Full Throttle is Now Available!

FULL THROTTLE - The Story Behind the Story

Before I met and married my current husband, I spent some time doing the Internet dating thing. I started corresponding with a guy who told me he was new in town, attending school and riding an old bike. I pictured some nerd on a Schwinn 10-speed.

He sent me his photo and I thought he was pretty cute. Pretty soon we met in person. I realized his “old bike” was a Honda motorcycle and he was attending Motorcycle Mechanics Institute. To pay the tuition, he worked nights at a printing company.

I spent a lot of time keeping him company at his job. One night I changed the clutch on his Honda still garbed in the dress I’d worn to work (which got covered in splotches of grease and oil and ended up in the rag bag), while he printed out a stack of brochures for a client. That was the night he told me he was in love.

It wasn’t long afterward that he moved into my house and convinced me to front the money for a mobile motorcycle dynamometer. If you’re not familiar with this particular piece of equipment, it’s a device mounted on a trailer that measures the horsepower and torque of a motorcycle.

We got our mobile dyno business going and attended every motorcycle event and local “bike nights” we could. It was hard, grueling, dirty work that consumed nearly every hour away from our “real” jobs. Because we were on a limited budget, we usually camped out for the weekend at rallies, adding to my work.

My boyfriend graduated and got hired at a custom cycle shop in town. Many nights I met him at the shop and helped him work on his own basket case of a Harley. His co-workers accepted me in the service bays and considered me just “one of the guys”. By day I was the executive office manager for an upscale, three-star hotel; by night I was a motorcycle mechanic. There were days I would show up for work dressed in a business suit, hose, and heels with grease under my fingernails.

Along the way I met lots of interesting people. They all became the basis for the characters in Full Throttle – from the rich guy who rode a Deuce and hired us for a full day of testing and tuning his garage full of motorcycles to the woman who rode her own huge, customized hog proudly with a group of gruff bikers.

Full Throttle’s heroine Samantha is much like me. She holds a business degree but teams up with her cousin to start a motorcycle dyno business and market their services to the owner of the custom cycle shop where Doug works, Linc Montgomery. Linc is a handsome ex-motorcycle racer who is the amalgam of several men I met while testing and tuning bikes.

Alas, my relationship didn’t last, nor did the business. I still have an MMI uniform shirt that I wear to change the oil in my truck while I remember those days. I wouldn’t do it again, but boy, the experiences… Read about them in FULL THROTTLE, available now in e-book format from Champagne Books.

Full Throttle is Coming Soon

Look at my newly created cover art for Full Throttle! I think the artist, Trisha Fitzgerald, did a fanastic job.

Full Throttle will be available October 1st through Champagne Books. Here's a blurb about this contemporary romance (my first!):

When ex-Harley racer Linc plots a full throttle seduction of motorcycle tech Samantha, the last thing he expects is love to throw a wrench in the works

Phoenix is hot but the bikers are even hotter and Samantha finds this out firsthand after partnering with her cousin to run Dr. Doug’s Mobile Dyno, a motorcycle testing and performance tuning business. Spurned by an ex-fiancée and resolved to taking care of her aging father and his medical problems, romance is the last thing Samantha’s looking for while expanding her new business is at the top of her priorities list.

Along comes opportunity in the form of Linc Montgomery, a tough, business-savvy, ex-Harley racer and new owner of Full Throttle Custom Cycles in Phoenix. Linc is used to having gorgeous women fall at his feet. When he meets Samantha and agrees to contract her dyno services, he quickly realizes she isn’t one of those brainless bimbos he normally dates before carelessly tossing aside.

The challenge is on for Linc as he sets out to seduce Samantha just to prove he can. He doesn’t plan on the interference of his ex-wife and her ex-fiancée – both of whom serve to make him realize that along the way, his seduction scheme causes him to fall head over heels in love. It isn’t so easy to convince Samantha she belongs to him

This book is so far the nearest and dearest to my heart. It is based on my own experiences owning a mobile motorcycle dynamometer and the adventures my partner and I had traveling around the area and attending biker events. I can't wait until it comes out, and hope you can't either!

Another Interview

Now I'm really starting to feel famous. Yet another interview has been posted on Linda LaRoque's blog. Just click the link in the subject line to read it. If you comment, you will be entered to win a free e-book Linda gives away monthly.

Linda is a great author of contemporary western and time travel romances and my co-editor on the e-cookbook, Recipe for Romance. If you would like a free copy, just visit my website at www.candacemorehouse.com and click on the News and Contests link. It contains a lot of great romance book excerpts along with recipes that characterize one scene in each book.

I am also looking forward to being part of the Long and Short Romance Reviews Anniversary Bash in August. They are giving away free e-book readers! If you haven't priced them out, they are worth hundreds of dollars so this is a great opportunity to win a wonderful prize that will have you hooked on reading electronic books. Visit their site here: www.longandshortreviews.com.

Whew! There's a lot going on these days! It's all good, though. Be sure to enter any of these contests or ask for your free e-cookbook. After all, free is a darned good price!

It’s All About Promotion

At least that’s what, as a romance author, I’ve been told over and over again by the wonderful staff at my publisher, Champagne Books. It’s not just enough to write a romance novel and get it published.

That’s when the real work just begins. Blogging, chatting, book signings, handing out bookmarkers and business cards, marketing the website, posting excerpts, creating profiles at book-related sites, social networking – the list goes on and on.

Honestly, how’s anyone with a “real” job supposed to write another book, let alone keep the home fires burning so they remember what romance is supposed to be like, and keep up on promotion?

Yeah, it can be difficult. Unfortunately, just because you create an artistic piece doesn’t mean someone will find it, and buy it. Promotion is the difference between being a no-name artist and one who becomes an icon.

Even so-so artists have been able to make a career out of their art because of great promotion. Take Bob Dylan and Madonna, for example. Or Willie Nelson. None of these singers is particularly talented vocally, yet all have made millions of dollars.

For a romance novelist, the road can be rocky indeed. I know very few authors have ever made big bucks on their first novel. Look at Janet Evanovich. She started out writing category romances for Harlequin many moons ago. Were those books great literary works of art? Hardly. But I guess they paid the bills until she could sell the fantastic novels she writes now.

Does that mean I aspire to be a so-so writer who just markets herself successfully? Not in the least. I’d much rather be known as a good writer, but am realistic enough to realize that is not enough in today’s ultra-competitive market.

Call me a promo whore. Maybe one of these days it will pay the bills.