Good morning! Please welcome author Annette Bower to Full Moon Dreaming! She is here today to tell us about her new release, Oranges for Miranda. Annette will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN GC to one randomly drawn commenter via Rafflecopter during the tour. The more you comment, the better your chances of winning. To find the other stops on her tour, go here. Don't forget to look for the Rafflecopter at the end of this post!
Oranges for Miranda
by Annette Bower
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
GENRE: Romance Contemporary
Sweet
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BLURB:
Miranda
Porter, a newly retired award-winning businesswoman, leaves home to transition
into her new life stage. Always in control, this is her time to have fun
without plans and responsibilities. Enter Renato Monteiro, a considerate tour
guide with secrets. Miranda isn’t looking for long-term. She wants a purpose in
her retirement. Could her purpose in retirement be finding love in this unlikely
place? Could her aim be domesticity and caring for and be cared for by a newly
found friend? Will a vacation romance end because of miles?
Renato Monteiro has
decisions to make. Stay in his birth country where his female relatives want
him to marry a woman young enough to give him children. Or does he return to
his second home, where he has a purpose and has built a life without children?
The day Miranda and he bumped heads changed his life and his pursuit. Now he
must decide which is most important the family he was born into or the family
he chooses.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
EXCERPT:
Tucking her oranges into the pocket of her billowy trousers,
she toed off her shoes, removed her socks, and padded down the stairs and onto
the beach. A rock, eroded and pocked from the wind and seas, was the perfect
place to stop. With her toes in the sand and her eyes closed, the scent of salt
and the sound of seabirds engulfed her. A wave lapped cold over her feet.
Miranda lifted an orange to her cheek.
As a shadow blocked the warm sun, her body momentarily
chilled. A deep voice whispered close to her ear, “Por favor, Senhora.”
Her eyes flew open, and she jumped away from the sound. Her
shoes slipped from her hand, and she reached to catch them at the same time the
man did. They bumped heads, but his hands were quicker and larger and rescued
her shoes seconds before the ocean foam of a retreating wave could swallow them
whole.
Miranda didn’t know whether to rub her head, reach for her
shoes, apologize, or sink into the sand in mortification. “I’m sorry,” she
stammered.
“I must apologize to you. My head is so much bigger and
harder. Are you okay? You aren’t dizzy. Come, let’s sit over here on the
rocks.” Long, thick fingers curled around her elbow as she allowed him to guide
her.
When he let go of her arm, he swiped sand away from the
surface of a rock and then motioned her to sit. Her orange. Miranda turned and
saw her orange lying in the sand at the base of the rock she had been leaning
against. She ran back and scooped it up before the next wave would have taken
it out to sea. She tucked it in her pocket along with the other one.
Walking back, she surveyed the man who had scared her,
bumped her head and then shepherded her to safety. Tall, with a large frame and
short-cropped, thick hair graying at the temples. He wore a golf shirt, shorts,
and sandals. He appeared to be a visitor, too. But why had he spoken to her at
all?
“Miranda.” She stretched out her hand.
His hands were hard. “Renato.” The lines around his brown
eyes were crinkled. “Renato Monteiro.”
“Was I in danger?”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Annette
believes home is where her stories percolate. And her home is a condo where she
watches the urban life below, airplanes arrive and depart at the international
airport, and the seasons change on farmland near the horizon. Annette travels
extensively but always returns home to Regina, Saskatchewan. Whether at home or
away, and even though directions are always a challenge, she wanders the
streets, parks, and lanes observing how people live, love, and care for one
another. Your way of sitting, holding hands, the way you tilt your head, or a
t-shirt you wear may end up in one of her stories.
On her first
trip to Olhos de Água, a fishing village in Portugal, she stopped at a café
where the proprietors were a mother and daughter. Annette sat at the outdoor
blue and white tiled table and ordered an espresso and brandy. While the sun
warmed her back, she opened her new notebook. The older woman walked by
carrying a basket, tipped her head toward Annette’s blank page, and shrugged.
When black-laced heeled shoes struck the tile, and the scent of just-picked
clementine oranges interrupted Annette’s writing, the woman plunked three
oranges at the edge of her page. Annette cherishes this gift from one woman to
another. Recently, Annette travels with an accompanying Orange and shares
pictures on Social media as her way of honoring those Portugues women. A
version of this event appears in her new novel, Oranges for Miranda.
During
another trip, while searching for an address in Malaga, Spain, she asked a
well-dressed man carrying a floral paper-wrapped bouquet if he spoke English?
Would he direct her to the address? With impeccable English, he suggested she
walk with him. They chatted, and she discovered he was a lawyer in his final
days of retiring. Finally, she asked to whom he was giving the flowers. He
lifted the cover to reveal a large crucifix. This detail has not appeared in a
story yet.
In a coffee
shop, looking south between glass tower office buildings, she could be anywhere
in the world. However, she is home watching people on Eleventh Avenue run for
buses, bring tea to a panhandler, and holding mittened hands while bending into
the wind.
Annette uses
experiences she gathered as a nurse, town administrator, elected official,
traveller, and member of a large extended family to inform her stories because
writing is her joy.
Annette Bower
is a Soul Mate Publishing author of five contemporary romance novels. Her novel
Fearless Destiny was first runner-up in the 2017 Sweet Contemporary RONE awards
and winner of the Raven Award. Her novel Ponytails and Promises was a finalist
in the 2020 RONE Awards and is the 2020 winner of the Raven Award.
Webpage:
https://annettebower.com/ (Also a sign
up for my monthly newsletter)
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/AnnetteBowerauthor/
Buy Link:
https://www.amazon.com/Oranges-Miranda-Annette-Bower-ebook/dp/B095Z4DF2F
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/BowerAnnette
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thank
you, Julie, for hosting my Goddess Fish Virtual Book Tour.
1. You’re marooned on a small island with one person and
one item of your choice-who is that person and what item do you have?
When
stranded on a small island with one person, I hope a survival expert such as
Bear Grylls or Rocky the Park Ranger is with me and a flat of duct tape.
According to the YouTube Myth Busters video, we can make anything we need from
duct tape, hats, water carry bags, and foot protective coverings etc. This
scenario is my life, and I want to be alive when the rescue boat or plane arrives.
I have many more books I want to write. Julie, thank you for this prompt to
research survival.
2. Which musical would you say best exemplifies your
life—and which character in the musical are you?
The musical Yentl is my life choice. I am Ashkenazi,
the Jewish girl who dresses and lives like a boy to obtain an education. During
her deception, she falls in love but chooses adventure over becoming a wife at
that time. After she arrives in America, I imagine she finds love with a man
who accepts her as the strong, intelligent, independent woman she has become.
3. When you start a new story, do you begin with a
character, or a plot?
I am a pantser. I begin with a character and something
I want to learn.
I always know the end because I write romance, and the
ending is happy. B.U.T. (behold the underlying truth) how the characters arrive
there is the most challenging. I enjoy the beginning when the characters get to
know each other. The middle is hard because I want them to fall in love and be
happy. Of course, there are challenges with past emotional baggage and the
expectations of love in their future together.
4. If they were to make the story of your life into a
movie, who should play you?
I would want Sandra Annette Bullock to play me. She is
the woman with the “girl next door” appeal, but she is so much more than that. Sandra
is not mainstream beautiful. Instead, she appears normal and seems to enjoy
herself and loves what she does. Sandra adopted children to realize her desire
to be a mother. She clarifies that they are her children, not her adopted
children. She is precise.
5. Do you have an historical crush and if so, who is it?
I am
Canadian, and I enjoy reading about Anne of Green Gables, who lived on Prince
Edward Island. Therefore, my historical crush is Lucy Maude Montgomery. Lucy
wrote stories about an orphan girl who needed love and found it in a spinster
and a bachelor. Anne brought love and wonder to their world while they gave her
a home, stability that she hadn’t experienced, and love she could not have
imagined. L. M. Montgomery continues to bring joy to many readers, both young
and old. I want my writing to bring joy to my readers.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
