I can’t believe it! Here we are at Day 9 as I introduce to you the amazing authors who have graciously agreed to be part of my takeover team for THE FINAL COUNTDOWN AUTHOR TAKEOVER PARTY ON JANUARY 18 FROM 12:00 TO 6:00 PM (CENTRAL TIME) on Facebook! Today I have the pleasure of introducing to you, Catherine Haustein, author of Natural Attraction, who will step in to host from 4:30 to 5:00 PM on the day of the event.
Catherine is one of several authors from Penner Publishing whom I’ve come to know well over the last nine months. In fact, I think she may’ve been the very first of Penner’s authors that I had contact with after singing my contract. She’s a true delight, and I’m completely awed by how brilliant she is. You see, she’s not only a published author, she has a graduate degree in Chemistry — one of many areas of science which deeply intimidates me. It seems so incongruent to me that someone with such an analytical mind as a chemist could write such compelling fiction, and yet Catherine juggles both of these things beautifully.
So what can I tell you about Catherine the author?
From her Author Bio
As a girl, Catherine Haustein was a prolific writer, amusing her high school classmates with serial novels such as “A Tale of Two Sophomores.” However, her high school guidance councilor told her that girls can’t be scientists so of course, that was what she aspired to be. After a year of pursuing her graduate degree in chemistry at The University of Iowa, Catherine, couldn’t get fiction writing out of her system. She applied to and was accepted into the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and enrolled in the MFA program there without telling her chemistry adviser. Thus her career as a writer of scientist characters was launched.
She’s written plenty of short stories. She likes her characters to be a little naughty and subversive and most are scientists. Her latest appears in the anthology The Female Complaint (Shade Mountain Press). Natural Attraction (Penner) is her first novel.
Most of her life has centered around science and raising a family. She barely wrote a word of fiction when her kids were teenagers and young adults! She’s now a grandmother of seven and has renewed her love affair with fiction. She plans to release a series of novels with scientific women as protagonists.
Catherine’s novel, Natural Attraction, was released this past May. Check out the book cover and synopsis:
NATURAL ATTRACTION
SYNOPSIS
To get ahead she’ll have to become a man—and a man, she always thought, never lets love get in the way…
Clementine dreams of being a naturalist—a career that leaves no time for romance. To sneak on an adventurous prospecting expedition, Clementine will have to convince everyone she’s a man. A mysterious tonic offers her just that disguise.
But “Calvin,” as she calls herself now, had no idea what she was giving up. When Wesley, the expedition’s gentle preacher, catches her eye, she can’t get him out of her head; not his lush lips, wide brown eyes…or broad chest. Dare she reveal her secret to him? Can she keep her career if she does?
Among run-ins with cowboys, natural disasters, and traveling shows, Wesley’s most fascinating adventure is meeting Calvin. Though Wesley’s betrothed to another, the cute, clever naturalist threatens to make him fall into temptation…
Doesn’t that make you want to stop what you’re doing and pick up her book?
For THE FINAL COUNTDOWN AUTHOR TAKEOVER PARTY ON JANUARY 18, Catherine will be giving away an antique poison bottle (related to something in her novel, which you’ll have to read to understand more!), a paperback copy of Natural Attraction with bookmark about how to stop abuse, and an e-copy of Natural Attraction. To find out how to win, you’ll need to pop in to meet Catherine from 4:30 to 5:00 PM (Central Time Zone).
In the meantime, find Catherine through her website! I promise you’ll love her every bit as much as the rest of us at Penner Publishing do!
To purchase Cleaner, Greener Laboratories
Purchase Links for Natural Attraction
C.H. Armstrong Books 
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