A Man for Mia

The idea for a story came to me after receiving a rejection letter from a publisher, telling me I needed to make my stories more realistic. So, while I was picking up a yard full of fallen limbs, I thought, "What's happening in my own life that's in any way interesting?"

I came up with nothing. Very typical. Still needing a realistic but engaging plotline, I moved on to other people in my life and hit a major jackpot when I thought of my husband's brother.

Though he's long divorced by now, at the time, my brother-in-law was still trying to keep his marriage afloat until one evening, he received a cryptic phone message from a woman he didn't know, telling him if he really wanted to know what his wife was doing, he'd come to this bar in a town that was, like, five hours away, and he'd find out the truth for himself.

So my brother-in-law hops in his truck, and goes to find out. Long story short, he didn't find his wife that night. But the next evening, I found myself playing lookout girl as my husband helped load our car with stuff Brother-in-law didn't want his wife taking in case things went south. Which they did.

Being a romance writer, I couldn’t exactly put my hero and heroine through that kind of mess, but this is not the first time a sibling of mine or my husband’s had gone through a similar experience. Used the being the SIBLING of a enraged spouse seeking justice, I decided to make my hero that very sibling.

And thus we have…

A MAN FOR MIA. Tentitively coming in April 2011 from BLACK LYON PUBLISHING, A Man for Mia starts out with a delivery of roses, a suspicious wife, and a loaded gun lead Drew Harper to the front door of Mia Stallone.

When Drew Harper catches his sister storming from her house with murder in her eyes, he follows her to 410 South Elm Street, where she suspects her husband's mistress might live.

Who they find in residence is Mia Stallone.

Plagued with survivor’s guilt after the death of her three-month-old daughter, Mia fully believes it’d be a crime to feel happiness again until she meets Drew, a stranger who appears in her yard, asking about the house for sale next door. He ignites a spark of hope in her, and she begins to wonder if living a little won’t kill her after all.

Still curious…cool! You can begin reading it now:

He’d never tried to stop anyone from committing murder before.

It was definitely a nerve-wracking business, Drew Harper realized as he sat tense in the passenger seat of his sister’s six-year old Honda Civic while she blew a four-way stop and careened around a corner, making the tires screech in protest.

He yelped out a curse and clutched the seatbelt strapped over his chest. “What in the world are you doing?”

“I told you not to come,” she muttered, her murderous glare fixed steadily ahead.

“Well, what do you expect me to do,” he retorted. “When I find you storming out the door with a gun in your hand and muttering something about killing a cheating witch?”