Five Stars for Dancing in the White Room

Dancing in the White Room got a five star review from Michelle Robertson at Reader's Favorite

"Ute Carbone has skillfully written a highly enjoyable story filled with realistic circumstances and emotions, making it appealing to many different types of readers. The story itself has a transitional tone to it, popping from past to present, making it intriguing and entertaining, making the reader eager to read more."  
Read the rest of the review HERE

Dancing in the white room is slang for skiing or boarding in deep powder snow. The dancer is PD Bell, one of the best extreme skiers on the planet. Mallory Prescott, the woman who lives with him and loves him, is used to Bell’s exploits. A patrol woman at Whiteface Mountain near Lake Placid, New York, Mallory is no stranger to risk. But this time Bell is taking on the West Rib of Denali, highest and most dangerous mountain in North America. It’s a descent that has never been done, though it’s been tried. Five years ago, Bell had tried it. The attempt nearly killed him. Five years ago, he promised Mallory he wouldn’t try it again.

     Over the six weeks in which he’s gone, Mallory begins to question her relationship with Bell. Does he really love her? Is he in it for the duration? What has loving him cost her?  Mallory’s life choices are thrown into stark relief when her daughter Emily takes a terrible fall. Together with her life-long friend Creech Creches, she must work her way through a maze of uncharted territory at a hospital miles from home.

            Dancing in the White Room is the story of the love we keep, the price we pay for that love, and the forgiveness it takes to hold on to what is precious.

Buy links:

Turquoise Morning Press

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

For more about this book, please visit the Dancing in the White Room web page

Coffee with Ally

I'm having coffee with Ally Shields today, chatting about my new book and life and such.

http://www.allyshields.com/1/post/2014/03/coffee-chat-with-womens-fiction-author-ute-carbone.html?

#Snippet Dancing in the White Room--Bell's Return

Here's another quick peek at Dancing in the White Room. In this snip, Bell has come back from Alaska.

He looks as though the Alaska Mountains have leaned hard on him. His collarbone sticks out like a hanger for the T-shirt he wears. His eyes, usually bright enough to catch me up, sag heavy over deep lines.

I’m gathered into him before I have the chance to say anything at all. He smells of sweat, I imagine how many hours he’s spent crumpled in an airplane seat. For a minute, I want all time to end here.

He kisses my forehead, and I burrow into the hollow of his arm. We stand there for an endless amount of time.

For more about Dancing in the White Room, please visit my webpage, TMP, or Amazon. 

#SaturdaySnippet Bell's Accident from Dancing in the White Room.

I've got a few more excerpts from Dancing in the White Room to Share. In this one, Mallory remembers what happened the first time Bell tried a descent down the West Rib of Denali. He's gone to try again, and Mallory is upset that he would.  This is the reason why--

It’s been five years, and I can still hear Roddie’s voice. “We had to grapple him down. Copter’s won’t go that high. We’re shipping him off to Anchorage.” When I didn’t say anything, he added, “Hope I didn’t worry you, love.”

After we hung up, I called the airlines and booked the first flight to Anchorage. They had Bell in a room by the time I got there. He looked like he’d been the loser in a prizefight. One eye was swollen shut, one hand bandaged because of frostbite on two fingers.

I was trying at the time to unhinge an awful fear, the awful thought of Bell as fallible, as vulnerable. It sat in my head, reinforced by tape and bandages and the blistering on his face. It sat there and I couldn’t shake it. It still sits there, this heavy pulsing gravitational thought.

When I think of Bell on Denali, this is the picture I get. Bell vulnerable. Bell fallible.

For more, please go check out Dancing in the White Room on my website

#Ski Addiction at Gemini Girls

The Dancing in the White Room blog tour stops at Gemini Girls today, where I talk about being addicted to skiing.  There's a contest to enter for some free books by yours truly!

http://www.geminigirls.com/dancing-in-the-white-room-by-ute-carbone-plus-giveaway/

Dancing in the White Room #snippet An Unwritten Promise

We're on a break from touring today, so I thought I'd post another short snippet here on the blog.
Mallory has called her father after having a fight with Creech.

“So why are you really calling, sweetie?” he asks.

And I’m ready to cry again, except that I’m too old to go crying to Daddy. He wouldn’t know what to do with it, if I did.

“I thought me and Em might come visit once the season’s done.” The thought has just popped into my head, as likely an excuse as any.

“That would be great.” He sounds like he really means it. “About the middle of April, maybe? Bell ought to be home by then.”

The mention of Bell is enough to do me in, and I find I’m telling him all my troubles, about Roddie and Bell’s continuing despite what happened. About how scared I feel. “And Creech is pissed at me too,” I finish, though I don’t even try to explain this part.

“Creechie will come round. He always does.”

But I don’t know. He didn’t seem very willing to come around when he left here.

I don’t feel much better after I hang up. What I’d really like to do is pack up and take Emily down to Wells right now. If this was seven years ago and there was no Emily and no Bell, I might go running home. But it’s not seven years ago, and it’s not so easy to just pick up and go. I have my job to consider. I couldn’t leave Albie in a lurch. It wouldn’t be right.

I go to bed but I don’t sleep. I tell myself I better stop obsessing. I’m going to pay for my insomnia tomorrow, but it doesn’t seem to matter what I tell myself. I keep playing my conversation with Creech over in my head. How could I have made him see it differently?

Then I get mad, thinking it’s really none of Creech’s business in the first place. He has no right to be upset with me. But that doesn’t sit well either.

Then I switch channels and think about Danny and try to imagine Bell running to his grandfather because I wouldn’t marry him. 

There’s still some kind of promise between us. Even if it’s unwritten.

Isn’t there?

Dancing in the White Room Blog Tour

Just because the Winter Olympics are over doesn't mean you can't still enjoy Dancing in the White Room. I'm taking my ski-themed book on tour over the next few weeks and there'll be plenty about my characters and skiing. Hope you'll make a few of the stops with me.

Tour Schedule

Feb 25 - The Book Bug Review   

Feb 26  -  Reviews by Crystal

Feb 27 -  Fiction Witches

Feb 28 -  Fall into Reading Reviews

Feb 28- Angela Smith

Feb 28- Coffee Time Romance

March 1 -  Harlie's Books

March 2- A Passion for Romance

March 3  -  Toots Book Reviews

March 4- Romance Lives Forever

March 5  -  Gemini Girls

March 6  -  London Scribbles

March 6 -  That Girl Reads 

March 7- Lusty Penguin Review 

March 10 - Romantic Reads  

Dancing in the White Room--#Snippet The bedtime story. #TMPress

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Mallory and Bell's daughter, Emily, asks her mother for a bedtime story that Mallory would rather not tell--

Settled into bed, she asks for a story. “I want the story of Daddy and the mountain.”

This stops me for a minute. I have to bite my lip to keep from crying. “I don’t know that one, Em.”

“Yes you do. Daddy went to the big mountain,” she begins and she lies back expectantly.

I swallow hard. “Oh, that one,” I say and I pick up as best I can. “Daddy went to the big mountain.”

“And what’s the big mountain called?” she asks, though I know that she already knows the answer.

“It’s called Denali.” The name is loose and pliable on my tongue. It rolls like pebbles in my mouth.

Dancing in the White Room is available as an e-book. Buy your copy at TMP, Amazon, Barnes and Noble

White Room Snippets: Mallory and Bell #TMP

Part of Dancing in the White Room is told in back flash as Mallory recalls her life with Bell over the past seven years. This snippet is one of those scenes. In it, Mallory tells how she and Bell first met. She's a patrol woman, he's an extreme skier who's at Whiteface doing a demonstration ski.

The lunch crowd had long since filtered out of the cafeteria, choosing to stand in line for the lifts rather than hamburgers. I spooned up a bowl of chili from what looked like the dregs of the pot. Bell sat at a corner table with some other guys from the team. His blond hair curled around his shoulders, and I thought he was the best-looking guy I had ever laid eyes on.
I sat down a few tables from them. When I glanced up, I saw Bell watching me. I smiled and he smiled back, said something to his friends, picked up his tray and started walking in my direction. I figured he was done with lunch and about to leave. I wanted to check him out, but not stare, so I concentrated on my chili.
I didn’t look up again until he sat down across from me, at which point I was caught up in a kind of gummy, adolescent speechlessness. He had a half-eaten burger on his tray and a mound of fries slathered in ketchup.
“Chili any good?” he asked.
I stared at it as though it might give me an answer to his question. The crackers I’d been crumbling into the bowl were stuck to my palm. “I wouldn’t recommend it.” I brushed the crumbs from my hand.
“I was watching you ski,” he said. “You’re pretty phenomenal.” He smiled down at his burger.
“You’re not so bad yourself,” I answered, thinking the minute after I said it that this was possibly the stupidest thing that had ever dropped out of my mouth.
“You want to grab a beer or something later?”

Dancing in the White Room as an e-book at a wide variety of online bookstores including
TMP , Barnes and Noble and Amazon

White Room Snippets; Opening Lines

I was told, once, never to begin a book with the character waking up. That is, of course, exactly how I started Dancing in the White Room. Though Mallory is not waking so much as lying awake.

The alarm goes off at four-thirty, and I stare at the skylight of our sleeping loft. Bell

bangs on the clock to keep it from singing out again. I turn my back and nestle under the blankets. It’s almost March and it shouldn’t be as cold as it is—five below last night according to the thermometer propped outside the kitchen window. The temperature inside’s not much warmer. Bell would probably say I’m the one causing the freeze. We spent the past few days fighting. I did my share of pleading and cursing. I refused to help him pack his gear.

I wait for it, the hand that comes to my waist soon enough. Bell’s long fingers caress the contour and follow up under the curve of my breast.

“Mallory, you awake?”

I try to decide if I should answer him. I try to decide whether I want to have this conversation again, the one we’ve had off and on for the last six months, ever since he let slip he would be going back to Alaska to do the glisse on the West Rib of Denali.

I’ve never been good at pretense, so I turn to face him. His face is angular in the gray light of the room. His blond hair shuffles around his shoulders. He reaches over, his arms still warm from the down of our comforter, and kisses the arch of my shoulder.

“I’m going to miss that.” His voice is as inviting as a warm bath in the winter. It would be easy to fall into his warmth, easy to make this goodbye tender and inviting,the way our goodbyes usually are. Soft and intense, full of a kind of sweetness that can hold us,both of us, for a week or a month. A goodbye that promises a return, that says we’ll be here again, together.

Today, I push him away. I’m in no mood for sweet goodbyes. Last minute lovemaking won’t change his mind. And what I want is a mind change. What I want is a turnaround. I’m too stubborn to settle for less.

Dancing in the White Room is now available at TMP and Amazon

Valentine's Blog Hop #CBG

Have you bought your chocolates yet? It's nearly Valentine's Day. In celebration, I'm blog hopping with some other great authors.
It's a big week for me--I have a new book releasing on Tuesday. The book, Dancing in the White Room, is about skiing and love. What could be better for a big heart winter celebration?

Dancing in the white room is slang for skiing or boarding in deep powder snow. The dancer is PD Bell, one of the best extreme skiers on the planet. Mallory Prescott, the woman who lives with him and loves him, is used to Bell’s exploits. A patrol woman at Whiteface Mountain near Lake Placid, New York, Mallory is no stranger to risk. But this time Bell is taking on the West Rib of Denali, highest and most dangerous mountain in North America. It’s a descent that has never been done, though it’s been tried. Five years ago, Bell had tried it. The attempt nearly killed him. Five years ago, he promised Mallory he wouldn’t try it again.

     Over the six weeks in which he’s gone, Mallory begins to question her relationship with Bell. Does he really love her? Is he in it for the duration? What has loving him cost her?  Mallory’s life choices are thrown into stark relief when her daughter Emily takes a terrible fall. Together with her life-long friend Creech Creches, she must work her way through a maze of uncharted territory at a hospital miles from home.

            Dancing in the White Room is the story of the love we keep, the price we pay for that love, and the forgiveness it takes to hold on to what is precious.

I'll have more updates and some sneak peeks at Dancing later this week. Meanwhile, leave me a comment for a chance to win any one of my books you choose. 

There's more fun and prizes at all the stops below. And a GREAT GRAND PRIZE of a Kindle Paperweight e-reader loaded down with books, including the first two novellas of my Anton and Lenora Series:

Did I mention the kindle is chock full of books? Here's a list of all the titles:

J.A. Garland Books: INSTINCT, Dysus Dreamer

Celia Breslin: Haven

Pippa Jay: Gethyon

Mimi Sebastian: The Necromancer’s Seduction

Cecilia Dominic: The Mountain’s Shadow

Jude Johnson: Save the Last Dance Trilogy

Isabella Norse: Assassin’s Heart

Dani Harper: First Bite, Storm Warrior

Rita Bay: The Aegis, Into the Lyons Den

Allison Knight: Lynbrook’s Lady, Betrayed Bride

Joyce Proell: A Deadly Truth

Holly Hunt: The Devil’s Wife, Scale & Feather

Ceci Giltenan: Highland Solution

Ute Carbone: To the Wind, Sweet Lenora

Cassiel Knight: Blood on the Moon, Key of Solomon

Audra Middleton: Hitchhiker

Morgan Wyatt: Dangerous Curves, Escaping West

Angela Kay Austin: Rumer

Liz Crowe: Floor Time, Sweat Equity, Closing Costs

January Bain: Forever Man, Forever Woman, Forever Clan

Susan Frances: The King Maker

Linda Rettstatt: In The Spirit, A Falling Star

Graeme Brown The Pact

Dani Collins: The Healer

Stop by at The Valentine's Day Blog Hop Home Page for your chance to enter. And be sure to check out all the other hop stops, too, for chances at more prizes and fun! 

 

Dancing in the White Room #BookTrailer

Ready, set, go! Dancing in the White Room is being released on February 11th! Holy smokes, that's on Tuesday! Stay tuned for places to buy the book and lots more about this ski-based story. 

Next week, I'll also be doing a Valentine's Blog Hop with some other great authors. There'll be lots of fun and prizes, including a grand prize of an e-reader loaded down with books, books, books. I'll have more for you on that on Monday.

Meanwhile, in the countdown until Dancing in the White Room's debut, here's the trailer for the book-

Dear Winter #WTFriday

Dear Winter,

I’m sorry. 

I've been moping ever since your fickle brother, Summer, packed up his wine coolers and his Frisbee and left me with you. Silent brooding stormy you. I missed those silly songs he sang, how he laughed long and hard at just about anything.

I locked myself away from you. I called you a cold hearted bastard, I named you cruel. I made fun of the way you never seem to have anything at all to say.

Then today, you stood at my doorstep with the sun in your arms and asked me to come away with you. I didn’t want to leave the warmth of my house, my steaming coffee, the novel half-read on the end table. I gave you a million reasons why I couldn’t—there was e-mail to answer and laundry to wash and the refrigerator needed cleaning.

I’d forgotten how persistent you can be. You stood fast, saying nothing, in your white suit and carrying that sun. And finally, out of excuses, I bundled myself, still grumbling, into my coat and hat. I got my skinny skis from the back of the closet.

You’d done your magic on the park. The pine boughs draped in white linen , the snowflakes lit to flickering under that luminous sun, the  brilliance only you know how to conjure. And the quiet—I had forgotten how it slows down the world, how it reminds me just breathing is enough.

I glided on the soft snow and remembered how, in my younger days, I’d loved you best of all. Your snow filled woods had filled me with wonder. I swooped down your sunlight slopes, the wind racing through my hair singing yes, yes and yes again.

How could I have forsaken you? Today you came to me dressed in your finest white and asked I come away with you.  I am glad I didn’t refuse you.  I love you, still.

Cover Reveal: Dancing in the White Room #TMP

Can I have a drum roll? The cover for Dancing in the White Room is here!

Getting cover art is one of the truly fun parts of being an author. It's like unwrapping a Christmas gift. I love the energy in this cover, by Kim Jacobs. It looks like the skier is going to ski right off the page, doesn't it? Perfect for this ski-themed book.
Dancing in the White Room will be available in mid-February, just in time for the Winter Olympics. It's set in ski country, but at heart, it's a love story.

Here's the book blurb--

 Dancing in the white room is slang for skiing or boarding in deep powder snow. The dancer is PD Bell, one of the best extreme skiers on the planet. Mallory Prescott, the woman who lives with him and loves him, is used to Bell’s exploits. A patrol woman at Whiteface Mountain near Lake Placid, New York, Mallory is no stranger to risk. But this time Bell is taking on the West Rib of Denali, highest and most dangerous mountain in North America. It’s a descent that has never been done, though it’s been tried. Five years ago, Bell had tried it. The attempt nearly killed him. Five years ago, he promised Mallory he wouldn’t try it again.     
    Over the six weeks in which he’s gone, Mallory begins to question her relationship with Bell. Does he really love her? Is he in it for the duration? What has loving him cost her?  Mallory’s life choices are thrown into stark relief when her daughter Emily takes a terrible fall. Together with her life-long friend Creech Creches, she must work her way through a maze of uncharted territory at a hospital miles from home.       
      Dancing in the White Room is the story of the love we keep, the price we pay for that love, and the forgiveness it takes to hold on to what is precious.