Get Lost in Melissa Cutler's debut release, The Trouble with Cowboys

The Trouble with Cowboys

Melissa Cutler

Cowboys have never been good for Amy Sorentino. First her hard-riding father bankrupted the family farm. Then her all-hat-no-cowboy boyfriend sold her out on national television, ending her promising career as a chef. Now she and her squabbling sisters have partnered up in a final attempt to save their land by starting an inn and local restaurant. So it figures that with everything on the line, Amy’s key supplier is just the kind of Stetson-tipping heartbreaking bad boy she’s sworn to avoid. But Kellan Reed has a few secrets of his own–and cowboy or not, Amy can’t resist his kind of wild ride…

The Trouble with Cowboys hits stores October 2^nd.

Hey everyone, Jillian Stone here. I'd like everyone to welcome Melissa Cutler to Get Lost in a Story. I know Melissa from RWA San Diego and am so excited that she is here at GLIAS to promote her debut release, The Trouble with Cowboys. Melissa sold two manuscripts last year, the other is Seduction Under Fire, Harlequin Romantic Suspense, coming October 16th!

Melissa Cutler is a Southern California native living in beautiful San Diego. She divides her time between her dual passions for writing sexy, small town contemporaries for Kensington Books and edge-of-your-seat romantic suspense for Harlequin. Find out more about Melissa and her books at www.melissacutler.net or write to her at cutlermail@yahoo.com. You can also find Melissa on Facebook (www.facebook.com/MelissaCutlerBooks ) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/#!/m_cutler).

Buy links:

Amazon      Barnes & Noble     Books-a-Million      IndieBound 

The Importance of Annoying Your Siblings

When I told my husband and kids over breakfast that I was writing a blog post called "The Importance of Annoying Your Siblings," my seven-year-old son perked up. "I know how to annoy sissy!" he exclaimed proudly. Sissy would be his nine-year-old sister. "What is it?" she asked him. "I'm not going to tell you" was his answer.

"That's not fair! Tell me what it is right now!"

Son: "No. It's a secret."

Sissy was outraged. A huge fight ensued, ending when Sissy stomped off in a huff.

And all I could think was, Well played, son. Well played.

Besides having two kids, I also have a younger brother (That's us in the photo. Are we cool or what?), and therefore consider myself a bona fide expert on sibling tiffs. So when I sat down to write about the dynamic between Amy, the heroine of The Trouble with Cowboys, and her two sisters, I knew that teasing and bickering would definitely be a factor. Especially between Amy and her older sister, Rachel, whose personalities have always clashed.

You see, as opposed to Amy's free-spiritedness, Rachel is a no-nonsense farmer. When a heifer belonging to the hero (who's in the doghouse for keeping a secret from Amy about his identity) wanders onto the sisters' property, Amy and Rachel have very different ideas on what to do with it. Rachel wants to butcher it and have steaks for dinner—which, in her world, was why the cattle was raised in the first place—but Amy has a different idea. Check it out…

from The Trouble with Cowboys:

Amy heard the creak of the front door opening, followed by Kellan's deep-voiced "Hello?"

"In the kitchen," she called.

He walked up behind her and kissed her neck. "You've got a new member of the welcome committee out front, a real friendly lady."

"I do?"

He grabbed a stalk of celery and straddled a chair backward. "About yay big, brown eyes, brown hair. Flowers in her ear."

Amy glanced sideways at him, smiling, and set her knife aside. "That's Tulip."

Kellan took a bite of celery. "Never seen one of my cows look so fancy before."

"She wandered over last week and I was too mad at you to call you about it."

"And the flowers?"

She scooped celery into a mixing bowl. "Those are to annoy Rachel."

"Did they do the trick?"

"You betcha. Check out the picture in the downstairs bathroom."

He wandered from the room. A minute later, his hoot of laughter shook the walls. Guess he approved of the framed photo hanging over the toilet of Tulip in all her flowery glory.

He took his seat again. "That's a photograph for the ages. I bet Rachel blew her top when she saw it."

"She's taken it down and destroyed it four times. Little does she know that Walmart had a special on picture frames, so I picked up a dozen. She takes one picture down, I put a new one up."

"That's right sisterly of you."

Amy sat next to him. "It is, isn't it?"

I love writing about siblings because despite the way they get on each other's nerves, there's an underlying bond of love that's unbreakable. Well, I mean, I'm never going to forgive my little brother for putting that flying beetle on my back right where I couldn't reach it when I was ten, but I still love him and would do anything for him.

I'd love to hear from you about your experience with sibling annoyance. Do you have siblings? What have they done to annoy you (or vice versa)? What's the most interesting sibling relationship you've ever read about in a book? Please share because I'm always looking for great book recommendations. To thank you for stopping by, I'm giving away a copy of The Trouble with Cowboys to one commentator, either print or digital—your choice. Best of luck!

And if you'd like to stay up-to-date on all my latest book news and release dates, don't forget to sign up for my twice-monthly newsletter (http://www.melissacutler.net/?page_id=255).

***Note: Offer void where prohibited. Prizes will be mailed to North America  addresses only. If an Advanced Reading Copy (ARC) is available, the author may utilize that option for International participants. Odds of winning vary due to the number of entrants.