Romancing the Hop With True Love

Welcome to one of Carrie Ann's Blog Hop creations

Romancing the Hop- Aug31st-Sep3rd.

http://carrieannbloghops.blogspot.com/p/romancing-blog-hop.html

   Starting on Friday August 31st, over 100 Authors and Bloggers will share their favorite things about romance, reading romance, and dating. And while we do that, we are EACH doing a giveaway. Yep. There will be over 100 giveaways on each blog hosted by that Author or Blogger.

  I'm giving away a copy of my e-book Old Dreams, the first book that started the Zogone series, my first book published and my personal favorite of all the ones I've written so far.

  But that's not all.... We have THREE grand prizes. You as a reader can go to EACH blog and comment with your email address and be entered to win. Yep, you can enter over 100 times! Now what are those prizes?

  1st Grand Prize: A Kindle Fire or Nook Tablet
  2nd Grand Prize: A $130 Amazon or B&N Gift Card
  3rd Grand Prize: The following Swag Pack!

 

  Yep. ALL of that! Whoot! Be sure to come back here on Friday and over the weekend to enjoy some stories and facts about our favorite Romance events and reads and enter to win! And don't miss the talk about it on Twitter (Hashtag #RomHop)

                            *    *    *    *

  What does romance mean to me? When I think of the word romance, my grandparents always come to mind. As a child I heard millions of stories about the perfect love I had missed out on. Since my grandfather, Adrian died five years before I was born, so my grandmother Lettie told me all about him and their great love story, so I wouldn't miss out. These are memories of hearing them as a child, so please forgive anything I haven't remembered correctly.

   When they were very young they met, fell in love and quickly married. Over the years they moved about through the Carolinas. They had four children, oldest Annie Frances, then Margaret Anne, whom everyone called Tootsie (my mother), then Linda and finally baby number four was a boy and Jack was always thought of as the sweetest thing. They eventually settled on a small farm in North Carolina were my mother grew up. During the day Adrian worked on the farm, while Lettie kept house and tended her pack of wild girls and one tiny angel. When Adrian wasn't working he was spending time with the family he was so devoted to, chasing boys away from his girls and taking his boy fishing.

   Obviously running a farm was hard work and nothing is going to get acomplished with three giggling teenage girls in a field. So, here is where one of my own personal hero figures steps in. Adrian met a young man looking for work. Tommy was another Native American with a big family looking for work to help out at home. Lettie and Adrian loved the young man to death like he was family. Of course Tommy met Totsie and as they say, the rest was history and Tommy really became family.

   By the time Margaret Anne (Totsie) was twenty, Adrian had become a grandfather. Over the next few years there were a number of little boys chasing after Grandpa Adrian, begging to go fishing. Grammy Lettie showed me pictures one time of Grandpa Adrian and my two oldest brothers as really tiny children and it was a sight to see. Grandpa was closer to seven feet than six feet tall and looked close to four feet wide. With his dark Native American skin and huge build the two tiny guys on either side of him looked almost like elves barely reaching two feet tall each. But they were happy as can be, hanging on Grandpa's overall legs grinning happily, while swinging red cane fishing poles.

   Grammy said there wasn't anything Grandpa loved more than all his little grand babies. But that wasn't true. The thing Grandpa loved most in the world was Grammy and no one ever doubted she felt the same.When she looked at him her face shined and she might as well have had hearts painted in her eyes, or so my mother always told me. Farm boy Tommy who I call Papa, told me Grandpa Adrian looked at her like she was the most preious and beautiful woman in the whole world. *SIGH* They were beautiful together, loyal, loving and happier than any other couple I ever heard of.

   But every great love story has a tragedy that is unchangeable. When Totsie was 35, she had given birth to five boys and was heavily pregnant with her first girl, my older sister Barbara Anne. Grandpa was out in the field working and when he didn't come in for supper, someone went looking for him, but it was already to late. The doctors said he had a brain anuresum, a blood vessel in his head burst instantly killing him.

   In the seventies, being still pretty young, you would think my Grammy would have remarried. Absolutely not! When I asked her why, she told me Adrian had been the love of her life and he always would, alive or dead. She never once looked at another man, never wanted another man. All through my life she stayed alone, helping her kids and loving all 14 of her grand children and her numberous great grandchildren.

   In 1999, I had my own son T.J. and vividly remember the day I took him to see Grammy. My mom laid him next to Grammy in her hospital bed and I took pictures of them snuggled next to each other. Every time I see the pictures it brings tears to my eyes and I think God I took them for my son. He was only a few months old when we lost her.

   It was the strangest thing. My mother went in to see her one afternoon and called me as soon as she got home to tell me to prepare myself. As you can imagine I was horrified and refused to let up until she told me why. Grammy had asked her that afternoon if my mother had seen Daddy with the angles. She swore Granpa Adrian had came to her and told her to get her afairs in order, because he would be back in a few days and she would be going home with him.

   Three days later I got the call at 1am. My Grammy had died in her sleep with a smile on her face. Happy because she was finally being reunited with the love of her life.
                       *    *    *    *
   Having faith, loyalty and undieing devotion, those qualities mean true romance to me and now you can understand why. So, when I write a romance it has to be worthy of the love I was taught. A perfect example of these qualities are the main characters of the first book in my Zogone series, Old Dreams.

   When Brian's wife is murdered, he cryogfenically freezes his body for almost five hundred years, waiting for the day Colleen will be reincarnated. When he wakes he rushes to find her, an Earthling named Arlene along with a group of the alien Zogone soliders for back up. He will stop at nothing to get her back. But, when he realizes this new young woman doesn't remember him or even her past life as his wife, he has to be patient as memory by tiny memory resurfaces for her through nightmares and vivid daydreams, even the occasional nasty haulsination.

  Arlene had a fresh start, in a different town, with new friends and a sweet, handsome roommate. Brian seemed to be a great guy and she was extremely attracted to him. The only problem was since the first day she had met him, her mind was filled with fantastic nightmares so powerful they made her physically ill-fantasies of Brian and a woman who wasn't her but strangely, at the same time, was.

　
To win a copy of the first book in my Zogone series- Old Dreams- leave me a comment and tell me what romance means to you with your e-mail address. Good luck and enjoy the blog hop. Thanks for stopping by and I hope you loved hearing about my grandparent's great love story. Don't forget the other 100+ authors and jump over to their sites for more chances to win.
Can't wait to win a copy, grab yours here!

 Want to read excerpts from Old Dreams? Check the links below.
Excerpt #1
Excerpt #2
Excerpt #3

And if you were curious, here are the covers for the rest of my Zogone Series!

Book 2-Past Regrets

Book 3- Ancient Enemies

And Book 4- New Beginnings

08/30- Thoughtful Thursday with Another Exciting Hop-

         Don't miss the Romancing the Hop- Aug31st-Sep3rd.

What is your favorite thing about Romance? Well, we authors are ready to share our romantic tips and favorite romance reads! Starting on Friday and ending on August 31st, over 100 Authors and Bloggers will share their favorite things about romance, reading romance, and dating.

And while we do that, we are EACH doing a giveaway. Yep. There will be over 100 giveaways on each blog hosted by that Author or Blogger. I'm giving away a copy of my e-book Old Dreams, the first book that started the Zogone sagas, my first book published and my personal favorite of all the ones I've written so far.

But that's not all....

We have THREE grand prizes. You as a reader can go to EACH blog and comment with your email address and be entered to win. Yep, you can enter over 100 times!

Now what are those prizes?

1st Grand Prize: A Kindle Fire or Nook Tablet

2nd Grand Prize: A $130 Amazon or B&N Gift Card

3rd Grand Prize: The following Swag Pack!

Yep. ALL of that! Whoot! Be sure to come back here on Friday and over the weekend to enjoy some stories and facts about our favorite Romance events and reads and enter to win!
For this hop you can keep up-to-date on what is happening on Twitter. Just check out the Hashtag #RomHop . And don't forget to jump along to each blog for another chance to win starting tomorrow.

 

Music Monday- For the Not So Okay and My Pitiful 100th Post

     

08/27 Music Monday- For the Not So Okay and My Pitiful 100th Post-

   First off, please excuse the missing posts from Wednesday and Sunday. As a child I ran wild through the woods in the South happy as a bug without a care in the world and never had a problem with any plants. On Sunday I helped deal with a dead tree covered in climbing vines. By Tuesday I had gotten a rude awakening. Apparently you can never have a problem with poison plants as a child, then suddenly form an aversion to them as an adult.

  By Wednesday both my arms were covered and my face had started to swell up. By Thursday My face was twice the size as normal and my neck had started to swell alarmingly too. Thursday afternoon meant a trip to the ER to be hooked up to an IV. All weekend it has been prescription meds, which will continue for 12 days, Benadryl, rubbing alcohol, calamine lotion, pealing skin and itching bad enough to drive me complete insane. Most of the swelling is gone now and a good percent of the rash is too, so I’m slowly on the mend.

  But this song explains so well how I feel right now, while slightly woozy from meds and itching in an ungodly way.

      My Chemical Romance- I'm Not Okay

Music Monday-Music for the Bizarre and Everyday

  08/20- Music for the Bizarre and Everyday-

  Some times you can be in the middle of a calm serene scene and not even realize the world is falling apart around you. In the YA sci-fi romance I’ve recently started working on my main character is spending her after school time in a sound proof dance studio practice room. She doesn’t hear anything, except her music and the steps she is reciting in her head. The fact that her world has been invaded by aliens never even registers until the building she is standing in starts to shake.

  To have a great story it has to be more than lines on a page. There has to be substance to your words. In real life the world doesn’t revolve around you, so why should it only revolve around your characters. A co-worker might have spent the night dealing with a sick child, while another could have had a nasty fight with their spouse before coming to work. On your drive in you might have past some road work and a dump truck driver could have winked at you out of sheer boredom.

  To make the story pop off the page and become 3D you need to add in details, because it is the little things that really matter.  As you’ll notice from this video there are so many point-of-views and even amongst chaos there is always room for love. So, remember the details and bring your worlds to life.

  Fun.: We Are Young ft. Janelle Monáe-

Six Sentence Sunday-Terrifying Hallucinations- #sixsunday

   08/19- From Old Dreams-

  A fat, three foot long, black rattle snake was curled over the top of the picture
frame. The tip of its tail softly shook, making the sound of a tambourine shaking and
almost half of its body stood up straight, head arched prepared to strike.


  Arlene jumped up and screamed a warning. “Snake …!”

  Brian swung around, glancing right at the snake, then kept scanning the
apartment, before looking back at her in confusion. “Where?”

  Arlene pointed at the snake. “It’s right there. It's right in front of you. How can you not see it?”
Find Old Dreams Here!

Thoughtful Thursday With Special Guest Author Jaleta Clegg!

  Just a few months ago I joined a writers group, SFR Brigade (Sci-Fi Romance). One of my fellow members is here today as my very special first guest, Author Jaleta Clegg. I'd like everyone to give her a warm welcome. Thanks for being here today to share your work and congrats on the release.

Jaleta is here today to tell us all about hunky heroes and introduce us to her newest book Priestess of the Eggstone, the latest addition to her The Fall of the Altairan Empire series.

Here is Jaleta's guest post. I hope everyone enjoys it as much as I did. And, please leave her an encouraging comment.

****

Guest post - By: Jaleta Clegg

Hunky Heroes

What makes a hero a hunk? That's a loaded question if I ever heard one. Ask ten different women and you'll get at least ten different answers.

For me, it depends on several factors. Appearance is only the surface. If a man is a total and complete jerk, I don't care how handsome he is, he isn't a hunk. Personality is the heart of being a hunk. Women really do care more about what's inside than what's outside.

In Priestess of the Eggstone, I had a lot of fun setting up a love triangle with three of the main characters. The two men couldn't be more different and yet they are both hunky in their own way. My main character, Dace, has her hands full trying to figure out what she feels.

Here's the description of Tayvis from when you first meet him in Nexus Point:

"He came out of the mist like a primeval god in a really bad romance vid–dark hair, darker eyes, and a face stolen from my most secret fantasies. He wore a leather vest with no shirt, tight pants, and tall boots. He stopped on the other side of the stream, muscles flexing as he folded his bare arms across his chest."

At the time, he's very threatening. He has to be. He's an undercover Patrol agent sent to find drug smugglers on a low-tech planet. Dace is where she doesn't belong and her story of crash landing in a damaged escape pod is too wild to be believable. But he's her best chance off the planet, so she agrees to work with him to catch the real bad guys. Tayvis turns out to be a decent, honorable guy and by the end of the book, she's in love with him.

Now enter guy #2, Jerimon, at the beginning of Priestess of the Eggstone:

"The man waiting in the doorway was short, slender, almost too good-looking to be real. His voice was cultured and smooth as Sirian silk, surprisingly deep. His short hair was deep black, with blue highlights under the lights. My mind filled in more details than I thought I'd noticed.

He had only glanced up briefly during the short interview, showing dark lashes and just a hint of blue. His hands were elegant, fingers moving gracefully over the keypad as he entered his information. He exuded competence and polish. His face could make grown women swoon, if he were in vids. He made my skin crawl but I was prejudiced against handsome men."

Two very different men, but both hunky in their own way. Dace finds herself very physically attracted to Jerimon, but he's a bit of a whiny jerk at times. Looks aren't everything. But Jerimon is there and Tayvis isn't. Which will she choose? You'll have to read the book to find out.

What makes a hunky hero for you? Looks? Skills? Attitude? or his character?

~

Jaleta Clegg loves to play with words, writing stories filled with adventure and just a bit of romance, because that's what she enjoys reading. You can find more about her at www.jaletac.com

Pursued by the Targon Crime Syndicate bent on revenge, the Patrol intent on recruitment, and the Sessimoniss who want their god back, the last thing Captain Dace needs is a handsome copilot with romance on his mind.

journal-store.com/bookstore/priestess-of-the-eggstone

Visit www.altairanempire.com for more information on the series, The Fall of the Altairan Empire.

　

She can also be found at:

http://jaletaclegg.blogspot.com/

http://www.nexuspoint.info/

http://www.facebook.com/AltairanEmpire

and https://twitter.com/Jaleta_Clegg

Fantastic post Jaleta. For me the one characteristic that makes a hero hunky or otherwise is devotion, a man that is loyal and lives for the woman he loves. What about everyone else? Leave a comment for Jaleta Clegg and answer her question above!

Music Monday- Music to Help You Keep Dreaming-

  08/13- Music to Help You Keep Dreaming-
        From Old Dreams-

  In my book Old Dreams Arlene gets memories of her past life in pieces, through dreams, nightmares and hallucinations. Then, there is Brian. He was Arlene’s husband in her last life, though she doesn’t remember it and  in this life she has no idea who he is. 

  Arlene might be the one having daydreams, but what about Brian’s hopes and dreams for the future. When his wife was murdered, he was cryogenically frozen for almost five hundred years until Colleen could be reborn as Arlene. The second the alien Zogone’s computer recognized her life force, Brian was awoken and rushed to her side only to find a lovely young woman who was attracted to him, but had no idea who he was.

  So, while she recovers her past, he can only dream of the future they were meant to have together. I think this song fits him perfectly.

Here Without You By: 3 Doors Down

P.S. Don't miss my special guest Thursday. I'm sure Jaleta would love the support. So, stop by and comment Thursday.

Six Sentence Sunday- #sixsunday

       08/12- From Talkers-
                  

  Her eyes traveled up to his face and he had to be the most beautiful man she had ever seen, with almost feminine features. His pointed nose was a bit thin, added to a tiny slightly pointed chin, high cheek bones, long cosmetically thinned eyebrows, one of which was pierced, which went surprising well with long dark eyelashes and a pair of dazzling bright green eyes. He was a man who could make even a woman like her sigh in pure enjoyment from just the sight of him.

  Clearing her own throat with a delicate cough into her fist, she tried speaking, hoping she didn’t sound like an overheated lusty housewife. "My father is in the back taking a call at the moment, but I can help you if you like."

  When he spoke his voice was heavily accented from naturally speaking an alien language. "I vas told I could find a Ms. Shayle Forester here.
Find Talkers here!

   P.S. Don't miss out on my first ever guest, Jaleta Clegg Thursday. She will be here to introduce her newest book Priestee of the Eggstone.

Nero's Niche: Guest Post: Alien World Building

Last night a fellow writer, Michael Formichelli hosted me on his site. He has some amazing posts you should check out. Here is the link to my guest post on his site.
 Enjoy,
Debra

Nero's Niche: Guest Post: Alien World Building: Greetings to all! Today please welcome sci-fi romance author, Debra Soles! Debra surprised me by providing an excellent guest post that ...

Hump Day Hunks- For the Hunk in Rough Waters-

08/08- For the Hunk in Rough Waters-


 

 
Nero ran across the deck, then up another slick set of steps to the wheel room or bridge.
He had to hold tightly to the railings on the way up the wind thrashed violently shoving Nero back and forth on the stairs, while whipping his clothes to tangle around him.

  Nero knew till the day he died he would never forget the deafening roar of the winds
whistle in his ears and the feel of the rumbling under his feet. Between the shifting of the stairs and the whooshing of the wind, it took everything Nero had to stay on his feet.

  Nero trudged ahead, with rain piercing the skin on his face and him grumbling with each step. “I hate these blasted storms. They come in like a thief, silent and stealthy, to steal your boat out from under you.” Offhandedly he shrugged in his musing, “Or like a woman. When her wrath is shaken you feel the full fury of her temper.”

  With great effort Nero finally made it to the wheel room where Georgey was fighting
desperately to keep the ship under control with the help of a few officers. Nero could tell that even for a man of such an extraordinary size, he was having a hell of a time with it. Nero knew it took more than shear bulk, it took skill, practice and a finer understanding of every inch of the ship you were trying to maneuver.

  Nero took over with Georgey’s heart felt gratitude. Every thought left him as his
instincts took over. With his hands firmly on the wheel he took charge, feeling the vibrations of Mama Lee fighting back against the storm that threatened to take her under.

  For a moment Nero thought Mama Lee might loose the fight as the ship tilted onto her
side. Shouts of ‘man overboard,’ rang out. There was a flurry of activity as every man ran wildly trying to save both the ship and the sailors that were lost to the angry sea.

Grab Your Copy of One Wish Here!

Music Monday- Music to Keep You Moving-

  08/05- Music to Keep You Moving-

  To get a person up and moving you need a bet to follow. Rhythm is great, but without a drum beat you have nothing but a sweet ballad. In His Kiss, my main characters love hanging out playing basket ball in the park. To write the scenes as fun, then sexual tension and ultimately a war between them, I had to have the right back ground music to get them running, dodging and their hearts pounding.

  My go to song for these scenes is a rock song with a head bobbing beat, I can really see them listening to. And as a writer I really appreciate the extraordinary detailed, creative video.
Korn- Coming Undone

Coming Undone- By: Korn

Six Sentence Sunday- #sixsunday

  08/05-From Past Regrets

  Ginger grabbed his arm and turned him back to look down at her.  “No we will talk about this now.  Why Sam?  Why would you have such a painting of me drawn over your bed?”

  Setting his clothes aside, he shrugged Ginger’s hand away.  “Just leave it alone Ginger.  I don’t think you are ready for the wormhole you are about to open.”

Grab your copy of Past Regrets here!