Book Blitz & Giveaway: Fake-Off with Fate (Love in Maple Falls) by Whitney Dineen

Fake-Off with Fate
Whitney Dineen
(Love in Maple Falls)
Publication date: August 13, 2025
Genres: Adult, Comedy, Contemporary, Romance, Sports

She’s a closet designer for the rich and famous and he’s a broken-hearted captain of a pro-hockey team. Neither of them is looking for love.

Ashlyn
An unexpected trip home to Maple Falls gets even more surprising when I inadvertently become acting mayor.
Add a huge crisis and a smoking hot hockey player, and I’m in over my head before I know it.

I’m only here for a short time, so I will not fall for Mr. Tall, dark, and adorable. I don’t care how helpful and kind he is. Long-distance never works, so the answer is no.

Jamie
I’m sick of the press hounding me about my last relationship, so when the opportunity arose to captain a new hockey team in smalltown Washington, I jumped at it.

Too bad I didn’t ask more questions before moving here, like, “Are there bears, and will they be living in my backyard?”

Then there’s Ashlyn. The last thing I expected was to meet a funny, sassy, and good-hearted woman like her. I swore off love after my last heartbreak, but my heart is acting like it missed the memo.

There’s no way I’m going to pursue her. Unless of course, fate has intervened, and we were meant to be…

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Fake-Off with Fate is a slow-burn, friends to love, fake-dating small town hockey romcom in the Love in Maple Falls series. Add a town conflict, missing mayor, and bear infestation and you will be laughing and cheering your way to a happy ending!

Welcome back to Maple Falls—the small town where hockey players fall in love! This is a multi-author series of seven full-length books that could be read as standalones, but we think you’ll enjoy them best in order.

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EXCERPT:

The mayor is ten minutes late for our dinner meeting. I figure I’ll give him another five and then I’ll go ahead and order my food to go.

I’m about to signal to the waitress when a very pretty woman wearing jeans and an orange sweater approaches my booth. She’s average height but not at all average looking. Her hair is a touch lighter than classic auburn but it’s not what I’d call red. “Hi there,” she says while sitting down across from me. “I’m Ashlyn.”

Well, this is awkward. I wonder if she thinks I’m her blind date or something. “Jamie Hayes,” I say, expecting her to realize her mistake.

“I know. You’re the captain of the Ice Breakers, right?”

“I’m sorry, do I know you?”

“I doubt it, because I don’t know you.” She takes a sip of the water glass the waitress left for the mayor.

“If you don’t know me, then why are you sitting with me?”

The question seems to startle her because she looks up and stares at me like a deer in the headlights of oncoming traffic. “I forgot you didn’t know that I was meeting you instead of my father.”

“You’re Mayor Thompkins’ daughter?” Holy heck, is the mayor trying to set me up with his daughter? I don’t care how pretty she is, that’s not cool.

“My dad got stuck in a meeting and he asked me to come in his place,” she explains.

“So, you’ve been tasked with trying to talk me into co-chairing Maple Fest?” If I had to guess, I’d say this was intentional manipulation on the mayor’s part. Little does he know I have no problem saying no to an attractive woman.

“I couldn’t care less if you co-chaired Maple Fest,” she says. “But if I were you, I wouldn’t do it. My dad is a lunatic about that event.”

Now I’m super confused. “So, you’re here to tell me all about Maple Falls?”

“Nope,” she says, before turning her menu over to look at it.

“Why are you here then?”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Whitney Dineen loves to laugh, play with her kids, bake, and eat french fries -- not always in that order.

Whitney is a multi-award-winning author of romcoms, non-fiction humor, and middle reader fiction. Basically, she writes whatever the voices in her head tell her to.

She lives in the beautiful Pacific Northwest with her husband, Jimmy, where they raise children, chickens, and organic vegetables.

Gold Medal winner at the International Readers' Favorite Awards, 2017.

Silver medal winner at the International Readers' Favorite Awards, 2015, 2016.

Finalist RONE Awards, 2016.

Finalist at the IRFA 2016, 2017.

Finalist at the Book Excellence Awards, 2017

Finalist Top Shelf Indie Book Awards, 2017

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Virtual Book Tour & Giveaway - Shocktober: The Biggest Upsets in World Series History by Jonathan Weeks

Shocktober

The Biggest Upsets in World Series History

by

Jonathan Weeks

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by

Goddess Fish Promotions.

Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

Sports History
Publisher: Lyons Press
Publication Date: January 7, 2025
Page count: 258 pages

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SYNOPSIS:

Mays’s spectacular catch in 1954, Bill Mazeroski’s walk-off homer in 1960, and Kirk Gibson’s pinch-hit blast in 1988 are just a few of the memorable moments that have dominated highlight reels. The outcome of the Series has not always been terribly surprising—especially during the late 1940s and early 1950s when the Yankees captured five consecutive championships, breaking their previous record of four straight titles from 1936 to 1939. But despite its predictability at times, the Fall Classic has taken many unexpected turns. The 1906 Cubs lost to the weak-hitting White Sox after establishing a new regular season record for wins. The 1955 Dodgers avenged seven prior October failures with an improbable victory over the seemingly invincible Yankees. And in 1969, the Mets finally shed their image as “loveable losers,” dethroning the powerful Orioles. In more than a century of World Series plays, a number of similar scenarios have emerged; twenty-two of those stories are told in Shocktober.

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ENJOY AN EXCERPT:

To understand why members of the White Sox conspired with gamblers to throw the 1919 World Series, one must take into account the financial climate of baseball in the early-20th century. Players weren’t paid exceptionally well (at least in comparison to today). Before the advent of free agency, owners held most of the advantages when it came to negotiating contracts. Players were more or less stuck with the clubs they had signed with until team executives decided it was time to get rid of them. Typical deadball stars were minimally educated and rough around the edges. In their free time, many gravitated to bars and pool halls, where men of questionable integrity could be found. Some players developed relationships with members of the underworld—especially bookmakers who were willing to tamper with the outcome of games in order to turn a profit.

 

Ty Cobb, one of the biggest names of the era, was paid $20,000 in 1919—equivalent to about $348,000 today. No one else was making that much at the time—not even Babe Ruth. Pitcher Eddie Cicotte, at a little over $9,000, was the highest paid member of the Chicago conspirators. The others were earning significantly less.

 

A common misconception among contemporary fans is the idea that Chicago team owner Charles Comiskey was a nefarious miser who drove his men to commit the crime of the century. Multiple myths have persisted regarding Comiskey’s penny-pinching ways—the most salacious being the story about how he delivered a case of flat champagne to his players as a World Series bonus in 1917. Other fallacies have been handed down over the years.

 

In reality, Comiskey was prone to acts of generosity. He allowed a number of Chicago organizations to use his ballpark for free and gave out complimentary grandstand tickets to school children. During World War I, he donated a significant portion of his annual income to the Red Cross. While it’s true that he could also be frugal, charging players for laundry fees, he actually paid his men pretty well. The White Sox Opening Day payroll in 1919 was among the highest in baseball.

 

While the specific motivations of each conspirator have been endlessly debated, it’s safe to assume that the primary incentive was financial gain. By his own account, it was first baseman Chick Gandil who approached gamblers with the idea of a fix. At the time, the club was divided into two social cliques with tension existing between the two. The educated players fell under the influence of Ivy League graduate Eddie Collins. The rest of the joiners cast their lot with Gandil—a former boxer with an attitude toward authority. Shortstop Swede Risberg played a major role in the fix as well, helping Gandil lure other players (ones who could be trusted to keep their mouths shut) into the fold. Boston-based bookmaker Joseph “Sport” Sullivan convinced New York underworld kingpin Arnold Rothstein to bankroll the plot. Others involved included “Sleepy Bill” Burns (a former pitcher) and Abe Attell (a former featherweight boxing champion). Both were associates of Rothstein’s.

GUEST POST:

Please welcome Jonathan Weeks, the author of today's featured book to the blog!

Why baseball books? 

Well, I could have made this a very short essay and answered simply ‘Why Not?’ But there is a specific story associated with the question.

Around the time of my 40th birthday, I decided to make a bucket list. I actually wrote down some of the things I wanted to accomplish over the next few decades of my life. I have no idea what happened to the list and have forgotten most of the things that were on it. But there is one item that stands out clearly in my mind: “Become an expert at something.” 

Seriously? Yep. For real—I honestly wrote that down. And I knew even then that it was a pretty tall order for someone who had already expended roughly half a lifespan.   

With no time to waste, I started eliminating the things I felt I could never be good at. Math? Boring and incomprehensible. Car repair? Too messy and labor intensive. Medicine? I pass out at the sight of my own blood. Nuclear Technology? Bad for the environment.

And so it went—until I stumbled upon the topic of writing. I was fairly accomplished during my high school years (several teachers told me that I showed promise) and I had gone on to write a few articles for my college newspaper. But every time I submitted my work elsewhere, it was always: “thanks, but no thanks.” I experimented with different forms of writing—short stories, novels, poetry. I even dabbled at children’s books. You could have papered the walls of a sizeable home with all the rejection letters I received. The negativity wore me down over time and I eventually developed a serious case of writer’s block. 

Unable to produce a single paragraph of coherent fiction, I composed songs on my guitar (bad ones mostly) and also learned how to write screenplays. A friend and I collaborated on a science fiction script and entered it in an Amazon Studios contest. We made it to the semi-finals but that’s as far as we got.   

It was around this time that I came up with my bucket list. Without any ties to Hollywood, I knew I would never make it as a screenwriter. So I decided it was time to execute Plan F (since Plans A through E had failed to yield any tangible results). There was one form of writing I had never explored in any depth: Non-fiction. And there were at least two topics I had always been passionately interested in: baseball and history.

I had written a lot of term papers in college so the process came fairly naturally to me. The learning curve was steep and my first project was a failure. But my second book (Cellar Dwellers: The Worst Teams in Baseball History) ended up being published. I have kept on writing ever since. Though I still struggle with fiction, I have managed to produce two novels, both of which were released through indie presses. I have learned a lot about baseball over the past 15 years or so—maybe not enough to be considered an “expert” on the topic. But if I may be so bold, I can actually say that I’m getting closer with every book.  

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Jonathan Weeks has written several sports biographies and two novels, one of which was a posthumous collaboration with his late father. He grew up in the Capital District region of New York State and currently works in the mental health field.

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Book Blitz & Giveaway: Against the Run of Play by Kiru Taye

Against the Run of Play
Kiru Taye
(Viva City FC Books, #2)
Publication date: May 28th 2024
Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Romance, Sports

Step into the thrilling world of professional footballers in the Viva City FC Books series!

Soccer player and reformed bad boy, Asher Uzodimma, is struggling through a challenging season. Due to a string of injuries, he finds himself relegated to the bench during crucial games as his team battles for promotion into the league’s top division. Frustrated, he falls back on some old habits and escapes to find solace where he encounters the vibrant Vivi. She has zero interest in celebrities. Yet, spending only two days with her brings a sense of calm and stability back into his life. She possesses all the qualities he never realised he desired in a woman, and his yearning to be in her presence grows stronger with each passing day. Nevertheless, when he finally learns her full identity, she quickly becomes the last woman anyone wants for him.

Vivacious and fun-loving Vivi Osondu is currently in seclusion after the highly publicised end to her turbulent relationship. She needs a break to reevaluate her life and dedicate time to self-reflection. Meeting Asher brings back her laughter, which had been missing for months, and each time she lays eyes on him, her stomach fills with a delightful sense of excitement. However, he’s part of the famous crowd, and she’s made a conscious decision to steer clear of that world, so she chooses to walk away. But Asher is determined to turn the game around both on and off the pitch, against the run of play.

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EXCERPT:

I see a flash of colour—fuchsia—and turn instinctively towards it. But I lose it in the crowd.

My heart is racing, my skin hot. Could it be her? Vivi. Is she here?

“Mum, I think I spotted someone I need to speak to. Do you mind?” I say.

“No. It’s okay. I need to use the ladies anyway. I’ll meet you back at the table.”

“Okay.” I direct her towards the signs for the ladies and keep glancing around. But I can’t see anyone wearing the bright purple/red colour I spotted earlier. Then I head down the corridor leading to the foyer, thinking she might have gone outside.

My heart stops as I halt. Then it slams into my chest.

A Black woman stands in the foyer talking on her phone. Her back is to me but I recognised her figure, her voice.

Vivi is here. I don’t know how it’s possible. I mean, I know she lives in London and she works as a sportswriter. But to be here at this very moment feels like serendipity. Like destiny.

My senses heighten and my vision clarifies. I was buzzing when I arrived. But now it feels like I’ve been struck by lightning as I feel an energy surge. It feels like that first night I saw her in the sports bar. I zoom in on her.

She is in an off-shoulder ruffle collar boho maxi dress that shows off the glowing skin of her shoulders and arms and skims her curves. It’s sexy without being vulgar. Her strappy stilettos match her purse tucked under her arm.

Her hair is different. In Zanzibar, her hair had loose curls and streaks of colour. This looks too dark, long, and straight and almost to her butt. Perhaps a wig or weave, just like my sisters wear sometimes.

Her voice is a melody that draws me closer and I can’t resist the pull. I walk past the people around me as if they are obstacles and challenges I must conquer to reach my goal—Vivi. Adrenaline charges over me. I’m on the field in a crucial match and I’m running toward the goal line to score before the final whistle.

As if she senses me, she swivels and I know I’m not dreaming because her face lights up with a beautiful smile. Warmth and ecstasy spreads through me. I want to touch her smooth skin, to kiss her full lips a shade darker than her dress. Her irises are a mesmerising bronze. There are layers of colours on her eyelids and cheeks, contouring her face. It’s more makeup than she had on the island.

But I recognise the woman underneath. I remember the natural tone of her skin first thing in the morning. The softness of her curves against me. Every cell in my body wants to be connected to her.

Author Bio:

Kiru is the award winning author of His Treasure. She writes sensual and passionate multicultural romance stories set mostly in Africa. When she's not writing you can find her either immersed in a good book or catching up with friends and family. She currently lives in the South of England with her husband and three children.

Subscribe to her newsletter for book news and giveaways: http://www.kirutaye.com

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