Sunday, August 31, 2008

When Heroes Collide...

Forgotten is the story of Caitlyn Smythe and Brandon Price; Forgotten is an unforgettable romance about two people who meet by chance,
love by choice and are torn apart by intrigue. Their romance survives a foreign threat to national security, kidnapping, personal tragedy and a murder attempt.

Readers of Forgotten will get to meet the hero of my next book, Within the Law (to be published November 2008). Here is the first time that Brandon Price (hero of Forgotten) and Tom Hughes (hero of Within the Law) meet...

The next day, Brandon bought another cup of coffee and drove down the road back into her town. Feeling determined, he parked directly in front of her house and stood beside his car for a few minutes trying to muster his courage. Her porch had a glider swing and rattan table just to the side of the door and he could easily imagine her having a morning cup of coffee out there while she enjoyed the lake view. In a brief fantasy, he saw himself seated next to her... sated from their nights and cheerful about their days. He hoped it wasn’t too late.

The house, as Malcolm explained it, had been her childhood home. She had lived there until, at the tender age of twelve, a drunk driver had run her parents off the road. Then she went to live with relatives. She moved to the city several years later. The relatives arranged for a realtor to rent the house out until Caitlyn’s twenty-first birthday when it would became hers. Her parents’ life insurance had paid off the house and the rent covered taxes and maintenance. It was definitely worth holding on to until Caitlyn came of age and made her own lifelong decisions. Since the house was paid off, all Caitlyn had to worry about was the current taxes and utilities.

It was small with just a patch of a front yard and a gravel-lined driveway along side it. Brandon didn’t see any car beside the house. The roof was sharply peaked and close-up he could see the paint was gray and weathered from the harsh winters and lakefront winds. A dented metal mailbox to the side of the porch steps had a red flag standing up. Two flower boxes hung off either side of the porch, both boxes had tiny white flowers. An empty cardboard carton, the kind used for appliance deliveries, sat at the end of the porch.

He walked up three wooden steps onto the porch. He hesitated just a moment before rapping his knuckles firmly against the door. A minute or two passed with no answer, he repeated his knock. Brandon rehearsed the words he planned to say to her and he hoped she would give him a chance to plead his case. Still there was no answer. He noticed a window behind the glider and took the few steps to it. He cupped his hands over the glass and tried to peer in through the sheer curtains covering the window. The living room was sparsely furnished, a big overstuffed sofa sat in the middle of the room. She had used a lot of bright colors to decorate and he thought that suited her. Whenever Caitlyn came into a room, everything always came alive. Beyond the sofa, in the dim shadows, it looked like she was doing renovations. One of the walls had some white patches.

“Can I help you?” A man’s voice called from behind him.

Brandon quickly turned in the direction of the question. He saw a state trooper’s car parked behind his. Standing just outside the cruiser’s open door was the same man he had seen with Caitlyn the day before. This time, he was in uniform.

“I’m looking for Caitlyn... Smythe” Brandon walked to the top of the porch steps.

The officer closed the car door and approached. “And you are?”

He waited until the officer was closer. “A friend of hers from New York City.” He wanted to say her husband, but at the same time he didn’t want to cause her problems and he wasn’t sure what she might have told people.

“Caitlyn’s at work. I just drove her there.” His answer was very matter-of-fact.

Brandon came down the steps to face the other man. He felt resentment that the trooper had so much familiarity with her. The two had gone out to dinner the night before and Brandon didn’t see him leave her house afterwards. And now this morning he’d already driven her to work. Brandon’s jealously mounted as he wondered if this man had spent the entire night with Caitlyn. At the same time, Brandon wanted Caitlyn to be happy and wanted her to find someone who could make her happy. It hurt to think he might not be that man.

“You know her pretty well?” Brandon was trying to figure out what kind of relationship this man had with her.

“Yeah.” The officer was wary. He wasn’t offering any information. “Is there any message you want me to give her?”

Officer Hughes, as his nametag read, was a local guy who obviously had been spending a lot of time with Caitlyn. He definitely seemed to feel entitled to act protective of her. Hughes was about his height and weight, maybe a little younger. A gray hat rested squarely on his head and shielded his sun-glassed eyes from the glare of the sun that was making Brandon squint.

“Just that... her friends from the city miss her.” He mentally sized the officer up. His jealous fantasies almost grew out of control. He wanted to punch Hughes. But that certainly wouldn’t win any favors from Caitlyn. He knew she detested violence. And without first speaking to Caitlyn, he didn’t want to make any assumptions that she would want him to even come back into her life.

“Can I give her your name?” It was obvious that the officer was assessing Brandon in the same alpha-male dominant way. He stood with his feet firmly planted on the ground facing Brandon.

“No, it’s not necessary.” There were few times that Brandon had ever felt this unsure of himself. His lack of confidence annoyed him. But the other man’s confidence seemed to be more than enough for the two of them.

Hughes cocked his head, “Are you going to be staying around?”

It was a challenge, not a question. Brandon saw defiance in the other man’s expression. Officer Hughes definitely felt he had the right to be there, that he had the right to question Caitlyn’s visitor.

Brandon wondered if it was time to sign the annulment papers, if it was time to let her go. He wondered if that would make Caitlyn happiest. “No, I’m driving back to the city.” He looked back at the house. “I guess that there is nothing more for me to do here.”

Buy Forgotten from Amazon

Buy Forgotten the E-Book

~~~~~

Friday, August 29, 2008

Remember...

THIS Sunday!
Books with Heart Blog Talk Radio Show
Sunday, August 31, 6:30PM EST
Join VHP Author Chelle Cordero, and Kimberlee Williams, Vanilla Heart Publishing Managing Partner, as they discuss author promotion and marketing techniques and tips! Chelle's strategies for promotion and marketing of her books, Bartlett's Rule, Forgotten, and coming soon, Within the Law are hugely successful, so be there and learn the secrets to exploding your book sales.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Thank you Barbara Nackman!

Barbara Livingston Nackman's Book-by-Book blog on Lohud.com features an article about the Origin Books, Art & Coffee event on Sunday, September 7 in the Nanuet Mall.


Check it out - Rockland author gets discussed - August 25, 2008

Monday, August 25, 2008

What I did for my summer vacation...

Check out my 3-part series about my summer vacation trip to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick in Canada.

Great pics (even if I do say so myself)

1: I’m back home!
2: The Halifax Sites - my vacation trip - part deux
3: St. Andrews and the whales ~ and back to the USA

Who knows what experiences will make it into a future novel????

Friday, August 22, 2008

I've kissed a few frogs...

This is the story of my own romance.

As a romance author I believe that my readers have a right to hear why I am such a "hopeless romantic". I think my story is truly romantic, I hope I won't bore you.

One day in the halls of my high school, the High School of Art & Design in NYC, I remember punching this rather annoying, anal hall monitor who wouldn't let me get onto the school's escalator between periods. It was common practice for Theatre Arts students to eat their lunch backstage the days before a big show so that we could work on the set; if we didn't bring lunch from home, we bought it in the cafeteria and took it to the auditorium. Nobody bothered with hall passes! But this creep stopped me, without a proper pass he wasn't going to let me pass - AND HE THREATENED TO REPORT ME TO THE DEAN. So I punched him and ran the other way.

Years later during the busy days of college and an active social life (oh yeah, I had fun!) I volunteered with the NYC Auxiliary Police Dept, 52nd pct. in the Bronx. My dad was the Auxiliary Captain of our unit by the way. One of my tasks in the AP was to interview new recruits to the unit and make sure they knew what was expected of them - well, 6 months after I joined I wound up interviewing that anal hall monitor, his name was Mark. We still disliked each other intensely; we had some very unkind words to say about each other.

Auxiliaries did foot patrol in the local neighborhood. Invariably the Sgt. assigned patrol pairs and I kept getting paired with Mark. I was irate but I refused to give up going out on patrol and that was the only option I was given. I complained to my dad weekly and he told me that it wasn't his decision, I should speak to the Patrol Sgt. The Patrol Sgt. directed me to the Lt. The Lt. told me to speak to the Capt. My dad kept sending me on another wild goose chase.

Through the years I had dated quite a bit, my boyfriends were varied in jobs, traits, pastimes, etc. The most memorable were the playwriter who also did a gig writing theatre reviews for a well-known trade paper (he is STILL doing quite nicely and I see items about him and his plays now and then), the guitar player who always dedicated the song "Wild Thing" to me, and the fellow I met in another Auxiliary Police unit who wanted to leave his fortune-500 job to become a state trooper. I received two very serious marriage proposals and actually gave thought to accepting one of them. Anyway, Mark was NOTHING like any of the guys I usually dated.

Then came the day I volunteered for crowd control at a Memorial Day Parade. I was in full uniform and had signed in to wait for my assignment; this was a borough/county wide event and there were many auxiliaries there that I didn't know. One older gentleman decided to make a play for me and try as I could, I couldn't seem to discourage him without making a scene. The first person I saw that I knew was Mark, so I went over to him and started an argument about his insignia; the older guy saw that I wasn't going to pay him any attention so he finally gave up.

After the parade was over, Mark & I were both invited to another unit member's home for hot chocolate (it was a chilly day!). There was a lot of joking and teasing about a woman who was throwing herself at Mark (she wasn't there-he was just being ribbed about it) and I joined in the banter. Unexpectedly Mark invited me out for dinner that next weekend - I THOUGHT HE WAS JOKING and I said "sure". It wasn't until later that week when Mark's sis made a reference to my upcoming date that I realized it was for real - I didn't want to go back on my word. That date was June 1, 1974.

The evening of June 15 we went to a dinner party at his sister's house. When we left, instead of driving me home, Mark drove behind a deserted and closed shopping center! I had no idea what to expect, honestly a lot of uncomfortable things ran through my head. He proposed! I said No! THREE TIMES. Finally he told me that the only way he was going to drive me home was to accept his proposal - so I said okay, I wanted to go home! Honestly, I had planned to ask my dad to beat him up! But my parents were sleeping... Later that night when my mom asked how my date was, I told them about the proposal. MY DAD WAS ECSTATIC!

Mark and I were married on December 28, 1975 during a blizzard. My sister fell down a flight of stairs at home and I was late to my own wedding while we took care of her. My mom, a diabetic, had a serious sugar reaction and spent the day sick, my grandmother and my dad got into an argument (they were both worried about my mom) and my father-in-law got drunk and sang When Irish Eyes Are Smiling from the dais. Here we are almost 33-years and two fantastic kids later and I still feel like I'm on my honeymoon!

As a writer I always try to put "something" about Mark into each of my romantic heroes, a habit, a comon phrase, any quality... In Courage of the Heart (originally published in 2001, it will be RE-RELEASED by Vanilla Heart Publishing next spring), Adam Sherman has hazel eyes that change color with his moods - so does Mark.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Marketing & Promotion - Blog Talk Radio show

http://www. blogtalkradio. com/Books-with-Heart

Due to technical difficulties on Aug 10 - Kimberlee Williams from Vanilla Heart Publishing and author Chelle Cordero have rescheduled the BTR show on Marketing & Promotions to Sunday, August 31 at 6:30PM EST!

Join VHP Author Chelle Cordero, and Kimberlee Williams, Vanilla Heart Publishing Managing Partner, as they discuss author promotion and marketing techniques and tips! Chelle's strategies for promotion and marketing of her books, Bartlett's Rule, Forgotten, and coming soon, Within the Law are hugely successful, so be there and learn the secrets to exploding your book sales.

Sunday, August 31, 6:30PM EST

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

I'm baaaaccckkk!

Our vacation in Novia Scotia and New Brunswick, Canada was an absolute delight! We did some great sightseeing and had wonderful adventures - quite possibly some of these experiences will make it into a future novel? I will be blogging about my trip on my MySpace blog at http://blog.myspace.com/rikki613 - check it out!

Now that I am back, it is back to the business of writing and my books...

This month I am a featured author on RomancingtheNovel.com - readers can also enter to win an autographed copy of my latest novel Forgotten; Deadline to enter is August 31, 2008.

Beginning Fri, Aug 22 you can read reviews about Forgotten on my Xanga blog. It's a great book and a terrific read, even if I do say so myself (no, I did not write these reviews, LOL).

Bartlett's Rule is the
August Book of the Month at
Origin Books
Art and Coffee
in the Nanuet Mall
Nanuet NY

Bartlett's Rule by Chelle Cordero
is available at Origin Books!

Bartlett's Rule will be the topic for
a Book Club Discussion Group
at Origin Books Art and Coffee
Sunday, September 7, 2008 1-3PM
Nanuet Mall, Suite 1021 75 West Rte 59Nanuet, New York 10954 (directions)

Stay tuned for some EXCITING news about Courage of the Heart! Another great love story by Chelle Cordero.

Buy Forgotten from Vanilla Heart Publishing, from Amazon.com, and from BarnesandNoble.com~or~ ask for it in the store and they can get it in for you from the main warehouse. Forgotten is also in E-book edition

Buy Bartlett's Rule from Vanilla Heart Publishing, from Amazon.com, and from BarnesandNoble.com ~or~ ask for it in the store and they can get it in for you from the main warehouse. Bartlett's Rule is also in E-Book edition. Bartlett's Rule is ON THE SHELVES at Origin Books, Art & Coffee in Nanuet NY.
~~~~~

Friday, August 15, 2008

Coming to you direct from Nova Scotia

Hello everyone!

Hubby and I took a few days off to get away - just the two of us (VERY romantic).

We are currently taking in the sites in Halifax, Nova Scotia and surroundings. It is a beautiful area and we are really enjoying everything.

So I will write more when I get back.

Yours,

Chelle

P.S.: I took a few summer reads with me (although I haven't had much time) - if you are taking a few days, be sure to take along copies of Bartlett's Rule and Forgotten with you and ENJOY!

Friday, August 8, 2008

Blog Talk Radio - Sunday!

On Sunday, August 10 at 2:30 PM EST, don't miss http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Books-with-Heart

Join Vanilla Heart Publishing author, Chelle Cordero, and Kimberlee Williams, Publisher, as they discuss author marketing and promotions, and share ideas for exploding your book's sales.

Call-in Number: (646) 478-3750

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Because I was asked...

Once again I was asked to provide links and information about where readers can get my books. I am always happy to do that!



Bartlett's Rule


from Vanilla Heart Publishing
from Amazon.com
from BarnesandNoble.com
~or~ ask for it in the store and they can get it in for you from the main warehouse
in E-Book edition
and at Origin Books, Art & Coffee in Nanuet NY



Forgotten


from Vanilla Heart Publishing
from Amazon.com
from BarnesandNoble.com
~or~ ask for it in the store and they can get it in for you from the main warehouse
and in E-book edition

COURAGE OF THE HEART
is CURRENTLY NOT AVAILABLE
keep checking back here for more news...
*****

Monday, August 4, 2008

About Chelle Cordero - Who am I?

I admit freely that I am a hopeless romantic.

The younger of two daughters, I grew up in the Bronx (NYC) and watched my parents’ terrific love affair with each other. I always got the feeling that they were still on their honeymoon in their nearly 32 years of marriage.

I attended the High School of Art & Design and studied Theatre Arts (lighting and scenery design) and studied acting at the New York Academy of Dramatic Arts. While in high school, I studied creative writing under renowned poet Daisy Aldan. I continued my studies in drama at Fordham University’s Lincoln Center campus. I had my first newspaper piece published when I was in college in both the Bronx Press Review and in my university newspaper – it was about a 16 year old boy who was killed trying to save a mugging victim in the subway.

It was while I was volunteering in the NYC Auxiliary Police Dept that I met my husband-to-be; I disliked him intensely (the feeling was mutual). My dad, also a volunteer, liked him though and tried “setting us up”. I finally went out with the guy. Mark and I dated for 2-weeks when he “kidnapped” me after a dinner party at a friend’s house and refused to bring me home until I accepted his proposal -

I said no 3 times and finally said yes only so he would bring me home! We are married now for 32 ½ years.

We have 2 wonderful children – our daughter Jenni is married to Jason and lives nearby; our son Marc lives at home and has a lovely girlfriend, Trish. We all (and I mean ALL 6 of us) volunteer with our local ambulance corps in addition to our “real lives”. My husband is a freelance photographer and Audio-Visual consultant (Mark is also a graduate of Art & Design HS but we did not meet there), my daughter is a Paramedic, my son is an EMT and me… I’m a writer.

I worked in a few wonderful and interesting jobs before I stayed home, pregnant with my daughter, and decided to be a full time freelance writer. I have had many articles and features published in local and national newspapers and magazines and I have a monthly column in 1st Responder Newspaper. But I always wanted to grow up and become a novelist…

(...read the full interview at RomancingtheNovel.com during the month of August.

Friday, August 1, 2008

I am a Shadow Forest Author

Shadow Forest Authors belong to a Fellowship of Authors and Supporters for Charity.



The mission at Shadow Forest Authors is to get books where they are needed. Everyone can help.



SFA authors donate copies of their titles to our beneficiaries, who places books in much needed hands.


SFA supporters can Adopt an author or authors, purchasing their titles to be donated to our beneficiaries.



Read more about what we do and what you can do to help at Shadow Forest Authors