Laura Writes

Laura Writes

The official blog and website of author Laura Castoro (aka Laura Parker)

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COUGAR TALES: Something for those Summer Vacations, or Staycations!

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MY NEWEST RELEASE!


Cougar Tales by Laura Castoro, Sandra Kitt, and Evelyn Palfrey

Contemporary romantic anthology!

Available now in Kindle download.

Coming soon in paperback!

I have to admit right off the bat:  I hate the title of the anthology.  That said, the concept is selling well — on TV, in the movies, and in bookstores.  Cougars are said to older women who date younger men– sometimes as little as 3-4 years younger.   This predatory approach seems misogynistic.  As if the guys need to be careful or they”ll be devoured by all that mature female passion!

Personally, I have to wonder about any man over 25 who can’t hold his own with a  grown woman of any age.  I mean, as in maturity level.  American males, stand up for yourselves!  This approach makes them sound dumb as the so-called empty-headed bimbo class of certain younger women.  So what does that equal: boy-bos, guybos, jimbos?  Pleeeez!

However, everyone who likes a good romance will enjoy our stories.  PROMISE

Well, if you’ve read me before you know I can’t just do a straight take on anything.  I have to add my twist. My heroine is 40 and about to become an grandmother.  The psychological divide of that rite of passage is broader than the 5-8 years that separate her from my hero (He never admits to their age difference because it doesn’t matter to him.)

Let me say now that if you read any reviews or blurbs at Amazon — so far — you should know that there in NOT a 30-something year difference between my characters!!!  I’ve written everyone to complain but, so far, no changes.

I’m happy to add that my companion authors also took the approach of who would want to write about a man who didn’t know what he was doing in dating a woman who happens to have a birthday older than his?  Our leading men know a thing or two about life and how to live it, regardless of that anyone else thinks.  Love is love, and it’s precious enough to hold on to when you find it.

So, rather than just give you a review, I’m going to do a Chapter Excerpt!

STORMY WEATHER by Laura Castoro

Chapter One

The moment her car left the blacktop, all Beverly Freeman could think about was that she was going to miss the birth of her first grandchild.

“Ma’am? Ma’am!”

Beverly opened her eyes. At least she thought her eyes were open. She couldn’t see a thing. What was going on? Where was she? She felt strangely suspended, floating. Was this a dream? No! Something had happened! Something she would begin to remember in a moment.

“Are you hurt, ma’am?” It was a man’s voice, carrying the command that she answer.

“I—I don’t…” The darkness about her exploded in light and then thunderous sound that vibrated her world. Adrenalin shot through her system. She whipped her head in the direction of the stranger’s shout. “Where are you? I can’t see!”

“Okay, hold on.”

She heard some scuffling, as if someone was scraping shoes over gravel, and then another bright flash of lightning lit the space around her. That’s when she realized something was covering her face. For the first time, panic edged into her thoughts. “Help! I’m stuck!”

“It’s okay, ma’am. I’m right here.” His voice was much closer. “I’m going to touch you. Okay?”

Confused, Beverly drew back instinctively from the idea of a strange man touching her. “Why do you need to touch me?”

She heard his quick grunt of amusement. “I need to move the air bag away from your face. Okay?”

Air bag? Why would there be an air bag over her face?

As he tugged the fabric away a bright halo of lightning stabbed her eyes. It took a second for her vision to adjust before she noticed the face of her rescuer. It was a very nice face, brown like hers, but something about him was very wrong.

She squinted at him. “Why are you upside down?”

His smile was as gentle as his touch had been. “It’s not me who’s upside down, ma’am.”

“What?”

His smile should have reassured her but it didn’t. It made no more sense than her situation, which wouldn’t come right in her mind.

“Can you remember what happened?”

“I was… flying.” The words surprised her even as she said them.

He nodded a little. “You’ve been in a car accident.”

“Accident!” It all came back to her in a flood of detailed memories.

Cliff, her son-in-law, had called at the crack of dawn to say that Angelique’s labor had begun. Angelique was terrified of pain, had been since a child. Not even having her husband by her side was going to keep her calm for long.

Prepared for the ‘baby’s coming’ call Beverly had grabbed her already-packed travel bag and not even bothered to check the weather until she was on the road. She wasn’t particularly concerned when her iPhone pinged an alert concerning a major storm system moving in from the Gulf. Thunderstorms were a regular part of spring weather in Arkansas and Louisiana. A little rain wasn’t going to keep her from the birth of her first grandchild.

The only portion of trip she was the least bit concerned about was the stretch where she had to leave the Interstate highway. The state roadway she took as a shortcut through southern Arkansas narrowed to a two-lane blacktop without shoulders as it snaked through piney woods. But with a little luck she would reach the next Interstate before the rain struck.

Beverly sipped Chai tea from her thermos and willed herself to relax. She had plenty of time to get there. Birthing took time for women in her family. Angelique, her only child, had been a nineteen-hour long labor. She had made this four-hour trip from Little Rock to Shreveport often since Angelique and Cliff relocated there six months ago. Bless her, Angelique needed help selecting everything from an apartment to curtains, and leaving her to unpack a household in her pregnant state just wouldn’t do.

“She should have stayed in Little Rock until after the baby was born,” Beverly murmured under her breath, and not for the first time. That’s what everyone said. But who could really argue with a first-time mother who wanted to be with her husband, even if his relocation had come at a bad time for the young couple?

Everybody’s mama! That’s what Denise, Beverly’s business partner in their medical billing service Med-Cap, called her. Denise like to rag on her about the fact that anytime family members or friends were feeling needy or neglected or wanted kindhearted yet practical advice, they turned to Beverly.

“Damn! Even strangers come to you for help,” Denise had said just the day before after Beverly had given directions to a motorist. “

Maybe so. But somebody had to be in charge. In business Denise deferred to her. So today, she was doing what she had always gone, making it happen for her baby girl.

Beverly glanced at the large diamond ring on her right ring finger. That stone, in a different setting of her own design, was the only reminder of a marriage she had left two decades ago, at age twenty. No need to throw out the baby with the bathwater went the old saying. So she’d kept the good things, Angelique and the diamond. That’s what she’d always done in her life. If being a single working parent meant she had been too busy to take seriously a relationship with a man, that’s how it was.

After Angelique and Cliff and the new baby were settled then she’d think about her personal life again. Though, Lord Jesus! How Angelique was going to cope alone with a brand-new baby didn’t bear thinking about. The girl was book smart and good-hearted, but she didn’t seem to have a common sense bone in her body. She would need lots of help with a new baby. So, Beverly would get a life as soon as she found the time.

When she reached that dicey stretch of back road, the first jittery flashes of lightning brightened the edges of thick purple clouds swallowing the once bright sky. Even so, she made a quick call, to reassure her daughter that she was on the way,

“Now you just have to pace yourself, Angelique. Remember your birthing class instructions. Babies come in their own time. You have to have patience and take each pain as it comes.”

All at once, straight-line winds began shoving her car like a linebacker trying to break through. She had thought she had time. Time had just run out.

“I got to go now. You and Cliff just concentrate on having that baby. Love you. Bye!”

Not wanting to worry Angelique, she didn’t mention the wind, or the approaching storm. Gripping the wheel, she cast an eye upwards. It didn’t look encouraging. A thick wedge of a wall cloud had swooped low, catching its raggedy edges in the treetops. By the time her gaze dropped back to the road a solid sheet of rain had drowned out the ribbon of blacktop ahead.

A frighteningly close burst of chrome-white lightning lit up the gloom a split second before an earsplitting crack of thunder lifted her in her seatbelt. One moment it was daylight, the next her car was enveloped in a downpour that came so thick and fast the windshield wipers couldn’t clear her view of the road.

Instinct urged her to pull over. But she was an experienced driver who knew that it was more dangerous to pull off into God-only-knew what kind of ditch or risk being rear-ended by a rain-blinded driver. Slowing to a near crawl, she clutched the wheel until her knuckles hurt, and began to pray

She thought she was alone on the road. Then the enormous cab of an eighteen-wheeler in the opposite lane came roaring over the top of a slight rise, its high beans piercing the curtain of rain.

Gritting her teeth in horror, Beverly watched as the cab veneered off the blacktop on the opposite side, its tires churning up great clods of mud and water. Despite the pounding rain she heard the hydraulic roar as the driver slammed on his brakes. Resisting those brakes, the heavy trailer it hauled jackknifed behind the cab, swung across the highway and into Beverly’s lane. The momentum of the entire truck sent it skidding straight at her.

She didn’t have time to do anything but brake and jerk her wheel to the right.

The moment her car’s tires lost traction, she knew she was in serious trouble. She felt the car leave the slick road, rising for an instant toward the angry gray sky, and finally she was tumbling and jerking and–.

“Dear Lord!”

“Ma’am!” Someone was shaking her shoulder, and not gently. “Ma’am, stay with me!”

Surprised again by the sound of a man’s voice so close to her, Beverly swung her head toward him. This time she could see clearly the face only inches from her own. It was wet with rain and marred by streaks of red mud, and still upside down. No! She was upside down. “My car!”

He nodded. “You’ve been in an accident.”

“Yes.” She swallowed. She remembered that. Now.

The hair lifted on her arms, a second before lightning forked down around the car. “Oh, my lord!” escaped her in a whisper.

“Take it easy.” The man reached out and touched her arm more gently this time. “You’re doing fine.”

No, she wasn’t! She was stuck inside her overturned vehicle, the one she had just made the last payment on. This car was supposed to last her another four years if she took good care of it. Now it was lying in a ditch like an overturned turtle. But that wasn’t her fault.

With sudden suspicion, she turned her head back toward the stranger. “You ran me off the road!”

“No, ma’am. The eighteen-wheeler that did is piled up about a quarter of a mile down the road.” She watched his expression dim for an instant, as if he was remembering something terrible, but the dark emotion was quickly gone. “I didn’t know e another car was involved until I saw your headlights off in the —.”

A deafening clap thunder cut him off.

Beverly felt the car tremble in response. She could have died, just like that! Through no fault of her own!

A rush of anger poured through her, willing away any concern for her own safety. She had other more important things to think about. More important than her car or herself. She needed to get to Shreveport. Angelique would be worried if she were late.

She tried to free herself from her seatbelt but couldn’t. Her left arm was still trapped by her side. Anger warred with a returning fright as she began twisting frantically in her seat. “What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I move?”

The man scooted closer by crawling on his elbows. “Now take it easy, ma–. What’s your name?”

She took a deep breath, trying to will away a helplessness she’d seldom known. “Beverly Freeman.”

“Can you look at me, Beverly?”

Slowly she turned at looked at him, really looked. He was sprawled on his belly, his legs stretched out behind him through her broken passenger side window. He was young, and looked big and solid. Just the kind of man one would want around in an emergency. Even his eyes, a golden amber in a darker face, seemed to glow with confidence.

When he took her free hand, she felt proof of reliability in his touch. “My name’s Will, Beverly. I’m going to get you out of here safely. Promise. But you’ve got to help me, too. Can you do that, Beverly?”…

Hope you’re hooked!

The Chicken Caper! Win a Prize!

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Every story has a theme, a conflict, an emotional tone, plot crisis, and denouement (day nom-ma, for those who - like me — learned the wrong pronunciation in elementary school and pronounced it Dee-now-ment for years!) Quelle  embarrassment!

Stories have all these parts that can be teased out of nearly every plot.  Critics love to discover them so they can dissect them.  But I’ve discovered that, as a writer who writes by the seat of her jeans, something else keeps creeping into my story lines, something unexpectedly and seemingly unconnected to the plot as I envisioned it. I’m talking about those little secondary actions need a name.  I’ve decided to call them — since I have to call them something in order to talk about them — Backstreet Capers: no, not the little round green things packed in brine and vinegar one serves with lox and bagels.  A Caper, as in a frivolous escapade or prank, is  one of those little teaser story lines that seem to have nothing to do with the book’s plot and are often played for laughs.

Where do they come from, these Backstreet Capers?  I don’t know.  Blame Da Muse!  But they do arise naturally from my sometimes fertile, sometimes funky brain.

Shakespeare was a master at this.  Duh!  Did the man invent every literary device, or at least do it best? It would seem the answer is self evident.  Even his most dramatic and tragic tragedies have elements of slapstick humor in them.  Release the pressure so audience can breathe and thus regain it’s equilibrium so that when the next blow comes — socko!

Everything from mysteries to suspense to horrors use this story manipulation.  But for mainstream fiction, dare I call it women’s fiction,

There was the  ever-evolving persona of Currin MacAdoo  in A NEW LU.

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From Red-headed Iowan

to Goth gothic-boy


dreadlockTo Rastafarian  ( Don’t know why it’s pink.   and I can’t seem to fix it!)


,

Currin was a work in progress.


Next up on my caper list is ICING ON THE CAKE.

There the caper involved a dying, shimmy-like-my-sister-Kate Bread Dough Mixer named Shorty!  bread-mixer2

How does Shorty make Liz a star?  Read the the book.

There’s  another caper element involving my main character’s sense of smell.  To say she tracks her man like a bloodhound might be over the top. nose2_1002But my Liz is something else.  Tantric sex, anyone?

Which brings me to the subject of this blog.  There a CHICKEN CAPER In LOVE ON THE LINE


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STARTNG TODAY I’m initiating the first ever  CHICKEN CAPER CONTEST!!!

The winner will be chosen by lottery from all the correct answers.  So, if you haven’t had a chance to read LOVE ON THE LINE, pick up a copy — buy, borrow, but don’t steal — zip on through it, and discover the answer to:

THE QUESTION::

How do chickens fit into the DENOUMENT OF LOVE ON THE LINE?

I will announce the winner in exactly two weeks:  June 27th.  Good luck!

(Oh, you want to know what the prize is?  Keep reading the blog!)

Why I Write.

This picture was sent to me today.  It so perfectly captures the joy of reading that it prompted this entry.

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I know that most of you have tucked away somewhere a similar picture, or at least a memory, of reading stories in bed. There are three distinct times that come to mind for me.

  • Reading was the reward before the dreaded nap time.  Many children think of napping as the worst punishment ever invented.  I was one of those.  I’m notorious as the child (4 yr) who left preschool by the side gate one day after recess.  I’m told my explanation was that I’d discovered that there was a mandatory nap time afterwards.  This was day 2 or 3 of my first week.  So, I left and walked home, a remarkable feat for a child who lived blocks away.  My parents were so astonished, and concerned, that I was not made to return.  VICTORY for the child who would rather have been relegated to reading quietly in bed for an hour at home than lying on a blanket in the semi-dark listening to other kids snore.  It didn’t matter that I wasn’t reading old enough to conquer the text of even a Golden Book.  I knew the stories by heart because my parents read to me from the beginning.
  • Reading was part of going to bed.  My dad was a dentist.  He worked six days a week.  Thursday afternoon was his time off.  Once a month he packed up his dental equipment and drove south to a tiny rural community and set up shop in a generous person’s living room to provide dental share for the neighbors, mostly sharecroppers.  He charged $3 to pull a tooth.  $5 for a filling.  But sometimes, on Sundays especially, he was paid in greens and turnips, squirrel stew, and whatever else seemed fitting barter.   Many years later, my mother said Dad was involved in so many civic things — church council, NAACP/Civil Rights, Boy Scouts, National Medical-Dental Association — that sometimes early in their marriage she felt neglected.  Then an older woman told her that she needed to get busy with her own life in order to be happy.  Boy, was she ahead of the women’s lib movement!  WHAT HAS THIS GOT TO DO WITH READING?  Mom read to us at nap time, before we were old enough to go to school.  Dad often read to my brothers and me at night.   He didn’t like to read the same book more than once — he did anyway.  Later he listened to first me and then my brothers struggle through our own learning-to-read bedtime stories.  Honestly, that often seemed like another homework assignment instead of a pleasure.   Fathers give us life.  Daddys help us grow up. 
  • Reading turned boredom into Dream Time.  By the time was I ten, I had a book in hand all the time.  I read to keep from being lonely when no one was around to play.   I read to fill in the time after I had completed an assignment in class and had to wait for the last person to finish.  As a teen I read in bed at night to keep from having to fall asleep.  I couldn’t play the radio without getting caught but reading seldom snagged my mother’s attention after midnight.  With my head in a book, I did mental walkabouts: Wikipedia explains that rite of passage for adolescence this way,”Australian Aborigines would undergo a journey during adolescence and live in the wilderness for a period as long as six months.[1] In this practice they would trace the paths, or “songlines“, that their people’s ceremonial ancestors took, and imitate, in a fashion, their heroic deeds.” THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT READING DID FOR ME!  In book after book, though I didn’t realize it at the time, I was tracing the path, through stories, of the cultural history of our human ancestors, learning the different ways of living and thinking of long ago, or even a Nancy Drew, and stocking up on heroic deeds of everyone from Robin Hood to James Baldwin to Peter Rabbit.

My husband’s childhood experience with books was much the same.  A fan of The Black Stallion, he’s still a sucker for a good animal story, really anything related to science.  Together we reared a daughter and two sons who hid comics in their algebra texts in class, and read fantasy and astronomy and horse anatomy books for fun.  They still read “for fun.”

As a writer I recreate and revamp from my own fertile imagination those stories I began stocking away from the cradle.  I didn’t know that once day I would want to write my own.  But when I did start, it felt like coming home, completing the circle.  Everything from the way I view the world, my language skills, my understanding of what and how things are still come from reading.  And I’m constantly revising, editing, adding to my knowledge of, well, everything.  Writing allows me to express what’s on my mind.  

Thanks to nap time, bedtime, and boredom, there’s a lot!

GUEST BLOGGING at Romance Book Club

I’m doing a little moonlighting again. This time I’m the guest blogger for THE ROMANCE BOOK CLUB BLOG THIS WEEK. 

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My blog is titled: “THE MODERN AMERICAN HEROINE IS AGING GRACEFULLY– AT LAST.”

          

It’s a writing tip blog about creating entertaining and fascinating female characters who are past 40, some waaaay past!  I think you will enjoy it and, if you are are writer, pick up some useful tips.  Here’s an excerpt:

In today’s fiction my main character is certain to be female and forty plus, sometimes decades plus, yet she will still be a vital, smart, sensually attractive, HARD-WORKING fully-alive human being. Fiction has caught up with a Baby Boomer truth: Life doesn’t end at forty or fifty. It doesn’t even slow down…” 

For the full text go to:  The modern American heroine is aging gracefully — at last by LauraCastoro - Guest Blogs - The Roma.

EVEN BETTER!!  Here’s your chance to win a prize from me.  Just leave a comment! Yes, you could win a special one-time only offering of… Hah!  YOU DIDN’T THINK I’D JUST TELL YOU.  Drop by, enter, and see for yourself.The more creative the better!  And soon. I have to make a choice! Go here and leave a comment to win:  http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=85660129225&h=DY8ui&u=Gl79d&ref=nf

 


Go by and possibly win something!  Better than old socks!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 

Times Square a PEDESTRIAN MALL!?!?!?

What will they think of next?  Sound-proof subway corridors?   I hadn’t heard about this idea.  But here’s the proof in pictures from the New York Times article.

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“A day after the stretch of Broadway was closed to cars, the soul of Times Square remains intact, writes Nicolai Ouroussoff, The Times’s architecture critic. The new pedestrian mall is not a cataclysmic shift in New York’s identity, he writes.”  Quoted from New York Times article

broadway-after

Ginuwine and Me!

Just when things slow down a moment, I’ve been running so I’m behind on the blogging…again.  Something comes along to make me smile.

        


More Off Site Literary Events with
Pyramid Art, Books & Custom Framing!
        

Join Us!
Saturday, June 6 & Sunday June 7

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Pyramid will be hosting signings with all authors below!
Click banner above or book cover or for full event schedule and ticket information!  

 

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                Patrick & Gina Neely              Laura Castoro                     Kevin Roberts                 Dr. Ian Smith
           Down Home with The Neelys         Love On The Line                 Cooking with Passion        The Four Day Diet
                         $27.95(HB)                                $13.99(PB)                          $16.95(PB)                         $24.95(HB)
 
        

Great Gifts For Father’s Day
& Cooking Enthusiasts!!!

    

        

Signed Copies Available!
Email today to reserve yours!!!
hearnefineart87@aol.com or pyramid@aristotle.net

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

Are you still reading to figure out where Ginuwine comes into this?  Here it is.

Notice a familar face in the group?   And I mean, CeCe Winans and Bill Bellamy, too!  I’m excited.  Well,  as excited as a celebrity guest should be.  Oh heck, I’m thrilled!  For more info click here: 2009 Sisterhood Outreach Summit and Showcase

The Arkansas Times and l!

One never knows who is listening, even in public.  Suddenly, I’m newsworthy!

Arkansas Times

I’ve been mentioned in columns in the Arkansas Times’ past two issues.   I didn’t know about either time until #1.  Someone wrote to say they were really sorry they missed my A LITTLE MORE SEX workshop at the Arkansas Literary Festival, especially  after they read about how steamy it was in THE OBSERVER column for April 23, 2009

 Excerpt from full article:  The Observer

“…The Literary Festival was pretty high-brow and all, but Sunday’s session on sex was unique. In a Clinton School classroom in the Arkansas Studies Institute, a rapt group listened to the author (Laura Castoro) read steamy sex scenes from various romance novels and discuss why they were good. She didn’t flinch, and neither did her audience, as she related tales of funny sex, tantric sex, sad sex, and sexy sex…

 

So I’m a little notorious!  Goodie.  For those who are interested: I was reading the tantric sex scene from ICING ON THE CAKE.  

icing-on-the-cake1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

#2:  John Brummett, a political columnist wrote about me, too, in his May 7th column.  We were both speakers at the Books In Bloom Author Party in Eureka Springs, May 3.  His Column is titled: Opinion and truth

In part, it says:  ”…They’ve haven’t landed so many big literary fish this time. That’s not to say they’re without gems. Laura Parker Castoro of Pine Bluff, writer of what she terms “women’s fiction,” gives a presentation and reading in which she impresses for her grasp of nuance and subtlety. ..”

It’s nice to be noticed.

So, if anyone is looking for a speaker, workshop person, or just wants to know about writing sex scenes, let me hear from you.  Nicely!

ICING ON THE CAKE & “A Matter Of Loaf And Death”

BOOK ALERT!:  ICING ON THE CAKE

icing-on-the-cake

 

 

My previous book, ICING ON THE CAKE, is still available wherever books are sold.

 

ICING ON THE CAKE is also available as an eBook 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was reminded to remind you when I ran across a new WALLACE AND GROMIT I’d not see before.  I don’t think it’s been released in the U.S. but, as with all things these days, it’s on line.  Instead of induling Wallace’s adiction to Wellesdale Cheese, this time Wallace and Gromit are running a bakery.  The video is called A Matter of Loaf and Death.  

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Naturally, the story of bakers made me think of the midlife baker protagonist in ICING ON THE CAKE.  Her name is LIZ TALBOT.  While her bakery adventures are different from W &G — she’s not being stalked by a manical rival baker — she does find herself in hot water (and even steamier love scenes) with the local Nabisco rep!  He’s described as looking like The Rock’s Dad, or at least his older brother.

dwayne-johnson

 

 

 

 

Are you getting the visual?  Enough said.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ICING is very entertaining, if I do say so.  But don’t take my word for it.

 Tired of advertising and even more so of her spouse Ted, Liz Talbot returns to her Jersey Girl roots when her grandparents move to Phoenix leaving her the Bagel Emporium in Upper Montclair as always supportive Ted ditched his now physically laboring spouse for Brandi, a younger yuppie model. Meanwhile after five years of baking with carbs in spite of the bakery¿s public enemy number one Atkins and other diet fads, her enterprise is in financial trouble. Ted proves much more supportive in death than in life as Mr. Ad Agency accidentally dies, but never changed his will from Talbot wife one to Talbot wife two. Thus Liz owns a failing ad agency to go along with her failing bakery while the outraged widow two files lawsuits faster than bagels can be made with the substance of the middle of a bagel. Thus she owns two businesses going under while also caring as the sandwich generation for her twin daughters and her mom. Liz obtains a respite when she meets an attractive hunk at a wedding, but soon marks him as off limits after she slept with him since he is food consultant Marcus James, who could make or break her beloved bakery and might assume her guilty of using him. — Poking jabs at America¿s diet flavor of the month, ICING ON THE CAKE is a delightful middle age chick lit romance starring a wonderful bread maker whose first person perspective is amusing yet poignant as she observes the chaos that revolves around her threatening to engulf her like a black hole. Liz makes the tale as she struggles with her two businesses, her relatives, her late ex husband’s widow, and her heart with the ICING ON THE CAKE being the cat fight. — Harriet Klausner

Fair warning: I’ve been told by fans that my book makes readers long for fresh hot something from the oven!  

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You might want to stop by your favorite bakery after you buy the book so when you get home you can curl up and enjoy a double treat!

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY

A cheery HAPPY MOTHERS’ DAY greeting from Me all my fictional mothers:

Thea Morgan ThorntonCROSSING THE LINE, LOVE ON THE LINE  

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Selma Broussard Yoruba – LOVE ON THE LINE 

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Liz TalbotICING ON THE CAKE

Sally Blake ICING ON THE CAKE eBOOK!

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Lu NicholsA NEW LU

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Japonica Fortnom MISCHIEF

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Kathleen GeraldineTEMPEST

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Lady Cymbeline Bannock MY OWN TRUE LOVE

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Gwyneth Valois Bertram EMERALD AND SAPPHIRE

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Off Site Literary Events with Pyramid Art, Books, and Custom Framing

I’m really racking up the miles these days, saying YES to every appearance oppportunity.  So, if you check my schedule of events regularly you may see me somewhere you are.  Next Up:

Off Site Literary Events with
Pyramid Art, Books & Custom Framing!

Ma’Dear, Momma, & Me Mother’s Day Event

Saturday, May 9, 2009 

Metroplex Event Center

I-450 & Colonel Glenn Road

Little Rock, AR

501.372.5824 

11:00 a.m. to 4 p.m. Schedule of Events

Literary Hour & Workshop with
Laura Castoro
    11:00 AM - 12:00 PM    

*Castoro will be signing until 2:00 PM

 

Laura Castoro is a best-selling author with thirty-eight  books published in the U.S..  Her work has also been published in fourteen  foreign languages, including among others German, French, Italian, Russian, Icelandic, Hungarian, Chinese and Japanese.  Her most recent works include Love On The Line  and a re-issue of Rose Of The Mists. Laura is a much sought-after lecturer on topics related to the craft of writing and the demands of getting published.  She also appears as a guest or featured speaker at numerous other types of programs and meetings throughout the U.S.  She teaches creative writing classes, as well as one- and two-day commercial fiction and marketing workshops.

dianne smith

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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