Heidi Rice's Blog, page 12

Heidi Rice & Amy Andrews: Entangled Under the Mistletoe Blog Hop!

Amy and I welcome you to our stop on the Entangled Under the Mistletoe Blog Hop... Yay!

We'll be giving away a copy of our gorgeous Festive anthology Baby It's Cold Outside (check out that chest, ladies!) so don't forget to click on the Rafflecopter below to enter.

Psst: Our fellow anthologists Kate Hardy and Aimee Carson are appearing at Kate's blog as part of the Hop with another prize to win!

Here are two tantalising tastettes from our two stories to get you in the mood to win a copy - or maybe just in the mood for some hot Christmas lovin'...


Tis the Season to Love Shoppingby Heidi Rice

When a Christmas Day blizzard strands an up-and-coming marketing manager Katherine Braithwaite and Ryder Sinclair, her boss's very off-limits, very hot playboy son, in Sinclair's luxury Fifth Avenue department store overnight, the two toe the line between naughty and nice as they unwrap their holiday presents—and each other!

And here's the tasty tastette - when Ryder and Kate have just discovered they are going to be stuck together alone in the store overnight...

“We should head up to the electrical department first for a couple of flashlights," Ryder began. "So we’re all set if the generator goes again.” He led her toward the stairwell. “Then we need to find you some dry clothes.” He glanced down at her attire. “Unless of course you want to wear the lap-dancing elf outfit again. I certainly wouldn’t object.”

“I’m not putting that on again,” she said, so relieved at the change of topic she felt almost giddy. “I looked ridiculous.”

Giddy relief turned to giddy shock when his arm tightened and he murmured, “Katherine, you did not look ridiculous. You looked seriously hot.” The blush shot up her neck and set fire to her ears. “But if you’re dead-set against giving me any more cheap thrills,” he added, apparently oblivious to her embarrassment, “which I personally think is a little small of you, then I suggest we check out the lingerie department and find a compromise we can both live with as a fallback position.”

“Um...” She stammered, her wits having completely deserted her. Was he flirting with her? And if he was, why was it making the giddy shock turn into a giddy thrill? “I’m not sure that’s appropriate...” She continued trying to find her indignation. Or at least a tiny iota of her usually very reliable common sense.

“Katherine, we’re stranded in the middle of a major weather event here. Forget appropriate. The only benefit to a situation like this is that appropriate no longer applies.”

Over to you Amy:

‘Tis the Season for Kissingby Amy Andrews
Down-on-her-romantic-luck kindergarten teacher Tamara plans to drown her New Year’s Eve sorrows in a gallon of spiked eggnog, but the arrival of her best friend's sexy brother Luke Jackson threatens to melt the snow piling up outside the tiny Vermont cabin.
After almost bashing Luke over the head with a gold stick, then stripping off most of her clothes in a cluelessly drunken striptease because she was hot, Tamara goes on to regale Luke with the hopeless state of her love life:

Luke chose his words carefully, taking a pull of his beer before he said anything. She might have been intoxicated but this angst was obviously coming from somewhere. “So...this ban on casual sex includes kissing?”

She nodded vigorously and Luke was left in no doubt that kissing was off the table. Damn.

“Most definitely,” she added for extra emphasis. “It’s like a gateway drug.”

“A gateway drug?”

She looked directly at him and somehow, sitting in her long johns with no bra, possibly no underwear, and high on eggnog, she still managed to look just like a kindergarten teacher.

“I don’t have good impulse control. Not when it comes to kissing anyway. I like kissing. Hell,” she bugged her eyes at him, “I love kissing. It’s addictive.”

She held his gaze and Luke was captured by the earnestness he saw in hers. “You know those deep, wet, hungry kisses with plenty of tongue and a lot of groaning that taste like cotton candy laced with cocaine and reek of anticipation that can go on for hours until you can barely breathe and every cell feels alive? Just kissing and kissing and kissing like it’s never going to end?”

When she shut her eyes and sighed with her mouth slightly parted, Luke swallowed. Hard. Hell yeah, he remembered those kisses.

She turned her troubled gray gaze to the fire. “But then I want more. I want to feel his hands all over my body. I want to be naked. I want to be horizontal. Or not,” she shrugged. “It depends. And I don’t want to leave until I know all of his kinks and erogenous zones and he knows that I like it when he talks dirty to me as I’m about to come and we’re lying in an exhausted heap barely able to breathe.”

Luke didn’t say anything as she stared into the fire. Her voice had become husky and he could hear a hitch in her breathing. Her admissions sent all the blood rushing from his head and other areas of his body straight to his dick. There was none left for his vocal cords, which seemed to have gone into some weird kind of paralysis.

She sighed and looked at him. “Gateway drug.”

He cleared his throat. “Right,” he said and hoped it came out a lot more manly than it sounded.

Has that whetted your apetite? I thought so. To enter the giveaway and be in with a chance of winning a copy, click the Rafflecopter link below! And Good Luck.

a Rafflecopter giveaway
Now it's time to....

And Calling All Tweeps...
Entangled are also hosting a Twitter Party tonight (7th December) at 9pm Eastern Standard Time in the US (so I'll probably be fast akip, but Amy hopes to be there). Lots of other cool Entangled authors will be attending and followers can answer fun holiday-themed questions with the hashtag #EntangledUnderTheMistletoe to win 10 prizes -- including ebooks, gift cards, and more!

Party On... And have a great Christmas.

BICO BLOG TOUR: Caribbean Accent Book Reviews

Yo, I'm stopping at Caribbean Accent Book Reviews today y'all to sun myself on the beach with the lovely Sasha H while talking about Tis the Season to Love Shopping... How cool is that? The Gift Card Giveaway only has one more day to go... So get on down there and enter. But don't forget my fellow authors Kate Hardy, Amy Andrews and Aimee Carson will also be doing giveaways during the next three weeks of our blog tour.

And later today I'll be doing a joint post here with the fabulous Amy Andrews as part of the Baby It's Cold Posse's contribution to the Entangled Under the Mistletoe Christmas Blog Hop!

BICO BLOG TOUR: Good Choice Reading

Sheesh, we're over at Good Choice Reading on the Baby It's Cold Outside Blog Tour and no-one's left a comment yet to win a copy of the book.... That sounds like pretty good odds to me, so get on over there, leave a comment and you could get a free shot of our sexy, seasonal anthology.

BICO BLOG TOUR: Once Upon a Twilight

Me and the guys are over at Once Upon a Twilight blog for the next stop on the Baby It's Cold Blog Tour talking about all sorts of interesting sexy, seasonal things (such as men, muscle cars and mistletoe!).. And we're also giving away a free copy of the ebook for one lucky commentator plus there's a chance to win a $10 Amazon Gift Card... So get on over there and comment.

BICO BLOG TOUR: Entangled in Romance, Gift Card Giveaway & Liz Fielding

I'm at the Entangled in Romance blog today launching the Baby It's Cold Blog Tour and talking about Matt Boomer, dating Superman (aka Henry Cavill) and my story in Baby It's Cold Outside (all the important stuff basically) plus a bit about my writing life.

We're also launching the first of four $10 Gift Card Giveaways today on the Entangled in Romance blog so check it out to enter.

For more info on the BICO Blog Tour just click on the logo on the right and it'll take you to all the scheduled blog stops on the tour (and more chances to win a $10 Gift Card! plus a copy of Baby It's Cold Outside).

The BICO posse are also popping over to Liz Fielding's blog later today to talk snow and Christmas and hunky guys (not necessarily in that order)

Baby It's Cold Blog Tour

Wow! It's all happening this December in Heidi Land... Both my boys have their birthdays this weekend (and they're not twins!) and I'm going on my first blog tour starting December 3rd and running til January 3rd with the Baby It's Cold Outside Posse (Kate Hardy, Aimee Carson, Amy Andrews and Moi).

I'll be posting here every day about where I'll be.... So stay tuned, because there's gonna be interviews, Q&As, prizes galore (including Amazon gift vouchers), and all sorts of appropriately seasonal fun (well, not always that appropriate, but you know what I mean). How cool is that?

We'll also be participating together in the Entangled Under the Mistletoe blog hop which is running from 7th-14th December.

I've also just added Baby It's Cold Outside to the Books page at my website, so you can get a special sneak peek of the story to whet your appetite for more sexy snowed-in romance.

AND...My latest Harlequin Presents Extra, One Night So Pregnant, hits book shelves in the US on 1st December.

Zane Montoya... is Too Close for Comfort

Cool, my next book for Harlequin, which will be my first Kiss is going to be called Too Close for Comfort and has a release date of June 2013... Very excited, love that title. This is the last in a five-book series with linked characters and stars dead-sexy Mexican-American Private Eye Zane Montoya and fiesty Scottish wildlife artist Iona MacCabe....

You can read more about this, and the book I'm currently working on (for the Kiss anthology) on my updated Coming Soon page.

Will also be doing a sneak peak of my story from the fabulous Baby It's Cold Outside on my Books pages very soon (honest!).

And One Night So Pregnant is out in the US on Saturday! And riding high in the Harlequin site's bestsellers list today. Yippee.

It's Beginning to Feel a Lot Like Christmas... Baby, It's Cold Outside launches at last!

Yay.... It's finally here, my first story for Entangled launches right here, right now.

First off, check out the seriously sexy cover:



Now here's the blurb (for anyone who hasn't been following my manic tweeting!):


BABY,IT’S COLD OUTSIDE
When a freak blizzard hits America’s Eastern seaboard,  four pairs of strangers spend a hot night together one cold Christmas season!  An Indulgence A nthology by  Aimee Carson, Amy Andrews, Kate Hardy and Heidi Rice including:
'TIS THE SEASON TO LOVE SHOPPING by Heidi Rice
Unlucky-in-love department store marketing manager Kate Braithwaite really doesn’t think her Christmas could get any suckier after being dumped via email on Christmas Eve. Until a trip into work on Christmas Day leaves her snowbound in the deserted Fifth Avenue department store with her boss’s far-too-tempting playboy son Ryder Sinclair. 
Ryder’s rugged, reckless and none too pleased to be stuck in a place he hates with an uptight workaholic like Kate. But as the night draws on, the lights go out and the temperature rises, until they’re both wondering is this the season to get lucky?
You can read an excerpt on Entangled's website soon:
And it's available to buy on Kindle in the UK and the US ! 
Enjoy. And Merry Christmas! (okay, it's a bit previous I'll admit, but I'm excited!)

The Next Big Thing

The lovely Freda Lightfoot, author of The Keswick Reminder, has invited me to take part in a blog event entitled THE NEXT BIG THING - a series of questions and answers about what’s happening next in my writing life. So here goes:

What is the title of your book? 

Tis the Season to Go Shopping which is one of four novellas in the Baby It's Cold Outside anthology from Entangled Publishing which is released on November 15th.

How did you come by the idea? 

The idea to do four stories set over the Christmas and New Year season and linked by a freak snow storm on America's Eastern Seaboard was a group effort between me and the three other fabulous authors in this anthology - namely Aimee Carson, Kate Hardy and Amy Andrews. I came up with the idea of having my couple stranded in an empty department store on Fifth Avenue on Christmas Day all on my own though - basically because I have this little fantasy of being able to go 'shopping' at Selfridges on Oxford Street and being able to afford anything I want. And then I started to think, how that particular fantasy would be even better if you were doing it in the company of a really gorgeous guy - I mean, seriously? Fantasy sex plus fantasy shopping? It sounded like the ultimate Christmas wish come true scenario to me...

What genre does your book fall under? 

Contemporary romance (with a sprinkling of Christmas sparkles)

Which actors would you choose to play your characters if it were a movie? 

My workaholic heroine Kate Braithwaite is a little uptight and judgmental but once she thaws has a sweet, vulnerable side that makes the hero's heart melt, so I'm thinking maybe Jennifer Aniston.. My photojournalist hero Ryder Sinclair's a bit harder to place because as well as being ruggedly handsome he's got this tender, nurturing, fun-loving side that totally captures Kate's heart... At the moment I'm leaning towards the ridiculously delicious Matt Bomer (check out my Pinterest board for this story), but I suspect a great deal more copious research on Google Images may be called for to be absolutely sure about that...

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book? 

Two strangers get snowed in at a deserted department store on Fifth Avenue and discover that keeping warm one cold Winter season can make your Christmas wishes come true. Plus there's fantasy shopping... Sorry, that's two sentence.

Will your book be self-published or traditional? 

Entangled are primarily an epublisher so the anthology's going to be an ebook in their Indulgence line (very excited about that as  Jennifer Probst's fabulous The Marriage Bargain was an Indulgence, which I loved to bits).

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? 

Amazingly for me, as I'm not a fast writer, I wrote the first draft of this story (which is only 18k mind you) in a week. The words literally flowed off my keyboard, I enjoyed writing about these two so much.

Who or What inspired you to write this book? 

Well, apart from my long-standing Selfridges' seasonal sex-and-shopping fantasy, the inspiration behind this book came from all the wonderful brainstorming I did with Aimee, Amy and Kate! In fact we worked together so well we started calling ourselves the Flirtettes - you know like a really cool sixties girl group with big hair and amazing harmonies... Okay, that was probably a bit too much information...

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

That it's in an anthology with three other fabulous sexy, seasonal, snowed in stories from three other completely brilliant writers. I've had the great privilege of reading the other stories so I'm telling you they're HAWT and fab.

Consider your interest piqued!

To close I've nominated three other authors to tell us about their NEXT BIG THING on Tuesday 20th November.

Take it away:

Kate Hardy
Amy Andrews
Abby Green
Fiona Harper

Giveaway and Book Accepted...

Only one more day to enter my Goodreads Giveaway for the US version of One Night, So Pregnant... Which btw got 4.5 stars from RT Book Reviews (oh, darn have I mentioned that already!)

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Goodreads Book Giveaway One Night, So Pregnant! by Heidi Rice Giveaway ends October 25, 2012.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads. Enter to win 
In other news I have a title for my next Riva story (which will be my first Harlequin KISS)...

Too Close for Comfort features ridiculously gorgeous Mexican-American PI Zane Montoya (Nate's drool-worthy best friend in One Night) and fiesty Scottish lass Iona MacCabe. I'll be sticking some more up-to-date info on this book on my Coming Soon page (soon!) as its had a rather checkered history, and has changed quite a lot from the original concept... But I'm very excited about it now and I LOVE that title. No release date as yet... Will keep you posted about that.