Awesome Valentine’s Day Giveaway with Author Carolyn Brown

It’s Valentine’s Day, can’t you just feel the love in the air? On this day of love and romance I’m delighted to welcome an authority on the subject, author Carolyn Brown.

Carolyn joins us today to talk about her latest release, THE COWBOY’S MAIL ORDER BRIDE and answer some questions for me. To celebrate this day of love, Carolyn and the charming Danielle at Sourcebooks have an awesome giveaway for one lucky visitor to Thoughts in Progress. The giveaway includes a set of the 3 books in the Cowboys & Brides Series (Billion Dollar Cowboy, The Cowboy’s Christmas Baby and The Cowboy’s Mail Order Bride), along with a cute cowboy charm gift from Carolyn herself! Please see the end of the post for the giveaway details. 

THE COWBOY’S MAIL ORDER BRIDE is a fun read that will have you smiling from beginning to end. You can read my thoughts on the book from my review earlier. Here’s a brief synopsis of the story:

She's Got Sass...
      Emily Cooper promised her dying grandfather that she'd deliver a long-lost letter to a woman he once planned to wed. Little does adventurous Emily know that this simple task will propel her to places she never could have imagined...with a cowboy who's straight out of her dreams...
He's Got Mail...
      When sexy rancher Greg Adams discovers his grandmother Clarice has installed Emily on their ranch as her assistant, he decides to humor the two ladies. He figures Emily will move on soon enough. In the meantime, he intends to keep a close eye on her—he doesn't quite buy her story of his grandmother as a mail-order bride.
      A lost letter meant a lost love for Clarice, but two generations later, maybe it's not too late for that letter to work its magic.

I think I hear Carolyn coming through the door now. Welcome, Carolyn. Grab you some chocolate covered strawberries and a festive drink before I bombard you with questions.

Mason - Is there one resource tool you've used that you'd recommend to writers just beginning?

Carolyn:
Well, first, I just want to say Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone! Have you picked out a pretty new outfit for the evening with your sweetheart? Emily wears a special pale blue dress to the Valentine party in The Cowboy’s Mail Order Bride and it did have an effect on poor old Greg. He looked across the room and thought he was looking at an angel.

After the book is written and the beginning writer wants to know where to send it for consideration I would highly recommend “Jeff Herman's Guide to Book Publishers, Editors, & Literary Agents.” Before the book is written, the Internet is an invaluable took for research. One thing that I always suggest, which I have learned from experience, is to go to the very spot you are writing about. Nothing beats seeing the area and getting a feel for it. The people in Ravenna, Texas probably thought I was casing their small town when I went there to get a good feel for the area before I wrote The Cowboy’s Mail Order Bride.

Mason - What TV shows would your characters watch?
 
Carolyn:
My characters would like Justified or any good western movie but in The Cowboy’s Mail Order Bride they watch CMT videos. However, I’m sure that Emily watches Justified on a regular basis.

Mason - Today is Valentine's Day, how would your cowboys impress their cowgirls on this special day?

Carolyn:
My cowboys aren’t conventional guys. They might take a woman to the river’s edge, sit under a shade tree on a blanket and bring along a basket of fried chicken. But they’d be sure to not only tell their cowgirl that she was special but to make her feel like she was a queen. He might even weave a crown of wild flowers and put them on her head for a crown to prove it. But in The Cowboy’s Mail Order Bride, Greg and Natalie spend the evening flirting and bantering at a formal North Texas Angus Association Party at a country club. Believe me, by the evening’s end, Emily does feel like a queen!

Mason - What would you consider to be a perfect meal for a date night?

Carolyn:
The meal itself wouldn’t be as important as the location of the meal. It could be a bologna sandwich, potato chips straight from the bag and bought chocolate cookies—but a perfect date night would be a blanket on the sand bar of a river, the stars glittering as the waves slap the sand bar and the sexy feller’s eyes saying that he’s thinking of nothing or no one but his date.

Mason - What can readers look forward to next from you?
 
Carolyn:
The line up for the rest of 2014 looks like this: The Red Hot Chili Cook-Off, April (the second women’s fiction book set in Cadillac, Texas); How to Marry a Cowboy, July (the final book in the Cowboy’s and Brides series); Long Hot Texas Summer, August (first book in the Red Dirt Road series); and Cowboy Boots for Christmas (Cowboy Not Included), October (first book in the Burnt Boot series).

Carolyn, thanks for joining us today and Happy Valentine’s Day to you. I have to agree with you about it’s not so much the food that makes the perfect meal, but the location.

For those not familiar with Carolyn, here’s a bit of background on her.

Carolyn Brown is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author with more than sixty books published. She writes bestselling single title cowboy and country music mass market romances as well as women’s fiction. 

Born in Texas and raised in southern Oklahoma, Carolyn and her husband now make their home in the town of Davis, Oklahoma. 

For more information on Carolyn and her writing, please visit www.CarolynLBrown.com. 

THE COWBOY’S MAIL ORDER BRIDE is available at the following sites: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, iBookstore, IndieBound, Sourcebooks, and Discover a New Love. 

GIVEAWAY DETAILS:

This giveaway is for a set of the 3 books in the Cowboys & Brides Series (Billion Dollar Cowboy, The Cowboy’s Christmas Baby and The Cowboy’s Mail Order Bride), along with a cute cowboy charm gift from Carolyn herself. The giveaway is open to residents of the U.S. and Canada only.

Once again to enter this giveaway, just answer the question below in the comments. Be sure to include a valid email address with your comment, if one is not available in your profile. If you want extra entries in the giveaway, share the giveaway information on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest, then leave a new comment for each shout out you gave.

If you wish not to be entered in the contest, just say ‘Not entering’ and then comment all you’d like. I don’t want to discourage someone from commenting just because they don’t want to enter the contest.

The deadline for entering the contest will be 8 p.m. (EST) on Sunday, Feb. 23. The winner will be selected by Random.Org and I will notify the winner by email with the subject line ‘Thoughts in Progress Cowboy’s Mail Order Bride.’ The winner will have 72 hours to respond to the email with their mailing information. If there isn’t a response in 72 hours, a new winner will be selected.

Thanks so much for dropping by and spending a bit of Valentine’s Day with us. Remember, answer the following question for a chance to win the awesome giveaway prize package including THE COWBOY’S MAIL ORDER BRIDE. “What gift would you like to receive on Valentine’s Day or what would you consider to be the perfect Valentine’s Day date?”