, cover flats, magnets, pens, coffee cozies, and more!With one chance at each stop and over two hundred stops, that's over two hundred chances to win!! Even Mrs. McGillicutty has said I'm good at arithmetic!

Afterglow book trailer.

Here's the book trailer for my romantic comedy, Afterglow!

Afterglow will be released in early January by Champagne Books.

#SweetSaturdaySamples Blueberry out take.

Hi Sweet Samplers! My women's literary novel, Blueberry Truth, is coming to print soon so I thought it might be fun to do an out take today. Earlier drafts of the book included some of Blueberry's voice. These were later edited out to smooth out the narrative and make it an easier read. Blue's voice, though, helped me to capture her as a character and helped her to come through in later versions.This is from a very early draft, one of the first things Blue "said" to me. 
   My granny the one who call me Truth. Ma call me Blueberry because that what she like to eat when she have me. I live with my Ma and Julio and Frostie before she gone off to Florida and I have to go to Granny house and she change my name. No baby be called Blueberry is what she say. I say there no baby here. I am seven years old, old enough that I go to the store by my own self. Granny say I seven years old with a mouth. That be Ma fault, she say. Ma ought to have said me some manners, but Ma run off with  trouble, is what Granny say.              Teacher at the new school show us to write cursive, but my letters come in crooked. Child write crooked, teacher tells Granny. Uncle Dee say it cause I stupid. I ain’t stupid, I say. You a little bitch like your Ma, he say. She can’t write good neither. I throw a cup at him, hit him in the nose and make it bleed. Uncle Dee got a good job that pay twenty dollars an hour, Granny say. Don’t you be messing with him. She make me sit in the closet. One hour for being disrespect. One hour, but when I see the clock she let me out it been one hour and one half. I can tell the time. I ain’t stupid.
 Beanie and Mac MacKenzie have led charmed lives. They both have jobs they love: he’s a pediatric cardiologist; she’s a teacher at a school for troubled children. They’ve recently bought a big house on a quiet Albany, New York street only blocks from where they grew up together. The only thing missing are the children with which they’d envisioned filling that house.
  Enter seven-year-old Blueberry Truth Crowley, a fiercely independent child whose life has been anything but charmed. When Blue ends up in Beanie’s classroom, their two worlds collide.
     Blueberry Truth is the story of that collision and of the commitment and love it takes to make not a baby, but a family. For more great Saturday Samples, please visit Sweet Saturday Samples