Due to my daytime job, I find myself at the bank a few times a week. I’ve gotten to know the employees there pretty well and every visit we learn a little more about each other. Well, today the woman I was speaking to asked me if I’d gone on vacation lately. I told her my latest vacation was a total of four days (including flying time) to Boston (my hometown) to attend my cousins wedding. Then she asked me if I was close to them and while I divulged that ALL of my family is there, my mother, sisters, cousins, aunts, & uncles.

Her first reaction was to tell me how lonely it must be for me here in Los Angeles without my family. Well, I have my children, husband, and his family, but yes, it can be very lonely. Which led me to explain the whole theme of my upcoming novel is about just that: missing my family.

I’ve been in Los Angeles since I was sixteen, and I’m forty-two now. During that time of my life, I was homesick and missed my family, sure, but I didn’t have a lot of time to do so. I was too busy establishing myself. Going to high school, getting a job, starting a family, raising said family, and it goes on and on.

Now that I’m older, I have time to sit back and reflect and I’ve realized how much I’ve missed. My cousins, like myself, have children that are graduating high school and having kids of their own. Some of my cousins are getting married, hence the wedding I just went to. With Facebook being around I get to see what everyone is up to, but for years the only hint I received was from my mother and her love of filling me in with all the family gossip.

While my family in Boston has spent the last twenty years getting together and growing up together, I’ve been apart from it all and missed out on quite a lot. The wedding I just attended was a great testament to that as I saw with all of the new kids running around and how much older everyone is. It seems I have always been the one to make an effort to go visit them and keep in touch with them otherwise it just doesn’t happen. And that’s okay, if it takes me keeping us together then it’s more than worth it.

My upcoming novel, My Mr. Manny releases TODAY August 27^th, 2013. It’s about family, love, growth, and, well, a very handsome male nanny that will steal your heart.

Summary:

Mia Balducci misses her childhood days and yearns for the big, Italian family that she left behind in small town Massachusetts. At the tender age of sixteen, Mia moves with her bachelor father to Los Angeles, but no matter how many years pass, it never becomes home to her. The years spent living with her father aren’t easy, especially since she can’t stop thinking about what she once had. Her enrollment in the University of Southern California promises to bring exciting changes to her life, but Mia winds up with big problems instead. When she runs into an old friend from her old hometown of Winthrop, she gets swept up in nostalgia, and she soon loses herself in a quickly-progressing romance. When the fantasy falls apart, she is left to raise her precious little girl, Lucia, on her own. The demands of Mia’s work schedule and Lucia’s needs increase, and their lives become increasingly hectic. It is soon clear to Mia that she needs help. Luckily, her life-saving cousin saves the day and brings the mother and daughter a male nanny – their new “manny.”

After losing his high-pressure job on Wall Street, Dominic Roberts wants to follow his dreams to have a family. He’s already one fiancée down, and there are no likely prospects for another. In order to find the family he so desperately wants, he finds himself getting into the manny business. Since he is fully qualified to provide child care and is eager to leave New York City behind, his sister-in-law is able to land him a job in California working for his first client – the beautiful and intriguing Mia Balducci.

Will Lucia like the new man in her mother’s life? Will Mia? And will this new trio discover the happily ever after they all so desperately seek?

Author Bio:

 Jennifer Garcia’s (aka Forbes Arnone) love of travel began when she went to the West Coast to visit her father at the age of three. Her home until she was sixteen was a small coastal town near Boston. She currently resides in Los Angeles with her husband, two sons, and two dogs.

Her lifelong love for reading and writing was put aside for many years while she made her way in the world and nurtured her young family. Even though she is older, and life never seems to settle, she’s finding her way while attending college full-time in pursuit of a B.A. in English Literature. She also runs a business, and is still caring for her family. Believing she can do it all, with the help of her family, she worked on her first novel during the late hours of the night while balancing the rest of her life during the day. Her hard work paid off, as her first novel, My Mr. Manny, will be published August 2013.

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