Kara O’Neal Shares Her Newest Series – Plus a Giveaway!

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It’s such a pleasure to be here today! I’m so excited to share my newest series – Wildflowers Of Texas – with y’all. This series combines several of my favorite things – heroes, heroines, true love, romance, family, and last…

Flowers.

I adore them. I don’t care what kind they are, or what color, or how cheap, I love them ALL. And as long as my husband gets me flowers on Valentine’s Day, I couldn’t care less what else he gives me. There’s something about them that just makes my heart sigh.

My favorites are Texas wildflowers. God bless my state and what happens in the Spring, because nothing else equals it. Not in my opinion anyway. My absolute favorite flower is the Bluebonnet.

Growing up, we’d go on “bluebonnet hunts”. We’d search for the best fields that showcased all of the beauty God had to offer and got to tour Texas at the same time.

One of the coolest places to visit is the Antique Rose Emporium. They’ve been a nursery for over a hundred years and have centuries old roses. I can wander the Emporium’s meandering paths for hours, and I’m not even a gardener.

Flowers inspire me. I think each one has character. And I’ve decided to write heroines who match with the “personality” of Texas wildflowers.

The first is MISS GREEN EYES. It’s available for pre-order now and will release on April 30th.

I chose the Texas Green Eye for my first heroine in the series, Annalee Gillespie. Not only are her eyes a startling green, but her flower is hardy and strong. It can grow in dry soil.

And Annalee, despite the tragedy she’s had in her life, or perhaps because of it, is just as strong and just as hardy. I enjoyed writing her story so much!

I’d like to give away a copy of “MISS GREEN EYES” to two lucky winners! Please comment with your favorite flower and you might win!

Thank you so much for letting me be here today. I hope you “visited” the Emporium and saw how lovely it all is.

 

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86 thoughts on “Kara O’Neal Shares Her Newest Series – Plus a Giveaway!”

  1. Really don’t have one as my allergies keep me away from real flowers. But i think tulips are beautiful.

    • I’m so sorry! But tulips are so pretty. The are THE reason I want to go to Holland someday. I’d love to see the fields.

  2. I love all flowers. But, my favorite would probably be the rose. The new book sounds very interesting.

    • Roses are gorgeous. I have a character in one of my books who has a secret rose garden. It was so much fun to create that garden!

  3. I love the trumpet vine flowers. Hummingbirds like them. I have them growing around my porch along with my hummingbird feeders.

  5. This is a hard task for me because, like you, I love all flowers. Right now, from the florist, I would pick Stargazer Lily. It’s the main flower that made up my wedding bouquet. And for a wildflower, I would choose Black-eyed Susies. They always make me smile, and I picked them often as a child. They used to be prolific, but I see less of them all the time.

    • I love Black-Eyed Susies, too! And the Stargazer Lily is gorgeous. I bet your bouquet was beautiful.

  8. yellow roses, but I really like many like my lilacs, honeysuckle and peonies that are all coming on!

    • Oh, my gosh, I bet that’s beautiful. My daughter’s favorite are peonies. And I adore honeysuckle and the way it smells. The yellow rose is my favorite rose. I guess because I live in Texas, but really I think I just like yellow flowers a lot.

  9. Welcome today. I am like you with flowers. I love most of them. Some I am allergic to. 36 years ago we moved into our first home in late June. The master bedroom faced the back yard. It was strange that every night my husband and I had awful allergies. We kept the window open a little for fresh air. I was pregnant with our second child. One day we went out into the back and there were these pretty little yellow flowered bush right under our window. Yup that was what was causing both of our allergies. LOL. I have a couple of other flowers that I am allergic to like Marigolds. It is hard to say what my favorite flower is. But I do keep coming back to Carnations. I love to grow them. I love to have them in the house. I love to find fabric with them. I love to stamp and color them. Yup I keep coming back to them. LOL quilting dash lady at comcast dot net

    • That’s amazing. I am terrible at growing anything. My mother is really good at it, though! Wish some of her talent had passed on to me.

  13. Kathleen took my response. I love lots of flowers but prefer carnations because of those reasons. Thanks for the chance to win a prize.

  14. Hello and welcome Kara! I also love all flowers! I’ll name four and stop! Daisies, sunflowers, blackeyed Susan’s, and Zinnias! My mother has brown eyes and as a child she was nicknamed black eyed Susie! After our wild flowers, blackeyed susans. Hopefully, this would be a new story for your book??? LOL

    One day I hope to see those blue bonnets! Best wishes to you on your new book!

    • Ha! I love all of those, too. In fact, when I was little my mom helped me plant Zinnias. But I’m terrible at keeping things alive. And yes, I really, really, really want to do a book around Black-Eyed Susans. I love them!!! I’ve been trying to work out the type of character who would match that flower.

  15. My favorite is carnations. I love the smell. I have a gardenia bush by my driveway, and it smells great when it blooms.

  16. It’s hard to pick one favorite flower, I love all flowers! If I had to pick one though, it would be a red rose.

    • That’s a good one! I have a character in a previous book who has a secret garden filled with roses!

    • Wish I could grow plants. I’d have all kinds of flowers. But I’d never heard of Blue Daze. I had to look them up. They’re beautiful!

  21. What a uniquely fun idea for a book series! As far as my favorite flower goes… Maybe hydrangeas, but it’s hard to choose 🙂

  22. My favorite flower is the tulip. This past week was my s-i-l’s birthday and I surprised her with a pot of tulips.

  24. I really like daisies,all daisies, (White daisies,Painted daisies, African daisies English daisies.)

    • I had to look those up. I’ve seen them many times but never knew that’s what they were called. What a clever name!

  27. Hey Kara! I couldn’t pick a favorite as I enjoy the beauty and scent of so many flowers…..roses, daffs, tulips, dahlias, daisies, gladiolus, carnations, cosmos, bachelors buttons, zinnias and the list goes on and on.

  29. Desert Roses. They are hardy and come in so many colors and varieties. All flowers are beautiful though.

  33. I love flowers, especially ones with a strong scent. Have you noticed how many hybrids don’t have a fragrance at all? For spiciness, I love carnations, for sweet, I love gardenias, and for freshness, hydrangeas. Also, I don’t plant them because they are so toxic to animals, but I love heliotrope, too–they have a lovely vanilla fragrance.

    • You know, I don’t think I’ve noticed that. It’s cool that you pick yours by scent. Bluebonnets have a scent, but you’d have to be in a field of them to catch it.

  35. I also like Bluebonnets. I lived in Texas from 2000-2008 and taught in Duncanville. I remember that every spring people would park along side of I-20 and take pictures of the flowers.

  37. I’m with you, Kara! I love the Bluebonnets, Indian Paintbrush and blooms on prickly pears. The wildflowers were beautiful this year. I’m a flower lover! My favorites are most flowers. But I love my Desert Roses and night blooming flowers. Peonies and hydrangeas are beautiful. I have people to stop to look at my trumpet bush when it blooms. I love unusual plants/flowers. I will have to check out the Antique Rose Emporium. Didn’t know about it and I have a friend from Brenham that never mentioned it to me. So, thank you for sharing!

  41. Honeysuckle and alstroemeria! There was a honeysuckle bush on our path to school and we liked to pick them and pull the style out from the stem and taste it. I have always loved that fragrance. And alstroemeria may be one of the cheapest flowers in a bouquet, but I feel like they’re some of the prettiest and they outlast the others! I can’t wait for MISS GREEN EYES to come out!

  42. Hi, your book sounds like a great read and I love your book cover, it is Beautiful! I love All flowers, I love pansies and how good they do in the winter, even when it snows they stand up all perky and showy, I love amaryllis , I love to give them at Christmas to my family, I gift it to all my siblings and my daughter and my son and of course I get myself one also, I love giving the gift ones that come as a gift kit which we plant the bulb ourselves in the planted that comes with it, we all share pictures of how they are coming along and when they flower. After they have flowered I keep them indoors until the weather starts warming up and then I plant them in a big pot, right now I have 2 big planters with about 8 amaryllis bulbs planted in them and they are blooming outside again I love them all. I love to plant all kinds of flowers in my garden, and I go outside and check and see how they all are doing. I can keep on and on talking about plants, I love carnations and I love their smell, roses, marigolds, petunias and yes I love bluebonnets also I live in Texas. My husband and I take our pup for a walk every morning and I just love to see all the flowers in the desert coming back to life and blooming including the cacti. Have a Great weekend. Sorry this is a little long.

  44. Congratulations on your new series. Anything based on flowers is sure to be good.
    It is hard to pick just one flower as a favorite. I like the way they compliment each other in the garden. My daffodils and tulips are fading and now the irises are starting to bloom and the peonies wi pop soon. I live the way those two look together. I have roses, heather, crepe myrtle, and red bud. I put annuals in every year in the flower bed after the perennials go by. Irt is really a shame we have such terrible clay soil here. It takes more work than it should to get good flowers. Funny, but the weeds do really well. They are ahead of me this year, but I am attacking them this weekend.

  45. My favorites are Sweet Peas-I like their shape, their colors, and their aroma. They look pretty growing tall in the garden.

  46. My favorite flowers are lilacs. Unfortunately they wont grow here so I have to get them at the flower shops.

  47. Not a trick question but a hard one, Kara (right up there with choosing a favorite book or author). I think I’ll stick with the flower of my birth month, the violet. We’ve lived in the high desert of CA (the Mojave) since the summer of 1982, so I don’t see them now. Growing up in MD outside Wash., D.C. they grew wild in corners of our yard.

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