It’s Almost Here! New Release and a Giveaway

 

Hello everyone, Winnie Griggs here. I’m so excited - the release day for Her Amish Springtime Miracle, the second book in my Hope’s Haven series, releases on Tuesday May 24th.

Her Amish Springtime Miracle features Hannah, the youngest of the three Eicher sisters, as the heroine. When I developed her character I looked to her biblical namesake. Hannah Eicher is a young Amish woman who has learns from her doctor that she will likely never be able to bear children. When an infant girl is abandoned in her family’s barn with a note pleading with Hannah to raise her, Hannah knows it’s an answered prayer. Now, a year later, Hannah is on the cusp of finalizing her adoption of baby Grace.

The hero, Mike is an paramedic with unwanted ties to the Amish. His parents were Amish but when he was a young child his mother died and his father left with bitter feelings toward  the community and embraced a more worldly lifestyle. This meant Mike was raised in the English world from age seven so for all intents and purposes he is an Englischer. But now he has to go back to his childhood community to find a lost-to-him nephew, the last member of his English family.

Both Hannah and Mike are seeking to build family ties in an unconventional manner but this commonality is only one of the things that draw them together. Their differences, though, are more profound. Because neither is ready to set aside the lifestyle and beliefs of the world they inhabit.

When I first conceived this story I never imagined the difficulty I would have in writing the final third of the book (It would have helped if I was more of a plotter and less of a pantser ). Trying to give Hannah and Mike their HEA when they had so much to overcome was definitely not easy. I did eventually manage to resolve this in an organic and believable manner (I hope!)

Here’s an excerpt (slightly modified for space and to remove spoilers). For context, Hannah is a baker and Mike, who's trying to get back in her good graces after they find themselves at odds over somehing, has offered to help her with one of her orders

 

Mike turned to Hannah. “What can I do?”

She waved dismissively. “There’s no need for you—”

He raised a brow. “Don’t you think I can be of any use?”

Hannah didn’t answer for a moment, and he wondered if this would be one of her stubborn moments. Then she nodded. “All right.” She retrieved a roll of parchment paper and stack of sheet pans. She set the pans down and handed him the roll of parchment paper. “You can line each of these pans, edge-to-edge, while I prepare the work surface.”

“Starting me off with the hard jobs I see.”

That earned him a grin.

While he worked on lining the cookie sheets, she cleaned and dried the table. Then she grabbed a canister of flour and dusted her work area.

A few minutes later he’d finished his task. “All done. What’s next?”

Hannah tilted her head and met his gaze. “You’re sure you want to keep going?”

“I am.”

She gave him a mock-warning look. “Don’t say I didn’t give you an out.”

Good, she was relaxing.

“If you’ll get two discs of cookie dough from the refrigerator, I’ll get the rolling pins.”

Once that was done, Hannah went into instructor mode. “We need to roll out this dough to a uniform thickness of about a quarter inch.” She demonstrated. “If the dough begins to stick, you can sprinkle on more flour.”

He enjoyed watching her when she was in her element, confident and relaxed. Standing side by side as they worked was nice too. Was she even aware that she hummed softly when she worked?

“How’s this?” he asked when he had it rolled out.

Her mouth scrunched to one side as she focused on his dough. “The center seems a little thicker than the edge. Otherwise I think it’s ready.”

Mike studied his dough critically, then rolled gently from the center out.

This time Hannah nodded and gave him an approving smile. “You’re doing so much better than I did on my first attempt.”

“Why, thank you. I have a good teacher.”

“Of course, I was six my first time.”

That surprised a chuckle out of him, and he saw an answering grin on her face. Promising. “So what’s next?”

She checked her ever-present notebook. “These are for a graduation party and I’ll use three different shapes” She retrieved the appropriate cookie cutters and handed him one. “You can work on the rectangles.”

Did she know she had a smudge of flour on her cheek? Even though he thought she looked absolutely adorable, he couldn’t resist reaching up to brush it away.

As soon as his hand touched her face, sensations jolted through him with the force of a flashover—sudden, overwhelming, undeniable.

She felt it too. He could see it in the way her eyes widened and darkened, in the sound of her breath catching in her throat. For that moment in time everything shifted.

They weren’t rivals any longer.

They weren’t Amish and English.

They weren’t Ohioan and Missourian.

They were just a man and a woman.

I hope you enjoyed this sneak peak into my plotting process (or lack thereof) and my story. Leave a comment with your thoughts to be entered in a drawing for a copy of Her Amish Springtime Miracle.

HER AMISH SPRINGTIME MIRACLE

An orphaned baby brings together an unlikely couple who learn the true meaning of family

When Hannah Eicher discovered sweet baby Grace in her barn last spring, the adorable infant seemed like the answer to her prayers. The young Amish baker has always wanted a familye of her own and now that she’s fostered Grace for nearly a year, her adoption application is almost certain to be approved. But an unexpected visitor to Hope’s Haven could change everything . . .

Englischer paramedic Mike Colder is only returning to his childhood hometown to locate and adopt his late sister’s baby boy. But when the trail leads to Hannah and Grace, Mike’s determination falters. With Hannah, the simple life he left behind suddenly seems appealing. Despite their wildly different worlds, can Mike and Hannah give each other the greatest gift of all: a life together?

For more information or to purchase, click  HERE

Love on the Range releases TOMORROW!

 When you write a three book series, it's a little tricky to introduce the characters who will populate the series but keep the main romantic hero and heroine front and center, while developing the secondary characters with an eye toward setting them up for their own story.

So, Molly and Wyatt. They've very definitely played parts in the earlier books but Molly is mainly taking care of the house and cooking for everyone, for which she has a strong talent.

And Wyatt has mostly been working. While Cheyenne, his half-sister runs off in a temper in the first book, then chases after bad guys while falling in love in the second book, Wyatt has needed to keep the ranch running.

So what it amounts to is, Molly and Wyatt have been doing all the work.

Now it's their turn. I ended the last book with Wyatt getting shot. Now we start this book with him with a broken collarbone, mostly tied up to keep one arm from moving and Molly waiting on his hand and foot. Now it's everyone else's turn to do all Wyatt's work.

And Molly is getting tired of being doing everything.

And she's exhausted, and for a mild mannered woman, a very RESERVED woman, she's getting a little cranky.

Love on the Range

There is still one day to pre-order on Baker Book House. On Sale and free shipping! Click to Buy

Buy on Amazon Here

Wyatt woke up to a woman in his bed.

            Very few things in his life had ever been stranger.

            She had her hand resting on his chest. Flat, right over his heart. Her head resting on his shoulder. Which wasn’t the shoulder that’d been shot. His arm was around her.

            She was on top of the covers and he was under, but it was still the strangest and most wonderful thing that’d ever happened to him.

            And he’d once watched a cow sniff a little cloud that rolled into a mountain valley, leading a horde of clouds that settled into fog.

            That fog rolling in, like little balls of fluff, that sniffing cow, that’d been the strangest and most wonderful thing…up until now.

            Molly. And boy oh boy, this was now number one and the sniffing cow wasn’t even a close second.

Molly What? What was her name? He’d hardly ever talked to her. Well, a few times. And she’d served him delicious food. She was a way better cook than Cheyenne and a fair sight better than Win. She’d patched some of his clothes, washed them, hung them on the line, he’d seen her doing it. She’d cleaned up after all of them, washed dishes. She’d kept this house running through a time of madness.

And now she was sleeping in his bed, in his arms, and it felt…right.

Most everyone around here was named Hunt. His mind rabbited around to Win marrying Kevin and then like a jolt of lightning, he remembered Cheyenne marrying Falcon. He leapt out of bed…except he didn’t.

            He tried. Realized he was all but tied up. Remembered why—his broken bone--and figured he was too late to stop the wedding anyway.

            So he just stayed where he was and watched Molly sleep. He’d done some wiggling when he’d tried to sit up and she’d slept through it so she must be exhausted. Poor thing.

            He realized that her name could be Hunt too, if he married up with her. And shouldn’t a man marry a woman he shared a bed with?

            Especially when he was so uncommonly pleased to wake up next to her.

            There were dark shadows under her eyes. His head was clear enough to remember being in and out of consciousness, fighting a blazing fever, a lot of it was blurred, but he knew whatever else was going on, whoever else was around, Molly had always been here.

            Marrying a woman he really didn’t know at all, just because he liked waking up next to her, struck him as a lunatic notion. But his life was one lunatic moment after another lately.

            Anyway, she didn’t like him much. So he set the idea aside.

Garner. Molly Garner.

            There, somehow knowing her name released him from any plans to change her name to Hunt by marrying up with her. He could remain single.

            Relief swept through him and that relief told him he’d made the right decision.

            Still, she was a pretty little thing.

Today tell me if you've ever wrote a series. How do you do it? Some series are just set in the same place but not largely populated by the same characters. If you don't write in series, why not? Leave a comment to get your name in the drawing for a signed copy of Love on the Range.

AND ON SALE NOW! \

THE ACCIDENTAL GUARDIAN

BOOK #1 OF THE HIGH SIERRA SWEETHEARTS SERIES. 

ON KINDLE ONLY FOR $1.99. 

When Trace Riley finds the smoldering ruins of a small wagon train, he recognizes the hand behind the attack as the same group who left him as sole survivor years ago. Living off the wilderness since then, he'd finally carved out a home and started a herd--while serving as a self-appointed guardian of the trail, driving off dangerous men. He'd
hoped those days were over, but the latest attack shows he was wrong.

Deborah Harkness saved her younger sister and two toddlers during the attack, and now finds herself at the mercy of her rescuer. Trace offers the only shelter for miles around, and agrees to take them in until she can safely continue. His simple bachelor existence never anticipated kids and women in the picture and their arrival is unsettling--yet enticing.

Working to survive the winter and finally bring justice to the trail, Trace and Deborah find themselves drawn together--yet every day approaches the moment she'll leave forever.

Woman of Sunlight -- First Ever Chance to WIN!!!

First of all a disclaimer.
I am sick.
Not (probably) sick enough you can catch it through the keyboard, but something gross. Not flu, just a stomach bug.

So I am being a complete slacker here and posting an excerpt from my March release

WOMAN OF SUNLIGHT

I wish I had the energy to teach you all something. That IS what we're supposed to do, right?
But I'm afraid whatever I tried to teach you would actually make you a WORSE writer.

So I am justifying my slacker-ification by saying I am protecting you from my probably bug-affected advice.

Woman of Sunlight
Book #2 in The Brides of Hope Mountain Series
Heroine Ilsa, the wildest of my wild women living on top of Hope Mountain, finds herself in a town. And she keeps being told rules on how a proper young lady behaves and she's just so confused!

An excerpt from when the hero, New York City businessman Mitch, comes home from his wealthy, high-powered life when someone seems bent on killing him....finds Ilsa, the wild mountain Tarzan-woman in the hallway outside his hotel room. She was sleeping in the same room with Mitch's ma who snores. And Ilsa decided it was leave the room or smother her.

And she's not supposed to be out there.

Woman of Sunlight

Book #2 in The Brides of Hope Mountain Series

A squeak from behind made her jump. It wasn’t the door Mitch and Quill were in, it was the

one next down. But it was Mitch standing there, fully dressed, looking at her.

Leaping to her feet, desperately happy to see a face she knew, she rushed the few steps to him and asked, “What are you doing in there?”

“Shh-shh,” Mitch held up a hand as if to push her back. He didn’t touch her but she, who did not know much about reading expressions, quit talking immediately.

“You’ll wake up Ma and Pa.”

Ilsa felt the painful truth of that. Wasn’t she out here in the hall because she didn’t want to do that?

“You can’t be out here in the hallway.” Mitch looked left and right with a line of furrows on his forehead.

“Yes, I can.” She spoke the obvious. “Here I stand, in the hallway.

With a tight, hard shake of his head, Mitch said, “I mean it’s not…um…there are rules for the behavior of young ladies. You’re breaking one of them.”

Ilsa had never had many rules in her life. She remembered how Ma Warden didn’t like her ankles showing. Ma’d said that was a rule. Had her ankles been showing while she sat on that step?

“What rule are you talking about?”

Mitch squinted his eyes at her and she thought maybe, in the dim lantern light of the hallway, she saw his cheeks turn a bit pink.

“Th-the rules about, about how a young woman should—should conduct herself in matters of-of propriety.” Brash, fast-talking Mitch seemed barely able to get the words out. And, unless he had a fever—and she really hoped he didn’t because she’d probably catch it—he seemed to be blushing.

And talking in strange, unfamiliar words.

“What does propriety mean?”

Mitch clapped an open hand over his eyes then dragged the hand down, past his nose, his mouth. “It doesn’t surprise me in the least that you don’t know.”

“That’s not really an answer.”

“I-I’ll explain.” Nodding, Mitch seemed to be forcing words from his mouth. “What I mean is a woman should not be alone. It’s not safe. A man could bother you.”

“You’re bothering me quite a bit right now, so that’s the truth. But I see no point in waking up your ma so she can watch you bother me.”

Brides of Hope Mountain book #1

Mitch’s jaw went tight. Ilsa studied it, wondering what in the world the man was thinking.

“I’d like to bother you, Ilsa.”

“That is still not an answer.”

“Oh, it’s an answer all right. But you’re too innocent to realize it.” Mitch paused. Cleared his throat. Cleared it again. “A young woman who is not married, well, the thing is, if someone saw you out here alone, they might—that is, a woman, if a man came upon her alone in the night and then someone else came along and saw the man and woman alone in the night—”

“You mean alone like the two of us are right now.”

Mitch’s throat moved as if he were swallowing something that wasn’t going down easy.

“Yes, exactly like the two of us are right now. If someone found us alone together in the night, well, people might think we were being…doing…that is…” Mitch fell silent as if he just could not put his worries into words.

Ilsa leaned close and whispered, “I thought you were sleeping in the same room with your Pa?”

Mitch shook his head and started talking again, so it was good she changed the subject. “After you and Ma went to bed, I went down and asked if there was another room empty.”

He leaned closer and whispered so quietly she was almost reading words shaped silently by his lips. “Pa snorts like a cave of grizzly bears.”

Ilsa straightened away from Mitch and giggled. She slapped her hand over her mouth but the laughter was there, just muffled. Mitch’s eyes gleamed as if he wanted to laugh himself.

“Ma, too, as I recall,” he said.

 Ilsa nodded from behind her hand just as the door next to Mitch, not the one Quill was in, clicked open.

Grabbing her wrist, Mitch yanked her into the room and shut the door swiftly and silently and pressed her back to the door.

“What—”

Mitch clapped his hand over her mouth this time. Heavy boots walked past Mitch’s door. Mitch looked at the floor, his eyes unfocused. Listening to the man walk by.

Ilsa didn’t know exactly what Mitch was trying to say about it not being right for a man and woman to be alone together in the night. But she was very sure if it was wrong to be alone in the hallway, then it was also wrong to be alone in his room.

Time to go back to Ma, snoring or not.

She listened as the man turned and began walking down the stairs. Where was he going at this late hour? Or was it an early hour? Ilsa wasn’t sure. She often rose before the sun. Maybe morning was coming and this endless night would pass.

Mitch slowly lifted his hand from her mouth. His hand closed and opened in a way that drew her eye.

Mitch kept listening but now he looked at his hand, then those brown eyes shifted to meet hers. His hand quit opening and closing and rested on her upper arm. He rubbed up and down, and Ilsa thought of that moment when she’d been riding with him. A moment where he’d seemed too close, then closer yet.

Now his hand caressed her arm, then the other hand lifted to her other shoulder and slid around to her back.

In the dark of his room, with those footsteps fading, Mitch said quietly, “I lived a life surrounded by people I couldn’t trust. I realize now many of them just told me whatever they thought I wanted to hear because I paid their salary. And I’ll admit I did tend to fire people who disagreed with me because, of course, I thought I was always right. For years, I’ve heard little but yes, sir, right away sir, whatever you think best, sir.”

“That seems nice.” Ilsa rested one hand on his broad chest and patted him because he seemed unhappy with himself. “I wouldn’t mind if you’d start saying yes more often.”

“Oh, I don’t think that’d be wise at all.”       

“Saying yes to me? I am sure I would like it very much.”

“I’d make sure you liked it very much.”

Ilsa wasn’t sure, but the way he said it made her wonder if he was talking about something completely different than she was.

Mystified, she said, “If, instead of scolding all the time, you say yes to me, of course it I’d like it.”

The room was nearly pitch dark, shrouded in deep shadows, but she had fine vision in the night and her eyes had adjusted and she could see him well, and hear the rise and fall of each breath. Smell him. His scent only made her realize how, until just recently, she’d never been near a man. And never close enough to be so surrounded by all these impressions of him.

His hands slid up and down her arms, both of them now.

“All those years, and now I come home to find a woman with wide-eyed innocence, who speaks her mind, even when I don’t want to hear it. I find that refreshing and I am enjoying it.”

“I don’t remember you enjoying it particularly.”

He gave a small, gentle laugh. His hands relaxed, then tightened. “You have to get out of here, Miss Ilsa.”

She most certainly did.

“Your hand over my mouth to keep me quiet gave me to suspect you were trying to let that man go past without him seeing or hearing us.”

“Yes, as I was trying to say, it is against accepted rules for a young, unmarried lady to be seen in the night, alone with an unrelated man.”

“Is it against these rules for that man to be alone at night?”

“No, the man can be alone, just not women.”

“Why on earth is there such an unfair rule?”

Mitch was silent. Ilsa suspected because he didn’t have an answer any more than she did.

“Well, we’re alone but no one can see us in here. So then is this not against the rules?”

“It is most definitely against the rules.” Mitch closed his eyes. His hands opened and closed on her upper arms. “You go back to Ma’s room, and you stay in there no matter how loud she snores.”

“I was daydreaming about smothering her with a pillow. I thought it best to get out.”

A chuckle escaped Mitch’s lips, which drew her eyes to them.

“Go on right now, before it’s too late.” Mitch was still holding her, in fact if she wasn’t mistaken, he might be holding her closer than ever.

Although it might have been her moving closer, not him.

“Too late for what?”

Leave a comment to get your name in the drawing for a signed copy of Woman of Sunlight, releasing March 3rd. So you'll have to wait a while to get it. I haven't gotten it yet. But it won't be long now!!!