Thursday, October 15, 2015

Author Showcase: Rachel Bailey

Please join me in welcome Rachel Bailey to the blog. This is Rachel's first time visiting and she is joining me on an Author Showcase where we get to learn a bit more about her and pimp her latest book. How fun! Since it's Rachel's first time, please give Rachel a warm Deanna's World welcome.

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I love animals - I’m a complete softie for all creatures great and small, and I usually have a pack of animals sharing my house. At the moment it’s four dogs: Dougal, Oliver, Ava, and Billie. My animal pack is a huge part of who I am, so it probably won’t come as a surprise that I manage to sneak some animal characters into my books as often as I can.

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The Finn Factor has a border collie called Harvey who adopts Finn as his human. I modelled Harvey on my border collie Jazzie May who was 13 when she died about a year ago. She was an amazingly smart girl who could smile, and who had all the other dogs sorted out, doing exactly what she wanted them to do (most of them, completely unknowingly!).
In my novella All She Wants For Christmas (that will be in the LoveCats DownUnder box set Hot Christmas Nights), my hero has an Irish Wolfhound called Lochie. He’s based on my mother’s Lochie, who was a small Irish Wolfhound, but who always told us he was big. I gave him his wish in this book.

Then there was Winston the Attackcat who was in Cover Story, based on my own cat, Winston, but also there was a more sedate cat called Winston in Return of The Secret Heir. Annalise in The Summer of Jake had cat called Rover who thought he was a dog – he was lots of fun to write. As you can see, I try to sneak a pet in wherever I can. :-)

So, tell me, who’s the most memorable animal character you’ve read in a book? I love new recommendations and I have a digital copy of The Finn Factor to give away to one commenter, so hit me!

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The Finn Factor
By: Rachel Bailey
Releasing September 28, 2015
Entangled Embrace

Buy Links:  Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iTunes | Kobo | Amazon UK | Amazon Canada


Synopsis


Sometimes all a girl needs is a little practice…

It’s been twelve months, three days, and eleven hours since accounting student Scarlett Logan made it past a second date. A pitcher of mojitos in hand, she employs her supreme graphing skills to narrow things down to one horrifying explanation. Kissing. Clearly someone needs to teach her how to kiss properly. Like, say, her best friend and roomie, Finn Mackenzie. He’s safe, he’s convenient, and yeah, maybe just a little gorgeous.

Finn knows exactly why Scarlett’s boyfriends are disappearing quickly. Him. Not a single guy she’s brought home is nearly good enough. And he’ll be damned if he lets some loser give her “kissing lessons.” No. He’ll do the honors, thank you very much. The moment their lips touch, though, everything turns upside down. But Scarlett deserves the one thing Finn can’t give her. And if he doesn’t put an end to the sexy little shenanigans, he’ll teach Scarlett the hardest lesson of all…heartbreak.

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Excerpt

    “I haven’t forgotten we kissed, obviously, but I can’t remember details, like what the most effective elements were.”
    I shifted in my seat. Every second of that kiss was burned into my memory bank. It seemed that hadn’t been as mutual as I’d suspected. I blew out a breath and focused on being a teacher in the situation, not a man who’d been carried away with his own lesson.
    “I think you’re over-analyzing this. The elements don’t matter on their own. It’s more about the big picture.”
    “Would you say that to your undergrads? Don’t worry about the specifics of the aqueducts, or which emperor came to power in what year. It’s more about the big picture of knowing there was a Roman Empire?”
    “Well, no, but it’s completely different,” I said, looking down the hall and wondering if I could escape the conversation by simply leaving.
    “How?” she persisted. “In both cases, you’re teaching something. So the student needs the topic broken down into bite-size pieces.”
    At the word “bite” all the air left the room. Scarlett must have interpreted my silence to be disbelief because she grabbed a pen and a sheet of paper.
    “Here.” She smoothed it out on the coffee table in front of us. “I’ll graph it for you.”
    That snapped me back. “You’re going to graph our kiss?”
    She drew an X and Y axis, then a line that went up across the page, but not smoothly—there were spikes and bumps along its progress.
    “So, here, for example”—she pointed to a sharp rise in the line—“you did something and the kiss took off. What was it?”
    “Seriously?” She wanted to talk as if it had been a clinical experience?
    “If this had been a kiss for kissing’s sake, then, sure, we could leave it alone. But it was a lesson. How am I supposed to learn if I don’t remember the stimulus that caused the response?”
    “You don’t need to. You were great. There’s nothing more to learn.” Better than great. Her kissing had been phenomenal.
    “Again, if an undergrad wanted to learn more about the Roman Empire than they needed to for the first-year exam, would you tell them they were fine, or would you point them to more resource material?”
    I blinked. “I’m resource material?”
    She threw her hands up in the air, as if she was the one who was exasperated. “You’re the one who offered the lesson in the first place, so yes. You are my resource material on kissing.”
    I looked over at the array of empty beer bottles on the coffee table. “We really need to make it a rule that we don’t talk about kissing after we’ve been drinking.”
    “You’d rather have this conversation stone-cold sober?”
    “I’d rather not have this conversation at all.”
    “Oh.” Her face fell.
    “What?” I asked warily.
    “It’s just occurred to me that although I thought the kiss was good, you might not have enjoyed it at all. That’s why you’re fighting so hard against a follow up lesson.” She scrunched up her nose. “It was awful for you.”
    I rubbed my temples—I was getting a headache trying to keep up with her thought processes and keep us out of dangerous territory.
    “It wasn’t awful.” Amazing would be closer.
    “Then why are you so against a follow-up lesson so I can focus on the bits I’ve forgotten?”
    Something in the way she said “forgotten” made everything inside me rear up and protest. Maybe it was vanity, maybe it was neediness, but whatever it was, I didn’t want to be considered a forgettable kisser. Especially by Scarlett.
    My gaze zeroed in on her mouth as I wrapped an arm around her and tugged her closer, but not quite touching. Her eyes widened and her pink tongue darted out to moisten her lips. I groaned.
    “See if you can forget this,” I said, and lowered my head.



Check out some of these titles by Rachel too



About the author

authorRachel Bailey is a lover of books, chocolate, dogs, and ice cream. Luckily, she has three dogs, an ice cream maker, a steady supply of chocolate, and bookshelves overflowing with books, so she’s covered on all fronts. Her books have hit the USA Today bestseller list, are published in over twenty-six countries and have been translated into sixteen languages.

Author links: Website - Facebook - Twitter - Goodreads - PinterestEmail - Blog








Giveaway
An eBook copy of The Finn Factor.
To enter, simply leave a comment below telling us about your most memorable animal character in a book and Rachel will pick a winner.


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21 comments:

  1. Thank you so much for visiting today Rachel and telling us all about your love of animals, especially your beautiful dogs. I adore Ava. I hope to meet her some day.

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    1. Deanna, Ava would adore you too! She's happy to meet all people, but she especially loves spending time with kindred spirits. I can tell you'd be one of those kindred spirits!

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  2. Thanks so much fir sharing this with us. I too LOVE animals. The Finn Factor sounds great

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    1. Leanna, so good to meet another animal lover! If I won the lotto, I'd buy a huge farm and make an animal sanctuary for all the animals who can't find a home. :)

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    2. Leanne, I think animals add so much to our lives. It's great to love them.

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  3. Hi Rachel and Deanna

    Oh I am so looking forward to this story it is calling to me from my kindle :) and I love animals as well I don't think I could live without them we have a Maremma at the Casper and he is so cheeky :)

    So of course I also love reading stories with animals in them they make often make the story I think or add so much to it and over the years I have read many great ones. Anna Campbell had a wolfhound in her story Untouched and he was the heroes Matthew's dog and he too was a hero I loved him :)

    Have Fun
    Helen

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    1. Helen, Meremmas are so gorgeous! I'm with you - I love reading stories that have animals in them. Funny you should mention Anna Campbell's wolfhound - there's an Irish wolfhound in my Christmas novella in the LoveCats box set called Lochie. I love him! :)

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    2. Oh I am looking forward to that one Rachel

      have fun
      Helen

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    3. Helen, I have it on my Kindle too. So many great books from so many wonderful authors to read. :-)

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  4. My most memorable animal character has to be Wilbur the pig from Charlottes Web. I myself have a fur baby his name is Neil and he is a ginger cat. I would love to have more animals but Neil is a jealous kitty. He is a good watch cat and he begs like a dog, he is a big silly boy. He adores my daughter Madison,he cries when she is gone

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    1. Gloria, I *loved* Wilbur and Charlotte. My year 4 teacher read that book to our class and I was entranced (and traumatized when it ended!).

      Neil sounds like such a character! I wrote a cat called Rover in The Summer of Jake who thought he was a dog. I just love it when animals do things that are more about their personality instead of what we expect a certain animal would do. My dog Oliver cleans his face like a cat - I love it. He might have learned it from the cat we had when Oliver was young or he might have worked it out on his own. Give Neil a rub behind the ears from me!

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    2. Gloria, I adored Charlotte's Web. I cried at the end.

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    3. I still cry like a baby when watching with my daughters. Oliver sounds like such a sweet boy. Someday I hope we can get a dg also, but we don't have a fenced in yard and people never obey the speed limit on our street so it scares me he or she would get out and get hurt

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    4. Gloria, did you see you won this giveaway? Here's the message from Rachel, Gloria, drop me an email to rachel (at) rachelbailey (dot) com and I'll send you a copy of The Finn Factor.

      If you've already seen it, you can disregard my message.

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  5. Rachel, I forgot to mention, I used to have two puppies. They were a Maltese x Pomeranian and a Shih-Tzu x Lhasa Apso. They were both delightful. Unfortunately, we had to give them up for adoption when we moved to the Middle East as it was just too hot a climate to take them to and it would have been terribly unfair on them. It broke my heart.

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    1. Deanna, those breed combinations sound gorgeous! I totally understand you pain - that would have broken my heart as well. :(

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  6. I love animals especially cats. I can't recall at the moment a memorable animal from a book.

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    1. Cats are such funny creatures. I love the cat videos that get posted on Facebook. I've never owned a cat though, only dogs.

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    2. Charilene, I love cats too! I live in some bushland at the moment, so it's not an ideal place to have one. I have to make do with visits to my friends' cats! :)

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  7. Thanks for having me visit, Deanna!

    Gloria, drop me an email to rachel (at) rachelbailey (dot) com and I'll send you a copy of The Finn Factor.

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    1. Hooray for Gloria!. Thank you for stopping by the blog, Rachel.

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