Spotlight & Giveaway: Moorewood Family Rules by HelenKay Dimon

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author HelenKay Dimon to HJ!

Hi HelenKay and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Moorewood Family Rules!

 
Hi everyone! Thanks for having me. I’m thrilled to be here.
 

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

Jillian Moorewood is the oldest child from a meet-cute-gone-wrong marriage. Her father was a con artist, one in a long line of con artists. Her mother was an heiress. Jillian’s entire family is a dysfunctional, grifting mess.
She went to prison to “save” them. She gave her scheming relatives an ultimatum to go legit or else. And now she’s back and she’s ticked off because their fleecing never stopped. They’re running several cons right out of her house. She gives them one more chance to clean up their act, which they ignore, but little do they knew that she’s been using some of their scams against them.
Enter the grumpy bodyguard who’s determined to keep her safe from her family of grifters – Beck. While he’s busy offering Jillian advice (which she tends to ignore), saving her from “accidents” (which pretends aren’t happening), and flirting (which is a skill she hasn’t used in a long time), she’s trying to fend off her mooching relatives and figure out who she is and what she wants. After years of fixing and protecting, she’s ready to put herself first. She’s Jillian Moorewood, her own woman, and she’s ready to figure out who she is…with a little help from Beck and a few relatives who won’t leave her alone.
 

Please share your favorite line(s) or quote from this book:

“I don’t get it. It’s not like you killed someone, right?” Harry ended with an awkward chuckle.

“A smart question, Harry. I like you.” Jillian didn’t really care about him one way or the other, but she did like him more than anyone else in the room, so that was something. “And liking you is a good thing. Because, you see, I have some serious, decades-in-the-making issues to work out with my family. Revenge, tactical warfare, scorched earth. I’m sure you get it.”

Harry nodded, looking full of compassion. “We all have issues with our families.”

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• I was inspired to write this book by rewatching the movie Ocean’s 8. The idea of a con artist getting out of prison and going home to fix her grifting family seemed too good not to try writing it.
• I spent a lot of time (probably too much) looking at real estate listings in Rhode Island to get the setting in my head. The research for this book was pretty fun.
• The house Jillian lives in was roughly based on a real house that was owned by relatives of John Jacob Astor, who died on the Titantic.
• The book originally started off as a family heist book. I rewrote it in its current form, as a family hijinks novel with some romance and a touch of mystery. This is the third version of the book. I’ve never had a book take so long to figure out what it wanted to be.

What first attracts your Hero to the Heroine and vice versa?

Beck is attracted to Jillian’s humor and survival instinct. Jillian is practical. At the beginning, she’s most attracted to Beck’s ability to fight off an attacker…but she quickly begins to appreciate everything about him.

Did any scene have you blushing, crying or laughing while writing it? And Why?

Jillian has a great aunt who spent a lifetime conning bad men out of their valuables. There’s also a family rumor about her killing her cheating husband. One of my favorite scenes is the introduction for Aunt Patricia. Here’s part of it…
“What the—” Jillian jumped, spilling champagne over her hand. Her gaze shot to the corner of the room and the petite figure folded up and lounging in the leather chair, the window open and a still smoking cigarette sitting on the sill. “Aunt Patricia?”

To the outside world, a charity-event-attending, opera-loving former debutante. In reality, a smoking, grifting, beer-drinking watcher of baseball. Hours and hours of baseball.

“Of course, dear.” She used that older woman voice with a bit of a wobble on the end. Also fake. In reality, she had a husky, dockworker voice.

Patricia Moorewood was Jillian’s great-aunt, her paternal grandfather’s sister. The only person in the family from that generation still alive. A woman thoroughly devoted to planning and pulling off superior cons—her term. Over the decades she’d changed her name and pretended to be different people. Her biggest skill came in collecting other people’s jewels. She stole them, bargained for them . . . found them.

Her real name: Agnes, which she hated. She dropped the name about the same time she dropped her husband. Literally dropped, as in her husband was shot by his mistress’s husband and while in the hospital recuperating mysteriously choked on his pillow, got up from his bed disoriented, and fell out a window.

For some reason, likely due to Patricia’s ability to charm and cry on cue, doctors and law enforcement believed that was an actual way for a human being to die.

Readers should read this book….

Moorewood Family Rules is a fun look into the frenetic world of a family that lies and schemes for a living. Seeing those family members try to be empathetic and listen and not cause trouble might make you appreciate the more annoying parts of your family.

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have in the works?

I also write thrillers under the name Darby Kane. Right now, I’m finishing editing my December release, The Engagement Party – not a fun party! After that, I’ll start my next HelenKay book about a messy family that makes me laugh.
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: A print copy of MOOREWOOD FAMILY RULES by HelenKay Dimon

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: Families are…interesting. We all have THAT relative. Do you have a bit of family lore that makes you laugh, or shake your head, or both? You don’t have to spill family secrets. I just want to know if you have one that might be good in a book.

 
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Excerpt from Moorewood Family Rules:

Chapter Five
Moorewood Family Rule #12: Never keep (accurate) written records.
Hours after the excitement had died down and the
crowd started to disperse, Jillian looked around the house. Not all of it because she could only imagine what or who she’d stumble over, but she ventured into the rooms that al- ways meant something to her, like the library with the two- story balcony lined with shelves. She spent a few minutes in there, relieved the family hadn’t sold the books or furniture while she was gone.
With champagne in hand, she walked upstairs and into her old office. She’d spent long days hidden in here, trying to make things better for the family and accidentally sealing her own fate. When the FBI descended, they’d found her at her desk, but she refused to let that one horrible moment
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Moorewood Family Rules 41
taint one of the few places on the estate where she’d always found peace.
She stared at what looked like an electronic keypad out- side the door before turning the knob. She half expected the room to be locked and suspended in time as a testament to her poor judgment in trusting the fellow members of her gene pool, but it opened.
She stopped, frozen in place at the threshold.
“What the hell?” She scanned the room, not fully under- standing what she was seeing. The familiar desk lamp cast the rest of the room in shadows, but she saw enough to know someone had taken over her precious space.
She turned on the overhead light and forced her legs to move, coming into the room and shutting the door behind her. The binders lining the bookshelves on the one wall looked familiar. Those contained the records the govern- ment had pored over, all created to tie estate assets to real accounts and sales. All fake and backed up with more false information. Some of her best work, really.
But that wall behind her desk. She imagined NORAD had a board like this. A commanding computer screen re- placed the oversized whiteboard that used to hang there. The massive interactive map of the world took up most of the wall. There were colored lights sprinkled throughout the dis- play, with most being centered on what looked like Rhode Island. Then there were little flags spread throughout the countries, with most right here in the United States. Along
the right side was what looked like a spreadsheet, but she couldn’t read it from this far away.
Did they try to conquer New Hampshire while she was gone?
“Jillian.”
“What the—” She jumped, spilling champagne over her hand. Her gaze shot to the corner of the room and the petite figure folded up and lounging in the leather chair with the window open and a still smoking cigarette sitting on the sill. “Aunt Patricia?”
To the outside world, a charity-event-attending, opera- loving former debutante. In reality, a smoking, grifting, beer- drinking watcher of baseball. Hours and hours of baseball.
“Of course, dear.” She used that older woman tone with a bit of a wobble on the end. Also fake. In reality, she had a husky, dockworker voice.
Patricia Moorewood was Jillian’s great-aunt, her paternal grandfather’s sister. The only person in the family from that generation still alive. A woman thoroughly devoted to plan- ning and pulling off superior cons—her term. Over the de- cades she’d changed her name and pretended to be different people. Her biggest skill came in collecting other people’s jewels. She stole them, bargained for them . . . found them.
Her real name: Agnes, which she hated. She dropped the name about the same time she dropped her husband. Literally dropped, as in her husband was shot by his mistress’s husband and while in the hospital recuperating mysteriously choked
on his pillow, got up from his bed disoriented, and fell out a window.
For some reason, likely due to Patricia’s ability to charm and cry on cue, doctors and law enforcement believed that was an actual way for a human being to die. She declared men useless the day after she buried her cheating spouse.
None of that explained why she was here, in this house. Right now.
“You’re back.” Patricia’s voice changed to her actual one as her gaze roamed over Jillian. “You look good. I worried you’d have that haunted expression that sometimes comes with confinement.”
“It was only thirty-nine months.” Jillian didn’t men- tion that she’d been out of prison for a week. She would have stayed with friends, but she didn’t have many of those. Needing to lie about every aspect of her life and upbringing made inviting other people in and building trust difficult. So, she’d stayed at a hotel in Boston while she reacclimated and stoked her anger for her big return.
She’d slept in the hotel bathroom every night because the suite she’d booked felt too large and too quiet. With- out the background white noise of arguing and shuffling, she couldn’t drift off. She hoped her unwanted connection to strict rules and threats, limited space, and lots of people milling around would go away quickly. She knew the slight rumble of fear that followed her like footsteps at all times would linger for years.
“Any time inside sounds hideous to me.” Patricia wore an emerald-green pantsuit. Every piece the same color, all matching her jewelry and highlighting her white hair, which she’d pulled up in a bun.
Family lore said she was in her mid to late eighties, but Jil- lian knew that was one of her longest cons. Patricia married young and became a mother not that many months after. She fudged dates, including that of her son’s birth, to cover the then-frowned-upon sex-before-marriage problem. She was barely eighty and could pass for a good ten years younger. She moved with ease except when it benefited her to go slower or pretend an illness or injury.
Having stolen a ridiculous amount of jewelry during her lifetime and fenced all of it, she moved to Florida years ago to, in her words, enjoy the water and look at pool boys. Jillian hadn’t expected to find her here, in the house, let alone in this room. “Are you visiting for a few days?”
“I live here now.” Patricia took a last drag from her ciga- rette before stubbing it out and leaving the lipstick-stained end balancing in the open window. “I knew you wouldn’t mind.”
No attempt at asking. Just a statement, per the usual Moorewood belief that everything belonged to them. Jillian remembered her father once boasting that he never asked for permission. Clearly, that sort of thing passed down through her family’s paternal bloodline.
Jillian didn’t even bother to contradict her aunt about housing arrangements. She wasn’t about to kick out the older woman, and this sly older woman knew it. Still, Jillian needed a few details so that she was prepared for whatever fallout might strike her later. “What happened in Florida?”
“It’s a long story, involving a museum charity auction and Interpol.” The light caught on Patricia’s diamond ring and danced as she continued to wave her hand in the air like royalty. “These things happen.”
So much for the theory that she’d retired. Jillian had known that wouldn’t stick. Patricia wasn’t the lounge-around type. “The point is whatever happened made you move back here. To this house. Apparently, permanently.”
“It’s good to be near family at the end.”
End? “You make it sound like you’re dying, which I don’t believe for a second.” The woman ran on spit and nosiness. She’d outlive them all.
Patricia smiled. “You always were the smartest Moore- wood of your generation.”
“That’s probably Tenn.” Jillian knew Patricia aimed that sort of false flattery at her targets. That’s part of what made Jillian’s family so successful—research. They stole from peo- ple with something to hide or from people who would be too embarrassed to launch accusations. They picked their targets carefully . . . usually.
Patricia sighed, ratcheting up the drama. “Tenn and that beautiful face? The things he could do with it. He’s wasted in education.”
Jillian refused to debate that topic . . . again. “Uh-huh.” The door opened and Jay peeked in. He quickly slipped inside and locked the door behind him and walked up to Jil- lian. “I wondered if you were still here.”
“I live here.”
“Yes, you’ve made your ownership claim perfectly clear.” Jay’s frown morphed into a wide grin as he turned to his aunt and immediately frowned again. “Patricia, really. You’re smoking in here? I’ve asked you not to.”
“Yes, really.” Patricia continued on before Jay could an- swer. “Where’s your new girlie?”
Jay sighed. “Her name is Izzy. Please stop referring to her as anything else.”
“First, you said I couldn’t call her your chippy. Now you don’t like girlie.” Patricia sighed right back at him. “Dumb as a lamp, that one.”
“You’re not an Izzy fan?” Jillian didn’t want to show any interest, but she didn’t have a choice after that comment.
“She yells when she talks to me. The assumption that all older people are deaf is maddening. I could take her in a fight, and the whole house knows it.” Patricia stood up— all five-foot-one of her—and brushed a hand over her silk pantsuit.
Jay looked like he wanted to respond. Instead, he turned to Jillian. “Do you like what we’ve done to our little room?” “You mean, my office?” Jillian vowed to train this crowd to understand the house and property were hers and she wasn’t about to be conned, cajoled, or convinced out of any
of it.
Heaven knew she’d tried. She’d made an honest deal with them more than three years ago. They all had ignored the terms. Now, if they wanted any money, they would listen. They didn’t know that yet, but those were her new terms. Cash for compliance.
“Your timing is good. What with outsiders coming in and out of the house, we installed the keypad lock on the door.” Jay leaned in closer to Jillian. “Need to hook it up. Just in case.”
She had so many questions. She went with the most obvi- ous one. “We?”
“Emma. This room is her baby.” Jay walked over to the map. “The lights represent family members. Setting it up like this, we know where everyone is and what they’re work- ing on.”
“You mean scams.” A grifter map. Great.
Patricia snapped her fingers at Jillian. “Work, darling. Don’t belittle our craft.”
“The flags show where we’ve . . .” Jay smiled. “Worked. Previous jobs so that we don’t double up by accident.”
Jillian couldn’t figure out if this was the most ingenious thing she’d ever seen or the most terrifying. “Who is the green dot way over there?”
Jay groaned. “Cousin Doug.”
“Poor Doug.” Patricia shook her head. “I fear my grand- son is in a bit of trouble.”
Doug’s father, Patricia’s only child, got stinking drunk, fell off a yacht he’d stolen, and got sucked under it. So, as far as Jillian was concerned, Doug started off with a pretty seri- ous gene pool deficit. “What did he do this time?”
“He failed to do his homework. Stole from the wrong family.” Jay winced. “Romanced a lovely young woman who happened to be the favored niece of the owner of a private black ops company. The uncle was not impressed when his niece gave Doug her car.”
“What kind?” Jillian regretted the question the second af- ter she asked. It was such a Moorewood line of inquiry, and it made Patricia’s and Jay’s faces light up with excitement.
Jay’s smile was almost feral. “Bugatti Chiron.”
“A lovely blue color,” Patricia said in a dreamy voice. “Yes indeed.” Jay nodded. “Three million dollars, and it
goes three hundred miles per hour. It was quite the get by Doug, even though the uncle viewed it as a steal and not a gift.”
“Right, because it was.” Jillian rushed forward, trying to prevent any more vehicle talk. “But why is he in Belgium with this totally useful car?”
“He’s hiding there,” Jay explained. “We’re not sure why.”
“So, and I just want to make sure I’m clear here”—Jillian held her hand in front of the map—“this is a scoreboard of crimes committed by our family, past and present. Like, this dot in Rhode Island is . . . yes.” Jillian got a bit closer to test it and, yes, it was a touchscreen. She read the description. “Anika targeting Harry.”
“A lovely man,” Jay said, brimming with misplaced pride.
Patricia made a face. “Boring but easy to manipulate.” Jillian actually felt sorry for Harry. “How romantic.” “Bah!” Patricia stopped the conversation with her favorite
nonword sound. “Romance is overrated. If you learn noth- ing else from me, learn that.”
Jillian leaned against the bookcase, swirling the last of the champagne in her glass. “See, I thought the teaching was over because I thought we had an agreement. No more cons.”
Dead silence.
Jillian tried again. “I went to prison and in return, the family went legitimate. Does any of this sound familiar?”
Jay glanced at Patricia before speaking again. “Techni- cally, you requested that arrangement, but no one actually agreed to it. In writing.”
“Interesting loophole.” She should have known Jay would find one.
“They’ve learned,” Patricia said without providing an an- tecedent or any explanation for the blank comment.
“Really? If law enforcement came in here they’d have a road map to everything.” Jillian tapped on a flag and a small explanation came up under Anika’s name. It went into some detail about a scam eleven months ago at an art gallery and changing out an exhibition for forgeries.
Patricia frowned. “Why would they come here?”
“Hence the need for the lock on the door,” Jay said at the same time.
“Yeah, no one can break those.” Jillian tried to ignore her impending headache. “Patricia can crack safes. So can As- trid.” Apparently Jay thought a keypad lock would be harder. “Emma and I have special watches. One touch and the screen and all its information disappears. There’s also a but- ton in the top desk drawer.” He demonstrated his handy watch button. Now the wall looked like a large, blank tele- vision monitor. “In case of a dire emergency, we can blow up the system so there is nothing to find. Only Emma knows where the backup is kept, though I’m sure she’ll share that
with you.”
Emma, her baby sister. One of the main reasons Jillian
willingly went to prison, made deals, and bathed in gen- erational filth. She wanted her sibling to have a reset and her cousins to go legitimate. For Emma to find a different life. Instead, Jillian going to prison had plunged Emma even deeper into the muck.
Jillian had no idea how to fix that particular mess or the family’s newfound love of spycraft, but she was sure threats about cutting off the money would help eventually.
“Now, this nonsense about you being in charge of every- thing,” Jay said.
“Jayson. You know better.” Patricia patted his arm. “Jil- lian only has the family’s best interests at heart.” As soon as she started what might be perceived as a loving gesture by anyone else, she stopped. “Now, where did you say your girlie got to?”
“Kitchen. With all the excitement she forgot to eat din- ner.”
“She lives here?” Jillian asked because she had no interest in sharing the house or stepping over her family’s victims. The urge to call them all out right now—make an ugly but impressive splash—tugged at her.
“Calm down. No. We need to keep outsiders’ access to the house to a minimum. You know that.” Jay frowned as if to show his disappointment in having to give the droning explanation. “Izzy is in town visiting a sick friend. That’s how we met. She lives in Boston. The party today was an informal way of introducing her to some of the people in the area and help her be comfortable with us as a couple.”
“Basically, you’re loosening her up while you check out her assets and prepare to travel back to Boston and steal them. Got it. So, what’s the payoff here?” Jillian didn’t bother to read the map or the spreadsheet. “Oil and gas?”
“Don’t be so negative. My feelings are genuine, I assure you.”
He sounded like a bad greeting card, and Jillian wasn’t buying it. “Uh-huh.”
“Her grandfather owned a bank. Her father parlayed that into a string of banks, which he sold to a financial giant.” Jay whispered the name of the bank.
Jillian tried not to show a reaction. “Serious old money.”
“Money is money. Who cares about the age of it? It all spends the same.” Before anyone could respond to that, Pa- tricia slipped her hand through Jay’s arm and guided him to the door. “Go see to Izzy before she wanders around and causes trouble, hmm?”
She shoved him out of the room while he grumbled about needing answers. Jillian admired the skill, or she did until she became the sole focus of Patricia’s attention.
“Yes?” Jillian waited, expecting a lecture about not threat- ening the family or withholding money. She didn’t have a response prepared but hoped something would come to her before her little spark plug of an aunt went off.
“Hire a bodyguard.”
Not at all what Jillian was expecting. “What?” “Trust no one.”

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

Knives Out and Ocean’s 8 meets The Nest in this hilariously twisty novel by award-winning author HelenKay Dimon, about a woman who returns home from prison to her dysfunctional con artist family and tries to get them to go legit.

One day a con man met an heiress, wooed her, married her, had two kids…and kept on conning. Jillian Moorewood is the oldest child from that meet-cute-gone-wrong marriage. The stable one. The sensible and dependable one. The one who protects and fixes. The one who went to prison to save their sorry butts. Now, thirty-nine months later, she’s out and she’s more than a little pissed.

Finally home she finds the scheming clan in full family fleecing mode. They all claim they didn’t really agree to Jillian’s previous go-legit-or-else ultimatum before she went away. They viewed it as a “suggestion” then ignored it. So, business as usual. But Jillian is done with the lies and fakery. She demands the whole messed-up crew clean up its act, and this time she’s not kidding—she has the leverage to make it happen.

Problem is, her life is in shambles, but with the help of a great aunt (crooked but loveable), a bodyguard (who is a nice surprise after three years in prison), and a few allies (all working undercover), Jillian starts to put her life back together. She kicks out a few mooching relatives living under her roof, sets limits on everyone’s access to the money, ducks from their various attacks, and sees if that bodyguard is maybe interested in sticking around for a while. For the first time, she’s Jillian Moorewood, her own woman, and she’s ready to figure out who she is.
 
 

Meet the Author:

Helenkay Dimon spent the years before becoming a romance author as a . . . divorce attorney. Not the usual transition, she knows. Good news is she now writes full time and is much happier. She has sold over thirty novels, novellas, and shorts to numerous publishers. Her nationally bestselling and award-winning books have been showcased in numerous venues, and her books have twice been named “Red-Hot Reads” and excerpted in Cosmopolitan magazine. But if you ask her, she’ll tell you the best part of the job is never having to wear pantyhose again.