Author: Jody R

Thinks are looking a little wonky

No, I’m not talking politics. It’s this website and our publishing site, BookbinderPress.com. I’m changing web hosts—not my forte. Imagine me with the car hood propped up with an old ice scraper while, surrounded by tossed and scattered tools strewn about my asphalt driveway (and one inexplicably embedded in the stucco siding), I wipe the 10W-40 from my brow, blow the curls from my forehead, and begin hour twelve of rebuilding my car engine.

That’s me with my website. Wheels are spinning off at the moment, but everything’s going to be FINE. 

Eventually.

New Release Today!

Now available at most online bookstores!

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This season, it’s time for a miracle.

Sophie Furnell loves her job as a 911 operator, and she’s good at it. One call at a time, she makes her community a better place. But one night, she has to tell a caller that help isn’t coming. Soon after, her job is defunded. Disheartened and broke, she sets off for the Adirondacks to house-sit her grandmother’s rental cottage.

As violence sweeps through his neighborhood, Cole Marick defends his bicycle shop and loses. His wounds heal, but the business he’s worked hard to build is destroyed, along with his faith in humanity. Leaving the boarded-up neighborhood storefronts behind, Cole retreats to his family’s Adirondack fishing camp.

Amid towering snow-laden trees, two neighbors have come seeking refuge. But not even the shimmer of holiday lights against new-fallen snow is enough to bring Christmas joy to their two damaged spirits. Neither has seen much in the way of miracles lately, but as a snowstorm blows in and Christmas approaches, they discover that miracles come in many forms.

Happy National Sandwich Day!

I know. You’ve waited all year, and it’s finally here—November 3, National Sandwich Day! So here’s a shout out to a man who had the meats way before Arby’s did.

In 1762, John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich, ordered beef between two slices of bread so he could eat and gamble at the same time. In a time when cutlery was all the rage, the Earl’s practice of eating with his fingers raised more than a few eyebrows. Evidently, no one had a problem with his gambling so obsessively that he couldn’t take a break for a meal now and then. No, it was his hands-on approach to eating that so shocked a nation—until they tried it.

What does this have to do with books, you might ask? Well, later that year, English author, Edward Gibbons, observed two men eating cold meat between bread slices in a small cafe called the Cocoa Tree. He was so impressed by the sight that he wrote about it, thus providing the first written record of the term sandwich.

So next time you chow down on a sandwich, thank an author.

New Covers

The Pine Harbor series now has new covers that better reflect the stories. I hope you like them!

Coming in October

 
They’ll be best friends forever, and that is the problem.

Marco is the best friend a girl could ever want. Lydia just wishes he loved her, too. But it’s hopeless. So she takes charge of her life and sets out to put distance between them. Otherwise, she risks pining away for the rest of her life all alone—like her mother. Except even her mother has found someone to love. So when a guy in one of Lydia’s college classes asks her out, she sees her big chance to get over Marco.

Marco has breezed through life—or at least his love life. The rest of his life hasn’t been quite so breezy. He was orphaned at ten, and his older brother raised him. Now eighteen, Marco and his brother own the Silva Brothers’ Brewpub, where Marco works the bar and charms the ladies. But his old pain-avoidance tactics have caught up with him. He’s kept Lydia at bay. They’re best friends, but best friends can grow close. By the time he realizes he’s in over his head, she finds someone to date. He didn’t see that coming.

In the small coastal town of Pine Harbor, Lydia’s Christmas wish could come true, but she’ll never know it.