Tuesday Teaser, weekly drawing, and great contest!

Thanks and smooches to all you wonderful readers who took Dillon and Claire home with you, which put Sea Glass Winter at #8 on the New York Times, #39 on USA Today (which includes all books published last week: fiction, nonfiction, and childrens'), #11 on Publishers' Weekly, and #1 on on the Barnes and Noble romance list its first week out!   And if you haven't gotten around to buying it yet, hey, keeping it up there for another week would be way cool, too. 

Also, if you missed it,  I'm having a month-long FIND DILLON contest. All you have to do is send an email to JoAnn at JoAnnRoss dot com and let me know where in the world you've spotted a copy of Sea Glass Winter. One lucky person, chosen at random, will receive the following cool gifts.  The winner will be announced on the news section of my homepage, this blog, Facebook and Twitter on Friday, February 1st.

Prizes are a set of twenty 5x7 note cards featuring four exquisite photos of sea glass on the covers of five cards each and approximately four dozen pieces of glycerine soaps created to look like the beautiful pieces of glass found on our Pacific beaches, lightly scented with Shelter Bay's fresh sea air fragrance.

 But that's not all! The best part of this contest is this vibrant, historical 7/8" aqua blue vibrant, one-of-a-kind Pacific coast gem necklace. The glass likely originates from decades old canning jar glass that someone's grandma discarded and has been tumbling along a remote Pacific shore for years until the jewelry maker found it while beachcombing.  (Just like Claire in Sea Glass Winter!) Set with a "mermaid's tail," it comes on an 18" sterling silver chain.

I'm going to be switching to another book in February for teasers, but while my Sea Glass Winter contest is still going on, I'm staying with it.   In this scene, Shelter Bay high school basketball Coach Dillon Slater realizes that he's toast.  At the end, I'll announce the winter from last week's Tuesday Teaser.  Enjoy:  

Dillon was not exactly thrilled to find his team on the winning side of a blowout. His initial concern, going into the game, was that they hadn’t known how to win. Now he worried that they’d foolishly, mistakenly think the rest of the season was going to go the same way, and slack off.

As yet more proof of their inexperience, when the buzzer rang, his ebullient team went wild, jumping around at the center of the floor, throwing high fives as if they’d just won the NBA finals.

Which earned them an admittedly deserved foul for excessive celebration, but the Pirates, now totally off their usual brilliance, missed the free throws, officially ending the game.

Only then did Dillon look up into the stands to the visitors’ section, where he’d known, from the moment she’d walked in, that Claire was sitting with the entire Douchett clan, along with Charity, Gabe, and Angel, who’d swapped out the ubiquitous tutu for a miniature blue-and-white Dolphins cheerleader outfit.

The woman who’d infiltrated his dreams and banished his nightmares, the single mother whose love and unyielding sense of duty to her son were the only things keeping them apart, had begun jumping up and down like a teenager, waving plastic blue-and-white pompoms and hugging everyone around her.

Their eyes met. When she flashed him a dazzlingly brilliant smile, the first he’d been treated to, Dillon’s breath clogged in his lungs and his mouth went as dry as the Iraqi sandbox.

The earth teetered on its axis, tectonic plates shifted, volcanoes erupted, and if a wave train of a tsunami had suddenly washed over the gym, he wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised.

Because the well-ordered, comfortable world he’d created in Shelter Bay  had just exploded.  And, on the verge of exploding himself, Dillon knew that neither it nor he would ever be the same.

One lucky person who comments, chosen at random, will receive either an autographed copy of one of my Shelter Bay backlist books, or  A Woman's Heart, the first book in my Irish trilogy (which also appears in Moonshell Beach), or a book of Oregon coast photos taken where my Shelter Bay series is set. Winner's choice, and the name will be announced here on the blog, on Facebook, and Twitter next Tuesday, January 22nd.

The winner of last week's drawing is Margaret Dawson! Margaret, thanks so much for taking the time to comment!  If you email your post office mailing address to JoAnn @ JoAnnRoss dot com, and let me know which book you want, we'll get it on its way.

I hope everyone comes back for my Friday photo and another Tuesday teaser drawing next week!

xo,

JoAnn