So, we know I like wine. But my favorite thing is pouring a glass of a really good California red wine--usually a Cab or a Zin--and taking that first sniff, that first taste. It transports me back to happier times. My love affair with California reds dates back to my first trip to California, when I was a newlywed. We camped in Marin, just outside San Francisco--I'm pretty sure it was Mt. Tamalpais State Park. There was an older couple (probably younger than I am now) in a camper set up in the site directly across from us, who invited us over for grilled oysters and wine. My husband doesn't like either one (well, he's learning to. slowly.) but I was in pig heaven. It was a magical night. Later, it started to rain, our tent flooded, we left before dawn, and all of our gear stayed wet for days.
But this wine--with its deep purple color, its soft tannins, the notes of cedar, violets, and crushed blackberries on the nose, with its bold mouthfeel, the hints of toasted oak, the lingering taste of raspberry and cocoa--brings it all back. It tastes like night in a redwood forest--dark and earthy and smoky and herbaceous.
I'd pair it with grilled oysters, if I had them. Since I don't, I'm enjoying it by itself.
For Lucy Greco Cavanaugh, life is a dream come true. She has it all. The perfect family. The perfect husband. The perfect marriage. What more could she wish for? Other than the chance to do it all again. To experience once more the agony and ecstasy of falling in love with the man of her dreams. To recapture the joy and uncertainty that comes with starting over.
As far as Dan Cavanaugh is concerned, his life has become a nightmare. His storybook marriage is on the line when Deirdre Shelton-Cooper, the runaway daughter of a former girlfriend arrives in Oberon intent on proving Dan is her father. Even though he's convinced the girl's claims are false, Dan decides his only chance to keep from losing everything lies in keeping her very existence a secret from his wife and family.
But, sometimes, what you don't know can hurt you--and those you love. When Deirdre, masquerading as a surfer girl named Monica, accidentally hooks up with their son, Seth, Lucy and Dan are left to wonder: has their perfect, fairy-tale romance, turned into a classic Greek tragedy?
Sometimes you get exactly what you wish for. And it's more than you'd ever dreamed.
Oh, this was a lovely wine. There were a lot of cedar and dark fruit notes in the nose, with just a hint of sweet smoke--like candied bacon. It's a dark, full-bodied wine (typical of Paso Cabernets) without the aggressive tannins Paso Robles Zins are known for. It's a complex wine, it was quite jammy (in the best way) and yet I tasted a lot of tart cherry notes along with violets, blackberries and baking spices. I found the finish very peppery, almost like a Syrah.
I paired this with a hearty, Sicilian pasta with eggplant.
Anyway, I think this video is of the very first flash mob wedding proposal ever. Or, at least, ONE OF the first. I may have watched it many, many times when it first came out.
The couple is still together, AFAIK. The woman in the red dress choreographed the whole thing. The gay couple are shown wearing (cheap, fake, plastic) leis because, at the time, Hawaii was one of the few (possibly the only) state where gay marriage was legal. I'm still not sure how I feel about the lyric "dancing juice" having been misinterpreted/re-imagined as "dancing jews". I believe the family is jewish, and it gives them a chance to get in on the act, but it's a grammar thing. If I could convince myself that Bruno Mars was singing "these" instead of "this" I'd be a lot happier.
But, even all these years later, it's still just the cutest thing!
It's 420. Of course I was going to post something like this. Stay blazing.
He knows what to do to save her business. She knows what he needs to fix his life!
Atlas Beach is experiencing a retail-renaissance—and Carly Meyer is determined to be part of it. But her sandwich shop-slash-food-truck, The Lunch Box, is struggling to stay afloat.
Luckily, help is on the way thanks to the Chamber of Commerce’s innovative mentoring program—partnering successful Atlas Beach business owners with some of the newer start-ups. Too bad the mentor assigned to her is the delectable—and highly annoying—Tino DiLuca.
Tino knows exactly what’s hurting Carly’s business and—exactly how to fix it. But his number one solution, changing the name of her signature sandwich, is the one thing she’s not prepared to do.
I'd never seen this version before, but I kind of love it. I mean...vocally, it's rough and a little fast (?) but the energy and the HAIR are fire! The multiplicity of cuts to Yoko was an interesting editing choice.
So Decoy is put out by Duckhorn and I talked about Duckhorn's 2021 Cab recently. Decoy is a little more affordable, but also quite good.
This has a lighter feel than the Duckhorn. There's a lot of black fruit--cherry, black raspberry, etc.--on the nose, along with hints of toasted oak and California chapparal. It's an easy drinking wine with mild, silky tannins and a creamy mouth feel. I enjoyed this with pizza
So, I know I said that Clay and his mom would be dancing to Wind Beneath my Wings, but I might have to change that, because this would be pretty sweet as well. Currently, I'm trying to convince one of the other POUR DECISIONS authors to choose it for their groom.
Guess you'll have to wait a couple of months to see how that played out. lol!
Life is more than just the lies we try and tell ourselves about what we’ve done and who we are.
I guess the truth is that I never stopped loving Ben. And I never stopped imagining how different my life might have been if he were only the person I needed him to be, instead of the person that he is. Which is silly, right? I mean, truly; it’s laughable. Because if he were someone else, he wouldn’t be him. And the world is already full of people like that. What good is one more gonna do me?
Besides, if I’m honest, Ben wasn’t ever the problem. That was me. I was never the person he believed me to be. Oh, I thought I was, in the beginning. I tried hard to be, and that worked for a while. Sort of. But eventually I reached the point where I had to make a choice between living life for myself, or for everyone else.
And when it came right down to that…how could I not choose me?
Yeah, this is another one that needs no explanation. And requires no notes. F*ck everyone who's brought us to this place yet again.
Hint: I believe I was writing Scent of the Roses, at the time. But I digress...
This was quite a nice wine made in the Italian style from grapes grown in the Texas High Plains. It's a young wine (as Rosé tends to be). And it was a very pretty salmon color, but oddly cloudy. It actually looked like a Pét-Nat wine, to be honest.
There were notes of burnt orange, fresh berry, and caramel on the nose. I tasted cantaloupe, strawberry and dried wild blueberry...which makes it sound sweet, which it was not! Lots of minerality, though. Not a bad thing.
I enjoyed this at the Texas Hill Country Olive Company Bistro along with a lovely salad and a chicken caprese sandwich. I think they paired very nicely.
The Spring Equinox falls in the month that nearly all Native Traditions recognize as being one of Big Winds--big changes. And big changes have certainly come to Oberon this spring, along with an ancient evil that must finally be laid to rest.
Cara Matthews is a girl with a troubled past and a very troubling present. The teenage girlfriend of Oberon's newest guru has always looked for love in all the worst places. And it doesn't get much worse than the Church of Truth, Light and Vision.
Former cop Liam McKnight could have told her that, but he's infiltrated the cult in hopes of discovering some clue to the whereabouts of his missing family members, and he can't jeopardize his mission--not even for love.
In a month marked by birth, death and marriage, the inhabitants of Oberon must all come to terms with what's really important to each of them--important enough to die for. Only one thing is certain; when the winds of change finally stop blowing nothing, and no one, will be the same.
So I've been drinking so many blends lately that it was nice to try this Petite Sirah (which is actually 4% Rubired--more about that later). According to Grape Creek's website, this wine is a dense purple "with a touch of garnet." It's not. It's garnet through and through.
The nose is pleasant. I've had a few wines lately that seemed to have no aroma at all. This is nice--blackberry, cocoa, a hint of espresso, the barest whisper of toasted oak. All as advertised on the website.
Lest you think I'm just copying from what's online--oh, I'm not. The website refers to this as, "the most moody and melancholy of red wines." And yeah, I don't even know what that means.
Even if I did know what it means, I wouldn't apply it to this wine, which has a jammy, lively, fruit forward quality, hints of almond, a moderate amount of tannins. And yes, a silky mouthfeel, as well.
I'd like to pair this wine with something smoky but not too heavy. A charcuterie plate, perhaps. Or maybe a pasta dish--mushroom and pancetta, pasta carbonara, butternut squash ravioli in a smoked gouda cream sauce. Or anything along those lines. The website mentions beef or venison stew, but I can't see that, at all.
So Rubired is a hybrid of two Portuguese grapes, Tinto Cao and Alicante Ganzin. It's only been around since the late 1958 and I think it's mostly used in blends, cheap rosé and grape juice. It originated in California, where I guess it's still mostly grown. I did read somewhere that it had been tried in Australia, but it wasn't very successful. Mostly, it's notorious for being utilized in something called Mega Purple, which is a concentrate used to enhance flavor and color in wines. I think Mega Purple might have been referenced (unfavorably) in one of the POUR DECISIONS books.
Fun fact: This story originally had the title, The Irish Goodbye. When you read it, you'll understand why. But once I settled on the GAMES WE PLAY series title, all the books got game-themed names, which worked out much better and made this one of my favorite series to write.
Book One, Truth or Dare was a story I'd been wanting to write for a long, long time. Book Two, Never Have I Ever is probably the most polarizing story I've written--people either love it or absolutely hate it. Two Truths and a Lie is the perfect end to the trilogy, pulling all the threads together...okay, the bouncing back and forth between time periods gets a little confusing, not to mention all the fake names, but overall, I loved the characters and their interaction.
And it paves the way for all the sequels! I'm up to four right now, with at least one more to go.
Anyway, this freebie will Irish Goodbye on Friday, so get it while you can!
Okay, so here's a small spoiler, although I guess it shouldn't be. Clay's mom will be at his wedding (along with several other members of his family. Shocking, I know!) and I think this song would be perfect for them to dance to.
As I mentioned last week, I got to enjoy some different wines on my birthday--and the days surrounding it. I enjoyed this Chardonnay at dinner with some amazing potato leek soup. This is a medium pale straw color. The nose is bright and citrusy with notes of apricot and honeydew. The flavor is buttery and dry with hints of dried pineapple and toasted meringue.
I think this wine would also pair well with roast chicken or quiche.
Valravn is a small Sonoma winery. It's only been around for ten or so years. Its winemaker is a Napa native--and obviously, I love that! You can read more about it here: https://www.valravnwine.com/
This week, on the Romance Writers Weekly blog hop we're asked, “Do your characters ever surprise you? Talk about plots you have fallen into by luck.”
OMG, do they ever! All the bloody time. I think the most egregious example is still Cara Matthews from the Oberon series. Cara first appears in book four. She's the ex-girlfriend of the hero and heroine's son--obviously a very minor character. IIRC, she's in all of one scene.
She resurfaced briefly in book five as an example of her ex, Seth, falling back into bad company, and then assumes a bigger role (albeit still a supporting one) in book seven.
Book four was supposed to have been the end of it. Book seven absolutely should have been. In fact, I wrote a perfectly lovely scene where she and Seth (who were never destined to end up together) finally resolve their issues and part company.
And then...
The villain of book eight made an unscheduled appearance at the end of book seven. He took one look at Cara and decided on the spot that he wanted her as the heroine of "his" book. In hindsight, that was actually a good idea. However, as a result, book eight blew up into a huge, ungodly mess and I had to shoehorn Cara and Liam back into book nine in order to give them their HEA. Which, apparently, wasn't as EA as some readers wanted, so I brought them back yet again for a sequel novella, Sea Change.
I was going to offer the Halloween novella, Hungry Heart, for free this week, because it has a forward penned by the aforesaid villain but the book is available through Kindle Unlimited, which means I can't give it away anywhere else. So I made the Forward available as an excerpt. You can read that here:
https://www.PGForte.com/excerpt-forward-from-hungry-heart
Enjoy! And now, hop on over to Leslie Hachtel's page now to learn about how her characters have surprised her. And don't forget to check out her book, Come Back to Me
When an immortal, shape-shifting fae, arrives on his doorstep, Gavin O’Malley knows he's in luck. Aislinn Deirbhile can give him everything he's been missing: A devoted-seeming wife in the image of his beloved Mairead, and children who are sure to outlive their father. And all he has to do is find a way to keep her—without losing his immortal soul in the process.
Twice each year, Aine Murphy ventures into the woods to hold ceremonies to honor the Oak King and the Holly King, never dreaming these Lords of the Forest could be anything more than myth. When the legends spring to life in front of her, how can she help but fall for the sexy demi-gods she's loved all her life?
