Just Friends at the Doggy Spa by Elsie Woods

 Life is grand when you are a dog groomer.  Rita organizes most everything at the elite dog spa attached to the Chateau Rose where the filthy rich and not so humble vacation while dropping off their fury and loveable companions for spa days in England. 

Rita happily accepts the position of maid-of-honor in her best friend's wedding. Whenever I hear that, I know something will go wrong.  Maybe it will go right this time.

Joey, the groom's brother and best man, calls her Buddy.  That'll be a platonic evening, for sure.

Although, when chaos strikes things may work out much better.

And it begins.  A driver drops a boxer off at the entrance of the dog spa and speeds away.  Rita needs Joey to find the dog's owner and take care of the boxer while searching.  The next tragedy sets the stage.  The wedding is in two weeks.  The bride and groom have not made any plans as they claim they're busy.  No flowers, no cake, no invitations, no hall rented, and none of the rest.  

Bride and groom beg Rita and Joey to cover for them.  In other words, plan a wedding in two weeks.  

"Buddy" Rita and Joey are now inseparable.  This is when you really get to know just about everything about each other.  Take the odd with the great and figure out how well all the details fit together like a complete puzzle or one missing pieces.  

I bet all the pieces of the puzzle can somehow squeeze together an create a beautiful picture.

Happy reading,

Dawn Kunda

ROCK STEADY COWBOY by Lexi Post is available for preorder!

 

ROCK STEADY COWBOY 

(Rocky Road Ranch: Book 5) 

by Lexi Post 

is available for preorder!

He's looking for a future. She's still running from the past.

Amazon | Amazon UK | Amazon AU | Amazon CA 

Kit Ford is ready for a fresh start when she takes the job as manager of the shooting range at Rocky Road Ranch. With a scarred face, missing fingers, and a career as a biathlete ended by a jealous woman, she's not looking for love. When a handsome cowboy is assigned to show her around town, she makes one thing clear: friendship only.

Nash Goodman wants what he's never had—a family. But every time he gets close to a woman, he ends up friend-zoned. When Kit shuts him down before he even tries, it's the final straw. Done with small-town possibilities, Nash ignores his attraction to her and takes his chances with an online matchmaking service for cowboys.

Kit told herself she didn't want more. But the longer she's around Nash, the harder it becomes to believe her own rules. She wants him—in her bed, in her life, in ways she swore she'd never risk.

Now she has to decide: keep hiding behind walls she built to survive, or fight for the man she's about to lose to someone ready to give him everything.

Releasing May 5th.

Catch up on the whole series here.

About Lexi:

Lexi Post is a New York Times and USA Today best-selling author of romance inspired by the classics. She spent years in higher education taking and teaching courses about the classical literature she loved. From Edgar Allan Poe's short story “The Masque of the Red Death” to Tolstoy’s War and Peace, she's read, studied, and taught wonderful classics.

But Lexi's first love is romance novels so she married her two first loves, romance and the classics. Whether it’s sizzling cowboys, dashing dukes, hot immortals, or hunks from out of this world, Lexi provides a sensuous experience with a “whole lotta story.”

Lexi is living her own happily ever after with her husband and her two cats in Florida. She makes her own ice cream every weekend, loves bright colors, and you’ll never see her without a hat.

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Critique Partner to the Rescue

 

       Hello, gentle readers! Hope you are all well and staying safe!

       Well, my lovely, talented, and so very intelligent critique partner has, once again, talked me off the proverbial ledge! And it’s a good thing, too!

        As you all know, I’ve been working on Wife Unexpected, the fourth book in The Wives of Bravado County series…and…let’s just say it’s not going as well as I want it to. I have ripped out the entire first chapter and started over. It wasn’t right and that was something I felt deep in my bones. My critique partner felt it, too, so…the change was necessary. Usually, my beginnings are fun and pretty much what I expect (I always enjoy starting a new story…it’s exciting to get to know my characters, set up the conflict, etc.). With this story, I started on the wrong foot, so to speak. It’s all been fixed now and the new beginning is much, much better than the old (I will admit the loss of words was devastating, but seriously, the story needs to start in the right place with the right tone). 

        That being said, since I rewrote Chapter One and changed so much, my problem then became Chapter Two. Yes, I’d already written it, but it doesn’t quite fit with the changes I made to the previous chapter.

        Now, just to understand how I write my stories, I generally write the scenes as they come to me then puzzle them together, and for this particular story, I have already written a number of scenes that occur further along in the book. I just write up to those points, make a few changes where necessary and keep going. You know. Puzzle the pieces together.

        So, during our usual Friday night zoom chat, we went over it and she…started with the questions. Oh my gosh! So many questions, things I hadn’t even thought about, but the biggest ones were “Who is Tysen? What drives him? What does he want? Does he even know? ”Apparently, those questions (and so many others) was exactly what I needed. 

        I didn’t quite ‘know’ Tysen well enough to write him. Faith, my heroine, I knew. She’s been with me for quite some time, and I love her for who she is, but him? I learned so many things about him while my critique partner and I talked (I took a lot of notes) and it seems to have fixed the problem I was having so now…it’s on to re-writing Chapter Two. I’m ready! Whooo-hoooo!

        Stay well! Stay safe! And remember to spread kindness wherever you go!

Marie

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman

 Isolation can happen in a city, at work, or anywhere people gather.  Those are the same places that relationships grow.  

Forever a resident of Ireland, Eleanor Oliphant has no intentions of disrupting her strategic and purposeful regime of work and weekends of pizza and soothing vodka.  She has a respectable job, which many may consider boring, a subsidized place to call home, a weekly call to her mum, and her life is plain and simple.  

This is her life-long plan to keep the past from distracting the rest of her life.  

Her coworkers occasionally whisper or make jokes about her detachment, otherwise they ignore her for anything other than work.  The new IT worker, Raymond, is the exception.  

Eleanor's computer has an issue, and Raymond eventually gets to her desk.  She's not impressed with his careless dress and sloppy attitude.  It surprises her when he somehow inserts himself in small parts of her days until they help rescue an older man who's fallen on the sidewalk and needs an assist.  

Raymond is super friendly, ready to give a hand, and always open for a new friend.  Eleanor is the opposite, so she grudgingly responds on limited terms.  Besides, she recently decided to remake herself from the outside, to hide her ugly past, and find the perfect man she saw in an ad for a local concert. How hard can it be?

This is a lovely story of unassuming colleagues getting to know each other, while having no intentions.  As details of their lives are slowly exposed, their need and respect grow.  It's this that helps Eleanor realize what she has to do to be whole and happy and Raymond is a specific ingredient. 

Happy reading,

Dawn Kunda

 

I Love Early Mornings!

 

        Hello, gentle readers! Hope you are all well and staying safe!

        It’s a beautiful morning here in sunny Arizona. The sun is just starting to come up. I love this time of day (I must because I’m up early to greet the sun every morning!).

        Actually, I started getting up early so I could write…without taking anything away from family time (our son was young at the time) and before the day job takes whatever brain power I have. It’s just me and dogs at this hour. They’re sleeping on the futon behind me, having already been fed, given fresh water and their treat (hahahahaha, yes I am well trained by my dogs). I’ve been doing it so long that I can no longer sleep in, even on weekends (sleeping in means 4:45 or 5 o’clock).

        It’s all good. After doing it so long, my brain is trained. It knows that this is the time to write and sometimes, I’ll wake up with words already in my head. I love that!

        So what am I working on? The next book in the Wives of Bravado County series. It's called Wife Unexpected. This is Faith’s story. You might remember her from the last book. She was the best friend of the heroine in Wife by Surprise and well, she needs her own story. The words are flowing, which is always a good thing BUT after completing Chapter One, I realized I started in the wrong place. This happens (all too often, it seems). It’s a little frustrating but a story has to start in the right place so after finishing the corrections/edits in The Madam and Mr. MacLean so I can submit it on time, I got right back into it…and ripped out the entire first chapter to rewrite it. Works better now though the loss of all those words hurt my heart! I am now back on track and much happier. The daily word count has been surprising, even for me (I’m a slow but steady writer). I have an hour to write before I need to get ready for the day job and not to toot my own horn but I have been nailing it! That makes me happy, too!

        That being said, I should get back to it before I need to start my Sunday chores. 

        Stay well! Stay safe! And remember to spread kindness wherever you go! 

 Marie