Virtual Book Tour and Giveaway: Just Like Family by Barbara Casey

Welcome to my stop on the virtual book tour for Just Like Family by Barbara Casey. This book tour was organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. On my stop, I have an excerpt from the book as well as a great guest post from the author about liking the unlikable character. There's also the tour wide giveaway for a chance to win a $25 Amazon or Barnes & Noble gift card. Be sure to visit the other stops on the tour for more content. Enjoy!

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Title: Just Like Family
Author: Barbara Casey

Publisher: Speaking Volumes
Publication Date: July 28th 2022

Print Length: 275 pages
Genre: Contemporary Romance

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All in one day, thirty-five-year-old Hallie Marsh learns that the man she loves, works for, and is living with has found someone else and that she no longer has a job or a place to live. She is also involved in a car accident. She retreats to her parents' home in the northern part of Florida to be consoled and to decide what to do with the rest of her life only to find out that her mother is planning to leave her father for another man. Embittered, filled with anger, and wanting revenge, Hallie decides to take a year's sabbatical and write a novel that would reveal the unethical, if not illegal, real estate business practices of her former boss and lover.

Determined and focused, Hallie buys a house in the neighborhood where her two best friends and former co-workers live: Carol Mathews and Gordon Sebastian Cooney. It is through Gordon and Carol that Hallie comes to know four neighbors, one of whom is Carol's Vietnamese mother who carries a doll and talks into reflective surfaces. These four neighbors--Cora, Suong, Charlie, and Vince--are all elderly, peculiar, and alone at this stage in their lives until Vince comes up with a plan: The four of them will form an alliance, buy the old Braswell estate which is located just down the road, fix it up, and live in it almost like family. Hallie is fascinated by these four people, and rather than write a tell-all book she begins writing about their alliance. With this new focus and the friendship of Carol and Gordon, Hallie overcomes her feelings of rage, she is able to cope with her mother's sudden death, and she finds true love.

 
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EXCERPT:

Cora served lunch in the dining room the way she had planned, but it wasn’t a very happy occasion. No matter how much Suong told them it wasn’t their fault, Vince, Charlie, and Cora felt they had let their friend down by somehow offending Carol. After eating about half of what he normally ate, Vince excused himself, saying he felt a little tired and thought he would go take a nap. Charlie mumbled something about needing to water the plants in his room and followed Vince up the stairs. Suong and Cora sat in silence at the table staring at the dirty dishes and uneaten food. Suddenly they heard Charlie yell. Cora threw down her napkin and hurried up the stairs with Suong right behind her. Charlie ran out of Vince’s room waving his arms.

“Hurry. Somethin’s wrong with Vince! Oh, gawd,” said Charlie, wringing his hands and hopping from one foot to the other.

Vince was lying on his bed gasping for breath. His face was an ugly red and his hands were clawing at the sheet.

“Go call 9ll, Suong, and tell them to send an ambulance to the old Braswell home off of State Road 9,” Cora said as soon as she saw Vince. Suong ran out of the room.

“Loosen his belt and trousers, Charlie,” ordered Cora, and she began feeling inside Vince’s pants pockets.

“Oh gawd,” Charlie kept repeating, and he was trembling all over. Finally after several attempts he managed to get the snap undone on Vince’s trousers.

“I can’t find his bottle of nitroglycerin pills,” said Cora now fumbling in Vince’s shirt pocket. “Loosen his tie and open his shirt, Charlie,” she told him and she rushed into Vince’s bathroom. A few seconds later she ran back into the bedroom carrying a little brown bottle. Charlie had unbuttoned Vince’s shirt and taken off his tie.

“We gotta do somethin’,” Charlie yelled. “Cora!”

Cora emptied out two small white pills into her hand and tried to open Vince’s mouth. But his teeth were clenched tightly together, and he was holding his breath.

“Oh, sweet Jesus, Cora, we gotta do somethin’,” Charlie repeated frantically.

Suong, who had gone to get Ngoc Tuyet after calling 9ll, now ran back into the room. She stood on the other side of the bed crushing Ngoc Tuyet in her arms.

“Charlie, now you listen to me.” Cora grabbed his arm. “We must get Vince’s mouth open so I can put these pills under his tongue. Do you understand?”

Charlie put his hand under Vince’s jaw and poked his thumb between his lips, but he couldn’t get Vince’s mouth open. Cora stood ready with the two pills in her hand. He pressed harder, trying to work his thumb between Vince’s teeth. Still he couldn’t get Vince’s mouth open. The veins on Vince’s neck and temples started swelling.

“Charlie!” yelled Cora.

“Breathe you son of a b*tch,” yelled Charlie. “Breathe!”

Just then Vince slowly let his breath out, and when he did, he relaxed his jaw muscles. It was just slightly, but Charlie felt it. He immediately jammed his thumb between Vince’s upper and lower teeth and held it there until Cora could slip the pills under Vince’s tongue. In the distance they could hear a siren. Suong ran downstairs to open the front door.

After several minutes the three members of the emergency crew managed to get a heartbeat and moved Vince from the bed onto a stretcher. Cora rode with him in the ambulance to the hospital. Charlie and Suong followed behind in the pickup. Once they got to the hospital, Cora, Charlie, and Suong had to wait in a separate room while the doctor worked on Vince. After an hour, the doctor came in and told them that Vince had been taken into surgery for an emergency bypass.

They waited four more hours, sitting and holding hands, and taking turns holding Ngoc Tuyet. Finally the doctor came back in and told them Vince was out of immediate danger. The operation had been successful, he felt, but he would know more after a couple of days. Vince would be kept in recovery for the rest of the night. They would be able to see him the next day. There was nothing else they could do for now.

Charlie, Cora, and Suong drove back home too exhausted to even talk. It was well past midnight when they finally got there. Wearily they all went upstairs to their rooms.

Cora dressed for bed and crawled between the cool sheets. She tried to go to sleep, but her eyes wouldn’t stay closed. She felt so frightened and helpless and weak. Vince was the strong one of the alliance. Without him . . . There was a light tap on her door. Cora turned on the lamp next to her bed.

“Come in,” she said.

Suong opened the door and shuffled over to Cora’s bed.

“Is fine if Ngoc Tuyet and Suong asleep with you?” asked Suong.

“Of course it is,” said Cora. “I don’t much feel like sleeping by myself either.”

Suong slipped under the covers, placing Ngoc Tuyet between her and Cora so that the doll could share the pillow. Cora tucked the covers around Suong and Ngoc Tuyet and turned out the light. Then she lay there, staring into the darkness. In a few minutes there was another tap on the door. Cora raised up on one elbow and turned the lamp back on.

“Come in,” she said.

Charlie opened the door and hovered there, his eyes filled with tears and KittyPussy doing figure eights around his legs.

“It’s all right, Charlie,” said Cora. “You can sleep in here with us tonight.”

Charlie climbed in next to Cora and turned on his side. He didn’t want the women to see him crying. Cora reached over him and once more turned off the lamp. She pulled the blanket up around Charlie’s shoulders and kissed the back of his head.

“Good night, Charlie,” she said, and once again she lay in the darkness.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Barbara Casey is the author of several award-winning novels and book-length works of nonfiction for both adults and young adults, and numerous articles, poems, and short stories. Several of her books have been optioned for major films and television series.

In addition to her own writing, Barbara is an editorial consultant and president of the Barbara Casey Agency. Established in 1995, she represents authors throughout the United States, Great Britain, Canada, and Japan.

In 2018 Barbara received the prestigious Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award and Top Professional Award for her extensive experience and notable accomplishments in the field of publishing and other areas.

Barbara lives on a mountain in Georgia with three cats who adopted her: Homer, a Southern coon cat; Reese, a black cat; and Earl Gray, a gray cat and Reese’s best friend.

Website * Amazon * Goodreads
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GUEST POST:

Liking the Unlikable Character
by Barbara Casey

In my latest novel Just Like Family, I introduce a variety of unrelated characters from different backgrounds with difficult and irritating personalities. These are four elderly people - two men and two women – with nothing in common other than a desire to stay independent as long as possible and not constantly be taken advantage of by society because of their age. Each of these individuals has his and her own peculiarities and quite often irrational behaviors. On the outside it would seem that their idea of buying an old dilapidated mansion and fixing it up to live in “just like family” is totally insane; they could never get along.

It takes a young woman who is struggling with her own personal problems after losing her job, a place to live, and her lover to recognize what is special about these four people. She also understands that it is because of their quirkiness and different personalities that they are able to get along so well. It is through this understanding that she is able to move past her own insecurities brought on by poor judgment and decision-making and find true love.

As I was developing these characters, I would find myself getting angry at Cora’s bossiness, Vince’s controlling manner over Charlie, and Suong, talking to her dead husband in reflective surfaces, with her cross-eyed doll that she wouldn’t let out of her sight. Yet, it was these very actions that made me unable to stop thinking about them and caring about what would happen to them. I loved them in spite of their faults, and as a result, they became “just like family.”

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GIVEAWAY:

Barbara Casey will be awarding a $25 Amazon or Barnes & Noble gift card to a randomly drawn winner via Rafflecopter. Good luck!

 

(All the Ups and Downs is not responsible for this giveaway, its entries, or the prize. Goddess Fish Promotions and the author assume all responsibility over this giveaway.)

a Rafflecopter giveaway