Check out Linda West's The Magical Christmas Do Over Book Blast!


I am so excited to have Linda West's The Magical Christmas Do Over Book Blast on the blog today! Be sure to check out her book!

Title: THE MAGICAL CHRISTMAS DO OVER
Author: Linda West
Publisher: Morningmayan Publishing
Pages: 320
Genre: Holiday

BOOK BLURB:

Three women, thrown together by fate, get a second chance to go back in time and change their lives forever.

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    It was a cold December eve, some say the coldest in decades, and a blizzard warning was in effect. It was the Friday before Christmas and most of the other workers of Kennedy and Crane had already left for the Christmas holiday weekend.

      Samantha looked at the clock and groaned inwardly. It was after 8 o’clock and her boss was in an extra foul mood even for her.
    “Shouldn’t you be getting home to put on that awesome Chanel dress you bought for the big night?” She asked.

     Macy spun around enraged, and Samantha sunk back.
     Macy’s dark brows knit together and her brown eyes looked nearly black with the size of her pupils. She ran her hands through her short dark hair and then stared at Samantha with disbelief on her face.

     “I got a text from Todd an hour ago. He’s gone off to LA with some friends for Christmas!”
Samantha’s mouth fell open. “What, why?” She stopped herself. “I’m sure he has a good reason Macy.”
     Macy snorted. “Yeah, good reasons usually don’t come in a text. I’m losing him Sam.”

     Macy plopped down in her chair and stared out the large picture window of her sleek office, and tapped her long manicured nails on her desk like a woodpecker.
     “Says he’ll call me when he gets back…in a month.”
     Samantha’s groaned inwardly. Poor Macy, it looked like she was getting the ultimate big let down. Broken up with at Christmas. No engagement celebration after all.

    “Here’s a piece of mail you didn’t get.” Sam offered up happily as she placed it on Macy’s desk.

    “Send it back.” Macy said dully without turning.

     Samantha continued hopefully. “It’s not the annual Christmas invite from your mother Macy, that one is always in a red envelope. I always send that back. This is something different.”
    Samantha looked at the pretty Tiffany blue colored envelope.
     “It’s addressed to you personally, not the company.”
    Macy cocked her head to the side intrigued.
    Sam rushed on eager to bring some sort of happiness to her boss. “Maybe it’s a love letter from Todd with two tickets to Paris for when he gets back?”
    Macy let out a big huff and gazed out the window at the oncoming storm. They both knew that wasn’t the case. Todd’s last minute text was just a breakup in disguise.
     But if not Todd then who? Macy really didn’t have any close friends that would send her a Christmas card. Anyone that did know her at all, knew she abhorred Christmas. Too much money being spent in the name of sentimentality and tricky marketers as her father always said.

     Macy waved her hand without looking back at Samantha as if she were a servant.
     “Read it.”
     Samantha scanned the letter, then suddenly, caught her breath and brought her hand to her heart.
     “Macy.”
     Something in Samantha’s tone made Macy spin her chair around.
    “What?”
      “Its from a friend of your mothers, a Ms. Carol Landers.”
      “You have got to be kidding me!” Macy threw her hands up in the air.
Now my mother is having her friends beg me to come home and visit her? How utterly selfish!”
      She shook her head in disbelief. “What is it with my mother? She ruins my life and then she stalks me! Can’t she see no matter how many times she begs me to come home for Christmas - I’m not going to Kissing Bridge to see her?”
      Samantha swallowed uncomfortably and croaked out, “I’m so sorry Macy. But this letter says that your mother passed away yesterday, and you’re the only relative left to claim her body.”
      She looked up sadly and met Macy’s stunned eyes.
     “You have to go home to Kissing Bridge.”



 






Linda West is an Amazon best seller and author of the best selling series ‘Christmas Kisses and Cookies.’ She writes books that feature food and fun and includes her own recipes from her quaint beach café in Malibu.

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{Author Interview} Laura Vosika Author of The Water is Wide


Laura Vosika is a writer, poet, and musician. Her time travel series, The Blue Bells Chronicles, set in modern and medieval Scotland, has garnered praise and comparisons to writers as diverse as Diana Gabaldon and Dostoevsky. Her poetry has been published in The Moccasin and The Martin Lake Journal 2017.

She has been featured in newspapers, on radio, and TV, has spoken for regional book events, and hosted the radio program Books and Brews. She currently teaches writing at Minneapolis Community and Technical College.

As a musician, Laura has performed as on trombone, flute, and harp, in orchestras, and big bands. She lives in Brooklyn park with 5 of her 9 children, 3 cats, and an Irish Wolfhound.

Her latest book is the time travel/historical fiction, The Water is Wide.

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About the Book:

Title: THE WATER IS WIDE
Author: Laura Vosika
Publisher: Gabriel’s Horn Press
Pages: 451
Genre: Time Travel/Historical Fiction

BOOK BLURB:

After his failure to escape back to his own time, Shawn is sent with Niall on the Bruce’s business. They criss-cross Scotland and northern England, working for the Bruce and James Douglas, as they seek ways to get Shawn home to Amy and his own time.

Returning from the Bruce’s business, to Glenmirril, Shawn finally meets the mysterious Christina. Despite his vow to finally be faithful to Amy, his feelings for Christina grow. 

In modern Scotland, having already told Angus she’s pregnant, Amy must now tell him Shawn is alive and well—in medieval Scotland. Together, they seek a way to bring him back across time.
They are pursued by Simon Beaumont, esteemed knight in the service of King Edward, has also passed between times. Having learned that Amy’s son will kill him—he seeks to kill the infant James first.

The book concludes with MacDougall’s attack on Glenmirril, Amy and Angus’s race to be there and Shawn’s attempt to reach the mysterious tower through the battling armies.

Watch the Trailer:

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As a book bloggin’ and book luvin’ Princess, I’m always curious to find out how authors got the ideas for their books.  Can you tell us what your book is about?

The Water is Wide is the middle of five books that tell the story of an arrogant, modern musician who finds himself trapped in medieval Scotland, fighting with Robert the Bruce and James Douglas. I bill it as a tale of time travel, action and adventure, mysteries and miracles, romance and redemption...ranging across modern and medieval Scotland.

It is ultimately a saga of a man facing himself, packed into action laden journeys across medieval Scotland, as Shawn seeks a way home to his own time to return to his girlfriend Amy and their newborn child.

Can you tell us a little about the main characters of your book?

Shawn Kleiner was the kind of guy people either loved or hated—really hated. In his 20s, he was good-looking, charismatic, funny, threw great parties and created a mega success of the orchestra he played for. He was also an obnoxious, arrogant, hard-drinking, gambling womanizer and cheater. However, a year in medieval Scotland, fighting for Robert the Bruce and James Douglas, knowing each day may be his last, will make a man think about how he’s lived.

Shawn is now a man eager to get back to Amy and to the son she was pregnant with at his accidental slip in time, a man conflicted about his growing feelings for the medieval Christina, and growing in camaraderie and respect for the medieval Highlanders he lives and works with, even as he tries to return to Amy.

Niall Campbell, Shawn’s medieval doppelganger, is one of those Highlanders, and everything Shawn is not—upright, devout, bound by duty and honor. Early in the series, he is no more excited than Shawn to be forced to travel and work together. By The Water is Wide, he has come to see that he and Shawn are more alike than either of them wanted to believe; that nobody is all good and nobody is all bad.

There’s Amy, the gifted violinist who is coming to know herself once again after being away from Shawn’s gaslighting; Angus, the heroic inspector and mountain rescuer who helps Amy in her attempt to rescue Shawn from medieval times, although he is in love with her; Christina, the serene medieval noblewoman who risked herself to rescue Niall and now lives at Glenmirril, rescued in turn by Shawn; Allene, Niall’s wife; the Laird who runs Glenmirril and his giant of a brother, Hugh, who is endlessly amused by the irritation between the Laird and Shawn, who simply cannot adjust to the medieval ideas of authority.

If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would that be?

Don’t take that long break! Keep writing!

What would you say is one of your interesting writing quirks?

That’s hard to say! I sit and write, usually at my kitchen counter, and drink coffee. Is it a quirk that I write anywhere I can? My kids are well known at our local Aldi (and dare I say loved?) I give them money and a shopping list and send them in while I sit in the car and work on my laptop. I think they enjoy the responsibility and they have become friends with the clerks and guards there, who all know them.

My laptop goes pretty much everywhere with me in case I have five minutes or half an hour to work.

Do you hear from your readers?  What do they say?

Hearing from my readers is one of the things I didn’t expect about writing that really makes my day! Yes, they contact me, usually through face book, and tell me how much they love the books and how attached they’ve become to the people.

What is the toughest criticism given to you as an author?

That’s a hard question because I don’t read reviews, for several reasons. My criticism comes from my writers group, Night Writers and I don’t really regard anything critical they say as ‘criticism,’ but as help in becoming a better writer.

Perhaps the toughest road was a character that my friend Ross really disliked. I ended up, with The Minstrel Boy, rewriting a large section of the book in an entirely different tense. It was a lot of work. But I believe it was well worth it and I would never want anyone in my group to tell me they love something that they don’t.

What has been your best accomplishment?

Managing to write a five book series plus the accompanying ‘Not a Cookbook,’ (Food and Feast in the World of the Blue Bells Chronicles) while raising nine children and maintaining my ‘day job,’ teaching music lessons to up to fifty students a week—and still getting to my kids’ concerts and wrestling matches any time I had an evening free from work.

I also consider my work on 221 B.C., a historically-based fantastical search for magical amulets by Dr. Kendall Price, to be an accomplishment. I did a great deal of editing, including writing many new scenes to flesh out the story. It involved stepping outside of my comfort zone of fourteenth century Scotland that I know so well, and learning a great deal about the times, places, people, and history of 221 B.C., from Egypt to Rome and beyond.

Do you Google yourself?

No. You know that old saying about not having a right to know what others think of you? It’s even more true in the internet age. Everybody has an opinion. I try to live right and do the right thing and nothing anyone says is going to change who I am, so it doesn’t matter.

How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have?

I have maybe a dozen more started. I have my current work in progress, The Castle of Dromore, about a young widow who moves her five boys into a medieval castle, only to find it’s haunted. I have a novel I completed when I was 24, which I haven’t yet published. That one is set in modern day Boston.

I also have an anthology in the works. For those who write poetry in traditional forms—sonnets, triolets, villanelles, and of course hundreds of other forms—Gabriel’s Horn is now accepting submissions. Information is at www.gabrielshornpress.com/poetry-anthology

Fun question – if you were princess or prince, what’s one thing you would do to make your kingdom a better place?

More dancing, more singing, more music, more laughter. More dogs—big dogs!

And there should be days to dress in our ordinary lives in medieval gowns, leines, Renaissance clothing—whatever we like! There’s a reason Comicons are so popular!


Do you have anything specific you would like to say to your readers?

Thank you to all who have reached out to me. Thank you for taking the time to leave reviews. Thank you for your kind words. Thank you for following me on social media and being a part of my life. Your kindness has been very touching and has meant a lot to me and been a beautiful reminder of how much we all touch each other’s lives, even when we don’t realize it.

https://gaelicwordaday.wordpress.com/

You Can't Force Love Book Excerpt Tour - Excerpt #8



Title: YOU CAN’T FORCE LOVE
Author: Marie Drake  
Publisher: RedBird Books
Pages: 286  
Genre: Realistic Fiction

“A battered butterfly, he’d build Kimberly up, nurture her strength and watch her return to flight. He repressed the visions dancing in the back of his mind; her naked body brandished red flags and spurred him to stampede. Bulls and butterflies did not mix.”

Jordan Fry’s obsession is born in “You Can’t Force Love” by Marie Drake, Book I in the Locked Hearts Series.

From different towns and social backgrounds, Jordan Fry and Kimberly Orvine experience life-altering abuse, lose a parent and land in the same foster home. Angry, and self-deprecating, fiery redheaded Kimberly is deadset on lousy behavior and suffering the consequences, punishing herself for former sins. Scared by his inner darkness, pyromaniac Jordan has vowed to change for the better. He focuses on Kimberly as the key to his success, but she intends to make him break his promises. Unaware of Jordan’s atrocious actions in the past, she’s dangerously close to unleashing the evil he struggles to contain during their epic battle of wills. Can they both survive?

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Paul paced; a vein throbbed in his neck. His angry blue eyes landed on Debbie. “Stop coddling the boy and administer discipline,” he said and shook his arms in the air. “This is serious; remember the last girl?” He took Debbie’s hands.

“It was a misunderstanding,” Debbie said.

“That girl was ten-years-old; luckily, her father came home when he did,” Paul argued. “His behaviors are a signal to me that he has grave problems; they’ve manifested; we need to contemplate our choices again.”

“He made restitution for the past; don’t dredge it up.”

“It isn’t the past when he exhibits poor decision making and perpetuates bad habits.”
“When we move into your house, he’ll attend a new school; he’ll gain a fresh start,” Debbie said. She held Paul’s arm in a pleading gesture.

“Let me talk to him, and we’ll discuss the future,” Paul said. He patted Jordan’s shoulder and rubbed his head and escorted him down the dark-paneled hall into his bedroom. Silent, he leaned against the closed door, and Jordan squirmed under his gaze.




 



Follow rest of tour here!


Award-winning author, Marie Drake lives in a small town near Lake Ontario with her husband, four sons, and three rescue pups. With many years of experience in the Foster Care community and advocating for other victims and survivors, she specializes in realistic and psychological fiction depicting the lives of abuse sufferers; their obstacles, their triumphs, and their downfalls.


http://www.pumpupyourbook.com

Book Feature: Miss Management by Traci Highland






Title: MISS MANAGEMENT
Author: Traci Highland
Publisher: Cheshire Lane Press
Pages: 215
Genre: Romantic Comedy


Mags has gotten herself in a ton of trouble: she’s lost her job, any hope for references, and she’s going to run out of money…. fast.

Yeah, sure, it may be her fault for punching her boss, but the jerk totally had it coming.
Nobody listens to her until she reaches her boiling point, and by then, well, she’ll admit that there’s no stopping Mr. Fist To The Face.

Now her years of hard work as a speech therapist are about to go down the drain unless she can find some way to salvage her career. So when her Aunt Elise calls to say that she has a job for her, it’s not like she can say no, even if the job is up in the wilds of Vermont.

Between stuffed moose, sloppy dogs and sexy men, Vermont proves to be a lot more interesting than she expected. But when she uncovers a scheme that would put her new employers’ livelihood in jeopardy, more than just hydrangea bushes are about to get squashed.

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Aunt Elise’s house, a tidy little Victorian painted white with blue shutters and a red door, looks like a gingerbread house about to collapse.  Sure, it’s clean or whatever.  But it’s old and sinking on one side.  She invited me for lunch after I got back from the bank yesterday, and after a night spent drinking beer and trolling through online job postings, and then spending the morning drinking coffee and trolling through more job listings, the invitation to drive on out into the Berkshires and have an excuse to see the sun is actually kind of nice.  The Berkshires is about as far as I can drive at any given time, given, well, anyway.  It’s nice to get out.
I knock and Elise opens the door. “What the hell is that in the driveway?  I didn’t recognize it.”
“It’s my Prius, Elise.  I’ve been driving it for four years now.”
“What happened to the pick-up truck?  I thought you liked to drive pick-ups.”
“I crashed that pick-up, Aunt Elise.”  She furrows her brow.  “It was on the news, remember?  I sort of accidentally ran over a mailbox.  And some hedges.  And an arbor.”
“Oh yes, the mistress’, right?  Now I remember.”
One of the mistresses.”  My husband of the time had many.  But I had been friends with Shawna. “I hit some black ice.”
She harrumphs.
The police also harrumphed when I told them about the black ice, as I recall.
“I always hoped you were a lesbian, you know.  With that truck.”
“Not all lesbians have trucks.”
“No, but the fun ones do.  Have you met Sharon and Hazel down the block?  Lovely couple.  Hazel drives a truck and—“
“Can I come in?  It’s starting to rain.”
She pulls the door back further and ushers me inside.  The house is a tea-party nightmare.  Shelves filled with teapots and chubby figurines pucker up at the flowered wallpaper in the hallway.  The rug of the adjacent living room is the color of cotton candy and I swear my stomach growls every time I see it.
I brush the plaques of inspirational sayings out of the way as I hang up my coat on the coat rack.
She stomps like a thin Godzilla back to the kitchen, causing the house to shudder and clink in alarm.  “You’re in luck, I just made some chicken salad.”
“Sounds great.”  I follow her into the kitchen and sit at the table with a sigh.
“I have a job for you.”
“Is that door still crooked?  I thought for sure that tightening the hinges would do the trick.”
“No, I mean a real job.”  Elise places a colorful bowl down in the middle of the table and glares.  Sealing her lips with some sort of judgmental superglue, she waits.
Oh, right.  The hands.  I go over to the sink and wash my hands.  She’s got this thing about germs.  Betty and I used to mess with her when we came over, going over to the sink and putting our hands together so that she would wash one of my hands and I would wash one of hers and then we’d wait to see if Elise would notice that we each still had one dirty hand.
She did. 
Always. 
As twins, Betty and I were convinced that we were supposed to be born with some kind of twin-specific super-power, but really the only thing we were consistently good at was making our baby sister Piper laugh so hard that milk would shoot out of her nose.
That was another trick that Aunt Elise didn’t find to be particularly endearing. 
After I dry my hands and grab the loaf of bread out of the breadbox, I say, “All right, so what kind of job are we talking about?  And please don’t mention the one in the woodchuck town.”
“What do you have against woodchucks?”
“Sweet Romany Halls! I don’t have anything against woodchucks, I don’t can’t work in a town that worships vermin, that’s all.”
“Fine. But please don’t take Romany’s name in vain.”
Romany Halls is a professional wrestler that Aunt Elise has a crush on.  One night when I was over doing some repair work for her I heard her swearing at the television set.  And I mean full-on swearing.  Aunt Elise never swears, at least not that I’ve ever heard.  As I walked into the guest bedroom to make sure she was okay, I realized that she not only was watching television in her guest bedroom, which was odd, but that the walls of the bedroom were covered in posters of one very muscled wrestler wearing not-so-many articles of clothing.  It was like an homage to all that was masculine and spandexy.
Whenever it’s just the two of us, I feel obligated to tease her about her crush and her shrine to the glory that is Romany Halls.  Me?  I don’t so much dig the guys with eye makeup thing.  But Elise, well, Elise seemed to like them big, oiled up, and wearing nothing more than colorful underwear.
“So this job?”  I grab a spoon and scoop out the chicken salad.
“It’s for a friend of mine, actually.  Very nice.  Her name is Eve and she needs help with Mansfield.”
“Mansfield?  That’s quite a name.  What happen, did he have a stroke?  Car accident?  Cancer?”
“I don’t know.  But she has put out several ads in the paper and everyone who shows up to check on Mansfield apparently refuses to treat him.”
“Refuses to treat him?  That’s horrible.  Why doesn’t she take him to a clinic?  If he’s rehabbing, a facility is probably better equipped than her house.”
“She says that he can’t travel to a clinic.  He must be in pretty bad shape.”
“Have you ever met him?”
“No, I know Eve from college.  She comes down sometimes, and I’ve met her grandson a few times.  Lovely boy.  But I haven’t met Mansfield.”
“Is she nearby?  Can I pop over there today and see what’s going on?”  I really need a job.
“She’s up in Vermont.  But last time I spoke with her on the phone she mentioned that she has a guest cottage you can stay in when you come.  I guess she has a lot of land.”
“Waityou already told her I would go?”
“Of course you’ll go.”
“You know that time you asked me to tell you when you were overstepping some boundaries? Consider them overstepped.”
She takes a bite of her sandwich, her eyes demanding from over the top of her bread.
I chew my bite of sandwich, taking my time in savoring the flavors of Aunt Elise’s chicken salad, just to make her sweat for a bit.  I close my eyes, exaggerating the chew.
When I open them again her eyes are no less stern as she wipes the side of her mouth with a hot pink napkin.
Damn.  She’s not sweating this at all, is she?  Not even a little bit. “Fine.  I’ll go.  This is a paid job, right?”
“Good.  And yes, of course, provided you don’t walk away like those others.”
“Speech pathologists don’t usually make house-calls.  I’d imagine that the other folks just tried to convince your friend to take Mansfield to a proper rehab facility.”
“Try not to be so judgmental before you even get there.”
“I’m not being judgmental.”  Maybe a little.  “He should be where he can get the best care, and that’s not always at home.”
“Eve and I went to Smith together, Mags.  I’ve known her for years and years. Trust me, if she’s determined that the best place for him to be is at home with her, then she’s right.  Period.”
“When did you tell Eve I’d be there?”
“Tomorrow. It’s going to be a great job for you.  You’ll see.”
Tomorrow.  Of course.


In some cases, bloggers ask us for first chapter reveals.  Please paste your first chapter here:
Nothing says Happy Friday like having Mr. Roth dribble crackers and sing La Cucaracha.  Nothing.
“Great job!  But let’s make sure to give those crackers an exaggerated swallow before the next stanza.  All right?”  I grab the paper cloth from the box and give his chin a wipe. 
He stares at me with rheumatic eyes, pushing his whole damn heart into his smile.
“Your smile always makes my day, Mr. Roth.”  I pick the last remnant of saltine out of his gray stubble and throw the paper towel into the garbage.  When Mr. Roth first came to see me, the stroke had paralyzed the left side of his face.  The paralysis had diminished somewhat and now he can do things like smile.  And sing.  Sort of.
At least we fixed the swallowing.  That’s a biggie.  He exhales a barely audible bar of his favorite song and I join him.  “Make it louder for me!  La cucaracha!  La cucaracha!  Ya no puede caminar…”
His smile widens and his voice rises, like a phoenix, dammit.  That asshat Dr. Robbins said he’d never speak again.  And here Mr. Roth is, six months later, singing. 
Days like this, I love my job.  Just as we’re about to finish up our session, Dolly pokes her head in the door. “I’m sorry, Mags, but Dr. Robbins says you’re going to have to keep it down.”
“Tell him to shut his damn door.”  That man exists to be the pain in my neck.  You know the pain, the one you wake up with every morning and no amount of Advil can kill?  That one.
“Was I too loud?”  Mr. Roth asks, worry crossing his cherubic, drooly face. 
“No, angel.  Not a bit.  You’re a rock star and I’m damn proud of you.” One day I am going to open my own clinic, so naysayers like Dr. Robbins can learn to shut the hell up.
Dr. Robbins, the asshat, runs the clinic. So naturally, he feels that everything in the office is his, too, like, you know, the pretty nurses and speech pathologists that he employs.
Grabbing Mr. Roth’s arm, I help him with his jacket.  Dolly clicks the pen in her hand like it’s a hand grenade.  On off, on off, on off.
“Stop it,” I hiss to her as I grab Mr. Roth’s gloves.  “Now keep practicing those scales we talked about and I’ll see you next week.”
He squeezes my hand and then says to Dolly, “She’s a saint, this one.  A regular saint.”
His r’s don’t come out quite right but hey, it’s a work in progress.
The second he’s out the door, I walk over to the nurses’ station and pull up the electronic records on my next patient. I haul on down to room number six, where Mr. Earle is waiting for me to re-adjust his tracheal tube.
I reach for the handle and I’m blindsided by Susie, the intern.  She’s the best kind of intern, hard-working and wicked smart, and rather pretty in a cute, slightly disheveled kind of way.  She’s shaking as she bumps into me, wiping tears from her eyes.
“What’s wrong?” There can be lots of things wrong when you’re twenty-one.  Hormones and boozing and all that, but this looks… different.
“Nothing, I’m fine. Tracheal tube, right?”  She straightens her Hello Kitty scrubs and adjusts the chunky black-rimmed glasses, making sure the floating strands of pinkish hair stay behind her ears.
I open my mouth but the words just sort of dry up.  Sometimes, it’s best just to leave it.  She knows I’m here—prodding would be rude, right?  Let her tell me when she’s ready, or not, her choice.  Besides, I’m running behind.
Susie and I wrestle Mr. Earle’s tube back where it belongs and the second we finish and leave the room, Susie’s face pales.
Dr. Robbins is standing in the hall, blocking the path between where we stand and the nurses’ station. 
He looks up at Susie and gives her a grin that turns my stomach into a rolling pool of bile and fire. His yellowish, crooked teeth and greasy hair make him look more like a Goodfellas reject than a doctor.  But hey, it could just be that I’m biased because he told me once that he hired me for my boobs.
Not my stellar resume.  Not my incredible grades that I worked by butt off to earn, but because he liked my boobs.
I wanted to quit right then and there.  To stand up and shout and sue and do all those noble things I would tell my sisters to do if they were in the same situation.
But yeah, I had just gotten divorced and needed the job.  Nothing like having to buy your cheating ex out of half of your own damn house.
So the words disappeared and I sort of just resorted to sending politely worded emails, like “Please remember to interact with the staff in a professional manner.” And “I believe we are due for the state-mandated sexual harassment prevention course.  Can I sign us up?”
Susie freezes beside me.  Her cheeks turn to scrambled eggs and she grabs my hand.  “Don’t let him touch me again.”  She whispers.
Again?  Touch her?  My vision blurs.  Like actually blurs as he walks towards us.  That creep. That stupid, sexist creep.  He touched her?  She’s just a child.  Mostly.  Practically.  Hell, it doesn’t matter how old she is!  He’s a monster.
Dr. Robbins sidles over and his snakelike tongue pokes in and out of his mouth as his eyes roam over Susie.  “Susan, do you know where the canned peaches are?  I need to use them for a videofluoroscopy this afternoon.”  He leans in closer to her and she clenches my hand as his chili taco breath assaults us. “Maybe you can show me in the supply closet?”
She shakes like a shake weight in those cheesy late-night infomercials.  “No.” Her voice is barely above a whisper, but I can hear her just fine.
He, however, moves closer.  “Stop,” I say.  As usual, my words do nothing. No one listens, dammit.  Again and again and again I’ve asked him to stop doing this. 
“Stop,” I say again, louder. 
He just moves on in closer, like I’m nothing more than a lamp.
That’s when I see it.  He reaches down and grabs her ass.  She jumps and he smiles.  “Get off.”  She hisses but he doesn’t listen, he never listens.  He cups her whole cheek now, grinning.
I punch him in the face.
His head slams back, blinking like, well, like I just punched him in the face.
Oh crap.
Did I really just punch my boss in the face? 
My fingertips chill and my hand aches.
I didn’ttell me I didn’t.
Susie gasps, her hands covering her mouth and a look of unadulterated panic in her eyes. My throat tightens.
Oh my God, I totally did.
“She asked you to stop.” It’s the only thing that leaves my mouth in a somewhat coherent fashion. 
He narrows his eyes, a large red bump creeping across his smarmy face. “You hit me!” 
Susie, her jaw now on the ground, looks at me. Her eyes are wide and frightened like a deer’s.  Her voice is flat when she says, “You punched him.”
I kind of hate deer.
“Yes!  Yes, I see that.  You’re fine, right, Dr. Robbins?  You should have stopped.  We all know you can’t go around grabbing asses like they’re doorknobs. But you just kept grabbing and squishing it around so I had to, had to—“
“You’re fired.”  He growls.
“You can’t!”
“Get out, Miss Anderson.  Get out now before I call the police.”
Well, damn.










Traci Highland writes funny books for sassy ladies.  She is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College and has a Master’s from Quinnipiac University.  She uses this education to write books, bake cakes, garden and make homemade jams.  Her children say she’s bossy, her husband says she’s high-maintenance, but the dog thinks she’s perfect.

Her latest book is the romantic comedy, Miss Management.

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