Author Guest Post with Melissa J. Roche, Skate Cute

Meet Kriss: astronomy grad student head home to her small town with a Ph.D. survival plan–skate and graduate. No falling involved. Of any sort.

Welcome to one of the July 29th stops on the blog tour for Skate Cute by Melissa J. Roche with Goddess Fish Promotions. Be sure to follow the rest of the tour for spotlights, reviews, more author guest posts, and a giveaway! More on that at the end of this post.

Please note that this post contains affiliate links, which means there is no additional cost to you if you shop using my links, but I will earn a small percentage in commission. A program-specific disclaimer is at the bottom of this post.

Author Guest Post

A novel comes alive

All authors have their own backstories. Some of ours are as colorful as our characters, but of course they are—our own stories make the best source material for our imagination. And vice versa. I can’t tell you how many times I wished my life would take a turn for the fantastical, that someone would hand me a lightsaber or a wand or drop me off in Hobbiton for the adventure of a lifetime…

And then, on October 12, 2020, my backstory and my everyday life became a novel.

These days, I’m an artistic inline roller skater. I say “these days,” because I had just about forgotten my childhood love of skating until I found a pair of scuffed up skates in a thrift store in Boulder, CO, about seven years ago now. My children were both under two years old at the time, and I needed a faster way to locomote them around town in the jogging stroller. From the moment I held those skates in my hand, I knew that my genius idea for “strollerblading” was about to become a brilliant reality.

(The not-so-brilliant reality: I promptly “strollerbladed” too fast down a hill with a sharp curve at the bottom and dumped all three of us in a nearby ditch. But never mind that. Onward.)

My skates surfaced again when my youngest was learning to ride a bike and needed a Mom-on-wheels to coast along behind, like a mobile bumper railing for an unsteady bowling ball. Just after that, a pandemic plunged all of our routines into chaos, sending me out of my house to find freedom and exercise underneath the open sky. So of course I pulled out my skates from the closet and headed for my neighborhood rink to try out my old tricks.

And so that bright October afternoon found me spinning tricks around my rink, listening to my favorite songs in my ears and gazing up at the endless blue sky overhead. Free from it all—pandemics, panic, masks, mess, and the four walls of my small house. Overcome with emotion, I just wanted to lie down on the rink and let myself be swallowed up by the sky…

But here’s the thing. My rink is right next to a busy skate park, across the street from the fire station. I’m often alone on the rink itself, but I’m never truly alone—everyone and their dog (yes, literally, so many dogs) are always walking past the chain link fence. So of course my immediate second thought, following the crazy lie-down-on-the-rink idea, was: Nope, no way, someone would probably see me and think I fell down and come check up on me. Probably some hero-wannabe paramedic from the fire station. Wouldn’t that be embarrassing.

And then my third thought hit like a bolt of lightning: That would be the best meet-cute EVER.

(Meet-cute, n: A charming or amusing first encounter that leads to the development of a romantic relationship.)

My brain whirled. Skater Girl has an emotional moment and lies down on the rink, only to be interrupted by Paramedic Guy who rushes to her “rescue”… then proceeds to sweep her off her skates. It’s brilliant. (Almost as brilliant as “strollerblading.” Almost.)

In an hour, I knew I was going to write this book. In a week, I had the entire plot planned out from start to finish. In a crazy month (NaNoWriMo, November 2020), I had written the thing and fallen in love with firefighter Chase and astronomer Kriss and their skating rink meet-cute. In a year, Skate Cute was in the hands of my publisher, Champagne Book Group, ready to come to life.

And now, thanks to you my dear reader, it lives.

About the Book

Skate Cute
Sacreola Sweethearts Book One
by Melissa J. Roche

Published 16 May 2022
Champagne Book Group

Genre: Contemporary Romance
Page Count: 304
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!

Kriss heads home to her small prairie town with 98% of an astrophysics PhD, a load of memories she’d rather not think about, and a survival plan: skate and graduate. Her plan doesn’t include the attention of a familiar admirer from the nearby fire station, one with an impressive physique, a hidden singing talent, and a smile dazzling enough to sweep her off her skates. Before she knows it, she’s falling for him—hard.

Chase has settled into the rhythms of his small-town firefighter routine, but he remembers Kriss from high school: the starry-eyed skater girl on her way out the door of his life. Now she’s back, just as gorgeous as ever, spinning around the next-door rink without a care in the world. Or so he thinks, until Kriss is targeted with mysterious acts of vandalism designed to derail her dreams. Can he help Kriss find the courage to stand up under the attacks and trust herself to love again?

Amazon US | Amazon CA | Amazon UK

Excerpt

The door on the south side of the rink banged against the wall, the noise jerking Kriss out of her emotional puddle. Her eyes flung open and her body surged upward, her head jerking toward the sound and the intruder. Crap, someone from the skate park must have thought the rink was empty and come over to goof off—

But it wasn’t a skater. It was a dude in jogging shorts and a dark navy-blue T-shirt with a fire department logo on the front, one earbud dangling against his collar.

Kriss met his wide eyes for exactly one shocked microsecond before dropping her head in embarrassment.

“Oh… I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I thought you were… Um. Are you okay?”

She nodded, hastily swiping at her cheeks. But it was too late; he had to have seen the tears already. “Sorry, no, I’m fine. I just… felt like lying down.”

She stole another quick glance at him. He was nodding sheepishly, his arm raised to scratch awkwardly at the back of his neck. A detached corner of her mind noted that his face looked familiar from somewhere. Another very, very detached corner of her mind noted the way his T-shirt stretched over his upper arms with the motion.

“Well, um, glad you’re okay,” he said, his chest bouncing with a hasty chuckle. His voice wasn’t what she was expecting. It was deep, but not too deep, and definitely more… smooth, or something. Maybe resonant was the right word.

About the Author

Melissa received her first pair of black-and-hot-pink inline skates in fourth grade, a couple of years before she swore her life to the study of the stars (in a fit of sci-fi inspired passion). Two decades later, she has acquired several larger pairs of skates and an astronomy PhD, both of which tend to slip out from under her at the most inopportune moments. She enjoys skating and singing at the neighborhood rink in her small town in Colorado, where she lives with her husband, two boys, and a cozy lap cat. Only one of which is allowed to read her writing over her shoulder.

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Giveaway Alert!

Melissa J. Roche will be awarding a $25 Amazon or B&N gift card or a digital copy of the book to two randomly drawn winners via rafflecopter during the tour.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

July 25	Long and Short Reviews	July 26	Lisa Haselton’s Reviews and Interviews
July 27	Sandra’s Book Club	July 28	Candrel’s Crafts, Cooks, and Characters
July 29	Splashes of Joy	July 29	Westveil Publishing
August 1	Words of Wisdom from The Scarf Princess	August 2	Literary Gold
August 3	The Key of Love	August 4	Fabulous and Brunette
August 5	Gina Rae Mitchell

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