Dear Readers,
I’m so excited to be on Fresh Fiction today celebrating my new release, BORROWING TROUBLE. Brady
Benson, BORROWING
TROUBLE’s hero, first appeared in the fourth book of my Nugget Romance series, STARTING OVER. I liked him
so much that I wanted to give him a book of his own. That’s the thing about
writing minor characters. You never know when he or she will worm their way into
your heart and beg you for their own happily ever after. I’ve had some secondary
characters who would’ve taken over an entire book if I’d let them.
Brady’s a chef and I’m a former food writer so already we were a match made in
heaven. He was also mysterious. In Starting Over he’d arrived in Nugget running
from a secret. The honest truth: I hadn’t worked out his secret yet. For that
book the important thing was to give him an air of intrigue and if I never used
him again—or continued using him only as a minor character--so be it.
I like writing character-driven stories and I like writing stories where
traditional rolls are flip flopped. For instance, Brady spends his days in a
kitchen and the heroine, Sloane McBride, is a cop. A man doesn’t have to be any
less alpha if he cooks for a living. In fact, I like playing with social mores
and shaking them up.
I also like characters to have quirks and flaws, it gives them more personality.
Nugget’s ensemble cast is gossipy, judgmental and often tactless. But they all
have one another’s backs. That’s the way it has to be in a small town, or at
least the way we’d like it to be. Having grown up in several—my parents moved
around a lot—neighbors looked out for each other. In most of these towns the
nearest emergency services were at least thirty minutes away.
At least Nugget has its own police department. There’s a secondary character who
works as a dispatcher in the office and I still don’t know what to do with her.
She keeps delivering one liners that crack me up and says the most outrageous
things at the most inappropriate times. Like a lot of people in Nugget, she
doesn’t seem to have a filter. And if I let her, she’ll steal the show away from
the hero and heroine.
I may have to break down and give her her own story.
Stacy Finz is an award-winning former newspaper reporter. After more than
twenty years covering notorious serial killers, naked-tractor-driving farmers,
fanatical foodies, aging rock stars and weird Western towns, she figured she
finally had enough material to launch a career writing fiction. She is the
author of the Nugget Romance series (Kensington/Lyrical Press) about a small
mountain town that has a strange way of giving people unexpected reasons to
start over and find the most irresistible chances to fall in love.
Praise For Stacy Finz
“Finz is a unique new voice. Nugget, California is a charming small town
filled with inventive characters and sweet romance."--Jill Shalvis, New York
Times bestselling author of the Lucky Harbor Series
"Tender and touching, Stacy Finz writes romance with heart."--Marina Adair, #1
National bestselling author of Summer in Napa
In the beautiful mountain town of Nugget, California, staying out of the
limelight is easy, but staying out of love is a bit more challenging…
Back in Los Angeles, Sloane McBride was a great police detective, but after she
uncovered corruption on her own squad, the job became nearly impossible. In the
bucolic hills of Nugget, she can start to imagine a life after all that, where
she keeps her head down, does her work, and doesn’t bother anyone. But her
delicious next door neighbor isn’t going to make it easy to keep to herself…
Brady Benson’s wildest dreams came true in LA—but they were paired with a living
nightmare. As executive chef of a searing-hot restaurant, he was lauded, adored…
and then found himself caught in the sights of a lovelorn stalker. Now, laying
low in Nugget, he finds his own heart ensnared by the beautiful new cop with her
own reasons to start over.
Neither Sloane nor Brady came to town looking for love, but it seems to have
found them. Trouble is, so have their pasts. And they’ll have to stop hiding
from both if they hope to come out the other side together…
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