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Monday, December 29, 2014

Dakota Franklin Guest Post
PLUS a giveaway

Today, Dakota Franklin returns to Cookie's Book Club with a special guest post and a giveaway!

Following Dakota's post, enter to win one of five prize packs featuring Ruthless to Win, Omnibus One, a three book set, and Triple Threat Thrill, also of the Ruthless to Win series.

Plus, enter to win more books in the Cookie's Book Club Annual Christmas Giveaway, on now!



“I married my husband for his money. 
I have been very happy with my husband’s money.”
Dakota Franklin

You won’t believe how much trouble that innocent joke got me into. And it isn’t even true. The truth is much more romantic, but is too long for a quick joke. Still, you and I have a moment, so I’ll tell you the truth.

Actually, I was a modest sort of heiress, and was expected to earn my way as an engineer too, and Ferry was a poorly paid university professor in Italy. Not that any of it mattered to him.

It was pure chance that I met Ferry. The administrators had a panel of academic advisers and like the male chauvinist pigs they were (Italian men over 50 — what else?) they let the boys choose first; when it was my turn, the “real engineers” were gone and I was left with Ferry, not an engineer but a mathematician. It was one of the luckiest incidents of discrimination that ever happened to me, not only personally but career wise.

I’d made one impulsive marriage while I was still an undergraduate, and regretted it immediately because the man I married clearly wasn’t ready to leave his mother. We proceeded straight from Vegas to our divorce.

I was determined not to make another mistake. Also, I was a clever little girl, and wanted a clever child; there are more than enough idiots in the world without deliberately breeding more.

Enters Ferry. He was ten years older, my academic counselor for my Ph.D. Ferry was, and is, handsome, clever, elegant, sensitive and witty. He makes women laugh; he made me laugh.

There was a problem though. Ferry wasn’t interested. A tall, handsome, Austro-Hungarian-Swiss with a tenured professorship in mathematics at a distinguished university? Why should he want a short “lady engineer” with spectacles? There was hardly a day when some elegant, beautiful, sophisticated woman didn’t wait for him in an expensive coupe outside his office at the college.

Ferry found me a job with Rolls-Royce Aerospace in England to do my practical work. It was long way from him but I didn’t just pine and fade away. Out of sight is out of mind, and I wasn’t having that. So I made a plan, and executed it with military precision.

I’d work late Monday through Thursday so that I could knock off early on Friday, and take the plane to Italy. By the time Ferry left his office after his last tutorial, there I’d be somewhere along his route so that he could catch just a glimpse of me. If he went out shopping, there I was in his peripheral vision. If he went to the laundry, I was just pulling out of a parking space. His favourite table at his favourite restaurant faced a window onto the street and I would of course manage to walk past. If he went to the soccer, there I was when the crowd parted. Of course, I took care to be just far enough away for him not to recognize me.

In the normal course of events I turned in my dissertation and Ferry as my counselor  invited me to meet with him in advance of the viva, the oral examination. The meeting was in a restaurant over dinner.
My heart sank when I walked in. Ferry had brought one of his elegant lady friends with the smart cars and Versace style to chaperone the meeting with a student. What a disaster!

He introduced her as his sister! Then he sat staring at me wordlessly. That wasn’t like Ferry at all. His sister explained that I looked just like the girl that Ferry had been dreaming of so vividly that he saw her everywhere…

“Good golly,” I said in my best innocent American style, “he can describe this girl he’s fallen in love with in his dreams? And she looks like me? Gee.”

Well, between the sister and me we had Ferry surrounded, in the nicest way possible, of course. The sister took me to Versace, and to her optician for contact lenses, and her hairdresser, and turned me into the smartest Italian woman you could dream to meet, a regular pocket rocket, if a bit lippy, and Ferry and I married, and bred a beautiful and intelligent daughter.

And my joke about Ferry’s money? Well, that came true too. Ferry turned out to have a knack for oil pipelines, and made such a fortune in the Russian oilfields we now have to live in Switzerland, where I’m very happy with my husband, my daughter, my job — and my husband’s money!

Copyright © Dakota Franklin

About Dakota Franklin

"The Queen of Racing Scribes"
(John Houlton)

Dakota Franklin was born in Palo Alto, CA, the daughter, granddaughter and great-granddaughter of automobile engineers. It was therefore predictable that she would become an engineer. Her mother, a teacher, didn't believe in putting children in boarding schools, so Dakota travelled the world, wherever her father consulted. By the time she was ten she could swear fluently in every European language, and carry on a conversation in all the major ones.

After college at Stanford and MIT, and further postgraduate studies in France, Germany and Italy, she worked on jet engines for Rolls-Royce, for Ford and Holden (GM's Australian branch) on high performance vehicles (HPV), then joined her father and grandfather in the family consulting business, where she has specialized in high performance machinery. She has since worked on contract or as a consultant with all the major automobile makers with a racing or HPV profile, and in powerboat and propellor plane racing. She insists racing regulators around the world love her, whatever they may say behind her back!

Dakota started writing in 1996 when a painful divorce coincided with a testing incident that put her in hospital for several even more painful months. After a false start which resulted in having to trash three complete novels, she finally acquired the right creative writing guru, and started creating the series RUTHLESS TO WIN.

She lives in Switzerland with her husband, an inventor, and drives or flies to the motor cities for her current consulting projects. She has one child, a teenager who travels with her and whose eclectic schooling has turned her into a linguist, just like her mother, but who has no intention of becoming an engineer.

Dakota says, "I'm finally happy. Fulfilled may not be too large a word."

Dakota at CoolMain Press 
Dakota on Facebook 
Dakota on Twitter  

Buy Dakota’s books at:
Smashwords (all formats incl Kindle)  
Kobo 
B&N

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Enter the Giveaway

Complete the Rafflecopter Entry form below. There are four ways to earn entries in the giveaway. Enter once, or enter up to four times. You may tweet about the giveaway daily for extra chances to win. The contest runs from December 26 through December 31.

The winners will be selected randomly once the contest has closed. Please be sure to include your email address so that we may contact you if you have won. We do not store email addresses for future use and we do not share them. 

Prizes will also be selected randomly, however, if you have a preference, please indicate it in a comment below, and we will do our best to accommodate it. Good luck!

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Enter below to win one of five prize packs featuring Ruthless to Win, Omnibus One, a three book set, and Triple Threat Thrill, also of the Ruthless to Win series.

Want to know how to find a tweet URL? "Expand" your tweet and then click "Details". Copy the url in the address bar.


(Applies to the "Tweet about the Giveaway" entry option.)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

9 comments:

R. Doug Wicker said...

Nice story. I'm glad André supplied a link to it.

Jenne said...

Interesting story. My own life is like an adventure book at the moment and I think I should really write a book about it. While waiting for inspiration, I read others books and enjoy them :)

Cookie’s Mom said...

Thanks for visiting Doug.

Dakota's stories are all fascinating to me, and I can't get enough of her wit.

bn100 said...

they sound interesting

Bill Marantz said...

Could be greatest chick flick of all time.

Hate reading shit like this; makes my life seem so drab.

"Seems, milady, I know not seems!"

Seriously, if I had any interest at all in car racing I'm sure I'd become a fan. You write beautifully.

Cookie’s Mom said...

Bill, I wouldn't have called myself a car racing fan before reading Dakota's books. They're great reads, whether you know anything about the sport or not. If you win one, you'll have to let me know what you think!

Andre Jute said...

I can just see Bill's movie. "Regular Amerianc pocket rocket meets Continental boy genius."

PS Next year you should let Sue have a few copies of your novel for her giveaway; her readers would love that sort of witty mystery.

justwin4once said...

I am a car racing fan and would love to read these books!!!1

Cookie’s Mom said...

Thank-you to all who entered the giveaway.

Dakota Franklin and her publisher CoolMain Press have generously agreed to offer book packages to everyone who entered the contest. Congratulations to the winners. Check your email for codes to download your free books, and enjoy.

Happy New Year!

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