Hey, lovelies!! It gives me great pleasure today to host Melissa J. Roche and her new book, “Skate Cute,” here on FAB!! 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 a $25 Amazon OR Barnes and Noble Gift Card OR a Digital Copy of the Featured Book!! That’s right – there will be TWO lucky winners!! See below for more details.
Also, come back daily to interact with Melissa and to increase your chances of winning!!
This eBook is on SALE for ONLY $0.99 during the book tour. See below for more details.
Thanks for stopping by!! Wishing you all lots of good luck in this fabulous giveaway!!
Skate Cute
A Sacreola Sweethearts Novel
Book One
by Melissa J. Roche
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GENRE: Contemporary Romance
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BLURB:
Kriss heads home to her small prairie town with 98% of an astrophysics PhD, a load of memories she’d rather not think about, and a survival plan: skate and graduate. Her plan doesn’t include the attention of a familiar admirer from the nearby fire station, one with an impressive physique, a hidden singing talent, and a smile dazzling enough to sweep her off her skates. Before she knows it, she’s falling for him—hard.
Chase has settled into the rhythms of his small-town firefighter routine, but he remembers Kriss from high school: the starry-eyed skater girl on her way out the door of his life. Now she’s back, just as gorgeous as ever, spinning around the next-door rink without a care in the world. Or so he thinks, until Kriss is targeted with mysterious acts of vandalism designed to derail her dreams. Can he help Kriss find the courage to stand up under the attacks and trust herself to love again?
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EXCERPT ONE:
He rounded the first corner at the far end of the field and snuck a glance back toward the rink just in time to watch Kriss’s long ponytail sail out behind her helmet with another tight spin. That one must not have gone quite as planned, because she stumbled a little and lurched sideways. But she recovered gracefully enough with a quick laugh a moment later, as if she enjoyed the thrill of almost wiping out on the concrete.
Yup. Gotta fall to get better. His ass knew as well as anyone else’s, after too many falls on that very same rink, shuffling his own inline skates and hockey stick around one of the goals in his spare time.
Too much of his spare time. But he wasn’t so bad on wheels himself, these days—MVP on the fire department’s informal team, crushing the police department’s lousy attempts at rivalry in the yearly Battle of the Badges tournament.
His high school self would die a thousand deaths before admitting it, but young Chase had taken up street hockey for a very… specific reason. Kriss had been just as badass on her skates all those years ago as a senior at Sacreola High, three years ahead of him. Hot, smart, and senior—and totally out of his league.
She had graduated and moved on without giving him so much as a second glance. But his newfound love for skating had stuck around long enough to turn him into a decent hockey player on the side. No harm done.
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GUEST POST:
Science or Fiction? How Passion Brought My Career Full Circle
Ten-year-old me lay on my back on my water bed staring up at the speckled drop ceiling and dreaming of galaxies far, far away. Someday, I promised, I’ll learn as much about the stars as I possibly can.
What I really wanted was to take my lightsaber to a cantina somewhere and ride off into the double sunset, but, not seeing any such options and being a practical-minded girl, I chose the next best thing: a career as an astrophysicist. Nobody told me I couldn’t, so I went for it.
My passion for astronomy carried me through college and grad school, launching me along research paths toward a bright future. I blithely walked through doors I didn’t realize weren’t open for others, or hadn’t even existed decades before. I wasn’t blind to the challenges of life as a female scientist, but neither did I pay them much mind unless they got in my way.
What I did ignore, however, was that tiny voice inside my head. The one that hadn’t forgotten the original inspiration behind my academic frenzy. The one telling me to put away my targeting computer and focus on my feelings, study the curious urge that had catapulted me on the science track to begin with.
When I finally stopped to listen to that voice, I recognized it—the storyteller inside me.
I have always loved stories. As a child, my bookcases were packed with adventures (again, a treasure trove I didn’t realize wasn’t available to everyone), and my next imaginative journey was always just a few shelves away. My hunger for story is what brought me to the brink of my life decision in the first place, that fateful moment on my bed when I swung toward science without a second thought… forgetting that it was the fiction that had brought me there.
And now I come to the bittersweet moment in my current tale. The moment when my science research future fell through, and I landed, hard, on what was left of my career. Science ditched me, and it sucked. The academic train rattled on without a backward glance, dropping a PhD out the back window as a consolation prize, leaving this newly minted “doctor” in the dust.
But all was not lost. Along came Fiction, chuckling a little at my misfortune, picking me up and dusting me off and taking me home again. Home to a little moisture farm in the desert, where it all began.
You can write again, Fiction promised, and set about showing me how. And so I took my doctorate in one hand and my imagination in the other, and schemed and scribbled my way back into the world of science fiction.
How did I end up writing a contemporary small-town sweet romance? That’s a story for another day. But if you peek between the pages of Skate Cute, you might just find another whimsical astronomer girl chasing her imagination and her dreams, wherever they may take her.
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AUTHOR BIO:
Melissa received her first pair of black-and-hot-pink inline skates in fourth grade, a couple of years before she swore her life to the study of the stars (in a fit of sci-fi inspired passion). Two decades later, she has acquired several larger pairs of skates and an astronomy PhD, both of which tend to slip out from under her at the most inopportune moments. She enjoys skating and singing at the neighborhood rink in her small town in Colorado, where she lives with her husband, two boys, and a cozy lap cat. Only one of which is allowed to read her writing over her shoulder.
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CONNECT WITH MELISSA:
Website:
Website:
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/writerchickphd
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/writerchickphd
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/writerchickphd
YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/c/stargirlskates
TikTok:
https://www.tiktok.com/@skatersings
BookBub Book Page:
https://www.bookbub.com/books/skate-cute-by-melissa-j-roche
Goodreads Author Page:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/22414583.Melissa_J_Roche
Goodreads Book Page:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61061961-skate-cute
Amazon Author Page:
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BOOK BUY LINKS & BOOK SALE INFO:
**The Skate Cute eBook is on SALE for ONLY $0.99 during the book tour!!!**
Amazon US Kindle eBook:
Amazon CA Kindle eBook:
https://www.amazon.ca/Skate-Cute-Melissa-J-Roche-ebook/dp/B09X6GH1LN
Barnes and Noble NOOK eBook:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/skate-cute-melissa-j-roche/1141323914
Google Play eBook:
https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Melissa_J_Roche_Skate_Cute?id=KgZ2EAAAQBAJ
Kobo US eBook:
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/skate-cute
Kobo CA eBook:
https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/ebook/skate-cute
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GIVEAWAY INFO:
Melissa will be awarding a $25 Amazon OR Barnes and Noble Gift Card (Winner’s Choice) to ONE lucky winner. Plus, a SECOND lucky winner will receive a digital copy of the featured book, “Skate Cute.” Therefore, there will be TWO total prize winners randomly selected via Rafflecopter during the tour.**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 fabulous community outreach projects and awesome giveaways on here**
This contest is sponsored by a third party. Fabulous and Brunette is a registered host of Goddess Fish Promotions. Prizes are given away by the sponsors and not Fabulous and Brunette. The featured author and Goddess Fish Promotions are solely responsible for the giveaway prize.
That would be tough going through all of that schooling to have that happen to you.
ReplyDeleteIt was... I was grateful to have some fallback plans, but I know others aren't so lucky. And a new grant has even given me the chance to do some science again these days, so I'm grateful to be circling back to it even now! But writing has stolen a huge chunk of my heart in the meantime.
DeleteWhat a fun title and cover and title - love it!
ReplyDeleteThank you!
DeleteSkate Cute sounds like a fun, flirty, and fabulous book to read on a hot summer day.
DeleteNancy
allibrary (at) aol (dot) com
Thank you Nancy! Today's certainly hot enough for it over here...
DeleteThank you for sharing your guest post and book details, I have enjoyed reading about you and your work and I am looking forward to reading Skate Cute. Given the cute cover and premise of the story I have to ask, do you roller skate, ice skate, roller blade or all of the above?
ReplyDeleteThanks so much Bea! I'm mostly on wheels, and mostly rollerblades with some roller skating on "quads". If you're interested, I've got fun videos of my skating on my YouTube channel, StargirlSkates: https://www.youtube.com/c/StargirlSkates
DeleteCan’t wait to read it!
ReplyDeleteThank you!!
DeleteThanks Sherry!
ReplyDeleteThanks Debbie!
ReplyDeleteGreat question! If it's a between-book slump, I usually work on other forms of writing (essays, poetry, writing make-believe with my children) until I'm ready to write a book again. If it's a mid-book slump, I've found a few tricks for getting started again: 1) I re-read what I've written already, to get "back in the groove" or 2) I check the scene(s) I'm writing to make sure I'm writing them in the right POV, and sometimes have to switch into the opposite character's head to make the scene "click", and 3) I change situation, get outside, go skating or exercise, whatever I need to clear my head again.
ReplyDelete