Looking for a laugh or two? Then check out Buck’s Fizz the third book in the Cocktails for You series. Meet Jewel Jessica Wellington, AKA Jess Wells, the newest member of an all-girl honky tonk band named Suzy and the Silvertones. But Jess isn’t your typical country singer. Not only is she the only daughter of a New York City billionaire on the run from her family and the marriage her father has arranged for her, she’s a respected soprano with the Metropolitan Opera.
Check out the blurb:
You can run, but you can’t hide! In order to escape an arranged marriage to a rude, insufferable man, Jewel Wellington leaves home and The Met to hide with a honky tonk band on a Southern promotional tour. As Jess Wells, she and the other Silvertones step into The Squawking Tomcat, a bar on the outskirts of Alice, Texas, expecting to have a three-week gig. The problem is, the bar’s owner, Lance Corcoran, isn’t expecting an all-girl band.Frustrated at this sudden reverse of fortune, Jess makes a deal with the bar’s owner—pick any song by any artist, and let her prove she and the Silvertones can do it. What she doesn’t expect is to realize that the bar’s crusty cowboy owner is none other the surfer she spent one steamy night on the beach with eight years ago, one she left without saying goodbye.Will Lance recognize her? And if he does, will it cost them the gig?
The Cocktails for You series is a set of books written as first person romantic comedy novels, each one focusing on a cocktail for its title. I’m not a lush, but I enjoyed going out for drinks with friends, cruises, dinners in fancy restaurants, all things stolen from us by the Coronavirus COVID 19 exactly a year ago. These books are shorter than my usual novels, upbeat, and easy to read, but they still offer the quality writing I’ve always promised you.
The first book in the series debuted in the ABB’s box set, Summer Shorts. Tequila Sunrise, with more scenes and details than the original short story, is set in Mexico, and the places mentioned are all the spots I visited and loved on my last vacation, thanks to the virus. Sun, sand, and mind-blowing kisses! Kelly Winters, an up and coming recreational facilities designer for Dreamscapes, is thrilled to be part of a Think Tank Conway Enterprises is putting together—so thrilled in fact that she agrees, despite the fact she hates flying.
Liam Conway, the heir apparent to Conway Enterprises, can’t believe his luck when he spots his Kellyanne in the airport and discovers she’ll be his seatmate on the flight to Mexico City. He was sure they’d connected that day ten years ago, and not just because she’d literally left him in stitches. He searched for her for weeks afterwards, but it was as if she’d vanished into thin air.
Kelly is stunned to see Liam after all these years. Discovering that not only is he participating in the same Think Tank she is, but he’s also her boss leads to more than she bargained for. Can a ten-year-old attraction blossom again, or will their positions keep them apart?
The second book in the series originated as What Dottie Wants in the ABB’s Dear Santa box set.As I did with the previous book, I expanded the story, adding more than ten thousand words to it and retitling it, Champagne Cocktail . Do you believe in Christmas magic? When life gave Ronnie Daniels lemons, instead of lemonade, the single mother learned to make Lemon Drops. This Christmas, times are tougher than ever, and Ronnie’s number one priority is making the holiday as normal as possible for her five-year-old daughter. All Dottie wants from Santa is a Famous American Ballerina doll. The problem is not only are they expensive, but they’re impossible to find. After another failed attempt to secure one of the dolls, in her frustration, Ronnie sends a scathing letter to the company, Thomas Toys. As the doll’s manufacturer, one advertising a product they don’t have on hand and can’t deliver before Christmas, it’s their fault that her daughter’s dreams won’t come true. When the company’s new CEO comes into the bar to apologize for the mishap and try to make amends, Ronnie refuses to listen to him, not just because of Dottie, but they have a complicated history. Determined to fix this, Wyatt won’t back down, and before long the doll isn’t the only thing Dottie and Ronnie want for Christmas.
The third book, Buck’s Fizz, appears as a short story in the ABB’s New Year’s Eve Shorts box set. Like it’s predecessors, the story got a major overhaul and is now double the original length. I based her experiences on some of mine, so to those of you ‘born in the saddle’ remember, there are a lot of us tenderfoots out there. The bonus writing this was the opportunities it gave me to listen to songs from the greatest female country singers. Here’s a new scene from the book to whet your whistle:
Looking out the partially open window into the darkness, seeing nothing but the reflection of my face thanks to the light from Elise’s electronic reader, I sighed. Who knew life could chew you up and spit you out this way? If I hadn’t hit rock bottom, I couldn’t be too far away.
Up until six months ago, my life had been tolerable, not perfect by any means, at least not as long as my father held a death grip on the purse strings, including my trust fund, which had forced me to live at home. Okay, maybe I could’ve given up some of the perks, but to go from a Manhattan condo to a dive in a neighborhood where the rats were the size of cats was still too big a leap for this poor little rich girl. So sue me!
I’d been one show away from my professional goal, a coveted main role at the Met—that was until my father decided it was time for me to get married, and put all that “singing nonsense” as he called it behind me. There were just two problems with his plan: not only did I not want to give up my singing career, I wasn’t in love. How could I even consider marriage if that vital component wasn’t in the equation?
All I wanted was to be in charge of my own life, make my own choices, and if I made mistakes, so be it. I would own up to them and move on. In the twenty-first century, despite the fact that I was female, that shouldn’t be so hard, and yet…
As the only child of wealthy parents who’d given me pretty much everything I’d ever wanted, I’d had friends, fame, and the job of my dreams. I was almost thirty, but that was still young. I would find my true love in time, and then, the rest of it, marriage and children, would fall into place—or so I’d believed. Unfortunately for me, my father had a different idea. I’d danced at his expense for years; now, it was time to stop being emotional and pay the band.
Emotional? Me? I was the most rational person in either our penthouse condo, our home on Cape Cod, or the mansion in the Florida Keys. I might work in theater, but I wasn’t prone to theatrics, nor did I believe in all the hocus pocus my mother had indulged in for the last thirty years in an effort to deal with the tedium of her life. Not having to work was both a blessing and a curse, and with my father a workaholic, rarely home until late at night, she’d immersed herself in all kinds of New Age thinking, dragging me along as long as she could.
She’d done it all—palmistry, tealeaf reading, visited mediums to connect with the spirits of her past, flooded the condo and the vacation houses with positive energy crystals, had tried Reiki, yoga, and meditation, and most recently was looking into her soul group or family, with a shaman named Bob, helping her prepare for her next reincarnation. Good karma, bad karma. I’d needed her support. Couldn’t she at least wait until this life was over to prepare for the next one?
My father tended to ignore her idiosyncrasies; after all in his world, a happy wife meant a happy life, and if she was off doing God alone knew what, it didn’t matter as long as she entertained his business associates and smiled on cue. But a daughter? That was a different matter altogether, and the reason I was in this van, where the air conditioner had committed suicide yesterday, my long, recently dyed, mouse-brown hair plastered to the back of my neck, driving at night through the desert, on my way to Nowhere, Texas.
Life at home had resembled walking across a mine field. I never knew exactly what might set my father off, and as far as my mother went, she was invisible, preferring to stay out of it. At first, the arguments had been minor, almost trivial, but at the end, they’d become major battles, especially after Montgomery Reginald Harris had been added to the mix. I’d never been one for confrontation, but if I didn’t stand up for myself, who would?
Monte, as he liked to be called, had pockets lined with gold, not that my family needed more money. Sadly, to the rich, the only thing that truly mattered was getting richer. I’d never seen my father as a greedy, covetous man, but then, until this year, I’d probably never seen him for the man he really was. When I did, it broke my heart.
With his nose job, hair plugs, capped teeth, and brooding good looks, Monte considered himself God’s gift to women. In reality, the poster boy for Plastic Surgery R Us was an ass with an overblown, sickening sense of entitlement. He never asked for anything—he demanded it. The first and last time we’d officially gone on a date had been at the end of July, the weekend of my cousin Tara’s wedding. He’d thrown a snit fit when the serving girl had dared allow the condensation on the outside of the water jug to drip onto the sleeve of his shiny, new jacket.
I’d been mortified, hoping against hope that no one would realize we were together. Unfortunately, he and my father had been in cahoots, and Monte had chosen to publicly stake his claim, latching onto my waist, openly proclaiming me his property. I’d struggled momentarily, but then, seeing the paparazzi and the glare in my father’s eyes, afraid His Majesty King Monte would make an even bigger scene, I’d stopped.
Monte had smirked, leaned down, and kissed me, the experience not unlike smooching with a dog that constantly drooled. I’d stepped back and excused myself, running to the ladies’ room to wash my face. What I should’ve done was knee him in the balls before walking away. That would’ve been a Pulitzer prize winning picture for the Society page.
The following morning, I’d tried to reason with my father, but to no avail. After that argument, I realized I wouldn’t get any help from either of my parents and afraid my father would drag me kicking and screaming down the aisle, I stood my ground—and made plans to escape.
Faced with the choice between obeying a man I no longer recognized or respected and saving my future, I did the only thing I could do. I took a leave of absence from The Met, giving up my role as Annina in La Traviata, packed my overnight bag, emptied my savings account, and bought an Amtrak ticket. I had no intention of marrying a man I despised simply because my father approved of him, and it made good business sense. If he wanted to set Mom aside and marry good old Monte himself, let him. I would make my own way in the world, without his precious money, and to hell with anyone who tried to stop me.
As the van ate up the highway miles, that sense of disconnect that had eaten at me this last year seemed stronger than ever. I felt like Toby Tyler, the boy who’d run away from home after an argument with his aunt and uncle, and had joined the circus. But this wasn’t a movie, andI hadn’t joined the circus, even if at times it felt that way.
Perform, sleep, drive, perform. I was singing backup and playing gopher for a honky tonk, all-girl band, just about as far away from the Metropolitan Opera as I could get. For the most part, the girls were great, and if they made me feel like an outsider, well … I was.
Buck’s Fizz is available exclusively from any Amazon retailer for only 99 cents USD, or is free to read in Kindle Unlimited.
Living the Dream 