WIN A COPY of Marrying the Single Dad
It's #GiveawayTime at the PHS! This month we have an electronic copy of Marrying the Single Dad from PHS columnist Melinda Curtis for one lucky reader.
About Marrying the Single Dad
The Harmony Valley series began with a town about to become extinct. Throughout the series, I’ve been adding new businesses. I thought it was time to add a mechanic and a beautician. In terms of getting their external plot details down, I wasn’t worried. I’d grown up with two brothers who pulled apart cars all the time and I have my hair done…Yeah, it was a little more complicated than tossing out terms like perms and pin curls.
As I began to write the story about Britney and Joe, Brit was insistent that she wasn’t just another hair and make-up gal. I began to believe she might be a picker (I’m very fond of those shows where people scavenge through junk). Finally, Brit and I compromised and she became an upcycle artist – taking junk and repurposing it. Now Joe…He had the added twist of inheriting a junkyard with his garage, not that it started out as a junkyard. Old folks in town just left their cars at the abandoned lot as they broke down. When he comes to town broke and finds a woman picking through what seems to be his hidden treasures, he’s a tad upset.
So I sat down with one of my brothers and talked cars (not my favorite topic, I admit). I learned about the first things you check when a car won’t start, the implications of cracked blocks, and the satisfaction a mechanic feels in solving the puzzle of a non-working car. And then it was off to research upcycle artists (a fantastic Pinterest topic, fyi). As I researched, I saw so many interesting things. Carburetors turned into lamps. Crank shafts holding up end tables. Truck beds turned into benches. And then I saw a sculpture of a something made of welded and turned metal parts that was “riding” above an old bicycle (sadly, I was never sure what the rider was). But it gave me an idea. I had Brit weld a mermaid sculpture and then weld that on top of an old motorcycle – an Indian. For restorers and collectors of old motorcycles, turning it into art is blasphemous, something I happily discovered as I was researching what kind of old bicycle or motorcycle was light enough to mount on a wall. My bike riding mermaid became the central focus of my story!
While writing this book, I was inspired to take an old toilet tank from our house remodel and turn it into a planter. It may not be a mermaid, but the flowers like it. Have you ever tried to repurpose something?
Marrying the Single Dad:
A man called Joe
Building a new life for himself and his preteen daughter brings Joe Messina home to Harmony Valley. That and showing his town that the onetime bad boy is now a responsible single father. His first move is to get his grandfather's defunct garage up and running. Except now he's got the FBI poking around, and there's a beautician with her eye on the abandoned auto parts.
An artist who's happiest turning rusty junk into sought-after treasure, San Francisco transplant Brittany Lambridge is making Joe think they can create something rare and special together. But he has unfinished family business that could jeopardize his fresh start. Is Joe ready to believe in himself as fiercely as Brittany's beginning to believe in him?
What's the most successful repurposing you've ever done? Tell us in the comments and if you'd like to win a copy of this fabulous book, just enter below. Good luck!
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