Hiya peeps! Today we have debut author Peter Grover popping in with his debut release The Weather Baker’s Son, we have a great guest post from Peter and you can check out an excerpt from this cover reveal post. So check out the post and enjoy! <3 ~Pixie~ 

The Weather Baker’s Son

Peter Grover

Nature’s call of desire among golden fields and intoxicating red-lipped poppies seems to proclaim a path to love and healing in southern France. Yet Peter, an American university student struggling with self-doubt following a failed love affair, is determined never to be hurt again. While on a vacation with his widowed mother, Peter is smitten by Gaston, a handsome local baker. Gaston, less bold than Peter, is drawn to Peter as well but fearful of the loss of family esteem—particularly the respect of his cousin Mario, who looks up to Gaston. Their friendship grows into more as Peter continues to visit the bakery, but their increasing intimacy does not go unnoticed. The road to fulfillment becomes increasingly obscured, and internal doubts and external events spiral out of control. The arrival of a handsome stranger, suspicions of murder, and the threat of harm might spell the end of more than just their relationship.

World of Love: Stories of romance that span every corner of the globe.

Peter Grover!

Hello MM Good Book Reviews. Thank you for the earlier cover reveal and for having me as a guest post on your review site! Your readers may like to visit the earlier cover reveal and catch the excerpt from the book there.

My book is part of Dreamspinner’s World of Desire project which is all about setting romance in different countries and evoking the special aspects of each country. So, I thought I would list 10 of my favorite sensations in southern France. Having rented a vacation home there a few times here are some of those favorite sights, smells, tastes that linger in my memory – some of which also show up in my book:

1) The smell of a fire in the great stone hearth. You could walk into it the hearth was so large with a long trestle table beside it where we would sit and stare into the dancing flames. We would have earlier wandered in the nearby pine woods and gathered up enormous pine cones strewn among the dry needles that carpeted the ground and cracked beneath our feet. These pine cones were excellent kindling for the logs we bought and would snap and pop indignantly as they became alight.

2) Pastis – the local liqueur Pernod or Pastis with its anise, licorice flavor diluted with water or to be mixed with green mint syrup to create a perroquet (parrot of course, bright green), a Mauresque (Moorish) when combined with Orgeat syrup or a tomate (tomato) when grenadine was added.

3) The musky smell of old stone in Roman ruins – that is why it is known as Provence as that is the contraction of the words Provincia Romana or Roman Province. This area was part of the Roman Empire and is stuffed with roman arenas, theatres, towns, roads, funerary monuments and much more, all with that cool smell of antiquity.

4) The grape-like smell of the blue irises that lined the path in the garden.

5) Rosemary – brushing against huge rosemary bushes would cause you to catch a whiff of its perfume as you passed which would linger where it brushed.

6) Color – everywhere, From the brilliant yellows of the rapeseed fields, to the red fields of poppies. There is the sunflower yellow and iris blue that inspired Van Gogh when he painted there. Of course, there is lavender blue as well, under an intense bright sunlight.

7) Chewy nougat. Thank you Montélimar – home of nougat. The smell and taste of honey, hazelnuts and pistachios in fresh nougat, a pleasure for the soul.

8) Aioli – that quintessential sauce of southern France, a mixture of garlic and olive oil, good on everything, especially vegetables.

9) Cheese and the cheese counter. Imagine the taste of so many varieties. Just glancing through the displays and taking in the rich scents is in itself an occasion.

10) Soft purple figs with a lush red inside, so big and juicy. and so sweet.

Well I hope many of you have had occasion to enjoy most of these things in France and will enjoy encountering some of them in my book.

About Peter

Peter Grover has received no end of inspiration from his life with his husband and a gaggle of ghosts in a Gothic Victorian house.  Peter has now arisen from a pile of dusty law books to relaunch his background in languages and literature, early passions before his career. Combining these passions with his many travels for work and pleasure has allowed him to illustrate local poetry, arts and landscapes that draw the reader into other, often exotic worlds.  Peter loves to hike the deserts and mountains of the Southwest US in the winter while enjoying the lush scenery and lakes of Central Canada in the summer.