BOOK A MAGICAL TRIP

“A book is a magical thing that lets you travel to far-away places without ever leaving your chair.” ~ Katrina Mayer

I grew up in the Philippines and, coming from a poor family, I did not have the resources to travel out of my birth country until I was already a working adult. Thankfully, I had a bookworm for a father and a teacher for a mother who both encouraged me from a young age to read books that took me all over the world before I was able to actually travel to the locations in which they were set.

Judith Krantz’s I’ll Take Manhattan familiarized me with New York City landmarks prior to my first visit there in 1994 and gave me the confidence to set my novella New York Engagement there. I had seen the grandeur of the Sydney Opera House through Emma Darcy’s Harlequin romances set in Australia before I beheld it for the first time in 1998. Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence had me enthralled with the South of France years before I toured Europe in 1999. Imagine how often I’ve been to England from reading books by Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, Barbara Cartland, Judith McNaught, Julie Garwood, and Johanna Lindsey. Truly, if there’s a special passport that gets stamped every time I travel in books, I would have to renew it every year.

I want to believe that this is the same for millions of readers all over the world. In reality, however, the US-centric world of Romancelandia has limited book travel options to Asia. There’s Sonali Dev’s angsty A Distant Heart which transported me to India and Hong Kong, Sherry Thomas’s epic The Hidden Blade and My Beautiful Enemy duology set in Imperial China, and Mina V. Esguerra and her Romance Class cohorts’ works which always bring me home to the Philippines.

There are a few others but I feel strongly about the need for many more books to take readers to the biggest continent on Earth without leaving their homes. That’s why, when I started writing, I’ve chosen to conjure the magic of traveling through books by setting my first series in my home region of Southeast Asia. I’d like readers of Carpe Diem Chronicles to not only visit the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand when they read Boracay Vows, Singapore Fling, Samui Heat, and Palawan Promises, but also to experience the cultures through the languages, customs, and food I feature in them.

People fall in love all around the world. The magic is in witnessing that love blossom within the pages of a book.

*This article was first posted at Read-A-Romance-Month https://www.readaromancemonth.com/2019/08/rarm19-maida-malby-book-a-magical-trip/

It was also featured in the All the Ups and Downs blog during the Singapore Fling Book Blog Tour with Lone Star Lit.

CELEBRATING FILIPINO-AMERICAN ROMANTIC FICTION

In celebration of Filipino-American History Month, my author friends Tif Marcelo, Mia Hopkins, Sarah Smith, and I are getting together in California to talk about Fil-Am romantic fiction and sign our books.

We will be at The Ripped Bodice on Saturday, October 19, from 3-5 pm. A panel discussion on our writing, Filipino heritage, and popular culture will start the event, followed by socials. RSVP here if you’re coming: https://www.therippedbodicela.com/events-and-tickets. Filipino snacks and some wine will be served.

On Sunday, October 20, Tif, Sarah, and I will continue the tour at Books Inc in Alameda from 4-6 pm. https://www.booksinc.net/event/tif-marcelo-sarah-smith-maida-malby-books-inc-alameda

I’ll update this post with photos from both events. Hope to see you there!

CRASHING IN ON LOVE by Taylor Love

CRASHING IN ON LOVE

by

Taylor Love

SYNOPSIS

After crashing a wedding in Jamaica can two strangers find love?

Tamara Reed spends her days seeing the worst that love has to offer as a divorce lawyer. Yet she still finds herself drawn to weddings and a secret part of her heart still believes in love. Crashing a wedding while on a much needed vacation, finds her meeting a tempting man. He not only catches her attention but sets her blood on fire. After an intense night with him she sneaks home to forget her vacation fling. That’s easier said than done, as memories keep her up at night and her vacation boo tracks her down. Is she ready to take a chance on love?

Benjamin Thompson went on vacation for a little work and a lot of relaxation. Who knew when he took a detour to watch a random wedding he’d get a chance to “play” as well. The woman he meets takes his breath away and knocks his socks off in the sheets. Barely exchanging any info before having the wildest sex of his life, he wakes up to find his sexy siren gone. Hooked after one taste, he tracks Tamara down only to find that she wants to keep their passionate night a onetime deal. As a successful Realtor he’s accustomed to tough negotiations. But he’s determined to close this deal no matter what it takes.

Tamara Reed is a jaded divorce lawyer who sees the worst that love has to offer as a divorce lawyer with a “tiny” soft spot for love. While on a long overdue vacation she meets a tempting man that has her throwing all caution to the wind. But reality comes rushing back all too soon. What she didn’t know was her vacation boo was a determined man used to getting the things he deemed important and he wasn’t going to let her go easily.

Fate may have thrown these two together but both have early family scars, that left them believing love was painful and may not be in the cards for them. Can they overcome childhood demons that have shaped their perceptions of love and relationships, to forge something new and lasting with each other?

Buy it here: https://books2read.com/CInOnLove

Follow Taylor Love here:

Website: www.TaylorMadeDaydreams.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TaylorMadeDayDreams/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TaylorLoveWrite

Texas Is Romance Land

The coming weeks will be busy for romance writers and readers here in the great state of Texas.

On Sunday, October 22, my friends and I will head over to Dallas for the 12th Annual Buns and Roses Romance Tea for Literacy which benefits the Richardson Adult Literacy Center. I will sit at the table of the RITA Award-winning author Cheryl Etchison. I’m so excited to meet some of my favorite authors like Lorraine Heath, Lenora Bell, Sabrina Jeffries, Ilona Andrews, and Mary Jo Putney.

Not even a week later, I will see Cheryl again, along with Kerrelyn Sparks and Sherry Thomas, on Friday, October 27 at the Heart of ATX, a Romance Reading Salon event in Buda. One of my good friends Cathy Maxwell is hosting this event.

Sunday, October 29 is the monthly meeting of the Old School Romance Book Club San Antonio Chapter. Our Book of the Month is Maya Banks’s The Darkest Hour, book 1 of her KGI series.

Another event I’m super pumped to attend is the Romance Panel Discussion at the Texas Book Festival on Sunday, November 5 in Austin. The topic is very dear to my heart – Diversity in Romance. Alisha Rai, Sherry Thomas, Cat Sebastian, and Mia Sosa are confirmed to attend.

Here’s to Texas, one of the most Romantic states in the US.

Cover Reveal – Cherish Hard by Nalini Singh

I’m so excited about this book. I loved Rock Hard and I’m so looking forward to reading about Asa and Sailor. Thank you, Nalini, for allowing me to share this great news.

CHERISH HARD
A Hard Play Novel by Nalini Singh

New York Times bestselling author Nalini Singh kicks off her new Hard Play contemporary romance series with a sizzling story that’ll leave you smiling…

Sailor Bishop has only one goal for his future – to create a successful landscaping business. No distractions allowed. Then he comes face-to-face and lips-to-lips with a woman who blushes like an innocent… and kisses like pure sin.

Ísa Rain craves a man who will cherish her, aches to create a loving family of her own. Trading steamy kisses with a hot gardener in a parking lot? Not the way to true love. Then a deal with the devil (aka her CEO-mother) makes Ísa a corporate VP for the summer. Her main task? Working closely with a certain hot gardener.

And Sailor Bishop has wickedness on his mind.

As Ísa starts to fall for a man who makes her want to throttle and pounce on him at the same time, she knows she has to choose – play it safe and steady, or risk all her dreams and hope Sailor doesn’t destroy her heart.

☆☆☆☆☆☆

EXCERPT

Fuming, Ísa made sure to set the alarm system and lock up. Everyone else was already well into their summer vacation—the sole reason Ísa was here was because she hadn’t been able to work on her lesson plans at home.

Her upstairs neighbor was having repairs done to her bathroom that required banging and hammering.

Not all of it involved nails and wood.

Hopefully the repairs would be finished by now. There was only so much ecstatic orgasmic screaming that a single woman in online-dating purgatory could stand without being driven to violence.

She spotted the tan-colored gardening truck the instant she came down the front steps of the school’s imposing redbrick main building and turned left to head toward her car. The hot gardener had parked it right next to her zippy blue compact. The front of the truck had four doors with tinted windows while the large bed was piled with shovels and other manly tools as well as a huge sack of clippings.

His light brown T-shirt was hanging over the top of the tailgate.

Which meant he was still walking around topless somewhere around here.

“Get in your car, Ísa,” she muttered to herself, well aware what would happen if she came face-to-face with that delicious hunk of manhood. Because while she might’ve conquered her shyness, she knew her limits.

Confronted by a bare-chested man who made her ovaries explode, she’d turn bright pink, lose her ability to form speech, and end of story. “Oh—”

She would’ve bounced off that sculpted chest if he hadn’t grabbed her by the hips.

“Hey, sorry,” he said with a startled smile that lit up the dazzling blue of his eyes. “I didn’t see you.”

“No, um, my fault.” It looked as if he’d crouched down to check one of his tires or something else but had risen to his feet right when she swung around to get into her car.

And God, his skin was so hot and smooth and he was so tall and his shoulders were so broad and her mouth was drying up. The stuttering would begin at any moment.

The same stuttering Suzanne had mocked relentlessly when they were fourteen. Until Ísa had gone silent around everyone except the few friends she trusted. And now that horrible, ugly-hearted girl was getting married, having a baby, getting a happily-ever-after. Added to which, Ísa’s mother was jerking her on a string like she was a marionette, and her last “date” had asked her to call him Woofy and reward him with doggy biscuits.

The blue of the gardener’s eyes flickered with a hot flame.

And she thought… I know him. But before she could follow that faint thread, all the fury and hurt and frustration and sheer aggravation in Ísa ignited into an incandescent inferno.

She went mad.

Grabbing the hot gardener’s beautiful face in her hands, she said, “I want to kiss you.”

A wicked grin. “Go on ahead.”

And Ísa pressed her lips to his.

☆☆☆☆☆☆

Meet Sailor & Isa on November 14th!
Pre-order your copy today!

Amazon US: http://amzn.to/2yaHnQG
Amazon UK: http://amzn.to/2i1LhHC
Amazon CA: http://amzn.to/2yXwnFB
iBooks: http://apple.co/2xw0U0O
Nook: http://bit.ly/2yf01bI
Kobo: http://bit.ly/2i2wvR1

☆☆☆☆☆☆

Meet the Author

Nalini Singh is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the Psy-Changeling, Guild Hunter, and Rock Kiss series. She lives and works in beautiful New Zealand, and is passionate about writing.

If you’d like to explore her other books, you can find lots of excerpts and free short stories on her website. Slave to Sensation is the first book in the Psy-Changeling series, while Angels’ Blood is the first book in the Guild Hunter series. The Rock Kiss books are all stand alone and can be read in any order.

STALK HER: Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Goodreads

Diversity, Thy Name Is Not Romance Novel

As a writer-of-color, I do appreciate the study recently conducted by The Ripped Bodice. It puts a spotlight on the sad state of racial diversity in romance publishing. Whether it changes anything is the challenge moving forward.

Nielsen did a similar study in the past and presented the report at the Romance Writers of America’s Annual Conference in 2016. The statistics then, as shared by Publishing Perspectives, were even more dismal.

I guess we can rejoice that the 2% non-white writers previously reported has ballooned to 7.8% in 2016. But, different research bodies, different samples, different methodologies make comparisons statistically invalid.

I am happy someone is pursuing the issue. I have long complained about the dearth of representation for Asians in the novels I read. That’s why I’m writing my own. But, I’m not going to sit around waiting for some publishing house to suddenly email after six months telling me that they’ve finally unearthed my manuscript from the depths of query hell and they now need me to increase their diversity numbers.

The truth is I want to control the setting of my novels, the design of my covers, the date of my publication, and the amount of my share of the sales, no matter how minuscule. As I can’t do those things with traditional publishing, I’m going indie. I’m sure many writers of color like me have the same mindset.

That doesn’t help improve future data for The Ripped Bodice’s study, but maybe they could expand it by investigating racial diversity in self-published romance in the future. It is almost a sure thing that it would yield more positive results. Perhaps instead of harping on traditional publishers to improve their inclusion, they should embrace independents more. Just my two cents.

Here’s the full report:

RippedBodiceReportFINAL

Looking for Asian/Pacific-American Heroines in Romance Novels

May is officially the Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month in the US and this month, I’ve decided I’m going to read romance novels featuring heroines of Asian descent. Before today, I’ve only read a few, among them Nalini Singh’s Rock Courtship, Alisha Rai’s Pleasure series, The Bollywood Bride by Sonali Dev, Lora Leigh’s Wicked Pleasure, Jaci Burton’s Midnight Velvet, and Fobolous by my friend Rainne Mendoza.

My Goodreads search proved to be frustrating as there are very few books that answer to the criteria – 190 if you include South Asians. Amazon is not much help either – only 40 are listed and most of the heroines are half something else.

It’s no wonder that 63% of those who answered the Dangerous Books for Girls survey said (they) “…think there is not enough diversity in characters and settings…”. It’s true, there’s not.

In the same study, it was learned that there were over 9,500 Romance ISBNs in 2013. Very likely, that figure went up in 2016. If I would hazard a guess, the number of those books who have Asian/Pacific Islander heroines would be pitifully small, could only be just a handful. Why? Are people not buying them? The Romance genre is a Billion-dollar industry and there’s no market for novels with my kind of protagonists? That’s sad and I refuse to believe that.

According to the 2010 US Census Bureau Statistics, over 3.3 Million American husbands have Asian wives. If only a small fraction of those wives read romance novels, that’s still a substantial number who may want to see their stories told in books. Toni Morrison said, “If there’s a book you really want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” So, that’s what I’m doing, I’m writing their story.

I’m writing MY story.