Come on, admit it. You read the title of this post and immediately thought, “oh, that’s opposites attract.” Am I right? Tropes form the backbone of many a romance novel. They form a kind of shorthand as we talk about stories with our friends. Like this… You to friend: “Hey, I know you love marriage-of-convenience […]
Shades of Grace
When I was a child growing up in a staunch Mennonite home, life was quite clear. There were wrongs — we called them ‘sins’ — and there were rights. The goal was to avoid the sins and do the right thing. Black versus white. I attended a Christian high school (boarding school) with very conservative […]
Cover, Cover, on the Book… and #giveaway
Cover, cover, on the book — which cover is the fairest look? Choosing a cover for a new story is always entertaining. I’m working with a pro photo manipulator for my cowboy romance covers, and with an illustrator (my daughter, Hanna Sandvig) for the Urban Farm Fresh Romance covers. These two approaches require very different […]
Confused Yet? …plus #Giveaway
Confused yet? Because, if not, I can remedy the situation! Once upon a time, I wrote a series I called the Farm Fresh Romance series. It contains six novels, all set on one farm in northern Idaho. There were a couple of sets of siblings in the mix, but the focus was on friendships on […]
How Do You Respond to Adversity?… plus #giveaway
Ever have a day (week? month? year?) when Murphy’s law kicks in? Everything that could possibly go wrong… just did. Sure, there might’ve been a pleasant moment or two in there as well, but it seems those were only in there to get your hopes up so they could be crushed again! As much as […]
How Fat is Too Fat?
Women come in all shapes and sizes, right? Right. And women say they prefer to read about real women, not heroines who are movie-star glamorous with slender (but perfect) curves, and long, shapely legs the hero can’t keep his eyes off of. Those legs were a recurring theme in a romance I read recently! Women […]
Hello — My name is Kassidy #giveaway
Hi, everyone! I’m Kassidy North, and I’m blogging here today for my author, Valerie Comer. She figures I owe her the favor because she’s been working on my happily-ever-after for over four years. I didn’t know I needed one. A happily-ever-after, I mean. Also, she says she’s too busy to blog. Like I have all […]
What does Flavors of Forever even mean?
Does eternity have a taste, let alone multiple ones? Is infinity the same thing as forever? Are everlasting and eternal synonyms? These are the questions that wake me up at five in the morning — trust me, it’s not my alarm clock. I prefer to not even know that there is such a thing as […]
A Fan Visits Bridgeview
Today I’m handing the mic… er, the keyboard!… over to the woman who is probably my Number 1 fan, Paula Marie. So I have been a huge fan of Valerie Comer’s books for a long time, and I fell in love with Green Acres, but now that the Urban Farm Fresh series has grown so […]
The Wedding Quiz… and #giveaway
Oh, my! What a lot of weddings! Wishes on Wildflowers released a week or two ago. It’s the fourth book in my Urban Farm Fresh Romance series, and suddenly it was time for ALL THREE of the other weddings to actually happen! I’d done some chronological overlapping, with Secrets of Sunbeams (Eden and Jacob’s story […]