I am pleased to annouce that I am geering up for the November 2009 release of A Home for Christmas. I have heard from a number of readers who enjoyed Only You who are as anxious as I am for this book's release.
The cover is gorgeous. My fabulous cover designer, Debra Dixon at Belle Books, once again did an amazing job! I just proofed the gallies and sent them off to my editors, so everything is on schedule.
Also, I just updated my website. I change the color to match with the cover for A Home for Christmas. So, be sure to stop by and let me know what you think about the new look. I posted an excerpt from Chapter One which I will post here as well. To further whet your appetite, if you email a request to dgracestaley@aol.com, I will send you a look at the rest of the first chapter:)
Here's the excerpt for Chapter 1 of A Home for Christmas:
Available November 2009
in Trade Paperback and in E-Format***ISBN 978-0-9821756-7-5
A Home for Christmas
The Second Angel Ridge Novel
by Deborah Grace Staley
© 2009 Deborah Grace StaleyAll Rights Reserved
Chapter One
They say you can never go home.
Janice Thornton glided up to the curb in front of the old two-story Victorian and killed the engine. It looked much the same—gingerbread trim in the eaves, wide wraparound porch with wicker furniture. The house was huge, but in the short time she spent here as a child, it had felt cozy to her.
Sitting here looking at it through adult eyes, she realized the appeal had never been the house itself, but the home her grandparents had made in it. Their house had been her ideal of what a home should be. A home she'd longed for as a child. A home she'd never had with her own parents.
Janice slid her sunglasses off and laid them in the empty passenger seat next to her. She always got sentimental around the holidays. She didn't know why. Her formative years had been spent at exclusive boarding schools. Christmases always involved a trip, either with her parents, or more often, with school friends. Each year, her grandmother had invited her to spend Christmas break in Angel Ridge, but her mother wouldn't hear of such a thing. She'd always been embarrassed by her humble roots and didn't want her daughter revisiting them.
Janice hadn't been in Angel Ridge, Tennessee since she'd gone behind her parents' backs and borrowed a friend's car when she was sixteen to come during her spring break. It hadn't changed much. Tall, old houses lined one side of a street that ran high above the Tellassee River, with church steeples just visible a few blocks over. It was a sleepy little town that time seemed to have forgotten, but for some reason, it burned in Janice's memory like a warm, inviting fire on a cold winter morning.
A movement in her peripheral vision made her refocus on the old Victorian. She noticed that a man had appeared from behind the house carrying a ladder. The sun glinted off a pile of tangled Christmas lights, bunched near the steps of the porch, drawing her attention. Janice smiled. She was glad to see that this man, whoever he was, continued her grandfather's tradition of decking the house out in grand style for Christmas.
The man leaned the ladder against the house. As he turned toward the mound of lights, he noticed her and smiled. Her breath caught and hung inside her chest. It was an easy smile, full of good humor that enticed a person to come sit a spell on the porch and enjoy the unseasonably warm, late autumn sunshine.
Tall and lean with whipcord muscles, he wore faded and well-worn jeans with a T-shirt that looked like it had once been black, but now was more a soft charcoal dotted with paint stains. A tan leather tool belt slung low across his narrow hips. A lock of thick, dark hair fell across his tanned forehead as he bent to retrieve the lights.
Janice shifted and the leather seat creaked. A sheen of sweat misted her forehead, and she cracked the window.
What must the home's owner be thinking? But he acted as if seeing a strange woman in a new silver BMW parked outside his home was an every Saturday morning occurrence. He turned, and without giving her a second glance, started up the ladder. Stopping about eight rungs up, he leaned to his right, toward one of the bay windows on the ground floor. Shifting the lights to his other hand, he reached out to pull at something above the window. He teetered. One foot went up in the air as he tried to shift back to find his balance. But the ladder tipped sideways with the movement, and Janice watched in horrified disbelief as he began to fall.
Years of medical school, emergency room rotations, residency, and private practice had honed her instincts so that she didn't even give it a conscious thought. She was out of her car and at his side almost before he hit the boxwoods and rolled to the ground.
"Ah, jeez…" he groaned.
Janice had already clicked into professional mode. "Don't worry, I'm a doctor. Try not to move." She ran her hands down his arms, checking for broken bones. "Where does it hurt?"
The man chuckled. It was a low rumble that had a crazy effect on her. And that smile…it should be registered as a lethal weapon.
"If I said everywhere, would you keep doing that?"
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All the best,
Deborah Grace Staley