#Interview with Annette Bower, author of Oranges for Miranda with #Giveaway

Welcome to the tour for Oranges for Miranda, a sweet contemporary romance by Annette Bower! Today you get a sneak peek inside with an excerpt and then get to know the author better in an interview. Be sure to ask more questions in the comments section and follow the rest of the tour for even more. Best of luck entering the giveaway!

Miranda Porter, a newly retired award-winning businesswoman, leaves home to transition into her new life stage. Always in control, this is her time to have fun without plans and responsibilities. Enter Renato Monteiro, a considerate tour guide with secrets. Miranda isn’t looking for long-term. She wants a purpose in her retirement. Could her purpose in retirement be finding love in this unlikely place? Could her aim be domesticity and caring for and be cared for by a newly found friend? Will a vacation romance end because of miles?

Renato Monteiro has decisions to make. Stay in his birth country where his female relatives want him to marry a woman young enough to give him children. Or does he return to his second home, where he has a purpose and has built a life without children? The day Miranda and he bumped heads changed his life and his pursuit. Now he must decide which is most important the family he was born into or the family he chooses.

Read an excerpt:

A blue and white tiled stairway leading up to the second floor of a house caught Miranda’s eye. She positioned her phone and snapped photos as she thought about the amenities she would prefer in her perhaps forever home or home for a while. 

Orange trees in yards were stunning. Back home in Regina, residents planted fast-growing poplar trees in front of a row of fir trees, which would be mature when the Poplars had reached their life span. Her mind leapt. Stacy and Nathan were her fir trees. Her parents started the business and expanded it for her, and she, in turn, developed it for her children. She shook her head, no more thoughts of her Canadian life to ruin this beautiful day with the azure blue sky, the white stucco buildings and the red tile roofs.

Miranda stepped onto the corner café’s patio and sat on the blue-tiled bench attached to the blue-tiled table. A young woman, dressed in black, appeared from a dark interior and gave her a menu with different flags denoting the various translations of the food items. She ordered black coffee and a glass of brandy as a treat she had read that many locals enjoyed during the day. While she waited, she searched in her guide book to discover the tiled pavement in the area was called calcada.

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Thank you, Andi, for hosting today’s virtual book tour of my contemporary romance novel, Oranges for Miranda. 

Describe your book in one sentence or fewer than 25 words.

 I’ve decided to respond to my hero’s story. 

No one asks what it is like to be a fifty-five-year-old man childless by circumstances. So does Renato listen to his relatives or change his dream?

Which of your book worlds would you like to visit? 

I have visited and lived in all of my book worlds. I write about places I know. My books have taken place in Regina, the city I live in now, Regina Beach, the resort town we raised our children, and the Town of Lumsden, where our children went to school. The farms I’ve made up are similar to those where my relatives live. The town of Apex is similar to many small towns where the development of natural resources is on the doorstep. And this book, Oranges for Miranda, begins in Albufeira, Portugal, where we often traveled. I like writing about and sharing the places I’ve traveled to and lived. 

Who is your writing muse?

Many years ago, I attended a psychic fair. A talented psychic told me my spirit guide was a bearded Asian man sitting on my left shoulder. I am speculating that a wise person guiding me is satisfying if the theory that thinking in words is part of the left side of the brain’s specialty. I often wonder who is seated on my right shoulder, which is dominant for imagination and playfulness. I didn’t go back to the psychic, but in my imagination, my guide is a woman on a swing enjoying the wind in her hair as she dares to fly higher and higher. I have a ceramic sculpture of my left spirit guide and a paper mache figure of my right-side free spirit. 

It may not matter how many trinkets I have scattered around my workspace; the hard work still has to be done. I must work at writing as often as I can. When I am researching or writing, I have to be deep into the work. I also need a group of writers to share the ups and downs of this business. And I need friends who play and are silly because they feed my imagination. 

If you could have any superpower, what would it be? 

My superpower is being a grandma. I know this because my granddaughters enjoy spending time with me. We fill the living room floor with toy houses, dolls, vehicles, and animals. Most of the time, they claim the houses, and I build my own with the scraps of cardboard and boxes I save for this play. They invent their games, and I participate. Every grandchild deserves to have a grandma with the superpower to join them where they are at the time. 

What are you currently reading? Up next on your TBR?

I’m audio and eBook reading The Best Man by Kristan Higgins. I bought both books, and they sync to the page I read last in either audio or print. I enjoy this opportunity to continue the story as I drive around doing errands, attending appointments, or sitting down for quiet moments. 

My next TBR is a re-read of All the Devils Are Here by Louise Penny. I am getting ready for her new book. I have pre-ordered The Madness of Crowds, her 17^th, which will be released on August 24, 2021. 

Annette believes home is where her stories percolate. And her home is a condo where she watches the urban life below, airplanes arrive and depart at the international airport, and the seasons change on farmland near the horizon. Annette travels extensively but always returns home to Regina, Saskatchewan. Whether at home or away, and even though directions are always a challenge, she wanders the streets, parks, and lanes observing how people live, love, and care for one another. Your way of sitting, holding hands, the way you tilt your head, or a t-shirt you wear may end up in one of her stories. 

On her first trip to Olhos de Água, a fishing village in Portugal, she stopped at a café where the proprietors were a mother and daughter. Annette sat at the outdoor blue and white tiled table and ordered an espresso and brandy. While the sun warmed her back, she opened her new notebook. The older woman walked by carrying a basket, tipped her head toward Annette’s blank page, and shrugged. When black-laced heeled shoes struck the tile, and the scent of just-picked clementine oranges interrupted Annette’s writing, the woman plunked three oranges at the edge of her page. Annette cherishes this gift from one woman to another. Recently, Annette travels with an accompanying Orange and shares pictures on Social media as her way of honoring those Portugues women. A version of this event appears in her new novel, Oranges for Miranda. 

During another trip, while searching for an address in Malaga, Spain, she asked a well-dressed man carrying a floral paper-wrapped bouquet if he spoke English? Would he direct her to the address? With impeccable English, he suggested she walk with him. They chatted, and she discovered he was a lawyer in his final days of retiring. Finally, she asked to whom he was giving the flowers. He lifted the cover to reveal a large crucifix. This detail has not appeared in a story yet. 

In a coffee shop, looking south between glass tower office buildings, she could be anywhere in the world. However, she is home watching people on Eleventh Avenue run for buses, bring tea to a panhandler, and holding mittened hands while bending into the wind. 

Annette uses experiences she gathered as a nurse, town administrator, elected official, traveller, and member of a large extended family to inform her stories because writing is her joy. 

Annette Bower is a Soul Mate Publishing author of five contemporary romance novels. Her novel Fearless Destiny was first runner-up in the 2017 Sweet Contemporary RONE awards and winner of the Raven Award. Her novel Ponytails and Promises was a finalist in the 2020 RONE Awards and is the 2020 winner of the Raven Award.  

Webpage: https://annettebower.com/  (Also a sign up for my monthly newsletter)

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AnnetteBowerauthor/ 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/BowerAnnette

Annette Bower will be awarding a $25 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

a Rafflecopter giveaway