Hello, lovelies! It gives me great pleasure today to host Cheryl Holt and her new book, “A Summer Wedding at Cross Creek Inn”! For other stops on her Goddess Fish Promotions Book Tour, please click on the banner above or any of the images in this post.
Be sure to make it to the end of this post to enter to win ONE of TEN autographed printed book copies of the featured book, “A Summer Wedding at Cross Creek Inn,” which is Book One of Cheryl’s fabulous new Book Series, “Cross Creek.” Yep, that’s right!! There will be TEN lucky winners!!! Also, come back daily to interact with Cheryl and to increase your chances of winning!
Thanks for stopping by! Wishing you lots of luck in this fabulous giveaway!
Please note that this giveaway is only open to US residents. Sorry INTL – please check out the other giveaways on this blog!
A Summer Wedding at Cross Creek Inn
by Cheryl Holt
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GENRE: Contemporary Women’s Fiction
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BLURB:
From New York Times bestselling author, Cheryl Holt, comes a sparkling, fast-paced novel about the complexity of family—and all the ways they can drive us crazy.
The lavish Layton-Benjamin wedding promises to be an event to remember, and the groom’s wealthy parents have spared no expense to impress their guests by hosting it at the exclusive Cross Creek Inn, a private mountain retreat tucked away in the heart of the Colorado Rockies. But the bride and groom are from completely different backgrounds, and they’ve only known each other for a few months, so it’s been a ‘hurry-up’ engagement that has everyone worried.
When the groom arrives late and tempers start to flare, it’s clear the wedding is a minefield that has to be carefully navigated. As parents and friends begin taking bets over whether the happy couple will make it to the altar, secrets are revealed, new loves emerge, and true happiness is finally found.
Book your visit to the Cross Creek Inn! A witty, fun summertime story about family, friendship, and finding out what matters most—that only Cheryl Holt could tell.
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An Amazon ‘Top-100’ Bestselling Author…
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EXCERPT ONE:
Jennifer…
“It’s so beautiful here!”
Jennifer Layton spun away from the stunning scenery out the window of her hotel room, and she smiled at her father, Greg.
“I suppose it’s all right,” he replied.
“You suppose?” she asked. “Don’t injure yourself by exhibiting too much enthusiasm.”
She had three siblings, but she’d always been his favorite. It was an open and established family fact about which they all joked. On hearing her remark, he was instantly chastened.
“I’m sorry, peanut. It’s marvelous, and I’m delighted by it too.”
She grinned. “That’s more like it.”
From the minute she’d phoned to tell him she’d gotten engaged and was planning a quick wedding, he’d been slow to exhibit the attitude a girl ought to expect from her only parent. He was a widower and carpenter whose wife died of cancer when his four children were very small. Jennifer had just been eight at the time.
He’d spent his life providing for them as best he could. He was sensible and pragmatic, with strong views about the world and his place in it. He’d never been the type to reach out and grab for more than he’d been given, but he’d wanted more for her and her siblings than he’d ever been able to supply. In that, he’d been very generous.
He’d encouraged her to spread her wings, to go to college and move on to a great future, and she’d done exactly that. She’d fled their home in Portland, Oregon, to attend college in Eugene, then she’d flitted off to sunny, exciting Los Angeles.
In the process, she’d fallen in love with Eric Benjamin. He was disgustingly rich and had grown up in an environment so different from hers that he might have been raised on the moon.
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GUEST POST:
Bring on the boo’s! Everyone loves to hate the villain! Tell us all about this truly loathed character and the inspiration behind their development.
I have been writing novels for twenty-five years, and I’m renowned as the ‘International Queen of Villains’. Depending on your point of view, I write some of the best—or worst—villains in American fiction. In my new novel, A Summer Wedding at Cross Creek Inn, I have a great villain who readers will love to hate, so I decided I should share a few thoughts about how I view villains and how I use them in a story.
When I was first starting out, I would have ‘bad’ people in my books who did bad things to the main characters, but they weren’t as driven as they needed to be. As I got more experienced, they got much better. I made a huge change after a reader once wrote to me after she’d finished one of my books. She pointed out that the ending wasn’t satisfying because she didn’t feel as if my villainess had gotten her just desserts at the end. After the villainess had caused so much havoc for the heroine, her paltry ending was a letdown. After that, I always made sure I pushed my villains to a very tall precipice so they would fall a very long way, and I made sure they had a huge crash at the end.
I also learned to write great villains because, for years, I worked with a New York ‘power’ editor who insisted that my novels build and build to exciting endings, with there being no let-up in the drama or pacing. She wanted a very fast tempo to build on every page so readers would flip through the story like mad without being able to put the book down until they reached the end. She always encouraged me to let my villains ‘fly free’, to let them be just as horrid and infuriating as I could make them, so readers would race to the end to see what happened to the main characters.
I always keep that advice in mind when I’m selecting a villain. They push my stories for me, and they provide an infuriating brick wall that might keep my heroine from achieving her goal.
I’m a very avid reader, and when I read novels, I often find that authors almost seem afraid sometimes to make their villains as wicked as they should be. And they often don’t give them the horrid and perfect endings they deserve. I never have that problem. In my novels, my villains are just as driven at the end as they were at the beginning. They never give up, they never think they’re in the wrong, and from the moment they’re thwarted, they start figuring out ways to get going again.
In my new novel, A Summer Wedding, my villainess is a woman named Crystal. She’s a uber-thin, gorgeous trophy wife who’s married to a famous Hollywood movie producer. She glommed onto him when she was 23 and was trying to break out as a Hollywood movie star. He was married to another character in the book, and his first wife was a sweet, pretty, very nice woman. He dumped her for Crystal—simply because she was younger, beautiful, and very decadent.
She’s a vicious, scheming harpy who has no morals or scruples, and she’s never suffered an ounce of shame or remorse over stealing another woman’s husband. She’s built a life with her much-older, famous husband, where they are an LA power couple, and she feels she’s entitled to every bit of glory, wealth, and power she’s managed to accrue by being shrewd enough to marry him.
During the novel, lots of trouble is starting to wing in her direction. For one of my plot threads, I used a topic from recent LA news stories: Crystal has a spoiled, lazy daughter, and she bribed a college admissions officer to get her into college. That scandal is unraveling and about to crash into her. She’s about to turn forty too, and her husband isn’t interested in having a forty-year-old wife. He’s about to trade her in for a much younger model, but she’s too smugly confident of her place by his side to believe that anything could go wrong in her life.
But of course, everything goes wrong. She spends the entire novel, making mischief, causing trouble, and infuriating characters (and readers alike), and at the end, she has the best ‘just desserts’ ever! I’m always really, really good at making sure the ending fits the crime.
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AUTHOR BIO:
CHERYL HOLT is a New York Times, USA Today, and Amazon “Top 100” bestselling author who has published over fifty novels.
She’s also a lawyer and mom, and at age forty, with two babies at home, she started a new career as a commercial fiction writer. She’d hoped to be a suspense novelist, but couldn’t sell any of her manuscripts, so she ended up taking a detour into romance where she was stunned to discover that she has a knack for writing some of the world’s greatest love stories.
Her books have been released to wide acclaim, and she has won or been nominated for many national awards. She is considered to be one of the masters of the romance genre. For many years, she was hailed as “The Queen of Erotic Romance”, and she’s also revered as “The International Queen of Villains.” She is particularly proud to have been named “Best Storyteller of the Year” by the trade magazine Romantic Times BOOK Reviews.
She lives and writes in Hollywood, California, and she loves to hear from fans. Visit her website at www.cherylholt.com.
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CONNECT WITH CHERYL:
Website:
Email:
cheryl@cherylholt.com
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/officialcherylholt
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/TheCherylHolt
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/cherylholtauthor
BookBub Author Page:
https://www.bookbub.com/authors/cheryl-holt
Goodreads Author Page:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/36853.Cheryl_Holt
Goodreads Book Page:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56693461-a-summer-wedding-at-cross-creek-inn
Amazon Author Page:
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BOOK BUY LINKS:
Amazon US Kindle eBook:
Amazon US Paperback:
Amazon CA Paperback:
https://www.amazon.ca/Summer-Wedding-Cross-Creek-Inn/dp/1637328184
Amazon UK Kindle eBook:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Summer-Wedding-Cross-Creek-Inn-ebook/dp/B08QNMMNJW
Amazon UK Paperback:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Summer-Wedding-Cross-Creek-Inn/dp/1637328184
Barnes and Noble Paperback:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-summer-wedding-at-cross-creek-inn-cheryl-holt/1138477776
The Book Depository Paperback:
https://www.bookdepository.com/Summer-Wedding-at-Cross-Creek-Inn-Cheryl-Holt/9781637328187
BAM! Books-A-Million Paperback:
https://www.booksamillion.com/p/Summer-Wedding-Cross-Creek-Inn/Cheryl-Holt/9781637328187
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GIVEAWAY INFO:
Cheryl will be awarding ONE autographed printed book copy of the featured book, “A Summer Wedding at Cross Creek Inn,” to TEN randomly drawn winners via Rafflecopter during the tour.
a Rafflecopter giveaway**This post contains
affiliate links and if clicked and a purchase is made, I may receive a small
commission to help support this blog.
This does not cost you anything, it just helps pay for all those awesome
giveaways on here**
Cheryl ~ Good morning! Welcome to FAB! It is so great to have you here! I am so glad we were able to make this work out and have you spend today here :) Again, congrats on your new book and good luck on the book tour! :)
ReplyDeleteI liked the excerpt, thank you.
ReplyDeleteThank you for hosting!
ReplyDeleteI like the sound of the book.
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like an enjoyable read. Thanks for sharing the excerpt.
ReplyDelete