The Sea Glass Cottage by RaeAnne Thayne - Blog Tour
Welcome to my stop
on The Sea Glass Cottage blog tour. This book was just released
on Tuesday and it is well worth picking up. If you’ve read some of my other
blog tour posts, you know that I love being a part of blog tours because it
gives me a chance to show behind the scenes information with the author via
Q&A. Also, if you are like me, you want a little more information about a
book besides the description on the back cover so I’m including an excerpt so
you can sample the book and find out if it is for you.
RaeAnne Thayne is a new
author to me. I know everyone says not to judge a book by its cover but I'm
very guilty of this. If the cover looks interesting, I'll pick up the
book to find out more and that is exactly what happened with this book. The
cover is absolutely beautiful and caught my attention right away and I’m very
glad it did.
Q&A
What made you write this
story? (The "story behind the story")?
That’s a very long
“story behind the story”! My husband of 34 years was adopted at birth to a wonderful
loving famiy and never knew anything about his birth parents. He was never
really interested, though I always wondered. He took a DNA test a few years ago
before going in for a major surgery, just out of curiosity so our kids could
know something about his ethnic heritage, and was astonished a few months later
when results from Ancestry.com came in linking him to several close relatives
on his maternal side. He wasn’t going to do anything about it but through a
very strange sequence of events, he eventually connected with three
half-brothers, an aunt and several uncles (including one who has been our
neighbor and friend for more than twenty years without either us knowing the
connection!). Unfortunately, my husband’s birth mother died several years ago
so he never had the chance to meet her but my husband now has a wonderful
relationship with his brothers, who have embraced and welcomed him. I have
heard of these kind of stories before and after living through the amazing
results from a simple DNA test, I wanted to write about someone trying to trace
her father. That’s one of the underlying subplots to The Sea Glass Cottage.
Do you have a favorite
character in The Sea Glass Cottage?
This is a hard question
because all my characters become cherished friends when I’m writing a book and
I love them all but I really adore Henry. He is just an amazing hero for
Juliet ☺
Where is your favorite
place to write?
I am the luckiest of writers because I have my own office. Several years ago, we made the impulsive decision to buy the house adjacent to ours. It was rundown and unsightly and kind of blighted the view from our backyard. Our plan was to fix it up to increase our own property value and then rent it out but after the renovation, I loved it too much to rent it out so I took it over. I have loved it! With a special needs son who has multiple disabilities and requires total care, life at my house is at times chaotic and messy but I always have such a sense of peace and calm when I go to my office. And I love that I can walk through the backyard in my jammies to go to work.
What inspired you to
become a writer?
I have been a voracious
reader all my life and have loved romance novels since I used to steal them out
of my mom’s room when I was still a preadolescent! I always used to tell
stories to my friends, usually involving our latest celebrity crushes. I didn’t
know I was destined to become a writer at the time but when I look back, I see
all the things that set me on the path. I actually wanted to be an actress and
was very involved in drama in high school, including performing in a repertory
theater company, but my mom persuaded me to take a journalism class my junior
year and I fell in love with telling stories. Even as I went into journalism
through college and my subsequent career as a reporter and editor, I dreamed of
writing a romance novel. I never imagined some day I could say I’ve written
sixty-something of them!
What does the future
hold in store for you? Any new books/projects on the horizon?
Yes! Always ☺ The last book in my Haven Point series, Summer at Lake Haven, comes out June 23. This is Samantha Fremont’s book, for those who have read others in the series. It also includes a surprise novella. Next up will be a standalone Christmas book in an all-new community, Silver Bells, Colorado. Christmas at Holiday House will be out in late September. And I recently spent three days at a California beach house with writer friends plotting my next hardcover and can’t wait to start writing it! The Path to Sunshine Cove (tentative title!) will also be set in Cape Sanctuary and will be out April 2021.
Yes! Always ☺ The last book in my Haven Point series, Summer at Lake Haven, comes out June 23. This is Samantha Fremont’s book, for those who have read others in the series. It also includes a surprise novella. Next up will be a standalone Christmas book in an all-new community, Silver Bells, Colorado. Christmas at Holiday House will be out in late September. And I recently spent three days at a California beach house with writer friends plotting my next hardcover and can’t wait to start writing it! The Path to Sunshine Cove (tentative title!) will also be set in Cape Sanctuary and will be out April 2021.
Excerpt
1
Olivia
Olivia shoved her hands
into her pockets against the damp Seattle afternoon. Nothing would take the
chill from her bones, though. She knew that. Even five days of sick leave,
huddling in her bed and mindlessly bingeing on cooking shows hadn’t done
anything but make her crave cake.
She couldn’t hide away
in her apartment forever. Eventually she was going to have to reenter life and
go back to work, which was why she stood outside this coffee shop in a typical
spring drizzle with her heart pounding and her stomach in knots.
This was stupid. The
odds of anything like that happening to her again were ridiculously small. She
couldn’t let one man battling mental illness and drug abuse control the rest of
her life.
She could do this.
She reached out to pull
the door open, but before she could make contact with the metal handle, her
cell phone chimed from her pocket.
She knew instantly from
the ringtone it was her best friend from high school, who still lived in Cape
Sanctuary with her three children.
Talking to Melody was
more important than testing her resolve by going into the Kozy Kitchen right
now, she told herself. She answered the call, already heading back across the
street to her own apartment.
“Mel,” she answered, her
voice slightly breathless from the adrenaline still pumping through her and
from the stairs she was racing up two at a time. “I’m so glad you called.”
Glad didn’t come close to covering the extent of her
relief. She really hadn’t wanted to go into that coffee shop. Not yet. Why
should she make herself? She had coffee at home and could have groceries
delivered when she needed them.
“You know why I’m
calling, then?” Melody asked, a strange note in her voice.
“I know it’s amazing to
hear from you. You’ve been on my mind.”
She was not only a
coward but a lousy friend. She hadn’t checked in with Melody in a few weeks,
despite knowing her friend was going through a life upheaval far worse than
witnessing an attack on someone else.
As she unlocked her
apartment, the cutest rescue dog in the world, a tiny, fluffy cross between a
Chihuahua and a miniature poodle, gyrated with joy at the sight of her.
Yet another reason she
didn’t have to leave. If she needed love and attention, she only had to call
her dog and Otis would come running.
She scooped him up and
let him lick her face, already feeling some of her anxiety calm.
“I was thinking how
great it would be if you and the boys could come up and stay with me for a few
days when school gets out for the summer,” she said now to Melody. “We could
take the boys to the Space Needle, maybe hop the ferry up to the San Juans and
go whale watching. They would love it. What do you think?”
The words seemed to be
spilling out of her, too fast. She was babbling, a weird combination of relief
that she hadn’t had to face that coffee shop and guilt that she had been
wrapped up so tightly with her own life that she hadn’t reached out to a friend
in need.
“My apartment isn’t very
big,” she went on without waiting for an answer. “But I have an extra bedroom
and can pick up some air beds for the boys. They’ve got some really comfortable
ones these days. I’ve got a friend who says she stayed on one at her sister’s
house in Tacoma and slept better than she does on her regular mattress. I’ve
still got my car, though I hardly drive it in the city, and the boys would love
to meet Otis. Maybe we could even drive to Olympic National Park, if you
wanted.”
“Liv. Stop.” Melody cut
her off. “Though that all sounds amazing and I’m sure the boys would love it,
we can talk about that later. You have no idea why I called, do you?”
“I… Why did you call?”
Melody was silent for a
few seconds. “I’m afraid there’s been an accident,” she finally said.
The breath ran out of
Olivia like somebody had popped one of those air mattresses with a bread knife.
“Oh no. Is it one of
your boys?” Oh please, she prayed. Don’t let it be one of the boys.
Melody had been through
enough over the past three months, since her jerkhole husband ran off with one
of his high school students.
“No, honey. It’s not my
family. It’s yours.”
Her words seemed to come
from far away and it took a long time for them to pierce through.
No. Impossible.
Fear rushed back in,
swamping her like a fast-moving tide. She sank blindly onto the sofa.
“Is it Caitlin?”
“It’s not your niece.
Stop throwing out guesses and just let me tell you. It’s your mom. Before you
freak out, let me just say, first of all, she’s okay, from what I understand. I
don’t have all the details but I do know she’s in the hospital, but she’s okay.
It could have been much worse.”
Her mom. Olivia tried to
picture Juliet lying in a hospital bed and couldn’t quite do it. Juliet Harper
didn’t have time to be in a hospital bed. She was always hurrying somewhere,
either next door to Sea Glass Cottage to the garden center the Harper family
had run in Cape Sanctuary for generations or down the hill to town to help a
friend or to one of Caitlin’s school events.
“What happened?”
“She had a bad fall and
suffered a concussion and I think some broken bones.”
Olivia’s stomach
twisted. A concussion. Broken bones. Oh man. “Fell where? Off one of the cliffs
near the garden center?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know
all the details yet. This just happened this morning and it’s still early for
the gossip to make all the rounds around town. I assumed you already knew. That
Caitlin or someone would have called you. I was only checking in to see how I
can help.”
This morning. She
glanced at her watch. Her mother had been in an accident hours earlier and
Olivia was just finding out about it now, in late afternoon.
Someone should have told
her—if not Juliet herself, then, as Melody said, at least Caitlin.
Given their recent
history, it wasn’t particularly surprising that her niece, raised by Olivia’s
mother since she was a baby, hadn’t bothered to call. Olivia wasn’t Caitlin’s
favorite person right now. These days, during Olivia’s regular video chats with
her mother, Caitlin never popped in to say hi anymore. At fifteen, Caitlin was
abrasive and moody and didn’t seem to like Olivia much, for reasons she didn’t
quite understand.
“I’m sure someone tried
to reach me but my phone has been having trouble,” she lied. Her phone never
had trouble. She made sure it was always in working order, since so much of her
freelance business depended on her clients being able to reach her and on her
being able to Tweet or post something on the fly.
“I’m glad I checked in,
then.”
“Same here. Thank you.”
Several bones broken and
a long recovery. Oh dear. That would be tough on Juliet, especially this time
of year when the garden center always saw peak business.
“Thank you for telling
me. Is she in the hospital there in Cape Sanctuary or was she taken to one of
the bigger cities?”
“I’m not sure. I can
call around for you, if you want.”
“I’ll find out. You have
enough to worry about.”
“Keep me posted. I’m
worried about her. She’s a pretty great lady, that mom of yours.”
Olivia shifted,
uncomfortable as she always was when others spoke about her mother to her.
Everyone loved her, with good reason. Juliet was warm, gracious, kind to just
about everyone in their beachside community of Cape Sanctuary.
Which made Olivia’s own
awkward, tangled relationship with her mother even harder to comprehend.
“Will you be able to
come home for a few days?”
Home. How could she go
home when she couldn’t even walk into the coffee shop across the street?
“I don’t know. I’ll have
to see what’s going on there.”
How could she possibly
travel all the way to Northern California? A complicated mix of emotions seemed
to lodge like a tangled ball of yarn in her chest whenever she thought about
her hometown, which she loved and hated in equal measures.
The town held so much
guilt and pain and sorrow. Her father was buried there and so was her sister.
Each room in Sea Glass Cottage stirred like the swirl of dust motes with
memories of happier times.
Olivia hadn’t been back
in more than a year. She kept meaning to make a trip but something else always
seemed to come up. She usually went for the holidays at least, but the previous
year she’d backed out of even that after work obligations kept her in Seattle
until Christmas Eve and a storm had made last-minute travel difficult. She had
spent the holiday with friends instead of with her mother and Caitlin and had
felt guilty that she had enjoyed it much more than the previous few when she
had gone home.
She couldn’t avoid it now, though. A trip back
to Cape Sanctuary was long overdue, especially if her mother needed her.
If you are interested in learning more about RaeAnne Thayne
you can visit her website, www.raeannethayne.com. You
can also connect with her on various social media sites.
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