Interview and Giveaway with Mari Carr

HAPPY RELEASE DAY MARI CARR!  We are excited to have this awesome lady with us today celebrating the release of FULL MOON, the second book in the Second Chances series.  So lets give her a warm welcome to UTC!

Hi Mari and welcome again to Under the Covers!  Can you tell us a bit about the Second Chances series? 

Of course! Essentially it’s me trying to write fictional happy endings for all my friends! Truthfully…I realize as I get older that happily ever after doesn’t always come around the first time. Sometimes you need a second chance to get things right. So…in this series, six women who live in the same apartment complex become friends and decide over wine at New Years that this will be the year when they figure things out. Fix You, book one, released in December and is about Zoey, who was determined to confess to her best friend that she loved him. However, before she managed to say the words she discovered that she had breast cancer.

What can readers expect with FULL MOON? 

Full Moon won’t be quite as heavy as Fix You. Josie is a single mom who’s done the marriage routine. And it bit her in the ass when she learned her husband was cheating on her. While she’s not looking for love, she sure as hell wouldn’t mind stretching her sexual wings a bit. Enter Jake, the hunky bartender.

Josie makes up her own “Howl List”. From your own books, which sex scenes would you say would make that list as the hottest sex scenes you’ve written? 

Oh wow. That may be one of the hardest questions I’ve ever had to answer. Hmmm…you know…it’s weird, but I can pretty much recall what I consider the “hot” sex scene from every book I’ve ever written. So I’ll say this…if you read Full Moon, I really liked the sex in public adventure! 🙂

What’s the one scene in your book that you love the most and would never cut? 

From Full Moon? When Josie and Jake meet up for a drink in a bar and he tells her he wants all her full moons (that’s when she goes out to howl–aka–mark another item off her sexual adventures checklist). Up until then, she’s resisted. That night he asks for her phone number so he can call her. I love Jake.

STATUS UPDATE is book 3 in the Second Chances series.  Can you share with us a little teaser from it? 

Of course!

 

She’d just come back downstairs when she heard a knock on the door. She opened it to discover she hadn’t imagined Bryan’s unbelievable hotness. Today, in broad daylight, he was even more handsome than she’d remembered.

He wore faded jeans and a simple blue T-shirt that looked soft and comfortable, but still outlined his muscular arms. Gone was the tall, gangly boy from school. This Bryan was broad shouldered, solid and filled out in all the right places.

“Hiya, stranger.” She stepped away from the door stoop and gestured for him to come in.

She expected him to walk by her, so she was surprised when he stepped in, closed the door, then took her in his arms and offered her a kiss so potent it would have blown her shoes off if she’d been wearing any.

Laura stood stock still for several seconds, too stunned to respond. Then her body took over from her dim-witted brain. She lifted her arms to his shoulders, opening her lips and stealing a taste. Bryan’s tongue stroked hers as he pushed her against the wall. Neither of them bothered to come up for air. Instead the seconds ticked by, turning to long, luscious minutes, as they explored each other’s mouth.

Eventually, nearly four hundred years later, Laura’s brain engaged and she pulled away. “Bryan?”

He smiled, looking completely unrepentant over his unexpected embrace. “I’ve dreamed about doing that since I saw you at Blue Moon.”

Laura laughed. That was a feeling she could relate to. “How did reality rate against the fantasy?”

“No comparison. You’ve blown every sex dream I’ve had out of the water.”

 

Can we expect more Screaming Orgasms? 😉 

In my future books, yes. In the Cocktales series, sadly, no. I think that series is written for now. I learned after the Wild Irish series to never say never because I certainly didn’t intend to write Wild Irish Christmas, but for at least now…my dance card (writing list) is full.

Of ANY book character, who would you want to have a date with? 

Honestly…probably Jake from Full Moon. He was just so easy-going and funny and nice. Or wait! Elias from Screaming Orgasm! I had a reader describe him to me as a sweet Dom! LOL. Usually I find myself falling in love with the last hero I’ve written, so at this present moment, I’m head over heels for Liam, the hero in Summer Fling, Compass Girls, book 3, but it doesn’t release until February 2014!

And which female character in ANY book would you take out for a drink? 

Damn…I’d probably grab all the Second Chances ladies (the Wine Girls) simply because they’re based on real life women who are already my happy hour buddies, so I know we’d have a good time!

What is next for Mari Carr? 

After Full Moon’s release, I’ll be hanging in there until Aug. 20 when Hope Springs, the second Compass Girls book comes out. Then Status Update at the end of the October. As for the writing, I’m in summer-mode. I’m a public educator so I’m happy to say that for the next two months, I’m FREE! So…I plan to write, write, write. I’m going to finish the final Scoundrels short story, write Back-Up plan, the fourth Second Chances book and start work on the final Trinity Masters story, Forbidden Legacy. Oh hey–if you haven’t had a chance to check out the Trinity Masters books, I hope you’ll give them a look. It’s a co-writing, self-publishing venture I’m embarking on with the incredibly talented, Lila Dubois. Elemental Pleasure and Primal Passion are out now. The premise for the series is RED HOT as strangers in a secret organization are placed together in menage relationships in hopes that their unions will better mankind. They are romantic suspense stories with a heavy dose of m/f/m lovin’ thrown in for good measure!

Sometimes it’s not just the tide that rises…
In the two years since her divorce was finalized, Josie Jacobson’s life has become one long, boring routine. Work, home, repeat. She has her hands full as a single parent, and while she’s not looking for a serious relationship, she sure wouldn’t mind getting laid.

When her friend, Zoey, challenges her to make a New Year’s resolution for a second chance at happiness, Josie goes one better and creates the “Howl List”. Every full moon, she will indulge in a different sexual fantasy. Right at the top? Sex without strings.

Fate leads her to the Blue Moon bar in January. After all, what better place to howl? And when she meets Jake Stewart, the sexy bartender, and engages in some red-hot sex with a stranger, her year seems to be off to a great start
At least, until Jake declares he wants all her full moons…

Warning: This is NOT the shifter story you are looking for. While the heroine howls during the full moon, she does it in naked, human-form only. Sorry—no wolves, but there is a really sexy bartender and lots of red-hot fantasies.

OUT NOW!

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EXCERPT

“Tonight’s full moon is sex in public.”

Jake choked on the drink and put the glass back down. “In public?”

She nodded.

“What the hell do you mean by full moon?”

Josie considered avoiding the question, but there was no harm in telling him the truth. She explained about her list and her desire to fulfill the fantasies.

“So what’s on the list? Besides the stranger danger and PDA ones.” Jake was exactly as she’d remembered him. Unflappable, fun, funny.

She shook her head. “I’m afraid the contents of the list are privileged information. If I told you, I’d have to fuck you.”

Jake grasped her shoulder, pulling her closer. “I’d have no problem with—”

“Jake?” A waitress stood by their table. She pointed to a couple of loud drunks by the door. “I think we might have trouble. You wanna take care of it?”

Jake sighed. “Yeah, sure. I’ll be right over.”

The waitress went back to work.

Jake leaned closer, whispering in her ear. “If you don’t have any luck with number two on the list within the next hour, come find me.”

Josie didn’t have a chance to respond before Jake rose and went to address the problem by the entrance. She took a sip of her drink, hoping it would calm her down. It was suddenly quite warm in the bar.

Josie watched Shelly and Lance dance, then gazed around the room. The place was crowded and there certainly wasn’t a shortage of men hanging around, either drinking alone or standing in large groups.

She spotted one large table across the room. It appeared the men were all out for a bachelor party. She found the groom-to-be instantly. The party must have been going for a while because the man had at least a dozen empty shot glasses in front of him. His friends were sending him out of bachelorhood in style. She slowly studied each of the men at the table, silently trying to decide which were married, which were mama’s boys, which were playboys.

Josie had never paid much attention to the opposite sex. Tony had been her first boyfriend. She’d fallen fast and hard for him toward the end of their junior year in high school and she’d convinced herself she was lucky. She’d honestly believed she’d found her soul mate at sixteen.

She closed her eyes wearily. The silly romantic girl she had been was long gone, leaving Josie struggling to figure out what her beliefs regarding love were now. Since the divorce, Josie had concentrated on setting up a new home for her and her son, working long hours to pay the bills, and avoiding the dating scene as much as possible because she refused to open up a revolving door of men in Tommy’s life.

She remembered too well how painful it was when her mother would bring home a new boyfriend, include him in every aspect of their lives, then yank him out again after the break-up.

Josie wouldn’t—couldn’t—do that to Tommy. The full-moon list had been created to protect him. And her.

So while she was tempted by Jake’s offer, she wasn’t sure she should accept it. She’d thought about the handsome bartender too many times the past few weeks. If she had sex with him again, wasn’t she sort of tempting fate and running the risk of developing feelings for him?

As tough as she tried to pretend she was, Josie knew when it came to matters of the heart, she was way too soft.

A man lingered at the edge of the dance floor by her table and gave her a friendly smile. It wouldn’t take much effort on her part to show interest, to invite him over.

Josie glanced over her shoulder and watched Jake deal with the two drunks by the door. Apparently a fight had been brewing between them, but somehow Jake had calmed the waters. They were laughing at something Jake had said. She smiled. Then she ignored the stranger and stood up, approaching Jake just as the two men shook his hand and said goodbye.

“Hey, gorgeous.” Jake glanced at his watch. “It’s only been fifteen minutes. Are you coming to give me the brush-off?”

She shook her head. “No. I don’t want to wait an hour.”

Jake’s eyes darkened with lust and her body responded instantly. “Come with me.”

STATUS UPDATE
Second Chances # 3
Coming October 29, 2013

 

About the Author

Writing a book was number one on Mari Carr’s bucket list and on her thirty-fourth birthday, she set out to see that goal achieved. Five years later, her computer is jammed full of stories — novels, novellas, short stories and dead-ends and six of her books have been published.

High school librarian by day and mother of two busy teenagers, Mari Carr found time for writing by squeezing it into the hours between 3 a.m. and daybreak when her family is asleep and the house is quiet.

Stalk her: Twitter | Blog | Facebook | Website

Ms. Carr is giving away an ebook copy of Fix You or, if you have that already, winner’s choice from her backlist!  International!