Hiya guys, Shira Anthony pops in today with her newest release First Comes Marriage, the second book in the Dreamspun Desires series, we have a great guest post, a brilliant excerpt and a fantastic giveaway so enjoy the post and click that rafflecopter link <3 ~Pixie~

First Comes Marriage

Shira Anthony

Their marriage was supposed to be all business….

When struggling novelist Chris Valentine meets Jesse Donovan, he’s interested in a book contract, or possibly a date. The last thing Chris expects is a marriage proposal from New York City’s most eligible bachelor!

Jesse’s in a pinch. To keep control of his company, he has to marry. So he has valid reasons for offering Chris this business deal: in exchange for living in a gorgeous mansion for a year, playing the doting husband, Chris gets all the writing time he wants and walks away with a million-dollar payoff. Surely Chris can handle that. He can handle living with the most handsome and endearing man he’s ever met, a man he immediately knows he wants in the worst way and can’t have. Or can he?

Shira Anthony

Thank you for hosting the First Comes Marriage book tour! For those readers who may not already know, First Comes Marriage is the second book in the brand new Dreamspun Desires line of gay category romances from Dreamspinner Press. Be sure to read to the bottom of the post for an excerpt from the book, as well as the Rafflecopter giveaway. You could win a dozen red roses for your sweetheart or yourself!

What’s a “category” romance? I didn’t know the term myself until a few years ago, but I knew the books! These were the Harlequin, Silhouette, Boon & Mills books many of our mothers read. You remember, the ones that came four to a box and were shipped every month? The covers all looked the same, and many were numbered sequentially, like magazines. They were called category romances because they were all from the same category of feel-good stories, all of a certain length (shorter novel), and were very formulaic or, what I might call tropey.

Putting romance tropes aside for a moment, though, there was another element in the classic romances that made them particularly fun for me: they were populated by lots of great secondary characters. Whether it was the man the heroine was expected to marry (some were good, some were not), the hero’s mother (most of these, unfortunately, were conniving and mean), the hero or heroine’s sister who helps try to get the two lovers together, the evil ex-boyfriend, or the hand of god (hurricanes and other storms make great secondary characters!), these characters helped give the traditional boy meets girl, boy marries girl stories I grew up with an extra helping of tension.

The way I see it, the better the supporting cast, the better the book. So when I was writing First Comes Marriage, I thought about these traditional characters and how to put them in some non-traditional roles. My favorite of these characters in First Comes Marriage is Wenda, the woman who stands to gain control of the Donovan family empire if Jesse Donovan doesn’t marry.

Jesse and Wenda have never gotten along. After his parents’ deaths, Jesse was raised by his grandfather. When his grandfather marries Wenda, who isn’t all that much older than Jesse, Jesse sees Wenda as interfering in his relationship with the only father he’s ever known. Typical conniving, evil woman?

Maybe, and maybe not.

Wenda is in a very real sense the key to the two main characters, Jesse and Chris, finding their way to each other. She challenges their marriage and her late husband’s will in court, and that challenge brings Jesse and Chris closer. Together, they must counter Wenda’s belief that their marriage is a sham. Which, of course, it is!

I won’t spoil the story, but suffice it to say that Chris comes to like and respect Wenda. Jesse isn’t keen on that friendship, but he admits that his feelings about Wenda are in part very childish. Jesse is forced to look at himself honestly for a change in part because Chris shows him a side of Wenda Jesse never appreciated.

I’ll leave you with an excerpt from the book where Chris meets Wenda for the first time. The two are pretty well-matched, and it was a lot of fun to write. I hope you enjoy it!

–Shira

Excerpt

Excerpt from Chapter Thirteen

That night Chris settled for yet another dinner alone in the Red Room, the smaller of two dining rooms at the estate. The day before, he’d asked Marcie to join him, but she’d flatly refused. “After his grandfather died, I told Mr. Donovan that if I was going to stay on, I wanted him to keep things the way they’d always been.” In spite of this, she’d still ended up chatting with him over coffee after she served him a delicious dinner of freshly caught bass and vegetables she’d grown in the garden on the side of the house.

Tonight, however, after Marcie cleared what was left of Chris’s meal, it was not she who walked into the Red Room ten minutes later but an attractive middle-aged woman with a shoulder-length blonde bob. Dressed in a well-tailored linen pantsuit that wore its myriad wrinkles well, she looked as though she’d just flown in from somewhere tropical. Which, apparently, she had, since Marcie came chasing after her, saying, “Mrs. Donovan, you must be tired from the flight. I’d be happy to serve you some dinner in your rooms, if you’d—”

“You’re the wife?” the woman said. Chris knew she had to be Jesse’s stepgrandmother, Wenda.

“Wrong plumbing,” Chris joked, hoping to ease the tension.

“Was that supposed to be a joke?” Wenda countered.

Not much for humor. “Chris Valentine.” Chris stood and offered her his hand. “Husband.”

She didn’t shake his hand but took her measure of him, eyeing him from head to toe. The scrutiny made Chris want to squirm, but he schooled his expression and willed his face not to twitch. “I didn’t know Jesse had any interests outside the usual,” she said. “Then again, you’re far easier on the eyes than the usual.”

Chris chuckled. “Thank you. I think.” So maybe she does have a sense of humor. Dry as the Sahara, but….

She narrowed her eyes and turned to Marcie, whom Chris had nearly forgotten was still standing there. “I’d like some dinner, unless that’s a problem.”

Marcie squeaked, “No, of course not, Mrs. Donovan,” then skittered off to the kitchen.

“Long flight?” Chris asked and pulled a chair out from the table.

Wenda raised a questioning eyebrow, then sat heavily. “Missed my connection in Puerto Rico. I should have taken the company jet.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Her eyes grew wide. Had she expected him to just roll over and play dead? “I… I prefer not to. It’s a waste if it’s only me.”

This doubly surprised Chris, that she’d consider the expense and that she’d admit it. “Sounds reasonable.”

“You’re not what I expected,” she said.

About Shira

Shira Anthony is a complete sucker for a happily-ever-after, and rarely reads or writes a story without one. Never a fan of instalove, Shira likes to write stories about real men with real issues making real relationships work. 

In her last incarnation, Shira was a professional opera singer, performing roles in such operas as “Tosca,” “i Pagliacci,” and “La Traviata,” among others. She’s given up TV for evenings spent with her laptop, and she never goes anywhere without a pile of unread M/M romance on her Kindle.

Shira is married with two children and two insane dogs, and when she’s not writing she is usually in a courtroom trying to make the world safer for children. When she’s not working, she can be found aboard a 36’ catamaran at the Carolina coast with her favorite sexy captain at the wheel.

Interested in hearing Shira sing? Here’s a link to a live performance of Shira singing an aria from Puccini’s “Tosca”: http://www.shiraanthony.com/wp-conten…

You can subscribe to Shira’s monthly newsletter for updates, free fiction, and subscriber-only contests here: http://www.shiraanthony.com/newsletter/

Where to find the author:

Giveaway!

First Comes Marriage is all above love and romance, and Shira’s grand prize is a dozen red roses for your sweetheart (or whoever you think deserves it!). First prize is a $10 Dreamspinner Gift Certificate.

Shira Anthony Rafflecopter giveaway!

Check out the other blogs on the blog tour