Milou Koenings: July Book Bash Summer SALE!

What better time than summer for a Book Bash Sale! This is the season to give ourselves a little downtime — even if it's just a few minutes here and there.

Escape to small town USA and make some new friends!

You can get the first two books — in chronological order — of my Green Pines Romance series at Amazon this week for 99 cents each:

The first book to take place in Green Pines is I Love You Three. This is a full-length novel, with no cliff-hanger, to-be-continued ending (I promise!). 

A former Marine.

A single mom.

Two broken people.

Mac’s struggling to adjust to civilian life after the death in combat of his best friend. When a teaching job opens up in the small town where his friend used to work in the summers, Mac takes it as a sign and moves to Green Pines, hoping to find refuge from his demons.

For Julie, there’s no refuge from night feedings, a crazy mom, an ex-mother-in-law and an overdrawn bank account. She’s struggling to build a better life for herself and her baby and the only thing she knows is she’s not falling for any guy again.

There’s only one problem. You never know when love will knock you off your feet.

"Loved this new book by Milou Koenings. If I had to describe the story, I'd say it was like a mille-feuille French pastry ... A millions interlaced layers"

~ Kd.R

" Mac and Julie are wonderfully complex characters who have so much depth and emotion to them, I feel like I could run into them in my own town ... a story that left me with happy tears in the end. I can't wait to read the other Green Pines romances!

~ Melanie D. Snitker

On sale July 21 to 25!

Buy Now From Amazon

And chronologically next in the Green Pines series comes The Kampala Peppermint Twist. It is the series because it features recurring characters from Green Pines but, as the title and cover image suggests, our heroine finds herself far from home.  I'll tell you a secret -- I love all my books, but if I had to pick one that holds a special place in my heart, this is it. 

A twist of fate and Annie's unexpectedly on her way to Africa for Christmas. Next to her on the plane, a man in a tuxedo. What kind of guy flies in a tux? Annie's about to find out—and discover things about herself that will flip her world upside down.

A delightful, heartwarming Christmas novella.

“A beautiful story that was packed with substance, intrigue, and entertainment.”

~ Nic. S. 

Buy Now From Amazon

Milou Koenings is a USA Today bestselling author. She writes romance because, like chocolate, stories with a happy ending bring more joy into the world and so make it a better place.

Her other Green Pines sweet romances, I Love You Three, Reclaiming Home, The Kampala Peppermint Twist and Sweet Blizzard are available on Amazon,  Amazon.uk, iBooks, Nook, Kobo and all your favorite e-book retailers.






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Re-Introducing ... Milou Koenings

Hi there. I'm Milou. It's re-introduce yourself month here on Sweet Romance Reads, so I'm here to share a bit about me and hope you'll all share a bit about you so we can get to know each other.

Who I am

Here's the official bio:

Milou Koenings is an award-winning USA Today bestselling author who writes romance because, like chocolate, stories with happy endings bring joy to the world and so make it a better place.

Yeah, yeah, I know it doesn't tell you much besides the fact I eat too much chocolate. What can I tell you — I'm shy.

Five Funky Facts about Me

1.  Lets start with the question I'm asked all the time. That name. It's Meeloo, accent on the Mee. Not My-lou. Although I'm so used to the latter by now that I honestly don't care either way.

The only other Milou I know is also Belgian, which is exactly what someone else recently said to me, too. So it seems I have a uniquely Belgian name. Technically, it's a contraction: Myriam Louise. But my parents were overly fond of Tintin, the cartoon character, and his dog's name is Milou.  So you can see I might have some complicated feelings about canines, being named for one...

For all you dog-lovers out there, rest assured. I do like dogs - but only the really big ones. Great Danes are my favorite. Cats? I love them black.

2.   I've lived for at least a year in 12 different countries and spent time in about 30 others.

3.  Number 2 probably explains why I am passionately in love with small towns where everyone has known each other forever.

4.  My favorite bird? Owls. I have a huge collection of them gathering dust all over my house. I keep saying I'm going to box them away, but each one reminds me of a place I visited, or a particular special day. So they stay.

5.   I always need to have a dozen projects going on at the same time. So I have multiple works in progress at any given time and I still have a day job, several in fact. But whatever it is I do, I do it from home, because that's where my heart is.

6.  As you see, math is not my forte...

Something You'd Never Guess About Me

Both my mother and my granny, my father's mother, were ladies-in-waiting.  Yes, to real queens.  One of these days, I'm going to spill the beans and write a royal romance — if they let me, which hasn't happened yet. 

Why I write sweet romance

Because, as a Harvard study discovered, investing in our relationships with lovers, family, friends and community is what keeps us happy and healthier. (We needed a 75-year-long study to tell us this?) 

So as a writer, I can't think of anything better than to write about love and kindness.

You want more dirty details?  You'll find them here on my website. 

My sweet romances — in chronological order

I don't write my Green Pines series in chronological order. They come into the world as the characters demand their own stories.  They books feature recurring characters, but each one is a stand along story.  However, if you want to read them in the order the stories happened in the universe of Green Pines, this is how they go:

A former Marine. A single mom. Two broken people.

Amazon | Kobo | Nook | iTunes

Angus & Robertson | Mondadori

A twist of fate. An overbooked flight. Christmas in Africa will flip her life upside down.

Amazon | Kobo | Nook | iTunes

Angus & Robertson | Mondadori

Covington Black knows what he wants. He wants to believe Ella’s the one, and yet it seems like falling for her is the one thing he shouldn’t have done.

Amazon | Kobo | Nook | iTunes

Angus & Robertson | Mondadori

He’s an ex-con, she’s a socialite.

He saves her life, she could make or break his; will the gift of love come in time?

Amazon | Kobo | Nook | iTunes

Angus & Robertson | Mondadori

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Now it's your turn.  Come join us in the Facebook Sweet Romance Reads Cafe and let's get to know each other!

Love Among the Blackberries by Milou Koenings

In my new release, I Love You Three, the characters spend a day harvesting blackberries from an old lady’s backyard — and then half the town spends the weekend using them before they spoil. There among the blackberry bushes, my heroine, Julie, falls ever more in love with the hero, and as they unload their harvest, she tells him the first lie...

Lorna Mitchell, cc-by-nd-2.0.

For me, blackberries immediately conjure up the memory of my grandmother’s marathon jelly-making days. She grew a variety of berries in her backyard and we always knew she kept a sharp eye on us kids from the kitchen window whenever we were out there playing. The minute she couldn’t see us anymore, she’d come looking, certain we were crouching behind a berry bush of some kind, eating her harvest. (She was usually right!)

But the payoff came when all those berries were harvested — one kind at a time — and she’d make jam. She had a stainless-steel pot taller than a coffee urn, with a tap at the bottom. I’ve never seen another one like it. The closest I’ve found are pots used to brew homemade beer. (And since my grandmother also produced many bottles of cassis liquor, it’s quite possible this was a hootch-making contraption and not a jam pot at all!)

We used to love lining up the jars of different colored jelly on the shelves. The jewel tones — ruby red currants, dark amethyst blackberries, deep blue cassis and blueberries, and fresh green of gooseberries ­— gleamed in the half-light of the basement.

Still, there’s only so much jelly or jam, or even pies and muffins, you can make when you’re faced with as many blackberries as my characters in I Love You Three.  So, I took a little journey on Pinterest, just to see what else people are doing with their fresh blackberries.  And wow!

Here’s a sampling of the mouthwatering recipes I found, and which of the characters in I Love You Three would be most likely to make it:

Blackberry Crostada, from halfbakedharvest.com

This seems like something Annie's mom would make. We first meet her in I Love You Three, but she saves the day in a later Green Pines romance.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/560838959831417544/

Blackberry Cheesecake, from Bromabakery.com

This is totally something Marcia would make. She teaches the hero, Mac, to dance, and brings him dinner, sometimes, too.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/560838959831394435/

Blackberry Popsicles and Blackberry Lemonade

Of course, the heroine, Julie, is going to be serving these at her mother's birthday party, during which she also surreptitiously tries to steer Mac toward some help for the problem he's grappling with...

Blackberry Popsicles from Tutti-dolci.com

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/560838959827557141/

Blackberry Lemonade from Like Mother Like Daughter

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/560838959827557038/

Blackberry Party Cake

This cake has got to be the piece the resistance at Julie and Mac’s engagement party, since it’s summer. (It won’t work as their wedding cake only because they get married right after Thanksgiving, at the beginning of my holiday novella, The Kampala Peppermint Twist.)

Blackberry Cake from Natascha's Kitchen

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/560838959831280457/

Now tell me you don’t want to fill your yard with blackberries? Well, maybe not. But when you find a basket or two of them at the store, at least you'll know the problem won’t be what to do with them, but which recipe to pick!

One last one that I have to include only because no recipe list would be complete without chocolate:

Blackberry Mille-Feuille from Gourmande in the Kitchen

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/560838959831394402/

I hope you enjoyed this tour of some of awesome culinary blogs.  You can find more recipes that my Green Pines characters might be whipping up on my Green Pines Recipes Pinterest board.

Amazon | Kobo | Nook | iBooks

Milou Koenings is a USA Today bestselling author. She writes romance because, like chocolate, stories with a happy ending bring more joy into the world and so make it a better place.

Her Green Pines sweet romances, Reclaiming Home and Sweet Blizzard are available on Amazon,  Amazon.uk, iBooks, Nook, Kobo and all your favorite e-book retailers.  








Sign up for her newsletter, so you'll be the first to know about new releases!

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Cover Reveal: I Love You Three by Milou Koenings

I have a new book coming out!

I've been saying that for months. I could have had a baby and then some by now. And now that it's finally happening, I can't quite believe it. I suspect I won't believe it until I start hearing from people reading it.

But it's time to reveal more than the cover.

The book was set to launch last summer. Then a whole avalanche of medical events descended on almost every member of my family. We've spent so much time in hospitals we practically lived there. The book release kept having to be pushed off.

And part of me didn't mind because releasing a book is kind of scary.

Terrifying, actually, because no matter what you write, romance or dystopian YA thrillers, putting it out there is baring a part of your soul. Even in a make-believe world of spunky, beautiful heroines and strong, tender heroes, bits of the author's own life and experiences, or aspirations can't help seeping through.

And there's so much of that in my upcoming book, I Love You Three.

Someone recently asked me what my next book was about. I told her.

Want to know, too? This is I Love You Three:

Two broken people.

Mac’s a former marine struggling to adjust to civilian life after the death in combat of his best friend. When a teaching job opens up in the small town where his friend used to work in the summers, Mac takes it as a sign and moves to Green Pines, hoping to find refuge from his demons.

For Julie, there’s no refuge from night feedings, a crazy mom, an ex-mother-in-law and an overdrawn bank account. She’s struggling to build a better life for herself and her baby and the only thing she knows is she’s not falling for any guy again.

There’s only one problem. You never know when love will knock you off your feet.

The lady who'd asked me shook her head dubiously and said, "I thought authors are supposed to write about what they know." 

I stared at her open-mouthed in shock, and then realized she doesn't know me. She sees me just as a work-at-home mom in a provincial town.

She doesn't see someone who grew up in a war zone and fights post-traumatic stress every single day.

She doesn't see the daughter and granddaughter of war survivors.

Doesn't see a woman surrounded by men who have been, are or will be in the military. Except for my dad and son-in-law — basically every man I know.

She never knew me as a destitute single mom desperate to survive.

And doesn't know me as someone who believes so strongly in second chances — because I keep being blessed with them time and time again...

It took me a moment to realize what a victory that encounter really was. 

Here I am, finally — an ordinary mom in a more or less quiet town, living a perfectly ordinary life. How extraordinary.

That's exactly what I am going to wish for my wounded characters in I Love You Three as they start their journey out in the world when the book launches on February 7. (You can get it now on pre-order at Amazon!)

I hope you'll love them and wish them well as much as I do.

Oh, yeah. This was supposed to be a cover reveal, not an all-my-secrets reveal, wasn't it? 

So here you go:

Pre-Order Now From Amazon!

Milou Koenings is a USA Today bestselling author. She writes romance because, like chocolate, stories with a happy ending bring more joy into the world and so make it a better place. 

Her Green Pines sweet romances, Reclaiming Home and Sweet Blizzard are available on Amazon,  Amazon.uk, iBooks, Nook, Kobo and all your favorite e-book retailers.  

Sign up for her newsletter, so you'll be the first to know about new releases!








You can find her on her website,www.miloukoenings.com, on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, or Instagram.