Where's Connie
Right this minute? I’m sitting contentedly in my office, looking out at a freshly mowed lawn and feeling the bliss of having just sent in the final revisions for SKINNY-DIPPING (January ‘08)
Making the moment even more perfect, I didn’t mow the lawn. my darling husband did.
This summer rather than go to Romance Writers of America conference, I had the opportunity to go on a fly-in fishing trip to Alaska and jumped all over it since one of the book ideas I’m working on involves a fly-in wilderness fishing trip. Alright, alright. I also jumped at it because I love to fish. I’ll miss seeing the usual suspects at RWA, but the year after is San Francisco and there’s a Napa valley with my name on it waiting for me as a side trip.
In the News
Hot Dish has been garnering praise from a variety of sources:
From Publishers Weekly
“A rancid, 20-year-old bust carved from a 100-pound block of butter is the main ingredient for Brockway’s saucy contemporary debut, which follows a long line of popular historical romances (most recently My Surrender). All Jenn Lind ever wanted was to put as much distance as possible between herself and Fawn Creek, the tiny Minnesota hamlet where her parents landed after gambling away the family fortune. Two decades after her escape, she’s on the brink of TV stardom as the newest Martha Stewart. All is well until she learns that, as the former Buttercup Princess of Fawn Creek, she’s been conscripted to serve as the town’s sesquicentennial grand marshal, a title she’s to share with Steve Jaxx—the famed sculptor (and ex-con) who carved her bust out of butter twenty years before. Upon arrival she learns that the butter head, which her mom had stored in the barn freezer all those years, has been stolen and is being held for ransom. While the inept blackmailers barter, the butter head is slowly melting, and Steve is desperate to rescue the head before something he hid in it resurfaces. While the plot has a make-it-up-as-you-go feel, Brockway’s talent for creating funny characters and a dead-on sense of place will keep romance fans enchanted.” Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From The Barnes & Noble Review
“Connie Brockway, well known for her historicals, takes her first cut at contemporary romance in an irresistible love story laced with humor and starring the oldest living butter sculpture as McGuffin. The 20-year-old sculpture is that of Jenn Lind, who hoped to win the Buttercup Pageant, earn a scholarship, and get out of Fawn Creek, Minnesota, for good. The sculpture, which was saved by Jenn‘s adoring parents, was an early effort by now-famous sculptor Steve Jaax, champion of ‘Been There, Done That, Wish I Hadn’t.’”
“Now it’s 20 years later. Jenn, the Minnesotan Martha Stewart, is about to make it big on daytime TV; her new network likes the idea of her being a marshal at the town’s sesquicentennial. Jaax, coasting on his fame, has been invited as the other celebrity marshal. Brockway could stop right there, but she adds to the fun with extra plotlines —some small-town blackmailers, looking to kidnap the butter head; Jenn’s loving but eccentric family; her old enemies from high school; her gay best friend; and some other wonderful complications. You know the romance between Jenn and Steve will heat up, and it does —in the fish house, on the ice— but not before these two overachievers discover the pluses and minuses of celebrity, revenge, and hometown living. Great fun for Brockway fans, old and new.” &mdashGinger Curwen
