New York Times bestselling, RWA Hall of Fame author Eileen Dreyer/Kathleen Korbel has published 31 romance novels in most genres, 8 medical forensic suspenses, and 10 short stories.
2015 sees Eileen enjoying critical acclaim for her foray into historical romance, the Drake’s Rakes series, which Eileen labels as Regency Romantic Adventure that follows a group of Regency aristocrats who are willing to sacrifice everything to keep their country safe. She is also working on her first nonfiction book, TRAVELS WITH DAVE, about a journey she's been taking with a friend's ashes.
A retired trauma nurse, Eileen lives in her native St. Louis with her husband, children, and large and noisy Irish family, of which she is the reluctant matriarch. She has animals but refuses to subject them to the limelight.
2015 sees Eileen enjoying critical acclaim for her foray into historical romance, the Drake’s Rakes series, which Eileen labels as Regency Romantic Adventure that follows a group of Regency aristocrats who are willing to sacrifice everything to keep their country safe. She is also working on her first nonfiction book, TRAVELS WITH DAVE, about a journey she's been taking with a friend's ashes.
A retired trauma nurse, Eileen lives in her native St. Louis with her husband, children, and large and noisy Irish family, of which she is the reluctant matriarch. She has animals but refuses to subject them to the limelight.
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| Eileen (left) with Patricia Rice and Cathy Maxwell RT/2011 in Los Angeles |
Eileen joins us to celebrate the re-release of ISN'T IT ROMANTIC? from her alter ego Kathleen Korbel ...
I Love a Road Trip
I love road trip stories. Maybe that's because I like to travel so much myself. But I think it's more likely that road trips automatically offer more opportunity for different experiences to impact our hero and heroine's relationship. There is inherent forward momentum.(Okay, and sometimes I get to travel myself to the places I drop my characters. You know. Research)(It's my story and I'm sticking to it).
So when I was coming up with the idea for ISN'T IT ROMANTIC? I had to figure a way to get Brooke Ferguson and Pete Cooper to have to leave home and rely on each other in order to survive and triumph over all the challenges I was going to strew in their path. And then, out of the blue came Pete's Aunt Mamie. Pete grew up with his Aunt Mamie. Brooke spent most of her formative years tagging along after Pete and her brother, which meant she, too, became best friends with the tiny gray-haired woman.
When Mamie dies, it is up to Brooke and Pete to fulfill Mamie's tenets of her will and more importantly the plan for her funeral. It seems that Mamie's fluttery Southern sisters refused her request for a Jazz Funeral or Limericks at Sunrise or an Elvis Impersonator or even to dress up as their favorite characters in Gone With The Wind.
So the day after the funeral Mamie's sisters planned for her(which didn't even include a drive-by from the Hell's Angels), Brook and Pete head out in the vintage robin's-egg-blue 1956 two-door T-bird coupe to fulfill Mamie's last wishes.
And I admit that I had a wonderful time sending them on their journey from Rupert Springs, Arkansas to New Orleans, then Shiloh, Natchez and up to Atlanta, passing time with, yes, Hell's Angels, a Jazz funeral, limericks at sunrise on the banks of the Mississippi and an otherworldly meal in an antebellum mansion named Thirteen Oaks. The fact that they also encounter a tornado and muggers just enlivens their journey from friendship to love, all the while guided by the gentle hand of Pete's canny aunt.
Brooke and Coop, as she calls him, first made this trip in 1992, when I wrote as Kathleen Korbel. It's been so much fun for me to take the trip with them again. I hope you'll come along with me.
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Kobo
I love road trip stories. Maybe that's because I like to travel so much myself. But I think it's more likely that road trips automatically offer more opportunity for different experiences to impact our hero and heroine's relationship. There is inherent forward momentum.(Okay, and sometimes I get to travel myself to the places I drop my characters. You know. Research)(It's my story and I'm sticking to it).
So when I was coming up with the idea for ISN'T IT ROMANTIC? I had to figure a way to get Brooke Ferguson and Pete Cooper to have to leave home and rely on each other in order to survive and triumph over all the challenges I was going to strew in their path. And then, out of the blue came Pete's Aunt Mamie. Pete grew up with his Aunt Mamie. Brooke spent most of her formative years tagging along after Pete and her brother, which meant she, too, became best friends with the tiny gray-haired woman.
When Mamie dies, it is up to Brooke and Pete to fulfill Mamie's tenets of her will and more importantly the plan for her funeral. It seems that Mamie's fluttery Southern sisters refused her request for a Jazz Funeral or Limericks at Sunrise or an Elvis Impersonator or even to dress up as their favorite characters in Gone With The Wind.
So the day after the funeral Mamie's sisters planned for her(which didn't even include a drive-by from the Hell's Angels), Brook and Pete head out in the vintage robin's-egg-blue 1956 two-door T-bird coupe to fulfill Mamie's last wishes.
And I admit that I had a wonderful time sending them on their journey from Rupert Springs, Arkansas to New Orleans, then Shiloh, Natchez and up to Atlanta, passing time with, yes, Hell's Angels, a Jazz funeral, limericks at sunrise on the banks of the Mississippi and an otherworldly meal in an antebellum mansion named Thirteen Oaks. The fact that they also encounter a tornado and muggers just enlivens their journey from friendship to love, all the while guided by the gentle hand of Pete's canny aunt.
Brooke and Coop, as she calls him, first made this trip in 1992, when I wrote as Kathleen Korbel. It's been so much fun for me to take the trip with them again. I hope you'll come along with me.
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Kobo
Pete Cooper and Brooke Ferguson were once childhood friends who spent evenings watching TV with Pete's Aunt Mamie.
Now Pete is a famous cable news anchor who earned his stripes in war zones, and Brooke watches Pete on the same old TV in the same small town.
Then Aunt Mamie passes away, and everything changes.
When Pete and Brooke set out on a road trip to fulfill Mamie's last wishes, they discover more than tornadoes, Hell's Angels, New Orleans Jazz Funerals, and one unique antebellum mansion. They find they might just be falling in love.
Now Pete is a famous cable news anchor who earned his stripes in war zones, and Brooke watches Pete on the same old TV in the same small town.
Then Aunt Mamie passes away, and everything changes.
When Pete and Brooke set out on a road trip to fulfill Mamie's last wishes, they discover more than tornadoes, Hell's Angels, New Orleans Jazz Funerals, and one unique antebellum mansion. They find they might just be falling in love.
To enter the giveaway,
1. Leave a comment about road trips - can you share a special memory? When I was a Lieutenant at Hanscom AFB outside Boston, I took a road trip with a group of friends to Annapolis for the Air Force-Navy game. We reserved an RV for the trip ... but we were given a van when a couple kept the RV for an extra week of fall foliage. Luckily, we could crash at a friends' parents' house outside Annapolis. What a weekend!
2. Comments are open through Saturday, September 19, 10 pm in Baltimore.
3. I'll post the winner on Sunday, September 20.
Mahalo,
Kim in Baltimore
Aloha Spirit in Charm City
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| US Naval Academy ... it's romantic! |
no big road trip memories, other than the loooooong drive down to Texas each summer to visit my Aunts we did when we were kids. My dad was always bound and determined to get there in less than 18 hours and we had to beg for bathroom breaks! Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteErin--I think everybody has those roadtrip stories. ours was the 10 hr drive to Michigan every summer---which my dad was bound and determined we were going to make in 9 hours. My brothers had unfair advantage, as my mom had a coffee can in the car. The girls weren't so lucky
DeleteWhile driving through the mountains I needed to use the bathroom......we drove through many small towns and no where to stop......we finally found a gas station and I went in and they would not let me use their bathroom, I came out of the gas station told my husband to stop pumping gas and told him what happened we then found a grocery store....needless to say I just made it!
ReplyDeleteWe have a family saying that we've used for years after a road trip. It's hard to translate but friends were giving us a tour of his farm and my husband said - oh, a field of radishes. This guy was so upset that my husband called it the wrong thing and came out with "radishes, my @ss" and now our family uses that term all the time.
ReplyDeleteI love sayings like that. On a trip to Ireland recently with friends Terri Brisbin, Laurie Kuna &Loralee Lillibridge, we became enamored of that moment in the Quiet Man when a local answers a request for directions wtih "Do you see that road there? Don't take it. It'll do ya no good." Every answer became "It'll do ya no good."
DeleteWe used to go on road trips to visit my Mums parents in Wales. It was quite a drive with all of us piled into the car.
ReplyDeleteOh, but what gorgeous scenery. I adore Wales.
DeleteWhen I was young we went on a road trip to visit my grandparents in Pennsylvania every summer.
ReplyDeleteThere was the week long cross country journey from California to Georgia when I was 10 - the only reason it took a whole week was that we stayed with different relatives a couple extra days along the way. After moving to GA at least once a year we drove up to visit Dad's family in Ohio - generally making it in 12 hours by only stopping 3 or 4 times...
ReplyDeleteRoad trips are the way we do our vacations. I love them. Many years ago when we were stationed in Colorado Springs, my aunt and 11 year nephew came for a visit. We had planned a trip to the Southwest and with my aunts age, etc, it was determined we needed to have a bathroom readily available. We rented an RV and set off for 2 weeks. Since she needed to be near the bathroom, she got the double bed. Our daughters, 8 & 9, got the bed made by lowering the booth table. Our nephew got the bed formed by the sofa. My husband and I plus our hyperactive 1 1/2 year old son got the cab over bed. Let me just say it was a loooong 2 weeks and we didn't get much sleep. We covered many of the highlights and really did have a good trip.
ReplyDeleteThe best road trip I've had is when I rode with my husband OTR for 3 months. We didn't have a chance to get off the highways very often, but it was fun - 35 states in 3 months.
ReplyDeletenot a fan of road trips
ReplyDelete