Today I have the pleasure of hosting Viviana MacKade. Viviana is here to share her newest release Painted Love that is part of the Lawbreakers box set. Welcome, Viviana!
Guest Post by Viviana MacKade
Why do I write romance? That’s a great question and has a simple answer: because love it’s what makes the world go on and on. Everything is about love. When your heart takes a double step when you see the person you fell for? Love. When you hug your mom, dad, or children? Love. When you share a too-small can of popcorn with a friend during a movie? Still love.
And that’s all nice and good. Can you hear a but coming?
Yeah. Because love can make us better people or horrible humans.
Let’s face it, getting dumped usually brings out the worst from anyone. I’m talking anything from ugly crying and hating on someone, all the way down to using love as an excuse to justify murder. Would it be twisted and sick? Sure. But it happens.
Take, for example, my first Crescent Creek novella. In She Came With The Tide, Andrea’s ex-husband is obsessed with her. She was his, chosen by a higher power to guide The Children of Vision with him. Not a healthy kind of love. Probably, not even real love (and here we could open a gigantic can of worms about the difference between love, obsession, and all that world but I have not enough space for it). The point is, he thought he loved her, and he wanted to have back that love.
My newest story, Painted Love. Florence goes after what her grandfather gave her because he loved her. To her, those paintings were the tangible reality of the love she and her grandfather had shared. And eventually, she loses all because she fell in love with Rhett.
All the birthdays, anniversaries, family gatherings forgotten or unattended because work gets in the way? Yep, that’s love too–for a job, a career, money.
Love is such a complex mess, and exploring all its various colors is an exciting rollercoaster that can take you to beautiful places, or in hell.
Which is why I like suspense in my stories, because I can dig into the characters’ hearts and see what colors their love is, each and every shade of it. Hopefully, I’ll find more light than darkness.
Personally, my husband makes my light shine a bit brighter. Not that I wouldn’t bash his head with a frying pan from time to time, but he still makes me a better person. As for the worse, I’m afraid to say that when I was 15, I totally ignored a friend’s claim on a boy. The girl and I weren’t the closest friends, she was more of an acquaintance, but I knew she felt for him the kind of love that burns the most, a 15-year-old love, no less. I liked him, nothing more (I learned love only when my husband came along), but I still went for him, got him, and dumped him after few days. Man, I regret that to this day. Losing a friend, not dumping the tool.
So, in this perspective, what is the best and the worst you did for love?
About Painted Love
Thou shalt not steal.
Oh, but Florence had, and would do so one last time.
Ten pieces her grandfather painted for her because he loved her.
Ten pieces her mother lost, along with anything else, for loving the wrong man.
She couldn’t get back everything he’d wasted away, but she’d be damned if she’d give up those paintings.
Easy and genuine, Rhett loves his life–his family, his market, his town. Until he meets a British woman with grey eyes and a cute little smile. The woman he’s been waiting for.
The thing is, to love her is easy, but can he trust her?
When Rhett pushes to uncover her agenda, Flo knows she will lose something–the man she loves or what she’d been fighting for years.
Which road will she choose?
Excerpt from Painted Love
Prolog
London, October 31st
Florence Harper closed her mobile phone and put it back into her purse.
The end was coming.
In the dark late afternoon, a group of underdressed young witches strolled by the bench she sat on. Drunk already, judging by the disarticulate chuckles and screams. She never cared for any such thing. Never had time for it.
The muddy water of the Thames kept flowing. Always had, always will. Her life? That was about to change. For the better, she hoped.
Jacob had found Painted Love: the last piece of her broken heart was hiding in a small town on the other side of the ocean.
Crescent Creek. A fanciful name, romantic, even.
For Florence, it was only the place where she’d sin one last time.
Thou shalt not steal.
Oh, but she had, and she will.
All her life, or her adult life, had been touched by love one way or another.
The day she was born, her grandfather had made Painted Love. After, each year on her birthday he would give what he called a piece of his own heart to her. Only to her. The collection stopped after her tenth birthday, when Grandfather Paul passed away.
And soon after, her widowed mother remarried. Flo would never know if the decision came out of pure love, loneliness, or naiveté. But she did remarry. A bastard, of course. Within a few years, he’d bet and lost all. Money, properties, art. A divorce didn’t change anything as it turned out, banks didn’t care much about it, or death.
The bastard didn’t live long. Official cause of death: blunt trauma from a fall. Word on the street was that someone had made that happen. For as much welcomed his demise was, herself, her mom and Joseph, the bastard’s only son, had to work themselves to the bone to get on their feet again.
They did, though. Tired, depressed for all the mistakes she’d made, and unable to overcome guilt, her mom managed to have a couple of quiet years before she gave up and united with her father and her beloved first husband, Flo’s dad.
But no matter how much of a successful photographer she’d become, or how much of a brilliant art curator Joseph was, the past haunted them. Florence couldn’t forget what was taken away from her; Jacob couldn’t shake off the shame of his own father’s actions.
So, they decided to act, right some of the wrongs.
She would take back those ten pieces her grandfather made for her because he’d loved her, and her mother lost because she’d loved the wrong man. That man’s son would help her achieve justice.
The irony.
And finally, Jacob had tracked down the last painting, the smallest one, through his private channels. Flo knew better than asking the hows, but she trusted him completely. Problem was, the actual owner of the Painted Love didn’t want to sell, no matter the money offered, and that meant one thing: for one last time, she’d have to steal.
Well, it appeared she’d be taking a holiday. A vacation, as they would say in America.
She grabbed the mobile phone and started to plan.
Find Viviana MacKade :
- WEBSITE: https://goo.gl/4S7zLe
- Amazon Author Page: https://goo.gl/cUzn51
- FaceBook: https://goo.gl/NPw2Bz
- Twitter: https://goo.gl/vqaLXy
Thank you for having me!
My pleasure, Viviana. Come back and visit again!
I hear you about husband and frying pan – some days arghhhh. Great post. Tweeted.
I enjoyed Painted Love!