Saturday, November 9, 2013

Rodeo Daze by Elle Druskin



Blurb:

It’s the Liberty Heights Stampede! B-grade actress Paulette Stone finally lands a great movie role. The catch? Equestrian skills required. Clueless Paulette turns to Jim Kildare for help but Paulette is hopeless. The solution? Import former rodeo champion Grandma Dixie Sue Kildare so Jim can concentrate on trying to romance Renee Landis, winner of the world’s worst first date contests.

While Renee does her best to ignore her feelings for Jim, Dixie Sue runs riot in Liberty Heights with her riding school, backyard sales and matchmaking. Then there’s the ghost haunting LouAnn Freedbush’s house complicated by sister BettyAnn’s failure at witch college and root beer addiction. What does psychic Wayne predict? Who is the ghost haunting LouAnn’s basement? Can Jim lasso Renee and win her heart?


Review:

Look out Grandma Baumgart, Dixie Sue Kildare’s in town and The Kildare Gang’s ridin’, ropin’ and shootin’ up Liberty Heights!  Grandma Baumgart’s not the only one who knows how to pick a girl for her grandson.  Dr. James Kildare (yup, just like the TV show and that was thanks to Dixie Sue, too) has his heart set on Renee Landis.  Fortunately, Grandma Dixie Sue approves of his choice and sets out to help him catch her.  Poor Renee doesn’t stand a chance.  Good thing she feels the same way, despite her track record of horrible first dates and never any seconds.  But this is Liberty Heights, New Jersey where normal doesn’t exist, but hilarious does.

Why do Liberty Heights books go so fast?  Why can’t they take longer to read so I can stay there awhile longer?  Oh, I’m not asking Ms. Druskin to pad her books.  The story is what it is and padding doesn’t improve a book at all.  I just love Liberty Heights and its crazy denizens old and new, human and animal.  I loved watching Lou Ann Freedbush trying to help her sister, Betty Ann dry out from her root beer addiction, while coping with the ghost in the haunted house she bought.  I love Wayne the psychic beagle, Dizzy the practically comatose horse and even Phantom, the “killer” horse.  Oh, yeah—and there’s Betty Ann’s search for a familiar.  That’s one of the reasons she flunked out of witch school.  She couldn’t find a familiar, and that failure sapped her courage when finals time came.  She knew the material; she just couldn’t get it out of her head and onto the page, knowing that without a familiar she still wouldn’t be able to get her license and join RWA—Registered Witches of America even if she aced her final.

If you follow this blog and you haven’t fallen in love with Liberty Heights yet, you may want to start at the beginning with Animal Crackers.  If you’re a fan like me, maybe you’ve been waiting for Book Five.  You will laugh just as hard as you have been.  I promise.

Length:  215 Pages
Price:  $5.95

You’ll notice I always include the publisher’s buy link.  That’s because authors usually receive 40% of the book price from the publisher.  Editors and cover artists usually receive about 5%.  When you buy a book from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or another third-party vendor, they take a hefty cut and the author, editors and cover artists receive their cuts from what is left.  So, if a book costs $5.99 at E-Book Publisher.com and you buy from there, the author will receive about $2.40.  If you buy the book at Amazon, the author will receive about $0.83.

Downloading the file from your computer to your Kindle is as easy as transferring any file from your computer to a USB flash drive.  Plug the USB end of your chord into a USB port on your computer and simply move the file from your “Downloads” box to your Kindle/Documents/Books directory.  I actually download my books using “Save As” to a “Books” file I created on my computer that’s sorted by my publisher, friends, and books “to review,” and then transfer them to my Kindle from there.  That way, if there’s a glitch with my Kindle, the books are on my computer.  Your author will be happy you did when he/she sees his/her royalty statement.

Thanks for visiting.  RIW

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