Tinsel River

A slow-burn Christmas romance for a Kiwi singer-songwriter and the sound engineer she left in the dust when she hit the big time.

Pieta, Kiwi singer-songwriter and media darling, returns home from L.A. with an uncertain path ahead, her once healthy ego floundering. Having lost her agent and been dropped by her label, she's smack-bang in the middle of an intellectual rights dispute.

Could anything else go wrong?

Income on lockdown, the songstress slinks into Ōtepoti with plans to pick up where she left off before her U.S. contract, horrified to realise every one of her solo-career choices seems to have been the wrong one. She burnt a lot of bridges when she left, her original sound engineer, Davis Stone, a smoking-hot wreck among them.

Not only did their one-night-stand three years ago muddy the waters of their working relationship, it made her defection to a U.S. label way too personal.

Davis has more than enough going on with fire damage to his house, his dad moving into care, and a ton of Christmas work piling up in the studio... But he also happens to be the best ear in the business, exactly who his ex-crush needs to help cut her comeback EP.

Trouble hits the instant the two musos try to work together again. Can Davis learn to handle being in the same studio with Pieta when his feelings have never subsided?

When it comes down to it, can Pieta?

Editor and agents choice in the RWNZ Great Beginnings competition, TINSEL RIVER can be read as a standalone or in connection to Stephanie Ruth's Otago Waters series. Set in the beautiful South Island of Aotearoa, New Zealand, this novella is intended for readers who enjoy their romance on the steamy side, and promising a happily ever after.

Reader discretion advised, this novel deals with the subject of dementia within the family, and a historical birthing-related death. It also contains on-page sexual content, and alcohol consumption.

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