Sunday, March 3, 2013

Just for Fun by Rosalind James Book Tour







Title: Just For Fun (Escape to New Zealand #4)
Author - Rosalind James
Genre - Contemporary Romance
Date Published: 12/8/12

Synopsis:
    
What if the person who broke your heart turned out to be the only one who could mend it?
 Nic Wilkinson is a responsible, organized, disciplined rugby player at the top of his game. Emma Martens is a sometimes-scattered, often-emotional, and always-broke would-be designer with a big chip on her shoulder where Nic’s concerned.
 They have no history together, except one perfect week. Nothing in common anymore, except the most important thing of all.
 Getting together again would be messy. Complicated. Scary. And, just maybe, worth every risk.


EXCERPT:
“Mum!” Zack burst in through the front door. “It was brilliant!” He kicked his shoes off impatiently, dropped his rugby boots next to them before struggling out of his jacket. Nic followed him in, grabbed the jacket and hung it on the brightly painted rack next to the door when Zack would have dropped it on the floor.
Emma reached out for a hug that, Nic saw, the boy was still willing to give his mother, at least here at home. Her eyes met Nic’s as she looked over her son’s head. How did she always look so soft? So . . . pettable? She was wearing another sweater, that was all, he told his troublesome libido. Another light, lacy one, prettily trimmed once again. A pale pink cardigan with pearly shell buttons, edged in cream, over a long stretchy top and leggings. She looked like an invitation to cuddle. Like the best blankie ever.
“Can Nic stay for dinner, Mum?” Zack asked excitedly, offering a welcome distraction from his wayward train of thought. “He could help me tell you all the things we did. We’re having spaghetti!” he told Nic. “It’s really good.”
“Can’t, mate. Sorry,” Nic put in hastily at Emma’s instinctive shake of the head. “But I’ll have a glass of water, if one’s on offer.”
“Sit down,” Emma told him. “Please.”
Nic slipped off his own shoes before heading to the couch with Zack. “Cheers,” he said as she came back from the kitchen to hand each of them a glass, then took her own seat in a small armchair next to the couch, the only other option the little room offered.
“You look tired,” she said abruptly. “And bruised. Are you OK?”
“Just a bit confused on the sleep schedule, still,” Nic admitted. “I took a wee pill on the flight home, but it never works that well.”
“It’s a long way, Mum,” Zack put in. “South Africa’s really far.”
Nic took a long drink of the cold water, looked around for something to set the glass on. “Coaster?”
“Just put it down,” Emma told him.
“Don’t want to spoil this,” he said, looking more closely at the coffee table. The simple rectangle had been transformed into a forest of ferns, with native birds peeping out from underneath fronds, perched in trees. The parson-throated tui making a meal of red fruit, the colorful, stumpy takahe on the forest floor, tiny fantails darting overhead.
“You can’t,” Emma assured him. “It’s all enamels. Everything in this house is pretty indestructible.”
“Did you find the ruru yet?” Zack asked him, leaning forward.
“Don’t tell me,” Nic said. “Let me look.” Zack watched him eagerly as he searched and finally pointed triumphantly to a notch in a tree where the owl blended into the bark. “There.”
“You did this too, eh,” he asked Emma. “Nice.”
“I did everything. That’s my decorating theme. Things I made.”
“I like it,” he assured her. The warm colors of the lounge seemed to cocoon them. Two walls were a rich caramel, the others a warm yellow. She didn’t even paint every wall in a room the same color, he realized. Well, at least in the kitchen it was all the same. Purple. He wondered what color her bedroom was. How it looked. And found himself wishing, against every better impulse, that he could see it.



Author Bio:
Rosalind James is the author of the Kindle bestseller Just This Once and the three subsequent books in the Escape to New Zealand series. She is a former marketing executive who has lived all over the United States and in a number of other countries, traveling with her civil engineer husband. Most recently, she spent several years in Australia and New Zealand, where she fell in love with the people, the landscape, and the culture of both countries.
Visit www.rosalindjames.com to listen to the songs from the books, follow the characters on their travels, watch funny and fascinating New Zealand and rugby videos, and learn about what's new!

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GUEST POST:
Why I Don’t Get Writer’s Block

“What do you do about writer’s block?” I hear this question all the time. Short answer: I don’t get it! After ten years as a marketing writer, I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve spent toiling to make alphabet letter tiles or fireplace inserts sound sexy. Writing stories about two people falling in love? Piece of cake!

The longer answer is that the techniques I developed to keep myself on track while writing about Building Your Classroom Library or Our Salon Services have continued to serve me well in writing fiction. Here they are:

1.      Take a walk. Or a run, or a bike ride, or a swim. We’re not just giant disembodied brains. Something about moving my body makes the left brain/right brain combination work. I don’t try to force my story to come to me, just let my mind wander. For the first ten minutes or so, it DOES wander. Then somehow, without any direction, it comes back to the book. Often, the scene that appears isn’t even the one I thought I was working on. I’ve learned to trust the process, and go home and write the scene that came to me. Maybe that other scene will appear next time—or maybe it wasn’t right after all.
2.      Try a different spot. I often take a notebook to the coffee shop in the morning. The walk up there gets my mind working (see #1), and the change from my normal writing place shakes up my mind a bit. The difficulty arises when I’m scribbling a particularly steamy scene in longhand, hoping devoutly that nobody can look over my shoulder and read what I’ve written—or that they’ll guess why I’m concentrating so hard!
3.      Just write. Don’t worry about getting it perfect at first. Your words may start out stilted, but the act of writing will make the ideas start to flow, and you can go back and edit later. I often don’t start at the “beginning” of a scene, as that bogs me down. I start with the “fun” part, the part that presents itself most insistently. Afterwards, I’ll come back and write the graceful introduction.
4.      Give it a day. I start each day by going back over what I wrote the day before. I can always improve it. It also jump-starts that day’s work by getting me back into the book.
5.      If you’re stuck, move! This goes back to #1. If I’m blanking out, I get up and make a cup of tea, empty the dishwasher, anything to shake myself up. The right idea always comes once I stop trying to force it.
There you go. I hope my tips help. And happy writing!


Reading Addiction Blog Tours


March 4 - The Boyfriend Bookmark Blog - Review
March 5 - Books and Neelepoint - Review/Interview
March 7 - Ethereal Book Reviews - Review/Interview
March 7 - Sara in Bookland - Review/Guest Post
March 8 - Read Your Writes - Review/Guest Post
March 9 - Always YA at Heart - Review
March 9 - Tiffany Talks Books - Review/Guest Post


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