Guest Blogger, Author Melissa Bourbon Ramirez

Thank you for having me today!  I love that I get to write about something different… about my inspiration for Deceiving the Witch Next Door.   Sometime real life truly inspires fiction.  Case in point, there really is a Storiebook Café, and there really is a Storie.  The real Storiebook Café is in Glen Rose, Texas.  It really is a renovated gas station, just as I describe in Deceiving the Witch Next Door. 

From the moment I saw the shop, it spoke to me.  It is so quaint and fun!  Built-in shelving, a floor to ceiling ladder on rollers, a cute seating area, a real garden room…  It was meant to be described in a book!  Then I met Storie, learned that her name is a family name, and heard the tale of her desire to open up the bookstore/café in her small town.  She is vibrant and enthusiastic, such a hard worker, and had a vision that she brought to life.  She inspired me, and her shop and even her name became the foundation of Bloomington and my fictional Storiebook Café in Deceiving the Witch Next Door. 

Now, my Storie (Bell) is vastly different from the real Storie; the only thing they share is their name.  But using her name and her shop as inspiration for my fictional world has been so fun.  I can picture the details of the shop, I can envision my characters walking around the town square, and it’s all very real to me. 

I’d love to hear from readers if they enjoy knowing that a book’s characters and/or setting is inspired by real life.   And do you like small town Southern settings?  I find I love them more and more! 

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Entangled Publishing has generously offered an ebook copy of Deceiving the Witch Next Door by Melissa Bourbon Ramirez to a lucky commenter! Please leave an email address with your comment so we can get your mailing address; contest runs through 9/22.

Blurb:

Down-on-her-luck witch Storie Bell never thought the biggest threat to her future would be Reid Malone, the very man she’d run from years before. After striking it rich in Texas shale, he’s back in town, and he seems hell-bent on getting in the way of her bookstore’s grand opening. A witch trying to blend in in a small southern town is hard enough, but now he’s seriously testing her strict No Kissing Mortal Men policy. But even witches don’t have a spell for that.

Reid knows there’s much more to Storie than meets the eye. But right now he has only one mission: to infiltrate her shop so he can snatch the elusive secret ingredient to his father’s million-dollar moonshine recipe. Once he does, he can go back to the city and get out of his small hometown, a place in which he has no future.

But as the days go by, he can’t help falling for Storie in every way…and every encounter brings him closer to finding out what happens when you try to deceive a witch.

 

About Melissa Bourbon Ramirez

Melissa Bourbon,who sometimes answers to her Latina-by-marriage name Misa Ramirez, gave up teachingmiddle and high school kids in Northern California towrite full-time amidst horses and Longhorns in North Texas. She fantasizes aboutspending summers writing in quaint, cozy locales, has a love/hate relationshipwith yoga and chocolate, is devoted to her family, and can’t believe she’slucky enough to be living the life of her dreams.

She is themarketing director at Entangled Publishing, is the author of the Lola CruzMystery series with St. Martin’sMinotaur and Entangled Publishing, A Magical Dressmaking Mystery series withNAL, and is the co-author of The Tricked-out Toolbox and two romantic suspensetitles.

Visit Melissa at her website| Twitter Page| FacebookHome | Goodreads| and Books on the House,a website bringing books and readers together!