Guest Post and Giveaway: Heat by RJ Scott and Chris Quinton

In Heat, one of our heroes, Devon, has an addiction to a sweet he’d never tasted before – Jelly Babies. My first taste of jelly babies as a child was clearly a good one, as I absolutely love the things! Although I can only eat about ten at a time, as they are very sickly sweet! I always thought they were covered in sugar powder but it is actually starch, although in the book, Heat, Lewis describes the white powder on Devon’s lips as sugar powder.

Jelly Babies are something people may know from Doctor Who. They are a type of soft sugar candy, or jelly, that are shaped as babies in a variety of colours. Yes, it’s probably weird to have something shaped as a baby. Not only that but there are ways of eating these sweets that include the decision to eat the head or feet first!

The sweets were originally called Unclaimed Babies, invented in 1864. In 1918 they were produced by Bassett’s in Sheffield (UK) as Peace Babies to mark the end of World War I. For the Americans reading this, Jelly Babies are similar in appearance to Gummy Bears, though the texture is different — Jelly Babies have a firmer outer layer and a softer, less rubbery centre, making them more similar to the American jelly bean.

Things you may not know about Jelly Babies…

When Beatlemania broke out in 1963, fans of The Beatles pelted the band with Jelly Babies (or, in the USA, the much harder jelly beans) after it was reported that George Harrison liked eating them.

In Doctor Who, Jelly Babies were often mentioned. First seen being consumed by the Second Doctor, they became most associated with Tom Baker’s Fourth Doctor, who had a predilection for offering them to strangers in order to defuse tense situations (Wiki). The Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, Eleventh, and Twelfth Doctors also offered them up in different episodes. The Doctor’s nemesis, the Master in “The Sound of Drums,” offers them to his wife on board the Valiant. I think this is why a lot of people outside the UK have actually come across these sweets!

In 2009, a poll of 4,000 British adults voted jelly babies their 6th favourite sweet. So my question to you is… what is YOUR favourite sweet, and do you feel like you have an addiction?

Heat

Available from Love Lane Books, Amazon and All Romance EBooks

The Book

Serving up passion, family, love and hate, with a side order of arson.

Lewis has lost nearly everything, and now it seems that Devon is here to take the last thing he has left – working in his beloved restaurant, Laurels. But when an arsonist threatens everything Lewis loves, he realizes sometimes everyone has their ghosts, and he discovers an unexpected ally who is prepared to risk everything for him.

Set in the small cathedral city of Salisbury, Master Chef Lewis Mandineau no longer owns the Laurels, the restaurant that had been in his family for generations. Betrayed and robbed by an ex-lover, he’s had to sell to Carnegie Enterprises, an American corporation. That isn’t all Lewis has to contend with. Rachel, his beloved younger sister has been left severely hurt by the car crash that killed their parents, and taking care of her has to be his priority.

Enter Devon Trelawney III, sent to assess the viability of the restaurant and its staff. Devon knows all about family tradition. But he also knows sentiment has no place in business matters, and the Laurels’ potential is swamped by the debts it has accrued. Devon is a hardheaded businessman, first and foremost, but Lewis and Rachel test his resolve in different ways. Soon Devon is forced to admit that what seems like an impossible love can sometimes become something very real.

Author Bios

RJ Scott has been writing since age six, when she was made to stay in at lunchtime for an infraction involving cookies. She was told to write a story and two sides of paper about a trapped princess later, a lover of writing was born.

As an avid reader herself, she can be found reading anything from thrillers to sci-fi to horror. However, her first real true love will always be the world of romance where she takes cowboys, bodyguards, firemen and billionaires (to name a few) and writes dramatic and romantic stories of love and passion between these men.

With nearly seventy titles to her name and counting, she is the author of the award winning book, The Christmas Throwaway. She is also known for the Texas series charting the lives of Riley and Jack, and the Sanctuary series following the work of the Sanctuary Foundation and the people it protects.

Her goal is to write stories with a heart of romance, a troubled road to reach happiness, and most importantly, that hint of a happily ever after.

mailto:rj@rjscott.co.uk
http://www.rjscott.co.uk/
http://www.facebook.com/author.rjscott?ref=ts&fref=ts
http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3432558.R_J_Scott
https://twitter.com/Rjscott_author
http://www.librarything.com/author/scottrj

Chris Quinton started creating stories not long after she mastered joined-up writing, somewhat to the bemusement of her parents and her English teachers. But she received plenty of encouragement. Her dad gave her an already old Everest typewriter when she was ten, and it was probably the best gift she’d ever received – until the inventions of the home-computer and the worldwide web.

Chris’s reading and writing interests range from historical, mystery, and paranormal, to science-fiction and fantasy, writing mostly in the male/male genre. She refuses to be pigeon-holed and intends to uphold the long and honourable tradition of the Eccentric Brit to the best of her ability. In her spare time [hah!] she reads, embroiders, quilts and knits. Over the years she has been a stable lad [briefly] in a local racing stable and stud, a part-time and unpaid amateur archaeologist, a civilian clerk at her local police station and a 15th century re-enactor.

She lives in a small and ancient city in the south-west of the United Kingdom, sharing her usually chaotic home with an extended family, three dogs, a frilled dragon [lizard] and sundry goldfish and tropicals.

mailto:chris.quintonwriter@ymail.com
http://chrisquintonwriter.blogspot.co.uk/
https://www.facebook.com/chris.quinton.14
https://twitter.com/Chris_writer
http://uk.pinterest.com/writerchris/
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2952441.Chris_Quinton
http://www.librarything.com/author/quintonchris

Excerpt

“Hey, Mom.”

“Oh my God. He lives.” Constance Trelawney was always the life and soul of any sarcasm party. It was a wonder he, Tom and Adam had turned out so well.

“Ha, ha.”

“Well, your dad said you’re still alive,” she said softly with a hint of her special brand of guilt-inducing reprimand.

“I had to talk to him, Mom, it was work.”

“Work. You do know I am attempting to organise your dad’s sixtieth. I haven’t any idea of what you are going to get him or that you’ll even be here.”

Jeez, the guilt just keeps on growing. “Of course I’ll be there.” He swung in his chair until he could see out the back window. Not that it was much of a view. All the good window positions were given up to clientele in the various dining places. His view consisted of a whitewashed building and a sign proclaiming that the alley was in constant use and illegally parked vehicles would be towed away. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

“That’s what you said for your brother’s twenty-first and where were you? Bora Bora, I believe?”

“Mom, that was years ago.” Even to his own ears he could hear clearly that, instead of being firm and unyielding, he was edging towards defensive.

“You work too hard,” she added.

Great. Now comes the “Devon is working too hard and doesn’t have a life” speech. He wanted to tell her he’d heard it all before, but she was his mom, and she was worried about him. He was her son and it was his job to ride the guilt trips as best he could. She loved him, and he loved her, that was the best equation. Guilt was the remainder and he could handle that.

“So, anyway, your dad says he’s told you to take at least three weeks on this job.”

Three weeks? “No, he said I should take more than my usual week,” Devon said. “I’ll probably stay until the weekend after next, then I need to book a flight to Edinburgh to check out the Trelawney properties there. I’ll email dad about that.”

“Will you be bringing Derek with you to the birthday party?”

Derek? With the artfully tousled blond bed-hair, the phony southern accent, and the fine line in acceptable table manners? Nah, he was yesterday’s news. Too many of the one-percenters’ children, spoilt idiots like Derek, were just small boys who never grew up.

“No, Mom, I told you we broke up. He’s off paragliding in the Seychelles last I heard.”

“And there’s no boyfriend now?”

“No. Mom, no boyfriend and no likelihood of one before the party, so you may want to renege on my plus one.” He was lucky his parents were so accepting of his sexuality, but there again, Adam was married with two kids and another on the way, so Devon had leeway.

His mom sighed the patented sigh of the put-upon parent. “I just want you to be happy. You work too hard.”

“You already said that,” he pointed out. “I’m thirty-two. I think I can look after myself.” He used his best teasing tone in the hope she would leave things be. His ploy failed spectacularly.

“Mark got married two weeks back. You remember him? As soon as they passed the vote, he proposed, and he and Liam were married on the beach. How long did you go out with Mark for? A year? Two?”

“Six months, Mom, and I always knew Mark was in love with his best friend.”

“Well, you have some time. Maybe you could meet a nice English boy and bring him home to meet us.”

“I’m working, Mom.”

And the only English boy—man—he’d met was Lewis, and while the angry maddening Brit was gorgeous, with beautiful sea-sapphire eyes, a sexy accent, and a slim, toned body, he was also staff, with a capital S. Devon never mixed business and pleasure.

Competition

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