Month of Love Guest Blog and Giveaway: The Kraken’s Caribbean series by Maureen O’Betita
Everyone please welcome Maureen to Paperback Dolls! Maureen just released the third in her Kraken’s Caribbean series, The Pirate Circus, earlier this month! To learn more about Maureen O’Betita and her other works, please visit her website here. To learn more about Month of Love and who is visiting you can go here.
Love!
Years ago, I fell in love with a boy I met in high school. The year was 1977 and I was a reporter for the Tiger’s Roar, our school newspaper. I was a junior and after an absence of several years, our school band had a new drum major. And it was my assignment to interview him.
We met in the school library, me sporting my avocado green jumpsuit (don’t laugh, it was very stylish). He wore a shiny green shirt with a pointy collar. (It was 1977. Quit laughing!)
It was a fair interview. He was painfully shy. (Which is interesting considering he’d just signed up to whirl a big baton and lead the band at football halftime shows and local parades…) So, we got the interview done, with me reaching down his throat and pulling answers out… And I went my way, thinking… cute guy.
Last dance of the basketball season, months later, he asked me dance.
Wow, sweet guy!
Summer, and our senior year. And I was now editor of Tiger’s Roar and guess who joined the class? He did! By the Christmas formal, we were dating. Fast forward two years later…and we married. 32 years in May…still a couple.
Class reunions are fun. We’re one of two couples still together!
It’s amazing how much changes in 30+ years. And how much stays the same. It’s still hard to get answers out of him. He still has his big baton. (Get yer mind outta the gutter!) He keeps it tucked under the bed, to smack intruders.
I no longer have the pantsuit, but I do have the hat I wore that day… He still have his ‘pimp’ hat… It was a style!
When I create a couple for a book, I like to think of them as lasting. None of this throw in a third guy, a hotter guy… Nope. My couples are forever. I like to think…no, I know, that the biggest adventures for a couple happen after that “I do.”
When you read a book by me, you can bet that the couple I brought together, will stay together. They’ll fight, they’ll make up, they’ll face challenges, they’ll grow and do battle…as a couple. I have a series I have on my laptop at home…and this series will be published one day. My romantic couple meet in the first book and are still together in book number 30.
I believe in lasting love!
I brought Alan and Emily together in The Kraken’s Mirror and no matter where I roam with that series, you will be able to count on them…poking at each other, flirting with each other, falling into bed with each other.
Same with Mick and Jezebel, from The Chameleon Goggles.
And now, with the third book, The Pirate Circus, Janey and Benjamin.
Happily Ever After is only the beginning!
What’s your love story? Or have you more than one? Which is cool… sometimes it takes more than one to find THE one!
I’m Maureen O. Betita, and I write romantic adventure with a pirate feel. Even when I don’t write about pirates, the feel of pirates permeates the story. I’m on , and I have a website… come visit with me…and explore The Kraken’s Caribbean!
A romantic paranormal adventure
Treated by our youth oriented society as invisible and sexless Emily Pawes attends a pirate festival to recapture the make believe magic she knew as a younger woman. She wins an interesting bit of booty at an old woman’s bric-a-brac stand. The Kraken’s Mirror is a magical portal and transports her to a land of Hollywood piratitude, where swashbuckling heroes own iPods. With little choice, she embraces the madness, deciding she’ll play pirate until she figures out how to get home. Or wakes up in a padded cell.
Instead of men in little white coats, she encounters the handsome Captain Alan Silvestri. He is a man haunted by a strange curse. Good luck is his to command, but it comes at the cost of any place to call home or people to call family. Resigned to die shunned by all, forced to sail every three days, he begins to dream of a special woman.
When they meet, sparks fly, passion flares. He needs her to be free, but more than that, he needs her to be whole. They set sail, uncertain of who has control of the wheel, seeking to defeat his curse of good luck and discover all the Kraken’s Mirror plans for them.
Related posts:
- Month of Love Guest Blog & Giveaway: Love at First Sight – or Not? by Deborah Cooke (Claire Delacroix)
- Month of Love Guest Blog & Giveaway: Bad to the Bone by Kendra Leigh Castle
- Month of Love Guest Blog & Giveaway: Confidence is very sexy, don’t you think? by Thea Harrison
- Month of Love Guest Blog and Giveaway: Burned by Amber Kallyn
- Month of Love Guest Blog & Giveaway: Silent Howl by Stacey Kennedy
lovely writing style, story and characters are all wonderful
keep it up
<3
Thanks so much, Tessa!
My love story isn’t the man I married, but the one that came after. Never married, but were together for many years, and still keep in touch after knowing each other for over 40 years. If we didn’t live on different sides of the country, we’d at least be seeing each other often, but at least there’s always visits. :D
This book sounds very good. Looking forward to reading it.
Barbara – sometimes romance or simply a good love story, doesn’t need the constant being together. I love that you’re still friends!
BN – I loved writing the books of the Kraken’s Caribbean!
Thanks for the giveaway. I am always looking for new to me authors. And an added plus, it involves the Kraken! Yippee!!
Jen – It involves THE Kraken! ;-)
I love that you write couples that are forever. I don’t like love triangles. Messy & unfair.
You are a new author to me, but now on my reading list.
Thanks, Mary. I not totally opposed to triangles, if all three are involved with each other. It’s the him or him stuff, after already selling us on him that drives me batty!
My love story started 15 years ago. We found each other and then drifted apart. Pride can be a dangerous thing. We found each other again 2 years ago and are happily together today. We are much older and wiser now.
That really is the secret, Patti. the happily ever after is only the beginning of the adventures (ie, the challenges of staying a couple!)
Congrats on rediscovering each other as older and wiser people!
love pirate’s story ;)
love someone that we admired and each time see him make our heart beat fast :)
Eli – Alan Silvestri still makes my heart beat fast! So far, the fav or my heroes!
This sounds good! I’d love to read it! Thank you for the giveaway!
You’re very welcome, and good luck!
I enjoyed your interview, especially the story of meeting your husband 32 (!!)years ago. I definitely agree that the greater story is what happens after you say “I do”.
Dee, it really blows us away sometimes to realize how long we have known each other. Life feels like one very long recess!
Thanks for the giveaway. I would love to read this book. It sounds very good.
Best of luck to you Victoria!
Thanks for the lovely post and giveaway! I love the premise of this book! I also like how you said that your HEAs are forever :)
You’re welcome, Erin! I’m a believer in HEA…but know they aren’t easy.
This speaks to a lot of us readers dreams of going back in time.
Appreciate the forever HEA!
Diane – I enjoy toying with the whole ‘ship out of water’ aspects of time travel. Though this involves not only time travel, but alternate world travel. Even better when the heroine finds her historical knowledge absolutely useless!
Bwah ha ha!
I find the premise for this story so fascinating and that it deals with time and magic and the seas.
I find the sea slips into everything I write…just something about the mythical possibilities of the ocean calls to me.
This isn’t like anything else I’ve ever read. I really want to get my hands on it. Interesting!
I love hearing that! I like to think it’s different enough to appeal, but not so different to drive readers off!
Pirate stories sound interesting. Thanks for the giveaway.
Thanks, Andrea! Good luck!
Hi…Maureen
Great story love all about pirate
Thanks for giveaway ^^
Newan – Writing about pirats is just as fun as reading about them! Good luck!
OMG!! I love love the cover. It’s awesome. And romantic paranormal adventure sounds very interesting to me. The story is great, can’t wait to read it. I hope I’m lucky with this one.
Thank u for this awesome giveaway :)
Amel – Thanks so much! I love all my covers and was lucky to have the same artist for all three…so I think they really come together well!
Good luck!
hi maureen, love the story about pirates. and i agreed to you.
if the sea is calling to you. i found sometimes i get bored, cry , happy i look out the sea, the picture. the sound.
and it is great story.
Cecil – I’m so luck that I live so close to the ocean!
I haven’t read your books before, but it really looks like I should! I am looking forward to reading some in the not too distant future. Thanks for the giveaway!
Love the interview and the giveaway, =)
My lovestory is a WIP, i love my Lukas and we´ve been together for nine years by now. It´s no whirlwind any longer but steady is nice, too. That´s why i love to read romancy in any shape or form, i can relive the first time, the flutter in the stomache and the anxiousness a seduction can give *happy sigh*
best wishes, Linda
Thanks so much for sharing your story. I broke up with my boyfriend in Feb. of my senior year. Mentioned to my sister’s friend how I wanted to meet a nice guy for once and she set me up with a friend of her boyfriends who just moved to town. It was a blind date and I remember everything about him from that night. His hideous shirt to his ugly shoes (He wasn’t to fond of my clothes either lol) but once our eyese connected we both just knew and it was a whirlwind of a romance. We met in April and he took me to my senior prom. By the end of May he proposed. On graduation day in June, he was there in the stands to cheer me on and though I went through the last week of school with an giant engagement ring and fought all my friends and family who thought it was a mistake. I’m proud to say we proved everyone wrong. 12 years later and we are still in love. I did have him throw out those ugly shoes, but I still have that shirt and he puts it on for me once in a while, just because :)