Release day, wooo!

Feels like I just had one of these a couple of weeks ago…oh wait, I did. But publishing is nothing if not stormy and spastic, so here we are again in the midst of my feast (famine to commence shortly, I'm sure).

So The Reluctant Nude is out today from Samhain! It's a contemporary romance about an unorthodox affair between a no-nonsense ecologist and a hot-blooded French sculptor, sequestered together one autumn in the artist's studio on Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. I'm very proud of this story. It's very me, as an author…quiet and intimate and a bit wonky. Fallon, the heroine, is waaay out of her element, and as a result she's wary and irritable and defensive. The hero, Max, is somewhat eccentric and occasionally galling, as provocative as Fallon is guarded. A match made in my own twisted idea of heaven.

I was going to make a big to-do, maybe post a recipe from Nova Scotia or Britanny, France, as there is a lot of food and wine consumption in the book…maybe talk about my Cape Breton honeymoon in 2009 which completely inspired the story…well, the setting, not the plot… But on second thought, I'm exhausted from the week already, so I've decided to keep the pimping minimal.

Ah, Cape Breton in autumn! Photo ©Dave MacDonald

But I must spew forth my thanks! Thanks to you future readers, and thanks to the book's very first readers, MB, Amy and Liz. Thanks to the judges who deemed it worthy to final in the 2010 Golden Heart, gigantic thanks to my editor Anne Scott for choosing it and making it stronger, to Kanaxa, who designed the beautiful cover, and to the kind reviewers who've weighed in on it so far.

Actually, I will dwell on the reviews. I've taken to forcing my forthcoming romances on my RWA chaptermate Penny Watson, and so far she's enjoyed them both, despite her repeated claims that she doesn't like contemporaries. She promised if she hated the book she'd diplomatically keep those feelings to herself and not review it on her blog, but as it turns out, she loved it! You can read her review here.

And this morning I woke up to an equally kind and thoughtful review from Smexy Books. Apparently I made both reviewers cry, which is pretty delightful since so often it goes the other way 'round for us authors.

Anyhow, for more information (blurb, excerpt) or to buy direct and save 30%, you can check it out in the Samhain online store. It's also available for Kindle and Nook, and come February of next year it will be available as a paperback.

That's enough for now. Thanks for swinging by on this exciting day!