Welcome Kathleen Rowland
Welcome to Mary's Garden. Today we have a special guest, Kathleen Rowland. You are in for a treat! First though... It's a garden and we need a tip.
Today's tip:
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It may sound obvious, but not everything grows everywhere, so what you plant is determined by where you live. “Take a look at the characteristics of your garden area—from the climate to sun exposure,” says Brian Sullivan, Vice President for Gardens, Landscape, and Outdoor Collections at The New York Botanical Garden. “It’s the most important thing to start with because you’ll want to understand the limits and the possibilities.” Talk to someone who works at your local garden center about the best native plants for your region, says Chris Lambton, professional landscaper and host of DIY Network’s Yard Crashers. “These will perform the best with less maintenance.”
Now, Kathleen, it's all about you!
One Night in Havana
#34 in the City Nights Series from Tirgearr Publishing
by Kathleen Rowland
Let's get to know Kathleen. I have asked her a few questions.
Mary: Which genre or genres do you write or prefer to write?
Kathleen: Romantic Suspense is a natural fit. I stay away from overdone plots and invent my own. My hero and heroine are polar opposites, and they’re thrown a curve ball that brings them together. My heroes are busy guys who are trying their best to make a go of their careers. They aren’t perfect but they work hard and play hard, My heroines are smart, independent-minded women who like to do things their way and have a plan for their lives. When these two meet up, the sparks fly, especially if they are already driving on a collision course.
Mary: What prompted you to write in the genre/s you do?
Kathleen: Romantic Suspense and mystery are areas I find most entertaining for movies, TV series, and reading. One Night in Havana is in Tirgearr Publishing’s City Nights erotic romance series, but it is a romantic suspense.
Mary: Do you belong to a book club? And if yes, has it helped you with your writing?
Kathleen: Yes, I belong to a book club at my church. The subject matter of the books has to do with social issues, and I find thinking outside the box is valuable.
Mary: How long have you been writing?
Kathleen: I wrote technical articles as a computer software designer before I began writing fiction a decade ago.
Mary: Who influenced you the most in deciding to become a writer?
Kathleen: The late Barbara Parker wrote an amazing Suspicion series. Her characters were as authentic as any people we’d come to know.
Mary: What obstacles did you have to overcome to begin creating your work?
Kathleen: My greatest obstacle is holding back information from the reader. Readers enjoy a mystery that is not easily solved. This is important because struggle enables characters to grow, learn about themselves, and are different when the book ends.
Mary: What gets your creative juices flowing?
Kathleen: A story idea might come from a news event that grabs my interest. I create characters who are affected when they’re drawn into the complication.
Mary: What will stop your creative muse the quickest?
Kathleen: Real life often gets in the way of my creative muse. I have a husband, children, grandchildren, friends and all the important responsibilities that go with caring about people.
Mary: What do you have for breakfast?
Kathleen: After enjoying coffee, I swim laps, and then make a smoothie with almond milk and frozen blueberries and peaches. I squirt some fat-free Reddi-whip on top.
Mary: What do you wear when you are writing?
Kathleen: Jeans, a T-shirt, and sneakers.
Mary: Where do you do most of your writing?
Kathleen: My office has two monitors, and I use one for research. I’m not productive with a laptop at coffee shops or at group write-ins.
Mary: Who would you love most to meet 'in person' and why?
Kathleen: Eleanor Roosevelt is a historical figure I admire because of her work to improve social justice. Eleanor was aware of around 250,000 jobless women who scavenged for food, rode all night on subways, and slept in abandoned buildings. She created Camp Tera where women lived in 26 log cabins, ate three meals a day in a dining hall, and had blankets, clothing, equipment, books, and health care while working in forestry and conservation.
Mary: If you had an unexpected free day what would you do with it?
Kathleen: I had a free day yesterday, and one of our daughters asked me to go skiing. We had a wonderful afternoon skiing at Snow Summit at Big Bear Lake, California. It’s a 2-hour drive up the mountain from the coast.
Mary: What are you working on now?
Kathleen: I’m plotting a third book for my Donahue Cousins series with Tirgearr Publishing. That’s a bit slow because I am the 2018 Chair for the Orange Rose Contest for Emerging Writers. The contest is sponsored by the Orange County Chapter of RWA.
Mary: Imagine your fairy godmother were to wave her magic wand and bestow a million dollars upon your bank account. What would you do with the money and why?
Kathleen: I would donate the money to help foster kids go to college.
Mary: What books have you had published? And tell us a little bit about them, please.
Kathleen:Thank you for asking. I will begin with the most recent and work backwards:
One Night in Havana—two marine biologists compete for the same grant.
Unholy Alliance—a mobster’s daughter was framed by the Irish mob and served a ten-year sentence. Her attorney warns her against searching for her missing cousin.
Deadly Alliance—He’s an ex-military CEO. Someone is stealing from him, and he hires the girlfriend of his late partner, thinking she knows about this.
Lily’s Pad—A bistro owner falls for the new teacher in town. He’s the fiancé of her best customer, a reality TV star. A lovers’ triangle gets complicated.
A Brand New Address—Ice age new adults know only one way to survive and enter a space race to Venus. Betrayal at Crater’s Edge is a follow-up.
Deeds of Deceit—An heiress’s parents were murdered long ago, and as she puts pieces together, she needs help from the sheriff.
A Key to All that Glitters—A young widow is visited by her late husband’s girlfriend who wants a key to a safe deposit box. Is the husband dead? The sheriff looks a lot like him and goes undercover.
Windward Whisperings—a reunion love story involves murder and plenty of misunderstandings.
Fallen Evermore— Bodies are found washed up at low tide and not quite dead. An attorney interviews a strange client who fits the Munchausen by Proxy scenario against her son. The sheriff’s daughter is the next victim.
I also write books on writing.
Mary: Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?
Kathleen: Join a chapter of writers and take advantage of classes offered. Authors teach each other. In May I will teach a class on dialogue at East Valley Authors, one of the chapters of RWA.
Now, let's hear about her new release!
About the Book:
A desperate competition and sizzling attraction leads to dangerous desire.
New York Marine biologist Veronica “Roni” Keane is attending the Havana Bay Conference in Cuba. Tomorrow only one grant will be awarded which will provide the winner with professional recognition, resources for a project, and living expenses for two years. She hopes to continue her deceased father’s work, but smooth operator, Carlos Montoya, has won many grants in the past.
Carlos, a freelancer for the Havana Port Authority, works to help protect Havana’s reputation as a bastion of safety. As international travelers flock to the island, attracted by its 1950’s time-warp and colonial architecture, the drug business is running rampant, particularly on Roni’s cruise ship. Something’s not right, and when her scuba tanks are tampered with, Carlos brings in the military police to investigate. For her safety, he keeps her close, but he craves her body.
Their attraction leads to a fun night with a bit of kink. But Roni finds herself in more trouble than she bargained for when the criminals blame her for alerting the military police and come looking for her. Can Roni trust Carlos to protect her? Will she stay in Havana if Carlos wins the coveted grant, or kiss her lover goodbye?
An erotic romance with mystery.
Amazon Buy LinkExcerpt: -- Chapter One
“Why, Veronica Keane.” A voice heavy with a Spanish accent drawled from behind her. “A dive bar?” A taunting tsk. “What do we have? A slumming New Yorker?”
She stiffened and closed her eyes. She knew that voice and its owner, Dr. Carlos Montoya, a finalist like her, competing for the same damn grant at the biggest Cephalopoda conference of the decade. Her heart pitter-pattered against her ribs. To turn toward him would intimate distress, or worse yet, weakness. She wouldn’t fail to win this grant, not when she was a final contender. “I like this funky little place.” Sia Macario Café, smack in the center of Havana, allowed her to observe locals and their daily lives.
“You need to eat with all the mojitos you’ve downed.” The big tease wasn’t counting. This was her first drink, but his rumbling, sexy timbre hinted at all kinds of dark, hot promises. She’d rubbed shoulders with the Cuban scientist all week. This splendid specimen of Latin male brought on a physical ache that punched low.
A flare-up stirred fear. For her own good, she needed to resist. “I ordered camarones enchiladas.” By now she knew the menu on the chalkboard by heart. She tipped her head back to whiff grilled shrimp soon to arrive in sofrito sauce with fried sweet plantains.
“The flan is good. Just like my abuela makes.”
“I bet. Your grandmother would be happy to hear that,” she said, knowing he brought out the best in most people. Two days ago he'd invited her and a handful of others scuba diving. The chance to ogle him had been one of the perks. He’d worn nothing but swim trunks, his bare chest on display. Every glistening muscle was finely etched. Not a drop of fat on him. Since he’d not given her the time of day, she’d checked him out without him noticing.
The hard-bodied host had led the way toward habitats of soft-bodied creatures. To find where invertebrates lived was never an easy task. Octopuses squeezed into narrow passages of coral for protection and gave females a place to keep their eggs. She’d discovered the remains of a few meals nearby.Octopuses scattered rocks and shells to help them hide.
This grant meant so much to her and no doubt to him as well. Veronica mindlessly toyed with the gold necklace around her neck, but anxiety crackled through her brain. Unlike this man of action, she lacked the flamboyant personality necessary to talk people into things. Carlos had that ability. He'd made friends with judges on board while she’d conversed with an older woman about a box of scones made with Cuban vanilla cream.
That day the wind had picked up to a gale force, and this woman named Bela with Lucille Ball red hair needed help walking to her home. The half mile down the seaside promenade, The Malecón, had provided her with time to practice her Spanish. Turned out Bela was Carlos’s grandmother. She’d worked as a maid when the Castro government came to power. When private homes were nationalized, titles were handed over to the dwelling occupants. Bela owned a crumbling home in the respected Verdado district and rented out rooms.
What Veronica detested about Carlos was his abnormal level of talent for schmoozing. Not that he wasn't charismatic; he drew her like a powerful magnet with emotions hard to untangle. Why was a self-assured woman who ran her own life thinking about a man who commanded everyone around him?
She inhaled a breath and turned around on the barstool, caught fast by a gut punch of Carlos Montoya in the flesh. She sighed and surrendered to the tendrils of want sliding up between her thighs.
Tall and muscular, his lush dark hair curled to his collar giving him a wild, roguish appearance. His face was lean and chiseled. His mouth full and tempting. His eyes the smoky-gray of a grass fire and fringed with black lashes as dense as paintbrushes. He smiled. A faint hint of mockery curved his mouth, a sensual mouth she imagined to be either inviting or cruel. Or both at the same time when he leaned over a woman with a diamond-hard gleam in his dark eyes while she drowned with pleasure. She fought a fierce desire to run her hand across his broad chest, tip her face upward, and…
His breath tickled her face.
Not going there. She blinked and forced her mind to focus. Carlos Montoya was not the kind of man you lost focus around. But that image of putting her mouth full on his and peeling away his shirt once introduced in her mind was impossible to expunge. Pointless even to try.
He was an intimidating blend of intellect and sexy danger. Both qualities had her leaning back against the bar’s edge. If it weren’t for him, she’d have a chance at winning the grant.
His lips twitched. “You’re staying on one of the cruise ships, am I right?” He rolled up the sleeves of his linen jacket to reveal a dusting of manly hair.
”Yes." Her cabin served as her hotel room while attending the January meetings with perfect high-seventies temperatures. His eyes locked with hers. She willed herself to move and yet she remained seated, clutching heat between her legs, a wetness so intense that her breath stalled in her chest while her heart hammered faster. Soon she’d return to freezing New York City.
“So, Bonita, give.” He slid onto the bar stool next to her. “What brings you down from a lofty ship to grace us lowly Cubans with your presence?”
Bonita. Pretty lady was not an endearment coming from the mouth curved in a taunting smile, but not a slight either. Not with his deep, melodic voice speaking words as if he knew secrets about her. What secrets did he know? Would he pry into her personal life? She doubted this bad-boy college professor acknowledged boundaries.
“Just drinks and dinner.” She scrambled for composure. “Aren’t we attending a world-class conference? I find the local population to be friendly and kind. That’s not slumming.”
The bartender set down a saoco. “Hope you like it, senorita.”
“Gracias,” she said. “Very nice, served in a coconut.”
“Ah, the saoco,” Carlos said. “Rum, lime juice, sugar, and ice. The saoco,” he repeated, disbelief heavy in his words. “Um. Wow. Once used as a tonic for prisoners of the revolution.”
“Medicinal?” She couldn’t help it. She chuckled and sounded as if a rusty spoon had scraped her throat raw, but it was genuine. The warm glow in its wake was welcome and needed. .
He leaned an elbow on the bar, his beer bottle with the green-and-red Cristal label dangling between his fingers. “Be careful with that one.” He dipped his head toward the front door as if he needed to go somewhere soon.
That fast, the glow snuffed out. She cleared her throat and gripped the fuzzy surface of the coconut container.
He placed a five-peso coin with a brass plug on the counter and whirled it. The spinning motion mirrored a dizzying attraction going on in low parts of her belly.
She cleared her wayward mind and nodded toward artwork on the opposite wall. “I plan to buy a painting tonight.”
“Don’t buy anything unless the seller gives you a certificate. You’ll need one to take art from Cuba. Artists deal in euros in case you don’t have pesos.”
She’d come prepared but said, “Thanks for the info.”
His coal-black eyes widened as he gazed from her head down to the tiny straps around her ankles as if she wore high heels and nothing else. “You give off a Barbie doll image,” he replied and stood up.
“Huh?”
“Where’s Ken, anyway? Kenneth Morton. He came with you to the talks in Antarctica. Five years ago.” He grinned, and the mortification in her belly gave way to a longing which she had no business feeling toward her competitor.
“Ken and I broke up.” She hesitated for a moment. “You have a gift for remembering names. Like a salesman.”
“A person’s name is, to that person, the most important and sweetest sound. Back then I introduced myself to Ken in the men’s room.”
“I remember now. Didn’t you give a talk on a specialized pigment in the octopus?”
“Ahh, si.” He splayed his fingers over his chest. “A pigment in their blood is—”
“—called hemocyanin. Turns their blood blue and helps them survive subfreezing temperatures. Were you awarded something?”
“The antifreeze protein grant? No. It went to a deep-diving photographer. He wasn’t chicken about getting lost or trapped under the ice.”
She slid from her stool and strutted around, jutting her chin in and out like a chicken. “Bock, bock, bock, bock, bock, begowwwwk.”
He chuckled. “Cute chicken dance. Very cute in that skimpy black dress.”
Her cheeks heated, and she clutched her necklace. He’d seen plenty of women in body-fitting attire. In Cuba, women wore dresses to meetings. If she'd harnessed sexier mojo, she’d have livened up presentations. Her presentations with an abundance of dull data went south. She slid back against her stool and clutched her purse to her stomach as if the small satin bag could calm the nerves playing deep down kickball. She belonged in her tidy New York office filled with computers, modems, and research manuals. Not in this softly lit café where passion oozed from a man’s pores, and artists displayed their canvases. Here was where Havana’s trendsetters congregated, and Ernest Hemingway wrote about desire.
“Good luck with your purchases, Veronica Keane.”
Okay, so they weren’t going to pretend they were going head to head for the grant.
As if he had more to say, he grinned at her, his perfect white teeth flashing.. “Do you find us different, like apples and oranges?”
“What am I, an apple or an orange?”
“Hmm. You’re an apple.” He was doing that sexy voice thing which made her brain shut down. Heady.
It started with an unexpected spark, an instant attraction, the jolting jab of oh-I’m-feeling-something. Something like a flashfire in her belly, but now they were talking. “Am I the apple of desire? Want to take a bite out of me?” She pulled in a breath. Had she really said that?
“Bonita, do I ever.”
“Tomorrow is the final ceremony.” Would she watch him walk to the podium to accept the grant?
Book Buyers Best finalist Kathleen Rowland is devoted to giving her readers fast-paced, high-stakes suspense with an erotic love story sure to melt their hearts. Her latest release is One Night in Havana, #34 in the City Nights series.
Kathleen also has a steamy romantic suspense series with Tirgearr Publishing, Deadly Alliance is followed by Unholy Alliance. Keep an icy drink handy while reading these sizzling stories.
Kathleen used to write computer programs but now writes novels. She grew up in Iowa where she caught lightning bugs, ran barefoot, and raced her sailboat on Lake Okoboji. Now she wears flip-flops and sails with her husband, Gerry, on Newport Harbor but wishes there were lightning bugs in California.
Kathleen exists happily with her witty CPA husband, Gerry, in their 70’s poolside retreat in Southern California where she adores time spent with visiting grandchildren, dogs, one bunny, and noisy neighbors. While proud of their five children who’ve flown the coop, she appreciates the luxury of time to write.
If you’d enjoy news, sign up for Kathleen’s newsletter at http://www.kathleenrowland.com/
Thank you Kathleen for dropping by and sharing.
Thank you so much for
your questions, Mary Martinez, and for hosting me.
Comments
Thank you for being my guest Kathleen.