Sleight of Heart - Jacquie Rogers

Thank you, Paty, for hosting me on your blog today, and I must say it’s an honor for Sleight of Heart to be included in the 9 Ways to Fall in Love box set with your book and the seven other books—quality, all.

Here’s a little about my book and how several little prompts come together, making the basis for Sleight of Heart.

Prompt #1: First of all, meet Aunt Grace, with curly gray hair, softly lined face, and a ready smile showing one gold tooth.  Oh, and with a little padding around the middle.  Doesn’t really sound like heroine material, does she?  But this woman was amazing.  She could add any column of numbers in her head, or calculate any type of arithmetic problem for that matter.  But her real talent was at the poker table.  My dad’s greatest achievement was when he actually beat her one night at penny ante poker—we heard about that for years.  Aunt Grace could calculate odds in a heartbeat.  She knew what cards had been played and who played them.  Your pennies were only safe if you did NOT play blackjack with her—I never saw her lose.  She wasn’t welcome in the Reno casinos.

Prompt #2: Magicians amaze me, and who doesn’t love watching an accomplished prestidigitator perform sleight of hand tricks?  Several years ago, my husband’s company Christmas party featured a magician, and a kernel of an idea formed.  On the way home, we turned on the radio to the oldies station and Heart came on singing—you guessed it—Magic Man.  You know, the one with the magic hands.

But other projects had to be finished and a few more stories were waiting in the wings.  My magic man’s time had not yet come.

Prompt #3: Five or six years later: I love trains, so when a friend and I visited Durango, Colorado, we just had to take the narrow-gauge steam train to Silverton.  Actually, we rode the bus to Silverton and rode down the mountain on the train.  There’s nothing quite like spending a couple hours breathing smoke and dodging cinders to give you an idea of what luxury travel (after all, trains were a whole lot more comfortable than stagecoaches) was like in the 1880s.

Mash up the train ride with Maverick, or maybe a historical Remington Steele, and Aunt Grace as a young Poker Alice, throw in a little phantom at the opera house and a few magic tricks—and there you have Sleight of Heart.  Enjoy!

About Sleight of Heart

Straight-laced Lexie Campbell, more comfortable with neat and tidy numbers than messy emotions, must find the man who ruined her little sister and make him marry her. When his lookalike brother Burke appears, she greets him with a gun and forces him to help her.

Smooth-dealing Burke O’Shaughnessy, riverboat gambler and prestidigitator, must find his brother Patrick to claim the family fortune. But when Lexie shows an astounding talent for counting cards and calculating odds, he figures she might be useful after all. Can he resist the queen of hearts?

About Jacquie

Jacquie Rogers grew up on a dairy farm in southwest Idaho, where she set her Hearts of Owyhee series (Owyhee County).  She loves rodeo, baseball, although her favorite sport is searching the archives.  A lifelong bookworm, she doesn’t go anywhere without her ereader.  Jacquie teaches writing courses both online and in person, owns the popular Romancing The West blog, and is a member of Western Fictioneers and Romance Writers of America.

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Sleight of Heart is one of nine books in the box set 9 Ways to Fall in Love that is now available for a special introductory price of $.99!!  It will only be this price for 30 days, so get your e-copy soon! As part of the special introductory offer we are also giving away prices one a day. You can sign up to win at http://southerncomfortromance.com/ or by leaving a comment on any one of the author's blogs.