Kicking Sideways by Dina Keratsis (VNBtM, guest post, excerpt and GIVEAWAY) GFT

What do you think is the strongest attraction about the genre(s) you like to write in?

Like all of us here, I love books, books in all genres.  But when I really want to relax and lose myself in another world, I choose romance. I love the romance genre so much that I wrote my Master’s thesis proposal on why educated women read romance. Thirty pages later, the answer was revealed.

Reading romance makes them happy.

I love the ups and downs of courtship, the will-they-or-won’t-they-get-together flip-flopping even though I know they will, without a doubt, ride off into a pink sunset. It’s all about the journey.

But if you want deeper meaning in your romance reading, you’ll find it.

Jerry Maguire got it wrong with the “you complete me” line. That’s not romance. That’s dysfunction.

We are all born complete. We are all whole from the start. But somewhere along the way we forget this truth and look for love and validation outside our selves.

In a romance, the heroine cannot truly love another until she reconciles this truth within her self. A romance novel maps the journey back to the self while coinciding with the rollercoaster ride of courtship. So at the end of the book when the couple rides off into that pink sunset, you know it’s not because they need each other to be whole but because they are two wholes that choose each other to complete the journey of life.

I think, minus the romance, that the theme of being a whole person is the theme of most books, fiction and non-fiction. I just prefer that message delivered in a romance novel and that’s why I write ‘em!

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Kicking Sideways

by Dina Keratsis

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GENRE: Contemporary Romance


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BLURB:

Lucretia “Cree” Cabot spends her time saving everybody else to avoid facing her own haunted life. Between raising her younger brother and trying to open a women’s shelter, Cree has built an impenetrable wall around her heart. But when a tenant for Cliff Cottage appears at her door, he cracks her vigilantly controlled world, forcing her to look within to confront the emptiness inside.

Mike Sullivan, famous superhero artist, is searching for a peaceful summer break and a new perspective on life. A farm in sunny Santa Cruz seems like just the place. Looking to escape from his usual routine, he doesn’t count on falling for a woman who is as stubborn as the mule that lives in her barn. Yet beneath Cree’s prickly exterior, he finds a woman in pain—a woman with an immense capacity for love. Mike knows she is the only one for him, but will Cree find the courage to truly live and love before the best thing to walk into her life leaves her behind?

 

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EXCERPT

Sundown hovered in the sky and was reflected in the surf, a great smearing of lime and fuchsia and orange sun. Mike and Cree stood on the Boardwalk and leaned over the railing to view the beach and pier as they ate hot dogs and sipped Cokes.

Tourist families trickled from the dusk-ridden amusement park while teenagers and college kids filled it. Down on the beach, couples strolled at the edge of the surf. A man jogged with his dog. Behind them, the carousel bellowed its macabre tones and Cree shivered.

She hated the merry-go-round. To her, the ride promised an escape to magical and faraway places but as soon as you bought a ticket, you found that you had been duped, all hopes dashed in a never-ending circle of ups and downs, dreams frozen in the mouths of screaming horses.

So she turned her back on the beach and let the white and colored lights of the Boardwalk dazzle her until she could tune out the strains of the calliope. Mike, she snorted, no doubt loved the awful contraption. She looked at him and shook her head. He was staring at the monstrous thing with a half smile on his lips and a dreamy look in his eyes.

He was right about coming here, she thought, as she tossed her napkins in the basket. She inhaled the salt air and sweet smell of cotton candy and felt light and free.

She felt young again, on the brink of promise, as if she were here with her girlfriends, giggling at the thrill of night and hoping that the hot guy from gym class would notice her. Only this time, she was here with an even hotter guy. She stood up a little straighter, let her step swagger a bit as she began to walk.

Buy link:
Amazon


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AUTHOR Bio and Links:


Dina Keratsis is an award-winning author of romance fiction in which all roads lead to illumination and magic is found in the mundane. A New England girl, she has a penchant for punk rock, Scottish tea rooms and a mad crush on Sirius Black. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband and two children.



Website
Facebook
Twitter: @dinakeratsis
Pinterest
Amazon author page



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GIVEAWAY




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The tour dates can be found here