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Blog Tour Stop + Giveaway! - Stable Mates by Zara Stoneley


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Scandalous Stable Mates by best-selling author Zara Stoneley is cantering its way through the bloggersphere. Get ready for lust, love and outrageous goings-on as we bring you romping reviews, exciting excerpts, galloping guest posts and a tip-top giveaway!
 
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What they say:
  'Secrets and scandals, love and lust – when the ‘Cheshire Set’ are up against the ‘Footballer’s Wives’ the only common ground is carnal… Flirting and fun seem the perfect antidote for Lottie's battered heart, and where better to find them than back in tranquil Tippermere, home of sexy eventer Rory Steel, the smiling Irish eyes of hunky farrier Mick O'Neal, and mysterious newcomer, model Tom Strachan? But when landowner Marcus James drops dead unexpectedly, and the threat of his waggish wife Amanda selling the heart of the village out from under them looms large, things look like they're about to heat up in and out of the saddle. With tensions running high, and the champagne flowing as freely as the adrenalin, is it any wonder that love catches more than one of them unawares?'
 
 
 
Get Back in The Saddle   
 
Guest Post by Zara Stoneley + Excerpt

Writing a book is a bit like riding a horse.

Firstly, you’ve really got to want to do it.  Believe me, you have. You’ve got to be in it for the long term, committed, not half-hearted. Anybody can get on a horse and sit there for half an hour, but to do it properly you need dedication. To be a good rider you need to turn up every day, you need to take the rough with the smooth and keep smiling. And you need to be prepared to get back up every time you’re bucked off, just as you have to be determined to get those words down even when you’re stuck and don’t quite know why things aren’t working out.  You have to want to get to the end. And enjoy the ride along the way.

Secondly, you haven’t got to show when you’re scared. Horses sense it. So do your characters (honestly, they’re real). Back off just a little and they’re off down their own path doing things you really hadn’t intended (just like that horse). They will take the mickey out of you, threaten to make you feel a failure. But you have to stand up to them. You have to know you can do it. And when you do they’ll let you succeed, let you fall in love with them.

Thirdly, it can be a rough ride. But there’s no feeling like it when things start to go right and it all makes sense. You want to jump up, run round and tell the world that you’ve got it! A whoop on the back of a horse might be a tad dangerous (you might end up on the floor pretty quick), and a whoop when you’re writing might get you the label crazy lady. But who cares? It’s exhilarating, gives you a buzz, makes all the pain worthwhile.

But when you start again, get on a new horse? Ah, well, that’s a different story – but if you get bucked off you just climb right back on, because you know it will be worth it, and you’re hooked.

Excerpt – first time!

Amanda was pretty sure that her skin-tight breeches, purchased more for appearance than practicality, were going to split straight down the centre of her bottom and show off the blue knickers she’d worn for luck and to give her confidence. And if the breeches didn’t, she might. It also seemed a bloody long way down to the ground, and gymnastics had never been her forte. She’d been the girl at the top of the rope in the school gym, not sure whether it would be more embarrassing to ask for help or to slide down and get severe rope burns all the way down her inner thighs. ‘Just let go’ had never been an instruction that had worked for her.
She closed her eyes, said a silent prayer and did as instructed. For a brief, horrifying moment, her knee got stuck on the cantle of the saddle and a vision of the horse galloping off with her hanging limpet-like onto his side like a Russian Cossack flashed through her mind, and then her body weight took over (no doubt leaving a massive bruise on her inner thigh – how did one explain that whilst having a bikini wax?) and she slithered ungracefully to the ground. Still clinging onto mane and saddle.
She took a deep breath and asked the question she still wasn’t sure she wanted to, ‘Can we do it again next week?’
 
 
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Author Bio: Bestselling author Zara Stoneley lives in deepest Cheshire surrounded by horses, dogs, cats and amazing countryside. When she's not visiting wine bars, artisan markets or admiring the scenery in her sexy high heels or green wellies, she can be found in flip flops on the beach in Barcelona, or more likely sampling the tapas! Zara writes hot romance and bonkbusters. Her latest novel, 'Stable Mates', is a fun romp through the Cheshire countryside and combines some of her greatest loves - horses, dogs, hot men and strong women (and not forgetting champagne and fast cars)! She writes for Harper Collins and Accent Press.

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Enter via the Rafflecopter below to win a £20 Amazon voucher and signed paperback of Stable Mates:
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Giveaway UK only. Paperback copy of Stable Mates will be sent upon its 20th November 2014 release. CandleLit Author Services and Zara Stoneley reserve the right to cancel and/or amend the giveaway at anytime, without prior notification.

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