I’m excited to have author Darlene Deluca with us here today on StoreyBook Reviews.

Darlene Deluca writes women’s fiction and contemporary romance, and likes to explore relationships – what brings people together or keeps them apart. Her characters seem like real people with real issues that readers can relate to.

Darlene is the author of four novels. She released her debut novel, Unexpected Legacy, in January, 2013, and it advanced to the quarter-finals in Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel Award. Meetings of Chance is a sweet contemporary romance, and The Storm Within is the first of her small-town trilogy in women’s fiction. Her most recent release, Something Good, is her third contemporary romance.

Darlene has been a reader and writer since childhood. She holds a degree in Journalism, and is the go-to person when her kids need help with an English paper, resume or essay. (Math, not so much.) Darlene started her writing career as a newspaper reporter, and later moved into corporate communications. “Writing fiction is a lot more fun,” she says. “It’s liberating. I can make up the people, places and the pertinent facts.”

She has a daughter who just graduated from college, and a son who just graduated from high school. Darlene tolerates living in the Midwest (that’s where the fam is), but when the temperature plummets and the ground turns white, she often longs for a distant sunny beach.

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The Circle of My Life by Darlene Deluca

Once upon a time there was a young girl who loved books. She read books all the time. She had many fictitious friends. Among her favorites were Betsy, Henry, Laura, Nancy, Beanie and Trixie. Her favorite places were cozy reading nooks, bookstores and libraries. She read far above her grade level. A competitive reader, she tracked with pride the William Allen White Books she read. She dashed with dizzying speed through the colors of the SRA reading exercises. She aced English. Always.

As a teen, this girl discovered Harlequin Romances and Bilbo Baggins and Middle Earth. In high school, she soaked up classics like The Grapes of Wrath and Catcher in the Rye. In college, her favorite class was, naturally, an English elective – Crime in Literature – where she was introduced to The Godfather, Crime and Punishment, All The King’s Men, and more. Words showed her the way, and so she graduated with a degree in Journalism on a fair day in May.

Years went by, and the girl grew up, got married, and got pregnant. Then what did she do? She read What To Expect When You’re Expecting and Dr. T. Berry Brazelton, and books on birth and parenting. And then she read . . . Goodnight Moon, and Put Me in the Zoo, and The Little House, and The Little Engine That Could. And she started over again with Laura Ingalls Wilder, and discovered Misty of Chincoteague. And then her children went to school and she read new classics. After all, she needed to know what her little prince and princess were reading. And so she read Harry Potter and A Series of Unfortunate Events and The Book Thief, and many, many more. For a great number of hours she volunteered in the school library, and ran the school book fair, and so became a book Queen.

And she worked. But with literary friends, formed a book club, and always kept reading. As the years passed, she added book shelves in her house. And more book shelves. And there are books in every room of her house. At night, stories went through her mind before she fell asleep. Sometimes they’d still be there during the day. She worked a long time. Then she stopped.

And then the time came when she sat at her computer. Her fingers tapped, grazed, and poked the letters on the keyboard. Stories came to life, and the girl who loved books began writing books. Now that girl is an author.

And she still loves books. And lives happily ever after.

The End

Giveaway

2 eBook copies of Something Good.  Available for the Kindle, Nook or iPad/iphone.  Open internationally.

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Synopsis

A mistake. A blessing. A tragedy.

And now, Mandi Evans has made it her goal to fade into anonymity. Once a straight-A student with her choice of colleges, she’s withdrawn into a life that consists of two jobs, an online class, and memories. Crippled by the past, she feels unworthy of a better life – until Lane Whitmore walks into the diner where she works six nights a week.

An urban planner, Lane is looking to revitalize the rundown part of town where Mandi’s hidden herself away. He can’t help but notice this diamond in the rough as well, and what starts as simple good times grows to . . . something more.

With Lane, Mandi feels alive again, and she makes a bold decision – one that could chart her course on a path to redemption. But will keeping her plan a secret from Lane turn out to be the biggest mistake of all?