CHARACTERS WHO BANTER

When is the last time you read a book where you truly enjoyed how the hero and heroine fought back and forth with good verbal banter?

I absolutely love reading – and writing- scenes like this. Anyone who has siblings is probably familiar with banter around the dinner table. It’s like a one-two punch. Cause and effect. One person says something and then the other person responds. Each person goes back and forth hoping to have the better line, better response.

Many of us have friends who do this. As a teenager I grew up with an entire group of friends who sat around the campfire, laughing and shooting “zinger” lines at each other all night long. And when romance is involved, the banter ups the tension a hundred-fold!

I hope you enjoy the banter scene from my new novel, BET YOU’LL MARRY ME, that I have included below.  Then tell me – which books have you found that have really good banter between the characters? I would also love to hear  how you respond when someone sends a zinger line towards you. Have there been times when you just didn’t have the words but then thought about it all day and later told a friend what you should have said? Wished you had said? Still might say the next time you see that person again? I hope you all have fun with this and I look forward to hearing from you! Please leave a comment below or contact me through my website: www.darlenepanzera.com

BET YOU’LL MARRY ME

(release date December 4, 2012 Avon Books)

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In Darlene Panzera’s  BET YOU’LL MARRY ME, an entire town places a bet on just whom Jenny O’Brien will marry…and her choice surprises them all!

When tall, handsome out-of-towner Nick Chandler first sets eyes on Jenny O’Brien, she’s storming into the Bets & Burgers Café, wielding a broom and threatening the safety of every man in sight. Hey, he figures, she’s got the right to be annoyed—the whole town seems to be laying bets on Jenny’s future.

Nick’s annoyed as well. He didn’t think he’d have to propose to romance the land away from her, but to save his sister and his ill-fated business, he jumps into the fray and bets $10,000 that Jenny will marry him.

Now the only thing stopping him from seizing her land…may be his own heart.

Excerpt:

He lay face up with his eyes closed, and didn’t appear to be breathing. She had trouble breathing herself as she pressed her fingers to his throat and checked for a pulse.

Thank God, he was still alive. She recalled the new medical guidelines she’d seen on the Internet and gave him thirty hard, fast chest presses to keep his blood circulating. Then she tilted his chin up and opened his mouth with her finger. Nothing seemed to be blocking the airway. She pinched his nose closed. Took a deep breath. Lowered her mouth to his to perform CPR.

She was about to blow air into his lungs when the world rolled over, placing Chandler on top, with a very dark, calculating look in his eyes.

Jenny thrust him off to the side, pulled out her boot knife, and sprang to her feet. “You faked that fall on purpose.”

“And you,” he said, pointing to the crazed horse prancing about the field, “deliberately put me on that beast to torture me. What are you going to do now? Stab me?”

She followed his gaze to the tip of her boot knife, its sharp point glistening orange from the setting sun. What was she thinking?

“I—I’m sorry,” she said, and trembled as she sheathed the knife beneath the hem of her jeans. “You seem to bring out the worst in me.”

“Oh, well, you know what they say,” Chandler said, pulling himself off the ground.

“What?” she demanded. Had the townspeople been talking about her again? “What do they say?”

“There’s a fine line between love and hate.”

“In your case,” she said, hardening her expression, “that fine line is a brick wall.”

AUTHOR BIO:

Darlene Panzera is the winner of the “Make Your Dreams Come True” contest sponsored by Avon Books, which led her novella, THE BET, to be published with Debbie Macomber’s FAMILY AFFAIR released July 2012. The full length novel, retitled, BET YOU’LL MARRY ME, releases December 12, 2012. She is currently working on a 3 novella set for Avon Books, a division of HarperCollins, to be published May 2013 titled, THE CUPCAKE DIARIES. Darlene is a graduate of the Writer’s Digest advanced novel writing school, The Christian Writer’s Guild apprentice program, and a member of Romance Writers of America’s Greater Seattle and Peninsula chapters. Born and raised in New Jersey, Darlene is now a resident of the Pacific Northwest where she lives with her husband and three children. When not writing she enjoys spending time with her family and her two horses, and loves camping, hiking, photography, and lazy days at the lake.

Write to Darlene Panzera at : P.O. Box 1876 Belfair, WA 98528

Or visit her website:  www.darlenepanzera.com

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