A Blissfully Spooky Halloween with Susan Meier

Susan Meier is the author of over 60 books for Harlequin and Silhouette, Entangled Indulgence and Bliss and one of Guideposts' Grace Chapel Inn series books, THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS. In 2013 she lived one of her career-long dreams. Her book, THE TYCOON’S SECRET DAUGHER was a finalist for RWA’s highest honor, the Rita. The same year NANNY FOR THE MILLIONAIRE’S TWINS was a National Reader’s Choice finalist and won the Book Buyer’s Best Award.

Susan is married with three children and is one of eleven children, which is why love and family are always part of her stories.

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How Spooky Am I?

Not very. Unless you’re one of my kids thinking I’m going to dance at a school function. Then there’s horror enough to last a life time. But I did begin the Donovan Brothers Novels series with a hero and heroine who own competing funeral homes. That wasn’t just spooky; it was brave.

Lots of readers who wrote reviews on Amazon said they almost didn’t buy the book because it had an icky premise. Hero and Heroine who run funeral homes? It creeped them out. Then they read it and loved it – which made me very happy. LOL But also alerted me to the fact that there’s still a bit of ... which should we say? Odd feelings about funeral homes.

My heroine acknowledges this when she leads the hero into the embalming room of her dad’s establishment, and even the shiny table creeps her out. When she thinks about embalming fluid that’s used to make lifeless cheeks look pink, she almost shivers.

So…okay. Maybe that’s not very romantic. But I had a great time doing the research on this! LOL I have to admit I didn’t use a lot of the things I learned about caskets and final expenses in the story, but it’s knowing that kind of background information that helps form a character.

Finn Donovan was a businessman. Pundits say when you want to start a successful business, fill a need. Finn didn’t set out to own a funeral home, but he saw that Ellie McDermott’s dad, Mark McDermott, was getting old and probably going to retire, and he got his mortuary license … so he could fill a need.

He doesn’t intend to stop there. Owning the town funeral home was just step one. But he had to have the ability to do a good job for his customers as well as the mind of a businessman in order to be successful enough to earn enough money to add more business establishments to his company. So from my research I realized he’d have to be strong and smart but also a bit shrewd.

On the other hand, Ellie wanted to be nowhere near the dead. She had to be just as strong and smart as Finn. She was an executive in Pittsburgh where there’s competition to be bested. That meant there had to be a reason being in the embalming room of a funeral home creeped her out. She’d lived in the apartment above the funeral home her entire life. She’d been able to visit her dad in the embalming room from the time she was a little girl. She should have been Abby Sciuto from NCIS. A coffin expert. A lover of all things macabre.

Instead just being in the building made her hyperventilate.

So why didn’t she like to be in the funeral home? Because her mom died when she was young and it started a series of events in her life that made her hate the funeral home…and the town. And Finn’s gotta fix that – even as he tries to run her out of business.

If you’re the kind of reader who likes simple stories that are built around normal things…I get it. HER SUMMER WITH THE MARINE probably isn’t for you. But if you like to shake things up a bit, if you don’t mind being taken out of your comfort zone, if you realize sometimes real life is messy…then you’ll love HER SUMMER WITH THE MARINE. Ellie doesn’t just have to deal with her dad’s declining years; she also has to deal with a funeral home and competition from a man who makes her mad and makes her hot all in the same sentence. LOL

And wouldn’t Halloween be the perfect time to read this book?

Happy Reading…
susan meier

Their competition has never been so irresistible

The last person Ellie McDermott wanted to run into after returning to her hometown is Finn Donovan, her high school nemesis and the guy she crossed the line from enemies to lovers with one night years ago. Now ex-military, tattooed, and still sexy as hell, Finn is a complication Ellie doesn’t need—she needs to concentrate on saving her family business.

Finn’s entire life, Ellie was there, going head-to-head with him in every class, bee, and test. So it’s no surprise she’d show up just as he was about to take over her father's struggling business. It is a surprise, though, that his attraction to her is even more explosive than it had been. Acting on their attraction is one thing, but Finn has to turn a profit to save his own family, and nothing—not even love—will get in his way.

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Up For Grabs:

• 5 eBook copies of Her Summer with the Marine

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