Mary Hughes Changes Pace (and Nary a Vamp in Sight)

As everyone who knows me understands, I am a huge Mary Hughes fan, and absolutely adore her Meiers Corners books. All those yummy vampires and decidedly twisted humor are things I look forward to with each new book. Now, Ms. Hughes has given us a new story, but not one set in Meiers Corners, and nary a vamp in sight, as far as I can tell. But The blurb and excerpt posted here do show that her absurdly skewed humor is intact, and as strong and as funny as ever. I can't wait to read this marvelous book, and it is definitely on my wishlist already.

Mary is giving away a winner's choice of Kindle, Kindle Paperwhite (with special offers), Nook Simple Touch, or Nook Simple Touch with light, up to $120 in value. Winner will be chosen from the complete tour, so follow the tour and enter at each stop to better your chances of winning. Winner will be selected by Rafflecopter.

I did a brief interview with Mary, via the internet, and she was gracious enough to answer some questions for me, and what's up now are her answers to my questions.

Thank you, Nancy, for having me back!

This seems to be a new road for you. Why the different direction?

Actually, the first novel I wrote, titled Novel 1 (which is now Hot Chips and Sand, I’ve come a long way :) ) was a contemporary romantic comedy. In some ways I’m just coming back to my roots. I've also been wanting to write something I can send to my husband’s family for Christmas. I just couldn’t picture my mother-in-law reading some of my Biting Love sex scenes. Lol.

Will this be a series, or just a one off?

I have another unconnected contemporary romantic comedy started about a media superstar, his supermodel ex-girlfriend and her twin sister, a woman who’s had a crush on the man for years and who tries to fit into his world with not much success, tentatively titled A Billionaire for the Wrong Sister. I’m really having fun, putting the heroine into fancy dress and having her stumble on her unfamiliar high heels into the hero’s lap.

Where did the idea for this come from; can you share?

Sure! One of the lines from my five-line pitch is “Edie’s passionate about workers’ rights, which gets her in trouble with sexy CEO Everett Kirk.” The story is my own experience as a child of the 60's finding a job in the 80's, the humorous clash of hippies meeting the material world. When I was living through it, it was difficult, personally facing the struggle of my grassroots ideals versus feeding my family and getting ahead in my career. Just as Edie does in the story, I had to go through a lot of conflict to find the right balance. But looking back I can see just how funny some of it was, and I used that in to spur the bickering banter between Edie and Everett.

What is your definition of Romance-what does that bring to your mind?

Eek. I was lousy at definitions in school. Lol. I know that, for a lot of people, romance is that first flush of giddy attraction. I’m a head-hand-heart sort of woman, and I approach life by trying to balance my reason, physical needs, and emotion. So for me, romance should be with someone I can talk with, be physically attracted to, and trust with my heart.

Unfortunately my heart grabbed me and slammed me to the mat and said “This guy.” Fortunately, the rest followed, although it took a lot of work. ☺

When I write paranormal romance it’s from an ideal perspective, the hero and heroine are soul mates whose careers and minds mesh perfectly, kept apart by outside forces or their pasts. With contemporary, I have more leeway.  I can have them be attracted but not instantly soul mates, so it’s more a story of their coming together.

What is one secret you can reveal that no one knows about you?

Ooh. Dark secret or light secret? Dark secret (at least I don’t talk about it much on the Web), my mom died when I was 16 and it’s colored my entire life. Light secret, I dye my hair. Not because I have gray, but because it’s a guy’s gray and I have f**ing wings. How embarrassing is that?

Hugs!
Mary

I’m serializing Hot Chips and Sand

here http://maryhughessidetrips.blogspot.com/search/label/current

EDIE AND THE CEO blurb

Edie Rowan is passionate about workers’ rights, wanting her Sixties protester grandparents to be proud of her. But championing the little guy gets her in trouble with sexy CEO Everett Kirk. Kirk is Mr. Ultra-Executive with his expensive hand-tailored suits and his eyes the steel blue of a finely tempered sword—but for the intriguing contradictions of his neat ponytail and square workman’s hands.

Edie’s latest disaster, a teambuilding exercise gone facepalm wrong, leads to a knockdown drag-out with rival manager Bethany “The B”—or add the “Itch”—Blondelle. The incident is the last straw for Kirk. He sends Edie to management camp and to her shock, announces he will drive her there himself. She wonders why he would want eighteen hours of enforced intimacy with her, even as she’s dazzled by his sparkling white smile and killer dimple.

Everett walks away from the confrontation with a headache. For years he has protected Edie from the fallout of her righteous crusading, but this may be the last time. A corporate backstabber is trying to eject Everett from his job. Even so, he’s looking forward to spending time on the drive with Edie, attracted to her sunny red curls, fiery personality and fine dark eyes.

Then a snowstorm forces them to seek shelter in an empty mountain cabin. Edie thinks she will take the lead in wilderness survival but Kirk proves more durable than his Italian loafers and silk sweater would suggest. The extended stay rubs them together in all sorts of ways, kindling emotional and physical flames. But when their corporate shells burn away, what secrets will be revealed?

An excerpt from

Edie and the CEO

Copyright © 2013 Mary Hughes All rights reserved — a Crimson Romance publication

Edie wants to make her 60's protester grandparents proud. But championing the little guy gets her in trouble with sexy CEO Everett Kirk. Someone's trying to force Everett out of his job, and Edie's latest escapade hasn't helped. A snowstorm and an empty cabin makes them confront their attraction.

Chapter One

Smack in the middle of the workday, because her brain was fried, Edith Ellen Rowan made her computer chirp Old MacDonald. Naturally that got her into trouble with The Bitch.

At first, Edie didn’t even register the problem. Four sunny bars bee-booped before it hit her—her computer was playing a children’s nursery song in an office full of conservative, nitpicky ears. Houghton Howell Enterprises was staid like an insurance company’s gray suit (fun was something you had on the golf course, or once a year at the Christmas party, but never ever on the job).

“Suck it to shell.” Edie hit the escape key. As ee-eye-ohhh died, she braced against the proverbial fan scattering the proverbial manure in the form of Bethany Blondelle, known to most of the company as The ‘B’ if they were feeling kindly, adding the ‘itch’ if they were not.

Shoulders hunched and breath held, Edie waited. She’d only been trying to motivate her people. Managing a team of programmers at HHE, a firm that sold innovative (read: expensive) solutions in accounting for large companies (read: deep pockets) wasn’t easy. Her team members were getting as fried as she, and so she’d proposed the music-writing contest.

Nothing happened. Edie gradually relaxed.

The Star Spangled Banner burst lustily from Jack’s cubicle next door. Edie groaned.

“What the HELL is that NOISE?” Bethany had her vocal caps lock on again. This would be bad. “Who’s making all that racket? Edie? Edie!”

Edie face-palmed. The contest was supposed to be a bit of fun, not cause for Armageddon. She’d have preferred to ignore The B, but “Bethany” and “proactive” were so synonymous they were hyperlinked on Wikipedia.

Sure enough, a long leg popped through the opening of Edie’s cubicle, followed by the lady herself in eye-bleeding red. Bethany’s fashion sense was from the DoMeHard channel. Her snappy skirts were hemmed just below her panty line. Today’s suit also featured a plunging sweetheart neckline, a chunky citrine necklace getting suffocated in her Wonder-enhanced cleavage. Her long, sleek hair was dyed crayon yellow #6.

Edie looked down at her own lacy teal tee, navy pants and wool blazer and wondered if she was underdressed.

Nah.

“What is the meaning of this racket?” Bethany leaned on Edie’s desk, looming over her. Invading personal space—“A” in the ABCs of corporate dominance.

“Project Pleiades. We had a month to deadline—until your good buddy Junior chopped that to a week.”

“Respect, Edie. Mr. Howell, not ‘Junior.’”

“I’ll respect Mr. Pharaoh Howell when he respects the workers. That deadline is a nightmare. My team has been working twelve-hour days and more. I’ve tried to push back, but you know Junior. Only the Evil Overlord can buck him.”

“Stop it.” Bethany tossed her head, a fleeting remnant of the girl Edie once knew. “The issue is not our executives. The issue is that...racket.” She waved her hand toward Jack’s cubicle, where the anthem was on its final verse.

“Handling Stress 101, Bethany. Work on something else.”

“Playing music on company time?” Bethany glared down her high-bridged nose.

“Stupidity 101. You should listen to me if you want to go anywhere in this company.” She pointed to her cleavage, fingertip disappearing to the first knuckle. “After all, my team’s twice the size of yours.”

“Bigger isn’t better. It’s all about how you use it.” Edie grinned. “How about you run your team and I’ll run mine?”

“You don’t run your team.” Bethany sneered. “They run you.”

“It’s called empowerment.” Edie took pride in her outspoken team. She wanted her grandparents, hard-core sixties protesters, to be proud of her. They’d raised her from a little girl when her parents had died, and she loved them to pieces. “It’s a proven management style.”

Jack’s computer shifted to A Hundred Bottles of Beer.

“Management?” One corner of Bethany’s perfect lips curled. “The only management I

see is mis-management.”

“Ba-dum-bum.” Edie was suddenly tired of the whole conversation.

And, as Jack’s computer continued to tweet bottles down, doubt gnawed at her. It was quite a racket.

“Other people are trying to work.” Bethany went for the kill. “Keep your hooligans under control or I’m going to have to tell Mr. Kirk.”

Edie suppressed a moan. Of all the straight-laced overbearing big shots at HHE, Edward Everett Kirk, president and CEO, was the biggest, straight-laciest. Like laced corsets...naughty corsets in Kirk’s competent hands—

“The way you two fight, it’s only a matter of time before he gets fed up and fires you.” Mme La B’itch drew a red-enameled nail across her slim throat.

Edie winced. “It’s called ‘corporate unfriending’ now. And I couldn’t help the janitor incident. Or the thing with the Super Soaker. Look, I’ll talk to my people. Just cut us some slack, okay? We’ve been working ridiculous hours.”

“Edie, you idiot. Has it ever occurred to you that your ridiculous hours are because of you?”

Them’s fightin’ words. Edie raised narrowed eyes. “I beg your pardon?”

Bethany leaned knuckles on the desk. “Only one kind of project manager confuses effort with efficiency: a bad one.”

“Enough.” Edie jumped to her feet, nearly head-butting Bethany. “Outside. Now.”

“And freeze my butt off? Hardly.” Bethany’s nose was inches from Edie’s. “You have absolutely no decorum, do you? That shouldn’t surprise me, considering the hippies who raised you.”

Edie lost it. “My grandparents were heroes! They fought for what they believed in, rallied at protest marches—”

“Pretty stories. Your grandpa was a long-haired unwashed bum. Your grandma wasn’t much better than a free love hooker.”

Edie snarled. “Now you listen here, you b—”

“If Mr. Kirk were here—”

“Mr. Kirk,” a deep voice rang with power, “is here. And I want to know what, precisely, is going on.”


Buy Links

Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/Edie-CEO-Crimson-Romance-ebook/dp/B00AWWZV9Q/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1359049418&sr=8-1&keywords=edie+and+the+ceo

Barnes and Noble

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/edie-and-the-ceo-mary-hughes/1114145167?ean=9781440564307

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February 4
Heart Breaking Reviews
Romance Book Craze

 February 5
Harlie's Books
Read Your Writes
My Life Beyond Labels

 February 6
My Fiction Nook
Tattooed Book Review
Guilty Pleasures

 February 7
Melinda Dozier
Blackraven Erotic Cafe
Storeybook Reviews

 February 8
AJ's Reading Nook
Simply Ali

 February 11
What's On The Bookshelf
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 February 12
Sugar and Spice Reviews
Escape2Books

 February 13
My Odd Little World
Blackraven's Reviews
A Little Fiction of Every Flavour

 February 14
Literary R & R
Smardy Pants Book Blog
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