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Petrina Aubol

EMAIL TO: petaubol (at) mindspring (dot) com

Love, Action and New Beginnings.

 

Ever since I first discovered pencil and paper I wanted to be a writer. After years of writing and editing student newspapers and magazines, I finally attained a degree with a dual major, English and Journalism from Syracuse University. Diploma in hand, a funny thing happened on my way to becoming a writer. I got waylaid by the small market radio business.

Twenty years later I escaped from this zany world and instead of pencil and paper, sat down in front of a computer and finally wrote something besides thirty second commercials and please pay your bill letters! At first I wrote newspaper and magazine articles, even produced a newspaper monthly double page feature before turning full time to fiction. My first book, DRIVE TIME, a satire on small town radio with much romance and adventure within the pages, was published in 2000.

My husband Dean and I have moved around a bit, but now are loving our life in East Tennessee. When not at my computer, I love to garden and with much space available on our four acre lot, annuals and perennials abound. Our neighbors are mostly cows, both beef and dairy. They are fun to watch along with many birds flitting around the pond.

Memberships:

 

Drive Time

Marissa Palmer is an urban exile who escapes from her rotten life in the big city seeking a second chance at happiness. But will she find her dream while running a backwoods radio station in a mountain town inhabited mostly by nutcases?

If you would like a copy of this romantic adventure, the cost is $5 including shipping and postage. Please contact Petrina for details.

 

News & Events

Contest Wins:

In case you haven't read The Challenge here, you will have a chance to read it when it is published in the September 2008 publication available through bookstores or on Amazon!

2008 Adams Media “A Cup of Comfort for Breast Cancer Survivors” Contest - Finalist! Click here to read The Challenge (Adobe Acrobat pdf 10.8KB).

SMRW's SSSS (Sweet, Spicy, Spooky and Suspense) - 3rd Place Sweet category with YEEHAW PAISANO!

SMRW's Christmas Line - 1st and 2nd Place! See my picture below. Contest rules were 1 sentence, 25 words max, using the words 'sparkle' and 'tradition.'

Funny, the first prize winner in the Christmas Line contest is sinister, the second grim. Never thought I had it in me. Of the six lines I entered, this is my favorite: "Dreaming of tomorrow's Christmas tradition, I awakened to moonlight sparkle and with amazement found Santa Claus sitting on my windowsill."

Thus starts a true story from my childhood, the one I'll be most likely to write.

My heroine of YEEHAW PAISANO, Mel Spadero, is not really sweet enough for the SSSS Sweet category. But she does melt some when she meets hero, Grady Cook. The story opens with Mel caught behind a crash between a truck toting oranges and a cattle carrier. She looks for a way around the accident so she can get to town and start out her new life as a radio station owner. The contest entry starts when she sees the cowboy. CLICK HERE for EXCERPT

 

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Spoon

Fork

In Petrina's Kitchen

Delicious Recipes to Tickle the Palate

Dean does most of the cooking, especially soup, but while he puts this together, the recipe is all mine! Soup is good this time of year when we don't know what the weather holds. This soup is good all year round!

PET'S MINESTRONE SOUP

** We sometimes make our chicken broth with chicken parts and beef bones...very good, like Chinese broth for Wonton soup. For the herbs, dried herb mix works, but I pick them right from my garden in season.

Saute chicken, zucchini, celery, garlic, and onions in olive oil. When browned, add to broth. Add carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, beans, green beans, and peas. Vegetables will give off juice, but if too thick, add more broth. Cook for about an hour until potatoes and carrots are crisp/tender. Can be made in a slow cooker.

Break spaghetti in half inch pieces and cook. Add to broth mixture right before eating. Top with Parmesan cheese and pass crusty Italian or French bread.

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Petrina's Books:

EVERY OTHER WEEKEND, another romantic comedy, stars young divorced moms in Baltimore. When the kids spend every other weekend with their dads, the moms kick off athletic shoes, don red stilettos and desert the soccer fields for rocking pubs. EVERY OTHER WEEKEND is making the rounds of major publishing houses in NYC, a very long process.

Also being marketed is YEEHAW PAISANO. Here's what the heroine has to say about this book: "Suppose Tony Soprano and his meddling Mafioso mob joined Stephanie Plum and her Hang 'Em High Cowboy for a big, fat Italian roundup? Wacky? Sure, but that's the story of my life when I leave the Metroplex for ranch country Florida. Hey, I'm no Stephanie Plum. I've got more smarts; that is until this city chick wanders into backwater Gardenia Springs to run a micro radio station and becomes Ms. Screw-up of the year. I'm Carmela Spadero, but everyone calls me Mel, except for the whip-cracking cowboy, Mr. Grady Cook to be exact, who calls me Princess. Sounds good to me even though I don't have a drop of blue blood like royalty or bad blood like a Mafia Princess." At this time this manuscript is under consideration by publishers and agents.

GEEKY CHICKS TRY HARDER, is another romantic comedy concerning a battle between a computer science professor and a landscape artist over the last plot of land on campus. He's creating a tropical paradise; she needs the land to build a computer lab as per her granddad's will. Just as Sierra decides to come out of her shell and explore life beyond the keyboard with her hunky land grab opponent, he goes and gets involved with a cult whose guru spouts celibacy. The guru makes a most hiss and boo-able villain. GEEKY and the above two novels are in the hands of the editor in chief of a publishing house after submission to an acquiring editor and recommended for a triple buy.

Work in progress is SPY GRANDMA, a story about a spunky grandma, a dentist, who never realizes that cleaning a doggie's teeth would lead to death defying encounters of international intrigue. Maggi meets the daring soldier of fortune in the veterinarian office where she works on pets now that she gave up the people practice. He needs her on his team since the dentist he's had spying on the South American dictator he must overthrow, has passed away and with Maggi being a martial arts expert, he begs her to join them. When her son-in-law, father of her twin grandbabies, disappears in the same country, she signs on with the handsome mercenary, but her goal differs from his. She will do her part in kidnapping the villainous dictator -- after she finds and frees her son-in-law. She goes from the camp to the dictator's palace, to a rebel camp headed by another fearless and gorgeous guy, and then to a stark government prison, kicking all the way. My job as author is to get the heroine into and out of, and back into, many menacing jams along with hot romantic situations. Granny decides she loves this life and wants repeat adventures. A series? I hope so. Harlequin is looking over the first three chapters.

All my books revolve around the theme of a dynamic woman who made bad choices at a young age then finds a second chance at happiness. While I write strictly fiction, the recurring theme comes from personal experience.

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Excerpt from YEEHAW PAISANO:

Needing rescue desperately, I looked around for a knight in shining armor, or the nearest cop, but I only saw a cowboy on horseback. A cowboy? Had to be a freaking fabrication of my trauma. I blinked. Didn't work. The cowboy image remained. The horse trotted into the livestock mess.

The color of shining copper, the bronco looked good, and so did the cowboy, both of them handsome enough to be Disney World super-stars. As my near-death daze dimmed, I decided the twosome had to be real-life cow herders.

Then again, the cowboy came across too flawless to be true. He possessed a build like young Clint Eastwood in "Hang 'em High". His perfect cowboy outfit set off the resemblance. I drank in the plaid shirt, jeans with silver buckled belt, tan boots and white hat. Yowza--A good guy! I looked to see if he had a gun. Of course not. Out here in the country no one needed a gun. I hated guns. Even when Clint twirled them. Ever since I was a kid and lived through that near accident, guns had no place in my life.

The way this guy whirled the rope at the escaped beasties upped my persistent cowboy fantasy.

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YEEHAW PAISANO goes on to recount many escapades of Mel and her cowboy including hassles with her nosey family when they show up on the prairie, interfacing with the small town folks and real danger when they get involved with the mob.

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