Serena BellSerena Bell
USA Today Bestselling Author
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Heating Up—and Finding Meaning In—the Holidays

Serena Bell

October 28, 2013

There’s always a moment for me in October that feels like someone has fired a starting gun for the race to New Year’s. I can’t help feeling that someone has signaled the beginning of an all out sprint to get the Halloween costumes made, the travel plans nailed down, the Thanksgiving menu decided on, the Christmas card photo chosen, the presents purchased.

Over time, I’ve learned that the trick to enjoying the holiday season is to find events, activities, music, and reading that will give me a reason to stop and enjoy and remember why I am doing all this. This year, I’ve actually been part of the creation of just such a treat—the eBook bundle Heating Up the Holidays, which goes on sale today. Heating Up the Holidays is a collection of tantalizingly sexy stories by three authors – the USA Today and NYT bestseller Lisa Renée Jones, the talented and popular Mary Ann Rivers, and me.

The three stories are meant to take you on a journey through the holiday season — starting with “Play With Me,” a Thanksgiving story by Lisa Renée Jones, then “Snowfall,” a Christmas story by Mary Ann Rivers, and last but not least, “After Midnight,” my steamy reverse-Cinderella New Year’s Eve tale (there’s an excerpt below!!).

It’s the perfect way to take a break from the holiday madness, a fun and sexy way to steal a few minutes from the hectic rush of life to remember how delightful this season can be, how romantic, how full of love, how rich with meaning.

I invite you to explore and enjoy the holiday season with us and to remember what it’s all about!

PLAY WITH ME by Lisa Renee Jones

Kali Miller has spent three years reporting fluff stories, waiting for the article that will launch her career to new heights. When she suddenly finds herself forced to take a job as an executive secretary at a Vegas casino, Kali meets the subject of what will surely be a shocking exposé: her boss, Damion Ward, the arrogant and undeniably sexy CEO. But after Damion invites her to help him plan a Thanksgiving charity event, Kali begins to see another side of the man. And when she surrenders to the exhilarating tension simmering between them, Kali hopes her story will have a happy ending.
 
SNOWFALL by Mary Ann Rivers

Jenny Wright can’t get enough of her erotic conversations with someone she knows only as “C.” Flirting online helps Jenny temporarily escape confronting the changes to her life as she slowly loses her vision. Jenny’s occupational therapist, Evan Carlisle-Ford, is helping her prepare for the challenges ahead, but the forthright, trustworthy man can no longer ignore his growing attraction to his fiercely intelligent client. Now Jenny must choose between the safe, anonymous “C”—or the flesh-and-blood Evan, whose heated kisses can melt snow faster than it can fall.
 
AFTER MIDNIGHT by Serena Bell

The clock is ticking down to midnight on New Year’s Eve, and all Nora Hart and Miles Shephard can think about is kissing each other—even though they met just minutes before. Then, as fast as Miles enters Nora’s life, he’s gone . . . and she never even gets the name of the man she thinks might just be “the one.” One year later, Nora and Miles are reunited. The chemistry between them is just as strong as they remember. But Miles broke her heart once before—and this time around, Nora’s not sure whether she can give love a second chance.

Excerpt from After Midnight
from the Heating Up the Holidays eBook bundle

Copyright © 2013 Serena Bell
All rights reserved — Loveswept Contemporary Romance

Chapter 1

December 31

11:41.
11:42.
11:43.

At this rate, it would never be midnight, and Miles Shepard would never say a permanent good night to this sadistic son-of-a-bitch year.

He stuck his phone back in his pocket and let his eyes wander over the party. They were in someone’s twenty-second-floor condo, all brushed nickel and rice-paper lamps and screens and edgy modern furniture. Well-dressed Bostonians—they’d left their Uggs and Pats jerseys and twenty-year-old Sox caps home tonight—monitored TVs tuned to network coverage of New Year’s events in various U.S. and world cities. The collective effect of an apartment bedecked with garlands of black and white streamers and metallic silver balloons, full of women in cocktail dresses and sparkly tops and ass-hugging jeans, was—well, if it hadn’t quite carved through the numbness that had been Miles’s constant companion for the last few weeks, it had at least chipped into it.

His childhood friend Owen was talking to a tall blonde in high-heeled boots, skin-tight silver pants, and a black velvet tunic. She towered over him, but it didn’t appear to intimidate Owen in the slightest. Owen grinned and told the blonde something, with his usual complement of hand gestures, and she smiled back and dipped her head.

Owen was one of those guys with mysterious appeal—he was thin to the point of near scrawniness, with a head of hair that was as unruly as a yellow dandelion, but women found him easy to talk to. Miles guessed that a month ago you could have said the same about him. These days, Miles wasn’t talking much, so if anyone was saying anything about him tonight, it was, “What’s up with the block of stone in the corner?”

The thing was, Miles knew Owen had his back. If anyone trash-talked Miles, Owen would be ready with a slap-down. When Miles had called him last week to say he needed to get the hell out of Cleveland and had no place to go, Owen had picked him up at Logan Airport, opened his condo to Miles, taken Miles to his sister’s house in Newton for Christmas, and otherwise tried to convince Miles his world hadn’t ended. As if maybe it was in some kind of weird suspended animation and at some point they’d unfreeze Miles and let him have another chance at it.

So for Owen, Miles would endure this party, even if it stayed 11:44 forever, like some punishment straight from the hyper-imaginative Greek gods.

A shriek cut through the hectic bounce of “Come On Eileen,” and he looked up to see a woman dancing her heart out. He definitely wasn’t completely numb, because his gaze fastened on the jiggle of her breasts under her shiny black tank top. Blood didn’t exactly rush south—it moved thickly through his bloodstream—but at least it was moving. Those were some awesome breasts, and he didn’t only mean awesome-cool: He meant awesome in its original awe-inspiring sense. They were the size and firmness that typically had to be purchased, but he knew real when it danced, and those were one hundred percent real.

His eyes traveled upward and—whoops!—met hers. She’d been watching him stare at her breasts as if he were an eleven-year-old unschooled horny boy. He made a wry apologetic face, and she laughed. Man, she was pretty, and not in a cover-of-a-magazine standard-issue way. She had strawberry-blond hair cropped pixie short, an adorable, mobile face, elfin ears, and a long, skinny nose. He didn’t usually go for short hair, but it worked on her, probably because the rest of her was so indubitably female.

And now she was dancing and holding his gaze, and his face heated as his blood picked up pace and got serious about things. His gut clenched, his dick was heavy, and she was moving for him. Still holding his gaze. The way she danced—it wasn’t sexual, not really. It was just uninhibited. Kind of . . . joyful. She had this grin on her face that was nine-tenths of what made her so pretty. Most people never looked that happy about what they were doing.

He wanted to cross the floor and—

And what? And proposition some woman he’d never met before in a city that wasn’t his when his life was in knots?

Yeah. Brilliant idea.

He broke the connection, turned away. He headed for the food table, which must have been catered, because this was no half-assed assortment of stuff people had scavenged from their pantries. There was a ham whose smoky flavor was addictive—Miles had eaten way more than his fair share an hour ago—and a cheese assortment that had probably cost several hundred dollars by itself. The dip-and-veggies setup was a work of art, not a grocery-store plastic-tray affair. Between the platters, bouquets of Mylar balloons urged him to have a Happy New Year. He frowned at them.

He spread some Brie on a cracker and leaned against the wall beside the food table. He told himself he wasn’t going to look for her again, but his eyes found her, anyway. She danced in a larger group now, her body language open, welcoming, her hands beckoning, her smile inviting. When new dancers approached, she opened the circle wider to include them.
The song ended and she broke away from the crowd. He watched her move through the room, her smile coming and going. She stopped beside a seated elderly woman—all wrong here, curved in on herself, decades displaced. The pixie-haired dancer knelt and shook the other woman’s hand. Leaned to speak in her ear, offered her own ear to the other woman. Rubbed the older woman’s arm. The older woman smiled hesitantly, and then, when the younger woman said something else, more broadly. Miles found himself smiling, too, an unfamiliar sensation that stretched the stuck muscles in his face and made his chest feel oddly, almost disturbingly, light.

His smile shriveled as soon as he noted it.

She caught him staring again, but this time he couldn’t hold her gaze. He pretended he’d been looking for someone else, scanning the crowd purposefully. He buttered another cracker with Brie and focused all his attention on it. He’d have to stop with the staring. Not so long ago, he’d been the guy who talked to everyone. The guy who spread smiles, like a wave at a baseball game. Now he’d forgotten how to be normal.

“Amazing, huh?”

She stood next to him. He froze with his hand on a carrot stick, the end still plunged into some sort of hot spinach dip.

She was even prettier this close, her hair damp from sweat at her temples, a smattering of light freckles across her nose, full lips, gorgeous cheekbones. She still breathed heavily from her athletics on the dance floor, making her chest rise and fall, which he knew only peripherally, because he was not allowing himself to look. He was afraid if he did he’d never look up again, and her eyes were not the sort of thing you wanted to miss. Pale blue, rimmed with long, thick lashes, and weirdly penetrating, as if she knew all the things about him that he didn’t want anyone to know.

“Can you believe this spread? Can you believe this party? Can you believe that fucking view?”

It was a weird thing about Miles that he was a sucker for women with foul mouths. He couldn’t explain it. It was those words in, well, that mouth. It made him want to kiss her like nobody’s business. Plant one on that luscious mouth and slide his tongue across hers. As if he could lick the taste of the word “fuck” right off her lips.

Instead, he said, “Great view.”

Awesome, Miles. Scintillating.

Of course, he’d been too busy admiring the interior view to give Boston-through-the-enormous-plate-glass-windows its due. The condo was down near the Charles on the Cambridge side—supposedly one of the best views of the Boston skyline in the whole greater-Boston area. He couldn’t contest that—it was spectacular. The buildings cast reflections in the Charles, dots of light and columns of color. He couldn’t see the famous Citgo sign from where they were, although maybe that was the top edge of it there, casting a reddish light over the lower buildings to the right of his field of vision?

But she didn’t seem to mind his vapid response. “Have you had this one?” She pointed to one of the cheeses.

He shook his head.

“Oh, God, you have to.” She cut him a slice. “Here.”

He reached for it, then realized she was intending to feed it to him. Holy shit.

She put it in his mouth, but not in a porn-star, fingers-lingering-so-he-could-suck-them sort of way. Just matter-of-fact. Which possibly made it worse, because he wanted to nip her fingers, and the craving was hotter than anything overt she could have done.

Then he realized that the piece of cheese was the most amazing thing he’d ever tasted, which distracted him enough from his previous train of thought so he could chew and swallow and say, “Mother of God.”

“I know, right?” She smiled at him.

“What is that?”

“I don’t know. I wish they’d left the labels out, but they didn’t. I’ll try to find out, though. The hostess is my older sister’s college roommate’s friend, so I have an in.”

He laughed, the sound unfamiliar in his ears.

“What’s your connection?”

“I’m visiting my friend Owen.” He pointed. “He got the Facebook invitation from a friend of a friend of a friend.”

“I’m surprised there aren’t more of those. Like this place isn’t packed to the gills. Who wouldn’t want to ring in the New Year up here, with this food? I’m going to angle to get invited every year. Find out if they do a Fourth of July party, too.”

“I’m sure they must, right?”

They stared out at the view for a moment.

“So, you’re visiting? You don’t live in Boston?”

“Cleveland.” Oh. Right. The problem with this scenario was that food talk would lead to more general small talk and then to warm-up conversation and then to real conversation. Real conversation was not his friend these days. “Hey. I’d better go check on Owen.”

“He looks like a happy man to me. I think things are going his way.” And she gave him a sideways smile that was full of flirt. Like, Things could be going your way, too, hon.

Her top was halter style, and she had great shoulders, strong and round. She wore a gray tweedy skirt and smooth black knee-high boots, and his unruly mind served up an image of her, naked except for those slick boots.

Jesus.

It wouldn’t go away, that picture of her. It wasn’t the flotsam and jetsam of his brain. It was a fully formed idea.

He seriously considered the possibility of it.

Maybe the year didn’t have to slink out in shame. Maybe he could put a more emphatic end on it.

“Let me refill your drink,” he said, reaching for the empty martini glass in her hand.

She gave him a big, genuine grin. “I’ve got a better idea.”

“Yeah?”

“Let’s dance. I love dancing. I love this music.”

She didn’t say it in a vampy way, but it shorted out something in his brain. It seemed like sexiness was something that happened to her accidentally while she was having more fun than the average woman could wring out of a New Year’s party. That was what made her so hot, he realized. She wasn’t trying particularly hard. She was just more here than most people were. More present, more vivid. And so she’d penetrated the fog he’d been wearing, like rifle fire through body armor.

Here was the thing. Numb had felt good. Numb had felt safe. Numb was what you were supposed to feel in his situation, when you were falsely suspected of embezzling more than three hundred thousand dollars from the nonprofit organization you’d helped found and when your fiancée told you adios, she didn’t think she was the stand-by-your-man type. You were supposed to lick your wounds and hide out for weeks, months, years. You were supposed to have as much life in you as a glacial boulder. You weren’t supposed to go to a New Year’s Eve party and spot some hot elf–witch chick with joie de vivre busting out all over and get all hot and bothered.

Numb had felt good. This—alive, buzzing, raw, wide open—felt dangerous.

“Hey, I get it,” she said. “I’m not your type.”

He shook his head. So far from the truth, it couldn’t find it with a lie detector.

“Is that a ‘No, you’re not my type’ or a ‘No, you’ve got it all wrong’?”

“You’ve got that part dead wrong,” he said, with some heat.

Her smile began at the corners of her mouth. “You like ’em younger.”

Shake.

“Prettier?”

Shake.

“Less busty?”

They were grinning at each other now, and it felt good, something shaken loose inside. Freed.

“Less bossy. You’re not in the market. You’re married. You’re gay.”

He laughed out loud at that, and he knew he’d dance with her. And probably not stop there. He’d think about the consequences, how they fit with his broke-ass life, later. After midnight. Next year.

“Okay, you’re not gay. Good, then, come on.” And she grabbed his hand and tugged him toward the dance floor.

There was some kind of eighties’ theme going on with the music, and AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long” was playing. Well, that kind of erased all subtlety from the situation, didn’t it? And maybe that was for the best, because his body had also decided to bypass subtlety and go for broke, and by the time she got her arms around his neck and slid against him, he was hard. Like really hard, so the shimmy of her hip against his crotch found him, no problem. She did it again, and he wanted to simultaneously ask her to stop and beg her to keep doing it. Maybe it was something about the lyrics, which had always done it for him, even though he wasn’t quite old enough to have bumped and ground to this song at middle school dances.

Her breasts pressed to his chest, her thighs moved across his uncomfortably engorged dick, and she tilted her pelvis to grind on him. Okay, that wasn’t accidentally sexy, that was overtly take-what-you-want, go-for-broke sexy, and it notched his own arousal up about six levels. She smelled unbelievably good, her hair strawberry-scented to match the color. He knew because he had his nose in it, and somehow his hands had found her ass and were guiding her movements against him. The friction there was the epicenter of something disturbingly fast-building, and he had to pull away a little from her, take it down a notch, because she was too much energy in his arms, too much pure, raw temptation.

He tried to think whether he’d ever wanted a total stranger like this, but he was pretty sure he hadn’t. He could blame the song, he could blame the speed with which she’d thawed his numbness, he could blame the evening, the anonymity, the unfamiliar city, the beautiful scenery, the holiday with all its “Auld Lang Syne” bonhomie, but at the bottom and the center of all the thinking and explaining there was just the feel of wanting her.

The music stopped, and he stepped back. The pressure that had been building in his dick waned enough for him to have a semi-coherent thought in his head, and it was this: I like this girl. A lot. Fuck.

“Okay, people, we’re turning on the big TV! Five minutes to go!” Someone had stood on a chair to make that announcement, and now one wall of the room lit up with Times Square, a split screen between the crowd and the suspended ball.

She stood next to him. He didn’t look at her but he could feel the distance between them, exactly how far he’d have to lean to jostle her with his arm, his hip, his shoulder. Exactly how far he’d have to turn to press himself against her.

The countdown was at −4:06. All around them, people shifted and jockeyed for position, an unsubtle effort to end up near the person they’d least hate the idea of getting kissed by at midnight. Owen was still beside the tall blonde. Go, Owen. If Miles couldn’t get him a medal for his acts of friendship this week, standing back while Owen got laid would be a good consolation prize.

Miles was feeling a lot better now about having chosen to stick this party out. Partially on Owen’s behalf, but also on his own. Because the woman next to him wasn’t the person he’d least hate the idea of getting kissed by at midnight. Not at all. Despite the fact that it wasn’t what he was supposed to feel, despite the fact that it made no sense and scared the hell out of him, she was the person he most wanted to kiss at midnight.

At that moment, he realized he’d never asked her name.

 
 

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Wild Child Blog Hop

Serena Bell

October 14, 2013

This giveaway is now closed! Tina is the winner; I’ll contact her directly! Thanks to everyone who stopped by and signed up for my newsletter …

Thanks for stopping by my site during the Wild Child Blog Hop! Please use the Rafflecopter form at the bottom of the page to enter the Wild Child giveaway. If you sign up any time during the blog hop (Oct 14-29) for my newsletter, using the form on the main page of my site, you’ll also be entered to win a $10 Amazon or Barnes & Noble gift card!

Monica Appleby is a woman with a reputation. Once she was America’s teenage “Wild Child,” with her own reality TV show. Now she’s a successful author coming home to Bishop, Arkansas, to pen the juicy follow-up to her tell-all autobiography. Problem is, the hottest man in town wants her gone. Mayor Jackson Davies is trying to convince a cookie giant to move its headquarters to his crumbling community, and Monica’s presence is just too . . . unwholesome for business. But the desire in his eyes sends a very different message: Stay, at least for a while.

Jackson needs this cookie deal to go through. His town is dying and this may be its last shot. Monica is a distraction proving too sweet, too inviting—and completely beyond his control. With every kiss he can taste her loneliness, her regrets, and her longing. Soon their uncontrollable attraction is causing all kinds of drama. But when two lost hearts take a surprise detour onto the bumpy road of unexpected love, it can only lead someplace wonderful.

Please also visit …

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Enter the HEATING UP THE HOLIDAYS Goodreads Giveaway + Sweepstakes!

Serena Bell

October 8, 2013

It’s never too early to start heating up your holidays!

We’d love your help adding HEATING UP THE HOLIDAYS—featuring three new holiday–themed novellas from NYT bestselling author Lisa Renee Jones, Mary Ann Rivers, and Serena Bell—to your to-read shelf on Goodreads! We’ll be giving away excerpts and prizes as we reach the following number of adds:

250 adds = Giveaway Excerpt of Snowfall by Mary Ann Rivers

500 adds = Giveaway Excerpt of After Midnight by Serena Bell

1,000 adds = Giveaway Excerpt of Play with Me by Lisa Renee Jones

1,500 adds = Entry into Sweepstakes to Win One $25 Amex Giftcard

2,000 adds = Entry into Sweepstakes to Win One $50 Amex Giftcard + Lisa Renee Jones totebag and a signed copy of IF I WERE YOU.

Here’s what you need to do to enter:

1) Click *here* to start the process of adding HEATING UP THE HOLIDAYS to your Goodreads to-read shelf

2) Click *here* to fill out this form and include your email address and a URL link to your Goodreads profile page.

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Yours to Keep pretties

Serena Bell

September 23, 2013

Loveswept made me these beautiful graphics for my upcoming Yours to Keep blog tour, October 28-November 22. I’ll keep you updated as I get more info about specific stops on the tour.

YourstoKeepBlogTourBanner

Yours to Keep is, according to its cover copy, the captivating story of a woman living on the edge—and the man who’s destined to love her.

Ana Travares has been looking over her shoulder her whole life. Her U.S. visa expired when she was a young girl, and if her secret is discovered, she’ll be forced to return to the DomYourstoKeepBlogButtoninican Republic.

Ana allowed herself to get close to someone once before—and after he broke her heart, she swore never to make the same mistake again. But when a handsome doctor asks for her assistance, she fantasizes about breaking all her rules.

Even though pediatrician Ethan Hansen is a natural when it comes to little kids, as the single father of a teenage son he just can’t seem to get it right . . . except for the Spanish tutor he’s hired for his son, Theo. Ana has managed to crack Theo’s shell—and he isn’t the only one taken with her. The sexy tutor has fired up Ethan with a potent mix of lust and protectiveness.

But as he starts to envision a future with Ana, Ethan is devastated to learn the truth about her citizenship. Somehow he’s got to find a way to help her—and hold on to the woman he’s falling hopelessly in love with.

 

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My Debut Novella Is Out!

Serena Bell

April 2, 2013

TicketHome300Today is release day for the Strangers on a Train series—taglined “romancing the rails.” In my story, Ticket Home, the heroine’s workaholic ex stalks her train commute, hell-bent on winning her back. If he doesn’t get himself arrested, he’ll do his best to remind her of exactly what she’s been missing!

I’m lucky to have worked on this project with four other amazing authors: Donna Cummings, Samantha Hunter, Ruthie Knox, and Meg Maguire, each of whom has a separate story in the collection.

The series has a really fun genesis—Ruthie and Sam were chatting on Twitter about the Tumblr “Hot Guys on a Train,” in which unsuspecting beautiful males are photographed as they ride, and the conversation turned to how much fun it would be to write a series of romances that take place on trains. The rest of us got drawn into/recruited to the project, and these five very different stories grew out of one prompt: Write about strangers on a train.

You can see/buy all the stories here:

Please also join us on our blog tour—all the stops are listed here. There are many chances to win each of the stories individually and/or complete sets of all five stories. Today, we’ll be at four different locations, giving away full sets of the book. Serena Bell will be at Romance@Random, Ruthie Knox will be at FictionVixen and Meg Maguire will be at Smexybooks. All five authors will visit HEA USA Today.

Here’s a short excerpt from Ticket Home:

Excerpt from Ticket Home

Copyright © 2012 Serena Bell
All rights reserved — a Samhain Publishing, Ltd. publication
“No more games.”

It was a command. It was a growl. She felt it, everywhere.

“Do you know what I spent my morning doing?”

She shook her head. From behind her, someone said, “Excuse me,” and Jeff sat abruptly in an empty seat and tugged her down to sit beside him. A group of passengers went by and distributed themselves into the seats beyond.

She tried to get up, but he held her firm.

“You’re hurting me.”

He released her instantly, and she rubbed the place where his fingers had dug into her.

“Your little stunt this morning with the conductor got me detained by the transit police for questioning. Apparently they take ‘See something, say something’ very seriously in the year of the tenth anniversary of September Eleventh.”

“Oh God.”

“It’s okay. It turns out I don’t have a police record or obvious links with terrorist organizations, and I haven’t traveled out of the country in the last couple of years.”

“Jeff, I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, well. You can make it up to me by not running away. Okay? Just talk to me.”

She shouldn’t have sicced the MTA police on him, but that didn’t mean she wanted to be trapped here with him. It didn’t mean she wanted to rehash bits of their relationship better left behind. And it definitely didn’t mean she wanted his body a few inches from hers, tension rolling off him like fog off the early-morning Pacific Ocean. If she let her eyes flicker sideways, she could see that his thigh was tensed, the muscle straining the wool of his dress slacks.

“I’m not playing games,” she said. “I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to fix things up. I want you to get off the train and leave me alone. It’s over.”

“And I want you to come home with me.”

He said it so simply, it stopped her dead.

 

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Strangers on a Train Blog Tour

Serena Bell

March 25, 2013

TicketHome300Ticket Home is now out!! along with stories by some of my very favorite authors—Donna Cummings, Samantha Hunter, Ruthie Knox, and Meg Maguire—as part of Strangers on a Train, a series of romances about railroad encounters of the very hot kind. Five couples, five trains, five steamy romances!

Please visit me and the other authors of the Strangers on a Train stories on our blog tour, March 25-April 22. Find out how we came up with the concept that became Strangers on a Train, read about our own train experiences, and enter to win copies of Ticket Home, Back on Track, Tight Quarters, Big Boy, and Thank You for Riding.

Below I’ve listed our stops and which book/author is posting—which also tells you which story you can enter to win by commenting on that post. “All the authors” means you can enter to win a complete set!

SoaT_tour_badgeMarch 25, Bookaholic Anon, all the authors

March 26, The Raunch Dilettante, Thank You for Riding by Meg Maguire

March 27, Blogging by Liza, Big Boy by Ruthie Knox

March 28, Love to Read for Fun, Ticket Home by Serena Bell

March 29, Intrepid Reader, Back on Track by Donna Cummings

April 1, Kindles and Wine, Big Boy

April 2, RELEASE DAY! We’ll be at four different locations, giving away full sets of the book. Serena Bell will be at Romance@Random, Ruthie Knox will be at FictionVixen and Meg Maguire will be at Smexybooks. All five authors will visit HEA USA Today.

April 3, Brunette Librarian, Tight Quarters by Samantha Hunter

April 4, Delighted Reader, Ticket Home

April 5, Ex Libris, all the authors

April 8, Confessions of an Opinionated Book Geek, Big Boy

April 9, Feeling Fictional, Ticket Home

April 10, Romance Around the Corner, Thank You for Riding

April 11, Book Crack, all the authors

April 12, Romantic Book Affairs, all the authors

April 15, Harlequin Junkie, Tight Quarters

April 16, Shh Mom’s Reading, Back on Track

April 17, Dee’s Book Blog, Ticket Home

April 18, Totally Booked, Tight Quarters

April 19, Romance Reader at Heart, Back on Track

April 22, Talk Supe, Back on Track

Please join us and enter to win! And if you’re interested, below are some links for buying the series or adding it on Goodreads.

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The Call

Serena Bell

February 12, 2013

I have some squee-worthy news. My novel, tentatively titled Are You With Me? will release as a Harlequin Blaze at the beginning of 2014. Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!

A few writer friends have told me that it isn’t always easy to identify the moment when you get “the call,” that long-awaited telephone conversation in which you cross the line from writer to author. And I’d have to agree. But I do think that at some point, you know you’ve fully made the transition. You know that however surreal and lurching and slow the process might have been, you are now on the “other side.”

And it’s a great feeling.

I sold my novella, Ticket Home, to Samhain in May 2012 for publication in April 2013. Ticket Home is part of a collection, one of five stories in the Strangers on a Train series, whose tagline is “Romancing the Rails.” On February 4, 2014, it will be released as a paperback anthology. I love this project. I’ve loved it from the very beginning. I love the wacky way it started, as a brainstorming session on Twitter. I love the women I work with. I love my story, and I love all four of the other stories. Hard.

 And yet, the way I sold Ticket Home, it never quite felt like my sale. My big moment. Partly because it is a collaborative project. And partly because of the way I found out I’d sold. I had flown across the country for the inspection on my brand new house. I was completely focused on the inspection—whether I’d like the house, which we now owned but which I’d never seen, whether the house would pass inspection, whether the negotiations that would follow the inspection would be as awful as the ones that had preceded it. My heart pounded as I waited to leave my mother-in-law’s house for the inspection, and I refreshed my email a million times, just for something to do.

In dropped an email from my wonderful editor at Samhain, Anne Scott. She wanted to buy my story, along with the other four, for Samhain. But she wanted some revisions first.

Oh, God!

There was no time to absorb the news. I had to race to the inspection—and for the next several weeks, the inspection and the other realities of the move consumed me. I finished the revision Anne had requested and she acquired the manuscript. But there was no moment. The day we celebrated on Twitter was a great day, but by then, my own sense of thrill had passed.

The next several months whisked by. My husband and I had two enormous financial transactions to deal with, and some nasty complications. Finally we moved into the new house, but our kids couldn’t sleep, summer visitors descended on us, and we worried about our new responsibilities. Just when I was starting to feel a “new normal,” school started, and my kids’ anxiety levels—and my own—ratcheted back up. We spent the early fall in a frenzy of friend-making activities.

Finally, I settled into a working groove and forced myself to revise Are You With Me? and send it out. I’d forgotten how hard it was to psych myself up for querying, and I knew that querying agents with a category-length novel wouldn’t make things any easier—many won’t read or rep category.

But then my first miracle happened. Emily Sylvan Kim of Prospect Agency loved the novel and offered me representation. Emily had been on my radar screen for years—before I knew she would turn out to rep my critique partner (who is also one of my favorite romance authors). I was thrilled by this turn of events, but because it all happened only a couple days before our cross-country Thanksgiving trip, I didn’t find time to celebrate it properly.

My mother disapproved. “You have to celebrate everything,” she said. “Every little victory. Because it’s a very uncertain career.” She’s a literary writer who has seen a book rejected by acquisitions despite love from an enthusiastic editor and a three-book contract vanish after the series was orphaned by an editor’s departure to another house. “You have to make sure you celebrate whenever you can. Everything.” She opened a surprise bottle of champagne for me the day after Thanksgiving.

That bottle of champagne helped me process how far I’d come. Two years before, I’d decided that since I loved reading romance so much, and loved writing literary fiction, especially the love scenes, I should try romance. I’d written a single-title-length novel and sent it to—I don’t know, eighty agents? Some of them had loved it but none of them had offered representation. Since then, I’d written one more single-title novel, a novella, several short stories, many abortive chapters, and Are You With Me? I’d lost my fear of querying, my fear of networking with other authors, my fear of conferences, and my fear of Twitter. I’d met amazing writer friends at RWA chapter meetings and online. I’d done it all one step at a time, without completely registering how much I’d accomplished, how much I’d risked of my ego, or how far I’d come.

I sipped my champagne and felt where I was. On the edge. On the brink of something. Emily was sure she could make it happen, and her enthusiasm, her certainty, was infectious.

She was also right. Just a few weeks after the champagne toast celebrating her offer of representation, Emily called to say that one of the editors who had Are You With Me? was on the brink of making an offer. Not quite sure whether it was time to celebrate yet or not, I went out to lunch with a friend but didn’t toast my almost-news. We finished up lunch, and I stepped outside to find a message from Emily. A little earlier, she’d told me that that she’d gotten a promising email from a second editor, and she thought it might be an offer.

I live in the Pacific Northwest now, and the weather here in January is gray. It’s one of the things that makes me sad about my cross-country move—that, and leaving behind family and close friends. The morning had started out bleak, but as I sat in lunch, the sun came out. Brilliantly, strongly, which it rarely does here in January. The temperature had warmed, too, and I found myself standing on the street in my little town—charming, sweet, bustling, exactly like a village in a romance novel—and talking on the phone with Emily while the unexpected sun shone on me.

The second editor had offered! And in response, the first editor had sped the book through acquisitions and made an offer as well. There were two offers on my book.

There had been twenty phone calls between me and Emily over the last few months—new hope and wait-some-more and no-really!-soon! and it had started to feel like there might be no one call. And there wasn’t, really, even that day. I walked around town and stopped in shops and waited for Emily to call back with updates, and I can’t keep straight which call contained which revelation.

Ultimately—I started with a spoiler, so you know how it turns out—I took the offer from Harlequin Blaze, and I’m thrilled to be working with veteran editor Brenda Chin to bring Are You With Me? (if it keeps that name) to readers early next year. I have recently learned that this makes me a “Blaze babe,” a distinction I’ll wear with pride.

I have celebrated—dinner out with my husband with a “Raspberry Truffle,” two scoops of vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce, and Chambord. I will celebrate again when my girlfriends take me out next week. I think my mother is right—it’s important to celebrate early and often and as many times as you think necessary. But the truth is, that moment, standing there in the sun, in the town I’ve come to love, listening to Emily lay out the terms of the two offers, marveling at the capacity of life to be miraculous? That was my call and my truest celebration.

 

 

 

 

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Marking Up a Manuscript on the iPad

Serena Bell

January 31, 2013

My critique partner, Ruthie Knox, and I struggled for a long time to find a solution to the following problem: How do you read someone else’s manuscript on an e-reader, then export your highlights and notes in a way that’s easy for your critique partner to read? Previously, both Ruthie and I read on our Kindles, then transcribed notes and highlights by hand into Word, because Amazon has made it nearly impossible to export highlights and notes from personal documents on the Kindle.

Ruthie’s husband came up with this elegant solution. It doesn’t fix the problem for Kindles, but it does make it possible to do what we wanted on the iPad.

PDF Expert App Store ss1) Purchase PDF Expert for iPad from the App Store for $9.99.

2) Open the manuscript in Word and format it to fit an iPad screen.

  • 6.5″ x 8.5″ page size
  • .75 margins all around
  • No unprintable area
  • Justified
  • Helvetica neue (other fonts work, too)
  • 12 pt

3) Print, save, or export the document as a PDF.

4) Email it to yourself. Receive the document on your iPad and long press the attachment–you’ll be given the option to open the document in PDF Expert.

5) Read and mark up in PDF Expert. You can highlight, make notes, strikethrough, underline, etc.

PDFExpress screenshot6) Using the emailer built into PDF Expert (in the upper right-hand corner of iPad screen, tap the little box with the arrow jumping out of it), email the marked up document to your critique partner. Once you select “Send by E-mail” from the drop down list, you have options that include send the document, send a read-only copy, and send the document with a summary of annotations (very helpful!).

If you try this, please let me know how it goes for you! And if you have other solutions for exporting marked up documents from any e-reader, please share!

 

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Strangers on a Train Cover Reveal & Giveaway

Serena Bell

December 2, 2012

Angela is the winner of the advance copy giveaway, and fourseasonsny has won the newsletter drawing. Thank you all so much for visiting and commenting on the blog train, and special thanks to those who also signed up for the newsletter. We’re happy to have you on board!

Welcome to the Strangers on a Train cover reveal blog train! I’m so thrilled to be part of this great series of railroad encounters of the very hot kind, with awesome authors Donna Cummings, Samantha Hunter, Ruthie Knox, and Meg Maguire.

This is the dining car—stop and feast your eyes. Make sure to leave a comment, because we’re giving away FIVE complete sets of ALL FIVE ARCS—one to a random commenter on each site in the train. Commenting on all five sites will give you the best chance of winning.

If you sign up for my newsletter (on my home page) this week, I’ll also enter you in a random drawing to win a $10 Amazon or Barnes & Noble gift certificate.

The comment period ends Friday, December 7th and we’ll pick and announce winners Saturday, December 8th.

Once you’ve squeeeeeed with me over my cover and commented, head on down to the next car for another tasty treat, the cover reveal for Donna Cummings’ story, Back on Track.

Now—cue squeeeeing—here’s the cover for Ticket Home, my debut book:

Is that a cell phone in his pocket…or is he just happy to see her?

When Amy Moreland left Seattle, she never expected to see her workaholic ex-boyfriend again. Encountering him on her Connecticut-to-New-York-City commute is the surprise of her life. He seems hell-bent on winning her back, but every time his cell phone rings, it’s a painful reminder how he failed to put her first.

Jeff Havers can’t help that his phone keeps interrupting his carefully composed apology speech, but having Amy sic the Metro North security team on him is a bit much. Once he talks his way out of handcuffs, he focuses on coaxing Amy to talk about the fears that drove her away.

As the train ride takes them through the landscape of their lost life together, sparks fly and remembered heat reignites. But if they’re not brave enough to overcome the still-fresh pain of old wounds, it could be too late to pursue what really matters—their ticket home.

Warning: This book contains steamy train-car action, sex on the stairs, and a hero determined to give his velvet-and-heels-clad woman exactly what she’s looking for.

You can pre-order Ticket Home now!

 

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Revising Your NaNoWriMo Book

Serena Bell

November 28, 2012

Rochelle Melander

Although I’ve yet to participate in NaNoWriMo, I’m fascinated by it (it’s on my bucket list). So I was psyched when Rochelle Melander of WriteNowCoach.com asked if she could write a guest post on revising NaNoWriMo work. I’m a big fan of writing sprints—I depend on daily and weekly goals to keep me on track—but the downside of sprinting is the aftermath. Below are Rochelle’s tips for living through what comes after November. Please comment and tell us how you feel about what you’ve written and the work ahead of you.

 

It is my contention that a really great novel is made with a knife and not a pen. A novelist must have the intestinal fortitude to cut out even the most brilliant passage so long as it doesn’t advance the story.                 —Frank Yerby

Can you feel it? You are almost done with National Novel Writing Month. Yes! And I’m here to talk about what comes after NaNoWriMo: revision. Bringing up revising before NaNoWriMo has ended is a little like asking a runner to analyze mile three of a marathon while she’s running mile twenty-three. Not helpful! If you need to bookmark this article and come back to it after the big NaNo post-game party—go ahead. If you’re brave and willing to consider revision—read on!

I’ve read that agents and editors hate December because National Novel Writing Month participants deluge them with hastily drafted manuscripts. Don’t do it, people! Don’t even think about showing anyone your NaNoWriMo book until you’ve revised it. Here’s how:

Step One: Let it rest. You’ve been hammering away at this book for a month. You’ve taken your characters through an amazing adventure and ignored everything else in your life. Give yourself and your characters a break. Take a month off to recover. Celebrate. Catch up on sleep. Cook. When you feel a bit more like yourself, recall what you’d hoped to accomplish with your NaNoWriMo book. Read a stack of the best books in your genre. Remembering and reading will help you envision your revised novel.

Step Two: Read through. Set aside a day to read your book from beginning to end, preferably in hard copy. Keep a notebook next to you to jot down the revision issues you see in the book. Focus on the big picture, reading for story instead of spelling. Making technical corrections at this point is like filling in nail holes on a wall you might demolish. After you’ve read once through for story, take a second look and note what needs to be revised in the following areas:

  • Character (Clear goal, Development, Transformation)
  • Story (Conflict, Plot, Action, Pacing)
  • Storytelling (Narrative, Dialogue, Voice)
  • Setting

Step Three: Plan your revision. You’ve done your homework and you know what you want this novel to do. You’ve also read through your rough draft at least once and made a “to revise” list. Create an action plan for revising the book, starting with the broadest issues (e.g., fixing the structural issues in the story) and finishing with the details (e.g., checking for consistency).

Step Four: Revise. Work through the issues you raised in steps two and three. Don’t worry about time—revising can take longer than drafting, but at least you have words to work with! Once you work through all of the issues you raised in the first reading, repeat steps one through four. (No, I’m not trying to torture you!) In the second stage of revisions, you will deepen the characters and tighten the pacing of the story even more. After you’ve put the book through a second round of revisions, it’s time to bring in outside help.

Step Five: Choose beta readers. At some point, you need to test market your book on real people. Invite your critique group and other avid fans of your genre to read through your book and offer feedback. If readers are not used to providing feedback—and it’s good to have a few of those read your story—it can be helpful to give them a critique checklist or even a few items to pay attention to. For instance, when my daughter read my middle grade novel I asked her to let me know what she thought of the characters. (Darcy Pattison has gathered a list of critique checklists here: http://www.darcypattison.com/novels/12-writing-fiction-checklists/) As you read the revision recommendations, remember that you are the creator of this story—you can dump any request that doesn’t fit with your vision of the novel.

A novel often goes through at least one more revision after beta readers provide their feedback. Once you get the story to a point that works, it’s time to put on finishing touches: checking the manuscript for details like spelling, grammar, and consistency. Now it’s really time to throw a party! Not only have you written a great book, you’ve revised it enough that you can start submitting it to agents and editors! Hooray for you!

Rochelle Melander is an author, speaker, and certified professional coach. She is the author of ten books, including Write-A-Thon: Write Your Book in 26 Days (and Live to Tell About It). She’s still revising her 2010 NaNoWriMo project, but hopes to be done very soon. For more tips and a complementary download of the first two chapters of Write-A-Thon, visit her online at www.writenowcoach.com

 

 

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