Release Day! Carry Her Heart

It's Release Day for Carry Her Heart!!  Yes, I'm a bit excited!!  (I know, you're shocked because I'm normally so sedate! LOL)

So what's it about??

“Maybe we live our lives constantly becoming and rebecoming. Maybe we’re always in the process of metamorphosing into something new."

In her journal, writer Piper George notes the change of seasons. Each entry marks the passage of time since she became a teen mother and put her baby up for adoption. Her words flow together, painting a picture of loss, hope, and enduring love. But one autumn, a new presence appears in its pages and in her life: her neighbor, Edward “Ned” Chesterfield.

As winter thaws to spring, Piper and Ned develop a friendship that could be something more if only Piper will let it. But the loss of her daughter has shaped her life. And having given so much of herself away, she’s not sure if she can give Ned all that he deserves. But with him at her side, Piper just might learn that a heart’s love is never truly lost!.

Reviews:

"An Unforgettable Story Of Unconditional Love"~Fresh Fiction

"Carry Her Heart is an emotional, slow burn, friends to lovers romance." ~Harlequin Junkie 

It's also #TeaserTuesday so here's an excerpt...

Carry Her Heart
Holly Jacobs 
copyright 2015 

Excerpt

I sat on my front porch and took a sip from a bone china teacup with tiny forget-me-nots painted on the side.

It was a civilized, proper cup.

I looked down at my laptop, which was balanced on the holey jeans that covered my outstretched legs. My legs were propped on the porch railing.

There was nothing particularly proper looking about me.

I didn’t need a mirror to know that my carrot-red hair had gone Medusa again and was breaking free of its twisty. As for my jeans, I swear my knees must be knobbier than the average woman’s, or maybe because I worked at home and wore them daily, they just gave up more rapidly. Either way, my three favorite pair of jeans all had holes in the knees . . . again.

I’d have to go shopping.

I hate going shopping.

I could buy most of what I needed online and avoid the stores, but jeans were an item of clothing that must be tried on.

I stared at my blank screen and took another sip of my tea.

I liked working on the porch.

I watched all the cars that stopped in front of the school across the street. Passenger doors opened and children were disgorged from them at regular intervals. Tall, skinny kids, short, roundish ones. Loud ones who started shrieking friends’ names before their feet hit the pavement. Quiet ones, who could seem alone even in the midst of the morning chaos.

Boys. Girls. Nerds. Jocks. Happy. Sullen.

They were all my inspiration.

They were also my audience.

In a sea of young adult books that dealt with paranormal elements, from wizards to vampires, I currently wrote reality-based books for preteens. I’d written books for much younger children in the past, but as my audience aged, so did my writing.

Maybe it was time to move my books from elementary and middle schools to high schools?

I tried to concentrate on the scene in front of me. I only had a few more weeks before the Erie, Pennsylvania weather got too cold to work outside. I always hated moving inside for work. This porch was where I found Julie and Auggie, Terry the Terrible, and Beautiful Belle.

This porch was also where I tried to imagine Amanda.

There.

A girl with auburn-brown braids that thumped up and down on her back as she walked to a group of girls and joined in the talk. She was new. I know I’d have remembered her. She was talking to a group of bigger kids. Probably eighth graders, the oldest class at this school. She was animated as she spoke. She’d work as a character. I . . .

I was distracted from the scene playing out across the street by a moving van that pulled into the driveway next door. The Morrisons had moved out three weeks ago. The For Sale sign on the front yard had a Sold sticker plastered across it for a few weeks longer than that. But after the Morrisons moved out, no one else had moved in.

The door of the van opened and a man got out.

I only needed that first quick glance to know he was cute.

I tried to study him circumspectly. And I immediately thought of him as a fictional character. If I were writing him in a book, I’d make him a . . . coach. He had that every-man  sort of look to him. He was good-looking, but not intimidatingly so. Still, he was good-looking enough that there was a spark of attraction.

I’ll confess, I don’t go out a lot and don’t meet a ton of eligible, single men. I meet even fewer who give me that zing of awareness. The sort of feeling that reminded me I was a woman in her prime.

I took another glance at the man I was zinging over. His hair was . . . neat. Not too short but not long by any stretch of the imagination. And it was brown. Not dark brown bordering on black and definitely not punctuated with blond highlights. No, this man’s hair was a straight-up, use-a-Crayola-brown-crayon-if-you-were-coloring-him sort of brown.

He was tan. Not in a lies-out-in-the-sun sort of way, but rather he had a skin tone that came from ancestors who came from sunnier climes than mine. I made people who were pale look swarthy.

Judging from the van, he was not overly tall, nor was he overly short. Average.

I tried to ignore my zing and concentrate on my book. This man would make a perfect coach. Put a baseball cap on him and give him a whistle and a glove . . .

At some point I’d started typing.

“Couch,” Felicity called. “Your name’s funny.”

“Coach,” Coach Divan responded, correcting her pronunciation.

“Couch Divan. I bet people pick on you. My grandma calls her couch a divan. So you’re really Couch Couch.”

“Coach,” he repeated.

“I like Couch better. Couch Divan. Yep. Couch Couch. Yeah, I like it—”

 “Hi.”

That one syllable pulled me from my story and I realized the man who had reminded me I was a woman and was my potential new neighbor as well as an inspiration for a new character was standing at my porch railing.

“Sorry. I got caught up in . . .” I wasn’t going to tell him what I’d been caught up in. It’s better not to scare new acquaintances with my profession. Some worry they’d become fodder for my fiction.

Frankly, some did.

I started again. “Hi. Are you my new neighbor?”

He nodded. “Edward Chesterfield. Ned, to my friends.”

I couldn’t help it. I started to laugh. Really, it was more of a giggle than a full-out laugh.

I’d written an article years ago about the evolution of the modern sofa for a historical magazine, which was the only reason I know that a variety of couches are known asChesterfields.

Given what I’d been writing, it was funny. Well, maybe not in a standup routine sort of comedy way, but to a woman who spent a lot of her time entertaining herself, it was hysterical.

My new neighbor, Ned, looked at me like I was nuts.

“Sorry. Really. It’s just that . . .” Man, I was making a muck of this. I’m pretty sure that telling a man you were amused that there was a type of couch that bore his family name wasn’t going to convince him of your sanity...

Teaser Tuesday, Meet Piper's Garden

I've started using my #ViewsOfMyGarden posts on social media again.  Watching the way it changes as the season goes along gives me glee.  From the first popping of my asparagus, to the fresh tomatoes, to the final burst of squash before the winter hits.  It's always changing.


The garden in next week's (Just 1 week to go!!) CARRY HER HEART becomes almost a character in its own right, so today's teaser is introducing you to Piper's garden:

From the front, my brick house with its big porch and small white dormer jutting out from the roof is as neat and orderly as I can possibly keep it. There are immaculately trimmed hedges along the porch. And on the porch, white wicker furniture, a welcome mat, and an antique milk box that my paperboy leaves the paper in.

But my backyard is not neat in the least. 

It’s overgrown and more than a bit wild looking. In a sea of well-kept lawns, my backyard was the neighborhood anomaly. I’d like to say I felt bad about that, but in truth, my yard is fenced in, so unless my neighbors are standing on something, I don’t think it bothers them. At least no one’s mentioned it to me if it does.
When I first moved in five years ago, there was a six-foot, solid wooden fence around the yard, but very little grass and no trees or bushes. That first spring, I went to a local nursery and went a bit crazy. I spent a week planting everything from serviceberry trees to raspberries bushes. Then I added a couple apple trees and a chestnut tree.

That fall, I put in hundreds of bulbs and added more in the spring, then threw three containers of wildflower seeds into any bare bits of earth that were left. Still, I added. Mints, chicory, milkweed, Queen Anne’s lace . . . 

Sometimes one plant choked out a neighbor, and occasionally something totally unexpected popped up. But five years later, my yard is perfectly imperfect. 

It’s a chaotic jumble of greenery.

If my front porch was my place to work, then my backyard was my place to dream. 

One of the nicest perks about being a professional writer was that daydreaming was part of my job description, and my yard was the perfect place to do that.

You can preorder Carry Her Heart now! It's available as a paperback, Kindle eBook, and audiobook!

Holly

#Teaser Tuesday...Carry Her Heart

Given the weather that's gripping most of the US, I thought this was an appropriate #TuesdayTeaser!

Carry Her Heart 
release date 4-28-15

I’d always thought that autumn smelled of cinnamon. I breathed deeply and decided winter smelled of peppermint. Not peppermint candy, but the real herb I had growing in the backyard. Sharp, cold, with a bit of a bite. Clean. Not that it was officially winter yet, but the season arrives early on the shore of Lake Erie.

As if on cue, it started to snow.

“And thus it begins,” Ned intoned.

I laughed. “Another Erie winter.”

“Snow shovels and snowblowers,” he said.

I added, “Snow brushes.”

Ned took it as a challenge, thought a moment and said, “Snow pants.”

“Come on, that’s a bit of a cheat.

Christmas in Cupid Falls, Holly Jacobs

‪#‎TeaserTuesday‬ Christmas in Cupid Falls, Holly Jacobs, 10/14

“Arf, arf,” Clarence Harding barked as he entered Kennedy Anderson’s shop minutes after she’d opened for the day. He pulled off his thick knit cap and exposed an ice-grey head of hair. “Mornin’, Mayor.”

“Good morning, Clarence. And it’s Cupid’s Bowquet. Bo—long O. Bow, like bow and arrow—Cupid’s bow and arrow. It’s not bow, short O, like powwow.”

For more than three decades, Kennedy’s aunt had owned the flower shop and it had been Betty’s Flowers. But Aunt Betty had been gone three years. This was Kennedy’s shop now, and she thought it was a great marketing strategy to play off the town’s name. Last year she’d realized that when you lived in Cupid Falls, Pennsylvania, Cupid’s Bowquet was a perfect name for a flower shop.

“It’s a dumb name, Mayor, if you don’t mind me saying.”

Kennedy did mind, but she was enough of a businesswoman not to say so. “What brings you in today, Clarence?”

“Seems I’ll be needing to send the old ball and chain some flowers. I got in late and ran over her new frog.”

Joan Harding collected frogs. Lots of frogs. They were everywhere inside and outside of her house. She even had some plastic bullfrogs she’d nailed into her giant maple tree and proudly told everyone they were tree frogs.

Clarence pulled off his gloves and stuffed them in his heavy winter coat’s pocket. “Course, I don’t know how she could tell I ran one over. I hid the pieces and there must be about a million frogs around now. Plus we’ve got all this snow . . .” He shrugged, as if figuring out the mystery of his wife was too much for him.

Clarence was a regular. It seemed he was always doing one thing or another to annoy Joan, but crushing a frog called for more than just some flowers. “It just so happens I might have something to get you out of the doghouse.”

“Froghouse is how I put it,” he grumbled. “And I seem to be in it more than any man should be.”

Despite his less-than-endearing endearment ball and chain, Kennedy had seen Clarence and Joan together. She knew they fit. They worked. Clarence might get in trouble for running over frogs, but the Hardings were one of those couples that no one could imagine not being together.
She liked to think her small flower shop helped to keep them that way . . . together.

“One of the vendors I order from had these, and I thought of you when I ordered it.” Kennedy reached under the counter and pulled out a small box and slid it across the counter toward the elderly gentleman.
Clarence opened the lid and pulled out a frog planter. “Now, this is just the ticket. The perfect thing to get me out of trouble. You’ll stick some plant or something in it for her?”

“Definitely,” Kennedy assured him. Clarence was the kind of customer she liked to think of as job security. “Do you have anything in mind?”

He handed her the planter. “Whatever you want, Mayor. Bill me, okay?”

“Sure thing, Clarence. I’ll deliver it this afternoon.”

“Maybe I’ll be out of the froghouse before dinner then. See ya later,
Mayor.”

Christmas in Cupid Falls, coming in October!

Contest to celebrate its release at:

https://www.facebook.com/HollyJacobsAuthorOfficial/posts/844582078894158