Search This Blog

Small Change: Promo and Giveaway!

Thursday, February 13, 2014
BLURB:

Take a trip to the charming little town of Heart Lake, and meet three best friends you’ll never forget. . . .

Rachel, Jessica, and Tiffany have major money problems. Tiffany’s whipped out the plastic one too many times, and now a mountain of debt has come crashing down on her. Jessica’s husband has lost his job, thrusting this longtime stay-at-home mom out into the cold, cruel workforce. And Rachel’s divorce transformed her from an upper-middle-class mom to a strapped-for-cash divorcée. So the three women start a financial support group called the Small Change Club—vowing to bring balance back to their checkbooks…and, in turn, their lives. Along the way they learn some valuable lessons—that friendship is an investment that keeps on growing and that sometimes love, like a loose coin, can be found in the most unexpected places…


“Roberts’s trademark humor and memorable characters wrestling with real-life issues add up to a novel that will make readers smile and wish for more.”—BookPage

Excerpt One:

There it sat, a Cloud Nine queen-sized luxury gold comforter with red ribbon appliqué and metallic embroidery. Forty-percent off. It was the last one left. Tiffany Turner had seen it, and so had the other woman.

The woman caught Tiffany looking at it and her eyes narrowed. Tiffany narrowed hers right back. Her competitor was somewhere in her fifties, dressed for comfort in jeans and a sweater, her feet shod in tennis shoes for quick movement – obviously a sale veteran, but Tiffany wasn’t intimidated. She was younger. She had the drive, the determination.
           
It only took that one second to start the race. The other woman strode toward the comforter with the confidence that comes with age, her hand stretched toward the prize.
           
Tiffany chose that moment to look over her competitor’s shoulder. Her eyes went wide and she gasped. “Oh, my gosh.” Her hands flew to her face in horror.
           
The other woman turned to see the calamity happening in back of her.
           
And that was her undoing. In a superhuman leap, Tiffany bagged the comforter just as her competitor turned back. Score.

Boy, if looks could kill.
           
It would be rude to gloat.  Tiffany gave an apologetic shrug and murmured, “Sorry.”
           
The woman paid her homage with a reluctant nod. “You’re good.”
           
Yes, I am. “Thanks,” Tiffany murmured, and left the field of battle for the customer service counter.

As she walked away, she heard the other woman mutter, “Little beast.”

Okay, now she’d gloat.

She was still gloating as she drove home from the mall an hour later. She’d not only scored on the comforter, she’d gotten two sets of towels (buy one, get one free), a great top for work, a cute little jacket, a new shirt for Brian, and a pair of patent metallic purple shoes with 3 ½ inch heels that were so hot she’d burn the pavement when she walked. With the new dress she’d snagged at thirty percent off (plus another ten percent off for using her department store card), she’d be a walking inferno. Brian would melt when he saw her.

Her husband would also melt if he saw how much she’d spent today, so she had to beat him home. And since he would be back from the office in half an hour, she was now in another race, one that she didn’t dare lose. That was the downside of hitting the mall after work. She always had to hurry home to hide her treasures before Brian walked in the door.  But she could do it.

Tiffany followed the Abracadabra shopping method: get the bargain and then make it disappear for a while so you could later insist that said bargain had been sitting around the house for ages. She’d learned that one from her mother. Two years before, she had successfully used the Guessing Game method: bring home the bargains, and lull husband into acceptance by having him guess how incredibly little you’d paid for each one.

She’d pull a catch of the day from its bag and say, “Guess how much I paid for this sweater.”

He’d say, “Twenty dollars.”

“Too high,” she’d reply with a smirk.

“Okay. Fifteen.”

“Too high.”

“Ten.”

“Nope. Eight-ninety-nine. I’m good.”

And she was. As far as Tiffany was concerned, the three sexiest words in the English language were fifty percent off. She was a world-class bargain hunter (not surprising, since she’d sat at the feet of an expert – her mom), and she could smell a sale a mile away.

Great as she was at ferreting out a bargain, she wasn’t good with credit cards. It hadn’t taken Tiffany long to snarl her finances to the point where she and Brian had to use their small, start-a-family savings and Brian’s car fund to bail her out.

She’d felt awful about that, not only because she suspected they’d never need that family fund anyway (that suspicion was what led to her first shopping binge), but because Brian had suffered from the fallout of her mismanagement. He’d had his eye on some rusty old beater on the other side of the lake and had been talking about buying and restoring it. The car wound up rusting at someone else’s house, thanks to her. Even the money they’d scraped together for her bailout wasn’t enough. She’d had to call in the big guns: Daddy. That had probably been harder on Brian than waving good-bye to their savings.

 AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Sheila Roberts lives in the Pacific Northwest. She's happily married and has three children. 
   
Writing since 1989, Sheila’s books have been printed in several different languages and have been chosen for book clubs such as Doubleday as well as for Readers Digest Condensed books. Her best-selling novel ON STRIKE FOR CHRISTMAS was made into a movie and appeared on the Lifetime Movie Network, and her novel THE NINE LIVES OF CHRISTMAS has just been optioned for film. Her novel ANGEL LANE was named one of Amazon’s Top Ten Romances for 2009.
    
When she's not making public appearances or playing with her friends, she can be found writing about those things near and dear to women's hearts: family, friends, and chocolate.

website: http://www.sheilasplace.com

find me on Facebook as Sheila Roberts, author

Twitter: _Sheila_Roberts

Amazon buy link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/125004376X/ref=s9_simh_gw_p14_d1_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0YXFTNH3EDEBDFNAE8E7&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1630083502&pf_rd_i=507846

GIVEAWAY:

Sheila will be awarding a copy of Small Change and a $25 Visa gift card to a randomly drawn commenter during the tour (US ONLY), and a $25 Visa gift card to a randomly drawn host.

9 comments:

  1. Rita Wray said...:

    I enjoyed the excerpt, thank you.

  1. Anonymous said...:

    Sounds like a fun one!

    vitajex(at)aol(Dot)com

  1. Unknown said...:

    As a stay at home mom, myself, I'm sure I can relate to some of this book. Thanks for the introduction.
    saltsnmore at yahoo dot com

  1. Unknown said...:

    Thanks for the great excerpt. I love the cover and this sounds like a book that I would enjoy. I hope you continue to write and share your wonderful talent with us. Thanks for the chance to win a great book.

  1. bn100 said...:

    Sounds like a helpful club

    bn100candg at hotmail dot com

  1. Thanks for sharing.
    ilookfamous@yahoo.com

  1. Great cover!

    davesmsperfect@yahoo.com

  1. Natasha said...:

    Sounds like a great read!!
    Thanks for the chance to win!
    natasha_donohoo_8 at hotmail dot com