Spotlight & Giveaway: Picture Perfect Autumn by Shelley Noble

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Shelley Noble to HJ!

Hi Shelley and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Picture Perfect Autumn!

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

Photographer Dani Campbell is the new darling of the Manhattan art scene. Young and self taught, Dani is loving every minute, but she knows she’s headed for a fall. And the only person who can help is a reclusive, bitter old man named Lawrence Sinclair. The last thing Lawrence wants is to think about photography or be pestered to distraction by some brash spike-haired Brooklynite who wants to pick his brain. The last thing he expects is for his estranged grandson, Peter, to show up without warning. Mayhem ensues as the three of them find their way to a happy ending.
 

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

Trust in yourself. So what if you miss what you think was a perfect shot…or a perfect life for that matter. There is no such thing. And you will have many more chances to find the beauty in our imperfections. Not everyone is so lucky.

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• I’ve always wanted to learn about photography and finally bought myself a nice camera. It’s a lot more complicated than my phone. So as I stumbled my way through trying to figure out what I was doing, I couldn’t t help but think, What if…..and Dani and her story were born.
• In the story , Dani finds five photographs that show her what photography should be. I just made up those subjects in the photos as I wrote, but from one of them, Lawrence’s whole story blossomed.
• I’ve had this favorite grotto cave in my mind for a long time, a combination of several childhood exploring expeditions. I’ve tried to use it in several stories, since it’s so cool (to me at least) but it never made the cut until now. YAY! I think it will lead to more good things for the Sinclair family, including Dani.

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

Over the phone, Peter first thinks Dani is the cleaning lady, when he first sees her in person he thinks she’s a boy, then a runaway goth teenager, then a gold digger. He’s completely off kilter trying to figure her out, which gives Dani the chance to develop her real self.

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

Lawrence stood to the side of the den window; he could see the beach from here and he’d spent the last few minutes watching the two young people, strolling along the surf.
For a moment he forgot they were a younger generation and he could see himself and Krista frolicking in the surf as if they didn’t have a care in the world. But he did have a care by then. The reason he had given up their peripatetic life, he as a freelance photographer, and Krista taking care of Elliott while they all lived out of a camper and she cultivated her spirit in a revolving kaleidoscope of meditation, sand painting, astrological studies, nature.
Krista, his free spirit wife, could make a gourmet meal over a campfire. Laugh when the rain drenched the drying clothes hanging on a makeshift line strung between a car door and a tree. Carry a four-year-old on her hip and dance across the beach as if they were both light as air.
They’d been happy, then.
Moving back to Boston had sucked the life out of her. His family had done nothing to welcome Krista. And for that, he would never forgive them. And they would never forgive him for what came later.
I love this scene. It isn’t between the two protagonists, Dani and Peter. But a reflective moment when an old man sees himself and his life in the two young people he loves most in the world. And wonders if they can hold their happiness complete, when he isn’t able to.

Readers should read this book….

I love writing about several generations in my stories; to explore their different takes on what is happening, how things are different for each, what is important or not so important. I hope that their individual journeys will give the reader a richer experience and appreciation of all the characters.

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

I’ve just finished writing a historical novel, The Tiffany Girls, about the women who created some of Louis Tiffany’s iconic lamps, windows and decorative work. How they lived, worked and loved. I’ve just started a rag to riches, to rags to love story. It’s in its early stages, but stand by.
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: 3 Print copies of PICTURE PERFECT AUTUMN by Shelley Noble

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: Do you like romances that include a cast of characters with their own story or do you like to just concentrate on the main love story?

 
a Rafflecopter giveaway

 
 

Book Info:

A Manhattan photographer finds inspiration and new possiblities in a Gothic Rhode Island beach house in this uplifting fall-set read from New York Times bestselling author Shelley Noble.

Dani Campbell is the latest darling of the Manhattan art scene. As a self-taught photographer, Dani is loving every minute of her sudden popularity, but has no idea how she got there, or a clue as to how to stay. On a shoot at an antiques barn, she discovers an envelope of old photos and sees in them what her photos are missing. Her search for their source leads Dani to a small Rhode Island town, a dilapidated American Gothic beach house—and Lawrence Sinclair.

Reclusive and bitter, the last thing eighty-year-old Lawrence wants to think about is photography—the thing that inadvertently led to his son’s death and tore his family apart. But Dani is determined and persuasive, and Lawrence can’t help but be intrigued by the girl with spiky hair who wants to learn from him, when almost everyone else just wants to relieve him of his substantial fortune.

Dani and Lawrence’s mentorship blossoms unexpectedly, but everything is put in jeopardy by the appearance of Lawrence’s estranged grandson, Peter. Peter is determined to spend some time reconnecting with his grandfather and to get rid of the supposed fortune hunter after Lawrence’s money. But Dani is not what he was expecting, and he soon discovers that they have more things in common than not.

Brought together by fortune, fate, and the ties that bind, all three embark on journeys of discovery and love.
Book Links: Amazon | B&N | iTunes | kobo | Google |
 
 

Meet the Author:

Shelley Noble is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of eighteen novels of historical fiction, historical mystery and contemporary women’s fiction, including The Tiffany Girls, Ask Me No Questions, and Picture Perfect Autumn.

A former professor, professional dancer and choreographer, she now lives in New Jersey half way between the shore, where she loves visiting lighthouses and vintage carousels, and New York City, where she delights in the architecture, the theatre, and ferreting out the old stories behind the new.
Website | Facebook |  Instagram |