Guest Author Bridie Hall with MY SUMMER ROOMMATE + #giveaway

Please welcome Bridie Hall to Fall into Reading Reviews !!

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First, I’d like to thank you for hosting me on your blog today.

Since my first YA book got published back in January, I’ve been often asked why I write. The truth is, until I started getting this question from readers, I never really thought about it. I never pondered it for the simple reason that it seemed such a large part of me that I never questioned the reasons behind it. Do you ask yourselves why you breathe? Or why you eat? Unless you’re a very philosophically oriented person, I don’t think you do.

Writing for me is an integral part of my life, like food and coffee and the sun coming up in the morning and going down in the evening. But after I had to answer the question a few times, I really started to think about the reasons. And here are some of them ...

I love building characters, giving them a background, motives, emotions ... I can explore the workings of the human mind by working out a scene or an emotional conflict through the characters. At the same time, I’m also expressing my views of the world through them.

Through the research that I do for each book I write, I learn a lot. I’ve explored places and times, I’ve researched different professions, history, habits. I like adventures, so research is like an exciting journey for me. I’ll often get carried away and keep researching something even after I know everything I need to know for my story.

I love connecting with other people through my work. I love to hear the readers’ responses because this makes for an interesting ‘conversation’. I want to make them feel something with my stories and have them respond to that.

I love my readers, and with that comes a responsibility that I think the more published you are the more you’re aware of it. You don’t want to disappoint your readers and that’s a challenge that gets bigger with every book. I like challenges because they help me improve my writing. So I hope My Summer Roommate is even better than Letting Go. And I hope the next one excels them both.

Writing is my outlet, my journey, a challenge that helps me grow, a playground where I resolve issues through my characters, it’s my way of expressing what I feel and think.

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My Summer Roommate

By Bridie Hall

YA Contemporary Romance

@39k

Chloe needs a place to crash for the summer before college. When Chris offers, she moves in with him. It’s just for two months, no biggie. But soon she realizes she may have made a mistake. He's too perfect—a former snowboarder, laid-back and kind to boot. And he’s smitten with her. But she’s got trust issues and a relationship feels daunting. When he keeps trying to win her over, the temptation becomes overwhelming.

Just as she gives in and decides it’s not worth fighting their emotions anymore, Chris reveals he’s made a stupid mistake which might ruin Chloe’s trust in him and tear them apart.

Buy Links:   Evernight Teen     Amazon     Smashwords

ARe     Bookstrand

Excerpt:

“Remember Chris? He was in History with us this year,” I say over my shoulder to Isabelle, as I lead the way into the deli. Isabelle’s expression is confused, but I know she remembers Chris. We’ve talked about him before. A lot of girls from class were all ‘gaga’ over him because he was hot and a snowboarder––or a shredder, as he called himself. Except for Isabelle, who’s had love troubles with Harper and Jamie, two brothers from Atlanta. Harper won. I like him well enough. I even had a crush on him way back when.

“That cute guy with iPod earphones practically glued to his ears?” she asks, recognition lighting up her face.

“Yes. I’m going to crash with Chris for the next two months,” I say quickly, hoping that Isabelle won’t react too strongly to the news.

“What do you mean?”

I drop into a chair.

“Aren’t you going to stay with me?”

Isabelle said I should come live with her. But Harper hangs out at her place constantly, because their relationship is still in the head-over-heels stage, too.

“I don’t want to be in the way. You and Harper need some alone time, Izzy.”

The waitress takes our orders and then rushes back with a small bowl of peanuts.

“My dad’s there, too, and he’s not in the way,” Isabelle says, taking a peanut and munching it absent-mindedly.

“Because he’s holed up in his study all day long.”

I smile and keep the tone light, but the thought of everyone around me starting their new lives, with their new, happy relationships, makes me feel lonely. Deserted. Even though I’m not looking for a relationship.

“It’s just for the two months until I go to college.”

“You wouldn’t be in the way, Chloe. You could never be in the way.”

“Okay, okay, I admit it. Watching you two being all crazy about each other would just make me envious.”

“Oh.”

Izzy’s my best friend, which means I know her well enough to have predicted such a response. Fact is, I broke up with Adam a few weeks ago. For the second time, but this time it’s for real. Of course Isabelle thinks I’m broken-hearted about it. I am sad, but not too much. I’ve never really thought our relationship would last. He was just a pretty boy, selfish and immature. I wasn’t looking for a long-term relationship, anyhow. I’m too young for that. Or maybe I’m too selfish and immature, too.

“Yeah.” I sigh. I feel a bit guilty for not being entirely honest with Isabelle, but the waitress bringing our drinks distracts me so I forget it quickly enough. Besides, I’m doing it to give her some space. Well, her, and Harper.

“So ... You’re just moving in with this Chris? I didn’t know you were tight.”

“We’re not. I mean, I saw him at Adam’s birthday party. We started talking and he was sort of cool. We stayed in touch.”

“And he just asked you to come live with him?” She looks incredulous, a bit worried, perhaps.

“I told Mark—Jamie’s friend? The lacrosse team captain?—about my situation, and apparently he told Chris. He called me last week and said I could crash with him for the two months, no prob. He’s got enough space now that his roommate went back home for the summer.”

“Hm.” Isabelle looks thoughtful as she sips her drink.

“How are things with you and Harper?” I say to change the topic, because I don’t like her frowning. I grin when I see Izzy’s cheeks warm up. “That cozy, huh?”

“We’re … great.”

“Uh-huh.” I’m amused by Isabelle’s short answer. She has always been very private and reserved. I wonder how that works with Harper, but my thoughts quickly veer into the gutter territory. Good thing Izzy can’t read my mind.

“Okay, okay,” Isabelle says, holding up her hands in surrender. “He’s wonderful. He’s so much fun, and experienced and …”

I wiggle my eyebrows just to taunt her and it has an immediate effect. Isabelle turns scarlet and starts to protest.

“I didn’t mean it like that. I meant in a general sort of way, like … he can teach me about life and such.”

“Sure.” I can’t help my lips stretching into a wide grin. This is better relaxation even than yoga.

“Well, he’s experienced … like that, too.” Isabelle stumbles over the words, but it is obvious that she is more than happy about it.

I snort in my tea, spilling it all over the table. “Good for you.”

Isabelle’s face radiates with happiness, different than when she was with Jamie, Harper’s younger brother. I’ve always known Harper was the right one for her, but Isabelle didn’t believe me until she spent one long day with him on the way home from Atlanta. That road trip made her see that Harper wasn’t just an arrogant jerk that taunted her at every opportunity he got. I saw right through him the first time I saw him with Isabelle, long before they ended up together. I could tell he’d fallen for her and that he wasn’t the bad person everyone thought.

I’m pretty good at that, reading people and their deepest secrets. I think that’s because I have experience guarding my own heart against selfish bastards, so I know all the tricks in existence. I’ve even invented some.

“You sure you’re going to be okay with Chris?” Izzy asks.

“It’s just two months. He’s a cool guy. Honestly. I wouldn’t accept his offer if I wasn’t sure I could handle it.”

Author Bio:

Bridie Hall sold her first story at fourteen. Since then, she has written dozens more, translated books, studied writing, and started writing novels. Her days revolve around stories and words, her sleepless nights involve plotting and inventing fascinating new characters. The only activity that takes up more of her time than writing, is reading.

Website: http://bridiehallauthor.com

Giveaway:  $50 Amazon GC, $25 Evernight Teen GC, 5 ecopies of Letting Go

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Happy Release Day Blitz to Ellie Ashe with Chasing the Dollar + a #giveaway

Chasing the Dollar

Ellie Ashe

Gemma Halliday Publishing

Romantic Mystery @75k

Miranda Vaughn has spent the last year and a half fighting for her freedom. Arrested for a fraud scheme involving her supervisors, she's lost her job at a prestigious investment firm, her fiancé, and her reputation. She walks out of the courtroom a free woman, only to find that life has a few more curve balls to throw her way. The jury may have found her not guilty, but Miranda is broke, in debt to her beloved aunt, and can't find a job because of the cloud of suspicion still swirling around her.

She can't move forward with her life until she finds out who set her up. Buried in the evidence against her, Miranda finds a larger scheme, one involving far more money than the $37 million her boss fleeced from unsuspecting investors. Determined to uncover the truth, Miranda begins her own investigation—leading her to Macau and Belize, and into the arms of one sexy FBI agent, who has his own agenda. When the danger heats up, Miranda finds herself in a race against time to find the person behind it all. Before he finds her... 

Buy Links:   Kobo   Nook   iBook   Smashwords   Amazon

Excerpt: (Chapter 1)

"Not guilty."

The two words sliced through the thick atmosphere in the courtroom, and my heart leapt. The boa constrictor of stress that had been wound around my body for the last year and a half eased a tiny bit. Next to me, my attorney, Robert Fogg, tensed. We weren't remotely done, his body language warned.

"As to Count Two, wire fraud, the jury finds the defendant—"

A pause. Why was the clerk pausing?

"Not guilty."

The breath escaped my lungs, but Rob put a cautious hand on my arm warning me not to get too excited yet. He'd spent much of the last fourteen months explaining the odds, explaining the process that I'd face if I insisted on going to trial, comparing the risk I'd face with the known quantity of the plea offer—a mere four years in prison if I agreed to a plea deal and admitted to defrauding clients of the investment bank where I'd been an analyst, compared to ten years or more I risked if I was convicted at trial. And I'd almost certainly be convicted, Rob had assured me. Even if the witnesses against me were convicted felons, liars, conmen who would say anything to get a break on their own prison sentences. The documents were undeniable, incontrovertible evidence of my guilt.

"As to Count Three, wire fraud, the jury finds the defendant—"

Damn her, why the dramatic pause?

"Not guilty," she finished.

This time I glanced over at the jury and made eye contact with several of them, my heart still in my throat. Instead of the impassive expressions they'd worn in the last two weeks, they looked relaxed. Friendlier. Less scary. And they were looking at me.

That was one of the signs Rob told me might signal a favorable verdict. If the jury walked in and wouldn't look at me, they probably had convicted me. When they had filed in with their completed verdict forms, I was too nervous to look in their direction.

"As to Count Four, wire fraud, the jury finds the defendant not guilty."

No waiting this time. The clerk flipped the page to the next form and continued reading, her pace picking up. She must have realized that if she kept pausing before the big reveal on each charge, we'd be here until dark.

"As to Count Five, wire fraud, the jury finds the defendant not guilty."

I couldn't relax yet, not quite yet. There were still ten more opportunities to hear I was going to prison.

Fifteen fraud charges. Fifteen chances to hear the clerk announce that the jury had believed my former boss, his former boss, and the government's accountants and investigators who had testified that I, Miranda Vaughn, participated in a conspiracy to defraud banks and investors. That I, with my business degree from a state school still freshly inked, managed to find a way to outwit regulators for the entire six years I worked at Patterson Tinker Investment Strategies to reap huge profits at the expense of the most established investment advisors in the industry.

Rob's hand gripped my arm, and I realized that the clerk was done reading the verdicts. The room was blurry, and I felt the wet tears running down my cheeks for the first time. The stress of holding those tears back in the last year had caused me to lose sleep, lose hair, and develop a nasty habit of grinding my teeth when I finally managed to close my eyes at night. But I knew that if I had let loose those emotions, I'd never be able to rein them back in and would have ended up in a stark white room with no interior door knobs where I'd spend my days rocking back and forth and waiting for my next round of pills.

"We did it, Miranda," Rob whispered, putting an arm around me in an awkward hug.

I looked up to see the judge watching me. Instead of the stern glare I had grown accustomed to, he was almost smiling at me. I blinked. It must have been the tears in the way. But when I wiped my eyes, there it was—Judge Smith's softening expression, looking like someone's granddad instead of the dour arbiter of my fate.

The judge addressed the jury, thanked them for their service, directed them to the jury commissioner's office to turn in their parking passes, and then looked back at me.

"The bond is exonerated. You're free to go, Ms. Vaughn. Court is recessed."

He stood, and everyone in the room followed suit. The jurors filed back into their room off the side of the courtroom to collect their belongings. Several of them smiled at me, and I smiled back but could feel my lips start to tremble. I swallowed hard and tried to pull myself together. Rob began gathering the legal pads that littered the defense counsel table.

I stood next to the table, still stunned and unsure what I was supposed to do now. Part of me expected to be found guilty, even knowing that I hadn't done what the prosecutor accused me of. I had prepared myself for that. Studied the post-conviction proceedings, the deadline for filing a notice of appeal, researched sentencing procedures and even federal prisons. I hadn't planned what would happen if I were acquitted of all the charges, and I was at a loss as to what to do now.

Turning to the nearly empty courtroom, I saw my lone supporter. The entirety of my cheering section was blowing her nose noisily into a hankie. She came toward me, pulling me into a warm hug over the low railing that separated the gallery from the attorneys and defendants.

"Aunt Marie, when did you get here?"

She gripped me harder. "Somewhere around count seven," she said. "Rob sent me a text when the jury came back. I hot-footed it right down here."

I relaxed into her embrace. The familiar scent of Chanel and baked goods that always permeated her clothing soothed me and took me back to the safety of my childhood. She had come straight from work because she was still wearing her apron with the Sugar Plum Bakery logo.

"Miranda, I'll take care of the bond paperwork," Rob said, interrupting our family reunion.

I pulled away from Aunt Marie and nodded. Rob's face was flushed, and he looked two decades younger than his sixty-three years. He seemed incapable of suppressing the huge grin on his face. Suddenly I felt awkward, unsure how to tell him how grateful I was.

"I don't know what to say," I said. "Thank you, Rob. Thank you so much."

The words were inadequate. During the fourteen months since my arrest, I always felt that he believed I was guilty of something, but despite that, he had done an admirable job defending me. He gave me a crooked smile.

"You're welcome," he said. "We'll talk soon. I'm going to see if I can catch a few of the jurors and talk to them. Come by the office later. We'll celebrate."

He leaned across the railing to shake Aunt Marie's hand and was pulled into a tight embrace. When she finally released him, he gave her a kiss on the cheek and smiled as he gently wiped a tear from her face. Then he turned back to the counsel table and continued clearing it of folders and notepads and his laptop computer, sliding the whole mess into the large black case that he'd been wheeling into court every day of the trial. He zipped the case, gave me another quick hug, and walked over to the other counsel table.

I turned to see how the prosecutors were handling the news. My tormentors—an older, brittle veteran prosecuting attorney named Donna Grayson and Matthew Reese, her younger co-counsel, a clean-cut young man who looked like he was my age. Neither of them would look at me, and their expressions were grim as they shook Rob's hand.

Finally, Matthew Reese made eye contact with me and gave me a nod.

"Good luck to you, Ms. Vaughn," he said.

I almost believed his words were sincere, but then I remembered three days earlier when he called me a thief in his closing argument. I returned the nod without a word, not trusting myself to hold back if I spoke to him—something I'd been forbidden to do for well over a year.

I slipped through the low swinging gate and took Aunt Marie's arm, leading her out of the dark courtroom into the bright, wide and empty hallway. When I had been arraigned on the fraud charges in this courthouse, the hallway had been packed with reporters clamoring for a comment. But since then, they had lost interest. The prosecutor's office wouldn't be putting out a press release on the loss, and I wondered if anyone would even care that I had won. That the woman the government had called "a slick con artist and one of the masterminds of the greatest financial fraud ever seen in this state" was walking out of court and not heading to prison.

I was free to go. No longer facing a decade in prison. Not under a cloud of allegations that had cost me my career, my good name, and my peace of mind. That had driven off friends. Led to the break-up of a five-year relationship. Cost me every last dime of savings and most of Aunt Marie's retirement as well.

I walked up to the wall of windows and looked down on the city, the busy intersection by the federal courthouse, the people jaywalking to get to the Starbucks across the street. A normal day, with everyone bustling about in the bright afternoon sunlight, enjoying a typical California summer day.

I was free to go.

Free.

To go where?

About the Author: 

Ellie Ashe has always been drawn to jobs where she can tell stories—journalist, lawyer, and now writer. Writing quirky romantic mysteries is how she gets the "happily ever after" that so often is lacking in her day job. 

When not writing, you can find her with her nose in a good book, watching far too much TV, or trying out new recipes on unsuspecting friends and family. She lives in Northern California with her husband and two cats, all of whom worry when she starts browsing the puppy listings on petfinder.com.

Contact Info:

Ellieashe.com

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https://www.facebook.com/EllieAsheBooks

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Giveaway:      5 signed Print copies of Chasing the Dollar

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Release Day Blitz: Someday, My Forever by Carrie Fox

Someday, My Forever  

Carrie Fox  

New Adult, @25k words

Rae Ann Bailey has focused on her family and education for her entire life. Now a college freshman, she’s looking forward to everything that being in college entails. She has always thought about what everyone wants and making them happy, so she’s relieved to be out on her own and making her own decisions.

Sam Jenks is a junior, and a vital part of the college rowing team. Studying and getting his team to the national championships are his only priorities. He doesn’t have the time or the desire for a girlfriend

When Sam and Rae Ann meet, they have an instant connection that neither of them can deny. As they get closer, his commitment to the rowing team strains their new relationship, and Rae Ann has to decide if she can handle rowing being number one. Just when it seems that things are going well, someone from Sam’s past threatens to tear them apart. Can Sam and Rae Ann move past their obstacles and decide that their forever is worth it?

Buy Links:   Amazon US     Amazon UK

Excerpt:

Several minutes later, Heidi breezed back inside and smiled widely.  "Let's celebrate our freedom!", she exclaimed.

I shot her a confused look and she laughed.

"Rae Ann, you and I are at the UW, free of parents...it's time to cut loose!"

Gib smiled at Heidi.  "It's good to see you again."  He looked over quickly and waved me away.  "Go on, she won't take no for an answer."

Sighing resignedly, I followed her onto the elevator, which quickly rose to the 6th floor.  We made our way down our way down the hall in a comfortable silence.  I knew the night ahead would be an adventure.

~  ~  ~



Author bio:
Carrie Fox has been an avid reader since childhood.  Since discovering the Indie author community, she has become a blogger and joined street teams for established authors.  Someday, My Forever is her first published work.

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