HelenKay Dimon

The title of this blog post is a tad misleading. I’m about to read this. Like, when I turn in my book on May 31st, I’m digging into this:

When Kate, single mother and law firm partner, gets an urgent phone call summoning her to her daughter’s exclusive private school, she’s shocked. Amelia has been suspended for cheating, something that would be completely out of character for her over-achieving, well-behaved daughter.

Kate rushes to Grace Hall, but what she finds when she finally arrives is beyond comprehension.

Her daughter Amelia is dead.

Despondent over having been caught cheating, Amelia has jumped from the school’s roof in an act of impulsive suicide. At least that’s the story Grace Hall and the police tell Kate. In a state of shock and overcome by grief, Kate tries to come to grips with this life-shattering news. Then she gets an anonymous text:

Amelia didn’t jump.

The moment she sees that message, Kate knows in her heart it’s true. Clearly Amelia had secrets, and a life Kate knew nothing about. Wracked by guilt, Kate is determined to find out what those secrets were and who could have hated her daughter enough to kill. She searches through Amelia’s e-mails, texts, and Facebook updates, piecing together the last troubled days of her daughter’s life.

I have a new romantic suspense coming out in July called FEARLESS. It centers on a formerly engaged couple now broken up, starts with a murder, takes place in beautiful Annapolis, MD and deals with the NCIS. I actually apologize in advance to the NCIS. I know you are all decent, hard-working people, but that angle didn’t work for the story, so…yeah.

I got my first review for the book from RT Book Reviews and it goes like this:

“Dimon just keeps ratcheting up readers’ pulse rates with a tightly wound plot, punctuated with explosions, gunfire and passion.”

I like it – thank you!

Today is an “author choice” day, so I thought I’d give you a peek at JUST WHAT HE WANTED (June, Carina Press), the 4th book in my Holloway series. This one stars Travis, the old soul but young-in-years plant nursery foreman who has been in the last two books. Honestly, I pretty much love this guy. I never intended to write his story. He just showed up on the page in LEAN ON ME and I couldn’t let him go. Take a look at his first meeting with Andie, our heroine, who Travis is expecting to be “Andy” (ie a guy)…

Andie Patterson stomped her foot against the loose ground and patted it down with the back of the shovel. She hadn’t intended to replant the shrubbery, but she’d tripped over the wild branches for the tenth time in two days and, well, that was that.

She’d moved from Philadelphia to the middle of nowhere West Virginia to get back to her country roots. She just hadn’t planned to have those roots all over her. Dirt now streaked across her faded “I’m the Boss” T-shirt. At least she wore a matching look. The clumps of wet mud missed her olive shirts and went right to skin.

If her ex-boyfriend could see her now. He appreciated fine wine and the opera, considered loosening his tie casual dress and practically lived in the office. She had no idea how they lasted ten months.

The sound of tires against gravel grabbed her attention. She had four cabins booked and all but one couple had sprinted out of there early this morning for a climb before the hot sun baked the trails. Cassidy, the woman Spence introduced as Mitch’s girlfriend even though Andie barely knew who Mitch was, led the activities. She was some sort of expert climber, and many of the calls coming in for new reservations wanted to book time with her.

The twosome that stayed behind likely had other activities in mind since they checked in to celebrate getting engaged. Andie put them on the far end for privacy.

A guy climbed out of the pickup. Through the rolled-down window she could make out a dark T-shirt and sandy brown hair. Then he shut the door and started toward her.

Damn. The heavens sure did shine on country boys. This one had a confident walk to match the could-lift-a-bus shoulders. Add in the faded blue jeans and skin that looked smooth enough to eat off of, and a woman could get a bit breathless.

She would have if he weren’t, like, twenty. Good grief, it was a wonder he could even grow that sexy scruff around his chin at his age.

Doing a little dip with her gaze, touring it all over him, made her feel like a dirty old woman even though she was right on the edge of thirty-five. Not that she was quite ready to look somewhere else. Not when the young hottie stopped right in front of her.

He was six-feet of hello-there-handsome. She ignored that and pretended to be a mature professional, though him looking like that didn’t make it easy. “Good afternoon.”

Up close, only a few feet away, she got a nice view. Green eyes, not dark or almost brown. A pale shade of green.

He smiled. “I’m looking for Andy Patterson.”

And he had one of those deep voices with a slight southern lilt. Man, he got sexier by the second. “You found her.”

His smile faltered. “Excuse me?”

The cute one seemed a bit slow. “I’m her.”

“Her?”

The conversation seemed stuck. She tried again because it was either that or look in on the cabin the writer guy checked out of that morning. She never saw him so much as open a window in the two days since she arrived. She seriously considered setting off a disinfectant bomb and hunting down a hazmat suit.

But she had another male to deal with at the moment. “You seem to like asking questions.”

“What?”

Well, that didn’t work. She thought the 38Ds would give him a hint, but she spelled it out anyway. “You’re looking for Andy with a ‘y’ but it’s Andie with an ‘ie’.”

“Ma’am?”

“You don’t need to call me ma’am.” Mostly because it made her feel ninety.

“Okay.”

The poor thing looked like he’d been hit with a big stick. “Andie as in Andrea, but no one ever calls me that. Well, not more than once.”

“Andie.”

“There you go.” He’d stopped frowning and making every response sound like a question. She decided that amounted to progress. Of a sort.

JUST WHAT HE WANTED
Copyright 2013, HelenKay Dimon
All Rights Reserved, Carina Press
_______________

Don’t forget to check out the other snippets:

Caris Roane
Eliza Gayle
McKenna Jeffries
http://shilohwalker.com/website
Taige Crenshaw
Delilah Devlin
Lissa Matthews
Myla Jackson
Lauren Dane
Jody Wallace
Leah Braemel
Mandy M. Roth
Felicity Heaton
Mari Carr
Selena Blake

I have the covers for the first two books in my new romantic suspense series from Harlequin Intrigue. The first, FEARLESS, comes out in July 2013. The second, RUTHLESS, comes out August 2013. The heroes in these books are brothers and were introduced as secondary characters in last year’s release, COPY THAT. The books are standalones, but you should totally feel free to buy/pre-order them all.

Here are the covers. As you can see, Harlequin redesigned the Intrigues covers between July and August. I’ll let you decide which style you like better.

I was reading comments by an author over the weekend and she was complaining about “when” her readers bought her books. Her point: if all of her readers bought her book in the same cycle – her preference was on her actual release day – then she had a better chance of making a bestseller list.

I think this might be a good time for me to reiterate the deal I have with my readers. It goes like this:

I will write the best book I can for you.

That’s it. That is the sum total of our deal. I owe you the best book I can write in that moment. You do not owe me a damn thing. Not a review or a purchase on a specific day. Nothing. You can buy the book whenever you want, however you want, in whatever form you want. You can get my book from the usual channels (like Amazon, B&N, BAM or wherever you shop), at a used bookstore, from a friend or from a library. That is your choice – always.

Your money and time are important and when you choose to spend either on me, I am humbled and deeply grateful. But it is not your job to make my career. Yes, I understand that if people don’t buy my books then I might not be able to continue a specific series or write for a specific publisher. Those are my concerns, not yours. Those issues do not – IN ANY WAY – impose an obligation on my readers. I don’t worry about my readers’ careers and it is not their job to worry about mine. They should read and enjoy. Period.

I read my first romance in 1998(ish). A co-worker handed me three romances and told me to enjoy a happy ending for a change. I made my career as a custody litigator then and dealt with non-happy endings all the time. Those used books were gifted to me. I did not pay for them. I loved the authors – Jayne Ann Krentz, Linda Lael Miller and Julie Garwood – and ruthlessly hunted down every book in their backlist, some from used bookstores. If anyone had told me that I had to buy these books in a specific way, I would have told them to kiss my ass. Honestly, I probably would have used nastier words.

A few years later I read my first Harlequin series romance (that wasn’t a backlist title of an author I already read) when I got one free in the Goody Room at RWA’s yearly conference (it was by Susan Mallery). I have read hundreds since then. I read my first digital book because a friend gave me a gift card and I used it at Ellora’s Cave (for Lora Leigh books). I buy ebooks the majority of the time now.

You’ll notice a theme here – free, free, free. Free books and used books led me to new authors. In fact, thanks to three free books from a friend, I discovered an entire new genre. That led to a new career. Those three free books literally changed my life.

I continue to buy thousands of dollars of books per year, in print and in digital. I buy what I want, when I want, how I want. I buy books for other people. I talk about books. When I finish some books, I pass them to friends who I think will like them. In other words, I give them used books so they don’t have to buy them. I give books away to the Salvation Army and Operation Paperback and others. And, yes, I even buy used books now and then. My money, my time, my choices. No apologies. That’s the gift I got as a reader. That’s what I want my readers to have.

I have a new cover to show you!! This is for JUST WHAT HE WANTED, the 4th book in my Holloway series. It’s a standalone, so you don’t need to read the other ones first…but feel free to buy them all.

Travis Yardley thought he had everything he needed, but one look at Andrea Patterson shows him he was wrong. Andie is a gorgeous, curvy blonde who moves to town to manage a nearby campground. Seizing the chance to get close to her, Travis volunteers himself as tour guide and “bodyguard.’

After a bad breakup, Andie is looking to start over and determined to put her heart on hiatus. She’s working on her self-esteem, and she is not ready for the likes of Travis. He comes on strong, with all the energy of a guy almost ten years her junior, which is exactly what he is.

Even as Travis’s troubled past catches up with him, he pulls out all the stops to convince Andie he deserves a chance. And with the spring thaw hitting the Mountain View Resort, Andie discovers her own temperature rising whenever Travis looks her way…

Welcome to Shiloh Walker’s latest and greatest latest and weirdest way to spread the word about new books. This time, she enlisted fellow authors Helenkay Dimon, Thea Harrison and Alyssa Day and there is absolutely NO THEFT taking place…she didn’t go on a rampage and steal things. She’s not trying to reunite lost lovers…nope.

These four authors are going to descend upon each other’s blogs and cause a tiny little bit of chaos. I really wanted to WRECK things, but I didn’t think I could talk them into letting me crash our websites and that kind of defeats the purpose of promoting our new releases if you can’t access the website to read about them, right?

So…instead, we’ll just switch things up a little…you play a guessing game and right or wrong, you get entered for fun prizes. Visit each blog, you get entered each time. It’s easy!

She calls a precious little person in her life Baby Doll. She’s lived in England, worked as a waitress and wrote her first book when she was nineteen.

Who is she?

He had been a Norman lord under William the Conqueror. After the Battle of Hastings, he had been given a castle in York to live in and defend on behalf of the king, and she had been there. The other half of himself.

They fit together. Such simple words and yet so profound. They fit. Interlocking pieces, contrast and confluence.
And remembering that was, completely and utterly, the most devastating thing he had ever experienced.
Over the years, he returned to that past life again and again in meditation, painstakingly recovering shards of lost treasure.

The look in her eyes when she smiled at him. She was luminous. (If only he could see the details of her face more clearly, even though he knew that what she looked like did not matter in the slightest.) How they talked late at night, discussing everything from the latest harvest to their great enemy. (For the danger was with them always, a thundercloud of war that shrouded their entire existence.)

Flashes of a mysterious and powerful intimacy. Her arms around his neck, his face in her perfumed hair. Their bodies entwined, and his spirit expansive and vibrant. (Not this thin, sharp sword that he had become.) Laughter. Her laughter, and his. (He never laughed anymore. He had not laughed in so long, he had forgotten that he had forgotten how.) The person he had been in this former life: this was who he was supposed to be. He took the memory and made it the cornerstone of his soul, and he built everything else around it, until he became a fortress.

So… which author do think this is? Is it Shiloh Walker, Helenkay Dimon, Thea Harrison and Alyssa Day
You can visit our sites…look through our latest releases, or just take a random guess. Right or wrong, you’re entered!

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Today’s topic is breaking up. I thought I’d give a peek at one of the more tense moments of NO TURNING BACK. Declan and Leah have a tough relationship thianks to their families’ joint history. Things are starting to go well – like, literally they are headed for bed – and Declan discovers the information Leah’s been compiling for years and just how deep her hatred for his family once went. Take a look…

Fueled by an anger he hadn’t known in years, he grabbed files, snapping them in the air and throwing them one at a time at her feet. Papers whooshed out of the sides and floated to the floor. She never moved. Didn’t try to catch anything or keep him out of the boxes.

“You’ve been collecting this for how long?” If she lied one more time he didn’t know what he’d do. He’d never hurt a woman, but he had no idea one would ever have the power to destroy him.

“It’s not—”
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Today’s topic is: jobs. Since the first Hanover Brothers novel is out (NO TURNING BACK), I thought I’d give another peek at Book #2 A SIMPLE TWIST OF FATE. This is kind of job related…well, Beck is working. So, close enough. Take a look…

She stood at the top of the stairs and glanced at her watch. Three-o-one. A sprint down the stairs and out the door and she could maintain the sort-of adult high ground and avoid Beck all day.

That was a smart plan. One she had no intention of following.

The whole hiding, ducking, running thing she’d been doing since she came to Sweetwater was exhausting and not how she usually operated. Though her experience in the male department might be limited, she enjoyed men. Loved to look at them, smell them, watch them walk and hear them laugh. Her desire to dive into a relationship and have the freedom to explore everything she wanted in bed grew stronger every day.

And Beck, with the way his t-shirt hung loose on his trim waist and grazed the top of his faded jeans. He bent or twist and that tiny slip of skin would show.

Sexiest thing ever.
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It’s release day!!! The first in my new contemporary series, The Hanover Brothers, is out today. It’s NO TURNING BACK and has a hottie former military hero who also happens to be the son of a con man. Add in a heroine with a big secret and you get fireworks. You can find it wherever you buy your digital books.

You can find it wherever you buy ebooks. Here are some places to start:

Intermix
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Kobo