Author Guest Post with Donna Del Oro, Saving La Familia

Can smart, scrappy Dina Salazar find the heart and strength to overcome her hatred of an ex-fiancé so that she can fulfill her immigrant grandmother’s wish and rescue a long-lost cousin in Mexico?

Welcome to the March 16th stop on the blog tour for Saving La Familia by Donna Del Oro with Goddess Fish Promotions. Be sure to follow the rest of the tour for spotlights, reviews, author guest posts & interviews, and a giveaway! More on that at the end of this post.

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Author Guest Post

Research Tips

I love to research. It not only gives me an excuse to travel but it adds information and depth to the story. The setting of a story itself might create a conflict or problem for the character, such as the isolation of the wooded cabin in which the child abductor and trafficker lives in my novel, ATHENA’S DILEMMA (Book 3 in the Delphi Bloodline series). The setting of Washington, D.C. provided an explanation for the diplomatic job of Athena’s father in ATHENA’S SECRETS (Book 1 in the Delphi Bloodline series) and my heroine’s unique childhood background. Having visited these places, I used maps and my notes to add texture to the story. While I am researching, I take notes, photos, collect films or books that add information. And then it all percolates in my brain, so to speak, until the plot and characters take form. I usually start with the seed of an idea, which generates the more detailed research into that idea, setting, characters. I know that the better the research, the more knowledge I gain, the more ideas I will have for creating and sustaining the suspense throughout the story. And sustaining suspense is the heart of any novel.

About the Book

Saving La Familia
La Familia Book One
by Donna Del Oro

Published 8 January 2022
Extasy Books Inc

Genre: Contemporary Romantic Suspense
Page Count: 398
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!

A romantic suspense comedy set in Silicon Valley, a young Latina teacher, Dina Salazar, is asked by her Mexican-born grandmother to rescue her cousins from a dangerous Mexican drug cartel. After all, her stern grandmother tells her, she is the “smart one” in the family. To do so, she has to recruit help from her hated ex-fiance. What’s a girl to do when “la familia” calls?

SAVING LA FAMILIA by Donna Del Oro, about a latina teacher who’s recruited by her Mexican-born grandmother to save her cousins from a dangerous Mexican drug cartel. It’s a romantic-suspense comedy with many “buen dichos”!

Amazon US | Amazon CA | Amazon UK | Publisher

This book is being offered FREE during the tour, so go grab it!

Excerpt

It took five years—six, counting my teaching credential— to work my way through college and, oh yeah, I lost my fiancé along the way—according to Mama and Abuelita, my only chance at happiness. Their idea of happiness meant you married young, spent the next twenty years changing diapers, cooking and cleaning for a man you seldom saw because he was working two or three jobs to pay for all the mouths you’d brought into the world…

¡Gracias a Dios!

Horrors, in my opinion.

That was the world they knew, anyway, and they didn’t have the imagination to picture me in another, I suppose. I had another vision of the world. And myself. After all, I was Dina Salazar, not Dolores—the rambunctious little girl I used to be, saddled with what I thought to be a horrible name and all it implied. I was certain my family considered me the smirky smartass, the brazen wise-ass. No matter what, I was going to scratch and crawl my way into the American middle class, and if I lost whatever family status I had or whatever love came along, so be it.

After all, according to them, I had una cabeza dura. Hard- headed. And they were right.

About the Author

Donna Del Oro lives in Northern California with her husband and three cats. She taught high school and community college English classes for 30+ years and is now happily retired. When not doing research, writing novels, or reading voraciously, she travels and sings with the medal winning Sacramento Valley Chorus.

Donna is a member of Capitol Crimes, the Sacramento chapter of Sisters in Crime in addition to the Valleyrose chapter of the RWA. She has judged RITA entries and does developmental editing on the side. Two of her novels, Operation Familia and Born To Sing, have won national and international awards.

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Giveaway Alert!

One randomly chosen winner via rafflecopter will win a $50 Amazon or B&N gift card.

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