There are a few things we can all enjoy at home. One is a good book. Another is ice cream. The Wild Rose Press has launched a new series called One Scoop or Two that combines these two treats.
Author Peggy Jaeger’s book releases May 20 and is on pre-sale now. Vanilla With a Twist is a sweet romance and Peggy conducted some serious research to get it just right. Read on for more from the author herself:
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My newest novella, VANILLA WITH A TWIST, is part of the Wild Rose Press’s new series One Scoop or Two. All the stories must involve ice cream in one way or another.
When I got the idea for Tandy Blakemore, my heroine, I made her an ice cream parlor owner who grew up on a dairy farm. Tandy knows everything about the dairy business and is an expert ice cream maker.
I grew up in NYC and the only thing I know about ice cream I learned from the Good Humor man. (Why does that sound a bit…dirty??)
I digress…
In order to give Tandy a plausible backstory and a believable present, I needed to do research on all things ice cream related, except for flavor tasting. I’m already an expert on that ( hee hee)
For instance, did you know:
~ the waffle cone was invented by accident? At the 1904 World’s Fair in Missouri, a vendor ran out of sugar cones and didn’t know what to do (disposable plastic bowls hadn’t been invented yet). Desperate, he asked the vendor to his right what to do. This vendor was a waffle maker. Brilliance shone upon them both and they decided to add ice cream to waffles they’d molded into a tube shape to hold the ice cream.
~ the ideal temperature for ice cream to be served at is 5-10 degrees F.
~90 % of American households eat some form of ice cream
~Vanilla is still the most popular ice cream flavor ( and why I made it Tandy’s favorite)
~in the US July is deemed National Ice Cream Month ( VWAT is set in July!)
~it takes 12 gallons of milk to create 1 gallon of ice cream ( Tandy’s brothers own a dairy farm and are her milk/cream supplier)
All that research paid off because I could give Tandy’s story real ice cream flavor (Pun intended!)
***no pounds were gained in the researching of this book! Hee hee
Blurb:
Tandy Blakemore spends her days running her New England ice cream parlor, single-parenting her teenage son, and trying to keep her head above financial water. No easy feat when the shop’s machinery is aging and her son is thinking about college. Tandy hasn’t had a day off in a decade and wonders if she’ll ever be able to live a worry-free life.
Engineer Deacon Withers is on an enforced vacation in the tiny seaside town of Beacher’s Cove. Overworked, stressed, and lonely, he walks into Tandy’s shop for a midday ice cream cone and gets embroiled in helping her fix a broken piece of equipment.
Can the budding friendship that follows lead to something everlasting?
Buy Links:
Amazon https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0868XXYQC
Nook https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/vanilla-with-a-twist-peggy-jaeger/1136710329?ean=2940162687870
Applebooks https://books.apple.com/us/book/vanilla-with-a-twist/id1505095515
Excerpt:
For a few moments, she regarded him with a look his mother would have called insightful. The corners of her eyes narrowed, she dipped her chin a hair, and she pulled her mouth into another appealing pout he was tempted to kiss.
“I bet,” she said after a long, drawn-out sigh, “you were the kind of kid who took apart clocks and fans and vacuum cleaners to see how they worked.”
“It was more washing machines and lawn mowers and anything with a motor, but yeah. I was.”
She shook her head, her own lips forming a lopsided grin. “Your poor mother.”
“She survived.”
Tandy rolled her eyes and shot her hands to her hips. “So it’s working again?” She thrust her chin at the ice cream machine.
“For now.”
“Okay, well, I can live with for now. And you think you know the real reason it’s been acting up?”
“I definitely do. But like I said, the water to the machine needs to be shut off to fix it.”
“Okay. Well, we close at nine.”
“I’ll come back a little before then. Get things ready. Is that okay with you?”
“I guess it’ll have to be.” She bit down on the inside of her cheek as her brows pulled together. “And you’re sure you want to do this?”
“If I weren’t, I wouldn’t offer, Tandy.”
Why her reluctance to have him help was such a turn-on was something he considered while he waited for his ice cream.
About the author:
Peggy Jaeger is a contemporary romance writer who writes Romantic Comedies about strong women, the families who support them, and the men who can’t live without them. If she can make you cry on one page and bring you out of tears rolling with laughter the next, she’s done her job as a writer!
Family and food play huge roles in Peggy’s stories because she believes there is nothing that holds a family structure together like sharing a meal…or two…or ten. Dotted with humor and characters that are as real as they are loving, she brings all topics of daily life into her stories: life, death, sibling rivalry, illness and the desire for everyone to find their own happily ever after. Growing up the only child of divorced parents she longed for sisters, brothers and a family that vowed to stick together no matter what came their way. Through her books, she’s created the families she wanted as that lonely child.
When she’s not writing Peggy is usually painting, crafting, scrapbooking or decoupaging old steamer trunks she finds at rummage stores and garage sales.
A lifelong and avid romance reader and writer, Peggy is a member of RWA and her local New Hampshire RWA Chapter.
As a lifelong diarist, she caught the blogging bug early on, and you can visit her at peggyjaeger.com where she blogs daily about life, writing, and stuff that makes her go “What??!”
Social Media links:
Website: http://peggyjaeger.com/
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BookBub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/peggy-jaeger
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Triberr: https://triberr.com/tribe/strong-women–loving-men
Pintrest: https://www.pinterest.com/peggyjaeger/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peggy-jaeger-296ab878/
Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00T8E5LN0
Authors database: https://authorsdb.com/community/15814-peggy-jaeger
