#Thursday13 Favorite Movies @AshleyLadd #MFRWauthor

MFRW Author Ashley Ladd shares her 13 favorite movies.
Ashley lives in South Florida with her husband, five children, and beloved pets. She loves the water, animals (especially cats), and playing on the computer. She's been told she has a wicked sense of humor and often incorporates humor and adventure into her books. She also adores very spicy romance, which she weaves into her stories.

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I love stories - obviously as I'm a story teller. I can watch these movies over and over. These are my thirteen favorite movies...

The Mummy

While You Were Sleeping

Battleship

Independence Day

Pillow Talk

Pirates of the Caribbean

Pride and Prejudice

Gone With The Wind

Glass Bottom Boat

By the Light of the Silvery Moon

Raiders of the Lost Ark

The Rocketeer

Back To The Future

Ashley recently released Cooking Up A Storm, an Erotic GLBT Contemporary Romance with Totally Bound.
Brooks and Rique desperately want to win the head chef’s position offered by an eccentric millionaire Jonah Verleun on his beautiful, private but peculiar island that includes a zoo full of exotic animals, an amusement park and a monster shark tank beneath Jonah’s bedroom floor. While Brooks wants the job to escape his heartache and the lover who thwarted him, Rique is hiding from the mob, hoping to live long enough to pay them off with the prize winnings. Fierce competitors, they cook up a storm in a series of cooking challenges while trying to turn down the heat on their intense attraction. When a hurricane strikes the island, the storm Rique has been cooking up explodes, and no heart—or body—is safe. Brooks and Rique desperately want to win a coveted chef’s job offered by an eccentric millionaire in paradise. Even more, Rique desperately wants to stay alive.

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EXCERPT

They ran, hunched over, zigging and zagging as bullets flew around them. Rique damned himself for putting Brooks in this mess. He wondered if the mob held the others prisoner and that’s why they didn’t answer the door.
He turned the first corner they came upon and then the next. He stopped dead and the air left his lungs. A moment later Brooks ran into his back almost knocking him over. He swayed dangerously but managed to stay upright and spread his arms wide to keep Brooks from stumbling forward.
He couldn’t believe his eyes. One of Jonah’s tigers lay in their path crouching low, baring his teeth, and eying them as if they were dinner.
He tried to quell the jitters attacking his stomach so the animal wouldn’t smell his fear then whispered to Brooks through clenched teeth, “What do we do now? Freeze or run?”
“Run. But where?” Brooks whispered back, a frown trembling on his lips.
“To the closest protection.” He prayed their hunters had lost them, that they wouldn’t run back into a barrage of bullets. As Rique bunched his muscles to run, already feeling the animal’s fangs ripping into him, he noted how the tiger’s thick muscles corded in his shoulders, and how saliva ran down his snarling lips.
“Dear God, we’re going to die.” Panic laced Brooks’ voice. “If we get out of here alive, let’s both turn down the job and move in together.”
Swallowing hard, Rique couldn’t reply so he nodded. Besides, as much as he wanted to live with Brooks, he couldn’t do it as long as he was indebted to the mob. However, the point was moot. He couldn’t see a scenario in which one of them didn’t die in the next five minutes.
Feeling responsible, Rique couldn’t let anything happen to Brooks as long as he was alive. He would take on the tiger giving Brooks time to reach safety. “On the count of three, run!”
As Rique whispered, “One,” hisses, then a blood-curdling growl wrenched the air. It was a different sound than the tiger was making. Then a crocodile bellowed and jumped out of the bushes and snatched the tiger by its belly. As it dragged the struggling creature back to the bushes, the tiger howled in surprise and pain. It clawed the air in vain as the reptile’s powerful jaws clamped tighter biting through flesh and bone.

BOOK SPOTLIGHT: Chaperoning Paris @VictoriaPinder #MFRWauthor

MFRW Author Victoria Pinder released Chaperoning Paris, a Mainstream Contemporary Romance, with Soul Mate Publishing in June 2014.

Gigi Dumont never forgot how she walked away from the only man she ever loved.

She’s a teacher who has led her students to the finals of an international French competition to be help in Paris. The night before the trip, the principal tries to cancel the trip before he, in turn, loses his job to her high school boyfriend, Sean Collins.

Sean Collins has survived cancer, a divorce, and Gigi having aborted their child back in high school. He assumed he’d hate her, if they ever crossed paths again. But he discovers she’s exactly what he wants.

When Gigi and Sean are stuck together for a week in Paris, Gigi feels she has lost all her control. How can she survive her attraction to Sean? The man’s sexier now than he was back in the day, and once upon a time, he’d had her heart. She finds herself falling for him, even knowing forever is impossible.

AMAZON

Excerpt

Payback time. Standing in his mother’s kitchen, Sean Collins smiled as he hung up the phone.
He hovered at the phone for a moment, then charged along the carpeted hallway to his bedroom. In a flash, he changed from his T-shirt and jeans into his black pin stripe king-of-the-business-world suit complete with black tie and shiny black shoes.
Finished dressing, Sean jittered at the door and listened to his son talking nonstop to his mother upstairs. His skin tingled and he closed his eyes. At least moving to his parents’ country estate where he had grown up on Cape Cod had been good for everyone.
Breakfast could wait. He grabbed the keys on the counter downstairs, and he called upstairs, “I’m leaving. I won’t be gone long.”
Last year, the school principal had fired him with bogus charges. Sean had sworn on every holy book that he’d been fired because his doctors had discovered cancer in a routine physical exam.
The sickness sucked. But he’d survived. And now he used his vast wealth to get what he wanted. No teacher should be treated so callously. He had taken the job at the time to prove to himself he had more choices than being the chief financial officer of his father’s corporation.
He set his jaw and walked outside to his car, where the smell of freshly cut grass hit his senses.
The moment he stepped outside and headed toward the garage, Sean stared at the vast forested area on the property for a moment and pressed his lips together. Trees made sense. Women never had. His luck with women had been bad from the start. His first girlfriend, Gigi Dumont, had left him for parts unknown, and then later his wife, now his ex, Jennifer, had also left. She’d played with a whole set of loose scruples. But Jennifer hadn’t hurt him, not like Gigi had. Sean rolled his shoulders. Why did everything in his life always seem to go back to Gigi leaving?
He fished out his keys from his pocket. And now Gigi had moved back into the house next door.
Sean opened the garage door. A quick click of a button and the gate lifted.
Last night he hadn’t slept. Today his shoulders were straight. This moment had nothing to do with women and everything to do with justice. His fingers traced the shiny finish of his brother Gerard’s Aston Martin. Without blinking, he opted to borrow the car. He’d be early and outshine everyone else. Gerard had offered to loan it to him specifically for today. Sean licked his lips and turned the key, igniting the engine, and took off.
A daydream flashed in his eyes. Principal Murray’s jaw dropped to the ground in shock the second Sean stepped inside the office with the papers.
Sean clutched the wheel. He intended to twist the knife even further. People like Mr. Murray gave businessmen around the world the reputation of cold, heartless automatons, especially when he claimed the firing had been over “job performance.” Every one of Sean’s students had passed the state assessments.
Now, Sean ran the finances for his parents, his father’s company, and his brothers. The support of his family to get him through cancer treatments had been phenomenal, but what if he hadn’t had that support? What if he’d had no money to pay for treatments? He’d be dead because the principal had fired him due to the insurance increases. Well, now Sean had a better solution.
He sped down the country road for the half-hour trip. During his horrible marriage to Jennifer, he’d worked as a teacher, and his students had achieved both academic and social successes. Jennifer had been the nightmare that drove Sean away from Collins Industries, Collins Enterprises, Collins Investments, and Collins Mutual, to list a few of his father’s multiple companies. Post divorce and cancer, Sean had made the decision to offer employees packages in cases of sickness. Anyone who worked for him would now receive a payoff equal to the job performance done over the years as part of a settlement. Money paid hospital bills.
Sean’s stomach clenched as he gazed at the sign for the Barnstable Charter High School parking lot. Sean parked Gerard’s fancy lawyer wheels that screamed “out to impress” right next to the about-to-be-sacked principal’s BMW sedan. The Aston Martin made the perfect goodbye gesture. Murray had been outclassed.
Sean leaned forward in his seat, refusing to feel guilty. He waited for the school bell to ring and watched students bounding outside.
Unlike most people, his family had money, and normally he wouldn’t like flaunting wealth. His Jeep Wrangler suited him just fine, but today he needed to look like the elite businessman he was. He stepped out a minute later, and in a fast walk, he strode down the halls. Sean winked the second he saw the school guard’s shocked face.
“You had cancer?” asked the older African American lady who coached the wrestling team.
“Yes, I did. I’m better now,” Sean said, smiling.
He inclined his head and passed the security desk then Sean turned right toward the principal’s office.
In his briefcase he carried the school board’s ruling and the proof of sale of the school to Collins Enterprises. Barnstable was a private school that followed school board law. The sale to his company had been finalized, but Sean had insisted on telling Murray in person. The minutes of the meeting would be posted at one that day. Victory waited for him, and justice tasted better than homemade chocolate chip cookies.
In the office, the overqualified secretary, Mattie, dropped her pencil on the floor. Sean made eye contact with her and the older woman smiled back. Then he picked up the pencil in stride, and handed it back to her. She opened her mouth to speak, and he shook his head, placing his finger over his lips to silently request her silence.
She smiled her response and swiveled her chair back to her computer.
He had seen Mattie in action and understood the older woman had known how to treat people more than anyone else in the office.
Outside the principal’s door, Sean straightened his tie into perfect alignment. His heart rate sped up and his entire body became alert then he heard her voice.
Gigi, or should he say, Giovanna Dumont. Her quiet, sweet voice unmanned him, making his palms sweat. Why would she be here? And how could she still steal his breath away?

About Victoria Pinder
Victoria Pinder grew up in Irish Catholic Boston then moved to Miami. Eventually, found that writing is her passion. She always wrote stories to entertain herself. Her parents are practical minded people demanding a job, but when she sat down to see what she enjoyed doing, writing became obvious.

The Zoastra Affair, Chaperoning Paris, Borrowing the Doctor, and Electing Love, Mything the Throne and Favorite Coffee, Favorite Crush will be published in 2014.

Now she is represented by Dawn Dowdle of Blue Ridge Literary Agency. Also she’s the Vice President for the Florida Romance Writers. Her website is www.victoriapinder.com.

#MFRWauthor Interview with @AngelaDrakeA

Who is Angela Drake?
Angela Drake believes in happy endings, the magic of 'what if' and in second chances. When not living vicariously through her characters, Angela writes about and promotes Texas and classic country music. She is an active member of two local writer's organizations. Angela enjoys time with her granddaughters, gardening, journaling, and a myriad of artistic pursuits. She shares a home in the Ozarks with her husband, three dogs and two cats. She loves networking with readers and writers through her Facebook, twitter and blog.

Want to know More? We do... so we asked!
How much of your personality and life experiences are in your writing? 
Quite a bit. Since I live and breathe the music business, I have the opportunity to let my readers behind the scenes.

What kind of research do you do for a book? 
Mostly for settings. If I can’t travel to where I want the story to take place, then I look through travel brochures, websites and network with people who live in the area. I also listen to music that my characters like – even the secondary characters help add to the fabric of the story.

When did you first think about writing and what prompted you to submit your first ms? 
I’ve been writing short stories and poetry since about the age of twelve. I wrote my first full-length novel in the late ‘90s.

What genre is it?
A Christmas to Remember(o riginally titled Ozarks Angel) is a contemporary romance set in Eureka Springs Arkansas. This was my first ‘second chance at love’ story.

Where did the idea come from? 
Somewhere Down the Line came from an experience I had a couple of years ago. I was about to see someone for the first time in 25 years. I sat in his driveway, gripping the steering wheel thinking, what am I suppose to day? How am I suppose to act? How will he react? This was not a relationship reunion but on the drive home later that ‘what if’ question popped into my head. What if my heroine were reuniting with someone for the first time after a long period apart? What if they had feelings for one another they never acted on before? When a fan crushes on an artist, don’t they often think what it would be like to be with them – even married to them?

What about your family, do they know not to bother you when you are writing - or are there constant interruptions? 
My husband of over thirty years has always been my most supportive person. He understands how important this is to me and will often ask if I’ve written anything that day.

What do you do to relax and recharge your batteries? 
I watch TV or create art. I love classic black and white movies as well as family movies like The Waltons. Quality shows with a moral compass. I am also a paper crafter and mixed media artist. I love getting my fingers in paint and playing with rubber stamps

Who are some of your other favorite authors to read?
I read every Vicki Lewis Thompson story that comes out. She’s a neat lady and great with creating characters you care about. I love Jodi Thomas’ contemporary ‘homespun’ stories and J.D. Faver. J.D.’s Bad series is one of my favorite collections. I also enjoy W.C. Jameson’s treasure hunting books and his books on historical figures such as Billy the Kid. He has one coming out about Amelia Earhart I’m anxious to read.

Angela Drake released Somewhere Down the Line, an Erotic Contemporary Romance,

with Boroughs Publishing Group in June 2014.

It all began twenty-five years ago on the road: a charming crooner with a boyish grin fronting an up-and-coming Country/Western band, an entertainment journalist with everything to prove, and a love that could never be. A love that was wrong.

Things have changed. Trey Morison and Alana Cozins are finally free to act on their desires, but is it really possible after all this time? From the Abilene Fairgrounds to a storm-swept beach on Galveston Island, from a reunion of friends to a fast-and-furious realization of their passion, Trey and Alana will test the boundaries of what they think they know—and what they know they want. They’ll find a renewed career, a deeper understanding of themselves, the past and each other. And it all begins with a hit song that’s a heartfelt prayer that unwavering love might finally be rewarded…

BUY LINKS
http://www.amazon.com/Angela-Drake/e/B00L701Z9C/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0
http://www.boroughspublishinggroup.com/books/somewhere-down-line
https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-somewheredowntheline-1547421-149.html
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/447433

What Reviewers Are Saying...
"Every perfect country song put into a perfect happy ever after story!
I couldn't put it down! Looking forward to more books by one of my new favorite authors!" ~ Joyce (Amazon)

"This book is a great addition to your Kindle library. I was so determined to finish the book I fell asleep only to be woken by my Kindle hitting me in the face - twice!" ~ Susan (Amazon)