Romance Novel Giveaways - Freebies and Giveaways of All Things Romance Romance Novel Giveaways: Victoria at Sea by M. Kate Quinn ♥ Book Tour & GIVEAWAY ♥ (Contemporary Romance)

Tuesday, September 6, 2016

Victoria at Sea by M. Kate Quinn ♥ Book Tour & GIVEAWAY ♥ (Contemporary Romance)


Why has no place in what the heart knows for sure.

On the eve of their wedding Victoria Gliden and fiancé Owen Walker call it quits. He accuses her of not being able to get over her deadbeat father’s vanishing act when she was a child and she and her cold feet run and don’t look back.

An interior designer, Victoria, has an important meeting on Cancun that could garner her a promotion and the plan was to incorporate her presentation with the honeymoon cruise that’s journeying to the island. Since she’s sure Owen is on his way to Portland to escape the aftermath of their ruined wedding, Victoria takes the honeymoon cruise anyway. Only Owen has the same idea and they’re stuck with each other for six days, five nights.

Tony Gliden, Victoria’s father, dies in a freak accident and is sent back to earth disguised as a crotchety old man with the mission to convince his daughter to believe in love. So, he, too boards the ship.

At sea, destiny takes a detour when Victoria befriends the quirky old man with kind eyes and together they join forces with a quartet of unabashed women in their fifties who drink pink martinis and flirt with the wait staff but are wiser than they look. While trying to dodge Owen, Victoria’s new acquaintances help her face old wounds and confront new fears.

Most of all, Victoria and Owen both realize it all boils down to one word—why?

By journey’s end will two broken hearts get their answer?


Why Romance?


I’m a diehard romantic, a wise-guy sometimes, and a born storyteller.  Put all that together and you have the makings of a writer of romantic comedies.
From an early age I fell in love with love.  Mickey loved Minnie, Donald loved Daisy, Barbie loved Ken, and so on.  A fan of old movies, old Hollywood’s version of love on the silver screen got in my blood.  Ginger and Fred, Elizabeth Taylor and any of her leading men, oh and Sinatra batting his baby blues at Ava Gardner.  And, Doris Day and Rock Hudson, well, as a teenager watching those romantic comedies I didn’t know the behind-the-scenes reality of their lives.  I only knew the love, the quirkiness of how they came to fall into each others’ arms.  I was hooked.
In my own world, as girl in junior high, there was a boy named Billy.  Cute and funny, freckles on his nose, tall and athletic, all the girls liked him.  Me, included.
When I’d spy him in the hallway between classes my heart would jump or stop or both.  I would do my best to be nonchalant around him if we were in the same class, act like he was not the boy whose initials were etched on the inside of my notebook along with doodles of hearts and arrows.  He filled every page of the diary I kept under my bed.
One day Billy’s friend, Eric, approached me as we were getting on our busses for the ride home.  He said that Billy would be calling me after school.  Air was locked in my chest for the whole ride home on that bus.  When I got home I sat by the phone guarding it, praying that nobody would call someone else in my family and tie up the line.  (No call waiting in those days.) Finally, it rang and it was Billy.
We talked on the phone lots of times and I laughed at all his jokes and thumped inside at every nice thing he said to me.   I was in love.
It wasn’t long before Billy moved on to a girl named Connie and my poor little preteen heart cracked into a bazillion bits.  But, in a way, that too, had been delicious.  To have loved and lost and all that.
When I write my romance novels my heroines are grown women and not girls in junior high waiting outside math class hoping to catch a glimpse of their crush as he enters the classroom across the hall.  Ah, but here’s the catch.  These women that I create have had their own girlhood crushes, their own early brushes with love and heartbreak, and it is that truth inside them that helps gives them life. Because, haven’t we all been that girl?
After all the hits and misses along the way, I knew in my heart that the right guy for me would cross my path, become my true love.  It was one heck of a twisty road, trust me, but I’m glad to say he and I found each other.  And, no lie, he’ll sit and watch The Notebook with me.
Once a romantic, always a romantic.  If you’re one, as well, I invite you to meet the characters in my books.  I’d love for you to follow them as they follow their hearts.




Words spilled from Owen’s lips before he had the chance to think. “I don’t know, Vic, maybe on some level I was meant to be here on this ship.”

She didn’t respond, kept her tooth locked down on that lip. But, her eyes were windows to some distant place he longed for. So, he and his glass of vodka let more words tumble free. “Sometimes I still can’t believe you really did this.” He gulped his drink in an effort to shut himself up, but it was fuel to his fire. “That you did this to us.”

“Don’t.” Victoria grabbed the fancy clutch that she’d squeezed into a misshapen blob of sparkly fabric.

“You know what?” He couldn’t stop and suddenly he didn’t want to. “It’s just too bad you’re so ridiculously afraid of veering off that rigid path you’ve carved out for yourself. That’s got to be a tough trek, Victoria. You must be exhausted.”

She stood up from the bar stool, chin held high, eyes swimming.

“You’re leaving.” It wasn’t a question. Owen knew the answer too well.

“Um, yes, I uh, promised my friends that I’d meet them.”

“Well, I guess I’ll see you back at the suite then, huh?” Pent-up energy raced around in him banishing every urge he had to stroke her hair, pull her to him, make them right again. His tone was caustic and it felt good and lousy both.

For each millisecond that he held her gaze, Victoria squirmed, her hands wringing that now pretty ugly evening bag, that tooth all but drawing blood as it pressed the pink flesh of her lower lip. She broke the stare and darted away as though she were being chased.

Owen’s heart squeezed like a fist had wrapped itself around the muscle. A tear pricked his eye. Victoria could run all she wanted, but for the first time in almost two days something finally made sense. She loves me.







Born to a feisty Italian mother and a gentle blue-eyed Irishman, I was given the name “Marykate,” inspired by Maureen O’Hara’s character in the movie, The Quiet Man, an old-time favorite love story that co-starred John Wayne. With a grandmother Catherine and an Aunt Mary the name was an obvious choice.

I've been writing stories all my life. There's an old Macy’s box in my attic filled with my writings from childhood, now smudgy-looking pages produced on my portable Olivetti Underwood typewriter, an eighth-grade gift from my Grandmother Catherine.

I am a recent First Place winner of a short story contest sponsored by Reader’s Digest Magazine and write a column entitled “Boomer Humor” that appears monthly in my neighborhood newspaper.

My husband and I are our own love story. We have a slap-happy middle-aged second marriage with a combined total of six grown children, one delightful granddaughter, another precious little baby on the way and one ridiculously spoiled, amazingly handsome cat named Sammy.



   

Win a $50 Amazon or B&N gift card!
@GoddessFish @MKateQuinn @SoulMatePublish http://goo.gl/e73UZE

25 comments :

  1. This story sounds fun! Love that her father s there to help :)

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  2. Thanks for the excerpt, itmade me very curious about this story.

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  3. I couldn't help but smile while I was reading your guest post. I am a hopeful romantic, myself! <3 Thanks for the excerpt and thank you so much for the giveaway! :)

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  4. congrats on the tor and thanks for the chance to win :)

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  5. Hope you have an amazing Tuesday and thank you for this giveaway

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  6. Fun interview!

    --Trix

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  7. Thank you for the excerpt & generous giveaway.

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  8. Thank you for the chance to win.

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  9. Love the title. Sounds like an entertaining story as well.

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  10. This sounds like a great read. Thanks for the great giveaway!

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  11. It sounds really good.Can't wait to read it!

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  12. Great post! I enjoyed reading it, thanks for sharing :)

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  13. The father coming back as another man add some mystery to this read.

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  14. Where do you get inspiration to write?

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  15. Yay, this sounds divine. Wow, prize amazon gc is fab. & splendid. 2 fingers snap. It is tight, fly & off the chain. Thank you for the awesomeness, the contest, and generosity. :) Pick me, pick me! Dear Santa: I’ve been nice. My X-Mas wish this year is to win this contest. Starving artist here desperately needs the gc to shop and eat. A life changing exp.

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  16. I've never been a huge romance novel reader until lately. now I'm looking for new ideas, and this one sounds perfect for me! thanks for the post.

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  17. sounds like a fun one

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