Romance Novel Giveaways - Freebies and Giveaways of All Things Romance Romance Novel Giveaways: Love. Local. Latebreaking. by H. Laurence Lareau 💕 Behind the Scenes, Book Tour & Gift Card Giveaway 💕(Contemporary Romance)

Wednesday, May 23, 2018

Love. Local. Latebreaking. by H. Laurence Lareau 💕 Behind the Scenes, Book Tour & Gift Card Giveaway 💕(Contemporary Romance)



Professional passion in the tradition of Julie James, Love. Local. Latebreaking. is a page-turning romance shining a spotlight into television news.

"Heart-tugging relational tension but with a sophistication that raises it above the romance genre." -- Jlaird, verified purchaser

"Mr. Lareau manages humor beautifully--I was able to envision certain scenes/situations/people so clearly that I was chortling into my coffee. I highly recommend this novel as a light-hearted (and sexy) diversion." -- Sarah K. Clark, verified purchaser

"The heroine had a career that she worked hard for and that she didn't give that career up simply because she'd found love" -- A. Geek, verified purchaser

Local TV news reporter Karli Lewis has one goal: escape Iowa's cornfields and podunk local news scene to hit the bright lights of the Chicago's newsrooms. Karli’s career is on the rise, thanks to her talented, dizzingly handsome, yet enigmatic news photographer, Jake Gibson, a dedicated hometown boy who is staying put. Will Karli listen to her heart, or will she choose a dateline over her favorite date? Can she reconcile her unbridled ambition and her longing for the man she could lose forever?


The Iowa State Fair, and the Rodgers & Hammerstein movie inspired by it, State Fair, help hero and heroine find their initial connection in Love. Local. Latebreaking. The Fair truly is a monumental and inspiring gathering—worthy of a great movie musical—where Des Moines-area newsrooms set up temporary studios every year for extended coverage, and where reporters and photographers cover evergreen stories—the butter cow, fair food—and explore every corner looking for something new to report.

Some years ago, my younger son and I were trying to navigate our way through the Fair’s jam-packed Ag Building to get to a restroom (he really had to go). We got stuck halfway through, though, barred on the one side by an expansive giggle of teen girls and on the other by a long line of seniors snaking slowly by on electric scooters. As we were trying to chart a path through the throngs, we heard a thump and looked back toward the seniors. We saw that one crusty older man was at least as impatient as my son’s bladder. He had deliberately rear-ended the frail woman in front of him, yelling “Go faster!” His scooter was audibly shoving hers forward; she seemed completely oblivious.

Like countless other real-life moments, that one wound up on the cutting room floor. Although my son and I were both astonished, remember it vividly, and still laugh about it (we made it to the restroom in time), it’s the kind of anecdote that doesn’t advance the story.

It turns out that most of my favorite real-life stories are useless for telling a good fictional story.

That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with following the universal edict to “write about what you know,” though.

The tensions, pressures and personalities in Three NewsFirst’s newsroom were inspired by my former career in TV news. Roger Francisco, the sound engineer who recorded the audiobook of L.L.L., did pretty much everything at my first station: he was an audio engineer, of course. He was also a meteorologist, vocal talent for commercials, and the guy who knew how to operate every piece of arcane broadcasting equipment in the building. The Reindeer Punch he served at his annual Christmas parties is very nearly the only actual, real-life thing that made it into the book.

I still cherish a journalist’s indignation at the idiocy of those in power. The tragic scene causing the hero’s breakdown in L.L.L. was inspired by shockingly poor traffic engineering and terrifying texting-and-driving events in my hometown. Neither of those issues gets anything like enough press coverage, so I was pleased that the L.L.L. news team agreed to place those issues front and center in their coverage.

Because the Things I Know includes a silly collection of interests, a number of disparate elements found their way into Love. Local. Latebreaking.’s story line. Our hero’s recovery begins in a karate studio, mostly because I have found a lot of comfort in dojos over the last 20 years or so. (Our heroine isn’t wrong when she confronts him: “Why do you even have a karate thing? . . . Photogs have photography studios. Nobody has a karate studio.”)

Because the Things I Know is a silly collection of memories and activities, following the write-what-you-know rule brought a number of disparate elements together into Love. Local. Latebreaking.’s story line. Each contributes to the story’s progress. I’m glad to report that the true stories—especially the numberless injury-causing mistakes from the dojo—stayed safely in the memory vaults. Though they did often urge me to Go faster!

Please contact me directly at hllareau@icloud.com, visit hlaurencelareau.com, or find me on Facebook. Here’s to your own happily ever after!



Her eyes and the smell of her skin and the pulse beating in her neck all told Jake that she was ready to be his. Her raised eyebrows and her erect, squared-off posture told him to stay away. He saw all of this in an instant, then fumbled for something to do that wasn’t kissing, in spite of the thudding pulse and the insistent twitch that urged him—now—to find the sweetness of her lips.

Jake wasn’t thinking through the feelings, the urges, the choices. Evolution or God or something had equipped men—and Jake more especially than most—with a finely calibrated system to gauge a woman’s readiness. Something—the pheromone density in the air or her posture or the pace of her breathing or some combination of those things or some other primal indicator—wasn’t yet right. One more moment of intimacy, though, and they would both be ready. Instinct guided him to the movie’s moment of consummation.

“When the heroine finds out that he really does love her and wants to marry her—that’s pretty powerful, isn’t it?”

Jake knew immediately that he’d said the wrong thing. Karli shook her head slightly and turned her blue eyes from his. She reached up and took Jake’s hand and the napkin it held from her face.

“Shut up,” she ordered him. “You think I was rooting for that insipid girl?” she asked. “No, Jake, I don’t identify with girls who need men to define them. I was cheering for the reporter. He had finally found his way to a real news job in a real market. He had escaped Des Moines.”




💕 Click on the image to learn more ðŸ’•




H. Laurence Lareau fell in love with romances the first time Pride and Prejudice came home from the library with him. Since that high school summer, he has earned an English degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, worked as a television and print journalist, built a career in law, and has remained a Jane Austen junkie through it all.

The Newsroom Romance series draws from his careers, his voracious reading, and his curiosity about the tensions between real life and real love.

Real life now is dramatically different from the real life of Austen’s times—privileged women no longer choose between eligible members of the landed gentry, nor are they imperiled by the sexist mysteries of the entailed fee simple estate in land.

Modern women with the privileges of education rather than birth now embark upon careers that can satisfy many personal and material dreams. Seemingly inevitably, though, careers fall short of the promise that they’ll fulfill women as people.

Strong, modern women have defined Lareau’s professional and personal lives, and strong women fully occupy center stage in their own newsroom romance stories. Their high-profile journalism and legal careers matter deeply to them and to the people they serve.

Then love comes walking in. These book boyfriends don’t have kilts or billions or pirate ships, though. Their career goals meet and often clash with their romantic counterparts, requiring both the men and women to make hard choices about what happily ever after should look like and how to achieve it.

When he isn’t writing, practicing law, or raising children, he’s working on martial arts and music.

Available on Amazon at: https://www.amazon.com/author/hlaurencelareau

Website: hlaurencelareau.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HLLareau/



  

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20 comments :

  1. I enjoyed getting to know your book and thanks for the chance to win :)

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  2. Siddhi Shailendra NigamMay 23, 2018 at 3:33 PM

    Thanks for the giveaway ♥️♥️♥️

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  3. Sounds like a good read and I love the cover.

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  4. Congrats on the tour and I appreciate the book description, excerpt and the great giveaway as well. Love the tours, I get to find books and share with my sisters and now my twin daughters who all love to read. We have found some amazing books for everyone. So, thank you!

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  5. This sounds awesome, thanks for sharing!

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  6. this cover is awesome! I'm really looking forward to reading this one.

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  7. Thanks for giveaway; I like the excerpt. :)

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  8. Sounds amazing. Thank you for sharing.

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  9. The Behind the Scenes section was rather interesting. I never realized how much gets cut from a book before it ever reached the reader. It seems like it would be very frustrating to write so much material and have it deemed unnecessary.

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  10. I love your cover. Made me think of the iconic leg lamp.

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  11. Congrats on the release! Sounds like a great book.

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  12. I would like to give thanks for all your really great writings, including Love. Local. Latebreaking., and wish the best in keeping up the good work in the future.

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