Hi all I met this lovely funny lady on Twitter after her books were reccd to me by a friend.
I am thrilled to use my blog to help her get the word out about her upcoming story Along Came Trouble
Ruthie writes lovely funny stories with lots of heart and of course great characters
I hope you give her stuff a shot
SUE
Hello,
Cleveland! Or wherever you are.
Happy to be
here at So You Think You Can Write (I do! I do!) to talk about Along Came Trouble,
which released on March 11 from Random House / Loveswept. Along Came Trouble is the second novel in my Camelot series, though
it can be read as a standalone.
It’s a
“bodyguard book,” but it’s a little different, too. I see it as a novel about what
happens when a woman meets the right man at the wrong time and has to decide
how much of herself to give him when she doesn’t feel like she’s got any
self to spare. And most of all it’s about how hard it is to find a
balance between dependence, independence, and interdependence—and how love can
lift our burdens and help us become better versions of ourselves, if we are
brave enough to let it.
To give you
a taste, I’m including this excerpt, which is in the heroine, Ellen’s, point of
view. Ellen is having her first long conversation with the hero, Caleb, and
finding herself far more curious about him than she wants to be. As she talks
to him, we listen to her thoughts and get an idea just where her resistance to
intimacy and dependence comes from:
She fought back all the other
questions she wanted to ask. How big was his family? Did he have brothers and
sisters, nieces or nephews? A girlfriend?
Her curiosity had no shame. She
couldn’t remember the last time she’d cared so much about the mundane details
of someone else’s life. There was nowhere this intense wanting-to-know could
lead that she had the freedom to follow.
“It sounds kind of nice,” she said.
“To have all that family around.”
He laced his fingers behind his
head, resting his elbows against the chair back. “It has its moments. Does that
mean you don’t? Have family or somebody around, I mean?”
“Just Jamie, when he comes to visit.
And my ex’s mom, I guess. She takes care of Henry a few days a week. She’s sort
of family. Both of my parents are gone.”
“What about the ex, does he help
out?”
“He’s an alcoholic.”
Caleb made a pained face, a standard
response to her confession about Richard. He was probably thinking the standard
thoughts and would soon offer one of the standard platitudes. What a shame.
How hard for you.
It had been hard, but the
alcohol had been the least of her problems when she was married to Richard.
One time, she’d embarrassed him at a
dinner party by admitting she’d never read Ulysses. He’d had a few too
many drinks, and he’d launched into a monologue that began with a few witty
jokes at her expense and ended with a dissertation on her shortcomings. It went
on so long that she’d fantasized about standing up and dumping her dinner in
his lap. She’d imagined herself walking out, hiking half a mile home in the
dark in her heels. Locking him out of the house until he sobered up.
She’d done nothing. Not that night,
and not for days afterward. Finally, when it seemed possible it could be funny,
she’d told Jamie.
Verbally abusive, Jamie had said. Never good
enough for you. You should leave him.
But those were all Jamie’s words,
and she hadn’t been able to absorb them, to believe them. Part of her had
understood the logic behind her brother’s hatred for Richard, but she hadn’t
known how to make it her own logic, her own hatred. Not until Henry came along.
In the divorce, she’d gotten the
house and a custody agreement that allowed Richard three hours’ supervised
visitation with Henry each week. Richard had gotten everything else. Ellen
considered it a victory.
Caleb leaned forward, resting his
elbows on his knees. Ellen waited for his sympathy, but it wasn’t what she got.
“No boyfriend?” he asked.
Surprised and grateful, she made a
snorting sound of dismissal, the sort of accidental pig noise she was always
embarrassing herself with. “No.”
Caleb rubbed his finger and thumb
over his jaw, looking ponderous but with mischief in his eyes. “A girlfriend,
then.”
“Come on, I’m not gay,” she
protested. “Just, you know, divorced. A mom.”
“You say that like it’s the same
thing as ‘washed up.’”
It is.
“Camelot’s a hard place to be thirty
and single,” she pointed out. “All these college girls running around are tough
on the ego.”
“They’re kids. They could hardly
compete with you.”
When she glanced over, he was
smirking at her. Served her right. She’d fished pretty deep for the compliment.
Caleb’s smirk was dead sexy.
Her libido growled and started
pacing back and forth across her lower belly.
Don’t look at him, Ellen told herself, but her
furtive eyes snatched tidbits to catalog. Shoulders so broad, he just about
filled the whole chair. His throat where he’d unbuttoned his shirt. The shadow
of stubble on his neck and jaw.
Here was a species of man she had no
experience with. She’d always gone for the Heathcliff types, men with wild hair
and deep thoughts. Army guys didn’t do it for her. Or they never had before.
Oh, not good. Not good at all.
She couldn’t have him. There was no
room in her life for any man, let alone one this . . . big. Even if she had the
feminine wiles to capture his attention, what would she do with him?
You’d roll right over and let him
take charge.
And then she’d be back at square
one, weak-willed and malleable, chained to the whims of another man who didn’t
want or respect her enough. No, thanks.
About the Book
Along Came Trouble by Ruthie Knox
Camelot
series, book 2
Releases
March 11, 2013
Ruthie Knox’s Camelot series
continues in this sizzling eBook original novel, featuring two headstrong souls
who bump heads—and bodies—as temptation and lust bring nothing but delicious
trouble.
An accomplished lawyer and driven
single mother, Ellen Callahan isn’t looking for any help. She’s doing just fine
on her own. So Ellen’s more than a little peeved when her brother, an
international pop star, hires a security guard to protect her from a prying
press that will stop at nothing to dig up dirt on him. But when the tanned and
toned Caleb Clark shows up at her door, Ellen might just have to plead the
fifth.
Back home after a deployment in Iraq
and looking for work as a civilian, Caleb signs on as Ellen’s bodyguard. After
combat in the hot desert sun, this job should be a breeze. But guarding the
willful beauty is harder than he imagined—and Caleb can’t resist the temptation
to mix business with pleasure. With their desires growing more undeniable by
the day, Ellen and Caleb give in to an evening of steamy passion. But will they
ever be able to share more than just a one-night stand?
E-book. 350
pp. ISBN 978-0-345-54161-1.
Buy the
book from Amazon
(US) | Barnes
& Noble | iTunes
Bookstore | Amazon
(UK) | Amazon
(Canada) | Other
buy links via Random House
Ruthie Knox
graduated from Grinnell College as an English and history double major and went
on to earn a Ph.D. in modern British history that she’s put to remarkably
little use. She debuted as a romance novelist with Ride with Me—probably the only existing cross-country bicycling
love story yet to be penned—and followed it up with About Last Night, which features a sizzling British banker hero
with the unlikely name of Neville. Other publications include Room at the Inn (a Christmas novella)
and How To Misbehave, book 1 in the
Camelot series. She moonlights as a mother, Tweets incessantly, and bakes a
mean focaccia.
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