“After all that work and sleuthing and investment in my great detective notebook, I had nothing. In fact, the only successful thing I’ve done since stepping foot on this island was successfully believe all the lies everyone told me. Oh, I’ve also successfully been kidnapped, successfully almost drowned, and successfully eaten more Xanax than I’ve ever eaten before in my life. And in two days I’m supposed to just leave and pretend none of this ever happened. If I can even leave after being framed for murder.”
When shy, medium-looking Samantha Stone winds up on the romantic tropical island of St. John after getting dumped at the altar, she’s faced with two options: (1) sit in her sweaty villa and cry over her un-marriage to her idiot ex-fiancé while watching Love Actually on repeat and mass-eating Oreos and Xanax, or (2) pursue a hot vacation sexcapade with the gorgeous travel god she meets at baggage claim. Really, what’s a girl to do?
But, after losing both her super spendy non-diamond engagement ring and her mysterious tropical island fling candidate in the same drunken night, Sam quickly learns that St. John isn’t quite what she bargained for. In fact, she’ll be lucky if she can make it back home alive.
Join breakthrough author Katie Bloomstrom as she takes you on a journey into a picture perfect paradise filled with men, money, and mystery where nothing – and no one – is quite what it seems.
Targeted Age Group:: 18+
What Inspired You to Write Your Book?
When visiting the island of St. John with my husband (who did not jilt me at the altar like Sam’s did), I was lying on the beach reading a book by Elizabeth Adler called “There’s Something About St. Tropez.” I started thinking about a story line where readers could experience life through the eyes of a young, under-experienced small town girl (and James Bond wannabe) who seems to find trouble wherever she goes. The Sam Stone series was born the very next day.
How Did You Come up With Your Characters?
If Bridget Jones and Stephanie Plum had a sheltered, small-town Minnesota-bred daughter, Sam Stone would be it. Awkward, shy, self-conscious…and desperately wanting to be something more, something better. I think Sam embodies a lot of the characteristics many of us have. As one reader put it, “At first you want to shake her; then you find yourself rooting for her.” The other characters – from Colin, the prototypical artist hipster with his too-cool-for-school attitude and strong side profile to Eddie, the FBI sex god with his washboard abs and superior make out skills, to Chomps Douglas, Elkton’s police chief/plumber/electrician/pastor – were born on the page. I like to think they were there all along, just waiting for their stories to be heard.
Book Sample
After Leah left to nap off her impromptu sickness, I wandered aimlessly down the curvy gorgeous roads of St. John. Like a leaf on the wind. Like a cloud in the sky. And so on.
I took this boring alone time as an opportunity to ponder my life’s events over the past three days. Namely 1) leaving Elkton for the first time ever (except for a week-long bible camp in Wisconsin when I was eight, where I was sent home after the second day because I wouldn’t stop crying and couldn’t participate in the Jesus-praising songs because of all the crying), and 2) traveling cross-country to stay alone on a romantic, tropical island and finding myself in a mystery web of lost-ring intrigue.
It was all starting to seem very exciting and romantic, and I congratulated myself for living such an exciting and romantic life and for making it so far into the day without any Xanax.
After drifting around like a…like a…piece of driftwood…for quite some time, thinking and working on my base tan and burning off my breakfast calories and Bloody Mary beverage, I eventually found myself outside a flesh-colored building that looked a bit like a police station due to the number of police cars and police bikes parked in the parking lot. (And the sign that said ‘Island Police Building’ on the front.) I figured it wouldn’t hurt to meander in and see if I could file a lost-ring report or whatever they do for lost goods on foreign tropical islands. (I would also like to know who chooses flesh colored paint and thinks it’s going to look good on anything. FYI – it doesn’t. I learned this from Leah. See, I’m learning so much already!)
After walking into the police station, the lady at the front desk spoke very harshly toward me and basically made me feel both incapable and highly stupid. I explained to her a few times that I’d experienced a significant property loss and needed to report it to someone of authority. She finally rolled her eyes and pointed to a plastic police bench.
I sat on the plastic police bench for what felt like days before a very tall, very dark, very skinny islander policeman in his late fifties came to get me. He was dressed to the nines in crisp, spotless white and made me feel very uncomfortable and sweaty in my skimpy black sundress with largish bacon grease stain, ugly purse, and duct-taped vacation flip flops.
As the epically tall policeman led me toward his desk, I suddenly realized that visiting the Police Building was the worst idea I’ve ever had. Even worse than going on my stupid honeymoon by myself. But since I was already there, I felt very over-committed and nervous. I briefly thought about making a run for it but was unsure as to what happens to tourists who run from foreign police stations. I was too afraid of winding up in that scary hungry-lesbian prison to find out.
Policeman Officer Calvin Gregory sat me down at his perfectly organized desk with his perfectly sharpened pencils and fresh paged notebooks and asked me what was wrong. I was so sweaty and panicky and put off by his epical organizing skills that I momentarily whack attacked and settled into a long series of short, wheezy coughs. By the time I finished, my head and throat were on fire. I swallowed repeatedly, eventually managing to tell him through a series of coughs and stutters that I’d lost my ring the night before.
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