The Perfect Dress from New York Times Bestselling Author Carolyn Brown

A plus-size Texas gal has designs on an old crush in New York Times bestselling author Carolyn Brown’s exuberant, bighearted romance.

In the small town of Celeste, Texas, Mitzi Taylor has never quite fit inside the lines. Nearly six feet tall, flame-haired, and with a plus-size spirit to match every curve, she’s found her niche: a custom wedding-dress boutique catering to big brides-to-be with big dreams. Taking the plunge alongside her two best friends, she’s proud they’ve turned The Perfect Dress into a perfect success.

Just when Mitzi has it all pulled together, Graham Harrison walks back into her life, looking for bridesmaid dresses for his twin daughters. A still-strapping jock whose every gorgeous, towering inch smells like aftershave, the star of all Mitzi’s high school dreams is causing quite a flush.

For Mitzi, all it takes is a touch to feel sparks flitting around her like fireflies. She can just imagine what a kiss could do. Graham’s feeling it, too. And he’s about to make that imagination of Mitzi’s run wild. Is it just a hot summer fling, or are Mitzi’s next designs for herself and seeing her own dreams come true?

Here's an excerpt:

    “Men! Can’t live with ‘em, and if we shot 'em all, we’d be out of business,” Mitzi grumbled as she entered the back door of the custom wedding dress shop that she owned with her friends Jody and Paula.

    “Ain’t it the truth.” Jody adjusted her beaded headband, and filled three cups with herbal tea. She threw her long blonde braids over her shoulder. “Some days I could poison Lyle.”

    “And yet, if anyone else even mentioned that, you’d burn them at the stake.” Paula picked up a cup of tea and carried it to the table. She’d gotten her dark hair and dark eyes from her Texas mother, but all the superstition came straight from her Louisiana father. She waved a hand over the cup three times before she tasted it. At thirty-five, she’d never been married, but then technically, neither had any one of them. Jody had lived with Lyle since they’d graduated from high school, but they rejected the tradition of a marriage license.

    Jody’s brown eyes flashed. “Oh, honey I wouldn’t waste gasoline or wood to burn anyone. I grow my own food, remember? I’d poison the tomatoes, and it would look like whoever bad-mouthed my boyfriend had had a heart attack. And you don’t have to do that with your tea. I wouldn’t dream of poisoning you.”

    At almost six feet tall and fitting into a size eighteen jeans, Mitzi had learned to be comfortable in her skin but not until she was an adult. Before that she’d endured lots of bullying about her size. Of course today it came rushing back, all over a wisecrack a man made in the tiny little pastry shop on Main Street in Celeste, Texas.

    “Dammit!” she swore. “I forgot to bring in the doughnuts. I’ll be right back.”

    Someone must’ve forgotten to inform the people who made calendars that in East Texas, summer didn’t wait until the last days of June. The official day was still three weeks away, but that day in May the weatherman said it would reach three digits. Mitzi’s dad had joked that he’d already seen a few lizards carrying canteens.

    Sweat beads had formed on Mitzi’s upper lip by the time she returned. She set the box on the table and grabbed a paper towel to dab at her face. But before she could get the job done, her maternal grandmother, Fanny Lou, slipped into the back door. Mitzi’s dad had bought the house for them to put their business in, but Fannie Lou had given them the seed money for fabrics, new sewing machines and the separate air conditioning unit for the dressing room. She refused to be called a partner, but she loved to drop in at any old time. Not that Mitzi minded. After being away for so many years, she loved to have her grandmother around, not matter what time of day it was.

    Fanny Lou wasn’t quite as tall as Mitzi, unless she was wearing her cowboy boots. Her bright red hair sat on top of her head in a messy bun that looked somewhat like she’d stuck her finger in a light socket. Set in a bed of wrinkles, her bright blue eyes always twinkled behind wire rimmed glasses. That day she was dressed in bibbed overalls, a faded red T-shirt and her signature boots. She set a paper bag filled with tomatoes and cucumbers on the table.

    “Hotter’n the devil’s pitchfork out there. I brought y’all some stuff from my neighbor’s garden. Lord knows, I can’t eat all that and if I could, I wouldn’t. Old women like me don’t have to eat their vegetables. They can eat doughnuts when they want.” She sniffed the air. “I smell coffee.”

Purchase The Perfect Dress:

Amazon: https://amzn.to/2YmVsHu

B&N: https://bit.ly/2SMXvkb

Meet Carolyn

Carolyn Brown is a New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Publisher’s Weekly and #1 Amazon and #1 Washington Post bestselling author and a RITA finalist. With more than 90 books on the market, she’s a recipient of the Bookseller’s Best Award, and the prestigious Montlake Diamond Award, and also a three-time recipient of the National Reader’s Choice Award.

Carolyn and her husband live in the small town of Davis, Oklahoma, where everyone knows everyone else, as well as what they’re doing and when—and they read the local newspaper on Wednesday to see who got caught. They have three grown children and enough grandchildren to keep them young.

When she’s not writing, Carolyn likes to sit in plot new stories in her backyard with her tom cat, Boots Randolph Terminator Outlaw, and watch him protect the yard from all kinds of wicked varmints like crickets, locusts, and spiders. Visit her at www.carolynbrownbooks.com.

Follow Carolyn:

Website: https://bit.ly/2TtQUeI

Twitter: https://twitter.com/thecarolynbrown

Instagram: https://bit.ly/2FApe47

FB (Author’s Page): https://bit.ly/2GZ2HAz

Buy Links:

Amazon: https://amzn.to/2YmVsHu

B&N: https://bit.ly/2SMXvkb

Thank you so much for inviting me back to Get Lost in a Story! I love getting to visit with all y’all! I’ve got coffee in one hand and a doughnut in the other one so bring on the questions.

E.E.: Who is your favorite villain?

Carolyn: That would have to be Rhett Butler in Gone With The Wind, but if we’re talking about television series, it would be Boyd Crowder in Justified. By the time that series ended I wasn’t sure which I liked better, the hero or the villain.

E.E.: Is there a “Blooper” in your story (it may have been changed before printing)?

Carolyn: Not in The Perfect Dress, but there was surely one in one of my previous books. The hero had this pet duck that followed him around. In the story the duck waddled up the stairs, and I bought an “i” instead of a “u”. Y’all can figure out exactly what waddled up the stairs. I was glad for a good editor.

E.E.: What’s the first thing you do when you finish writing a book?

Carolyn: I always say that I’m going to take a whole week off and clean my house, but after the office is cleaned, it seems a shame not to use it, so I start plotting the next book.  But in all honesty, after I write THE END, I take a deep breath and give thanks that I met my deadline!

E.E.: If you could interview one person (and it doesn’t have to be a writer) who would it be?

Carolyn: My great-great-great-great-great grandmother Martha Cummins. I’ve been told my whole life that she came to the United States from Ireland and married a Native American, but my DNA test showed that I didn’t have an ounce of Native American blood. So I’d like to ask her about her husband. Wait just a minute while I go write this idea down for a future book about a heroine who doesn’t believe her DNA test!

E.E.: If you were given a chance to travel to the past where would you go and specifically why?

Carolyn: Probably to Ireland.  I’ve always been intrigued about that place. Maybe it’s that DNA test calling me home to where my roots really started.

Today, Carolyn  will give away a signed copy of The Perfect Dress. Just leave a comment and enter the raffle.

Do you recall your wedding dress? What did you love about it? 
If not yours, someone else's.

Thank you for having me again, and thanks so much for the folks who asked questions. 

Join me on my Author’s FB page today from 11 to 12 central standard time if you have anymore questions!!

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