Dani Collins's Blog, page 60

Thursday Thirteen – Travel Must Haves

A few weeks ago I was sent out of town by my day job on short notice. I’m pretty good at packing in a hurry. Some years ago we had a family situation that sent us driving eight hours back to our home town–I’m not kidding–seventeen times in thirteen months.

So, if you only have enough time before to print this list and pack what’s on it, you should be in good shape for your impromptu trip. I am taking for granted you will pack enough underwear and socks for the number of days you plan to be away, plus one dress up outfit with a decent pair of shoes.

Remember to also take:

Bathing suit – Number one because it’s the most often forgotten item by at least one family member per trip.
Workout gear – I know, this doesn’t sound like vacation to some of you, but I’ve come to love working out as part of my downtime when I’m not squeezing it in around the rest of my busy life.
Feminine protection, birth control or other necessary equipment for the privates.
Razor.
Spare glasses or contacts and contact lens solutions/eye drops.
Medication.
Identification and other important papers like a marriage certificate or proof your ex knows you’re transporting your child across a border
Camera.
Chargers. Good luck keeping them from becoming a tangled mess of fishing tackle.
Snacks – Particularly important for diabetics, but always helpful if you have children or, like me, act like a child when your blood sugar dips.
Credit card and cash.
Tickets and Itinerary, address and phone number of where you’re going.
Phone number for whoever is watching your house, feeding your cat. Remember to ask someone to feed the cat.

With any luck, next week I’ll post the last 13 words of my WIP. I’m sooo close to The End.

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#SampleSunday – More Than A Convenient Marriage

Apologies to those who received the duplicate ‘test’ notifications from my website. My blog was having conniption fits each time I posted something new. My website peeps at The Seed had to perform some tests after they fixed it, but I thank them for their prompt and efficient service. They are made of awesome.

On to #SampleSunday and More Than A Convenient Marriage? I’m so excited! My author copies arrived yesterday. This means I can fulfill my giveaway commitments on Goodreads and LibraryThing (you have to scroll down to it). I also draw for a signed copy from my newsletter list. Subscribe here.

If you’ve missed the previous #SampleSunday posts from this book, they’re here:

The previous posts are here:

Gideon thinks Adara is cheating
Adara thinks Gideon is cheating
Adara thinks about divorce

Here, Gideon thinks about her:

~ * ~

After discovering his room wasn’t ready, Gideon went to the patio restaurant attached to the hotel and ordered a beer. He took care of one piece of pressing business on his mobile before he sat back and brooded on what had happened with Adara.

He had never cheated on her.

But for the last year he had spent more time with his PA than his wife.

Adara had known this would be a brutal year though. They both had. Several large projects were coming on line at once. He ought to be in Valparaiso right now, opening his new terminal there. It was the ticking off of another item on their Five Year Plan, something they had mapped out in the first months of their marriage. That plan was pulling them in different directions, her father’s death last year and her mother’s sinking health not helping. They were rarely in the same room let alone the same bed, so to be fair it wasn’t strictly her fault they weren’t tearing up the sheets.

And there had been Lexi, guarding his time so carefully and keeping him on schedule, mentioning that her latest relationship had fallen apart because she was traveling so much, offering with artless innocence to stay in his suite with him so she could be available at any hour.

She had been offering all right, and perhaps he hadn’t outright encouraged or accepted, but he was guilty of keeping his options open. Abstinence, or more specifically, Adara’s avoidance of wholehearted lovemaking, had made him restless and dissatisfied. He’d begun thinking Adara wouldn’t care if he had an affair. She was getting everything she wanted from this marriage: her position as CEO of her father’s hotel chain, a husband who kept all the dates she put in his calendar. The penthouse in Manhattan and by the end of the year, a newly built mansion in the Hamptons.

While he’d ceased getting the primary thing he wanted out of their marriage: her.

So he had looked at his alternatives. The fact was though, as easy as Lexi would be, as physically attractive as she was, he wasn’t interested in her. She was too much of an opportunist. She’d obviously read into his ‘I’ll think about it’ response enough to imagine she had a claim on him.

That couldn’t be what had precipitated Adara running here to Greece and another man, though. The Valparaiso arrangements had only been finalized recently. Adara wasn’t that impulsive. She would have been thinking about this for a long time before taking action.

His inner core burned. A scrapper in his youth, Gideon had found other ways to channel his aggression when he’d reinvented himself as a cool-headed executive, but the basic street-life survival skill of fighting to keep what was his had never left him. Every territorial instinct he possessed was aroused by her deceit and the threat it represented to all he’d gained.

The sound of a checked footstep and a barely audible gasp lifted his gaze. He took a hit of sexual energy like he’d swallowed two hundred proof whiskey while Adara lost a few shades of color behind her sunglasses. Because she could read the barely contained fury in him? Or because she was still feeling guilty at being caught out?

She gathered herself to flee, but before she could pivot away, he rose with a menacing scrape of his chair leg on the paving stones. Drawing out the chair off the corner of his table, he kept a steady gaze on her to indicate he would come after her if she chose to run. He wanted to know everything about the man who thought he could steal from him.

So he could quietly destroy him.

~ * ~

Alpha, alpha, alpha, right? If you’re ready to read the rest, preorder here:

Amazon: US | Canada | UK | India |

Nook | Kobo | eHarlequin | Mills & Boon Aus | Mills & Boon UK

An Heir To Bind Them, Book Three in this series has been accepted and will come out mid 2014. If you want to hear more about my writing and upcoming books, listen to my interview from Oct 17th with Bernadette Walsh at Nice Girls  Reading Naughty Books.

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The Healer!

Finalist in the 2014 Epic eBook Awards. Read more about The Healer here.

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Radio!

My Oct 17th interview with Nice Girls Reading Naughty Books is here.

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Cover Reveal and Bernadette Walsh

I’ve been going flat out at the day job, went to Head Office for two weeks even, and have come back to chaos all around. I have a deadline November 1st–still need to get my 1500 words written tonight–and have been stressing that I not forget I have an interview on Saturday evening with Nice Girls Reading Naughty Books. The timing looked tricky since my mom had invited us for a belated turkey dinner. Canadian thanksgiving was last week.

So, just to be sure we were a go, I emailed Bernadette this evening to confirm we’d be chatting on Saturday and she said, “Um, you mean tonight in eight minutes?”

Eeek!

But the nice thing about such a mix-up is that there was no time to work myself into nerves. It was done before I had time to think about whether it would go well and frankly, she’s so easy to talk to, I feel like it went very well. Have a listen for yourself.

Meanwhile, I’ve been meaning to post the cover for my February book, A Debt Paid In Passion. Did I say it right on the air?

Have a great weekend.

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#SampleSunday – More Than A Convenient Marriage

As usual, I’m all over the map and for once I’ve physically been so as well. I arrived back from Eastern Canada very late last night. Today has been a day of hitting the keyboard hard. Three thousand words later, I’m prepared to move on to other things, like folding laundry, making supper and other glamorous tasks.

I’ll write some posts about my trip soon–thank goodness I came back to a long weekend. That gives me a breather before I’m back at work and going flat out again. In the meanwhile, I wanted to offer up another bite of Adara and Gideon’s troubled marriage.

The previous two posts are here:

Gideon thinks Adara is cheating
Adara thinks Gideon is cheating

Perhaps this mutual suspicion is why RT Book Reviews recently said, “Her couple is the epitome of miscommunication, but watching them finally ‘get’ each other is worth every page.” They also said, “Collins’ latest tearjerker should come with tissues,” and called the love scenes, “jaw-dropping sizzlers.” They gave it 4.5 out of 5 stars!

Here’s the next scene:

~ * ~

The ferry was gone so Adara couldn’t leave the island. She drove through a blur of goat-tracked hills and tree lined boulevards. Expansive olive branches cast rippling shadows across bobbing heads of yellow and purple wildflowers between scrupulously groomed estates and bleached white mansions. When she happened on a lookout, she quickly parked and tried to walk off her trembles.

She’d done it. She’d asked for a divorce.

The word cleaved her in two. She didn’t want her marriage to be over. It wasn’t just the failure it represented. Gideon was her husband. She wasn’t a possessive person. She tried not to get too attached to anything or anyone, but until his affair had come to light, she had believed her claim on him was incontestable. That had meant something to her. She had never been allowed to have anything. Not the job she wanted, not the money in her trust fund, not the family she had briefly had as a child or the one she longed for as an adult.

Gideon was a prize coveted by every woman around her. Being his wife had given her a deep sense of pride, but he’d gone behind her back and even managed to make her writhe with self-blame that it was her fault.

She hadn’t made love with him in weeks. It was true. She’d taken care of his needs, though. When he was home. Did he realize he hadn’t been home for more than one night at a stretch in months?

Pacing between guilt and virtue, she couldn’t escape the position she’d put herself in. Her marriage was over. The marriage she had arranged so her father would stop trying to sell her off to bullies like himself.

Her heart compressed under the weight of remembering how she’d taken such care to ask Gideon for only what seemed reasonable to expect from a marriage: respect and fidelity. That’s all. She hadn’t asked for love. She barely believed in it, not when her mother still loved the man who had abused her and her children, raising his hand often enough Adara flinched just thinking about it.

No, Adara had been as practical and realistic as she could be—strengths she’d honed razor sharp out of necessity. She had found a man whose wealth was on a level with her father’s fortune. She had picked one who exhibited incredible control over his emotions, trying to avoid spending her adult life ducking outbursts and negotiating emotional landmines. She had accommodated Gideon in every way, from the very fair prenup to learning how to please him in bed. She had never asked for romance or signs of affections, not even flowers when she was in hospital recovering from a miscarriage.

Her hand went instinctively to her empty womb. After the first one, she’d tried not to bother him much at all, informing him without involving him, not even telling him about the last one. Her entire being pulsated like an open wound as she recalled the silent weeks of waiting and hoping, then the first stain of blood and the painful, isolated hours that had followed.

While Gideon had been in Barcelona, faithful bitch Lexi at his side.

She had learned nothing from her mother, Adara realized with a spasm in her chest. Being complacent didn’t earn you anything but a cheating husband. Her marriage was over and it left a jagged burn in her like a bolt of lightning was stuck inside her, buzzing and shorting and trying to escape.

A new life awaited though, unfurling like a rolled carpet before her. She made herself look at it, standing tall under the challenge, extending her spine to its fullest. She concentrated on hardening her resolve, staring with determination across the vista of scalloped waves to distant islands formed from granite. That’s what she was now, alone, but strong and rooted.

She’d look for a new home while she was here, she decided. Greece had always been a place where she’d felt hopeful and happy. Her new life started today. Now.

~ * ~

North American readers, you’ll be getting two books in one! Along with More Than A Convenient Marriage? you’ll get No Longer Forbidden?, the first book in this series. These opening scenes take place outside Rosedale, the setting for most of No Longer Forbidden? Adara is here to find its owner, Nic, who is her half-brother.

Pre-order here:

Amazon: US | CAN | UK | Kobo

Also, please look for my contest on Goodreads. Starting Oct 15th, you can enter to win one of three signed copies of this 2in1.

 

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Remembering Danielle

Today should be a Thursday Thirteen post, but October 10th is always a hard day for me as I remember a beautiful young girl who didn’t quite make it to her thirteenth birthday.

I have loads of nice things to share that have happened in my life lately, plenty to be grateful for as we head into this time of thanks, but I will save telling you about them for another time. Today is Danielle’s, because she didn’t get the rest of her life to become a writer like me, the way she wanted to.

Danielle was very close to my daughter in many ways, especially in age. For the last six years, my daughter has hit all the milestones that Danielle should have shared with her and there’s a certain poignancy attached to that. It reminds me to be extra grateful. To cherish everything a teensy bit more.

And lessons. There are many lessons when you lose a loved one.

My last memory of Danielle was of her and my daughter walking toward me on a crisp fall day, two conspirators giggling and angled together as they walked. They hadn’t seen each other in weeks and were so happy to be together. I hurried my daughter along. Dad was waiting.

Don’t hurry, people. Cherish. Count your blessings every day, not just this coming Monday.

Live, because it really is a gift. Enjoy your time with your family and take car this weekend as you travel to see them.

 

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#SampleSunday – More Than A Convenient Marriage

Hello all,

I’m traveling for my day job thus missed #ThursdayThirteen. I was going to write 13 items to pack when traveling in a hurry. I should do it now, but I’m already yawning so will get my excerpt up and blog more once I’m home. I’ll have photos from this trip, so please check back in a week or so to see them.

Meanwhile, we left Adara and Gideon each thinking the other is having an affair. If you haven’t read the first two excerpts, they’re here:

Cover Reveal
More Than A Convenient Marriage?

Here’s the excerpt:

~ * ~

Her heart gave a kick. Gideon rarely got angry and even more rarely showed it. He certainly never directed dark energy at her, but his accusation made her unaccountably defensive.

She told herself not to let his jab pierce her shell, but his charge was a shock and she couldn’t believe his gall. The man was banging his secretary in the most clichéd of affairs yet he had the nerve to dog her all the way to Greece to accuse her of cheating?

Fortunately, she knew from experience you didn’t provoke a man in a temper. Hiding her indignation behind cool disdain, she calmly corrected his assumption. “He has a wife and new baby—”

Gideon’s drawled sarcasm cut her off. “Cheating on one spouse wasn’t enough, you have to go for two and ruin the life of a child into the mix?”

Since when do you care about children?

She bit back the question, but a fierce burn flared behind her eyes, completely unwanted right now when she needed to keep her head. The back of her throat stung, making her voice thick. She hoped he’d put it down to ire, not heartbreak.

“As I said, Lexi assured me you had appointments in Chile. ‘We will be flying into Valparaiso,’ she told me. ‘We will be staying in the family suite at the Makricosta Grand.’” Adara impassively pronounced what Lexi hadn’t said, but what had been in the woman’s eyes and supercilious smile. “‘We will be wrecking your bed and calling your staff for breakfast in the morning.’ Who is cheating on who?”

She was proud of her aloof delivery, but her underlying resentment was still more emotion than she’d ever dared reveal around him. She couldn’t help it. His adultery was a blow she hadn’t seen coming and she was always on guard for unearned strikes. Always.

Somehow she’d convinced herself she could trust him and if she was angry with anyone, it was herself for being so blindly oblivious. She was having a hard time hiding that she was trembling she was so furious, but she ground her teeth and willed her muscles to let go of the tension and her blood to stop boiling.

He didn’t react. If she fought a daily battle to keep her emotions in reserve, his inner thoughts and feelings were downright non-existent. His voice was crisp and glacial when as he said, “Lexi did not say that because it’s not true. And why would you care if she did? We aren’t wrecking any beds, are we?”

Ask me why, she wanted to charge, but the words and the reason stayed bottled so deep and hard inside her she couldn’t speak.

Grief threatened to overtake her then. Hopelessness crept in and defeat struck like a gong. It sent an arctic chill into her, blessed ice that let her freeze out the pain and ignore the humiliation. She wanted it all to go away.

“I want a divorce,” she stated, heart throbbing in her throat.

For a second, the world stood still. She wasn’t sure if she’d actually said it aloud and he didn’t move, as though he either hadn’t heard, or couldn’t comprehend.

Then he drew in a long, sharp inhale. His shoulders pulled back and he stood taller.

Oh God. Everything in her screamed, Retreat. She ducked her head and circled him, aiming for her car door.

He put out a hand and her blood gave a betraying leap. She quickly tamped down the hunger and yearning, embracing hatred instead.

“Don’t think for a minute I’ll let you touch me,” she warned in a voice that grated.

“Right. Touching is off limits. I keep forgetting.”

A stab of compunction, of incredible sadness and longing to be understood, went through her. Gideon was becoming so good at pressing on the bruises closest to her soul and all he had to do was speak the truth.

“Goodbye, Gideon.” Without looking at him again, she threw herself into her car and pulled away.

~ * ~

Watch for a chance to win a signed copy of More Than A Convenient Marriage? on Goodreads. The contest starts October 15th.

Okay, have a great week. Mine will be busy. I’ll check in as time allows.

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#SampleSunday – More Than A Convenient Marriage

On the heels of learning Friday that the third book in this series has been accepted (look for it in June) I’ll post another snippet from this, the second book.

See the first sample, the opening pages, here. This comes right after that, switching from Gideon’s point of view to Adara’s.

I’ll try to keep this up the next few weeks, but I can’t promise. I have to go out of town for the day job and I have a rather heavy deadline Nov 1st.

~ * ~

Adara averted her gaze from the end of the drive where the sun was glancing off her rented car and piercing straight into her eyes.

The grounds of this estate were an infinitely more beautiful place to look anyway. Groomed lawn gently rolled into vineyards and a white sand beach gleamed below. The dew was off the grass, the air moving hotly up from the water with a tang of salt on it. Everything was brilliant and elevating.

Perhaps that was just her frame of mind, but it was a refreshing change from depression and anxiety and rejection. She paused to savor the first optimistic moment she’d had in weeks. Looking out on the horizon where Mediterranean blue met cloudless sky, she sighed in contentment. She hadn’t felt so relaxed since… Since ever. Early childhood maybe. Very early childhood.

And it wouldn’t last. A sick ache opened in her belly as she remembered Gideon. And his PA.

Not yet, she reminded herself. This week was hers. She was stealing it for herself and her brother. If he returned. The gardener had said a few days, but Adara’s research had put Nico on this island all week so he obviously changed his schedule rapidly. Hopefully he’d return as suddenly as he’d left.

Just call him, she cajoled herself, but after this many years she wasn’t sure he’d know who she was or want to hear from her. He’d never picked up the telephone himself. If he refused to speak to her, well, a throb of hurt pulsed in her throat as she contemplated that. She swallowed it back. She just wanted to see him, look into his eyes and learn why he’d never come home or spoken to her or her younger brothers again.

Another cleansing breath, but this one a little more troubled as she turned toward her car again. She was crestfallen Nico wasn’t here, not that she’d meant to come like this to his house, first thing on arrival, but her room at the hotel hadn’t been ready. On impulse she’d decided to at least find the estate and then the gates had been open and she’d been drawn in. Now she had to wait—

“Loverboy not home?”

The familiar male voice stopped her heart and jerked her gaze up from the chevron pattern in the cobblestones to the magnificence that was her husband. Swift, fierce attraction sliced through her, sharp and disarming as always.

Not a day passed that she didn’t wonder how she’d landed such a smoking hot man. He was shamelessly handsome, his features even and just hard enough to be undeniably masculine. He rarely smiled, but he didn’t have to charm when his sophistication and intelligence commanded such respect. The sheer physical presence of him quieted a room. She always thought of him as a purebred stallion, outwardly still and disciplined, but with an invisible energy and power that warned he could explode any second.

Don’t overlook resourceful, she thought acridly. How else had he turned up half a world from where she’d thought he would be when she’d taken pains to keep her whereabouts strictly confidential?

Fortunately, Adara had a lot of experience hiding visceral reactions like instant animal attraction and guilty alarm. She kept her sunglasses on and willed her pulse to slow, keeping her limbs loose and her body language unreadable.

“What are you doing here?” she asked with a composed lift of her chin. “Lexi said you would be in Chile.” Lexi’s tone still grated, so proprietary over Gideon’s schedule, so pitying as she had looked upon the ignorant wife who not only failed as a woman biologically, but no longer interested her husband sexually. Adara had wanted to erase the woman’s superior smile with a swipe of her manicured nails.

“Let’s turn that question around, shall we?” Gideon strolled with deadly negligence around the front of her car.

Adara had never been afraid of him, not physically, not like she had been of her father, but somewhere along the line Gideon had developed the power to hurt her with a look or a word, without even trying, and that scared her. She steeled herself against him, but her nerves fried with the urge to flee.

She made herself stand her ground and find the reliable armor of civility she’d grown as self-defense long ago. It had always served her well in her dealings with this man, allowing her to engage with him even intimately without losing herself. Still, she wanted higher, thicker invisible walls. Her reasons for coming to Greece were too private to share, carrying as they did such a heavy risk of rejection. That’s why she hadn’t told him or anyone else where she was going. Having him turn up like this put her on edge, internally wind-milling her arms as she tried to hang on to unaffected nonchalance.

“I’m here on personal business,” she said in a dismissive tone that didn’t invite discussion.

He, in turn, should have given her his polite nod of acknowledgment that always drove home how supremely indifferent he was to what happened in her world. It might hurt a little, but far better to have her trials and triumphs disregarded than dissected and diminished.

While she, as was her habit, wouldn’t bother repeating a question he had ignored, even though she really did want to know how and why he’d followed her.

No use changing tactics now, she thought. With a little adherence to form they could end this relationship as dispassionately as they’d started it.

That gave her quite a pang and oddly, even though his body language was as neutral as always, and his expression remained impassive as he squinted against the brightness of the day, she again had the sense of that coiled force drawing tighter inside him. When he spoke, his words were even, yet she sensed an underlying ferocity.

“I can see how personal it is. Who is he?”

~ * ~

More Than A Convenient Marriage is available for pre-order on Harlequin.com. It’s a 2-in-1 with No Longer Forbidden? so good value.

It’s also available for pre-order on Amazon: US | CAN | UK

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Thursday Thirteen – Things To Do (Financial)

Ugh, you’re going to hate me for this one.

Every year we get the call from the people who administer the group retirement savings plan for my day job. Every year I send my husband, but this year it didn’t work and I had to go. So, to share the pain, here are 13 things we should all be doing for our financial health (and probably aren’t.)

Write a Will (or update it)
Remortgage (or lock in to a good rate. They’re going up, people.)
Life insurance (if you don’t have some, get some. If you have some, get a quote from a competitor.)
Retirement Savings (Figure out how much you’re gonna need and how much the government will give you.)
RRSP (in Canada) (If you’re not contributing, set one up. If you are contributing, increase your contribution.)
Shred old documents. (Make a stack of the folders, files, statements, and other documentation from ten years ago. Burn, shred, or otherwise permanently destroy.)
Funeral arrangements (Do your family a favour and communicate your wishes and ensure they’re funded. I’m going for LifeGem.)
Education Planning (RESP in Canada) (Got kids? Get money from the gov’t by setting up one of these.)
Disability Strategy (no, I don’t have one either. I’m just trying to clean off my desk and came across all the papers she gave me. Gah.)
Budget (I use You Need A Budget. I do not use it properly. I try to use it as small business software to track my writing expenses. It is not the best tool for this, but I like it for the day to day banking and can’t be bothered switching. If you have a great small business for Mac suggestion, I would love you forever if you tipped me off.)
Figure out how much you need to make off of your writing in order to quit your day job. (Okay, that’s a #NoteToSelf)
Submit receipts (Do you have some, like for prescriptions or something? Are you forgetting that’s money to you if you go to the trouble of mailing them in? How about that rebate on snow tires? Just do it!)
Quit buying lunch (Another note to self. I do this too often then wonder where our money goes. It’s a small daily expense until you add up a month’s worth and hate yourself. Make a PBJ, for heaven’s sake.)

I know, I know. I’m not jumping on any of this myself. It’s a drag and costs money, but it’s important. Make an appointment with one person about one of these things, even if it’s just your spouse to talk about that lunch thing.

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