Spotlight & Giveaway: The Magnolia Inn by Carolyn Brown

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Carolyn Brown to HJ!

Hi Carolyn and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, The Magnolia Inn!

 
Thank you so much, Sara, and thanks for inviting me back to HJ again.
 

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

Jolene was elated that her Aunt Sugar had given her half interest in the Magnolia Inn. The one kicker was that the other half had been given to her uncle’s nephew, and they’d never gotten along. She was willing to work with Reuben, and had even drawn up a plan that would benefit them both. But Reuben wasn’t interested in doing anything or even listening to her–he put his half on the market the day that he signed the papers accepting his half.

Tucker Malone wore guilt like a wet woolen coat. His wife had been killed in a car accident and he blamed himself. He couldn’t get past the feelings unless he was drinking–and that caused him to lose his job as a policeman in Dallas. He had the money from his wife’s life insurance and used it to buy half of an old inn up near Jefferson, Texas.

Guilt met determination from day one. He couldn’t get over his guilt. She wasn’t having anything to do with a drunk–not after the crazy childhood she’d had with an alcoholic mother. The old inn soon provided a middle ground for them, but did it have enough magic in it to give them a foundation for a relationship?
 

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

“It keeps the wind and rain off, it reminds me of the good times Melanie and I had, and it beats paying rent for an apartment. But come right in. Make yourself at home. Do the dishes while you’re here,” he (Tucker) said.

Dotty pursed her lips. “Gawd Almighty, Lucy. We’re livin’ in a brand new world. If Tucker needs a little something to get him through the tough times that’s his business. And if Jolene wants to sleep with him, then that’s her business.”

“We didn’t come here to argue and fight about religion or the Gator.” Flossie picked up a cookie. “And I doubt that Ezra made it past the Pearly Gates anyway, so I don’t know why you’re all up in religion, Lucy. That old scoundrel never went to church in his life. If he went to heaven he’d be miserable up there.”

Jolene cracked up. “Yeah, right. Aunt Sugar would have sent you away to a convent if you’d even let the idea float through your mind.”

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• Mr. B and I were out looking for a setting for The Magnolia Inn. I had my heart set on somewhere down around Abilene or San Antonio, but it started to snow, and we thought it best to get out of that part of the state. So we headed east and wound up almost to Louisiana in a little town called Marshall, Texas. We didn’t see anything there that caught my attention so we drove up to Jefferson–still wasn’t inspired. But on the way back to the hotel in Marshall, there it was! An old house with a wide porch set back in the tall pines. By the time we got home the next day, I pretty much had the book plotted out.
• As y’all all know, I’m a country music fan. Some of the songs in the book include Blake Shelton’s “Kiss My Country Ass”: Sarah McLachlan’s “In the Arms of an Angel”; and “I Feel Lucky” by Mary Chapin Carpenter.

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

Tucker is attracted to Jolene because she’s independent and is such a hard worker. But he can’t let himself get involved with her when he’s still in love with his deceased wife.
Jolene is attracted to Tucker because he’s willing to put sweat and tears into helping her bring the old inn back to its original glory, but it takes a lot of time before she learns to trust him.

If your book was optioned for a movie, what scene would you use for the audition of the main characters and why?

This would be a good scene for a movie because it’s one of the first times when Tucker and Jolene are alone and beginning to open up to each other a little bit:

Tucker would’ve never figured Jolene for a bartender. Maybe an elementary school teacher or even a bank teller. She wasn’t big enough to be a bartender for one thing, and she was way too cute. The drunks would have her in tears in minutes.
Surely, she worked somewhere like the Southern Comfort, a bar inside the country club over in Tyler. He could visualize her in a place like that. Melanie’s dad had a membership there, and he’d gone with him to that place one time after a game of golf. That night a tall redhead had been working the bar, and she’d been flirting with a man in a three piece suit. He remembered it well because the man had taken off his wedding ring, and shoved it into his pocket.
He looked down at his own ring and felt still yet another wave of guilt. Every time he and Jolene were in the same room, something warmed his cold heart. He wouldn’t betray Melanie by letting another woman take her place.
“You sure are quiet,” Jolene said.
“Thinkin’.” He finished his milk and carried the glass to the dishwasher. “That was a crazy bunch of old ladies. One’s religious. One’s kind of fussy, and the other one owns the local bar.”
“They were Aunt Sugar’s best friends from the time she was a little girl, way back before they bought antique stores and inherited a bar.” Jolene poured two cups of coffee and handed one to him. “Dotty’s husband, Bruce, died years ago. None of the four, including Aunt Sugar, ever had children. I think that’s why they were so close, and why Aunt Sugar’s going off on this long, extended trip has left a hole in their lives. She kind of held the group together, especially after Dotty kept running the bar even after her husband died. I wouldn’t be surprised if Lucy isn’t on her religion kick from missing Aunt Sugar as much as the fact her latest boyfriend died.”
Tucker’s brow wrinkled in a frown. “She’s still dating at her age?”
“Lucy likes men,” Jolene’s shoulders raised in a shrug. “But Aunt Sugar going away can’t be easy. They are all in their late sixties, so this is a drastic life change.”
“Did your aunt live right here her whole married life?” he asked.
“Not just her married life. Her whole life—period. Her grandparents owned this property. When they passed on, they left it to her father. He’d just gotten married, and he and his wife had Aunt Sugar that next year. They opened the inn up for business right after she was born. Grandpa nicknamed her Sugar when she was a baby and it stuck. When he died he gave this place to Sugar and the equivalent of its worth to my mother.”
Jolene’s soft lilting voice soothed Tucker, so he kept asking questions. He wasn’t really interested so much in her past. For all he cared, she could read the Bible or even the phone book to him. “How’d your mama feel about that?”
“She never liked this place, so it didn’t bother her one bit. She and Aunt Sugar had always kept in touch even if they weren’t good friends, mainly because of me, or at least that’s what Mama said.” Jolene answered. “You ready to go back to work? I’ve got enough energy to help you get that last piece of furniture out of the room and then we can pull up the carpet.”
He put their coffee cups in the dishwasher. “You got brothers or sisters?”
She shook her head. “Nope and my folks are both gone. All that’s left of family is me and Aunt Sugar. Daddy went with a heart attack when I was sixteen and Mama…” She hesitated for several seconds. “Mama got addicted to pills and alcohol. She overdosed when I was twenty.”
The pain in her voice mirrored what he felt when he thought about his precious Melanie. He could hear the hurt and pain in Jolene’s tone, and a fresh wave of guilt washed over him, but at least he wasn’t hurting anyone by his weekend binges.
“By blood, this place should be all yours,” Tucker said.
“But by hard work and working as a fishing guide on the bayou in the lean years, Uncle Jasper should have the right to give half of it to his kin—even if I never did like Reuben, and I’d still like to shoot him, it’s only fair,” she said.

Readers should read this book….

because it will show them that guilt is a heavy burden, and should be shaken off, and hopefully they will come away with the understanding that trust has to be earned if second chances are even a possibility.

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

I’m working on a women’s fiction titled The Family Journal. I just finished writing Christmas with a Cowboy last week. The upcoming list looks like this:
The Perfect Dress, April 16
Cowboy Rebel, May 28
Christmas with a Cowboy, Sept. 28
The Empty Nesters, TBD.
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: I will give away a signed paper back copy of The Magnolia Inn.

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: What makes you pick up a book and buy it? Is it the cover–I squealed when I saw the cover for The Magnolia Inn–or maybe the blurb on the back of the book, or do you open it, read the first couple of paragraphs before you make a decision to buy it?

 
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Excerpt from The Magnolia Inn:

Tucker drove back to his trailer with Sassy sitting like a queen in the passenger’s seat. Last year he’d been willing to sink more than half of the insurance money into the old place. If this Jolene woman was willing to take his offer, he would restore and flip the place and make a nice profit. He shed his coat and cowboy boots when he was in the trailer and began to pace. Sassy turned around three or four times in the middle of his bed before going to sleep.
“So you’ve done your duty and now you aren’t going to worry with me?” Tucker asked. “Now that I’ve seen it again, I want it really bad. You could at least stay awake and keep me company.”
Sassy’s whiskers didn’t even twitch in a reply.
He wished he had a job to keep his mind off the two offers he’d made. He’d even be willing to remodel a bathroom to keep his hands busy, and Tucker hated working in the tight spaces. They reminded him of all the times he’d had to crawl under houses in search of things he’d rather not think about anymore. He slouched on the sofa and leaned his head back, shutting his eyes, and second guessing himself about what he’d just done.
He fell asleep and in the dream Melanie was sitting on the swing on the front porch of that big house. She ran out to meet him as he drove up, slung her arms around his neck and kissed him. He awoke to the sound of the phone ringing and before he answered it he just knew that it was good news.
“Hello, Belinda. That was quick,” he said.
“Got good news and bad news. Which do you want first?”
“Give me the bad.” He raked his fingers through his dark hair, and realized he really needed to visit the barber.
“Jolene says no way in hell, and that if she had the money, she’d buy Reuben out. Good news is that Reuben didn’t even want to counter offer. He took the sixty-five thousand and said to tell you to consider it yours. I’ll have the papers ready for both of you to sign on Friday morning, but as of now you can sell that trailer and move into the house if you want.”
“I ain’t sellin’ my trailer. I might drag it out there and park it behind the house by the bayou, but a million bucks couldn’t take it from me,” he said. “I’ll see you Friday. What time?”
“Nine o’clock,” she said.
“I’ll be there.”
“Bring your checkbook.”
* * * * *
Jolene had taken stock of what was left in the pantry, and there was plenty to last a couple of weeks. By then she’d have money from the bar to pay the utility bills. She paced the floor, wondering if the guy who’d offered would really buy Reuben’s half of the inn. She went from the foyer, up the wide staircase, checked each bedroom and finally sat down on the top step.
The person who was interested in the place might not finalize a deal on only half. If he backed out, she decided that she was going to open for business, no matter what. She’d take a month to get the place in shape, do the spring cleaning like Aunt Sugar did every year, and take reservations starting the first of February. If she lived on a shoe string, maybe she could save enough to could hire someone to remodel one room at a time that way.
Now that she had a plan, even if it wasn’t a good one, she was eager to get started, but seven o’clock at night wasn’t the time to start washing woodwork. She grabbed a quilt from the back of the sofa and carried it outside. Wrapping it around her body like a long shawl, she sat down on the porch swing and set it to moving with her foot. Within seconds she was second guessing herself about selling her half, and then a picture of Aunt Sugar’s smile flashed through her mind.
Even if she could have more money than she’d ever had at one time and could be on her way to a new life, maybe down near Lafayette where she still had a beaucoup of cousins—it wasn’t going to happen. She’d made up her mind and she was going to stay focused on moving forward with the plan.
A big, white fluffy cat hopped up on the swing with her and laid a paw on her leg. It was friendly enough that Jolene wondered if it belonged there, and Aunt Sugar had just forgotten to mention it in her excitement to leave the day before.
“Well, what’s your name, pretty thing?” Jolene asked.
“Sassy is her name,” a deep voice said right behind her.
Startled, Jolene whipped around so fast that she almost fell off the swing. “Who are you, and what are you doin’ here?”
Now is that any way to act toward a potential customer? Aunt Sugar’s voice popped into her head. He might stay a week, and you’d make enough money to pay the electric bill.
“Right friendly, ain’t you?” Sarcasm dripped from the man’s tone.
“I’m sorry. You scared me. Is this your cat? How did you get here?”
“Drove my truck right up the lane and parked my trailer out in that little clearing by the bayou.” His deep drawl left no doubt that he was definitely from Texas. He easily topped six feet in his well-worn cowboy boots. His hair was dark, and the porch light lit up his piercing blue eyes.
“We don’t have a trailer park.” How had he gotten past the house without her hearing the truck?
“Nope, don’t reckon you do.” He sat down on the porch step, and the cat hopped off the swing and went to curl up in his lap.
“Then what are you doing here?” she asked again. “Would you like to rent a room?”
“Nope, don’t reckon I do, but I wouldn’t mind a tour of the house,” he said.
“Why would I do that?” Her fear radar shot up several notches.
“Because, honey, I’m Tucker Malone, and I own half of this place now.”

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

New York Times bestselling author Carolyn Brown brings together two wounded hearts in a Texas romance of second chances and twice-in-a-lifetime true love.

Inheriting the Magnolia Inn, a Victorian home nestled in the East Texas pines, is a fantasy come true for Jolene Broussard. After living with the guilt of failing to rescue her self-destructive mother, Jolene knows her aunt and uncle’s B&B is the perfect jump start for a new life and a comforting place to call home. There’s just one hitch: stubborn and moody carpenter Tucker Malone. He’s got a half interest in the Magnolia Inn, and he’s planting his dusty cowboy boots squarely in the middle of her dream.

Ever since his wife’s death, Tucker’s own guilt and demons have left him as guarded as Jolene. The last thing he expects is for his new partner to stir something inside him he thought was gone forever. And as wary as Jolene is, she may have found a kindred spirit—someone she can help, and someone she can hold on to.

Restoring the Magnolia Inn is the first step toward restoring their hearts. Will they be able to let go of the past and trust each other to do it together?
Book Links: Amazon | B&N |
 
 

Meet the Author:

Carolyn Brown is a New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal, and Publisher’s Weekly bestselling author and a RITA finalist. With more than 90 books on the market, she’s a recipient of the Bookseller’s Best Award, and the prestigious Montlake Diamond Award, and also a three-time recipient of the National Reader’s Choice Award.
Carolyn and her husband live in the small town of Davis, Oklahoma, where everyone knows everyone else, as well as what they’re doing and when—and they read the local newspaper on Wednesday to see who got caught. They have three grown children and enough grandchildren to keep them young.
When she’s not writing, Carolyn likes to sit in plot new stories in her backyard with her tom cat, Boots Randolph Terminator Outlaw, and watch him protect the yard from all kinds of wicked varmints like crickets, locusts, and spiders. Visit her at www.carolynbrownbooks.com.
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