Have you ever wished that you could win the lottery or have someone give you millions? It's a nice dream, isn't it? Most of us have to earn our money and we aren't likely to see a million dollars in a year, much less ten million. But today's book excerpt is from a book, "Ten Million Reasons" by Heather Gray where a woman is handed, yep, ten million dollars.
Heather talks about how she arrived at her ideas for the book and then shares an excerpt with us.
And my standard disclaimer: I am employed by Astraea Press. I am not being compensated for putting up this post.
Heather talks about how she arrived at her ideas for the book and then shares an excerpt with us.
And my standard disclaimer: I am employed by Astraea Press. I am not being compensated for putting up this post.
Aside
from her long-standing love affair with coffee, Heather Gray’s greatest joys in life
are her relationship with her Savior, her family, and writing. Years ago, she decided it would be better to
laugh than yell. Heather carries that
theme over into her writing where she strives to create characters that
experience both the highs and lows of life and, through it all, find a way to
love God, embrace each day, and laugh out loud right along with her.
Find Heather Online:
My
Website – http://www.heathergraywriting.com
My
Blog – http://www.heathergraywriting.com/blog
Facebook
– http://www.facebook.com/heathergraywriting
Twitter
– http://twitter.com/LaughDreamWrite
Money talks, and the way she spends hers tells him all he needs to know…Richard needs to find a woman he can trust, and he needs to find her fast. He doesn’t have time to waste on getting to know people, which means dating and interviewing are out of the question. So how can he get past that initial mask of good behavior to learn what people are really like? Easy! Give them ten million dollars and watch to see what they do with it.Genevieve is a free-lance journalist who talks to herself, constantly forgets to put appointments on her calendar and can’t go anywhere without being asked to take a survey. Why on earth is Richard interested in her? She doesn’t know it yet, but he has ten million reasons…
Publisher: Astraea Press
Genre: Contemporary Inspirational Romance
Format: Ebook
Release Date: July 26, 2013
Buy Links :
Kobo
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What would I do with a
million dollars?
Have you ever asked yourself that question? If you have an imagination anything like
mine, you've wondered how you would come across so much money, what you would
do with it, and…how it would change you.
I was pondering this particular question one day, and I realized that,
in today's world, a million dollars might not actually seem like much money
anymore. By the time someone pays off
their mortgage, student loan, car, and the taxes…a lot of the money is already
gone.
So I decided to up the ante.
How would a person
who's never had much money before spend ten million dollars?
Then, because that didn't seem like quite enough of a
challenge, I added a caveat.
If there was only one
day to spend it.
This idea bounced around inside my mind for a while before I
came up with the premise for Ten Million Reasons. It takes that "What if" idea and
adds a bit of a twist. The truth is,
we've probably all at one time or another thought about how we would spend a
fortune if we ever came into money. The
question we don't usually ask, though, is:
What does the way we spend our
fortune say about us?
Come along with me and get to know Genevieve and
Richard. They made me laugh (and
sometimes cringe) as I wrote their story, and I hope they come as alive for you
as they did for me.
************************************************************
Excerpt:
After the
pizza had been demolished, they all walked across the street to enjoy some ice
cream. “Double Chocolate Fudge Brownie Monster Chunk for me!” declared Max.
“Peanut Butter
Marshmallow Chocolate Madness please!” Genevieve added. Then she and Max went
to sit down while Richard ordered the ice cream.
“So, Aunt Gen,
you honestly didn’t know who he was?” When Genevieve shook her head, he said,
“You’ve got to look him up online. His family grew up around here. Old money.
Maybe back to Jamestown. Lots and lots of old money.” She raised her left
eyebrow, and Max shook his head and laughed at her. “I know. Money doesn’t make
the man. Blah, blah, blah.” After a second he asked, “So, was this supposed to
be a date or a business meeting today? You never said.”
Right as
Genevieve opened her mouth to tell her nephew it most decidedly was not a date,
Richard’s voice came from behind her, “A date, of course. How many business
meetings have you been to that include pizza and ice cream? Business meetings
have boring foods like salad and steak and desserts you can set on fire because
people are busy trying to impress each other.”
Is he out of his mind? Of course he is. Genevieve watched
Max and said, “Not a word, you hear me?”
“Not a word
about what?” Richard asked.
“Oh, come on,
Aunt Gen. If I go to school tomorrow and tell people my aunt is dating the Richard Blakely, do you know how
much my stock will go up?”
“Not a word. I
mean it.” Max rolled his eyes, let out a loud, over-exaggerated sigh, and threw
himself into the kind of relaxed slump that no one but a teenager could master.
“Max…”
“Alright,
alright, but if you make it to a third date, all bets are off.”
Genevieve
shook her head in mock despair, her red curls gamboling with the movement. Then
she looked over at Richard and did a double-take, “Since when do men eat girlie
ice cream?”
Richard spied
his colorful cone and asked, “Girlie ice cream?”
Max tried to
warn him, “Don’t argue with her. Trust me. Let her lecture you and get it out
of her system. Eat the ice cream as fast as you can. If she can’t see it
anymore, she’ll get over it quicker.”
Richard
inspected her, slowly took a bite of his cone, and said, “Did you just insult
my ice cream?” Then, putting on a hideous fake western accent, he added,
“Them’s fightin’ words, don’cha know?”
Max tried to
hide his laughter as Genevieve, face dead-pan and voice matter-of-fact, said,
“Only girls eat fruity ice cream.”
Richard eyed
her ice cream cone and said, “You’re a girl, and I don’t see any fruit in your
cone.”
“No man! You never say that,” Max said in sympathy.
“I, Mr.
Blakely, Esquire,” Genevieve wound up, “am not a girl. I, Mr. Blakely,” she said his name with added emphasis, “am a woman of
sophisticated tastes. You, on the other hand,” she waved her hand dismissively,
“are eating girlie ice cream.”
Richard tried
to defend his choice of ice cream but was told again and again, “Only girls eat
fruity ice cream.”
Finally, Max
asked, “So exactly what flavor is that, anyway?”
Shamefaced,
Richard answered, “Pineapple Pom Pom Sparkleberry Cheer.” Max and Genevieve
laughed uproariously, and Richard joined in. When their laughter settled down,
he told Max, “And you are most definitely not allowed to tell your friends at
school about that, my boy.”
“Are you
kidding me? I’d be shunned for life, a perpetual outcast of the high school
social strata. I’m taking that secret all the way to the grave.”
************************************************************
The book is out now so if you're intrigued, go pick up a copy!
The book is out now so if you're intrigued, go pick up a copy!
Thanks for having me on your site today Bea!
ReplyDeleteThe guest post and excerpt were great!
ReplyDeleteGlad you liked them Jenea! :)
DeleteI love this premise! It's fun thinking how I'd spend all that money, and wonder if I'd be up for the challenge of doing it all in one day.
ReplyDeleteChristi Corbett
Some of my greatest ideas are born from the "what if" scenarios. :)
DeleteLove your writing style heather. Great post and excerpt.
ReplyDeleteThank you Sherry! This was my first contemporary, and I hope the readers find my characters as fun as I did while writing them! :)
DeleteThis sounds like an awesome Read, Heather! I've got it on my TBR pile!
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping by Lisa! re: the TBR pile...all I can say is "thank goodness for e-readers or I'd be buried alive under all these books!" :)
DeleteHeather, I love your premise and that you upped the ante. This looks like a fun read! Best of luck!
ReplyDeleteThanks Ariella! When I'm being completely (or mostly) objective, I say that my goal for each book is that it be better than the one before it. So upping the ante sounds perfect to me! ;)
DeleteLovely, fun excerpt.
ReplyDeleteThank you for stopping by Elaine!
DeleteGreat post ... and interesting idea. In all honesty, i'm not sure whether i'd be able to spend 10m in one day .... if at all.
ReplyDeleteLoved the excerpt, too!
I'm not holding my breath waiting for a sudden windfall of money, but it is kind of fun to think about sometimes. :)
Delete