Danita Minnis

https://goddessfishpromotions.blogspot.com/2022/06/vbt-skate-cute-by-melissa-j-roche.html

Melissa J. Roche will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN GC or a digital copy of the book to two randomly drawn winners via rafflecopter during the tour.

Author Interview Melissa J Roche

1. How did you choose your genre? What made you write this book?

This book chose me! The genre, too—I was more of a YA fantasy/sci-fi novelist until this book arrested my imagination. Little did I know, I was in for a wild ride…

The date was October 12, 2020. I was practicing my artistic inline skating tricks at my neighborhood outdoor rink, listening to my favorite music underneath a beyond-blue afternoon sky. Overcome by it all, I just wanted to lie down on the rink and stare up at the sky… But then I thought Nope, can’t do that, someone would probably see me lying here and think I fell down and come over and check on me.

Then it hit me. That would be the best meet-cute ever. In an hour, I knew I had to write this book. In a week, I had a plot and characters all planned out. In a month (my first NaNoWriMo, November 2020) I had a first draft. And in a year, a publishing contract to make the novel a reality.

So you see, Skate Cute really wrote me. But I’m not complaining.

2. Writers write what they know, and must observe the world. Are you a first-born, middle or last child, and how does this shape your view of the world?

I’m a first-born, and as a child, I was always a precocious reader and an avid student of the world and its characters. But these days I’m learning to hold loosely my ideas about my personality, some of which I formed myself and others of which were handed down to me. I am being written and re-written—as an author and a human—almost daily.

3. Where is your favorite place to write?

Under the shade of the lilac hedge, with pen and notebook and my two elementary-age kids, sailing the high seas of young imagination.

4. How do you feel about killing your darlings, and what do you do with the remains?

Characters or books? One of my first “novels” as a young teen involved a tragic plotline that spilled the blood of basically every character my heroine had ever known and loved, but I’ve left that teenage angst behind (I swear) and now I rarely kill off characters. Book ideas haven’t gotten so lucky. I’m always back-burning projects that just seem to need a little more tweaking before they’re ready to go public, so my to-be-written shelf is all too often a graveyard of mouldering corpses. But I’ll pick each one of them up again someday…

5. You are introduced to your favorite author. Who is it, and what is that one burning question you must ask them?

C. S. Lewis. “Which way to Narnia?”

6. Inquiring minds want to know…tell readers something about you that no one knows.

Oh you do, do you? Fine, here you go: I had already turned down dozens of marriage proposals before I finished high school. No, I’m not just that popular. I was the firstborn daughter of the missionary doctor in our rural African village, and each proposal honored both me and my father. They just… weren’t quite right for me.

7. You are stranded on a deserted island with only a backpack for company. What three items are in your survival pack?

Katniss Everdeen (I can fit her in a backpack, right?). Okay, fine, at least her magic, make-water-drip-from-trees tool. And a turtle harness (I’ve heard Jack Sparrow has one I could borrow). And Tolstoy’s War and Peace (for some light reading while I wait for the turtles).

8. If you could have one superpower in your existence, what would it be?

The power to make two people love each other. Not fall in love, mind you—I would make people love first, and freely, without fighting. But in case that’s not the type of power you were looking for, I’d love to fly.

9. Favorite snack?

Probably Pringles. They make good fake duck lips.

10. Indy 500 – Do you know how to get where you’re going or do you drive the speed limit?

That’s a car race, right? (Yep, I grew up in Africa.) When the road has a speed limit, I follow it. Mostly.

Skate Cute

by Melissa J. Roche

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GENRE:   Contemporary Romance

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BLURB:

Kriss heads home to her small prairie town with 98% of an astrophysics PhD, a load of memories she’d rather not think about, and a survival plan: skate and graduate. Her plan doesn’t include the attention of a familiar admirer from the nearby fire station, one with an impressive physique, a hidden singing talent, and a smile dazzling enough to sweep her off her skates. Before she knows it, she’s falling for him—hard.

Chase has settled into the rhythms of his small-town firefighter routine, but he remembers Kriss from high school: the starry-eyed skater girl on her way out the door of his life. Now she’s back, just as gorgeous as ever, spinning around the next-door rink without a care in the world. Or so he thinks, until Kriss is targeted with mysterious acts of vandalism designed to derail her dreams. Can he help Kriss find the courage to stand up under the attacks and trust herself to love again?

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Excerpt:

He rounded the first corner at the far end of the field and snuck a glance back toward the rink just in time to watch Kriss’s long ponytail sail out behind her helmet with another tight spin. That one must not have gone quite as planned, because she stumbled a little and lurched sideways. But she recovered gracefully enough with a quick laugh a moment later, as if she enjoyed the thrill of almost wiping out on the concrete.

Yup. Gotta fall to get better. His ass knew as well as anyone else’s, after too many falls on that very same rink, shuffling his own inline skates and hockey stick around one of the goals in his spare time.

Too much of his spare time. But he wasn’t so bad on wheels himself, these days—MVP on the fire department’s informal team, crushing the police department’s lousy attempts at rivalry in the yearly Battle of the Badges tournament.

His high school self would die a thousand deaths before admitting it, but young Chase had taken up street hockey for a very… specific reason. Kriss had been just as badass on her skates all those years ago as a senior at Sacreola High, three years ahead of him. Hot, smart, and senior—and totally out of his league.

She had graduated and moved on without giving him so much as a second glance. But his newfound love for skating had stuck around long enough to turn him into a decent hockey player on the side. No harm done.

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Melissa received her first pair of black-and-hot-pink inline skates in fourth grade, a couple of years before she swore her life to the study of the stars (in a fit of sci-fi inspired passion). Two decades later, she has acquired several larger pairs of skates and an astronomy PhD, both of which tend to slip out from under her at the most inopportune moments. She enjoys skating and singing at the neighborhood rink in her small town in Colorado, where she lives with her husband, two boys, and a cozy lap cat. Only one of which is allowed to read her writing over her shoulder.

https://writerchickphd.com https://melissajroche.com/

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Amazon buy link:

This book is on sale for $0.99.

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