Tag Archives: Big families

Still touring….and visiting.

I’ve got 2 stops today on this last week of my Goddess Fish blog tour for CHRISTMAS & CANNOLIS.

Come join me over on Locks, Hooks, and Books where the author reviewed the book. ( Hint – she liked it!)

And then over on Sharking Links and Wisdom, where I explain my love of big families.

In another note, I’m over on WRP sistah Vicki Batman’s blog today as well promoting another of my books, DEARLY BELOVED. Vicki’s blog is for the purse-lover in every gal and you’ll want to see the little clutch she features from me!

As always, if you’re looking for me, you can find me right here:

Tweet Me//Read Me// Visit Me//Picture Me//Pin Me//Friend Me//Google+Me// Triber// BookMe // Monkey me //Watch me

and here’s the link to my TELL ME ABOUT YOUR DAMN BOOK podcast interview, just in case you missed it: TMAYDB

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#SundaySnippet 10.21.18

So this weeks selection is from my last holiday release A KISS UNDER THE CHRISTMAS LIGHTS. The reason I’m going back in time here is to get you (hopefully!) ramped up for the next San Valentino Holiday release, CHRISTMAS AND CANNOLIS, which comes out on 12.12.18. Both stories are stand-alones – you don’t need to read the first to enjoy the second – but really, this family is so crazy and so much fun, you should read them all anyway! But that’s just my opinion…hee hee.

“Gia, I know a guy who’s looking for a numbers person,” Uncle Sonny said. “A new business venture he’s putting together on the Lower West Side. One of those trendy cybercafes. Frou-frou coffees with names no one can pronounce, big-ass muffins and breads and stuff. He could use someone with a math brain like yours to help him with the books and the spreadsheets. I could put a good word in his ear for ya.”

He was seated across the table from me, his bright blue suspenders sitting over his old-as-sin, used-to-be- white, wife-beater tee. The only time Uncle Sonny ever wore an actual shirt was when he left the house. Any time he was inside, no matter whose house it was—his own or someone else’s—he removed his dress shirt, electing to be comfortable in his undershirt and pants. The suspenders were a necessary item, not a sartorial statement, because he’d gained some substantial weight in the past few years and hated the wincing feeling of a belt around his ever-expanding waistline. His pants hung underneath his bulging abdomen and would have fallen to the floor if not anchored by the suspenders.

Before I could respond, Mama beat me to it.

“Salvatore San Valentino.” Her voice rose to a pitch that could summon dogs. “You will not give my bambina’s name to any of your wise-guy friends, do I make myself clear?”

“Frankie, honey,” Sonny said, all sweetness and light oozing from his voice, a smile Nonna always termed oily across his mouth. “No worries. This guy’s legit.”

“No one you know is legit,” she shot back, rising and moving around the table with the filled pasta bowl to give refills.
She slapped a wooden spoon the size of a cup measure onto my brother Gianni’s plate with a thwack. “It’s bad enough everything you own fell off a truck.” She moved onto my youngest brother, Edoardo’s plate. Thwack. “And that you associate with people on police wanted lists.” On to Antonio. Another thwack. “But you’re Joey’s brother, so I overlook all that.” Thwack onto Nonna’s plate—although she hadn’t eaten any of her first pasta round yet. “But I draw the line when you want to involve my baby girl in the businesses of your low-life, crooked friends.”

With a final thwack to Daddy’s plate, she slammed the bowl, which was almost as wide as she was, back onto the table and picked up the gravy boat.

“Who wants sauce?” she snapped, her crystal-blue gaze flitting with anger around the table.

“Here, Mama.” Chloe’s husband, Matt, stood and took the antique piece of imported Italian china from her. “I’ll do it. You sit. Eat. You must be tired from working at the church all day and then making this wonderful meal for us all.”

Gently, he nudged the gravy bowl from her hands, charming her with his dashing smile and melted- chocolate-colored eyes.

Unable to resist smiling back at him—he was after all the golden son-in-law since he was a doctor and had given her two more grandchildren to fawn over—Mama patted his cheeks. “You’re such a good boy, Matteo. I’m so happy my Chloe married you.”

From next to me, I heard my brother Paolo mutter, “Suck up,” and I choked a laugh into my napkin.

Peggy here: God, I love this family!!!!

Buy links:

Amazon // Wild Rose Press // Barnes and Nobel // Google books // Kobo 

also available in audio!


Audible //

Find me here:Tweet Me//Read Me// Visit Me//Picture Me//Pin Me//Friend Me//Google+Me// Triber// BookMe // Monkey me //Watch me

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Please #Vote for my book!

Hey all! My holiday novella A KISS UNDER THE CHRISTMAS LIGHTS is up for the July non-erotic book of the month over at Long and Short Reviews. I’d really appreciate some voting help! Here’s the link:

http://www.longandshortreviews.com/book-reviews/july-non-erotic-book-of-the-month-poll-3/

YOu can vote until August 2nd. Thanks so much!!!

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Sometimes, I get it right…..

You never know if what you are writing is going to be received well. It’s like a comic performing in front of an audience for the first time. He knows he’s funny. He likes his jokes, his routine, but he’s just not sure the audience is going to “get it.”

That’s typically the way I feel when I write. Is anyone going to “get it?” Are they going to understand what I mean? The intention behind the innuendo? My weird sense of humor?

Well, today I know someone got it – and a big someone at that. I received my first professional review for a story that is as near and dear to me as my own family – A KISS UNDER THE CHRISTMAS LIGHTS.  I’ve included a link to the review here because I sososososo want to brag about, er… share it! The review is from LONG AND SHORT REVIEWS and I’ve been hoping they would review something of mine since my first book was released. It took two years and 7 books, but they finally did and I just have to pull a Sally Field and say “she liked it! She really liked it!!!”

Here’s the link to the review LASR

Here’s a little about the book:

A KISS UNDER THE CHRISTMAS LIGHTS

With Christmas just a few weeks away, Gia San Valentino, the baby in her large, loud, and loving Italian family, yearns for a life and home of her own with a husband and bambini she can love and spoil. The single scene doesn’t interest her, and the men her well-meaning family introduce her to aren’t exactly the happily-ever-after kind.

Tim Santini believes he’s finally found the woman for him, but Gia will take some convincing she’s that girl. A misunderstanding has her thinking he’s something he’s not.

Can a kiss stolen under the Christmas lights persuade her to spend the rest of her life with him?

Excerpt:

After an hour of helping people move supplies from cars, I passed by mama who was carrying a humongous plastic swaddled baby Jesus statue for the crèche when she called out, “The new guy is here.”

“Where?” I put down the ladder I’d been carting and looked in the general direction of where she’d pointed her chin since her arms were full of the Lord.

I found him in an instant. It wasn’t difficult to do because he was the only guy in the parking lot I didn’t recognize who was under sixty. Plus, he was dressed head to toe in basic clergy black. Black long sleeved shirt under a black vest over black trousers and standard issue shiny black boring priest shoes.

His back was to me and he was carrying a table, but after he put it down and turned around I got a good look at the front of him.

And Holy Mary, Mother of God, what a front he had.

Close cropped military style hair the color of wind blown wheat topped a head which stood – truly – head and shoulders above everyone else around. The guy had to be six-three at least. Sharp, etched cheekbones God cut with a knife, sat under oval eyes which looked deep and dark from where I stood. His face was a composite of planes and angles, the carved cheeks meeting up with a chiseled-from-stone chin. Hardened concrete looked softer than this guy’s jawline. His nose was perfectly fixed in the center of his face, the slight aquiline bend at the tip bringing to mind Michelangelo’s David, the cupid’s bow under it deep and pronounced. Clean shaven, his mouth was full and thick and – God help me – looked utterly kissable.

I could tell even with the chunky vest covering his torso, he was closer to thin than stocky, but if I could guess from the way his biceps pulled against his sleeves, he had some muscle to him.

And some pair of legs. They went on forever, from heaven to earth in a full, hard line.

I don’t know how long I stood there, just gawking with my mouth open looking like a cannoli waiting to be filled, but I’m being truthful when I say I couldn’t move. My feet were frozen to the ground, my knees had locked, and my hips weren’t taking me anywhere soon.

This was one beautiful man.

The old masters would have used him as a springboard for their work, and I could actually picture him in a Botticelli fresco, garbed in Roman robes, lounging with naked, buxom-breasted plump women surrounding him, feeding him grapes and sweetmeats.

In the time it took for a hummingbird to flap its wings once, I pictured myself as one of those women.

Buy Links: Amazon //Wild Rose Press //  kobo   // Nook // 

When I’m not basking in the fabulousness of this review, you can find me here:

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