Author Ambush & Giveaway with Stephanie Rowe

Happy Friday Everyone! Book Monster Reviews & LITERAL ADDICTION are very pleased to welcome Stephanie Rowe back to our sites today.

Stephanie Rowe is a nationally bestselling author of more than twenty books and a Four-time RITA® Award nominee and Golden Heart® Award winner.  A life-long reader, Stephanie began crafting stories at age ten, but didn't realize it was her dream until she was an adult.

Once the light dawned, she immediately left behind "work" as the world defines it and went to "work" as she defines it, which means getting up every morning with a smile in her heart so she can spend the day doing that which makes her spirit sing.

Stephanie believes in learning to listen to your heart in order to figure out what your dreams are, and then opening yourself to the inspiration that will direct you there. She believes we all deserve the right to enjoy life, and for the ride to be as easy as we want it to be, and that we all should accept nothing less than making our dreams come true.

Stephanie lives in New England, and spends every day doing her best to fill it with people, observations and activities that uplift her soul, which include writing, tennis, friends, and her amazing family. 

Stephanie has published a multitude of books for all age groups and in several sub-genres of romance...

She has four contemporary romance novels "If The Shoe Fits", "Unbecoming Behavior, "Shop 'til Yule Drop" and "Stress & the City".  

"Ice" and "Chill" are from Stephanie's romantic suspense series, ALASKA, and she also has a standalone RS called "The Sharpest Edge".  

IMMORTALLY SEXY is her romantic comedy series, and it currently has 4 books - "Date Me, Baby, One More Time", "Must Love Dragons", "He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not and "Sex & The Immortal Bad Boy".  

Most recently, Stephanie has come on the scene with her incredible paranormal romance series, SOULFIRE, and ORDER OF THE BLADE.  SOULFIRE has 3 books right now, and ORDER OF THE BLADE currently has 5.  "Kiss At Your Own Risk", "Touch If You Dare", and "Hold Me If You Can" are books 1 - 3 of the SOULFIRE series.  "Darkness Awakened", "Darkness Seduced", "Darkness Surrendered", "Forever in Darkness" and "Darkness Reborn" are the available releases for ORDER OF THE BLADE.

She's also written a teen romance series called THE GIRLFRIENDS GUIDE TO BOYS, which was originally published under her Stephie Davis pen name.   

Today we're helping Stephanie celebrate and promote her newest releases, which are:  

• "Jingle This! (A Somewhat Sassy Christmas Novella" which was just released on 11/1/12
• And both books of her EVER AFTER contemporary romance series - "No Knight Needed" (released on 11/17/12) and "Fairytale Not Required" (released on 12/5/12)

For our readers new to Stephanie's work, here are the synopses and information for "Jingle This!" and the 2 books of the EVER AFTER series to get you up to speed...

"Jingle This! 
(A Somewhat Sassy Christmas Novella":

Released 11/1/12

Buy from Amazon

Love. Diamonds. Mistletoe. And a one-on-one holiday assignment with a very sexy boss. Put it all together, and it's enough to ruin a girl's day. 

Angie Miller has to write sizzling, evocative, heart-melting holiday stories about love, romance and diamonds for her company's newest client…an assignment that isn't so easy when she's just had her heart broken. When her first not-so-cheery story nearly gets her company fired, her boss Kyle Black makes it his personal mission to get Angie in the right mood to wax poetic about love and romance. The fact that there's three years' worth of unrequited sexual tension simmering between them? It just makes it all the more interesting when Kyle shows up in her office with his oh-so-broad shoulders, smoldering smile and…oh, yeah… his slightly autocratic ways… How is Angie supposed to find her muse again when Kyle keeps trying to have his way with her? Not "that" kind of way, but a girl can dream…

*Author's Note: Jingle This! was originally published 2004 in mass market paperback by Dorchester Publishing as part of the holiday anthology Shop 'til Yule Drop. It has been substantially revised and expanded.

"No Knight Needed"

EVER AFTER BOOK #1:

Available NOW!

Buy from Amazon | B&N

Broad shoulders silhouetted in the night. Strong arms anchoring her against a powerful chest. A modern-day knight in shining armor on a stormy mountainside… Who has time for that kind of fantasy? Not Clare Gray, that's for sure. The plucky single mom is a little too busy to dream about turbulent dark eyes brimming with intensity, and sensual kisses that ignite her soul. But when Boston business mogul Griffin Friese steps out of his black truck on the abandoned mountain road and helps Clare rescue her daughter from a deadly Maine storm, her well-ordered world implodes. 

Suddenly, Clare finds herself having fantasies about tender loving and hot passion with the mysterious stranger with the rain-slicked jacket and the angel painted on the roof of his truck. The midnight encounter awakens yearnings in Clare that are far too dangerous to explore, but when she learns that her heroic knight is staying in town for a few days, he becomes a reality she can't deny. She's already barely surviving, so how can she risk her heart with a man who threatens everything she believes in? 

NOTE: No Knight Needed was originally published under the title Dawn at Birch Crossing. Book Two of the Ever After series, Fairytale Not Required, is an entirely new release and will available December 2012. 

"Fairytale Not Required"

EVER AFTER Book #2:

Just Released 12/5/12!

Buy from Amazon

Kisses that set her on fire. A tender smile that melts her heart. Promises of forever…. It's the fairytale that no woman can afford to believe in, especially not Astrid Monroe. Oh, she did once, long ago, but the scars etched on her heart remind her that the only one she can trust is herself. The flamboyant designer with the quick wit and spunky demeanor will never show the world how much she is struggling…until she meets Jason Sarantos, a man whose tormented past enables him to see the secrets she is trying to hide. 

The connection between the two damaged souls is instant and electrifying, shredding the defenses Astrid had worked so carefully to erect, and tumbling her into a world of passion and vulnerability she can't control. Jason has moved to Maine to rebuild his life after the tragic death of his wife and youngest son, and Astrid's vibrant spirit ignites a searing fire in the single dad that he thought was long dead. Intense, soul-shattering passion explodes between the pair, threatening everything that they hold most dear. Is there a way to stop the fire before it consumes them, or are they fated to a future more beautiful and more heart-wrenching than either thought was possible? 

How great do those sound!!?  Make sure that you have them added to your virtual bookshelves, and keep an eye out for them to become available from your other favorite booksellers as well.  

In celebration of these new releases, let's see what Stephanie had to say when we let her take over the site for the day...

Actual conversation with my six-year-old daughter:

6 yo: "Mom, you should marry a king."

Me: "That would be a good idea. Then I would be a queen and you would be a princess."

6 yo: "And then we would live in a mansion."

Me: "I would like a mansion. I'm down with that."

6 yo: "Then I would have all the American Girls dolls I want. And we'd have an indoor pool. And an outdoor pool. And I'd have a room just for my toys. And I'd have 20 dogs. And horses. Lots of horses. And a really nice car. Oh, I would have a limousine and a driver who would drive me anywhere I wanted. And all the cookies and ice cream I want."

Me (thinking): Damn, it's good to be six.

When was the last time you had a conversation like that, only you were the one saying the things my daughter was saying? Hmm… can't say I can remember either. But there was a time, once, long ago, when we were all like my daughter. We had dreams of princes and fairytales and real-life magic sweeping down upon us to fill our daily grind with magic and sparkles. Today, what do we have? Grocery lists, deadlines, dirty dishes to wash, kids to schlep around… so many things to do and never enough time to do them. Where are our dreams and hopes of more? Of the magic? Of the fantasy? Or the prince who will get down on one knee and declare his love to us? Swept away by the gritty realities of life, the need to pay bills, to take care of the daily things necessary to function in this life.

You know what? I think that is so sad that the magic and hope has someone drifted out of her grasp, but I know that's the way it is for so many, including me the day my marriage of 13 years was torn away from me overnight, leaving me as an unemployed single mom struggling to start her life over. It's not easy. It's terrifying in fact. We all have those moments, whether we're single or married, those moments when it seems like the daily grind of live is obscuring the magic that we once dreamed of when we were six years old. But you know what? Every woman deserves to believe in her knight, her prince, her fairytale.  

Welcome to the lives of the heroines in my Ever After series. In No Knight Needed (Book One), the heroine, Clare Gray, was widowed at age 18 and has spent the last fifteen years as a single mom. She has no time to think about a knight in shining armor rescuing her. She's too busy keeping her life under control and making sure she does everything she needs to do for her job and her daughter. She, like so many of us, has long lost the dream or fantasy of the fairytales that little girls thrive on. She doesn't want to be rescued. Who has time to wait around for that kind of nonsense? No one, of course. We're all too smart for that, aren't we?

And then, out of a dark and stormy night, Clare's knight shows up in her life…shocking her out of her focused existence and thrusting her into a world where she's no longer allowed to ignore the yearnings and dreams for more that we all have in our hearts. Love comes looking for her, and it won't be denied.

In the second book in the series, Fairytale Not Required, Astrid Monroe has learned the hard way not to believe in the fairytale. She once did, and she was burned so terribly that her heart will never heal. She's not foolish enough to believe in or trust another man, to even trust life in general. And yet when Jason Sarantos shows up in her life, refusing to be shut out, Astrid has to learn that a little magic can be okay… no, more than okay. It can be the gift she has been waiting for her whole life.

The Ever After series is a tribute to all the woman out there who are too responsible and too focused on survival to think about fairytales…and yet get them anyway. You don't need a paranormal romance for a knight in shining armor to appear. Fairytales happen every day, in real life, to ordinary women like you, like me. Open your heart, let the magic in, and see how high you can fly.

Believe in the fairytale. You deserve it.

What dreams did you have a little girl? What happened to them? What are your dreams now? Leave a comment and be entered to win a free copy of any of my books (your choice, though not all books are available in all mediums). 

a Rafflecopter giveaway