Authorpreneur Dashboard – Deborah Smith
The Crossroads Cafe
Romance
The world's most beautiful movie star is scarred in a fiery car accident. Her career over and her self-esteem in shreds, she hides in the magnificent home her grandmother left her in the mountains of North Carolina. But her motherly cousin refuses to let her become a recluse, and a handsome neighbor with painful dilemmas of his own is lured into the mix. Romance, family life, drama, humor and secrets.
Book Bubbles from The Crossroads Cafe
The Crossroads Café: From Scratch
Drop-dead gorgeous. Killer good-looks. She slayed them with her beauty. There’s something about beauty that sounds really dangerous. But what if being one of the most beautiful women in the world turned out to be a tragedy for the woman blessed with that gift? My idea for THE CROSSROADS CAFÉ started that simply: What if one of the most gorgeous actresses of our time was ruined in a fiery car crash that left her with horrific scars on her body and her once-perfect face? Cathy Deen took over from there and told the story for me. She becomes a recluse, hiding in her grandmother’s isolated Appalachian home, sinking into suicidal despair...until her motherly mountain cousin, the legendary owner of The Crossroads Café, plays matchmaker between Cathy and a hard-drinking architect who lost his wife and son in the Twin Towers attack of 9-11. Two lost souls, one southern “biscuit witch,” and a pair of abandoned girls who need a family... Beauty is forever if it’s from the heart, and scars prove that even the deepest wounds can heal.
My Inspiration for The Crossroads Cafe...
My mother was always up for a road adventure. Especially if the trip included a coffee cup full of gin and a pack of smokes. We’ve driven primitive trails in the Smokies where I feared the 4-wheel-drive would fail and I’d have to hike out while Mother fended off wolves by flicking cigarette butts at them. Mother never flinched. We found the inspiration for The Crossroads Cafe on a jaunt in the mountains above Asheville, totally by accident. There was this little diner at an intersection in the middle of the woods, and there we had one of the best downhome meals EVER. There’s nothing as tasty as finding a feast by surprise.
Sweet Hush
Romance
Her Harvard-student son just eloped with the First Daughter. CNN is parked on the road to her apple orchards. Secret Service agents have commandeered her country kitchen. The irate First Parents are threatening to have her taxes audited. The President's handsome, tough, ex-military nephew is setting up camp in her guest room. Hush McGillan's quiet Appalachian world of heirloom apples, country festivals, and carefully guarded family secrets has just been flipped like one of her famous Sweet Hush Apple Turnovers. What do you do when your brand-new-in-laws are the First Family, and they don't like you any more than you like them? And what happens next when you find yourself falling in love with the man they sent to unearth all your secrets? From the White House to the apple house, from humor to tears and sorrow to laughter, get ready to fall in love with Sweet Hush.
Book Bubbles from Sweet Hush
The Biscuit Witch
Romance
Welcome back to the Crossroads Cove where new loves, old feuds, and poignant mysteries will challenge siblings Tal, Gabby, and Gus MacBride to fight for the home they lost and to discover just how important their family once was, and still is, to the proud people of the Appalachian highlands. Tallulah MacBride hasn’t been back to North Carolina since their parents’ tragic deaths, twenty years ago. But now, Tal heads to cousin Delta Whittlespoon’s famous Crossroads Café in the mountains above Asheville, hoping to find a safe hiding place for her young daughter, Eve. What she finds is Cousin Delta gone, the café in a biscuit crisis, and a Scotsman, who refuses to believe she’s passing through instead of “running from.” He believes she needs a knight in shining flannel. When a pair of sinister private eyes show up, Tal’s troubles are just beginning. For Tal’s brother and sister—Gabby, the Pickle Queen, and Gus, the Kitchen Charmer—the next part of the journey will lead down forgotten roads and into beautiful but haunted legacies.
Book Bubbles from The Biscuit Witch
The Whys Behind The Biscuit Witch...
I love biscuits and western North Carolina. So what more perfect combination than a book about baking biscuits in the mountains above Asheville. My husband and I visit that wonderful mountain city regularly. How to describe that part of the Carolinas? Magical. They call it the "land of the sky." The incredibly beautiful mountain scenes in Last of the Mohicans were filmed in the North Carolina Appalachians, and also that Patrick Swayze classic , Dirty Dancing!
The Yarn Spinner
Romance
A Crossroads Café Short Story 47 pages long She’s destined to love Gus MacBride—if she survives her first year in the Crossroads Cove. A thread of hope is all she needs. Damaged, confused, alone. Cathy Deen Mitternich recognizes her old self in the fragile survivor huddled in the sheep barn’s storage room at Rainbow Goddess Farm. Former art teacher Lucy Parmenter may be beyond even the tough-love magic of the farm, a live-in counseling center for abused women. Afraid to set a foot outside, drugged on medication, and filled with despair, Lucy needs the big biscuit magic of the Crossroad Café’s Delta Whittlespoon. Together, Cathy and Delta search for a lifeline that represents Lucy’s best hope of holding on. Their search ends in Lucy’s new home at the barn. When Lucy discovers the magic there, neither she nor Cathy will ever be the same.
Book Bubbles from The Yarn Spinner
About The Yarn Spinner...
Every person has a secret that would break your heart, and each of us finds ways to hide our secrets, and to deal with our fears. Sometimes, our tactics are weirder than weird, but they work. That’s why Lucy Parmenter is one of my favorite characters, ever, and I can’t wait to share more about her (and her secret long-distance love, Gus MacBride) in THE KITCHEN CHARMER. THE YARN SPINNER was a chance to show readers how Lucy found the lifeline that will lead her out of her fears to the edge of the light, where Gus can help her the rest of the way. That lifeline is the art of spinning yarn— also knitting it, crocheting it, weaving it, and caring for the creatures who gift us with their wool. I added a pattern for the baby blanket she creates in the story; I hope to bring readers inside Lucy’s gently woven world.
