Series Spotlight Tour/Giveaway: The Cinderella Romances Series by Petie McCarthy

 

Check out The Cinderella Romances Series by author Petie McCarthy and make sure to enter the tour wide giveaway as the author is awarding a $10 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner. The tour is sponsored by Goddess Fish Promotions and you can find all the tour stops HERE.

Interview with author Petie McCarthy

Tell us about your latest book, who are the main characters and what can we expect when we pick it up?

 First, I want to thank Dawn’s Reading Nook for inviting me to share my stories and background on your blog and for hosting me on this Goddess Fish series promotion tour.

If you try my new series—The Cinderella Romances . . . fall in love with the fairy tale all over again—you will enjoy modern-day Cinderella stories that make you believe a Prince Charming might be waiting for you.

 Luckily for me, there are unlimited opportunities to retell the famous fairy tale in different locales with different heroines playing the part of Cinderella, happily with returning characters from previous fairy tales to share in these adventures. How fun to get to retell the fairy tale in a dozen different ways with each fairy tale unique.

 

Do you come up with the hook first, or do you create characters first and then dig through until you find a hook? 

As I have mentioned previously on my Goddess Fish tour, I see movies in my head and the first discernible portion is the basic plot which usually provides the hook straight off. The location and intent of that plot then define a hero and a heroine and everything just expands from there.

[i.e. a rich guy, who from experience thinks most women are golddiggers, gets stuck inspecting a shipment of exotic trees from an eclectic landscape nursery and meets and falls for a beautiful woman he assumes is a socialite. The easy joke on him is to make the woman the gardener. And thus, you have your hero and heroine.]

 

Which of your own characters would you like to have lunch with? 

I would like to have lunch with the Duke of Reston from my time-travel regency romance, Duke du Jour. He’s all stodgy and serious in the present and turns hilarious and full of dry wit in the past.

 

Tell us about what you are reading at the moment or anticipate reading in the future. Any favorite authors you enjoy reading in your spare time? 

I am presently rereading the Miles High Club series by T. L. Swan. Four brothers all blessed with amazing dry wit. Exceptional writing.

As for my favorite authors, they are too numerous to count but would include:

Jayne Ann Krentz

Linda Howard

Jennifer Crusie

Kristen Ashley

Rachel Gibson

Sarah MacLean

 

Which of your own books would you like to live in? 

Probably Duke du Jour. I would love to spend time in the Regency era of England.

 

What do you do when you have free time? 

If I have a large block of time, it would be traveling via road trips with my sweetheart. Pack the car, take off on an adventure with an end destination in mind, and stop wherever we want along the way until we miss home enough to turn around and come back. Smaller chunks of free time would be spent on my electric bike or my treadmill or my rowing machine to compensate for the amount of time I sit on my butt at the computer.

 

How do you approach character development in your stories? Do you have any specific techniques or methods that you find particularly effective? 

The characters do a lot of the development themselves, depending on the plot and what their goals and motivations are. But to make the characters memorable, you have to make them vulnerable, give them a hidden soft/emotional side. Give a masculine hero a sad abandonment story as a child or suffer the loss of a sibling or a broken heart or have him protecting a kid in your story or have a heroine who can’t get past her ugly-duckling childhood enough to believe she is now a swan. Rip through their protective walls and expose their humanity and soft side underneath. The tougher the walls, the greater the reward.

 

What do you believe sets your writing apart from others in your genre, and why should readers choose to read your books? 

I’m told I build new worlds or villages well with my often numerous, quirky, and personable, or annoying, secondary characters. Creating that peanut gallery to surround the hero or heroine is the most fun of all. And they are the ones who usually hide the red herrings.

 

Can you discuss any upcoming projects or books that you’re currently working on? What can readers expect from your future works? 

Next up in this series is Cinderella on the Rocks. A beautiful Yank is hired by the wicked stepmother of a hunky Scottish Highlander whisky distiller to steal her stepson’s proprietary recipe for single malt. The sexy Highlander, Ian MacVicar, previously appeared in Par for Cinderella.  After that story plays out, Spying on Cinderella is a definite possibility with Liam Shaunessy, Aidan Cross’s private investigator, making a return appearance. He’ll no doubt be investigating, suspicious of illegal shenanigans, and then falling in love with his own Cinderella. 

Due to the recent and unexpected closing of Soul Mate Publishing on September 30 and the subsequent return of my rights to the Mystery Angel Romances, I am also in the process of re-writing, retitling, recovering, and rebranding that series as a new and darker romantic-suspense three-book series, The Watchers. Look for it in a future Goddess Fish Promotional tour.

 

THE CINDERELLA ROMANCES SERIES

Author: Petie McCarty

GENRE:  Contemporary Romance

 

BLURB:

 

The Cinderella Romances...Fall in love with the fairy tale all over again.

 

Modern-day Cinderella stories that provide unlimited opportunities to retell the classic fairy tale, happily with returning characters to share in these adventures.

 

Cinderella Busted 

Once upon a time, in Jupiter Island, Florida . . . 

Billionaire developer, Rhett Buchanan, is forced to inspect a shipment of priceless trees and meets the girl of his dreams instead. A bit jaded where women are concerned—since most are gold diggers—Rhett falls head over heels for the Jupiter Island socialite who only wants him, not his money. Except she isn't the glamorous socialite she appears to be. 

She's the gardener . . .

 

Betting on Cinderella 

Once upon a time in Biloxi, Mississippi . . . 

Garrett Tucker inherits his grandfather's casino empire and steps into the reclusive billionaire's shoes as the new "Prince of Vegas." Discovering embezzlement in his newly purchased casino in Biloxi, Garrett goes in undercover. His prime suspect? The new finance supervisor . . . a feisty brunette who stole his heart at first sight. 

Andi Ryan moves to Biloxi to care for her godmother. Taking a job as finance supervisor for the renovated Bayou Princess casino, she discovers someone is skimming from the till. Andi starts her own investigation, worried she will be blamed for the theft when the handsome new owner discovers her godmother likes to gamble. 

Industrial espionage is afoot at the Bayou Princess, and Garrett and Andi are soon forced to work as a team to prove her innocence and save the casino before it’s too late. 

This swoonworthy modern-day fairy tale joins the other stories in the Cinderella Romances series. Each provides a new opportunity to retell the classic fairy tale, happily with returning characters to share in these adventures.

 

Par for Cinderella 

Once upon a time in Cedar Key, Florida . . . 

Golf resort developer Aidan Cross is at loose ends. Something feels missing from his life, but that something isn't women. He has too many women chasing him now. To confuse things even more, his yacht breaks down off-shore of his next project site in Florida, and Aidan falls for his only competition in the small town—a woman who wants nothing to do with him or his rakish charm. 

Casey Stuart is stuck living in Cypress Key, unwilling to abandon her uncle or the golf course they manage together. She doesn't quite trust the stranger Aidan who shows up in town looking for work, and she vows to steer clear of him and the danger their intense chemistry provokes. Aidan’s stay is temporary, and falling for him promises only heartbreak. 

But Casey needs Aidan’s help when she discovers Cypress Key’s mayor is making underhanded business deals, and she ends up on the wrong side of the powerful crook. Aidan steps in to rescue her, but secrets from his past threaten to bogey their new-found affair. 

This swoonworthy modern-day fairy tale joins the other Cinderella stories in the series. Each provides a new opportunity to retell the classic fairy tale, happily with returning characters to share in these adventures.

Excerpt One:

 

from Book One: Cinderella Busted

 

“Do you buy a lot of plants here?” Buchanan suddenly asked.

 

Her head snapped up from examining a bent gray frond. She swallowed. “Buy?”

 

“You must be one of the nursery’s best customers as well as you know the stock and know your way around here.” He gave her that slow, sexy smile again. “Are you buying landscaping for business or pleasure?”

 

Oh good grief! He thinks I’m a customer.

 

But why wouldn’t he? Today, she was dressed like one. Surely, he could tell from their conversation she worked here at the nursery.

 

Or not.

 

He waited for a response. So that was why he had asked her to help him! She grinned. She couldn’t help it. She felt like Cinderella masquerading as a princess at the ball. Maybe she could just avoid answering his question altogether.

 

She guided him to the end of the aisle, made the turn to the fifth row of trees, and aimed their steps toward a cluster of Monterrey pines.

 

Buchanan put a hand out to stop her. “I hope you’ll let me take you to dinner to thank you for helping me, Lily.”

 

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AUTHOR Bio and Links: 

Petie spent a large part of her career working at Walt Disney World—"The  Most Magical Place on Earth"—where she enjoyed working in the land of fairy tales by day and creating her own romantic fairy tales by night, including her new series, The Cinderella Romances. She eventually said good-bye to her "day" job to write her stories full-time. These days Petie spends her time writing sequels to her regency time-travel series, Lords in Time, and her cozy-mystery-with-romantic-suspense series, the Mystery Angel Romances. 

Petie shares her home on the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee with her horticulturist husband and an opinionated Nanday conure named Sassy who made a cameo appearance in No Angels for Christmas. 

Visit Petie's web site online at http://www.petiemccarty.com or her Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/petie.mccarty. 

BIO Social Media:

http://www.petiemccarty.com

https://www.facebook.com/petie.mccarty

https://x.com/authorpetie

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6094579.Petie_McCarty

https://www.bookbub.com/authors/petie-mccarty

http://www.amazon.com/author/petiemccarty