Rebecca Norinne's Blog

WIP Wednesday

Over on Facebook, I’ve been talking a lot about exploring books that I started to write but abandoned for various reasons. One of those was a story about lost love and second chances that I conceived while floating in the lake alongside my sister. It started out with a simple premise, but I kept complicating it until I no longer recognized anything about my original idea. Last week, my husband and I spent time at a different lake, and I came back wanting to pull up that old manuscript to see if there was anything salvageable. Thankfully, there was. It was just a kernel, but it was enough to spark my creative juices. I immediately got to work, and in the days since, have plotted my booty off and written nearly 12,000 new words (after having cut more than that). Suffice it to say, I’m feeling inspired.

With that, here’s your #WIPWEDNESDAY for August 28.

BUILDING FOREVER by Rebecca Norinne Caudill

Chloe's shoulders slumped, and she looked away, but not before Jackson saw her eyes flash with what looked like guilt. “I was a mess, Jackson. I wasn’t emotionally equipped to handle everything that was happening. I was scared, and I didn’t want to burden you with it. I started to think that maybe you’d be better off without me.”

Jackson’s heart ached at the pain in her voice, but he couldn’t help the frustration that still simmered inside him. He wasn’t a monster. He understood her rushing to her friend’s side; what he couldn’t fathom was her complete lack of contact afterward. “You could have told me. I would have understood. I would have driven straight to Boston so I could be there for you.”

“I know you would have, but it was better if you didnt,” she said. “The things people were saying about Jessica … the things they said about me. That I was just like her and deserved the same fate?” Chloe shook her head as if to dislodge the memories of that time. “It was … . it was a lot, and I went to a pretty dark place afterward."

How dare anyone compare Chloe to that vapid, selfish waste of space Jessica Bradley. “You are nothing like Jessica, and to hell with anyone who says otherwise.”

Chloe's face crumpled. “But that’s just it, Jackson. She and I were two halves of a whole. She was my best friend, two peas from the same damn pod. Who I was when I was here with you was the anomaly.”

“Bullshit,” he bit out. “I knew you, Chloe. Knew who you were beyond the trappings of all your fancy clothes and this big fucking house. You were the opposite of Jessica in every way that mattered.”

“That’s who I was for you,” she practically growled, her voice lit with sudden anger. “But back home?” She shook her head, the action suffused with sad defeat. “Why do you think we came up here every summer and stayed so long? My parents didn’t want me in Boston. No, they didn’t trust me in Boston.”

Nope. Jackson wasn’t buying it. “Your parents bought this place when you were five, Chloe. It wasn’t some rich person’s institution for wayward youth.”

Chloe’s eyes flashed with something Jackson couldn’t name. If forced to put a label on it, he’d say it was defiance. “Oh yeah? Would you still say that if you knew that when I was thirteen, I was sent to boarding school in the south for lighting a girl’s hair on fire at a sleepover? That we showed up here two days later and stayed until the day before they shipped me off to Virginia?” She pushed to her feet, her chest sawing in and out as she stared down at him, daring him with her fiery gaze to say something, anything.

But he couldn’t. He didn’t have the words, and the shock of her confession rendered him speechless. He swallowed to try and moisten his suddenly parched throat. None of this made any sense. “What are you talking about?”

“Didn’t you ever wonder why I never got my license?” she asked, her voice suddenly--eerily--calm.

Jackson found his head moving back and forth, seemingly of its own volition. “You always said you were afraid to drive. That Boston drivers were the worst.”

“Oh, they absolutely are,” she sing-songed. “Especially the drunk teenagers who crash their shiny new BMWs into mailboxes.”

His head was still moving. “No.”

Drunk driving was something Chloe had always been adamant about. It wasn’t hard to get beer around Balsam Lake—someone’s older brother or cousin was always willing to supply whatever you could pay for. Once, when Chloe was off using the restroom, someone had passed him a can of PBR that he’d drunk nearly half of by the time she found her way back to him. “No, absolutely not," she'd said, tugging it out of his grip and dumping it in the pine needles at their feet. "You drove us here, and you’re driving us back.”

"Yes."

“Why are you doing this?” he managed to croak out.

“Because I need you to understand that’s who I was back then, Jackson. I was a rich bitch who had everything I could ever possibly want handed to me on a silver platter, and I still wasn’t satisfied. I did shitty things to shitty people because I, myself, was a shitty person. But you were my escape from all of that. When I was with you, I thought I could be someone different. And mostly, I was. But then you told me you loved me, and my best friend tried to kill herself while my other friends said the only sad part was that she hadn’t succeeded, and I just knew that I was going to destroy you too.”

Pen Names and Personal Identity

There was quite the hullabaloo in Romancelandia this week that resulted in a number of conversations around why an author would choose to have a pen name, and while I support my colleagues' desire for anonymity (as long as they’re not trying to pretend they’re someone or something they’re not in order to capitalize on a perceived identity), I never actually wanted that anonymity. What I wanted was my damn name on those covers, but as a newbie author back in 2017, I let someone who (supposedly) knew more than me about book marketing convince me that having such a long author name would be a deterrent to people reading my books because it sounded pretentious and settled for “Rebecca Norinne” to end the harrassment from those parents. 

Now, I don’t know if “Rebecca Norinne Caudill” sounds pretentious or not. I don’t think it does, but the reality is as I inch ever closer to 50, I genuinely don’t care if having my real name on the cover of a book that I labored for months over gives someone the icks.

I guess that’s my very long-winded way of saying that moving forward all of my books will be published as Rebecca Norinne Caudill, and I’m slowly working through updating all of my back catalog to reflect this change as well.

Matty & Drake are getting their own book!

Raise your hand if you remember Matty Thompson from THE DATING GAME. And what about Drake "The Bro-iest Bro Who Ever Did Bro" Barlowe from HOMECOMING?

If so, you may recall in DTG Matty discussing "an old college buddy" whose roommate would beg him for some sexy shenanigans when they were both drunk. Meanwhile, in HC, Drake just came out to his very conservative family.

If you guessed that these two are getting their own story, you’re right!

Get excited because A FINE BROMANCE is dropping December 2021! Full cover & blurb coming soon.

Is M/M Monday a thing? If not, it should be.

More than three years after releasing Irish rugby star Liam Donnelly and Scottish chef Lachlan MacLeod into the world, and I still love them so much.

“Is everything okay here?” Lachlan approached the hostess podium, his posture rigid.

I didn’t know when or how I’d become so adept at reading his body language, but it was obvious he didn’t appreciate me being here despite the fact that he'd told me I could come.

“He says he talked to you earlier and you gave him the table the Patterson party booked,” Jenny told him, her voice dubious.

“It should be in the computer," he told her. "I entered it myself.”

Jenny undocked the iPad and turned to him, her finger pointing out something I couldn't see. “There must be some mistake then because it says here that the Pattersons confirmed their reservation at two o’clock today.”

Lachlan studied the screen for a few seconds before he pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he muttered, closing his eyes and sucking in a deep breath.

If it had been just me, I would have told him it was no big deal and walked out. But after the debacle in the locker room earlier, I needed to prove to my teammates that I was one of them.

Lachlan dropped his hand from his brow, and his eyes landed on mine. “You can’t book for tomorrow, can you?”

“We could probably find somewhere else but …”

“But you want to impress them.”

Yes, I did, but he wouldn't understand why. “Something very much like that.”

“Just so you know, I wouldn’t do this for anyone else.” He crossed his arms over his chest, making the muscles in his biceps pop beneath his rolled up shirtsleeves.

“But we don’t have space for them!” Jenny blurted. “We’re booked solid.”

“We’ll do it upstairs then.” Her eyes went wide with surprise.

“Upstairs?” she practically squeaked.

He turned to her, his jaw ticking with suppressed frustration. “Is that a problem?”

Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. “Of course not. We just usually prep for something like that. You can’t just do it on the fly.”

His dark eyebrow arched. “Can’t I?”

Jenny’s cheeks turned even redder, if that was possible. “No, of course you can. I’m sorry. I’ll just … just …”

“Why don’t you grab Cole and Dean and bring them here?” His tone brooked no argument.

“Yes, of course,” she stammered. “Right away, Chef.”

Jenny scampered off, and Lachlan turned back to me. “It looks like tonight’s your lucky night.”

“Oh yeah?” I tried not to read too much into his words. He’s not flirting with you, I told myself. He doesn’t mean what you want him to mean, even though you know you could never take him up on the offer.

He pulled a pen and small pad of paper from the front pocket of his monogrammed apron and quickly jotted something down. “You just lucked into a private chef’s dinner I only do three times a year.” His lips lifted in a small smile that tugged at something deep inside of me. “And best of all, I won’t even charge you the £1000 fee.”

Holy shit.

“No way. I can’t let you do that.” All I’d wanted was a table. I didn’t need preferential treatment—much less for free—and I certainly didn’t want to put him out.

That sexy eyebrow lifted again. “You’re not letting me do anything. I’m offering.”

“It’s too much.”

He nodded. “It is. But I want to do it anyway.”

“Why?” I croaked.

Lachlan didn’t answer for a few beats while his eyes raked over me. When they landed back on my face, he looked sad. “Because in another world, you’d be mine and I’d get to do things like this for you. I’d look forward to them. Because your friends would be my friends.”

For fuck’s sake. Was he trying to flay me alive? Tear out my fucking guts? Leave me a raw, quivering mess? Because that was how his words made me feel. I longed for the same things.

Briefly, I let myself imagine what it would be like to be his—to be able to stand proudly and unabashedly with his hand in mine—and it made my heart race with anxiety.

It also made it pulse with something I’d never felt before, something no one—man or woman—had ever brought out in me. I didn’t know what it was, but if pressed to give it a name, I’d say it was hope.

Cover Reveal: A Thousand Words

Several months ago, I had an idea for a novella I wanted to write set at Thackeray College where David, Hank, and Miranda from NOT QUITE PERFECT and THE WORST MAN are professors, and where Ross O'Connor, my hero from the Dublin Rugby novella SIDELINED, has come to coach rugby.

I loved the idea so much, I reached out to a few author friends and asked if they would be interested in contributing their own novellas to this world. And thus, the "Love at First Kiss" multi-author shared world was born. 

In A THOUSAND WORDS, a down-on-his-luck rugby player and an uptight poly-sci major meet during a "strangers photo shoot" and instantly fall for one another. Keep reading for more information. 

When you’re a broke college student and someone offers you a couple hundred dollars for an hour of your time, you take it. That’s how how I find myself caressing the cheek of the most gorgeous woman I’ve ever laid eyes on while a photographer stands five feet away taking photos of us pretending to be in love.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but the only ones I can think of are you’re perfect and I want you. And from the way Emmy’s pulse flutters in her neck as her eyes lock with mine, I know she feels it, too.

So even though we only just met, I’m hoping she’ll say the one word I want to hear most: yes.

CLICK HERE TO PRE-ORDER

Have you heard the news? The Dublin Rugby Romance Series got a makeover.

It’s been awhile since I’ve talked about my Dublin Rugby Romance series despite the fact that readers are still searching out Declan and Sophie, Eoin and Aoife, Donal and Lauren, Liam and Lachlan, and Ross and Gemma.

To keep up with current trends in steamy sports romance covers, I gave these five books a bit of a makeover recently, and I absolutely love the way they turned out - especially when they’re all lined up next to each other like this

And keep your eyes peeled, because they just might be making their way back into print in the coming weeks!

December Wide & Shine Giveaway and Book Sale!

Check out the December Wide & Shine Giveaway, featuring romance books available on Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, and more! Even better, the participating authors of this promotion are offering readers a chance to win a $25 iTunes Gift Card just for subscribing to our newsletters or following us on social media.

Click here for further details:

https://lovekissedbookbargains.com/2020/12/04/december-wide-shine-giveaway-2/

I'm heading north ... to the World of True North, that is.

I’m so excited to announce that I’ll be contributing a book to Sarina Bowen’s World of True North as part of the Speakeasy series!

HOMECOMING features historic preservation carpenter Preston Harper and his new next door neighbor, Rosalie James. When Preston and Rosalie enter into a fake relationship to get her meddling mother off both their backs, neither expect the situation to feel very, very real.

What you can expect:

🔥 A slow burn that builds to an explosion of pent up passion

💔 A brokenhearted heroine learning to love (and trust) again

 🛠️ A strong alpha hero who's not afraid to be vulnerable

🍁 Lots of New England porn (beer, flannel, lakes, mountains)

Have you heard the news?

I’m so excited to announce that I’ll be contributing a book to Sarina Bowen’s World of True North as part of the Speakeasy series!

HOMECOMING features historic preservation carpenter Preston Harper and his new next door neighbor, Rosalie James. When Preston and Rosalie enter into a fake relationship to get her meddling mother off both their backs, neither expect the situation to feel very, very real.

What you can expect:

Sports Romance Freebies!

I’ve teamed up with some of my sports romance author friends to bring you this awesome list of FREE sports romances on January 22 and 23 only. Grab these freebies TODAY as part of January’s Trope-a-Palooza celebration!

KEEP ON LOVING YOU by Erika Kelly: https://BookHip.com/CZVTBA

SOMETHING SO RIGHT by Natasha Madison:

The EX EFFECT by Karla Sorensen: https://amzn.to/2R92I8h

IN SKATES TROUBLE by Kate Meader:  https://amzn.to/2R9Qxbq

FACEOFF by Kelly Jamieson: http://bit.ly/faceoffKIN    

TOO TEMPTING by Bethany Lopez: books2read.com/TooTempting

THE PLAY by JH Croix: https://jhcroixauthor.com/brit-boys-1/

THE LAST FIRST GAME by Gina Azzi: https://amzn.to/2NGIQaa

TRYING SOPHIE by Rebecca Norinne: https://amzn.to/30CSPTp