“Hilarious, heartwarming, and hopeful, SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED takes romantic comedies to new heights.”

When new divorcee Ro Andrews moves her pack of semi-feral children to a run-down farmhouse, helping her brother restore the moldering homestead and living an authentic life—per the dictates of Instagram and lifestyle blogs everywhere—tops her to-do list. But romance? Hell, no. Between hiding from her children in baskets of dirty laundry, mentally eviscerating her cheating ex, and finding a job, Ro has a full plate.

Until she meets Sam Whittaker, a hunky Texas transplant with abs of steel and a nameplate that reads Boss. Clad in cowboy boots and surfer curls, this child-free stud has Ro on edge – and rethinking her defective Y chromosome ban. Somehow, this overworked, undersexed, exasperated single mom needs to find time to fall in love with a man allergic to chaos and crumbs and make it stick, not sticky.

Available now on Amazon Kindle and B&N Nook. Hard copies available December 2019
For more information:

Author Robin Winzenread can be reached at:

http://www.robinwinzenread.com

Debut Romcom Tackles Finding Love and Fending off Family During the Holidays

Holiday chaos is par for the course come Thanksgiving and Christmas and, for many, family squabbles are one reason to dread the holidays. For debut author Robin Winzenread, however, it’s research.

“When you cram nearly a hundred warm bodies into a small 1,700 square-foot home on Christmas eve, you’re bound to get some fodder for future fiction.” She laughs. “I just try to make the most of it and write about it.”

Winzenread’s first fiction novel, SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED, takes that chaos and elevates it into a raucous read. Released in ebook on October 28 and available in print in early December, Winzenread’s romantic comedy features a young, single mother of three from Chicago who relocates her family to the country and tries to make the best of it following a bitter divorce. Set in a small rural Midwestern town, this delightful tale features a city girl fish-out-of-water twist dripping with colorful locals, kids being kids, animals being ornery, sexual tension at the “sweet heat” level, and a handsome, widowed boss with a penchant for wearing tight jeans and cowboy boots all while taking place during the holidays.

Champagne Book Group Publisher Cassie Knight spoke with Winzenread recently about the inspiration for her new novel.

Knight: “We are thrilled to be publishing your first ever novel. It’s a fun, laugh-out loud read.”

Winzenread: “Thank you. As many of the more humorous scenes have a basis in reality, I laughed out loud remembering much of it.”

Knight: “I’m not surprised there’s some truth to it. Your Thanksgiving dinner scene with its kids and calamity particularly rang true to me. As a mother yourself, how drawn from real life was that action?”

Winzenread: (laughs) “More than I should admit, though not all of it came from being a mom. Some of it was drawn from my own experiences growing up as a child on a farm in Central Indiana. Coming from an active family of four, calamity as you put it happened at nearly every meal.”

Knight: “Seriously?”

Winzenread: “Yep. My brother was a serial vomit’er. He emptied out a White Castle once, so that’s saying something.”

Knight: (laughs) “Indeed.”

Winzenread: “Also, my dad was one of ten, so I have cousins numbering in the…I’ve lost track…thirties? Forties? Anyway, there’s a bunch of us and when we would get together when I was a kid, it was always epic.”

Knight: “I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall back then.”

Winzenread: “Well, you probably would have been squashed. We all were pretty much shoe-horned into my grandparent’s home on the south side of Indianapolis. Us kids spent half the party playing on the stairwell for lack of options. We’d all brace ourselves against the walls when someone entered or left the house, otherwise we’d all shoot out like toothpaste from a tube. The place was a freaking clown car on Christmas eve.”
Knight: “It paints a picture, as does your novel. Where did the essential story come from? From your own divorce?”

Winzenread: “No, not from mine, rather from the experiences of my maternal grandmother and my sister-in-law. My grandfather died in his early fifties, and he left behind my grandmother and my youngest uncle, an “oops” baby. Here was my grandmother who had never worked outside the home with a seven-year-old boy and suddenly she’s a widow. How do you make a life for yourself after that? As a kid, I used to lie in bed at night praying first that grandpa would get better and then after he died that grandma and Jerry, my uncle, would be okay.

“Then, in 1997, my brother, Andrew Winzenread, was killed in the line of duty – he was an Indiana State Trooper and was the inspiration for the nation’s first move-over law – and he left behind my sweet sister-in-law, Cindy, and their month-old daughter, my niece, Taylor. Cindy was only 24 years old when it happened. Once again, I found myself worrying about a loved one, wondering how she would make it in the world.

“Those two experiences got me to thinking about that essential question – how do you pick up the pieces when your world is torn apart? – which ultimately led to this novel. I just decided to stick them on a small farm and throw problems at them, one right after the other. Which is why I included goats. They’re always a barrel of fun.”

Knight: “Yes they are. But you also threw in a conflicted love interest. Tell us about Sam.”

Winzenread: “Ah, Sam. Naturally there has to be a hunky heartthrob – it is a romcom after all. Basically, he has his own issues to deal with too so there’s a back and forth between him and my main character throughout the story. They each have their own demons to wrestle before they can wrestle each other.”

Knight: “Your ebook came out last month – congrats – and the hard copy will be available in December. Until then, keep writing. We would love to publish more.”

Winzenread: “Thank you! I have multiple works in progress. Fortunately, our family chaos is in no danger of going extinct, so more stories will follow.”

Winzenread’s debut novel is available for Amazon Kindle, Barnes and Noble for Nook readers, and through her publisher’s online store at http://www.champagnebooks.com/store/. It will be out in print via Amazon in early December.  For more information, visit her website at http://www.robinwinzenread.com

See below for order links.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/some-assembly-required-robin-winzenread/1134016423?ean=2940163638505
http://champagnebooks.com/store/coming-soon/778-some-assembly-required-9781926681528.html

Venice – Great Place to Visit, No Place for a Zombie Apocalypse

There’s nothing quite like a long alley with multiple darkened crevasses along the way to get the old heart rate up…

Halloween is over.  The candy has been eaten, the jack-o-lanterns smashed, the scary decorations taken down. 

I hope there isn’t a hole in the ceiling any where…

What few pumpkins escaped carving now begin the morbid count down to their ultimate demise as Thanksgiving dinner pumpkin pies.   Tis the season.

Vino, pasta and zombies anyone?

But should you get the urge to revisit this spookiest of holidays before next October 31st rolls around, may I suggest an alternative?

Kind of makes you wonder what’s around the curve. I hope it’s not a dead end…

 Take a night time stroll through the darkened streets of Venice proper. 

I wonder what’s under the water…

 While she is relatively safe from a human perspective, her dark nooks and even deeper crannies make one thing abundantly clear.

Only vertically challenged ghouls need apply to haunt these nooks and crannies. Zombie pigeons anyone?

 This is no place to be during a zombie apocalypse…

In reality, the scariest thing that actually might happen in Venice is a drunken tumble into a canal. But don’t judge me…

Oh Bring on the Nooks and Crannies…

My childhood home – the place where my mother still resides – was simple and pleasant enough.  It had three bedrooms which housed six people, and the one and a half baths proved to be more than adequate since my brothers were allergic to cleanliness.  Like most American homes, it had all the necessities – a serviceable, but lackluster kitchen, a living room/dining room combo with a large picture window looking out over a front lawn sprinkled with dog poop, and a tiny family room with a fireplace.  And, like so many other Hoosier homes, it was a standard ranch-style one-story brick house, in essence a nearly identical replica of its many cookie-cutter brethren. 

An amazing Oh-Florence.com apartment with one heck of a view!

Now, don’t get me wrong, I LOVE the home I grew up in.  It was and always will be home even though I now own one of my own.  Yes, it was loving, yes it was warm and, yes, it was home, but a creative living space, it was not, despite my attempts to color it up with homemade macaroni art. 

Nooks and crannies?  Nada.  Twisting staircases?  Forget about it!  Frescoed walls?  Arched hallways?  Dormers with window seats? Butlers’ pantries?  Hidden passageways?  Bay windows? Nope.  Not a one.

So while my home provided all the love and comfort a girl could need, it wasn’t exactly inspiring on a creative level.

While most kids may give little thought to nooks and crannies, as a child, I was different.  Buildings and boats fired my imagination, and I spent quite a bit of my childhood drooling over both and building models of each.  I once owned so many dollhouses that my younger brothers threatened to line them up and

Oh-Paris apartment with the fireplace of my dreams. Hot dogs anyone?

recreate the great Chicago fire.  When we visited downtown department stores, my siblings would run for the toy aisle.  Me?  I ran for the furniture.  As an adolescent, I actually saved up my allowance to subscribe to House & Garden magazine and that one day a month when it arrived in the mailbox was my own private Christmas morning.  Yeah, I was that weird.

And that mania hasn’t mellowed with age, oh no, quite the contrary!  I actually have an inch-thick file of colored chip strips collected from various paint departments.  I now subscribe to more decorator magazines than I have toes and fingers, and my husband has to pry me out of the kitchen display sections of home improvement stores with a crowbar.  When we drive anywhere in the

This Oh-Florence apartment has a triangular-shaped terrace! Almost makes me wish I was better at geometry.

dark, I peer at passing houses in hopes that I may spy a staircase or built-in bookcase through the windows.  Naked people doing God knows what in there?  Who cares!  I want to see their walls!

When my children were little, I gave thanks for Halloween because it meant trick-or-treating in the oldest neighborhood dripping with big turn-of-the-century mansions left over from a more prosperous age.  Thus while my kiddies begged for candy at strange door after strange door, I peeked into one architectural beauty after another, here a Queen Anne, there a Victorian, everywhere a Gothic.  It was heaven.

So imagine my joy, my glee, when I stumbled upon Oh! 

Headquartered out of Barcelona,Spain, Oh is a vacation property management company specializing in Europe.  With hundreds of rental properties to choose from in such locales as Venice, Paris, London, Prague, etc., they are, in short, the maker of vacation dreams.  I discovered this by accident when I stumbled over a retweet of Oh’s spring blogger competition and entered.  The contest was inspired, but simple – pick one of ten European cities and write a blog post about why you want to go there and the top five things you would do while visiting.  In return, the winner would receive one week in four different cities, equating to a month-long grand tour of Europe!  My imagination inflamed, I entered, I dreamed, I won.

Well, I won a runner-up spot!  Congrats to Leah of “Leah Travels” who won the grand prize with her fabulous winning blog entry onFlorence.  See the link to it below – it’s delicious!

http://leahtravels.com/site/places/italy/i-want-to-go-with-oh-to-florence

After discovering my wonderful runner-up status, I proceeded to scare the neighborhood dogs with my peeling screams of delight.  I then ran around the house asking my family to pinch me because I had to be dreaming, but my children declined, oddly enough, and my husband wouldn’t stop.  Go figure.

After that, I sat down and I dreamed.  And indulged.

For my runner-up prize is three nights in Venice, Italy in accommodations provided by Oh, and after going to Oh’s property rental site (see link below) I spent the rest of the day pouring over Venetian rental property after Venetian

This puts my sofa from Big Lots into perspective.

rental property after Venetian rental property.  For on Oh’s site, one can not only see where the rental property falls on the map, one can also drool over pictures of the accommodations and, in many, cases view a layout of the apartments.  Le sigh!

http://www.oh-venice.com/

As a nook and cranny junkie and a lover of creative living spaces, I was hooked.  Apartment after apartment after apartment – many located in buildings older than my hometown – scrolled past on my computer monitor and time slipped away.  In my own way, I was an explorer, off to distant lands, making my way through unfamiliar territory and loving every minute of it.

And I couldn’t stop at Venice.  After that it was on to Oh -London and Oh -Florence and – oh my God! – Oh -Paris!

And now Oh’s property sites have replaced Pinterest as my day-time dream-filled distraction of choice.  Where as Pinterest drips with things I will never have or places I can never attain or clothing I will never fit into, Oh’s property

A Venetian room with a view courtsey of Oh-Venice.

is oh so attainable and very much available for rent, thus making these little slices of heaven one can actually enjoy as I will be doing in September.  *Pinch*  Ouch!  God, that felt good!

Venice awaits and maybe next year my daughter and I will finally fulfill one of her dreams and get to Dublin.  My 70-year-old mother has always wanted to see England, the home of her grandmother.  My husband dreams of his family’s mother country of Germany and Berlin.  And I will definitely have to get to Barcelona if for no other reason than that of drooling over matadors in tight shiny satin pants.  It’s wonderful to dream, isn’t it?

I once worked with a woman who grew up in southern California between the Pacific Ocean to the west and burnished mountains to the east.  She moved to

My Cape Cod doesn’t look like this. Neither does the yard barn from Lowes.

Indiana after marrying a native Hoosier, but while she loved the man, she failed to fall in love with my home state.  As she grew up a stone’s throw from both deserts and palm trees, I can understand why.  Her benchmark for beauty was set high at an early age.  Growing up in a vacation destination, could she appreciate Indiana otherwise?

My childhood home is much like the land in which I live.  Both are serviceable and have their charms.  They’re understated and often overlooked.  Bells and whistles are non-existent.  But living in that little cookie-cutter house surrounded by Indiana’s flat fields of corn left me with a very flexible benchmark for beauty.  I delight in a winter wheat field.  Golden pastures of rolling hay bales give me pause.  And I will swoon over Venice.

September will be here soon and with it Italy.  I am preparing now to be left speechless.  And in the meantime I will dream and plan and drool.  And even while I will fantasy over Parisian apartments and London hotel suites and

I think Anthony Bourdain visited the owner of this building in an episode of No Reservations. I recognize the courtyard!

Tuscan abodes, I will embrace my quaint little house and my childhood home and my flat little land and thank them for being what they are and for shaping me into who I am.

By Robin Winzenread Fritz,

Writer, dreamer and lover of spaces big and small.