FAMILIAR LIGHT - A Timeless Desire Novella

by Sarah Ballance

I'm not quite sure how it happened, but I have another release RIGHT around the corner and, well, shucks, isn't it pretty? In just four days, on October 17, my new romantic suspense novella FAMILIAR LIGHT will be available from Noble Romance as part of the Noble Romance Authors November Blog Tour.

Today, I'm here with a sneak peek: a blurb and ... wait for it ... an exclusive excerpt. Yup, that's right - it's not even on my website yet! (Okay, so sometimes procrastination pays, LOL. "Exclusive" has a nice right to it, no?" *Grin*) This story has been getting MAD props through my Six Sentence Sunday offerings, so check it out, wouldya?

FAMILIAR LIGHT

Seven years of longing comes down to just one night.

Laney Kent returns to Barrier Shoals hoping to reunite with her first love, Bridger. She anticipates his reception might be chilly, but what she doesn’t expect is to become the victim of a deadly obsession . . . or that this night with Bridger could be her last.

Bridger Jansen tangled a lot of sheets trying to forget about Laney, but his heart knew what the rest of him refused to admit: he could love no one else. He’s determined not to forgive her for leaving him without explanation, but when he fails to protect her from a viscous attack, the person he can’t forgive just might be himself.

EXCERPT

"Can I help you?" The gruff question trickled through the cavernous space like water leaking through pipes. He seemed to materialize from the shadows as he strode toward her, the rise of heat from the concrete floor keeping him just out of focus.

But her heart knew.

She swallowed a hard knob of regret. "Bridger?"

He couldn't have heard her—not with the way she clung to his name, as if saying it out loud would be to lose another piece of him. But his step faltered, and the recognition in that interrupted cadence brought the burn of tears to her eyes.

No regrets.

She stood, trembling, as the fifty feet between them dwindled to ten. When he was close enough for her to make out the stubble lining his jaw, his legs stopped moving, but his gaze tore over her. The impassioned glare was without direction, a harsh reflection of the hard lines edging his face. The warm brown eyes she remembered were now a bitter shade of espresso.

"What are you doing here?" he asked.

The words, tense with fury, sent her backpedaling against the concrete wall. Too late, she realized she no longer knew this man. They were kids when they'd parted ways, too naïve to realize they'd never keep those breathless promises. At least she'd been that way. His tone suggested otherwise.

They were alone in the deeply shadowed belly of Barrier Shoals Light. And for the first time within those walls, Laney tasted fear.

"Was I supposed to wait for you?" he asked.

Seven years had passed since her weak-kneed promise to return to him. She didn't have an answer for that.

He took another step, boxing her against the curvature of the rock. He stood close—so close, she had to tip her head to meet his eyes.

And she summoned courage to do it.

"Was I?" he asked, his voice softer now. He leaned closer. The stifling heat morphed into sexual innuendo, his skin slick with sweat, daring her to touch.

She was one careless thought away from taking him up on that unspoken suggestion. Her fingers itched to claw through his hair, to draw him closer until the distance between them evaporated. Memories of frantically grasping for purchase against the stone wall besieged her, curling fear into boundless adrenaline. "Did you?"

Her words coaxed a slow grin from his sensual mouth. "Was I supposed to?"

Wait for me, Bridger I'll be back.

The thought came from nowhere, peeling away seven years to their last night together. He'd held her, caressed the hair from her face, and kissed every salty inch of her skin. Stay. A single word. A plea from a man who asked for nothing—and yet owned it all. Every piece of her was his.

She'd just taken too long to realize it. And those eyes . . . . They bore into her, dark with the kind of passion that made anger futile and sex magnificent.

She remembered the latter well.

"Can we talk?" she asked. Lame. But in that moment, all that mattered.

He ran his index finger along her jaw—a slow, teasing exploration he abandoned in short order to toy with a strand of her hair. Dipping his head so his lips grazed her ear, he said, "To think I have anything to say is to assume I still give a damn, Laney. And I think I left that behind a long time ago."

His words were so much at odds with his actions she failed to reconcile the two. Lack of awareness might also be blamed on the hand curling at her nape, the gentle touch drawing her against his chest. Or the heat of his mouth lingering on her flesh, following the coy path his finger trailed across her jaw. Every nuance of touch electrified her, each moment captured in a single thud of her heartbeat.

He stood so close she saw only snapshots of memories, each one triggering another landslide of emotion. His mouth closing over her skin. His fingers laced through hers. That wicked grin he wore as he held her captive with his touch, her wrists pressed overhead against the sand. The dark shadow of his profile blotting out the dance of moonlight on water, their heavy breaths intoxicated with salt air and lust . . . and a promise she failed to keep.

"If I were less of a man," he said, "I'd tell you what you wanted to hear. We'd have a good time, and then I'd walk. Let you spend the next few years wondering what the hell you did to lose me."

"Bridger—"

"But no one deserves that. Not even you." His tight smile brought hard lines to his jaw, but no trace of forgiveness. Holding fast to her gaze, he stepped away, taking twenty degrees of Fahrenheit with him.

Laney shivered. He may have put distance between them, but the narrow darkness in his eyes clutched her throat. She'd mistaken the flat, slated glare for fury, but it wasn't anger . . . it was hurt. She'd hurt him by not coming back. And that was far worse than his wrath.

"You should go."

She opened her mouth and closed it. Every reason she counted for coming back begged her to stay and stand up for what they once had, but there was one thing missing from her fight: a leg upon which to stand.

So, with nothing left to say, she went.

Now y'all KNOW it doesn't end there . . . find out what happens next in FAMILIAR LIGHT, coming Monday, October 17th!

Sarah Ballance

Noble Author Page | Website | Blog

Psst: Subscribe to my blog *by email* and you are automatically entered to win a weekly prize--winner's choice of a $10 gift certificate to Noble Romance or $5 to Amazon. YES, it's really that easy, but full details are available by clicking here.

UNFORGIVEN: New Release & Contest Announcement

News and shameless bribery from Sarah Ballance

Welcome, friends and literate people! I've got some awesome giveaway information to dish (naturally, at the END of this post) but first I want to share an exclusive excerpt from my new romantic suspense, UNFORGIVEN, which kicks off a brand new series for me here at Noble Romance. It also happens to be Noble's #3 bestseller at press time, so while I'm doing my happy dance, you can all look at this:

UNFORGIVEN | Packing Heat #1

Riley Beckett's past just came back to haunt her . . . and this time, he's got a gun.

When Gage Lawton finds his brother shot dead on his back porch, every shred of evidence points to one person: Gage's former lover, Riley. He and she didn't part ways on good terms, and he's not planning to rekindle anything now--not when he's got a revolver pointed at her head and a finger on the trigger.

A year after Riley swore she and Gage were over, he returns in a hail of gunfire. One look into those achingly familiar blue eyes and she knows how wrong she was to let him go, but now far more than their heated past stands in the way. A twist of fate puts them in the crosshairs of a killer, leaving Riley with two slim options: trust her greatest betrayer or face a murderer on her own.

EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT:

"Get on the floor, and keep your head down. Once I start this truck there's no turning back, and we're in for a rough ride."

Was there any turning back now? She almost laughed, but his serious expression wiped the thought away. Without a word, she slid to the floor and tucked her knees to her chest, hugging them close. The large opening of the shed faced the side yard, and from their position near the rear of the property they weren't far from the crest of the next hill.

If her daddy's gun was in the hands of a killer, they just might need that hill. The rifle was accurate at a distance far past the cover of the far slope.

"I hope I can still feel my way down your back path," Gage said, peering into the night. "Because I'm not going to hold this maniac's hand by using the headlights." He looked down at her and grinned. "Fortunately, I had a refresher trip this afternoon."

"Lovely. Thanks for the reminder."

He shrugged and turned the key. "How could you forget? Now, hang on."

She didn't have a chance. The instant the engine caught, the truck tore out of the shed. They took a hard right, away from the house, the suspension absorbing several rough bumps as they slid sideways over the thick, unkempt grass near the rear of the yard. From her vantage point Riley could see only the black sky outside the truck, but it wasn't hard to figure out where they were by the feel of the terrain under the tires. Old ruts on the path caused several unforgiving jolts, each one slamming her against the door and glove box with increasing intensity.

Gage didn't let up. He kept a white-knuckled grip on the wheel, and—judging from the scream of the engine—the pedal to the floor. The ride was relentless, but the angle of their ascent told her they had to be near the top of the hill. Any second now they would crest it and be out of the sights of the killer behind them—

With a horrific blast, the back window imploded. All sound seemed to fall away with the raining glass, and for a split, surreal second the world was mute. It wasn't until the truck slowed and took a sudden, thoughtless turn to the left that Riley tore her eyes from the gaping hole. The steering wheel jerked erratically, fighting the lay of the land.

Only one thing hampered the wild rotation.

With horror, she realized it was the cumbersome weight of Gage's body.

Click here to read more. (No, I insist.)

FREAKING AWESOME CONTEST ANNOUNCEMENT

Now that you've read my excerpt (or skipped ahead to the contest part - seriously, you think I didn't see that? Uh huh...) I've got a killer giveaway to tell you about. Every Friday I'm giving away a gift certificate--winner's choice of $5 for Amazon or (wait for it...) $10 to Noble Romance. Want to know how to enter? All you've got to do is (1) wait out your 18th birthday, then (2) subscribe to my blog by email. I do love my Wordpress and Networked Blog followers, but I need your email address for this one. To kick things off, I gave out $20 this week, and there's another BIG prize coming.

BIG PRIZE COMING

First of all, those of you who skipped ahead to right here need to back up a paragraph. We'll wait while you read. ... ... ... Okay, all together now? Here's the deal. On Friday October 7 someone is going to win a big ol' e-gift certificate (winner to be contacted Oct 7 with the announcement to be made Oct 10). Guess how you enter? Yep, that's right. (Are my readers clever or what?) You must subscribe to my blog by email in order to win. Subscribing is easy. Just head to my blog and take a gander at the top of the sidebar on the left. Fill in that little box, and don't forget to confirm your subscription.

Well, you know. Unless you don't want a chance at some e-cash.

I'm still doing that happy dance no one in their right mind wants to see (not sober, anyway) so I'll thank you once again for putting UNFORGIVEN near the top, and I'll spare you the rest.

Want even more UNFORGIVEN? Check out the Six Sentence Sunday featured spots on my blog!

The 7 Stages of Writing a Novel

By Sarah Ballance

Authors get a lot of questions. Where do you come up with your ideas? How long does it take to write a book? How does it feel to be a published author? Well, guess what. I'm probably the last person to address these questions because (a) I'm new here and (b) I'm just not normal, but I'm going to tackle them anyway. Here's a look at the stages of writing when you're, uh, me.

Stage 1: Inspiration

Inspiration is a crapshoot, but it can come from some rather unusual places. Take this lovely photo, for example. The kids and I had just finished our three mile walk Tuesday morning when the ditch started to boil—major geyser action, only we don't have those here. And the water turned bright red in seconds. I found this alarming. My first thought was someone had cut up a body and stashed it in the ditch pipe. (Fortunately I did not voice that concern to the park ranger, who calmly responded to my epic WTF by saying the discoloration was due to backwash from the aerators they use in the lake.) But am I inspired? Oh, you better believe there's a plot in all that "bloody" water!

Stage 2: Excitement

Post "inspiration," I've got a brand new idea and a shiny new doc file to match. I spend a good thirty minutes telling everyone how excited I am to start a new story, then three or four times that looking through various themed baby and surname lists so my characters won't have to go by "Hey, you!" for the entire manuscript. I am on the cusp of something big. I am … not writing yet.

Stage 3: Wordage

This elusive period of writing occurs in the first one to six paragraphs (or, if I'm really lucky, I get that many pages out of it). It's the point right before excitement is ransacked by reality and I realize my great idea is going to have to get down somehow, and nothing is looking as good on virtual paper as it sounded in my head.

Stage 4: Le FAIL

My characters hate me. My words hate me. I don't know what I was thinking. Le FAIL.

Stage 5: Progress

Some authors move past stage 4 into smooth sailing and actually feel good about their accumulating wordage. Me? I think I ride Le FAIL through to the end. (I have a fast pass—front of the line, unlimited rides.)

Stage 6: The Slump

Like Le FAIL, only when I'm half to three-quarters done with the manuscript. This is the point where I've heard so many authors say they start doubting their stories. You may wonder how I distinguish this from Le FAIL. To that, all I can say is I have no idea, and thank you for paying attention.

Stage 7: The End

I speed up near the end. I can't help it. It's an accomplishment, and I get WAY excited. I don’t know if the novelty of finishing ever wears off, but right now I dig it, big time. And all that nagging and self doubt? Totally makes this moment sweeter! (That's, like, making pessimism optimistic. Now I don't know which t-shirt to buy. WAIL.)

Now, of course it doesn't actually end there. In fact, that's where the REAL party begins, and I am THRILLED to say I'm about to do some partying, Noble-style, with my recently (FINALLY) finished book UNFORGIVEN, which kicks off a series of romantic suspense titles. (I had to throw that in there for those of you who have kindly asked about my progress. And also for the person who keeps finding my blog by searching "Tehcotah, Oklahoma," which is awesome … and also where UNFORGIVEN is set.) All super good, mega-exciting stuff, but I have to admit one teeny distraction. You see, there's just one thing I'd really love to know.

Who the heck was in that ditch, and how do I get him out of there and into one of my books?

Not surprisingly, Sarah's characters tend to be just as twisted as she is. To observe from a safe distance, visit her blog or website. And if you want to know how that next book is coming along, click here.

Walking The Edge: Of secrets and suspense...

Hello everyone

My name is Zee and I write suspense-- Stop right there! I do? You'd be stumped to know I'm the first one surprised! I generally write romance, at least, I set out to write romance. How this turns out is sometimes out of my hands. Like what happened with Walking The Edge (Corpus Brides: Book One) , my debut release with Noble Romance that came out on June 30.

So what happened where that story is concerned is that I had a heroine with amnesia. To me, that spelt out "Secrets hiding in her closet". And there's nothing that looks more like bait to my curious mind than secrets!

I just have to think about this - some of my favourite movies are driven by the secrets that the heart of the plot. In Unknown, Liam Neeson's character ends up with amnesia after an accident in Berlin, and suddenly the woman he recalls as his wife claims she doesn't know who he is. What secret is she hiding? What's lurking inside his mind?
Same goes for Jason Bourne's character (played by Matt Damon) in the Bourne trilogy - what secrets lurk inside his blank mind, after he is pulled out of the water by fishermen off the coast of France?
In Salt, Evelyn Salt (played by Angelina Jolie) is told by a Russian dissident that she is in fact a double agent. Salt does not remember that - it's a secret. How, and why?

Is it a surprise all those movies are suspense? And when you combine this to the fact that I write romance, I ended up with... romantic suspense, of course!

Secrets have spurred me on the journey to writing this book. Secrets, that I uncovered along with my heroine throughout the story, have fuelled the pace and tone of this book. I know of no greater catalyst and spru-into-action springboard than secrets, and these are rife in a memory that has been wiped clean.

Come find out what secrets lie inside my heroine, Amelia's, past. See what she'll discover about herself. The novel is on sale at the bargain price of $1.99, and that's a steal, if you'll allow me to say so. :)

And here's the blurb:

Walking the edge: The next step might be the last...

A woman without a past
Left amnesiac after an accident, Amelia Jamison struggles as her instincts slowly rise from the depths of oblivion, leading her to question her life as the wife of a cold, manipulating and distant man. Wisps of a dream show her another man she may have known intimately, but is he a memory, or a figment of her imagination?

A man with too much information
After many aliases, today Gerard Besson is simply a police commissaire in Marseille. When a mysterious woman starts to follow him, he is suspicious - and intrigued. But things aren't what they seem, and as he reluctantly gets closer to her, dregs of his painful, buried past emerge and make him question her identity.

Each seems to have led several different lives
But neither is prepared for what awaits them when they cross the fine line between knowing your true self and that of your alter ego.

Danger is the name of the game, and as it catches up with them in the French Provence, both know they better be ready for the inevitable fall.

You can find the book here.

From Mauritius with love,

Zee

One Year: Looking Back, Moving Ahead

By Sarah Ballance

Oh, to have been me one year ago. Talk about upheaval! I'd just given birth to my sixth child—one who came as quite a surprise to the H and myself, as I'd had a nifty surgical sterilization which was rumored (ha!) to render me reproductively useless—when IT happened. On June 7, 2010 Noble Romance Publishing released my debut novel, DOWN IN FLAMES.

Yeah, I know. Not exactly earth shattering, but it's not something I saw coming. Oh, sure, I had the signed contract and I'd drooled over the cover enough to fear for the lifespan of my keyboard. I'd even survived "the edits"—something of great myth and lore to us first-timers. But I still didn't believe they'd actually go through with it. This was, after all, my book. My first book at that, and my first shot of fiction since grade school. I can honestly say there were approximately ZERO points in the writing process I ever expected the story to see the light of day…let alone with a buy link attached.

It was quite a moment—one to be followed by many more such moments of disbelief.

You see, I never meant to do this author thing for real. I wrote DOWN IN FLAMES because I told someone there was no way, no how, ya-can't-make-me-because-I-ain't gonna write fiction. It took less than a day for my own words to hit me, and from that point I became determined to write "a" book—more specifically, a manuscript—and not because I held any great aspirations toward being published. I just wanted to prove myself wrong. Suffice to say I succeeded—and loved it—but my own refusal to believe the success left me scrambling at the last minute to put something on my website—and by "something" I mean "anything"—and to do the same kind of "something" with my blog. (The latter I didn't truly accomplish until the first weeks of 2011). But even that was nothing compared to conquering my greatest fear.

The Interview.

I am quite possibly the most introverted person you've ever met. Put me in a crowded room—and by "crowded" I mean at least two other people, give or take—and I'd be content to hide under a table if it wouldn't serve only to draw more attention to my quaking self. I'm terrified people will look at me. I have NO IDEA how I managed to get married with a captive audience in attendance, other than to say whoever came up with the idea for the veil is pretty cool in my book. I can tell you all, with zero exaggeration, that the idea of getting my name and myself out there PETRIFIED me. You'd think I had to deliver a speech naked on live TV for all the trauma the mere thought of an interview caused. And if not for fellow Noble author Nichelle Gregory reaching out and inviting me to her blog, I'd probably still be cowering; for her kindness, I'll be long-grateful.

That first interview was nearly a year ago. Since then, I've made fifty-six guest appearances over the internet and have amassed eleven reviews from bloggers and review sites—two for DOWN IN FLAMES and nine for my second release, the romantic suspense RUN TO YOU. (To see the full list of reviews and interviews, click here.) That might not sound like much, but I still feel that pull in my gut when I think about that first interview and how frightened I was to take that step. And now, with my first whirlwind year behind me, I'm about to take another one.

To celebrate my first anniversary among the ranks of published authors, I'm going to do something absolutely crazy.

I'm going to take a step back and write.

Sarah's work-in-progress UNFORGIVEN is the first of a series of at least four romantic suspense titles she plans to finish in the next few months. If you'd like to see the status of her WIPs, click here.

What cold medication, SpongeBob, & Angelina Jolie have in common...

Hello everyone!

My name is Zee Monodee, and I recently joined the amazing Noble Romance Publishing house as part of the Hot New Talent program (feels all funky to see my name listed up there *grins*). I'm 28, married, mum to a tween hellion, addicted to Supernatural-- and I'll go back to the real purpose of this post before I bore you to death.

So, intrigued by the title question up there? Some might say they all put you to sleep, but then too, there's good to be ascribed to sleep. Especially when it generates new stories.

All three of the above have played a part in my story coming together. My romantic suspense-slash-mystery-slash-thriller, Walking The Edge (Corpus Brides: Book One), will be coming out with Noble Romance on June 27, under the Foreign Affairs imprint.

Now what on earth do cold medication, SpongeBob, and Angelina Jolie have in common with a romantic suspense-slash-mystery-slash-thriller? Let me explain, and for this, I need to tell you a bit more about the book.

I've always loved a good amnesia storyline. What does this past that the character cannot remember hold? What secrets hide in those darkened depths? I knew this was the starting point of my story - an amnesic heroine, who wakes up from a coma and knows -just knows - that something is off with the world her 'husband' wants her to live in.

What lurks in her forgotten memories? I'll admit that I hit a brick wall here. What was the husband's deal? Why the secrecy? How not to make this into a soap opera? By now I was halfway through a draft, and I shelved the story because it wasn't going any further.

Fast forward to few months later - it's now August, and where I live, the heart of winter (southern hemisphere, tropical island by the name of Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean. Yes, we do have winter in the tropics *grin*). My town is very much like England - always cold, always rainy, so winter months are spent inside. Not really helpful for your sanity when your kids go on winter break, and you're stuck with them 24/7 inside four walls. Add to this that you catch the cold of the century, and you're stuck in bed with fever, endless sniffles, kinks and pain in your body - you get the picture. Sleep is very welcome then - except that you cannot sleep, because there's a kid at home that you have to watch.

Enter the cold medication. Real good stuff - knocks your cold off in 3 days tops. Not to mention that it also knocks your socks and brain off too in the process. I would be out cold within half an hour of a dose, and then I would dream. When I'd wake up, everything would be hazy... and on a few occasions, my husband had to ask me what I was talking about because, you see, my dreams had felt so real I was experiencing deja vu when I was awake.

Eureka moment! I suddenly knew what it was like to lose all your bearings, to question your reality, to second guess yourself and doubt your husband's words when he goes, "honey, nothing like what you mention has ever happened."
And guess what? This is exactly what Amelia, the heroine from Walking The Edge, feels like when she wakes up with amnesia and goes to live with her husband in their posh Hampstead Heath home in London.

I got the trigger point of dreams - highly lucid visualisations that make Amelia question her reality. What if the dreams were real, as in, fragments of her shattered memory? And what happens when they don't equate at all the 'reality' her husband wants her to believe in?

Enter SpongeBob. A SpongeBob GameBoy cartridge, actually. I'm an imperfect and perfectly-flawed mother, and my idea of school break babysitter is a new game cartridge. Anyhow, my kid is the kind who can conjure chaos in 10 seconds flat - I always need to have him close to me. Which is how I find myself drifting between reality and la-la-land (courtesy of the cold meds), to the background score of the SpongeBob Volcano Island video game.

Anyone familiar with the yellow sponge here? You'll know he is extremely annoying. The music on his video game is none less brain-bashing. One tune in particular, on a level my son was stuck on for days, kept playing over and over here. So much so that after a while, I could hear that tune in my head even when it was switched off. It did have a rapid, catchy pace to it, that escalated to a mind-numbing climax. Thanks to my cold meds, guess what sound became the background score of my dreams and daydreams about the story? You guessed it - SpongeBob.

So now I had my starting point. I had my pace, and I knew it all escalates to a climax. The big question was - why? Why is the husband so intent on having her drugged? What does he want to hide? What doesn't he want her to remember?

And what if the clue to her past lies in Amelia's dreams of the past, in the guise of this gorgeous Frenchman she sees in bed with her when she closes her eyes?

Back to my own reality, on the day I manage to tear myself from my bed to plop down on the couch, it so happens that my husband is watching this movie, Wanted, starring Angelina Jolie. Not my cup of tea usually, such movies, but hey, anything is better than listening to SpongeBob. So I sit down and watch this story about a total nobody (played by James McAvoy) who is told that he must avenge his father's murder, and the person who will train him is this kick-ass, no-nonsense, gun-wielding chick played by Angelina Jolie (that was long before her Salt days!).

And Eureka again! Amelia in Walking The Edge should be a kick-ass, no-nonsense, edgy chick a la Angelina-in-Wanted too.

From here on, I slid into Amelia's psyche, walked in her shoes, saw the world through her eyes and the limited frame of reference she had to process everything because of her amnesia. When she wondered that the Frenchman from the dreams could have the key to her memory, I cut and run along with her to Marseille, the old city on the Mediterranean coast. I met this man, Gerard Besson as he is called, at the same time Amelia comes across him in the flesh, finally.

Together, Amelia and Gerard took me on a journey through Marseille to find out who she really is. Start to finish, I had this story's first draft down in exactly 13 days. I wrote for every minute I was awake - I became Amelia. Along the way, with her, my heart broke, sang, took a few hits, found a safe harbour... and found the truth.

What was the truth, you ask? Ah, this I cannot say. Not yet. Why don't you catch Amelia directly, on June 27, to find out what her story is when Walking The Edge (Corpus Brides: Book One) comes out?

I hope I have managed to give you a glimpse of what an incredible ride it has been to put this story together.

From Mauritius with love,

Zee

Catch me on the Web at the following places:
Blog - http://zeemonodee.blogspot.com/
Facebook - Zee Monodee
GoodReads - Zee Monodee
Twitter - ZeeMonodee

(Another) Beach Vacation Gone Awry

by Sarah Ballance

I seldom wonder what it's like to be married to a writer—I seldom have to, as my husband is happy to point out the tragedy of his lot in life—but it's safe to say we come with our hazards. My Riot of Research real-life tale is one example. This … well, this is another.

Last weekend, my long-suffering spouse and I were fortunate enough to escape our brood of children for about 31 hours (yes, I counted, and I bet if you had six kids you'd be counting, too) at the beach. "The beach," mind you, is a whopping handful of minutes from home, but once you leave the mainland behind it's a whole new world. There's something about having a very large body of water between yourself and your offspring that's oddly freeing.

No such luck for the husband, however, when it comes to his "imaginative" wife.

Things started as they always do: with me trying to get him in trouble, or so he says. When we checked into our hotel, the receptionist asked if we'd like one key or two. After some hesitation, he requested two. Upon hearing that—and with NO hesitation on my part—I asked, "Where are you going?" The two receptionists giggled, and I was treated to a Look. As it turns out, he just thought it would be a good idea to have two keys in case we lost one. Oh. There is that.

Fast forward to dinner. (Hang with me for a minute … this all ties in.) We kept our corner table overlooking the ocean for a good two hours after the restaurant kitchen closed, which gave us a fantastic view of an awesome band. They had a big crowd over in the bar/lounge area, but after staff stopped seating in the dining area and the last of the patrons trickled out, we had a private show. (I should also point out that a LIVE BAND made less noise than our kids—I can't tell you the last time we had such a peaceful meal!) Our waitress, bless her, was attentive and never left us staring at the bottom of our drinks for more than a minute, if that.

At some point, my husband noticed he had one of those Bud Light bottles you could mark with a key or a coin. I'd never seen or heard of them, and I'd had just enough to drink to find them utterly fascinating. (I don’t know what I was drinking – some Bahama something). Apparently, there's a version of a post-it note whiteboard on there and you can write your name or a message of your choice on the bottle. Cool concept, but don't these people ever see beer commercials? If I drank the stuff, I don't think I'd put it down long enough to lose it because that's giving someone waaaaay too much time to tamper with it. Ahem. Anyway, adorable guy that my hubby is, he scrawled his cell phone number on the label, pushed the bottle across the table to me, and suggested I hook up with him later that night. I even got the other kind of Look with the offer … the kind a woman is darn lucky to get from her husband after fourteen years of marriage! *gush*

Still with me? So, later, when the bill arrived I suggested we drop a tip that would be considered generous by most standards. He gave me one of those "you're crazy" looks, but when I reminded him how diligent our waitress had been with refills he tossed the extra cash in with the bill. She came back a few moments later with a gracious thank you and left with the empties … at which point I started laughing.

"What?" he asked.

Pfffft! What, indeed. Anyone see what's happening here?

First he gets an extra key to our room. Then he slips his phone number to our waitress, and on top of THAT he leaves her a mega tip.

Oh, if you could have seen the look on his face when I spelled it out. But such is the occupational hazard of being married to an author (or, in some cases, married at all).

We're just always plotting.

These photos were from our trip, so don't say I never brought you anything! There's no pavement out there ... the beach IS the road, and it's not at all unusual to find wild horses meandering right in the middle of it. (Uh, watch where you put that beach towel!) And, hey, if you think the idea of stepping in horse poop is bad, you should see what happens in the pages of my romantic suspense RUN TO YOU!