Hi Tule Readers,

I’ve been pretty excited this month for a couple of reasons—first I’ve always loved autumn, and November’s one of my favorite months because of all the vibrant colors. I live in the Pacific Northwest, and November often ushers in a lot of heavy rains so the trees get stripped of their brilliant hues all too quickly, but this year, November has been glorious, with some of our historic trees still clinging to their leaves. 

Second, my Southern Love Spells series is concluding with the release on November 20th of A Kiss of Southern Magic.  This is book four in the series that explores four sisters who move home to their small town in North Carolina, rediscover their closeness, unearth a few life changing family secrets and rebuild their lives and find love with a little push from a potentially magical heirloom recipe book. 

My heroine is pediatrician Sarah Maye, the eldest, who carries the mantel of responsibility gracefully. I saved her for last because she was the quietest of the sisters, and as I wrote the other books and she would enter and exit and participate, her story, her personality began to shine.  The premise of the book is that if one of the sisters makes a recipe from the Southern Love Spells book –exactly (and some of the directions are quite unusual), they will find their soul mate who will fall madly in love with them. Sarah resists using the book—of course she does, but then she’s curious about a new professor in town and takes a chance—making some scones and jam for him. But he shuts her down only to see her later that day when he brings in his young daughter for her childhood wellness exam.

This is the first full series I’ve written that focuses exclusively on sisters. I often focus on cowboy brothers or friends, and I’ve loved this journey so much, I hope to create a series with sisters again—it was one of my childhood fantasies.

Here is an excerpt below.  I hope you get a chance to read A Kiss of Southern Magic—let me know what you think.  Happy Reading. SJ

“Doctor Maye, your next patient is here.”

Sarah held back her sigh. It was her fault she was so tired. She hadn’t been sleeping well since she’d moved into Grandma Millie’s stately and historic home following her death this past spring. Instead, she’d roam the three floors at night, combing through paperwork, boxing up and labeling various china patterns to share with her three sisters, cleaning, and trying hard to not think too much about the house’s future as well as hers.

Her nurse hovered in the doorway, her expression more than a little judgy.

“You work too hard.”

It was what she signed up for.

“And still the patients come.” Sarah smiled. She put her chai down without sipping it—that would only make her crave and miss it more. She also didn’t eat her sliced apple or protein bar.

“And that’s not really lunch,” Jeannie added. “It’s the first cold snap. Soon we’ll be overrun with snotty noses, hacking coughs and fevers. You gotta keep your strength up. Pace yourself.”

Jeannie wasn’t wrong. But most of the ailments Jeannie listed were due more to viruses or bacterial infections. Still. Sarah had lost weight in the past few months, when she’d already been slim.

And I’m still not happy.

The thought made her shake her head impatiently. Happiness was a choice. Her initial choice of husband hadn’t worked out so well, but now she was choosing differently. Making her own decisions.

But she still felt stuck. That word was a drumbeat in her brain.

Book club, Pilates and yoga were Band-Aids. The Monday night dinners with her sisters and their partners eased the loneliness that seemed to have taken up permanent residence in her bones but reminded her of everything she didn’t have.

“Are you feeling okay, Dr. Maye?”

Sarah had forgotten the young nurse was still there.

“Just woolgathering as my grandma Millie would say.”

Jeannie’s young, pale face creased in sympathy. “It’s hard to lose someone. My granny died the year I entered the nursing program. I still sometimes think about texting her when I see a squirrel doing something crazy or I see a bargain at the knitting and fabric store or the dogwoods come in bloom. She was crazy for gardening.”

Sarah smiled, grabbed her iPad and touched Jeannie’s shoulder as she passed out of her small office.

Sarah took the slim chart Jeannie held and knocked on the exam room with the picture of a purple dragon on it. She opened the door, polite, reassuring smile in place, but she stopped short.

“Oh.” For a silly moment, she nearly considered retreating.

“This isn’t awkward at all,” Professor Forster Luke Raimy said, smiling charmingly as he stood up from the light blue, padded chair and held out his hand to shake hers.

Sarah focused on her new patient, not the girl’s father.

She was a professional and had years of training in hiding her feelings—not just in her medical practice, but also as a widow and long before that as the eldest Maye daughter. Maye women were self-assured and composed no matter what crisis they faced. And a man who’d openly rejected a…friendly overture was hardly a crisis.

About the Author.

Sinclair Sawhney is a former journalist and middle school teacher who holds a BA in Political Science and K-8 teaching certificate from the University of California, Irvine and a MS in Education with an emphasis in teaching writing from the University of Washington. She has worked as Senior Editor with Tule Publishing for over seven years. Writing as Sinclair Jayne she’s published fifteen short contemporary romances with Tule Publishing with another four books being released in 2021. Married for over twenty-four years, she has two children, and when she isn’t writing or editing, she and her husband, Deepak, are hosting wine tastings of their pinot noir and pinot noir rose at their vineyard Roshni, which is a Hindi word for light-filled, located in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. Shaandaar!