Kindle Edition Download to your Nook (eBook) Download from Smashwords (eBook) Amazon Explore Beyond the Usual Explore Beyond the Usual Category:  Romance Publisher: Explore Beyond the Usual ISBN-10:  1478271221 Pages: 436 Copyright: August 8, 2012 ISBN-13: 9781478271222 Portsmouth A Love Story is about falling in love in Portsmouth and falling in love with Portsmouth.  Portsmouth A Love Story delivers a robust and transcendent love story as well as the metaphysical message that mystical forces can guide readers to their destiny even when the landscape looks barren and bleak.  Severine Champagne, a professional business woman who moves to the historic city of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where she finds that messages from beyond lead her into a complex romantic relationship with Peter Nicholas, a Greek real estate developer with a secret past.  Peter must wrestle with his own fears and experiences with the spirit world before he is able to accept the gift of real love that was waiting for him all along. For Severine, Spirit had always been there to protect and guide her from an abusive childhood into a happy adult life until one day, she is guided in a direction that turns out to be one of the most painful but enlightening journeys of her life. She starts to question her faith and her own intuitive guidance until she learns that life and love sometimes take many unexpected twists and turns.  Portsmouth A Love Story takes the reader on a journey through the main streets and back doors of New Hampshire's historic seacoast both past and present. Meet the real ghost of Hannah at the Three Chimneys Inn in Durham. Attend the Portsmouth Jazz Festival at Prescott Park and walk on the beautiful beach at Wallis Sands. For our last stop, climb aboard for a boat ride down the Piscataqua River and visit Star Island and Gosport Chapel at the Isles of Shoals.  You're sure to fall in love with Portsmouth too! Portsmouth A Love Story is about falling in love in Portsmouth and falling in love with Portsmouth.  "Whenever I tell someone that I live in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, I get the same response, 'I LOVE Portsmouth!' It's never 'I Like Portsmouth,' or 'Oh yes...good place to visit.' People always use the word LOVE. Over the years, many authors have written about the mystique of Portsmouth. It's a city I love and I know you will too once you read my novel Portsmouth A Love Story." - R. Ann Rousseau Excerpt Available in print and ebook

Sherri Cortland - The Examiner
I read Portsmouth slowly and with great gusto. In fact, I allowed myself just a couple of chapters a day so I could make the experience last as I relished and appreciated every word. Despite my best efforts to make the reading of this book go on forever, I finished it long before I was ready to give it up; fortunately, the author is currently writing a sequel.

Reading Portsmouth was a very special experience for me--not because it’s a love story, although it’s a wonderful love story; and not because it’s set in, and chock full of great history about a town in New Hampshire that’s now on my travel list. I became so caught up in, and involved in this book, because so much of it could very well be my life story…and yours too. The story is fiction, but what the protagonist, Severine, experiences throughout this saga, are things that all of us can relate to, and it’s so interesting to see them written about as prose; including:

Growing up in a family that doesn’t believe you can see and speak with Spirit, and punishes you for talking about it.
What it’s like explaining to friends that you see and hear things that they don’t.
Dealing with folks who want to label you as a heretic and ostracize you because you don’t follow traditional religious beliefs.
Facing the challenges of opening up about yourself to potential romantic partners, and dealing with the repercussions when that person isn’t receptive.
Learning to stand in our own personal truth.
I don’t want to give too much away, because I know you’ll savor every word of this book, too; but…I have to share with you that when Severine is called a heretic in the story, it really struck a chord with me. Not just because I had a past life where I was burned at the stake, but because the fear of re-living this century’s equivalent of being burned at the stake kept me in the Spiritual closet for a very long time.

I loved this book so much that I contacted the author, R. Ann Rousseau, and asked if she would share a little bit about the writing of Portsmouth with us today, and she agreed. I am so happy to introduce you to her right now:

Sherri: R. Ann, I love your book. It was very cathartic for me to read about Severine’s experiences and how she dealt with the challenges of being out of the Spiritual closet while living a ‘normal’ life. As I read it, I often wondered, ‘Is this the author’s personal story?’

R. Ann: Thank you. Most novelists write about what they know and incorporate some of their personal experiences into the story. I have done this as well. The goal of writing the novel was less about telling my personal story as it was about making the reader feel good. With the stress of the Great Recession, the bombardment of issues on the nightly news and all the violence we’re exposed to on TV and in movies, I felt we were way overdue for a love story that makes us feel good.

Sherri: The heroine, Severine, risks her new and long-waited-for romantic relationship when she stands up to the cruel Spirit of her boyfriend’s uncle who is hurting his father. She also helps send the spirits of several Earthbound children into the light. The descriptions of how she does these things and the words she uses are not fiction. Have you had personal experience in these areas?

R. Ann: I have had experiences similar to those in those in the novel, but I wanted the metaphysical to be peripheral to the narrative—not the story itself…as it is in real life. I wanted the metaphysical scenes to reflect what an intuitive person really experiences and not something too bizarre and unbelievable. In books and movies, the paranormal is portrayed as something silly, and spooky. I wanted the reader to experience the scene as it would really happen. I hope someday we can get to a point where having a conversation with Spirit is second nature, whether that is Source Energy or individual spirit entity such as your grand-mother who has passed. I think we’re in a period of spiritual transformation as a human culture. We’re moving from a patriarchal society where we’re told what to believe and how to pray to it, to a universal scientific understanding of the energetic forces that surround us and how they operate.

Sherri: R. Ann, I’m not ashamed to admit that I read your wonderful book very slowly because I loved reading about someone who has experienced so many of the things someone who is awake experiences, and I’m sure this book will resonate with Lightworkers. I know you’re working on a sequel—can you give us any insight into what challenges are coming up for Severine?

R. Ann: There are some unresolved issues in the current novel that I’ll bring out in the sequel. The sequel will show the next step in the relationship between Severine and Peter and the challenges a new marriage faces in a community where everyone knows your name. My preliminary title is Portsmouth -The Pearl with the spiritual message that difficulties and irritations in our life and relationships create layers that make us stronger and our relationships more precious. There will always be a spiritual lesson and message in my novels.

Sherri: Thank you so much for writing this book and for sharing with my readers today.
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A little bit about the author: R. Ann Rousseau is a business consultant, writer, and blog owner. She lives with her family in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Her blog is Explore Beyond the Usual where spiritual, metaphysical and astrology topics are discussed.

Kang-Li Cheng - University of New Hampshire - The New Hampshire
Books that contain significant amounts of local history often fall into one of two categories: boring and tedious, written for the few old-timers who enjoy reading about the landscape of their childhoods, or excessively trivial and cute, pasting in local history as the backdrop for a predictable dime novel.
“Portsmouth: A Love Story” written by R. Ann Rousseau, avoids both categories. It traces the lives of two main characters, both New Hampshire-natives, who are crossing over into what seems like a typical love story between two young people, Peter Nicholas and Severine Champagne, using Portsmouth and nearby towns as its setting.
The twists and turns that follow create a novel that will leave the reader cliff hanging. The barriers against the lovers are many, from young attractive women, “gold diggers,” who would love to entrap Peter into premature marriage, to Severine’s unstable employment that forces her to move almost across the country.
Rousseau, who said she has many connections between her own life and that of the female protagonist, has lived in New Hampshire since the early ’80s. As an accountant for big-name firms in Boston, she found herself unemployed during the 2008 financial crisis and had nothing to turn to. With the encouragement of friends, she set out to write, first starting a blog. Soon, ideas for a book emerged.
Fiction was unfamiliar territory for Rousseau, who had always written non-fiction and book reviews. Drawing on support and criticism from both local and national groups, her novel slowly emerged. It was published in August 2012.
According to Rousseau, her inspiration for using Portsmouth as the setting for the novel came from her love for the city.
“I have lived here since 1982 and have really fallen in love with the city,” Rousseau said. “I wanted to write something that [would] take the reader to a better place at the end, a sort of feel-good story.”
“Portsmouth” shows how unexpected turns in people’s lives can play out for the better. According to Rousseau, this same idea impacted her life; had Rousseau not lost her job, she would have missed her calling as a writer.
Readers familiar with the Seacoast area will be thrilled by the references to familiar locales and Rousseau said she hopes outsiders will gain a better understanding of area and fall in love with it.

Amy Shapiro - Explore Beyond the Usual
Bright, witty, attractive, and emotionally wounded, Severine Champagne is an Accountant by profession, and a sensitive, or intuitive who communicates with Spirit and helps earthbounds transition to the other side. She is guided to Portsmouth, New Hampshire to find true love. Her search leads her through centuries of adventures as Portsmouth is revealed in clairvoyant time-traveling psychic flashes of a city haunted by its past, just as Severine and her suitors are haunted by theirs. Twists and turns take the reader into deep waters of yearning, angst and most of the deadly sins, as Severine grapples with being judged a heretic by the self-righteous, and preserving her honor amid crooks and hypocrites.

Tough themes -- mental illness, alcoholism, sex addiction, and corruption -- impact Severine through those she encounters, testing her bond with the man she loves and the forces of good. Perhaps, after all, it is easier to love Portsmouth, than to be in love there. Can she and her soul mate work it out to be happy together, despite the odds? You’ll have to read Portsmouth: A Love Story to find out for yourself!