June 21, 2009
I’m doing this without my editor’s approval, but hey! I’m feeling rebellious this evening.
Stay is the second book in the Dunham series. It is not entirely necessary for you to read The Proviso before you read Stay, but I do recommend it. Now, neither main character is an actual Dunham by blood or marriage, nor are they Mormons (shocker, I know, but there’s still plenty religion, money, politics, and sex), but there is a method to my madness in the series order. If you have read The Proviso, you might have (or not) picked up on a hint or two that these (very) minor characters might have rather . . . interesting . . . histories that were not explained.
Here’s the official back-of-book blurb:
At 12, Vanessa defied her family to save 17-year-old bad boy Eric from wrongful imprisonment and, possibly, death. She’d hoped for a “thank you” from him, a kiss on the cheek, but before she could grow up and grow curves, he left town.
Fourteen years later, Vanessa is a celebrity chef at the five-star Ozarks resort she built. Eric is the new Chouteau County prosecutor on his way to the White House.
Four hours apart and each tied to their own careers, their worlds have no reason to intersect until a funeral brings Vanessa back to Chouteau County, back to face the man for whom she’d risked so much, the only man she ever wanted—
—the only man she can’t have.
* * * * *
DECEMBER 14, 1994
“People versus Eric Niccolò Cipriani. Charges of statutory rape, sexual assault in the first degree, and forcible rape in the first degree.”
“Ms. Leventen, how does the defendant plead?”
“Not guilty.”
“Hilliard?”
“Remand, your honor. The victim is thirteen.”
“So ordered.”
* * * * *
Tentative release date: November 26, 2009.
Thank you for your continuing indulgence on the travails of designing a cover if you’re not a designer of covers. As I said last week, it took me almost a year and hundreds of hours of Photoshopping to come to the cover I did, which I affectionately call The Bewbies™. Originally, The Proviso was one book and it was enormous. I originally titled it Barefoot Through Fire. Then I figured I’d probably do better to split it out into 3 parts, 1 part per romance. This is the story of book 3.