A to Z Challenge Blog 2024 The Letter T

I want to take a minute to thank those who’ve opted to follow my blog. Inviting you to my online home is an honor and a privilege. I hope what you’ll find here will be worth your time and effort.

Today’s letter is T. I’m torn between talking about the trouble I have with marketing and the trouble I have with what I call stubborn characters.

In terms of marketing, I would say my biggest trouble comes from the fact that marketing IS NOT my field of expertise. I don’t understand how to target my ads and all that stuff, although I have taken online courses designed to help, and they have, but I’m by no means even good at it. If I had the money, I would hire someone to market for me. I have everything in place–the professional website https://mhsusannematthews.ca/ courtesy of my son who’s a web designer, professionally made covers that follow the current trends thanks to my cover artist and best friend, Melinda https://www.coveredbymelinda.com/ and my blog, which connects to my newsletter when I want it to do so. But, I suck at promoting myself, so unless that changes, I’ll always have trouble with marketing.

The second trouble involves my characters. I do my best to put each of my heroines in some kind of trouble. I also try to give them unusual occupations when I can. My favorite example of that is Trouble With Eden. Here’s the blurb:

Can two lonely strangers find love and happiness through a caring man’s bequest?

Fantasy author Jackson Rivers is fed up with the world. He wants to hide away from everyone and everything and focus on his books, preferring the worlds he creates in his mind to reality. When he discovers he’s inherited a house and a service station in a rural part of Eastern Ontario, he sees it as the answer to prayer. He may only own half of both, but surely, he and the coheir can come to some arrangement. He just wants to be left alone, and a house in the country sounds perfect. Sadly, an encounter with a moose changes everything, and when he meets the other heir, not a man as he’d envisioned but a woman, the embodiment of his newest fantasy heroine, his priorities change. If it’s time to let someone else into his life, this woman is the ideal choice.

Eden-Jane Walford, E J to friends, wants her life to stay exactly the way it is—unfettered—able to come and go as she pleases, living in her childhood home, answering to herself and the dad she adores. But fate tosses a monkey wrench into things. She’s a Class A mechanic and tow truck operator for Paradise Service Station and Towing, her adoptive father’s company, but when he dies suddenly, she’s in for a surprise. While he leaves half of his estate to her, the other half goes to a stranger, who just happens to be his biological son and knows absolutely nothing about the business. Sharing her home and the boss’s chair with this man will be more than a little challenging, especially when he’s the first man she’s been drawn to since her disastrous engagement fell through. Will the sparks between them lead to love or war?

And what kind of trouble is Eden in? Well, other than the obvious of having to live and share her business with a stranger, someone wants to buy the land to redevelop it. She’s not selling and has to convince her step-brother not to sell either. That won’t go over well with the developer willing to do whatever it takes to get it, including intimidation and murder. It’s up to Eden and Jackson to figure out who’s behind it all. You can peek into the first chapter here.

That’s it for the letter T, and today’s musical selection is for one of my followers, Lois Roelofs. Enjoy! Come back tomorrow for the letter U.

Check out blog posts from other participants here: https://tinyurl.com/w54yupwe