Please welcome to my stop on #1 NYT bestseller Robyn Carr's blog tour showcasing her newest Thunder Point novel The Chance. Enoy some information on the novel, a short Q&A with Robyn and then enter for a chance to win your very own copy sponsored by Robyn's publicist Little Bird Publicity. US ONLY
- ISBN-13: 9780778315995
- Publisher: Harlequin
- Publication date: 2/25/2014
- Series: Thunder Point Series , #4
- Format: Mass Market Paperback
- Pages: 368
Overview
www.robyncarr.com
Share the joys, heartbreaks, challenges and triumphs of the people who inhabit the small Oregon town of Thunder Point with #1 New York Times bestselling author Robyn Carr
With its breathtaking vistas and down-to-earth people, Thunder Point is the perfect place for FBI agent Laine Carrington to recuperate from a gunshot wound and contemplate her future. Little Bird Publicity is sponsoring
this giveaway of one copy
Robyn Carr's The Chance
US ONLY
use Rafflecoter form below
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Read an Excerpt :
When Laine Carrington arrived in Thunder Point, she went directly to the hill above the beach and sat in the parking lot beside Cooper's bar. She didn't go inside- she would do that later. She just wanted to see if the view from this perch matched the pictures she'd been sent. She let out her breath, not even realizing she'd been holding it. The vista before her was even better.
What am I doing here? she asked herself again. She'd been asking herself over three thousand miles of driving.
The view was stunning. The beach was wide and long. The huge, black haystack rocks were a powerful contrast against the gray-blue water. The mouth of the bay lay between two promontories, the Pacific stretching endlessly beyond, crashing against the giant rocks, but the water in the bay was calm.
She shivered in the cold and pulled her jacket tighter. It was late January and the damp cold caused her right shoulder to ache all the way to her elbow. She'd had surgery on that shoulder three months ago. A bullet was removed and damage repaired. Maybe it was the bullet that brought her to Thunder Point. Laine had been wounded on the job, then pulled from FBI field service and put on a desk while recovering. She wasn't given any active cases but she had a computer-she was limited to what amounted to research and clerical work for other agents. When she realized they were going to keep her on that desk for a long time, light duty, assisting rather than leading investigations, she requested a one-year leave of absence to focus on rehab.
Rehab was an excuse. She didn't need a year. She was close to seventy-five-percent total recovery of the shoulder and in another six months she'd be a hundred percent. But even though she was cleared for duty by the shrink, she wanted time to rethink her career path. And she was allergic to that full-time desk.
Plus, she'd had a miserable holiday visit with her father in Boston. She left angry, went back to her Virginia town house, got in touch with a Realtor in Thunder Point, where she knew a couple of people, and from emailed photos she had chosen a house to rent. A house with a view of the bay. Because Thunder Point, Oregon, was just about as far from Boston as she could get.
Her car was in the parking lot of the bar and she leaned against the hood for a long time, staring at the sea. It was overcast and cold, and there was no one on the water. It was glum, actually. But she liked cloudy or stormy days. Her mother used to call them soup days. Although her mother had been a career woman, she had loved to cook and bake and it was particularly on days like this that she'd come home from her office or the hospital early, arms filled with grocery bags, and spend a few hours in the kitchen. It relaxed her. She loved filling her family with comfort food-thick soups and stews, hearty casseroles, pastas in rich sauces and sweet, soft breads.
Laine sighed. She would never get over losing her mother. It had been five years and she still reached for the phone. Then she'd remember. She's gone.
It was time to get to town to meet the Realtor. She got in her car, drove out of the parking lot and took the road that crossed the beach and led to the town. There was some construction on the hill-it looked like a few houses were being built on this beachfront hillside. Like Cooper's bar, they would have the best views in the town.
She drove to the main street and parked in front of the clinic. When she got out of her car she locked it out of habit. She looked up and down the street lined with lampposts still boasting a bit of Christmas garland. Well, it was only January, she thought with a private chuckle.
Laine walked into the clinic and there, sitting behind the counter at her desk, was Devon McAllister. She rose with a wide smile on her face.
"You're here," Devon said in a near whisper. She came around the counter and embraced Laine. "There was a part of me afraid you wouldn't come. That something would happen, that the FBI would have work for you…
"Can we please not say a lot about that?"
"About what? The commune? The raid? The FBI?"
Laine couldn't help herself, she brushed the hair back from Devon's pretty face as if she were a little sister. Laine had taken Devon under her wing in the commune. "About all of it," she said. "When people find out I work for the FBI they either ask me a ton of weird questions or they get strange, like they're worried I'm going to do a background check on them or something. At least until I settle in a little bit, let's downplay all that stuff."
"What will you say? Because these people want to know everything about everyone. They're nice about it, but they will ask."
"I'll just say I worked on a federal task force, but most of my work was just at a desk, compiling data, research, that sort of thing. Not at all a lie. And I'm on leave because of shoulder surgery."
"Okay," Devon said, laughing softly. "They really don't need to know your task force was counterterrorism until you stumbled on an illegal pot farm in the middle of a cult and that you had shoulder surgery because you were shot in the line of duty." Then she grinned.
Laine groaned. "Please, I really don't want to sound that interesting."
"Well, the only people who know certain details were there that night and they were briefed pretty thoroughly. Rawley, Cooper and Spencer will be very happy to see you," Devon said. "And of course Mac knows-he's the law around here, can't get anything by him. I told Scott, my boss, but I can keep him quiet. He's pretty easy to control."
"Is that so?" Laine asked with a smile.
"Oh, yes," she said. "In Dr. Grant's case it has more to do with me being happy so I can keep track of all the paperwork in this clinic. He dreads things like insurance filing, especially Medicaid and Medicare. He does it when he has to and frankly, it takes him five times as long as it takes me. He's not even very good at keeping lab work and patient files up to date."
"You're so different from the person I knew on the farm."
"Actually, I was different in the commune from the person I really am," Devon said. "This is more me. I was always a good student, a hard worker. But you are the curiosity. How did a sophisticated city girl like you manage to fit into the family like you did?"
Laine smiled, secretly proud. "Specialized training, research, good role-playing."
"I can see that working for a couple of days, but it was over six months!" Devon reminded her.
She knew. Only too well. "Very good research and role-playing," she said. Not to mention the fact that lives were at stake and rested on her success or failure. Laine had done a lot of undercover work over the years but her time with The Fellowship had been the longest deep-cover assignment in her career. She had requested it, thinking it would be a brief fact-finding assignment. She thought she could probably fit in, get to the bottom of what was happening there, but what was going on was quite different than what the FBI suspected. They had been looking for evidence of sovereign citizenry, tax evasion, fraud, human trafficking and possible domestic terrorism. What she found, once she was inside, was a giant pot farm fronted by a fake cult.
Laine could have left then, escaped, turned her information over to the task force and let them figure out how to proceed, how to best serve a warrant and get inside to make arrests without creating a small war. But there were women and children behind the fence that surrounded The Fellowship and the men in charge would fight back-they were armed to the teeth. So she stayed, getting as many of them out safely as she could before law enforcement breached the compound. It had been a dangerous and complex operation and in the end, she'd been shot by the cult leader, the boss. Jacob.
"Are you ready to have a little quiet now?" Devon asked.
"You have no idea," Laine said. But she'd never actually had quiet before. The thought of whole days without plans stretching out in front of her was intimidating.
"I saw it," Devon said. "The house you rented."
"You did?"
"Ray Anne, the Realtor I suggested to you, told me which house it was and I peeked in some windows. It's beautiful. So beautiful."
"I've only seen pictures," Laine replied. "I understand I was very lucky-that there's hardly ever rental property available around here."
"At least not real pretty rental property. This is a vacation home that for some reason the family isn't going to be using for a while so they're renting it."
"Do you know them? The people who own it?"
Devon shook her head. "But I haven't been here that long. I don't know everyone, that's for sure."
Laine looked at her watch. "I better go meet Ray Anne. Want to come? See the inside from the inside?"
She grinned and nodded. "Let me check with Scott, then I'll follow you so I can come right back."
"Maybe I better follow you," Laine said. "I haven't even looked in the windows yet."
Devon led the way to Laine's rental. They drove down the main street, past what seemed to amount to the entire commercial district of Thunder Point, took a left and entered a residential neighborhood. A woman who appeared altogether too dressed up exited her BMW in front of a very small house that sat in the middle of about a dozen nondescript houses. The foliage and pines surrounding the little house were deep green even though it was the dead of winter. Virginia or Boston at this time of year would be covered with snow and the trees bare.
Laine was a little shocked at how ordinary and dumpy the little house looked; she had never seen a picture of the front exposure. It seemed very small. There was an ordinary white door with a diamond-shaped window in it and one front window. If this were her house she'd paint the door dark green and add identically colored shutters to that window.
Laine parked, got out and stretched a hand toward the Realtor. "Ms. Dysart?" she asked.
"Call me Ray Anne. So nice to finally meet you, Laine." She dangled house keys. "I think you're going to love this. Please, do the honors."
With Ray Anne close on her tail and Devon following, Laine stepped into the small house and entered a whole new world. Right inside the front door was a spacious foyer and the house opened up before her. To her left, an open staircase and small powder room, to her right, a small and unfurnished room with louvered double doors, perfect for Laine to use as an office. Straight ahead was a great room with a large picture window. To the left of the great room was a big open kitchen with a dining area in front of a matching window. Dividing the two windows were French doors that Ray Anne immediately opened, revealing a very large deck and a view of the bay that just about knocked Laine out. She inhaled deeply, appreciatively. She walked outside to the railing and looked down-the deck sat atop a rocky hill.
"You can't get to the beach from here," Ray Anne said from behind her. "There really isn't much beach- only a little when the tide's out. You'll have to go down the street and back through town to the marina. This is considered oceanfront. The only beachfront in Thunder Point is over there, where Cooper is building. Most of us thought there would never be any building there, but Cooper has a plan for maybe as many as twenty single-family residences. The rest of us po' folk have to get to the beach either from his bar or the marina. This is the north promontory. Straight across there, that's the south promontory. The previous owner, the guy who left it to Cooper in his will, had always wanted it to be a nature preserve, safe for the wildlife. Much as I'd like him to cut it up and let me sell lots for him, you have to admit it's beautiful."
"Beautiful," Laine said in a breath. A few trees growing right out of the rocks and hillside below her deck reached up so that their branches brushed the railing. They needed trimming so they wouldn't obstruct her view.
"It's so wet and cold right now I didn't uncover the grill or deck furniture. I thought I'd leave that to you. You might not want to sit outside in this weather."
Laine looked around for the first time. It looked like she had a table and four chairs, a chaise and a rather large grill under the weatherproof drapes. Laine turned and went inside again, taking note of the great room, divided from the kitchen by a breakfast bar. The pictures had done the interior more credit than it deserved. There was a maroon sofa, two uncomfortable-looking rattan chairs, a nice fireplace and zero homey touches. The breakfast nook held a beat-up but large table with eight cane-back chairs. There was a short hall that led to a laundry room, pantry and interior garage door. "Bedroom?" she asked.
"Right this way," Ray Anne said, leading her back toward the front door and up the stairs. Laine and Devon followed along. At the top of the stairs was a set of double doors that stood open to expose a rather small but comfortable-looking master bedroom. Not a suite, but a bedroom. One queen-size bed, one bureau, one bedside table and a fireplace. But it had a triple-wide set of sliding glass doors and a small deck again with the most stunning view. Laine was drawn to it. Her eyes nearly rolled back in her head at a vision of sitting against big pillows, looking out the window at the clouds, only the fireplace lighting the room.
When Laine Carrington arrived in Thunder Point, she went directly to the hill above the beach and sat in the parking lot beside Cooper's bar. She didn't go inside- she would do that later. She just wanted to see if the view from this perch matched the pictures she'd been sent. She let out her breath, not even realizing she'd been holding it. The vista before her was even better.
What am I doing here? she asked herself again. She'd been asking herself over three thousand miles of driving.
The view was stunning. The beach was wide and long. The huge, black haystack rocks were a powerful contrast against the gray-blue water. The mouth of the bay lay between two promontories, the Pacific stretching endlessly beyond, crashing against the giant rocks, but the water in the bay was calm.
She shivered in the cold and pulled her jacket tighter. It was late January and the damp cold caused her right shoulder to ache all the way to her elbow. She'd had surgery on that shoulder three months ago. A bullet was removed and damage repaired. Maybe it was the bullet that brought her to Thunder Point. Laine had been wounded on the job, then pulled from FBI field service and put on a desk while recovering. She wasn't given any active cases but she had a computer-she was limited to what amounted to research and clerical work for other agents. When she realized they were going to keep her on that desk for a long time, light duty, assisting rather than leading investigations, she requested a one-year leave of absence to focus on rehab.
Rehab was an excuse. She didn't need a year. She was close to seventy-five-percent total recovery of the shoulder and in another six months she'd be a hundred percent. But even though she was cleared for duty by the shrink, she wanted time to rethink her career path. And she was allergic to that full-time desk.
Plus, she'd had a miserable holiday visit with her father in Boston. She left angry, went back to her Virginia town house, got in touch with a Realtor in Thunder Point, where she knew a couple of people, and from emailed photos she had chosen a house to rent. A house with a view of the bay. Because Thunder Point, Oregon, was just about as far from Boston as she could get.
Her car was in the parking lot of the bar and she leaned against the hood for a long time, staring at the sea. It was overcast and cold, and there was no one on the water. It was glum, actually. But she liked cloudy or stormy days. Her mother used to call them soup days. Although her mother had been a career woman, she had loved to cook and bake and it was particularly on days like this that she'd come home from her office or the hospital early, arms filled with grocery bags, and spend a few hours in the kitchen. It relaxed her. She loved filling her family with comfort food-thick soups and stews, hearty casseroles, pastas in rich sauces and sweet, soft breads.
Laine sighed. She would never get over losing her mother. It had been five years and she still reached for the phone. Then she'd remember. She's gone.
It was time to get to town to meet the Realtor. She got in her car, drove out of the parking lot and took the road that crossed the beach and led to the town. There was some construction on the hill-it looked like a few houses were being built on this beachfront hillside. Like Cooper's bar, they would have the best views in the town.
She drove to the main street and parked in front of the clinic. When she got out of her car she locked it out of habit. She looked up and down the street lined with lampposts still boasting a bit of Christmas garland. Well, it was only January, she thought with a private chuckle.
Laine walked into the clinic and there, sitting behind the counter at her desk, was Devon McAllister. She rose with a wide smile on her face.
"You're here," Devon said in a near whisper. She came around the counter and embraced Laine. "There was a part of me afraid you wouldn't come. That something would happen, that the FBI would have work for you…
"Can we please not say a lot about that?"
"About what? The commune? The raid? The FBI?"
Laine couldn't help herself, she brushed the hair back from Devon's pretty face as if she were a little sister. Laine had taken Devon under her wing in the commune. "About all of it," she said. "When people find out I work for the FBI they either ask me a ton of weird questions or they get strange, like they're worried I'm going to do a background check on them or something. At least until I settle in a little bit, let's downplay all that stuff."
"What will you say? Because these people want to know everything about everyone. They're nice about it, but they will ask."
"I'll just say I worked on a federal task force, but most of my work was just at a desk, compiling data, research, that sort of thing. Not at all a lie. And I'm on leave because of shoulder surgery."
"Okay," Devon said, laughing softly. "They really don't need to know your task force was counterterrorism until you stumbled on an illegal pot farm in the middle of a cult and that you had shoulder surgery because you were shot in the line of duty." Then she grinned.
Laine groaned. "Please, I really don't want to sound that interesting."
"Well, the only people who know certain details were there that night and they were briefed pretty thoroughly. Rawley, Cooper and Spencer will be very happy to see you," Devon said. "And of course Mac knows-he's the law around here, can't get anything by him. I told Scott, my boss, but I can keep him quiet. He's pretty easy to control."
"Is that so?" Laine asked with a smile.
"Oh, yes," she said. "In Dr. Grant's case it has more to do with me being happy so I can keep track of all the paperwork in this clinic. He dreads things like insurance filing, especially Medicaid and Medicare. He does it when he has to and frankly, it takes him five times as long as it takes me. He's not even very good at keeping lab work and patient files up to date."
"You're so different from the person I knew on the farm."
"Actually, I was different in the commune from the person I really am," Devon said. "This is more me. I was always a good student, a hard worker. But you are the curiosity. How did a sophisticated city girl like you manage to fit into the family like you did?"
Laine smiled, secretly proud. "Specialized training, research, good role-playing."
"I can see that working for a couple of days, but it was over six months!" Devon reminded her.
She knew. Only too well. "Very good research and role-playing," she said. Not to mention the fact that lives were at stake and rested on her success or failure. Laine had done a lot of undercover work over the years but her time with The Fellowship had been the longest deep-cover assignment in her career. She had requested it, thinking it would be a brief fact-finding assignment. She thought she could probably fit in, get to the bottom of what was happening there, but what was going on was quite different than what the FBI suspected. They had been looking for evidence of sovereign citizenry, tax evasion, fraud, human trafficking and possible domestic terrorism. What she found, once she was inside, was a giant pot farm fronted by a fake cult.
Laine could have left then, escaped, turned her information over to the task force and let them figure out how to proceed, how to best serve a warrant and get inside to make arrests without creating a small war. But there were women and children behind the fence that surrounded The Fellowship and the men in charge would fight back-they were armed to the teeth. So she stayed, getting as many of them out safely as she could before law enforcement breached the compound. It had been a dangerous and complex operation and in the end, she'd been shot by the cult leader, the boss. Jacob.
"Are you ready to have a little quiet now?" Devon asked.
"You have no idea," Laine said. But she'd never actually had quiet before. The thought of whole days without plans stretching out in front of her was intimidating.
"I saw it," Devon said. "The house you rented."
"You did?"
"Ray Anne, the Realtor I suggested to you, told me which house it was and I peeked in some windows. It's beautiful. So beautiful."
"I've only seen pictures," Laine replied. "I understand I was very lucky-that there's hardly ever rental property available around here."
"At least not real pretty rental property. This is a vacation home that for some reason the family isn't going to be using for a while so they're renting it."
"Do you know them? The people who own it?"
Devon shook her head. "But I haven't been here that long. I don't know everyone, that's for sure."
Laine looked at her watch. "I better go meet Ray Anne. Want to come? See the inside from the inside?"
She grinned and nodded. "Let me check with Scott, then I'll follow you so I can come right back."
"Maybe I better follow you," Laine said. "I haven't even looked in the windows yet."
Devon led the way to Laine's rental. They drove down the main street, past what seemed to amount to the entire commercial district of Thunder Point, took a left and entered a residential neighborhood. A woman who appeared altogether too dressed up exited her BMW in front of a very small house that sat in the middle of about a dozen nondescript houses. The foliage and pines surrounding the little house were deep green even though it was the dead of winter. Virginia or Boston at this time of year would be covered with snow and the trees bare.
Laine was a little shocked at how ordinary and dumpy the little house looked; she had never seen a picture of the front exposure. It seemed very small. There was an ordinary white door with a diamond-shaped window in it and one front window. If this were her house she'd paint the door dark green and add identically colored shutters to that window.
Laine parked, got out and stretched a hand toward the Realtor. "Ms. Dysart?" she asked.
"Call me Ray Anne. So nice to finally meet you, Laine." She dangled house keys. "I think you're going to love this. Please, do the honors."
With Ray Anne close on her tail and Devon following, Laine stepped into the small house and entered a whole new world. Right inside the front door was a spacious foyer and the house opened up before her. To her left, an open staircase and small powder room, to her right, a small and unfurnished room with louvered double doors, perfect for Laine to use as an office. Straight ahead was a great room with a large picture window. To the left of the great room was a big open kitchen with a dining area in front of a matching window. Dividing the two windows were French doors that Ray Anne immediately opened, revealing a very large deck and a view of the bay that just about knocked Laine out. She inhaled deeply, appreciatively. She walked outside to the railing and looked down-the deck sat atop a rocky hill.
"You can't get to the beach from here," Ray Anne said from behind her. "There really isn't much beach- only a little when the tide's out. You'll have to go down the street and back through town to the marina. This is considered oceanfront. The only beachfront in Thunder Point is over there, where Cooper is building. Most of us thought there would never be any building there, but Cooper has a plan for maybe as many as twenty single-family residences. The rest of us po' folk have to get to the beach either from his bar or the marina. This is the north promontory. Straight across there, that's the south promontory. The previous owner, the guy who left it to Cooper in his will, had always wanted it to be a nature preserve, safe for the wildlife. Much as I'd like him to cut it up and let me sell lots for him, you have to admit it's beautiful."
"Beautiful," Laine said in a breath. A few trees growing right out of the rocks and hillside below her deck reached up so that their branches brushed the railing. They needed trimming so they wouldn't obstruct her view.
"It's so wet and cold right now I didn't uncover the grill or deck furniture. I thought I'd leave that to you. You might not want to sit outside in this weather."
Laine looked around for the first time. It looked like she had a table and four chairs, a chaise and a rather large grill under the weatherproof drapes. Laine turned and went inside again, taking note of the great room, divided from the kitchen by a breakfast bar. The pictures had done the interior more credit than it deserved. There was a maroon sofa, two uncomfortable-looking rattan chairs, a nice fireplace and zero homey touches. The breakfast nook held a beat-up but large table with eight cane-back chairs. There was a short hall that led to a laundry room, pantry and interior garage door. "Bedroom?" she asked.
"Right this way," Ray Anne said, leading her back toward the front door and up the stairs. Laine and Devon followed along. At the top of the stairs was a set of double doors that stood open to expose a rather small but comfortable-looking master bedroom. Not a suite, but a bedroom. One queen-size bed, one bureau, one bedside table and a fireplace. But it had a triple-wide set of sliding glass doors and a small deck again with the most stunning view. Laine was drawn to it. Her eyes nearly rolled back in her head at a vision of sitting against big pillows, looking out the window at the clouds, only the fireplace lighting the room.
Q: What would you tell someone who is coming to Thunder Point for the first time? What do you want them to know about the town before they jump into The Chance? Because after all, even though this is a series, the brilliant thing is that you don’t have to read them in order. You really can just jump in and fall in love with any book.
A: Thunder Point is a small coastal town in Oregon. Many of the residents have been there all their lives, some have been there at least several years and some are finding new lives there. The things they all seem to have in common is they’re not afraid of hard work, they take pleasure in the most simple yet wonderful things life has to offer, they are committed to helping each other when help is needed and they value their friendships. Most of the town could use sprucing up but the landscape is breathtaking with the big rocks in the bay, long beach and protected bay. The storms that come in from the Pacific and gather in the bay provide as much entertainment as any action adventure movie. Thunder Point is almost crime free and has a safe, secure feeling to it. It’s a perfect place to raise children, recover from a broken heart or start over.
Q: Which character from The Chance do you find yourself relating to the most and why? Is there one character, from any of the Thunder Point books that you are particularly drawn to?
A: Probably Gina McCain, the town sheriff’s deputy’s wife and long time waitress in the diner. She is as much a lunch counter therapist as waitress and a friend to everyone. Gina hasn’t had it easy but that hasn’t stopped her from being grateful. She’s a devoted wife and mother and stepmother. And she works very hard.
Q: Do you really believe it’s possible for two polar opposites like Laine and Eric to fall in love and make thing works for the long term? If you were Laine, would you be able to look past Eric’s past and allow yourself to love him for who he was and now is? Or even better, if your daughter were Laine, how would you advise her about a potential relationship with Eric?
A: Do opposites attract? I think it’s almost required! My husband and I joke about it—if you like all the lights on, like the temperature warm, like to stay up late and sleep late, go find someone who shuts off lights, lowers the temperature and goes to bed at 8 pm—then marry him! As for The Chance and Laine and Eric, it’s not easy for her to look past Eric’s past—he actually has to investigate him, get other peoples’ read on him, research what really happened with him. The attraction is there from the first minute, but the decision to commit to him comes much more slowly.
Eric is one of my favorite characters—I love the man he’s become. He is the ideal of what should happen to a young man after paying for his crimes. The reality seems to be that a stint in prison makes criminals worse rather than teaching them valuable life lessons. Eric has risen above and is a much better man than what he would be if he hadn’t been punished for his careless and reckless behavior.
It’s an entirely different issue whether I could encourage my daughter to get involved with a man with Eric’s shady past—as a mother, I can only see the surface qualities and would probably be protectively suspicious of his true character. But being a mother of a daughter I can tell you—she’d ignore me completely! I learned a long time ago, when my daughter (or son for that matter!) brought someone home, I always welcomed them because if I said one negative thing, they’d not only take them to the prom, they’d probably marry them!
Q: In The Chance, Laine rethinks her career path and life choices. Have you ever been in Laine’s position and had to reconsider where you are and where you want to be? Tell us about it. We are dying to know what’s inspired by your own personal life story!
A: Everyone rethinks their choices—whether it be within relationships they’ve formed or careers they’ve chosen. I started out studying nursing as a young woman and then somehow began writing fiction at a very young age—25 or so. Over the next 30 years, struggling to make it in a tough business, I had to re-examine that choice at least a hundred times. It was so hard to get anyone’s attention with my work—if I couldn’t be successful, I certainly wanted to make a living and for 30 years I couldn’t have supported myself much less a family! This was one of the most important learning and relearning lessons of my life—I had to make peace with the fact that I might write my entire adult life and never be a bestselling author. So then, why was I writing? I had to figure out what was driving me because if it was as simple as the want of money, there were other places I should work or study or apply myself where my odds were far better. At the end of the day, over and over, it came down to the love of storytelling and that realization helped me to apply all my energy to the stories I wanted to tell rather than focusing on how many people were buying my books. After all, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t control my sales figures—that was up to the readers. I could try a million things to boost sales but it always came down to readers responding, to word of mouth, to stories catching on. Every time I re-evaluated my choice to be a writer, I consistently chose to write the stories I wanted to read and if they caught on, great. If they didn’t catch on there was nothing I could do to trick them into buying my books or spreading the word about them.
And that’s only one of many areas of my life that required constant re-examination and I think there’s great wisdom in the willingness to rethink things—everything from marriage to mothering to friendships to what you decide to read—you name it. Whether you make the right choice or wrong choice, you learn great things about yourself and the world.
MEET THE AUTHOR:
Robyn Carr is a RITA® Award-winning, #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than forty novels, including the critically acclaimed Virgin River series. Robyn and her husband live in Las Vegas, Nevada. You can visit Robyn Carr’s website at www.RobynCarr.com.
I loved the Chance, it was one of my favorites in the series and I look forward to the Promise.
ReplyDeleteI totally forgot you reviewed this book Kim, I've linked your review above.
Deletedeb
Choices..... Looking back through the years I think of some of the opportunities and choices I had and how different my life would have been. What if my parents had said yes when Charlie Rich, who was at the top of the charts at the time, heard me sing and approached my parent about giving me a start in Nashville. What if I had chosen to accept the full accounting scholarship instead of the opera scholarship? And finally, what if I had put my foot down and gone to Boston for two weeks the Sumner of 76 to celebrate the bicentennial with a new boyfriend/friend.
ReplyDeleteNashville and the shining lights, Dark Africa with the dedicated social doctor to save the world's children, are only dreams of what might have been.
Even the chase for the footlights of the Met never quite got there, but got caught up in the wilds of Northn New Mexico. The road to my retirement years has had the excitement and thrills of any rollercoaster or high mountain road trips with all it's twists and turns. For no matter what grandiose plans we dream and plan, the road trip life gives you is often a far wilder ride, and a lot more fun.
Wow Muse, thanks for sharing those great memories :)
DeleteI haven't had a chance to start the new series, so I guess my favorite has to be the Virgin River series!
ReplyDeleteHey Casey, thanks for the comment. Wasn't that series awesome!
DeleteI love both series for almost the same reasons, yet I find the Thunder Point series has more teen/YA issues which I can relate to since i have kids within that age group. The drama and romance are excellent in both. Anything Robyn Carr writes is a must read for me. Thanks so much for " The Chance" to win!!! crossing fingers AND toes!
ReplyDeleteHi Lorelei, thanks for stopping by :)
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I've not tried this series of hers but enjoyed quite a few of the Virgin River ones. Gina sounds like such a wonderful heroine. I love people like her <3
ReplyDeleteHI Anna, I loved Virgin River novels too
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