What's better than Love, American Style? This weekend on Get Lost in a Story we've been celebrating romance in the land of the red, white and blue--past, present and forevermore. Today, you'll meet more authors who write romances set in America, and get a peek at a favorite love moment from one of their books.
Friday, we visited Love in the Old West, yesterday we explored Love in the City.
Today we find Love in the Country with Donna Alward, Angi Morgan, Liz Selvig, and Love Forevermore with Kathleen Baldwin.
Donna Alward
A busy wife and mother of three (2 daughters and the family dog), Donna Alward believes hers is the best job in the world: a combination of stay-at-home mom and romance novelist.
Donna completed her Arts Degree in English Literature in 1994, but it wasn’t until 2001 that she penned her first full-length novel, and found herself hooked on writing romance. In 2006 she sold her first manuscript. From her home office in Nova Scotia, Donna loves being back on the East Coast of Canada after nearly 12 years in Alberta where her Harlequin career began, writing about cowboys and the west.
Donna is the best-selling author of over forty books for Harlequin, Samhain Publishing and St. Martins Press, and is a member of the Romance Writers of Atlantic Canada Chapter. She’s won both the Booksellers’ Best Award and the Colorado Award of Excellence twice, and is a 2012 RITA Finalist for her title HOW A COWBOY STOLE HER HEART. Visit her at www.donnaalward.com.
What's your favorite love story?
I think my all time favorite is Morning Gloryby LaVyrle Spencer. Both characters are good people in bad situations, emotionally wounded and outcasts from society. And yet with each other, they face their demons to take their place not only to be accepted in the community but even loved and respected. They are kind and compassionate and scared to love each other, but it makes their triumph as individuals and as husband and wife soooo satisfying. When I was younger I didn’t appreciate the book as much as I do now – I probably read it when I was 19 or 20.
Why do you write romances?
You know, it puzzles me why people are so dismissive of love stories and happy endings. I think it’s a basic component of our humanity to want to love and be loved, and yet when we write about it it’s somehow not worthy of serious discussion. I write it because I like to believe that there are happy endings out there; that there is hope for everyone to find that someone to share their life with, and that our obstacles can be overcome to find happiness. There is enough heartbreak in the world… it’s my privilege to bring a little happiness to someone’s life, even if it’s through stuff I make up.
Here's a love moment excerpt from Donna's last book, The Cowboy's Valentine
Amazon | B&N | Indiebound | iBookstore
Quinn stared at her and felt his frustration bubble up and over. There was just too much Lacey in his life all the time. In the morning when she made coffee and packed Amber’s lunch for school. When she baked her stupid cakes and used her own stupid fabric softener on his clothes so he had her scent with him every damn day. Family dinners at night and the way she worked around the house while he took Amber through her bedtime routine. The little hesitation each evening when their eyes met and they said good-night before going to their separate rooms far too early, just to avoid time alone together.
“Maybe you could help a little less,” he snapped. “I understand you’re at loose ends and not working, but Amber and me? We’re not your little project. We’re not your surrogate family. So stop trying so goddamned hard to be indispensable to us. You’re not Marie so quit trying to be!”
She pulled back as if he’d struck her, her wide blue eyes filling with unexpected tears at the cruel words.
“Goddammit,” he repeated, as his control snapped. He stepped forward and cupped her head in his hands and kissed her, full-on, no holds barred, lips and tongues meshing in a furious, passionate dance.
Oh, God.
It had been so long since he’d held a woman in his arms, since he’d felt the softness of a female body pressed to his or heard a murmur of pleasure ripple through her mouth to his. She wasn’t fighting him off, he realized, she was straining to reach him. Her fingers dug into his shoulder blades as she held him close and her teeth…oh God, her teeth bit into his lower lip, sending sparks of desire rocketing through him. He reached down, cupped one hand around a delicious buttock and pulled her against him, her gasp of surprise giving him a strange satisfaction as he ran his tongue over the seam of her lips.
He ground his pelvis against hers once, aching for her, but it was the one step that brought them both out of the passionate haze and into the present.
She pressed her hands to his chest—when had it started heaving like he’d been running? “Quinn,” she whispered, her voice a mixture of wonder and apprehension. “What are we doing?”
He had to get a grip. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, dropping his hands and backing up a step, needing to put some distance between their bodies in an attempt to clear his head.
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Lizbeth Selvig writes fun, heartwarming contemporary romantic fiction for Avon books. She is a winner of the Romance Writers of America’s Golden Heart® contest for unpublished manuscripts (with what became her first published novel The Rancher and the Rock Star), and her second published novel, Rescued By A Stranger, was a 2014 nominee for Romance Writers of America’s prestigious RITA® Award.
Liz lives in Minnesota with her best friend (aka her husband, Jan), a hyperactive border collie named Magic, and a gray Arabian gelding named Jedi. She turned to fiction writing after working as a newspaper journalist and magazine editor, and raising an equine veterinarian daughter and a talented musician son. She’s now over the moon being a brand new grandma to Evelyn Grace, as well as to her four-legged grandchildren of which there are over twenty-five, including a wallaby, two alpacas, a large goat, a mammoth-eared donkey, a pig, three sugar gliders, and many dogs, cats and horses (pics of all appear on her website www.lizbethselvig.com). In her spare time she loves to hike, quilt, read, and horseback ride. Her next project with Avon is a seven-book series “Seven Brides For Seven Cowboys.” The first of the series “The Bride Wore Denim,” comes out May 5, 2015. She loves connecting with readers—contact her any time!
What's your favorite love story?
I love so many love stories! I always rack my brain trying to figure out what the favorite is. I don’t know. But I do have a favorite love “line.” It’s from the end of “Pretty Woman,” when Edward braves his fear of heights to “rescue” Vivian from her tower.
Edward: So what happened after he climbed up the tower to rescue her?
Vivian: She rescues him right back.
That says it all to me—the perfect romance is one where the hero and heroine rescue each other.
Why do you write romance?
Truly, truly I can’t help myself! I realized early on in life that I was a story-wimp. No sad endings, violent endings, horror endings, or unresolved endings for this girl. I wanted The Fairy Tale. And I’d fallen in love with romances by reading Silhouette and Harlequin books by the gross and then graduating into big single titles—LaVyrle Spencer, Danielle Steele, and Joanna Lindsay. Also, I grew up in a family of strong, stubborn women and good-hearted, ahead-of-their-time liberated men. I desperately wanted to write stories that would show the world that true love, real romance, and wonderful happily ever afters really could exist. And nowadays, with such graphic images on the news reminding us constantly how unhappy the world can be—we need romance and HEAs more than ever! I’m so blessed to be able to write what I love!
Here's a love moment excerpt from Good Guys Wear Black:
He removed his foot from the stirrup, Rose placed hers into it, and Jill gave her a boost, launching her twenty feet into the air—or so it felt. A second later, she sat astride Sun’s broad rump behind the saddle. Instinctively she grabbed Dewey around the waist.
“Howdy, little lady.” He laughed.
“Don’t ‘little lady’ me. If I fall off, I’ll turn you into a little lady.”
His laugh deepened. “Afraid much?”
“Hey, I cracked my head open falling off one of these things when I was twelve. Sorry if I’m a wimp.”
She hadn’t admitted the story until now, but she had to explain the quivering in her torso somehow.
“Really?” He placed a hand over hers, where it fisted in his shirt against his belly. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have made fun of you.”
“It’s fine.”
This time when he laughed, he shook against her body. It didn’t help the quivers any, but it did make them form from something other than fear. She noticed immediately how heightened every sensation was from her spot on Sun’s back. She could feel when Dewey squeezed his legs together, because the tension spiraled through his entire body. When Sun stepped out, his haunches lifted beneath her, throwing her balance left and right. As Dewey swayed with the rhythm of the horse’s walk, her body motion evened out, relaxed even, and she pressed closer to him, his body her only safety equipment.
“Better?” he asked.
“Where the heck did you learn to ride?”
“My sisters both had horses at one point. We used to go out on trail rides once in a while. I can do this much, but nothing fancy.”
“This is good enough.”
“Relax, I won’t let you fall.”
He meant it literally, but the words sank into her mind, soothing her past the fear of falling off a horse. For an instant, she knew what it was like to let worry go. Jesse was right there and safe; he was happy; she could close her eyes and think about herself and the strong, spice-and-horse-smelling man without anybody caring or knowing he was with a senator’s daughter. This had to be what living on clouds in heaven was like.
“What do you think?” His voice rolled beneath her cheek like soothing surf. “Could you do a longer ride like this?”
“I’m pretty sure I could,” she murmured.
“You sound a lot more relaxed.”
“Once I found out you’re a real cowboy.”
“Yah, okay, let’s go with that.”
The next five minutes passed like the breath in a first kiss. Too quickly. Completely unexpected. He let Sun trot, and Rose giggled, slipping side to side until she found the rhythm with Dewey’s strong back as a guide. She reveled in his width, his height, his solid male strength. He made her want to sit with him forever and let him guide her. He made her want to climb on a horse by herself and run through the fields with him beside her—to prove she could do it without being scared of her twelve-year-old self.
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