New Release --- The Trouble With Cowboys
Welcome everyone -
We're excited to have our chapter-mate, Melissa Cutler, with us today to talk about her debut release, The Trouble With Cowboys...
The Most Important Words
Melissa Cutler here, and I'm so excited to be on the RWA San Diego Chapter blog talking about the words you long to hear from a parent. Besides "I love you", I'd wager that "I'm proud of you" is the most profound statement a parent say make to a child. Some people live their whole lives waiting and wishing their parents would be proud of them, and many a great romance hero or heroine has been imagined around that wish.My mom and I are pretty close. She's a great mom to me and an amazing grandma to my kids, and has always been effusive in telling me how much she loves me, but she's been notoriously unimpressed with my life accomplishments. She never explicitly told me she was proud of me until this year when my longtime dream of becoming a published writer came true.Last month, I brought copies of my two debut releases to share with her. One of them is dedicated to her, in fact. She hugged me and told me she was proud of me. I was floored by how profound the actual words were to hear from a parent. I mean, she must've been proud of me at all those other times, right? I've had a great life and have done really darn well for myself in everything I've set out to do. But wow—those four words are really sticking with me.Amy, the heroine in The Trouble with Cowboys, opts to remain a contestant on Ultimate Chef Showdown, a reality TV show, even though she's grieving her dad's untimely passing because she felt like it was the first thing she'd done that made him proud of her. Hearing those words from a parent is that powerful. What she longed to hear from her mom, but never did before her mom passed, was "I'm sorry."On the other side of the coin, Kellan, the book's cowboy hero, has heard "I'm sorry" way too many times from his mom to believe it. Growing up, he never heard or felt his parents' pride in him and it gave him a serious, unrelenting drive to prove himself.I'm a mom of two grade-school-age kids and really do my best to show them how proud I am of them and how much I love them. My mom certainly reminded me last month of how significant a parent's approval is to a child, at any age. It also reminded me that even though I'm grown, I'll never outgrow needing my mom—and that's a really good thing, if you ask me.I'd love to hear from you now. Do the words "I'm proud of you" mean as much to you as they do me? What would you love to hear your parents tell you?
The Trouble with Cowboys is in stores now:Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/The-Trouble-Cowboys-Catcher-Creek/dp/1420130048/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1342633967&sr=8-3&keywords=The+trouble+with+cowboys+melissa+cutlerBarnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-trouble-with-cowboys-melissa-cutler/1110855259?ean=9781420130041Books-a-Million: http://www.booksamillion.com/p/Trouble-Cowboys/Melissa-Cutler/9781420130041?id=5360765607338IndieBound: http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781420130041My thanks to the RWASD blog for hosting me today. I love hearing from readers and am really easy to find at www.melissacutler.net, on Facebook (www.facebook.com/MelissaCutlerBooks ), and Twitter (@m_cutler). And you can always email me at cutlermail@yahoo.com or sign up for my newsletter (http://www.melissacutler.net/?page_id=255 ) to find out about my latest books and upcoming events.~~~Melissa Cutler is a flip-flop wearing Southern California native living with her husband, two rambunctious 
kids, and two suspicious cats in beautiful San Diego. Three things you should probably know about her are: she believes Judith from Julie Garwood's The Secret is the most perfect heroine in all of literature (sorry, Elizabeth Bennett), she's traveled to more countries in the world than states in the U.S., and she's certain that there are actually only two types of food in existence—those that taste better with hot sauce and those that taste better with whipped cream. She divides her time between her dual passions for writing sexy, small town contemporaries for Kensington Books and edge-of-your-seat romantic suspense for Harlequin
