Saturday Sampler - STONES by Marilyn Baron

I don't usually comment on Saturday Samplers, but I have to on Marilyn's new book, STONES. Women of a certain age will find this story poignant, funny, and totally relatable. I loved it. Love the cover, too. Isn't it gorgeous?

Stones Blurb:

Books with Bling: A Coming-of-Middle-Age Novel

When Julie Paver’s husband Matt moves his business to Atlanta, she is forced to leave behind her thriving jewelry boutique, Stones. The move threatens their twenty-five year marriage, because now if Matt isn’t out of town negotiating a merger, he’s spending late hours on overseas phone calls with his sexy-sounding second-in-command. 

Feeling neglected and unloved, Julie seeks closure by reconnecting with her first love, Manny, when he pursues her with his Internet innuendos. Manny is unaware he is the father of Julie’s son, and Julie contemplates revealing the secret to him on the eve of their son’s wedding. But would such a walk down memory lane be worth the cost?

Julie and Manny finally meet at her oceanfront condo—in the midst of a hurricane—and elements collide to create the perfect storm in this coming-of-middle-age crisis. 

Excerpt:

To go or not to go to Palm Coast is no longer the question. The question is what will I do once I get there? Will I really have the nerve to reconnect, or as my daughter Natalie likes to say, “hook up,” again with Manny Gellar? How will I feel tomorrow when I see him alone for the first time after 25 years? Will I finally reveal what I feel compelled—no, what I'm busting a gut—to tell him? That he has a beautiful son, that our son Josh is getting married in just three months? I'm probably rationalizing, but I think he finally has a right to know.  

If I could, I’d fix what is wrong with my marriage and put it back the way it was before. Before Matt yanked me out of Miami by my roots as if I were a noxious weed he was tossing out of a flower garden and carelessly transplanted us to Atlanta. Before we moved a state away from my family and my best friend and a business I’d worked a lifetime to create. Before Matt sold his freight expediting business to a German conglomerate for mega-millions and agreed to run the company for them from Atlanta for the next two years, barely consulting me. Before the German occupation, or rather before he became preoccupied with his sexy-sounding German second-in-command, Gretchen. Before he stopped sleeping with me in the biblical sense. Before I turned fifty. 

All I really want is closure. I’m convinced that meeting Manny Gellar again is the only way I will ever come full circle and reconnect with my life.

Stones Buy Links:

Amazon (Paperback and Digital)

http://www.amazon.com/Stones-Marilyn-Baron-ebook/dp/B00NF12CVG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1411824092&sr=8-1&keywords=Stones+marilyn+baron

The Wild Rose Press (Digital)

http://www.wildrosepublishing.com/maincatalog_v151/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=244_210&products_id=5817

The Wild Rose Press (Paperback)  

http://www.wildrosepublishing.com/maincatalog_v151/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=191&products_id=5747

Barnes & Noble

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/stones-marilyn-baron/1120383929?ean=2940150316454&itm=1&usri=2940150316454

Kobo

http://store.kobobooks.com/search?Query=stones+marilyn+baron

All Romance eBooks

https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-stones-1625091-149.html

BookStrand

http://www.bookstrand.com/stones

IBookstore

http://ibookstore.com/products.php?i=1628304413

About the Author:

Marilyn Baron is a public relations consultant in Atlanta. She’s a member of Romance Writers of America and Georgia Romance Writers (GRW) and the recipient of the GRW 2009 Chapter Service Award. Marilyn writes humorous women’s fiction, romantic thrillers, historicals, and paranormal romantic suspense for The Wild Rose Press. She has won writing awards in Single Title, Suspense Romance, Paranormal/Fantasy Romance and Novel With Strong Romantic Elements. Visit her Web site at www.marilynbaron.com to find out more about her other books and stories and upcoming releases and visit her blog at www.petitfoursandhottamales.com.

Marilyn and her sister, Florida artist, Sharon Goldman just released a new musical called Memory Lane, at http://amzn.com/B00GBJWFIO. To listen to a medley of the songs, visit her Web site at http://www.marilynbaron.com/anthologies-and-more/ .

A native of Miami, Florida, Marilyn now lives in Roswell, Georgia, with her husband. Marilyn graduated from The University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida, with a B.S. in Journalism [Public Relations sequence] and a minor in Creative Writing. She met her husband at UF and both of her daughters graduated from UF. Go Gators!

Social Media Links:

Website www.marilynbaron.com

Blog www.petitfoursandhottamales.com

Twitter https://twitter.com/MarilynBaron

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pages/Marilyn-Baron/286807714666748?fref=ts

Pinterest http://www.pinterest.com/marilynbaron5/

Goodreads https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4722647.Marilyn_Baron

Amazon Author Page http://www.amazon.com/Marilyn-Baron/e/B008PJFQPC/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_pop_1

Linked-In http://www.linkedin.com/home?trk=nav_responsive_tab_home

Doctor Who and Change

On Saturday night, all Whovians in America were glued to their televisions sets. (Unless they had to do something crazy like...go to work.) For you non-Whovians, the reason was not just the first episode of the eighth season of Doctor Who. It was the introduction of the new Doctor, played by Peter Capaldi. He is the twelfth actor to portray the time-traveling alien.

When the show started in 1963 (yes, that long ago) the producers had no idea what a hit they had. What was supposed to be a kids’ show gained universal appeal. So when the actor who portrayed the Doctor became too ill to continue, the writers came up with a clever device to explain the new actor. The Doctor would die then regenerate. At the end of last season, boyish Matt Smith morphed into grizzled, gray-haired, fifty-six year old Capaldi. What a shock, especially to the Doctor’s companion Clara.

The companion has two roles on the show. Usually female, she keeps the Doctor company on his adventures through space and time. More importantly, she is us, the audience. She asks the questions we want to know. In Saturday’s episode, she reflects our disbelief and confusion at what the Doctor has changed into. Like previous companions, Clara was a little in love with her Doctor. And this new one isn’t him.

Change comes hard for Clara. Just as it does for all of us. We like the status quo. We’re comfortable with the known, the familiar. Yanking us out of where we feel like we belong is traumatic. Marilyn Baron in her book Stones describes quite accurately the feeling when her main character says her husband “yanked me out of Miami by my roots as if I were a noxious weed he was tossing out of a flower garden and carelessly transplanted us to Atlanta.”

I don’t like change, as I mentioned here back in 2011. I’m a new convert to Doctor Who, having discovered him not quite a year ago. In one way I was lucky to find him just before the show’s fiftieth anniversary. I got to watch the show’s progression and many retrospectives. Since then, I’ve watched all the episodes since its reboot in 2005, following its sixteen year “hiatus.” Prior to Saturday’s show, BBC America ran a marathon of episodes and a series of half hour show where the audience could “meet” all the Doctors.

In watching those episodes, I became “attached” to each Doctor and was disappointed when he regenerated—only to discover I really liked the next. I wasn’t prepared to like Capaldi in that role. I thought he was too old, which is kind of ironic since he’s younger than me. I thought he couldn’t be as funny as the previous two. The writers didn’t disappoint. Before the first commercial, I was hooked. The Doctor was hilarious as he discovered his new body. No spoiler here, but Clara was a lot slower to accept him than I was. He had me with his comment about his eyebrows.

While change is difficult, it can lead to new things, fun things. Whether it’s a move across country, our children leaving the nest, or an actor in a TV show, it’s our attitude toward change that makes all the difference.