BLURB:
To their friends, Nick and Cathy Chance have the perfect marriage.
High school sweethearts who’ve been together for ten years, they’ve weathered
challenges and are as committed as they were when they first fell in love.
Cathy trusts Nick, Nick’s world revolves around his wife, and the future looks
golden.
To everyone who knows them, Cathy Chance and Roxanne Ruiz have a
perfect friendship. They connected in grade school and since then have been
each other’s confident and trusted advisor. Cathy loves the gorgeous Roxanne
like a sister, Roxanne has fun-loving Cathy’s back in every situation, though
lately there’s been tension between these two best friends…
And then, on a sunny summer morning, the unthinkable occurs,
throwing into doubt the truth of what each of these people really know about
themselves and one another.
Will Roxanne’s sacrifice be too little, and too late? Should
Nick’s love for his wife be strong enough to risk trusting his heart more than
logic? Can Cathy’s devotion to Nick give her enough strength to convince him to
see her for who she really is?
Secret Sister proves how strong, how stubborn, and how trustworthy
love can be as Nick and Cathy and Roxanne are challenged to overcome the
secrets, the lies … and one extraordinary twist of fate that turns their lives
upside down.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
EXCERPT:
It
was sunny and mild the July morning Roxanne and I headed up the state highway
into the Verdugo Hills. But the Santa Anas were blowing in from the desert, and
those aptly called devil winds rocked our car with gusts of heat and dust that
caused tiny sparks of electricity to snap against my fingertips every time I
touched my hair.
I
looked forward to the Santa Anas each summer because they cleared every trace
of smog from the vast L.A. basin and left the air sparkling. But that day they
were weeks early and their intensity increased a sense of foreboding I’d
awakened with.
I
squeezed my hands together and glanced at the woman sitting next to me, for she
was the true reason for my uneasiness.
My
best friend and I should have been relaxed and chatty, but we hadn’t been
either lately. Roxanne had recently broken up with the guy she’d been seeing
for years, and her mood alarmed me. She had barely said a word at the front
door when she picked me up, and nothing at all since we’d been in the car.
Slowly
I turned my head from side to side, trying to ease the knot of anxiety in my neck.
I reached up to massage my shoulder but the seatbelt held me snugly, so I undid
it.
The
lock made a sharp click as it released.
“What’s
wrong?” Roxanne asked.
“Nothing.”
I spoke quietly. “Just a kink. I must have slept weird.”
She
frowned and shifted gears and the road rose higher in front of us…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
INTERVIEW:
- Where did you
get the idea for the novel? Secret Sister started with one
question, “If everything about you changed on the outside, would your true
love recognize you?” I knew I didn’t want to do a ‘Beauty and Beast’
story, where of course someone would have to be disfigured to pull it off.
I like ‘trading places’ stories, starting with “Freaky Friday” through “What Women Want” with Mel Gibson, and I thought
it would be interesting to add the ‘what
if’ twist of one of the traders dying. So I mixed all those elements
together and ended up with this book.
- Your title. Who
came up with it? Did you ever change your title? I came up with the title Secret
Sister almost immediately, then changed it for a year to “Nick &
Cathy and Roxanne” I thought it
was clever and evocative and elegant. Everyone else thought it shrieked ménage a trois. Including the
artist my publisher assigned it to, whose first shot at a cover looked
pretty much like an orgy. So I
changed it back.
- Why did you pick
this genre? What do you like about it? Secret Sister is a
contemporary romance/women’s fiction/paranormal. HA! Dizzy yet? Truth is,
I’ve never been a straight down the line genre follower (never could color
inside the lines, either). I like a touch of magical realism in a
contemporary novel, suspense in all romances,
and have a suave and sexy ghost in my next contemporary novel. Blended genre
is who I am, and I like it, but primarily because I can’t seem to train my
mind to come up with anything but these kinds of stories.
- Since becoming a
writer, what’s the most exciting thing to ever happen to you? I was at a cocktail party on a boat in
Mobile Bay in Alabama. My friends, who owned the boat, introduced me to another
guest who asked me what I did for a living. I’d just contracted for my
first book the week before. I gulped and replied, “I’m a novelist.” I can
still see his smile of appreciation,
and can still feel the thrill up my spine I had speaking those
words, and having them be true!
- What book are
you currently reading or what was the last book you read? I’m currently reading Diane Gaston’s A Reputation for Notoriety, a tension filled gem about a
gaming establishment called The Masquerade Club in Regency England. The
last book I read was The Halo Effect
by Shauna Allen. Wowie…tattoo parlors, hot guys on Harleys, and a couple
of angels. Yes, angels. It was marvelous.
- What is your
writing process? Write, cry, throw
away. Okay, kidding. Come up with an idea. It’s always the end of the
story, and the title for me. Then try and use Michael Hague’s fabulous Six Stage Plot Structure. Fail
miserably. Write, cry, throwaway.
Not really kidding now. I write everyday. Even when I don’t. I do several
drafts. Then pray for inspired input from my critique group, aptly named
The Lifesavers, do five or six rewrites,
rely on my hubby, ‘Phil the fist’, for food, clean clothes, and
stern admonitions to keep going, and voila,
a book.
- At a book
signing, do you just sign your name or do you write a note? How do you
come up with stuff to say? I
haven’t done book signings for a long time, but when I did as a Harlequin
Intrigue author, I found it easy to ask who the book was for and just sign
to them with thanks. I really did feel thankful that someone had come to
see me, and wanted to read the book. It choked me up. Even the one time I
talked with a woman for five minutes, signed the book to her, gave it to
her, only to have her hand it back to me and say, “Oh, I don’t want to buy
it. I just wanted to see what was going on here.” Writing is humbling in a
million different ways.
- What is
something people would be surprised to know about you? I love televised golf. I’m addicted to
it. Sergio. Tiger. Or, be still my heart, Graham McDowell and Camilo
Villegas. My author friends think I’m insane, but I love the ‘you against
yourself’ nature of the sport. And I can sit on the couch all day in my
nightie when I watch it, always a plus.
- How do you react
to a bad review? I actually
appreciate well written bad reviews, and by well written, I mean those
that state why my book didn’t
work for them, and then enumerate the reasons. I learn from those. I hate (yes, strong word, but strong
feeling arises) the ones that state they dislike my book, and then give
reasons that are factually incorrect. I got one of those with Secret
Sister. Of course I wrote back and gently corrected their facts. The
reviewer still hated the book.
- How did you
celebrate the sale of your first book? Wine. Dinner. A trip to Disney with the kids. A Dooney &
Bourke purse. And thanked my karmic spirits that I’d found an editor who
believed I could tell a good story!
Emelle
Gamble was a writer at an early age, bursting with the requisite childhood
stories of introspection which evolved into bad teen poetry and took her first
stab at full length fiction in an adult education writing class when her kids
were in bed. As M.L. Gamble, she published several romantic suspense novels
with Harlequin. She has contracted with Soul Mate Publishing for Secret Sister,
summer of 2013, and Dating Cary Grant, an early 2014 release.
Always
intrigued by the words ‘what if’, Emelle’s books feature an ordinary woman
confronted with an extraordinary situation.
She most enjoys reading stories that surprise and amaze her, and hopes
her readers will enjoy the challenging and exciting journeys her characters
take.
Emelle
lives in suburban Washington D.C. with
her husband, Phil, her hero of thirty years,
and two orange cats, Lucy and Bella. These girls, like all good
villains, have their reasons for misbehaving. Her daughter, Olivia, and son,
Allen, are happily launched on their own and contributing great things to
society, their mother’s fondest wish.
Email:
emellegamble@aol.com
FaceBook: Author Emelle Gamble
Twitter:
@EmelleGamble
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Links will come as soon as they’re available.
GIVEAWAY:
Emelle will be awarding a $100 Amazon gift card to a randomly drawn commenter during this tour AND her Reviews Tour.
Emelle will be awarding a $100 Amazon gift card to a randomly drawn commenter during this tour AND her Reviews Tour.
