Today is release for the print version of ROCKY MOUNTAIN HAVEN. This book, like the heroine, Beth, has a bit of a twisted past. Moving forward and making changes has turned out to be one of the best things that happened to either of us.

FIVE THINGS ABOUT ROCKY MOUNTAIN HAVEN

1. The original title for the story was Rocky Mountain High. Since the heroine is a teacher in the high school, I thought that would totally work. Also, salute to John Denver, ya know. Only TPTB thought the title sent too young an image for a hot romance, and I had to come up with a new title. I think Haven ended up being just right.

2. After it was originally published in March, 2010 as a 40k category length story by Liquid Silver Books, I had a number of readers contact me to tell me Beth was perfect. The fear and strength that’s present in a woman who has faced abuse and moved on—it was real to them. Their letters still make me cry.

3. Rocky Mountain Haven won the Best Erotic Western Romance EPPIE of 2010. This was one of the first awards/honours I’d ever received as an author, and was all the more special because it was for this book.

4. When I decided to bring the series to Samhain Publishing, I was on the road traveling with the family for a year. We were on a temporary layover on Prince Edward Island during the three weeks that I revised and expanded the story to its current word count. As a Canadian I get a kick out of the fact I wrote a book just down the road (literally) from Anne of Green Gables home.

5. When Rocky Mountain Haven came out in digital in January of this year, I was in Ecuador with the family (yes, we are gypsies!) We had a book release party with the neighbors on the deck of the house we were staying in, and a week later we had another, even bigger party, as readers took the book onto the USA and NYT bestsellers list.

Authors have books that are defining moments in their writing career. I have a few of those, from Wolf Signs, which started the adventure, and High Risk coming in March of 2013. But Rocky Mountain Haven certainly meets the criteria for being a life-changing moment for me in so many ways.

I’m glad to share a HEA with Beth and Daniel.

Rocky Mountain Haven

Six Pack Ranch, Book 2

It’s the quiet ones that take you by surprise.

Beth Danube’s emotionally abusive husband is dead and buried. So is her heart. It’s no big deal, she has all she wants: her three little boys and a fresh start in a small Alberta town. What she doesn’t want is another man in her life—not now, maybe not ever.

After ten years of unsatisfactory, missionary-position sex, she never expected her libido to reawaken. One look at sex-in-boots Daniel Coleman in a Calgary bar, though, blows the dust off her sexuality.

Sensing an edge of desperation, even fear, beneath Beth’s come-on, Daniel finds himself giving in to the powerful urge to let his normally subdued desires run wild. The lady wants non-judgemental, non-vanilla sex? She’s got it—in and out of the bedroom.

At first, friends with blazing-hot benefits is more then enough. Then she realizes Daniel is burning away the protective fortress around her heart…and the guilty secret she dare not reveal.

Warning: One woman determined to retake control of her life, a man with the single-minded purpose of offering her—and her body—everything she needs. Inappropriate behaviour in barns, change rooms, and oh-my-gawd phone sex with a cowboy.

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Vivian Arend: Website | Blog | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads

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For a chance to win a print copy of ROCKY MOUNTAIN HAVEN or ROCKY MOUNTAIN HEAT (book 1 in the series), just leave a comment below. Good luck!