Ginger Voight's Blog, page 8

Swoon-a-Palooza Book Boyfriend #12 - Devlin Masters ($0.99 sale, limited time only!)

It's probably become crystal clear over the last two weeks that I write a variety of book boyfriends. Anything you want, I've probably written it - aside from maybe a true Dom in terms of the D/s lifestyle. That's not really my cuppa tea. What gets me off isn't so much a kink itself as much as it is the complications that inherently pop up whenever you give your heart or body away to another person. That's why the emotional connection is my main focus, rather than how Tab A inserts into Slot B. Or C. Or F. Or G. (Think about it...)



I write nice guys and I write douche bags. I have stable, one-women men and gallivanting, unapologetic manwhores. I have dominant men ready to take command, and easy-going men who provide unconditional love, support and encouragement. There's room for all, and I find all equally compelling for different reasons.

Since it's Walking Dead Day, I'll put it like this: If I can fall in love with both Rick AND Glenn, why limit myself to either? When in doubt, choose both! (Sometimes even at the same time... but I'm ahead of myself. You're just going to have to check out Book Boyfriend #13.)

Some are rich, some are poor. Some are best friends that fit just like a missing piece of a puzzle. Others are frustrating thorns in our side as we try to mold them into something worthy of a HEA. The best thing about my job is that I get to fall in love over and over again and it never gets old or stale, because I have virtually any guy I can dream of at the tips of my fingers.

It. Is. Awesome.



Well, last year I decided I was ready for a professional.

Devlin Masters is a male escort. A gigolo, if you prefer.



So when my best friend asked the rhetorical question of if I would ever pay for sex, my brain started spinning on all the complications and benefits that could entail. What if you could get whatever fantasy you wanted, no strings attached, provided by a super hot guy whose only focus in life is making you feel good? You didn't have to worry about rejection, or spend half the date dissecting whether or not he REALLY wants you, afraid to be yourself, afraid to drive him away, when all you want to do is jump his bones.

You go into the date with full permission that you can, in whatever way you want. It's literally his job to provide that to you.

How delicious.



So I created Devlin Masters. Like his name may hint, he's a commanding kind of guy. He's also a pretty big mystery from the start. That's what happens when a man has taken it upon himself to be a clean slate for every client. He can do anything, be anyone. Being honest about himself would actually prove counterproductive to the fantasy. Instead he becomes an expert in reading what his clients want or need and bringing it to life. A guy like this needs repeat business, after all. When you're charging $400 an hour, four hours is better than two, and a weekend is better than a date.

The only way to build his empire is to learn how to adapt himself, like a chameleon, to whoever is writing the check. After three years, he's pretty darned good at it.

“So tell me about this party.”

“It’s a fundraising benefit,” I started. “We’re raising money for children affected by neurological disorders, to help their families pay for the cost of care, and provide therapy and support. Friends of the family are hosting at my family home in Bel Air.”

“Sounds wonderful,” he said. “I assume it’s black tie.”

“Yes,” I confirmed.

“Do you have a dress already?”

I blinked in confusion. It seemed such an odd question. “I… well… I’m torn between two,” I finally admitted. And it was true. I really was. As much as I liked the one that Lucy found for me, I didn’t know if I could show up at the party in a dress that didn’t come from Cabot’s. It was a big deal.

“I can make that choice a little easier for you. What’s your size?”

I nearly choked on my saliva. Was this an insidious way to figure out what kind of heavy lifting he’d have to do on the date? “Depends on the store,” I finally replied.

“What are your measurements, then?” he persisted. It immediately set off warning bells. All this time I had pretended that his desire for me was a given, simply because he was getting paid to bring my fantasy to life. It never occurred to me that he would actually have to pretend to be interested. That took a little wind out of my sails.

I cleared my throat, suddenly very self-conscious. “It’s, um, 46/34/44,” I finally managed, feeling, for the first time in my life, embarrassed to answer the question.

That he hesitated didn’t help matters at all. “So, size 14, then?”

I cleared my throat again. “Like I said, it depends on the store and the designer. Thanks to…,” I swallowed hard, “thanks to my bust size, it can fluctuate between a 14 and a 16, possibly an 18 if they even keep the size in stock.”

I hadn't meant for it to sound as bitter as it did. Fortunately Devlin didn't miss a beat. “Did you have a particular color scheme in mind? Did you want classic or modern?”

“Whatever makes me look beautiful,” I answered in a near squeak. I almost—almost—wanted to add, “If such a magic dress exists,” but I stopped myself. Why I felt I had to throw myself on the grenade of his rejection was a mystery to me, as if making fun of myself first would make it hurt less if he did it. I hadn’t pulled such a juvenile stunt since I was in high school, when I tried to be the quirky, funny sidekick to Lucy’s pretty Queen Bee.

And why was I trying to impress him anyway? He was the one who needed the job.

He chuckled then, which took me by surprise, as if he could read my thoughts. “All women are beautiful if you just know where to look.”

It was out of my mouth before I could stop it. “That has to make your job a little easier.”

“Indeed,” he replied. “I tell you what. Send me photos of yourself in the outfits you’ve already purchased.”

“Why?”

“Because I have a few ideas how to make you feel beautiful.”

I couldn’t help but notice he said ‘feel’ instead of ‘look.’ There was probably a very good reason for that. “You don’t even know what I look like,” I pointed out.

“Hence the photos,” he replied, humor lacing his tone.

“You know, I’m not even really convinced that I can go through with this,” I started. He was quick to cut me off.

“Of course you can. Now send me your photos, Coralie.”

As you can see, Coralie Cabot, or CC as she's called, is another Rubenesque heroine. It didn't start out that way. Though I tend to write plus-size heroines, that's not ALL I want to write about. Sure their conflicts hit me right where I live, and I feel a certain responsibility to make sure their voices are heard, but - like my men - I like to shake things up every now and then. This is true of whatever size they are, as well. Whereas Shannon, from LOVE PLUS ONE was insecure about her looks, Andy from GROUPIE didn't give a rat's ass, and she was 4 sizes bigger. I like to write about individuals, and more often than not they reveal themselves to me as I write, often changing the very things I planned with such care.

This was CC.

Initially I was going to make her thin because I didn't want to have size play into it. This was a book about sexual fulfillment and empowerment. I didn't want to write a book that could EVER be mistaken as some overweight sad sack was so desperate for a man that she needed to pay one in order to get laid. We get enough of that bullshit in our culture. I'll be damned I'm going to further propagate it.

The more I got to know her, though, the more I realized that the real issue wasn't that she was fat or thin. She was unfulfilled because she wasn't inherently valued. Her whole life she had been painted into a corner, stuffed into an ill-fitting box because that made other people more comfortable.

The best way to convey this WAS to make her heavier, because there's no place that message is so strongly reinforced as in the media.

The Cabot family runs one of the biggest department stores in the country, leaders in haute couture. Being overweight presents a whole slew of complications when it comes to fashion, most notably when it comes to sizing. There's been a lot of focus these past several years about making more inclusive to a plus-size clientele, by using plus-size models and making sexier, hip clothing to fit those who wore sizes other than small, medium and large.

This made me question why there's even a separation there into such ambiguously named groups at all. If the average size woman is a size 14/16, then why are those numbers pushed as a "plus-size"? If that's the average, isn't that the medium? Why treat being those sizes in particular as if it's an anomaly? If anything, there's size average, petite and large. But to segregate those groups out like that is stupid anyway because what one store sizes at small, medium, large or plus is not universal among all stores in the first place.

Worse, sizes aren't universal. What fits in one store might not fit in another, thanks to the differences in design and production. If you're "plus-size," this problem compounds exponentially.

Once I put CC in fashion, there was no going back from making her a larger woman. The bigger sociopolitical comment here is that it's STUPID to value women based on their size because there's no universal standard there, not really. It's a system rigged to make us all feel bad about ourselves. When you feel bad about yourself, you accept treatment you don't deserve because you've been conned into believing that you do. It's a way to diminish us and we give them permission to do it by agreeing. There's something wrong with me. It's my own fault I feel bad. If someone's a dick to me, then *I* need to change so everyone around me will play nice.



Nothing hurt me worse than seeing reviews come in for this book by those who further disparaged the character for her size. If I remember right, one questioned if I was a woman at all, or even did my research, to make her the size I did. Apparently to this particular reviewer this was HA-YOOOGE and unrealistic, particularly that 46"-size chest. (Which is around her boobs by the way, not just her ribcage. As a size-22/24, MY undercarriage is 44" around, so thanks, I guess, for that all too important reminder that I'm gigantic. I just can't hear that enough.)

It does, however, prove my point. As you can see above, CC's measurements were ample and unbalanced. I made her top-heavy for a reason, to show how sizing is a bullshit standard to judge women, because there IS NO STANDARD in how our many different bodies are shaped. This is why sizing guides change from store to store. Consider Salma Hayek, whose measurements are 39-24-36. According to this chart, her hips put her at a size 4, her waist a size 0 and her bust a size 10. At Lane Bryant, her bust would put her in a size 14. Her official size of record? A 4. Because sure... THAT makes sense.



This is the size dysmorphia we all indulge in every time we delegate a woman's value down to a collection of measurements. Really, if you don't count her boobs, which were made to be bigger on purpose, just to further prove we women don't come in cookie-cutter proportions, CC's still on the small end of plus. So please think twice before you berate a character for being HUGE just because of a scary number. If you do research, you'll find most size-14s, with all those scary measurements (particularly in the 40"-range) don't look all that different from everyone else, and certainly not the kind of HUGE that would make someone highlight it for a review as unrealistic.



For the record I see CC as more the model in the middle,

By the second time I use that song in the book, I totally believed he meant every single word - so much so I had to stop writing so I could SOB like a NEWBORN BABE.

This is the romance that awaits you with Devlin Masters. In book one, MASTERS FOR HIRE, you get the full fantasy. The saga itself takes some interesting twists and turns, which we'll get to in our next blog, but when it comes to Book 1, it was all about the romance and the wish fulfillment for happily ever after against the odds.

We'll deal with Real Life when our couple gets back to Los Angeles, and a friend of his - who knows Devlin much better than CC does - comes along to jack everything up, including any idea of a HEA between our two blissful lovers.

For now, though... we'll swoon hard and long over Devlin, the truest manwhore I've ever written, since he actually got paid to sleep with a bunch of women.

But somehow... I forgave him.

For just ninety-nine pennies, you can find out if you will too. MASTERS FOR HIRE is on sale RIGHT NOW for a limited time online. The $0.99 price is live at Amazon and iTunes, and coming soon to B&N.



While I didn't have a casting choice for Devlin, I did have a prototype, thanks to one of my idols, Glenn Frey. In the mid-80s, he released an album called The All-Nighter. The title song is about a lover who knows exactly what women need and want, and to find this man would be a heady addiction. It may have taken me nearly 30 years to write him, but suffice it to say, Devlin has been percolating for a VERY long time.



(I plan to write a blog devoted to Glenn, and how devastated I was over his passing, but I'm still piecing my heart together over that one. All I can say is the Grammys better do him right. If they don't, by God I will.)

Swoon-a-Palooza Book Boyfriend #11 - Xander Davy, includes a re-release/ONE DAY FREEBIE

We've talked a lot about some of my nice guys. I bet a few of you out there are hankering for a naughty boy. I serve up a tasty little morsel in BACK FOR SECONDS, where we get to meet Xander Davy.



Remember when I told you all that my first celebrity crush was Davy Jones? Well, he inspired Xander somewhat, in that he is British, with dark hair and enough charisma that it's impossible not to become discombobulated just from being in his presence. Hence the last name, which was a not-so-subtle homage to Mr. Jones.

When I first developed the plot for BACK FOR SECONDS, I knew I wanted to use a Brit. Like many other American women, I'm a bit of sucker for a British accent. It can make just about anything sound sexy. And don't get me started on hearing my name in an English accent. Waterboarding me would be a waste of energy. If you really need information, STAT, whisper sweet nothings in my ear with that accent, using my name often and well, and I'll tell you anything you want to know.

Like long hair, it is another form of kryptonite that will render me powerless.

The other thing I wanted to do was use an older protagonist. I write about young girls all the time, and that's been fun. But I wanted to parlay the life experience of a woman in her 40s, who has other concerns beyond finding her HEA. She's been down that road, she knows how that story ends. It ended with her cheating louse of a husband trading in his 40-year-old wife on a couple of 20-year-old employees. I wanted to riiiiiIIIPPPPPP the rug right from underneath her feet and see how she would rise to the challenge. She went from upper class housewife to an unemployed single mom in a matter of weeks, returning home to her Mama and her Gran so that they could help her get back on her feet.

Not helping in this task were her three children, who were equally thrown off balance by this sudden and dramatic change. Five-year-old Hannah couldn't understand why she couldn't stay in the bedroom she'd occupied her entire life. Fourteen-year-old Nash was quiet and sullen, not letting anyone inside his head to help sort it all through. And then there was Kari. She was fifteen, so everything happening in her world was more important than it had ever been or would ever be. When she has to move across town, to a new school, away from all her money and her popular friends, she blames her mother for the crisis.

Needless to say, our protagonist Joely has a lot on her plate. The last thing she'd ever consider adding to the list is an ill-timed affair with a younger man.

Did I happen to mention that Xander is 26? He's also the manager for her mother's restaurant, so it's not like she can ignore him. And he makes damn sure she can't even when she tries.

Still. Joely Morgan has one focus. She needs to get a job pronto in order to get on her feet, to become financially independent so that she can take care of her family. She never wants to give anyone the power to pull the rug out from under her again.

But it's Xander.

“What’s all that about?” she wanted to know.

“What’s what about?” he asked as he popped another huge bite into his mouth. His dark eyes watched her closely.

“Playing buddy-buddy with my kids,” she replied as she took his plate and headed back toward the sink. The chair scraped against the tile as he stood and walked over to join her.

His mouth was still full when he said, “It’s called being nice.”

Her look was skeptical. “Look. They’re going through a difficult time right now.”

He swallowed his last mouthful. His eyes kept hers captive as he ran his tongue around the corner of his mouth to capture any leftover frosting. “I know,” he finally said. “Your mother told me.”

Inwardly Joely groaned. That explained everything. “Great.”

He leaned against the counter. “It’s no big deal. Lillian thought maybe I could connect with Nash. He’s alone in a house full of women now. She thinks he could use a man to talk to.”

From where they stood nearly a foot apart, she could see his broad shoulders straining against the navy blue shirt he wore. His legs were long, crossed casually at the ankle, as he linked his hands and rested his elbow on the counter. Her nose filled with the scent of his cologne, a mixture of wood and spice. There was no doubt about it. He most definitely was a man. And the look in his eyes wouldn’t let her forget it. “I just,” she started but then found herself flustered and stammering. “I don’t know how long I’ll be here and I don’t want them to get attached to anything temporary. I appreciate the thought, but it’s not necessary.”

He towered over her 5’5-inch frame, studying her long brown hair and her deep brown eyes. The longer he stood without saying anything, the more nervous she got. When the tip of his thumb brushed the side of her mouth, she nearly jumped right out of her skin. Her doe eyes opened even wider as she watched him lick his thumb. “Missed a spot,” he murmured.

She was still sputtering behind him as he walked from the kitchen.

When Xander meets Joely, he can tell a few things right off the bat. She has zero self-esteem, thanks mostly to a mostly loveless marriage. She wears the neglect like a second skin. And even if she can't see it, he does. She needs a little excitement, and this young ladies' man takes it upon himself to provide it.

“Would you like to dance?”

Novanna practically shoved her out of the booth. “She’d love to.”

Joely stared helplessly back at her grinning friend as Xander pulled her to the crowded dance floor. The dance tune gave way to a Peter Gabriel classic, made popular in an iconic movie from her youth. Xander responded by pulling her closer, fitting her against his strong lines of his hard body. She gulped hard as her eyes drifted up to meet his. Those brown eyes, lightened with gold and green flecks, studied her intensely.

“What are you doing?” she finally said.

“Dancing with a beautiful woman,” he murmured in response as his gaze drifted lazily towards her mouth. “It’s one of the perks of going to a nightclub.”

“Please,” she scoffed. “You’re just taking pity on me because you think I’m some middle-aged reject.”

His eyebrows lifted. “So you think you know what I’m thinking, do you?”

All her senses were overloaded. She hadn’t been this close to a man in a very long time, even before Russell’s affair. Xander’s young sculpted body made all her senses go haywire. She held onto anger, because it was the only bullet left in the chamber of her common sense. “You tell me,” she said.

He leaned down next to her ear and murmured, “I think I already did.” His hand, which had been placed squarely on her back, splayed out as it traveled down the contour of her spine, coming to rest on the small of her back, pushing her into him. For a second there she forgot to breathe. “It’s not Spring Break in New Orleans, but it’s not a bad way to spend a Friday night.”

She glared at him. “Novanna was making all that up.”

“You never got drunk in New Orleans?” he asked with an innocent cock of his eyebrow. She sputtered in response, which made him chuckle. “You hide it well under this domestic veneer, but I get the feeling there’s a tigress under there somewhere. I’m just waiting for her to come out to play.”

“What do you think my mother would say about this?”

He ran his other hand down her arm to clasp her hand. “I don’t kiss and tell, love. Your mother doesn’t have to know. No one has to know.” He brushed his thumb against the palm of her left hand, which wedding rings no longer graced. “Just you and me alone, no restrictions, no limitations. Sounds kind of nice, doesn’t it?”

She glared at him. “So I’m just some one night stand, wham, bam, thank you ma’am?”

He held her closer so she could feel the promise of his hard body. “You can decide that for yourself.”

It was all too much. She hadn’t been touched like that in years, maybe ever. The look in his eyes was primal, like a caveman about to knock his newest conquest over the head with a club to drag her back to his cave by the hair. Whether he meant what he said or he was just teasing her because he could, it scared her straight. This was not the place for a newly single mom who was knocking on 40’s door.

“I already did,” she hissed under breath. “I’m not some booty call.” She wrenched away from him and stalked to the table. She barely said goodbye to Novanna before she stormed out of the club entirely. For the second time that day, she slammed as many doors as she could between her and that annoying, arrogant dickhead, Xander Davy.

As you can see, he's got a lot to teach her and she's got a lot to learn. When I first plotted the book, I fully intended to make it an erotic romance for more mature readers. I wanted it to be down and dirty, as this young'un showed her a few new tricks. He was dominant without being domineering, like her husband. I knew under his masterful seduction, she'd come alive in ways she hadn't been able to before. She just had to learn how to let go.

When she returned to the house, she met a delivery driver at the door, who carried a large white box. “Miss Morgan?” he asked.

She fought the urge to correct him and say, “Mrs. Morgan,” considering, like Xander and Novanna had said, that wasn’t who she was anymore. “Yes,” she said as she approached.

“Package for you,” he said as he handed it off.

She fished a few dollars from her purse to tip the young man before carrying the large parcel into the house and up the stairs. She didn’t stop until she reached the bedroom, where she deposited the box onto her bed. Before she could rip it open, her phone rang.

It was Xander.

“Good morning,” he crooned into her ear.

“I assume you had something to do with this,” she said as she sat on the bed next to her gift.

“Guilty as charged,” he admitted happily. “Open it.”

She put him on speakerphone before she lifted the top of the box away and moved the tissue aside to reveal a silky black and lace dress. “Oh, Xander,” she murmured as she withdrew it, revealing a flowing skirt, snug bodice with a sweetheart neckline that dipped low in front. The wide straps were made of lace and the style was much like the other 50s-inspired clothing he’d selected for her. He clearly preferred retro glamour. “It’s lovely.”

“I’m glad you like it. I can’t wait until tonight so I can see you in it.” She shivered in spite of herself. “There’s just one thing,” he murmured.

“What’s that?”

“You’re not allowed to wear any underwear underneath it,” he said in a voice so low it nearly made Joely groan out loud.

“Allowed?” she echoed.

“That’s right. No panties. No bra. Just you. When I hold you close to me tonight at The Ranch, I want to know that I’m just a fine bit of silk away from fucking you right there on that dance floor. And I want everyone else to know it, too.”

“Xander,” she started, but he wouldn’t allow it.

“Ah, ah,” he said, and she could hear the smirk in his voice. “I’m the one in charge, remember? And you will be a good girl and do as you’re told.”

She could barely breathe. “Okay.”

“That’s not all,” he said. “I want you to drop off the kids wearing this dress.”

Her heart nearly stopped. “Why?”

“I want him to see what he threw away.”

She made a face he couldn’t see. “He won’t care,” she said.

“Yes, he will,” Xander promised. “Because somewhere deep down he’ll know that this weekend you belong to someone new.”

::clutching pearls:: Oh, my nerves.

Needless to say almost every aspect of writing and publishing this book was a helluva lot of fun, including the research. I got to use my first sexy cover. I finally got dip my toe into the erotic romance genre. I was as ready for Xander to teach me a few things as Joely was.

Truth is this story is so much more than a book about a sexual relationship, even though it is a sexual awakening. Mostly this was about a woman learning how resilient she could be, and how powerful she could be, all on her own. And what better teacher than this guy?



So I've released a second edition of this story, with a new cover, and a new focus, with certain editorial problems addressed from the earlier edition. This new edition is gaining ground in Kindle Unlimited, but I'm giving away copies FREE all day to anyone who wants to give it a re-read. Or read for the first time. I hope you'll be as pleasantly surprised as I was by this story and these characters.

This book still has all that Ginger Voight angst my fans love so much, only this time I keep it right at home, between a family as it fractures, and how they struggled to regain their footing. Complicating matters just a little bit? The fact that Joely's teenaged daughter sets her sights on Xander, who is about as many years older than her as he is younger than Joely. In Kari's mind that means she thinks she has a chance, especially since she has no clue that her mother is dating him on the sly. This keeps her from jumping all over the chance to campaign on her father's behalf for a family reconciliation, something ol' Cheater McCheaterson decides he wants when he catches a new man sniffing around the wife he threw away.

I didn't need the bright lights to tell this story. It was about as human as human gets. I even set the location right in my birthplace of Abilene, Texas, where I (mostly) grew up, just to show a little hometown pride. I consider this book my "comfort food." It's sexy and romantic, with all those titillating moments that keep ME turning the page, but it's got heart. Lots and lots of heart. In the end, I found myself looking up to Joely, hoping I can pull out my own miracle like she did. She inspired me. Xander seduced me. All the characters really kind of have their day, which is why this book is the first in a series, but not a trilogy.

Unlike my other sagas, which typically take about three books to resolve, each book is essentially self-contained, at least as far as the relationships are concerned. In this Lone Star Second Chance at Love series, three different couples will star in three different books, which each one facing new relationships in the face of losing an old one.

So fear not. If you want to know whether or not Joely and Xander make it to their happily ever after, you'll get the answers by the end of book one, before they become supporting characters in Book Two, which will branch off to Amarillo to tell the love story of one of their friends.

Consider this book a trolley car. The story will continue, but it's up to you to figure out where to jump on or off.

And right now you can do it all for free. Pick up BACK FOR SECONDS, Second Edition, FREE to everyone today only.

Swoon-a-Palooza Book Boyfriend #10 - Jake Dalton (Includes one-day Freebie!)

They say you never forget your first, and boy are they right.

Jake Dalton wasn't my first book boyfriend, but he IS the first book boyfriend who would have chosen someone like me. For that reason alone, I gotta love him.

I wrote LOVE PLUS ONE in 2006/2007, as part of a "protest" against all the traditional romance novels. I had just finished reading Waiting to Exhale and I was rather annoyed that, once again, the fat chick had been used mostly as a prop. She was comic relief, who wasn't expected to live the exciting, sexy jet-set life of her thinner counterparts. She was luck to get what she got, and she knew it.

That, coupled with Danielle Steel using fat as a character flaw in one of her books, particularly couched in terms of a serious issue like domestic abuse, just rubbed me the wrong way. I was tired of not being represented in the books I read. From the time I was eleven, I was reading about "thin and beautiful" heroines who were allowed and encouraged to race towards their happily ever afters. I'd only read one book up till then that had a fat main protagonist... and wouldn't you know being fat was the biggest hurdle she had to jump. She had to change THAT in order to have all her dreams come true.

Subtly, even without the authors meaning to, I was subconsciously programmed to believe that "thin and beautiful" was the only way to get love, and if someone like me wanted a little romance, I had better hit the gym.

There's only one thing wrong with that. I had managed to find love and romance, including sex, without ever having to lose weight myself. My HEA didn't hinge on my losing weight to find a guy; it depended entirely on finding a guy who could love me regardless of what I weighed.

In our culture this is considered "unrealistic." But since I had found that, I knew that I could write that. And that's what I did.

I gingerly dipped my toe into the Rubenesque genre by making my heroine a more forgivable size-12, which is roughly the average of most American women. I knew that they could identify with Shannon, including her insecurities as she compared herself with everyone around her that wasn't a little bigger, or thick, or, dare I use the term, fat.

I put a lot of me in Shannon, which is why, by 2007, she had a lot of growing up still to do.

By no surprise I put a lot of Steven in Jake, Shannon's very best friend and one of the few men on the planet who could see through her dress size to the girl underneath.

He was the one who saw her potential and lovingly pushed her towards it, even when she was scared shitless of reaching for any brass ring.

As soon as it was polite to do so, he herded her outside on the patio for some private conversation. He was dying to hear what Dixie had said about her idea. He thought it was a lock, and he couldn’t wait to see her get the promotion she deserved.

“So. Tell me. What did Dixie say?”

She shrugged and headed toward the swing that still hung from the big tree out back.

His heart sank. “You mean you didn’t tell her?” She sent him a sheepish glance. “Shannon.”

“What? Come on. It’s a worn out idea. What’s the point?”

“Says who?”

“Says Rex, that’s who.”

Jake came over to her and pushed her swing into motion. “You mean Dogface, Lord of the Reptilian People?”

“He’s not that bad.” He grabbed the rope and put an abrupt stop to her swinging to stare at her. She shrugged and looked away. “We swapped ideas. He said it was good but he said the timing was all wrong. It’s not like he made fun of it or anything. Which is better than what I did to his idea,” she added, figuring it made her point.

Jake started pushing her swing again. “I still think you should run it past Dixie. What can it hurt?”

“Actually it hurts plenty. It took a lot of guts to tell someone I work with about my idea. I walked around all day with this big old balloon of hope, only to have it deflated.”

“Rejection is a part of life, Shan. Everybody goes through it. Even all your heroes have dealt with it. The trick is to get beyond that and find the person who says yes.”

“If I could do that I’d be married and have ten kids by now, and my mother wouldn’t have to bribe you with dinner to shove Taylor down your throat.”

He laughed. “It wasn’t that bad.”

This time she stopped the swing and glared at him. He couldn’t help grinning as he sprawled out on the lawn beside the swing. “Okay, so we both need some help standing up to the puppet masters. You go tell Dixie about your idea and I’ll stand up to your Mom.”

He was serious. And she was scared. “But what if it’s a bad idea?”

He shrugged. “Then you’re no better or worse off than you were. But if you don’t try, you’ll never know.”

She couldn’t help but smile. He was right. Like always. What would she ever do without him?

That conversation is pure Steven right there. It could have been lifted from from our lives together, in the many times he had to be my biggest cheerleader to take my own leaps of faith.

And, just like Steven, he was right there with no-nonsense straight talk to keep her on task, even if it risked hurting her feelings.

“If you don’t go back and fight for that idea, then maybe you deserve to have it stolen.”

She was shocked. “What?”

“Listen to me. I’ve known you for a long time, and there are some things I know for certain about you. You’re smart. You’re funny. You’re amazingly talented. And you’re also the biggest obstacle you face. You walk away from challenges so you never have to fail, but you can’t succeed that way either.” She turned away. He knew her too well. “Let’s face it, Shan. Producing this new show would require you to get out of your own way and put it all on the line. I think... no. I know you can do it. But until you know that too, then maybe the people who have that confidence are just better people for the job.”

Tears coursed down her cheeks. She came there for comfort, not a butt-whooping. They’d known each other for nearly a decade, and now he decides to implement tough love? “Thanks a lot.”

But Jake wasn’t falling for it. He’d held his tongue long enough. It was time to push his little bird out of the nest. “Shan, I love you.”

“No, you don’t.” It was another wail.

“Yes, I do. If I didn’t, I’d put on a hat and join your little pity party. But what you need most is to hear that you can go back to that studio, you can confront that jerk and let Dixie know the truth. She will believe you because something this good could only come from you. And it is good. And it will succeed. And you do deserve it.” Her eyes met his. “This is your chance, honey. You just have to go claim it.”

By no surprise, he doesn't take it on the chin when she ignores his advice and tries to hide in the shadows where she thinks she belongs.

Shannon finally opened the door to Jake’s persistent knock. Her hair hung in tendrils outside of the normally tight ponytail she wore. Her glasses were askew. She wore a pair of sweat pants that looked as though they’d never actually seen a drop of sweat, and her stylish ensemble was topped off with a well-worn pair of slippers that looked like bear paws.

“I take it you didn’t go back to the studio.”

She snorted. “What gave it away?”

He was confused. “I don’t understand. What changed your mind?”

She shrugged as she lumbered back into the apartment. He’d never understand, so it was pointless to explain. She had every intention of going to work the next day and claiming her idea, but a nightmare ended up changing her mind. She dreamed that she’d gone back to work and strutted right to Dixie’s office, but when she opened the door she stood on the edge of a hundred-story building, teetering right on the edge. The whole world watched from below as she lost her footing and plummeted toward the ground.

She had jerked awake in her bed, in the throes of a panic attack unlike anything she’d ever experienced. The dream had merged all her worst fears into one epic nightmare. It took a whole gallon of ice cream to calm her down.

Clearly the dream was an omen. And she was no longer convinced that her dreams were worth pursuing if that was the cost of their coming true. “Does it matter?” she finally asked, though she really didn’t expect an answer.

Jake followed her into the apartment. The scattered debris made it look like a Chinese restaurant had exploded in the middle of her living room. “Apparently not,” he sighed as he watched her flop down on the couch and grab her remote.

He grabbed it just as fast and turned off the television he suspected hadn’t been off in at least two and half weeks.

“Hey! I was just about to find out if Carly and Sonny were going to get back together.”

Soap operas, he thought with a groan. It was definitely time for an intervention.

“You have ten minutes.”

“Before you turn back into a frog?”

“Before I pick you up and carry you into the bathroom and plop you in the shower.”

“You and what army?”

He loomed large over her and she shrank back into the sofa. This man had muscles and ate his spinach. “I was kidding.”

His face remained stern. “Well, I’m not. You’re going to go take a shower and I’m going to drive you to the studio. We’re going to get your job back.” She shook her head. “Forget it.”

He shrugged. “Suit yourself.” With his two strong arms he effortlessly lifted her up like a bale of hay, despite her very loud protests and wiggling. “Jake!” she squealed from her precarious perch atop his shoulder. “Put me down!”

He shook his head and held her tighter as they maneuvered the tight hallway heading toward her bathroom. She clutched door frames and scraped her fingernails along the wall to put a halt to their journey, but Jake was a man on a mission.

Toiletries went flying and he pulled the curtain back with one hand, using the same hand to turn on her shower. It was a shot of icy cold water that sprayed over both of them. “My clothes!”

“Smell as though they could use a washing too,” was his blithe remark. “Besides. Do you really want to be naked right now?”

She shook her head emphatically. Aside from her doctor, men didn’t generally see her naked. She felt no need to tarnish such a pristine record.

“Either way works for me,” he said as he handed her a bar of soap.

After a comedy of errors, both Shannon and Jake end up cast for the reality show she had gone to fight for. He'd be the bachelor on this new dating show, and she'd be the "mole" inside the girl's house, to weed out the bitches and pick the right match for Jake.

They knew going into it that there could only be one choice.

“No. Nope. Nada. No way.”

Jorge and Jake watched Shannon vigorously scrub the layer of makeup Jorge had previously applied with such care. No matter how much beauty he tried to plaster on her face, the ugly truth was that she was not ready for prime time television. It was impossible.

“Don’t hold back,” Jorge remarked. “Tell us how you really feel.”

“How do I really feel? You want to know how I really feel? I feel like a gigantic jerk, that’s how I feel. I belong behind the camera, not in front of it. Dixie’s crazy if she thinks I’m going to willingly go on national TV.” That was the total opposite of invisible, and it just would never do.

“It’s up to you,” Jorge replied. “But I think you’re missing a huge opportunity.”

“Oh yes. The opportunity to make a fool of myself doesn’t come along every day. Just every other day.”

“Slow down. Think about this for a second. Rex stole your idea. This is your chance to steal it right back.”

That stopped the scrubbing. Momentarily. “What do you mean?”

“He’s a producer, but this is unscripted, reality television. That means once those cameras roll, you guys would be the ones in control. Whether the show is good, or whether the show flops, is completely up to you.”

She considered it for a nanosecond. “Regardless.” She took a deep breath and sank back into the makeup chair. “Do you realize how idiotic I’ll look next to the swimsuit models he’s probably already cast?”

Jorge came to stand behind her and run his hands through her recently styled hair, fluffing and primping. “You will look like most of the women who watch the show, which will be a first for reality TV.” None of them could argue that point. “Who would you root for if you were watching? And wouldn’t that just chap Rex’s ass?”

She nodded, but then shook her head. Even with his masterful touch with her hair, with the makeup gone she looked way too plain and unbecoming to pass for a hopeful bachelorette.

“You know, Dixie offered me this gig but I turned her down. I didn’t want to work with Rex. But if you decide to do it, I’ll be there in a second. How’s that for an offer you can’t refuse?”

“It’s very nice,” Shannon conceded. “But even you can’t fix what Nature missed.”

He stood back and crossed his arms. “Excuse me?”

She swung around in the chair. “Okay, maybe you can. But we’re talking a full-time commitment.”

He just smiled and swung her back to the mirror. “Then I’ll move into the bachelorette pad for a few months. Tell me where there’s a down side.”

“But it isn’t fair to Jake,” she motioned to her still silent friend. “He doesn’t want to a part of a televised meat market.”

Jorge laughed. “Oh yes. Surrounded by twenty adoring females. It’d be hell.”

Jake just smiled. Although he wouldn’t have chosen this for himself, he thought the idea had some merit. Not to find a mate, necessarily, but to see his friend finally take her destiny into her own hands.

And if he had to date twenty lovely women to facilitate that… it was a dirty job but someone had to do it.

“Jake?”

He shrugged it off. “Like I’ve always said, Shan. Life is full of lessons. It’s a—”

“Learning experience,” she finished for him. She sighed. “So what would we have to do?”

Jorge hopped up on the counter and they all leaned in together. “I think we can all agree that we don’t trust Rex.”

Both Shannon and Jake answered immediately. “Right.”

“So you can’t necessarily control how he edits the show. But the money is on who the bachelor will choose. And that is very much in your control.”

“So who do I choose?” Jake asked.

A light bulb appeared at once over Shannon’s head. “Me.”

Jorge smiled. “By Jorge I think you’ve got it. What better Cinderella story for a Just Dixie audience?”

Jake and Shannon shared a look. This could actually work.

But something happens when the light shines bright on someone so used to living in the shadows. It changes the way she sees everything... including her best buddy, Jake.

They sat close together, comfortable old friends.

“I’ve missed you,” he said. “I don’t know what to do with my nights without my favorite IM buddy.”

She laughed. “I’ve seen the video. You have plenty to keep you busy.”

He chewed the corner of his mouth to conceal his embarrassed grin. “Well, you know.”

She nodded. She knew. As much as he’d begun this journey to help her reclaim what Rex stole, he was still human.

“So what’s it like for you? I don’t get to see any tapes,” he reminded her.

Purple feathers and misplaced underwear flashed in her mind. “Thank God.”

That got his attention. “Okay. Now you have to tell me.”

Her entire face turned red as she shook her head. “No way, buster. That’s not how this game is played.”

“You know,” he said, donning his best German accent, “ve have vays of making you talk.” He held up two hands in prime tickle position, which made her giggle before he even touched her.

“You wouldn’t dare!”

He dared. He dove right in and tickled her until she was laughing so hard she could barely breathe. “Okay, okay!” she gasped. “Uncle!”

Mercifully he stopped, but he didn’t move. As she caught her breath she realized that he had her pinned against the seat, their faces mere inches apart.

Time stood still as she stared into those baby blues up close. She had dreamed of being in his arms like this, but nothing compared to actually being there. She could feel every muscle as his warm, hard body pressed against her.

“Well?” he whispered with a crooked grin.

“Well what?” she whispered back, having completely forgotten the original line of questioning.

Jake seemed extremely amused. He didn’t move an inch. “What goes on at the Bachelorette Pad when I’m not around?”

“Oh,” she said. She licked her lips which drew his gaze that direction. The butterflies in her stomach clog danced their way to her feet when his eyes briefly glanced down at her mouth.

“Gossiping. Grooming. Sacred shaving rituals. You know. Girl stuff.”

He nodded, but he didn’t look as if he believed her.

And he also didn’t look like he had any intention to let her go. He held her so close she knew he could feel her tremble. Minute by minute, she grew more and more visible, not only as a woman, but as a woman who was developing feelings for a man.

“Jake,” she said softly, almost pleadingly.

His gaze drifted to her mouth and voice was warm like butter when he said, “Shannon.” She had never heard her name said like that before, from anyone, especially her best friend. It promptly turned her insides into goo.

Unfortunately for Shannon, she realizes that she's falling for handsome, hunky Jake, her steady bestie for ten years, around the time she has to fight 20 more women for his heart. And not just any women. We're talking *reality dating show* women. To say she stands out is an understatement, particularly to the other girls.

Jake wasn't having that either.

Kayleigh found Jake still sitting in the room with a perplexed look on his face. “Hey, you. Why are you in here all alone?”

His gave her an absent-minded answer. He had other things on his mind. “Shannon just left.”

“Ah.” Kayleigh entered the room and took a seat beside Jake. It was her spot, she’d decided, and she was going to do everything she could to be there. “You know I passed her in the hall and she seemed upset. Did you two have a fight?”

He gave a quick shake of his head. The thought was ludicrous. He and Shannon never fought.

They also never kept secrets, which was the hardest part of this new situation. Neither one could be honest about what they thought or felt. They were putting on an act, every single day, which felt completely unnatural for their ten-year friendship.

Jake realized then that he could ask Kayleigh’s insight. She’d been at the house. Maybe she knew what was eating Shannon.

“Did she say something?”

“She didn’t really have to say anything,” Kayleigh explained. “She mentioned that the date did not go well, but didn’t elaborate. We all kind of decided that meant it really didn’t go well.” She waited but Jake gave nothing away. “You’re very sweet, you know that?”

“Is that so?” he asked, but the absent question was inherently rhetorical.

“Being so nice to someone like Shannon,” Kayleigh expounded.

That got his attention. “Someone like Shannon?”

Kayleigh sensed that she had to broach the subject carefully. “You know. Someone who isn’t very well suited to you.”

His eyes narrowed as he studied her. He and Shannon had been thick as thieves for ten years. How could anyone think that they weren’t suited for each other? “And why isn’t Shannon suited to me?”

For the first time since she met him, his easy-going manner evaporated. Kayleigh laughed, and hoped to put him at ease. “For instance, you love the outdoors. You’re athletic. You’re adventurous. She’s… not.”

He waited. She was trying to say something, and suddenly he really wanted to know what it was.

“You’re a great guy,” Shannon continued. “You didn’t want her to be among the first to go. You even give her individual dates. But it’s not like you’re actually going to fall in love with her.”

He sat back and searched her face. Had he really been toying with the idea she might be the kind of girl he’d like to keep seeing after the show? “Why not?”

Kayleigh decided once again to change tactics. She leaned toward him. “Because you’re going to fall in love with me.” She gave him a winning smile that begged for a kiss.

He did not oblige. “It’s much too early to decide that,” he reminded as he stood. “Let’s get back to the party.”

Kayleigh left that room with a lot less confidence than when she entered.

Suffice it to say, Jake Dalton is one of my most swoon-worthy men, the first of my many "Good Guys." If you want a sexy romp with a cocky douche bag, this isn't that book. Read my GROUPIE or MASTERS sagas instead.

But if you want to know what it means to fall in love with your best friend... Jake's your guy.

They ended their evening with one last dance, and when the final notes of the music echoed away, they stood in the circle of one another’s arms, locked in each other’s eyes. Her heart thundered in her chest as she wondered if he was thinking about kissing her as much as she was thinking about kissing him. The moment was perfect. It was romantic. It felt just as right, at least to her.

He wore an unreadable expression on his face, one she’d never ever seen before, so it was frustratingly hard to tell how he felt about it. Her hopes began to climb when his hand cupped her face, with one thumb absently caressing her full bottom lip. “What?” she finally said in a breathless whisper.

“I made a mistake a couple of weeks ago,” he said at last, his low, soft voice bouncing off of her tightly drawn senses.

Her eyes fixed on his mouth. Thanks to her dreams, she could already imagine what it would feel like to kiss him. And even if it was only an act for the viewing audience, suddenly it was all she wanted to do. “What was that?”

“I gave away something I should have saved for the perfect moment. For right now. For you.”

Her breath caught as she realized that his head was lowering towards hers. The minute his mouth opened over hers, she was a goner. Her lips parted like they had in her dreams, unconsciously, with a wanton gasp, and fireworks exploded in her brain as his tongue meshed at once with hers.

It took her a whole second to process what was going on. It was real! Jake was kissing her! And not just a I-kinda-like-you-so-I-think-I’ll-kiss-you kiss. With Jake clutching her tight, his hand weaving into her hair to crush his mouth against hers, it felt more like I-wanna-kiss-you-so-bad-it-physically-hurts kiss. Whether it was for the show, or the ultimate fuck-you to Rex, didn’t seem to matter. Instead she focused on how his tongue tasted like wine as he conquered her mouth in ways her limited imagination just couldn’t picture. She practically swooned against him and he held her tight in his strong arms.

They were breathless when he finally broke apart. Seconds passed as they stared at each other. Finally his face broke apart in a lopsided, self-satisfied grin. “Now that’s a first kiss that counts.”

Shannon couldn’t speak as she nodded. Her whole body was flushed. “Jake,” she started, though she had no idea what thought could possibly follow.

Instead he bent his head towards hers and lightly kissed her on the tip of her nose before he rested his forehead on hers. “Thank you,” he whispered. “For what?” she whispered back.

“For the best date so far.”

As for who I'd cast, it'd have to be someone who was rugged and strong, like a rancher should be. He'd have to have the zen of an old soul, which you could see the minute you looked into his eyes, which would immediately put you at ease. He can't take himself too seriously. He'd have to be romantic and kind and accessible, but with a strong code of honor what it meant to be to be a man... and how that translated into his treatment of women.

Basically I'm open to suggestions. To me he's simply Jake, and I love him every bit as if he were real.

Fortunately, thanks to my own HEA, he totally is. I see him every time I look into my husband's blue eyes. And since you can't have him (sorry, I don't share,) I gave you Jake.

You're welcome.

LOVE PLUS ONE is free to read through Kindle Unlimited. Today only, everyone can download a copy.

Join me and let's fall in love with one helluva bachelor.

The Three-Step Method for a Successful Career as an Indie Writer.

Recently an article came across my feed that boldly proclaimed only 40 self-published writers are considered a "success" by Amazon. I scoffed immediately. I have tasted my own measure of success over there, by making more money as a self-published writer than I ever did in a "real job," so I clicked on the link to see how they, and by they I mean Amazon, measured "success."

To them, you haven't really "made money" until you've sold a million books, and in the last five years, only 40 self-published authors have done that.

Full disclosure, I am not one of them. My total for book sales on Amazon is probably about 70K. If you multiply that by the average book royalty of $2.05 (based on the very low $2.99 purchase price,) that puts me at over $140,000 over the past 5 years, which averages out to $28,000 a year. Though that sounds low, consider that 80% of all self-published make $1000 or less annually. Despite what they tell you, replacing a job where you make $13/hour just so you can play in the sandbox all day is, by most definitions, a successful endeavor.

In fact, I only stayed in that 80% for my first year. In my second year, Groupie took off and I saw my earnings grow by 1000%. The next year it doubled again, which continued all the way till 2015. Still, even with that bad year, where I saw my earnings slashed by a very painful 80%, I made well above the average of most. Before you get too excited I should probably tell you that the median writing-related income in 2014 was $8000. (To put this in perspective, earning $11,670 or less qualifies as poverty wages for a single person alone.)

So if you got into this racket to get rich quick, you're very likely going to be very disappointed.

If you got into this gig to have a career, however, I think I can help you. I have a three-step program sure to guarantee your success*, not just in writing but in any endeavor you pursue.

STEP ONE: Redefine what you mean by success*.

Let's be frank. The word "success" is subjective. Everyone has their own metric for it, and really kind of should. What you want out of your writing career may not be what I want out of my writing career. You have to figure out what your ultimate goal is and let that guide your path, not some pie-in-the-sky lotto number that keeps your carrot constantly out of your reach.

I can't guarantee you'll sell a million books. No one can. Some books will do well. Some will bomb. It's up to the reader alone which of your books will be worth their hard earned dollar, and you won't know which is which until they do. You're not only going to have to keep throwing new books against the wall to see what ultimately sticks, you're going to have to wade through tons of crap submitted by hackish folk doing the same thing. When I say hackish, I mean all those people who just want to make a quick buck and figured self-publishing was the way to do it. They aren't storytellers. They have no passion for the art. They just want to make a a lot of money quick and they'll do whatever it takes, including shamelessly plagiarizing other authors word for word, to do it. There are no real hoops to jump through to hit "publish." Once you have a book in your grubby paws, there's only you and Amazon to decide if your book is suitable for sale.

(This is probably why Amazon had to implement a new policy on the quality of said books. I'm tentatively holding out hope this is a good thing, and not just another way to penalize self-publishers.)

Every week dozens upon dozens of new books hit Amazon, so it's hard as hell to sell even one book - much less a million.

If you want to stay sane in this process, you're going to have to redefine your own measure of success. Though the hill you climb is steep, there are a lot of cool milestones along the way where you earn your stripes as a writer.

Milestone One: You finished a book.

This is a huge success when you consider so many people only wish they could finish a book. If you made it through Chapter One all the way to The End, you're already ahead of the game. YOU FINISHED SOMETHING. Ideas are a dime a dozen, but you did the work and managed to create something concrete and tangible out of nothing more than the thoughts in your head. GO, YOU! And since can't sell a book you never finish, finishing that book means you're one step closer to earning money as a published writer. (Pretty cool, huh?)

Milestone Two: You sold a book.

The very first money I ever made was on an Internet article. I earned about $0.03, but, by God, that was money earned because of what I wrote. I did a victory lap accordingly. Remember what I said about how hard it was to be seen and discovered among the tidal wave of books published weekly on Amazon? Selling even one book is huge! It means some reader somewhere managed to stumble across your book in the vast Amazon wasteland. They saw your cover and opened the page, read your book blurb and thought, "Sure, what the hell? I'll take a chance."

They took a chance on you. They didn't have to. The competition is steep, with many more successful writers tilting the odds more in their favor by paying for PR and having a legion of fans to support them. You, little no-name you, SOLD. A. BOOK. If we aren't allowed to stop and celebrate that as a huge fucking win, what does that say to that one reader? That they don't count because there aren't a million more like him/her? Good luck building a career on that kind of ingratitude. Your readers are the only bosses that count in this business. They're the ones who, if you've done your job right, will tell other people about your book and do all your selling for you, just by word of mouth. The best PR I've ever had in my life I never had to pay for. I just got one reader passionate about the story, who then passed it on to a book blogger, who became even more passionate about the story, who shared it with all her followers and BOOM. The door opened.

Book bloggers are responsible for almost all of my coverage. These readers took a chance to read/review me even though I wasn't already sitting on a goldmine, sending my little babies out into the reader universe like ripples in a pond. You want to sell a million books? You can't sell a million without starting with the one. Never, ever lose sight of who is important in this equation.

Milestone Three: You got a review.

Reviews sell books. Plain and simple. You need em more than ever in an saturated market. But here's where it gets tricky for far too many writers. Though you want everyone to love your book, realistically that's not going to happen. Nobody reads the same book, and it's inevitable you're going to find those who hated every word you painstakingly typed. Whether they loved it, or whether they hated it, every single review you get is a win. You started with a blank page and you made someone FEEL something, even if it's anger that they wasted their time on your book. Your success isn't dependent upon a positive review. If people are talking about it, you're already ahead of the game. The death of any book is the dreaded "DNF," - or "did not finish." It's the indifference that you need to worry about, indifference towards you, indifference towards your story. In the end, "meh" will do more damage to your career than "OMG she's wonderful!" or "OMG she sucks!"

Believe it or not, those lower-rated reviews can help you sell a book. Readers are savvy, and they know that there are writers out there who know how to game the system, who set up sock-puppet accounts to give their own books glowing reviews, or worse... pay for them. If a book doesn't have a FEW stinker reviews, that looks suspicious. And plenty of readers will read those 1-or-2-star rated reviews FIRST, just to see what someone else hated about it. If that reader demonstrates personal biases in the review, many will shrug and think, "That's not a big deal," and dive right in.

A very small percentage of readers actually leave reviews. Though I've sold 70K books (and given away a significant chunk on top of that,) I only have 1,311 reviews on Goodreads. Amazon is even lower, because they have a very strong oversight on who can and can't leave reviews for your work. Ratings are much easier. Click a star and go. But reviews? That takes time, and to take that time the reader must care. If you get a review... that's pretty darned huge no matter how it sorts out in the end. It is one step in the right direction towards the ultimate goal of success.

No one sold a million books without reviews, good, bad or ugly.

Milestone Four: You've earned fans.

This is probably one of the cooler milestones, even though you can't cash it in at the bank. But as far as I'm concerned, you can't put a price on that writer/reader connection. One of the best "author" moments I ever had was when I went to my first book-signing in Las Vegas. After one of the parties, I was sitting at a slot machine, just happily playing like I always do in Vegas, when I heard a gasp behind me. I turn to see this woman cautiously approach me. "Are you Ginger Voight?" she asked. I smiled and said yes and this woman had the very same reaction I've had when I've met famous people. She was practically beside herself to meet me. ME. Little ol no-name, no-million-books-sold me. At that time I had only sold about 20K books, but she made me feel like a rock star. You simply can't put a price on that, and no one - and I mean NO ONE - gets downplay how successful that made me feel. Every single time I publish I know there are fans out there who don't even have to read the blurb to buy my books. They may be smaller in number than some of my more "successful" peers, but the fact that they consider me a #OneClickAuthor is mind-blowing and humbling. Any email you get, any kind of follower you earn on social media... ALL of that is fucking incredible. The more you appreciate THEM, the more successful you'll be, simply because they'll make you feel like a success even when the world around you wants to dismiss you.

Milestone Five: You are lucky enough to repeat all these milestones again with your next book.

If you want a career, you're going to have to treat this like a job. Even for those 40 indies who have sold a million bucks, this is a marathon, not a sprint. Allow yourself to bask in the glow as it comes, but don't dawdle. Get back in that saddle pronto to repeat these steps with each new book you write. (Because you WILL need to write more books.)

And that brings us to...

Step Two: Develop Your Plan According to Your Desired Success.

The main difference between a goal and a dream is that one of them has a plan. You don't just trip into the kind of success it takes to sell a million books. My son Tim has a saying. "Your discipline must match your ambition." Since I am a very ambitious person, I know the work I put in has to meet my goal for success in equal measure. Every year I have the same goal: Sell a million books. It's lofty, sure; made loftier by the idea only 40 indie writers have managed to do it. But I don't look at it from the perspective that ONLY 40 have done it, so I shouldn't try. I look at it as 40 broke through and made it happen. If they can do it, I can, too.

I just have to be willing to do the work.

This is the attitude you have to have if you want to make ANYTHING a success, by the way. You have to believe that you have it within you to do it. But it doesn't stop there. You've gotta be willing to turn up the heat and make it so, defy the odds, conquer the impossible.



I don't just write a book and throw it up on Amazon and let it go at that. I'm constantly working, strategizing, marketing, writing, plotting, developing... to the point that if I have a free minute to spare, I'm filling it with "work." I have to, because whether I succeed or fail is completely up to me. It's not going to fall into my lap just because I want it. It's not going to rain money from the sky just because I happen to be talented. This is a business and I have to treat it as such. I'm not going to become a professional basketball player just because I can sink a basket. I have to learn the game, I have to practice. I have to put in the time and effort. I have to take the falls and learn from failure. Good is not good enough. I strive to be great.

To sell a million books, you have to be great. More people want to be great than put in the work to become great, which is why the odds are so slim of such big things happening in any career, much less a creative one.

Here's the painful truth. No one owes you anything. If you have a dream, it's up to YOU to make it come true. Even if you get really strong, talented, go-getters behind you, 95% of your success depends 100% on what you do. This is a job where you are going to hustle. There's no way around it. You're not going to sell a million books just because you want to. You're going to sell a million books because you set forth a very deliberate plan to make it so. Do your research. Some books make money. Some don't. Read bestsellers. Find out what the market demands. Constantly be learning, honing your craft. Study those people who HAVE made a career for themselves. Find out how they did it. Learn from the masters. This is a crazy business that is set up to swiftly weed out those who can't cut it in the long haul. The "thick skin" this profession demands isn't from the barbs of critics - it's for the constant sting of inherent rejection you face every single time you publish. Most people will reject you first and foremost by not buying a book.

But guess what? They "reject" some of those bestsellers the very same way.

This is a career you'll hear no way more than you'll hear yes no matter who you are. Lace up your boots and keep walking.

Stop treating success like some random lottery win. People who make this their careers put in the work, plain and simple. And when I say career, I mean something more substantial than one best-selling title. To me, the measure of success is that I have never gone a day without selling a book in four years. When you consider that most books drop off the map after a release-day push, the fact that a series released in 2014 still has "legs" (in that I sell dozens of copies per week per title) is fucking mind-blowing.

Can I retire on it? Nope. Not by a long shot. That's why I have to keep working. To have a writing career, I have to approach it like a job. There's no shortcut around it.

And I'll take it a step further, as word of warning for all those folks who have "make enough money I can quit my day job" as one of their own personal markers of success. The minute you become a full-time writer, you cease having value in the "real world" job market no matter how well you do. When the market fluctuates, and it will, and you end up needing more money than your sales generate, you WILL have to to supplement your income just to make ends meet. Any sales job is a matter of feast or famine, depending on the market. My husband used to sell real estate, cars, furniture and cell phones. His income was anything but stable. Some days we lived like kings. Other days we robbed Peter to pay Paul. If you want to be a writer, then you have to accept this as part of the deal. The minute you cut ties with Plan B, you are literally going for broke. Despite my successes and my tremendous skills and diverse employment background, I am currently un-employable. I should make $30K a year at the very least for what I am able to do, but because I've been out of the "job market" for the last five years, I can't get an interview to save my soul. And when I do, it all comes back to the fact that I don't have a recent work history (even though I work 12-hour days on the regular, running my own business.) I have skills coming out of my arse (type 75wpm, data entry 11K-kpm, test in the 90% on Microsoft Office, experience with web/graphic design, marketing, accounting, management, etc., working in insurance, real estate, public relations, retail AND restaurants,) but I can't even get a job answering a damned telephone. Having done so well as an indie, in that I could make my ends meet for years on end WITHOUT an outside job, takes me completely out of the running.

So when I say there's no way around it, I'm telling you the cold hard truth. You want to make a living with your writing? You're going to have to hustle. No one is going to give it to you. You have to earn it many times over before you ever see the work pay off. I wrote for twenty years before I ever made a dime. Fortunately, because of self-publishing, many of you won't face the same challenges. It still won't come easy. This is a war, my lovelies. And you have to be willing to spring up out of bed every day willing to fight it.

Some days I'm more successful at this than others.

Which brings us to...

Step Three: Learn How to Adapt.

It is safe to say that self-publishing has changed the game of publishing, but that doesn't really go far enough. The more accurate way to say it is that it is changING the game. What worked for indies in 2012 won't work in 2016. It's as hard as it ever was, and gets even harder the more people jump on board to take a little piece of the pie. That's why the "only 40 writers" article even exists, to caution new writers against using self-publishing as some sort of get-rich-quick scheme, which makes it so much harder for the rest of us who actually want to make this a substantial career.

I'm not real worried about that though. The slush pile is a little different than it used to be, in that those books are often published now and flooding the market, but fighting the slush has been a part of this profession since I started sending out queries in the 1990s. I have to stand on my head to convince anyone to read a book, then or now. I just do it a little differently these days. Truthfully, I'm doing it differently than I was when I started self-publishing in 2011.

You have to be adaptable in life, not just this business. If you can't adapt, you die. That's evolution 101. You constantly have to reinvent yourself and modify your expectations accordingly. This job in particular is very fluid, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. Good, in that you CAN find new ways to do things, so experimentation is welcomed and encouraged. Let's face it. This industry has been changing moment to moment for years, so nobody really knows anything anymore. The best thing about being an indie is that you CAN stop on a dime and try something new without worrying about the traditional publishing paradigm. But if those experiments fail, and they often do, it can be very bad. Just like water, it doesn't take much to pose a dangerous threat of drowning. That's why adapting is key, no matter what you want to achieve. Anyone who has ever achieved anything great had to master this.



As this industry changes, you have to be willing to adapt to it. A lot of people are scared of indies, just because they don't know what to expect. They will downplay your successes, like this original article attempted to do. They want to discourage you with scary statistics which don't JUST apply to indie writers by the way. Traditional writers are just as likely to have low or "mid-tier" careers rather than become bestsellers, thanks to the publishing stranglehold against them. You, as an indie, only make that much harder for publishing giants, who have a lot more moolah on the line than you do when they invest in a book. They want to get you off the hunt. But here's the reality: self-publishing is no longer the redheaded stepchild in the basement. Though major publishers have taken a hit in sales in recent years, self-publishing is currently on an upswing, despite all the safeguards in place to keep us at the bottom of the pack. If you're an indie, you are part of a movement, swelling like a tide, ready to knock the old traditionalists right off their high horses. Several bestselling writers have even ditched their traditional publishing contracts so that they have better control over their content. Many have learned that the work is the same even with a traditional imprint, and have decided that it isn't worth taking the cut in royalties in order to publish traditionally.

If I'm expected to do all the marketing and publicity for my book, I'm going to take the full 70%, not the 35% offered by most traditional publishers.

Plus concerns have been raised recently regarding less than reputable publishing houses, which, despite their successes, have left many of their vulnerable writers out to dry - where many are living in fear they'll lose their rights to their content entirely. Far too many writers are handing over money to people unwilling to earn it. They want you in their "stable," but all the work ultimately falls on you and they get to walk away with your money thanks to legal contracts that bind you to them, for better or worse.

This is why self-publishing has proved so successful. Instead of waiting for quarterly reports to see how things sell, an indie can log on daily and keep an eye on things. Because of this, it is easier to adapt and experiment with things to boost our income. Some things work. Some things don't. But you have more control over it. If you're just checking your sales once a month, you're missing major opportunities to properly market/sell your book.

Each and every one of those 40 who have managed to sell one million books have worked their ass off to get there. It wasn't some accident or fluke. Serendipity plays a minor part, but I guarantee the people who made it happen didn't sit around on their laurels expecting a huge payday simply because they hit "publish" on a book. They watched the market, they learned what their readers wanted, they figured out how to boost their visibility (which is the absolute key to success in this industry,) and adapted accordingly.

In other words... they treated it like a job. If you want a successful career as an indie writer, that is what you must do.

People will discourage you from tackling this kind of career because honestly it is a poor man's game. Your odds for a quick payday are long. If you want to sell a million books, they're even longer. Only 40 indies have done it, after all.

But 40 people HAVE done it. And lots and lots and lots more have managed to eke out a pretty decent living following their example. Best-sellers get the most press, but they stand on the shoulders of hundreds, even thousands, of no-name, mid-tier writers who proudly call themselves successful professionals.

Set your metric for success.

Do the work to achieve it.

Be willing to adapt along the way, particularly in terms of your own expectations.

There is no shortcut.

Good luck. And godspeed.

Now let's get back out there...

Swoon-a-Palooza Book Boyfriend #9 - Dylan Fenn (One-Day Freebie!)

Okay. Confession. The idea behind THE LEFTOVER CLUB, which gave birth to today's book boyfriend, Dylan Fenn, was created in part to "rewrite" several instances in my past where I, myself, was Queen of the Unwanted.

I preach all the time that anyone can find love and live the life of their dreams no matter what size they are, and I believe that 100%. But all the same, I am human and I do live in a culture where my appearance isn't necessarily prized. I've been stuffed into The Friend Zone more times than you could count, having been told by EVERY crush trying to let me down easy that "The man who gets you will be so lucky."

I know a fair amount about being rejected by the people you want most.

So I re-invented myself as a completely new character, Roni Lawless, who shared many things in common with me. Her dad died when she was a kid, just like mine. She was raised basically an only child by a single mom, just like me. She had to share her home with another family, just to make ends meet, just like us. She got her first kiss on a playground based on a dare, just like me. She was humiliated in high school PE by a ruthless PE coach who wanted to make an example out of her, just like me. Her best friend was gay, which opened her up to brand new experiences and perspectives she never would have had otherwise, just like me. Her first marriage ended in divorce, just like mine. (My husband wasn't as big of an asshole as Roni's was, but there was a bit of the same anti-fat tough love going on, which only made the fat thing worse... just like me.) She surrounded herself with other outcasts, just to have a place to belong, united in the shared rejection over That Guy, which lasted sadly long into adulthood. Just like me.

Most of all she pined for years over a boy who, by all conventional expectations anyway, shouldn't want her due to her size. While this manwhore adored her as a friend, she got delegated to the very exclusive group of people who *didn't* get to sleep with him, to commiserate together as they watched other people (and generally unworthy people) walk away with the prize of affection, getting all the glory without any of the hard work that comes from loving someone unconditionally.

Just.

Like.

Me.

When I developed Dylan Fenn, I decided that, UNLIKE me, Roni should get her chance to be chosen by the boy who should never, ever choose her. I dug way deep in my history to unearth those frighteningly awkward teenage moments, all in an effort to shade in the memories with a little more hope. A "missed opportunity" is a lot easier to swallow than outward rejection, after all.

If you want to criticize me for overly indulgent writing, in this case it actually might prove true. There's so much "me" in this book it's ridiculous. Well, the old me, anyway. The one who never believed anything good could ever happen to her. She rears her head every once and a while still, despite all my successes and how far I've come. She whispers in my ear whenever I want to try something new to temper my expectations, because the good stuff really doesn't happen to me, at least not for very long.

I'm sure this is no doubt tied to the clinical depression I've suffered with pretty much my whole life. That's why Roni's turning point is to seek therapy, to figure out why she continually self-sabotages.

It all comes back losing her father when she was a vulnerable child. Just like me, she had to wonder what the point of being happy was, when inevitably something wretched always comes along to destroy it. It seemed like the happier I was, the more traumatic the catastrophe. That's a scary place for a kid. And it helps cultivate scared adults.

In the end, her HEA wasn't necessarily about getting the hottest guy on her planet to love her as much as it took her learning to love herself.

Let's just say I'm working on it. Thankfully I was several steps ahead of Roni in righting this particular internal wrong, so there were parts of this story that were hard to tell. Seeing as how so much of it occurred in the past, including those confusing 80s as a lonely teenager, and the tumultuous 90s as a clueless adult, there was no getting away from that kind of self-examination. Making stupid mistakes in hindsight is a lot harder than you'd think.

The only way to get through it was to keep it as upbeat as possible, hence why I decided to write a story in bemused, nostalgic flashbacks. I could lean heavily on the music and movies and pop culture of the time, which immediately connected me to any reader who shared those common experiences. And since she was stronger than I ever was at that age, I made Roni a lot like what I had always wanted to be. She did all those high school things I never did. She graduated high school and went straight to college, like I always regretted not doing.

And then there's Dylan.

What can I tell you about Dylan?

Dylan Fenn is That Guy. He's the quarterback of the football team, he's the big man on campus, he's the star on the verge of breaking out. He's every guy you ever wanted that you thought was too far out of your league to seriously pursue. He's got every possible advantage, except for a father who loved him. This has dogged him his whole life, with only Roni there to understand his pain.

I wanted to tell him I was sorry that his dad flaked out again, but I learned a long time ago that he didn’t like to talk about that kind of thing. Instead it was time for Operation: Distraction. “So what movie do you want to see?”

“I don’t know. I’m not really in the mood to see a movie.”

“Oh,” I said. “What do you want to do?”

“I want to see my dad,” he said.

I turned my head to look at him. That softly worded confession was unexpected. I saw a tear at the corner of his eye.

“Why doesn’t he want me, Roni?”

I turned over on my side and propped up on my elbow. I didn’t know what to say, or do.

He turned on his side to face me, mirroring my posture by propping up on his elbow. “Sometimes I think you’re the lucky one. Your dad didn’t leave you on purpose.”

“Still hurts,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, I know,” he said.

“And your dad can change his mind someday. He can come back.”

His dark eyes were big and sad. “He won’t.”

I didn’t know what to do so I reached for his hand, just to let him know I’d always be there for him, no matter what. He smiled. So did I.

Despite this inward pain, outwardly he's everything That Guy should be. He's hot, he wears all the right clothes, he hangs out with the right people. He's charming so people forgive him when he cycles through girlfriends like tissue paper. He's smart, but not arrogant. He's good looking without being egotistical. Thanks to his absent daddy's money, it looks as if his whole life is wrapped up in a big sparkly bow. Why should anyone like this settle for the high school reject?

Dylan grabbed my arm and propelled me out toward his car. He said nothing as he unlocked the door and thrust me in the passenger seat. He revved the engine once he got in, and then screeched around in an illegal U-turn as he pointed the car towards home.

“That was stupid, Roni,” he finally muttered once we hit the Pacific Coast Highway. “You can’t go alone with guys like that. They’re only after one thing.”

“Not from me,” I said softly.

“From anyone,” he corrected. “All those guys want is an easy lay.”

“I’m not an easy lay,” I snapped. “I’m a virgin.”

He stole a brief glance. “For now.”

I was starting to get angry. “What is that supposed to mean?”

He sighed. “Insecure virgins are a number one target.”

“You’d know,” I snapped.

He pulled off the main road and headed down toward the beach, pulling into the parking lot and killing the engine. He swiveled to face me from his bucket seat. “Is that the kind of guy you think I am?”

I held his gaze for as long as I dared. Finally I looked away. “I don’t know what kind of guy you are.”

“I’m a guy who cares about you,” he said softly, which forced me to look at him again. “I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

It was hollow comfort. I had been hopelessly infatuated with Dylan Fenn since I saw him ace a spelling bee in the first grade. A lot of good that had done me over the years.

Silence stretched on indeterminately between us until finally he said, “Truth or dare?”

My eyes met his. “What?”

“Truth or dare?” he repeated.

“There are no merry-go-rounds here,” I pointed out.

He conceded that point with a nod of his head. Then he reached across me to pull a joint from the glove box. He lit it up, inhaled deep, and then handed it to me. I took it begrudgingly and gingerly took a hit. “Hold it in,” he instructed, and I did. “Good. Give it a few minutes and you’ll feel like you’re right back on that merry-go-round.”

After I finished coughing and sputtering, I leaned back against my seat and closed my eyes. Just like he said, within minutes I felt like I was flying. “Truth or dare?” he repeated softly.

I didn’t bother to open my eyes. “Truth.”

“Would you have slept with Todd if he had asked?”

I exhaled slowly. “I don’t know,” I finally said. And that was the God’s honest truth. “It’s not like anyone has ever asked.”

“Would you have kissed him?” Dylan persisted.

“I don’t know. Probably. I mean look at me, Dylan. I’m a cliché. Sweet sixteen and never been kissed.”

“I think you’re forgetting something,” he said softly.

I glared at him. “That wasn’t a real kiss.”

A long moment passed before either of us spoke. “You’re right,” he finally conceded. “It wasn’t. We were just kids and it was just a silly dare.”

Though I long suspected it, it hurt to hear him say so. I started to look away but his hand curled around the back of my neck and pulled me back. “This is a real kiss,” he said before he leaned toward me and his mouth landed on mine.

Despite all the starts and stops in their childhood, Dylan and Roni would have likely orbited in the same galaxy had Roni not gotten married. But... old flames die hard, especially with someone like That Guy. It doesn't take much to blur the lines.

Dylan stood to face me. “I didn’t expect to see you here,” he grinned. “You look great.”

“Thanks,” I said as I glanced him over. “Ditto on both counts.”

He laughed. “Thanks. I just came by to drop off Mom’s famous banana bread. She made a thousand loaves, as usual.”

I chuckled. I remembered well overdosing on Bonnie’s famous recipe over the years.

“Do you have a minute, or are you on your way back out?” he asked, looking over my attire which was far too fancy for a night at my mom’s.

“I was leaving, yeah,” I said. “But it was good to see you.”

Those familiar dark eyes were warm as they stared back at me. “You, too. Let’s get together sometime, okay?”

“Absolutely,” I promised, though I had no intention of doing so. I couldn’t afford yet another liability if I was going to try and save my marriage. I waved goodbye to my stepfather and hugged my mom and Meghan goodbye before I headed back out to my car.

I waited until I got back into the driver’s seat before I called Wade. My plan was simple. I was going to ask him to dinner, and we’d have a respectable date where I would promise that I would do whatever he wanted if he would just come home. Meghan needed him. And that was all that mattered.

But when the phone picked up, it was not Wade on the other end. A woman answered, which was odd, considering it was the direct line to his private hotel suite. “Hello?” she answered.

I didn’t say anything at first, but then, before I could stop myself, I said, “Julia?”

“Yes,” she confirmed. “Who is this?”

There was a slight muffling sound before Wade’s voice filled the line. “This is Wade Connor.”

“This is Veronica Connor,” I gritted. “You know. Your wife.”

He sighed. “It’s not what you think, Roni.”

“Right,” I scoffed. “You won’t let me go to a public place with my friends but you allow a woman in your hotel room?”

“There are several people in my room. We’re attending a function this evening and we decided to meet early.”

“And she just randomly answers the phone?”

“I asked her to,” he answered coolly. I didn’t reply. “What did you want, Roni?”

“I wanted to invite my husband to dinner so that we could work on our marriage.”

“Tonight is out of the question,” he dismissed. “I have prior engagements.”

The streetlight glanced off my two-carat diamond ring. “Yeah. I thought I was one of them.”

“Roni…,” he started.

“Goodbye, Wade.” I disconnected the call, threw the phone onto the passenger side of the car and burst into tears. How did it all go so fucking wrong?

I heard a tap on my window. I turned to see Dylan hunched beside my car. I wiped my tears away and rolled down my window. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I lied as I smeared more of my makeup by wiping away the tears.

He wasn’t convinced. I could feel his eyes as they scanned my face. “Want to talk about it?”

I shook my head. “I really should go back inside.”

“I thought you were leaving.”

I couldn’t even face him. Tears cut a path down both cheeks. He said nothing further as he opened my door and pulled me out by the hand. I grabbed my purse, but left my phone, and allowed Dylan to lead me toward his Mustang.

It was like old times. He was in the driver’s seat and I was along for the ride. He blasted his music, that familiar heavy rock sound that he had always loved. He merged onto Interstate 5 going north toward Los Angeles. “Where are we going?”

“I know a place,” he said with that grin that still made my knees tingle.

Unlike That Guy, who works only for a season and then you outgrow him like last year's fashion, Dylan is the only constant in Roni's life, despite their long-simmering non-affair. It's a love affair that stretches over decades, because that's how long it took both of them to grow the hell up, despite having each other to lean on for all those years.

“I could not have done this without you. You know that, right?”

I shrugged. “Call Emma and thank her. She was the one who recommended you. We just brokered the deal.”

He chuckled and shook his head. “You’re never going to take credit for anything you do, are you?”

“Credit. Blame. Talk to me in three months, when you’re digging swamp bugs out of your teeth.”

He laughed. They started filming in early January, clear across the country in a small town in Florida. This was good news for me because it meant for six weeks solid, I wouldn’t have to have Dylan Fenn thrown into my face by my family, my friends and life in general.

But it wasn’t January yet.

“We should do something to celebrate this auspicious occasion.”

I shook my head. “Can’t. I have to get home to the kid.”

“So bring her. I don’t think I’ve seen her since she was six. Remember?”

I rolled my eyes. Remembering was not my problem these days. I was reliving every painful experience from my past as that damnable twenty-year reunion loomed. “I have a strict policy not to involve my daughter in my social life. My ex-husband does that enough for both of us,” I added bitterly.

He sighed before he leaned across my desk, linking his hands together as he cornered me in a direct gaze. “Roni, I want to see you. I want to spend time with you. I want to fit in your life somewhere. It’s not a date. It’s not marriage. It’s just friends hanging out. I’m pretty sure she’s old enough to understand that. You should give her a little credit. Me, too, for that matter. And yourself most of all.” He paused before he added, “You deserve a life of your own. It’s okay to be happy.”

But oh... what a ride. Definitely worth going through a second time around.

As for who I would cast, I wouldn't. Everyone but everyone has their own definition of That Guy. (Or that Girl. We're inclusive here around these parts.) Whatever that person was, that holy grail of attraction, the one you thought you'd never get, you can put his (or her) face in the blank spaces.

This is the book for every outcast, every reject, every scorned, friend-zoned, nice guy/girl who never turned That Guy's eye, not for real, not the way it counted.

So raise your glasses, you beautiful weirdos. The book for your HEA is here at last.

Check out THE LEFTOVER CLUB, which is available free to read through Kindle Unlimited. And, for today only, EVERYONE can download a copy FOR FREE!

Welcome to my own teenage wasteland.

Swoon-a-Palooza Book Boyfriend #8 - Jace Riga

I have to say that I have a special place in my heart for today's hero, Jace Riga. He is the king of all my nice guys, because his goodness is unwavering. Whereas many of my other "good guys," like Graham and Jonah, have their missteps, Jace is like a lighthouse in the storm. This wounded war vet, who lost his leg in the service of our country, has a very strong sense of what is right and what is wrong, but mostly what is worth living - and dying - over. He plops into my heroine's life right when she needs a strong, steady influence the most.

In this way, he's much like my husband, Steven. More than that, he truly, truly, loves Jordi for who she is. He sees her in a way she can't see herself, because she has so many outside voices telling her she's not good enough because she's fat. He doesn't see any of that. He sees her talent, her strength, her heart... her. In that way, he's most like Steven.

He's the kind of guy who would buy a lonely girl a rose just to make her smile, or give that much-needed pep talk to lift someone's spirits and get them ready to go back in the ring. And he's the kind of guy who decides a woman is worth romancing, even when the rest of the world would rather she didn't exist at all.

“What is this?”

“This, Boo Boo,” he said as he pulled a basket from the back of the cart, “is a pick-a-nick.” I couldn’t help but giggle as we climbed into the boat. He shoved off and we drifted along the water. “I figure why stay on a stuffy old sound stage when we have the entire universe at our disposal?”

“I like the way you think. Maybe tomorrow we can dine at a Paris bistro.”

“Consider it done, mademoiselle,” he said with a really bad accent.

He rowed us out into the center of the pond, then placed the oars inside so we could bask in the afternoon sun. He then pantomimed being a waiter as he pulled out the basket full of food, which included a fruit platter, some cheese and crackers and a bottle of sparkling grape juice. I had to laugh when he made a production out of uncapping the juice and pouring it into some plastic stemware. He sniffed the juice, then swirled it around in his mouth like wine. “A lovely vintage,” he pronounced. “Sweet with a hint of fruit. But it will sneak up on you if you’re not careful,” he advised with a wink.

I couldn’t help but giggle as he poured me a glass. “You have excellent taste,” I complimented after I took a sip.

“I’m a man of many talents,” he assured as he spread some cheese on a cracker. He fed me the first bite, which I savored with eyes closed. To return the favor, I spread cheese on another cracker, topped it with a grape and fed it to him.

Our eyes met as his sensual mouth closed over the food. It sparked something way deep down inside of me that took me so off guard I almost gasped.

“Delicious,” he said softly, before feeding me a plump, juicy grape.

The way he watched my mouth as I took a bite unsettled me even further. Clearly this was heat stroke. I pried myself out of his intense gaze and reached for my glass of juice.

“I’m so glad Imogene didn’t eat you and spit out your bones. I would have hated to miss this.”

He laughed. “No, she took pity on me. But she did say that my song choices were a bit too dated.”

“What did you pick?” I asked.

He told me the title of a 1970s tune that talked about being lonely. The sheer coincidence that he’d pick a song like that when I had told Jorge that was how I was feeling nearly knocked me into the water. I was speechless as he went on. “She told me that I needed to pick something more current.” He named her selection, which as a fine song, and would certainly win him some fans with girls especially. A veteran singing a song about heroes? It couldn’t lose.

“I think I would have liked to hear the first one,” I mused.

“All you have to do is ask,” he offered softly.

My eyes searched his. Finally I said, “Sing it to me.”

He gave me a tender smile before he started to sing. It wasn’t a showstopper by any means. It was quiet and sweet and sentimental, and for that moment it was as if he was singing it especially for me. I was captive in his eyes as he sang. He hit a falsetto that gave me chills as he finished the song. I didn’t even know he could pull off that kind of range. Imogene wasn’t as smart as she liked to think she was if she discouraged him from singing this song.

“That was beautiful, Jace.”

“To be honest with you, you kind of inspired it.”

“Me?”

He nodded. “I thought about you all weekend,” he confessed, and for a second I couldn’t breathe. “I knew how rough it was for you, and I just wanted to let you know that I would be there for you if you needed someone to talk to. A friend,” he clarified. Then, softer, “Maybe more.”

“Jace,” I started, but he was quick to cut me off.

“Was that out loud?” he joked. He looked away, and I could see how much courage it took him to admit how he was feeling. Despite his flawless good looks, he faced the same kind of rejection I did from a society that demanded perfection. What was worse, the things that made me different I did to myself. The thing that made him different had been done to him in a cruel twist of fate.

I scooted from my bench over to his and took his hand in mine. “Jace,” I started again, wanting to say so many things but at a loss for words. When his eyes met mine, there was only one thing to say. “I’ve been thinking about you, too.”

His eyes searched my face. My breath caught and held as his our gazes locked. Desire poured from his soul as his head tilted slowly towards mine. His lips were warm and firm as they covered my mouth in series of slow, open-mouthed kisses, each hungrier than the last. My heart raced as his hand slipped into my hair, cupping my head as his fingertips gently brushed my scalp. When his tongue pushed through my lips, I was beyond stopping him.

I groaned in my throat as the kiss deepened. Every nerve ending came alive under his touch, and my frustrating weekend bubbled to the surface as he explored my mouth. When he finally dragged his mouth away, he rested his forehead against mine. “I’ve wanted to do that all day,” he whispered.

“Why?” I couldn’t help but asking. Of all the women on this lot to romance, why me?

His eyes locked with mine. “Because you’re sexy.”

I shook my head and looked away, but he was quick to grab my chin with his hand. “You come alive on that stage, Jordi,” he told me. “There’s something magical about you. Something beautiful.”

I chortled in disgust. “Please.”

“Why don’t you believe it?” he wanted to know.

“Why are you the only one who sees it?” I demanded in return.

“I’m not,” he assured. “And soon you’ll see that. You’re going to win this whole thing. I feel it.” He traced the line of my face with his finger.

“Pretty soon the whole world is going to know what kind of star you are.”

He is by every definition of the word a hero. I can't even think about him without swooning a little bit.

In fact, Jordi was the one who routinely made the mistakes that hurt their relationship, thanks to her massive insecurities and the influence of her less-than-loving inner circle, which we see play out in that very same scene when she withdraws from his passionate embrace, and has to tell him why.

“Things… happened this weekend,” I tried to explain. “When I went home. There was this party and all the people I knew… all the people I thought I wanted to like me or love me or want me.”

A look of understanding dawned on his face. He sat back and waited.

“My mother is moving out here. She’ll be here a few days.”

“And?” he asked softly, as though he sensed there was something more.

“And,” I started, taking a deep breath, “my boyfriend is coming with her.”

He closed his mouth and gulped down anything he might have said in response. It only made me want to explain even more.

“I’ve been in love with Eddie Nix since I was eight years old. And now he wants me too. And my mom thinks that we’d be a good match, so she let him stay in the house…”

Jace reached for the oars to row us back to the shore. “I get it,” was his clipped response. “This was pity.”

“No!” I was quick to correct. “It’s not pity.”

His eyes flashed as he turned back to face me. “Then what was it?”

“I don’t know. I’m confused. I’ve never felt lonelier in my whole life the way I felt this weekend. The best thing about getting what I thought I wanted from him? The texts I got from you.” He stopped rowing. “And now they’re coming and I’m not even sure I want them here. This is all happening so fast.” I cursed the tear that escaped from the corner of my eye. Jace captured it on the tip of his finger.

“Don’t cry,” he said softly. “You’ll ruin Jorge’s makeup,” he added with a grin, which made me laugh despite myself.

“I’m sorry,” I offered, for what it was worth.

“I’m not,” he told me. “I’ve wanted to kiss you for a long time. I won’t apologize for that. The only thing I regret is that I didn’t do it sooner.”

I took both of his hands in mine. “Me too.”

He squeezed my hands in his as he gave me a reassuring smile. He pulled me into a long hug, but he didn’t try to kiss me again. He was too honorable a man.

In fact, despite how horrible both her "boyfriend" Eddie and her mother are to her, Jordi's insecurities remain her biggest antagonist all the way through all three books. (I know a little about that, too.)

My message in this series was simple. You can have THE perfect man, who loves you like you never thought you'd ever be loved, but if you don't love yourself, if you don't think you are worthy of every good gift he has to give you, you run the risk of losing it all.

Granted, it's hard to stay body-positive in a world that doesn't want to hear anything from a fat person except how they plan to become thin, as if that excuses you in some way for committing the sin of being overweight. Eddie and Jordi's mother were horrid, yes, but they were the vocal embodiment of our culture, in which we shame someone for not being more like we think they should be.

Allow me to introduce Eddie.

“A steak, Jordi? Really?”

“What’s wrong with a steak? You got one.”

“I’m also not a hundred pounds overweight,” he said as he cut off his first piece.

His comment cut me to the core. “So what am I supposed to eat? Lettuce?”

“For a while, maybe,” he offered as he dug into his baked potato covered in sour cream, bacon and cheese. “You’ve gained a lot of weight since you’ve been out here, Jordi. And that was weight you couldn’t afford to gain.”

“I see,” I said as I put the plastic dome back over my plate. I rose to my feet and went into the bedroom, but he didn’t bother to jump up from his side of the sofa until he saw me carrying my bag toward the door.

“Where are you going?” he wanted to know.

“Home,” I said, trying my best not to cry. I would be damned to show him how hurtful his comments were.

He met me at the door and held it shut so I couldn’t leave. “Jordi, you have to know that the way you are isn’t healthy.”

“I took a physical for the show,” I informed him. “I’m in fine health.”

“For now,” he conceded. “But you are on a fast track to an early grave. Only the people that really love you will tell you the truth about that.”

I looked into his eyes, searching for a hint of sincerity. He was saying the words, but why didn’t they make me feel any better? “You love me?” I asked.

He took the bag from my hand. “I’m here, right?” He took my hand and led me away from the door. He dropped my bag into a chair and pulled me down onto the sofa. “More than that, I got my mom’s wedding dress out of storage. I brought it here to Los Angeles. All we need to get married is for you to fit into it. Then we’re solid for life.”

“Why do I have to lose weight for you to marry me?” I wanted to know. “Are you embarrassed by me? Like you were in Iowa when you were sneaking around to see me on the sly?”

“Jordi,” he began, but I cut him off.

“You think I’m stupid,” I accused. “I know why you never told anyone about me.”

“I was a stupid kid,” he offered. “But I’m a man now. And I’m willing to come here to Los Angeles and support you in your career. I left my home, my family, my school. How many other guys do you think would do that? All I ask is that you meet me halfway. Show me that you are equally committed to our future. I mean, look at you, Jordi. Where do you see yourself in ten years, honestly? You think you could have babies being so overweight? How healthy would that be for you or for them?”

I turned away so he couldn’t see the tears.

“I’m not going to settle down with a wife I’ll have to bury at age 40. I’m healthy and strong for you. I just ask you do whatever it takes to be that way for me.” He lifted my head with his hand. “What better time to fix this problem than when you have the show? Imagine how many people you will win over as they watch you lose weight. People love a winner, babe. You could be that.”

My chin trembled. “I could win without losing weight, too. That’s the whole point of the show.”

He brushed my hair back with his hand. “I think you know deep down that will never happen. If you don’t have any respect for yourself, why would anyone else?”

The difference between the two men sounds night and day, as if any sane girl could tell the difference and know instinctively who to pick. But Jordi is a very young girl who has been browbeat all her life for not being (whatever the people she wanted to love her wanted her to be) enough. She wasn't thin. She wouldn't have known how to play it small. She had outgrown her cage by the time she was eighteen years old, and flew the coop accordingly.

The only cage left was wanting to prove to her childhood crush and her mother that she was good enough. She was special enough. She could be and was already a winner. Yet, despite how well she did on the show, they could never see that simply because she wasn't dropping the weight. She could win a hundred competitions, or sell out hundreds of arenas all over the globe, full of fans who loved her not in spite of who she was but because of it. Yet her final value for them and so many others like them, was how she looked. That wasn't even her issue, yet they felt perfectly entitled to punish her for it.

There are people who won't read this book because it's a romance starring a big girl, and they don't want to read about a fat girl having sex. We can crawl into the skin of just about anyone in a book, from Scarlet O'Hara to Hannibal Lecter, but for some reason being a fat person finding love is just too "oogie." Sadly this proves I didn't exaggerate with these awful characters - the kind of people we are told "love" us enough to treat virtually treat us like shit. And we somehow deserve it for not being something/someone else. In the scene above with Eddie, we see him employ all the pseudo-caring bullshit that lift him up into a position of superiority over her where he is allowed to (and in many cases, encouraged to) punish her for not being more like him. If he mocks her, insults her or hurts her feelings, then it's her fault for not being what he wants her to be. If she doesn't like it, then she can change. And we expect her to, even though he hurts her feelings because he WANTS to hurt her, simply because she's fat and he doesn't like it.

Personally I think that is the least loving thing anyone could do.

There is so much more to Jordi than a double-digit dress size. Those readers can't see it. Many people in our culture can't see it. So needless to say her very own mother and first boyfriend couldn't see it either. That's as realistic as it gets, folks.

The only one who saw it was Jace Riga - and in that way, he does Steven proud. (And guess what? That's pretty damned realistic too. I'm living proof.)

Jace was movie-star handsome, but he was no longer "perfect" due to his missing leg. It gave him perspective what it would feel like to go through this world surrounded by people who thought one was lesser than just by how they look. And he gave both Jordi and me perspective on how it would feel not to give a shit. I learn this during a moonlight swim one night at the mansion where all the Fierce contestants live. Jace had taken up swimming at midnight, just so he could take off his artificial leg and swim without bothering anyone. Everyone gave him a wide berth out of respect, figuring he wanted that alone time. One very memorable night, Jordi decides to join him.

Jace seemed startled to find me there as he walked over to one of the lounge chairs. “I wasn’t expecting to see you here,” he said offhand as he dumped his towel onto the chair.

“I’ve wanted to come down for a while,” I admitted. “Every midnight for two weeks,” I added softly.

The look in his eyes was intense as he sat on the chair. “Why didn’t you?”

“They told me this was your time. I didn’t want to impose.”

He chuckled. “I thought they were just uncomfortable.”

I shook my head. “They love you, Jace. They never wanted you to feel embarrassed.”

“I’m not,” he stated simply. His eyes never left my face as he proceeded to remove his artificial leg. I watched as he removed the prosthetic, and the supporting garments underneath, such as the sheath and the socks. When he stood, he didn’t waver. He hopped easily over to the edge and dove into the deep end.

I watched as he swam over to me, only breaking surface to pull himself up in front of me. “Come in with me,” he suggested softly.

I shook my head. “I don’t have a swimsuit.”

His hands ran up my bare legs to the edges of my shorts. “So?” Our eyes met and locked. He couldn’t really be asking what I thought he was asking.

Before I had any chance at all to argue, he grabbed my arms and pulled me into the water. “Jace!” I squealed as I toppled into the cold pool.

He wore a self-satisfied smirk. “Refreshing, isn’t it?”

Playfully I splashed him, and then swam away before he could retaliate. He was quick on my heels. He lifted me up and dunked me again.

“Of course you know,” I retorted, “this means war.”

I swam after him and then lifted him up to dunk him. We chased each other, splashed each other and played together for long, blissful, uninterrupted minutes. When we finally had to catch our breath, we swam lazily over to the shallow end by the steps. He propped himself up on one arm.

“That’s so much more fun when there’s someone else here,” he said with a crooked smile.

I nodded. Even though I wasn’t planning on getting in the pool, it had been way more fun than I imagined.

“There’s still one problem, though,” he said as he studied me thoughtfully.

“What’s that?” I asked breathlessly.

“You’ve seen what I normally don’t show the world. I think it’s only fair that you show me something, too.” His eyes traveled across my face and down to the wet shirt clinging to me like a second skin.

“You’ve seen it all,” I tried to argue as I crossed my arms in front of myself.

“No, I haven’t,” he insisted as he pulled my arms to my side. “But I’d like to."

It was a moment of shared vulnerability, which is what made this particular couple so damned special. He didn't shame her for falling short of his expectations. He included her, as is, opening up to a whole new life where - surprise, surprise - exercise could be fun, something they could do together. She didn't have to wait until she was thin to be included. He included her, and in that way helped her a few steps along in her journey, without the lectures and the piousness - and without making her feel bad. He didn't have to tear her down to build her up. He simply met her where she was. THAT is how you show love to someone. THAT is how you demonstrate you care. What Eddie did was self-centered. He piously beat her down for being "inferior," just because it gave him some perverse joy to do so... and then landed all the blame for the abuse on her shoulders.

Jace simply showed Jordi another way. Needless to say, this was a turning point in the relationship, though Jordi still had to wade through a lot of bullshit to be worthy of this particular hero. We see that play out in this scene as well. As always, her insecurities, fed daily by those inconsiderate assholes around her, played third wheel.

Only this time, Jace wasn't having it.

"Show me, Jordi."

“Someone will see,” I protested but he shook his head.

“No one comes down here, remember? Not once, in all these weeks. We’re all alone,” he promised. “I’ve been dreaming about this moment for months. Don’t make me wait anymore,” he begged as his hands slid up my arms.

My voice was small, like a squeak. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“Yes, I do,” he said. “That’s why I am asking it. Show me,” he commanded again.

I was shaking as I leaned back and slowly peeled my shirt from my body. The argument to keep it on was really moot, as it didn’t hide anything. But it was a barrier, and I liked my barriers. And little by little, Jace Riga was stripping them all away.

I sat astride his lap in the water, wearing only my shorts and my bra. His hands slid up my back until his fingers reached the fastener. My breath caught and held as he released it and pulled the garment away. The longer he gazed upon my half naked body, the more naked I felt. “You’re beautiful,” he finally whispered as his fingers danced over my shoulder and across my sensitive flesh. “Like a goddess,” he said as he looked up into my eyes.

I shook my head. His praise was too lavish to be believed. Yet his body still strained against me. It was literally hard evidence that his compliment was sincere.

“Why don’t you believe me?” he wanted to know as his hands traced every spare inch of my exposed skin. “Why can’t you see how beautiful you are?”

“Because I’m not,” I answered tearfully. “I’m a 260-pound beached whale.”

His hand cupped my chin and he stared into my eyes. “Don’t you ever talk about yourself that way.”

I swallowed any self-effacing retort. “I just… I just don’t look like anyone else,” I offered helplessly.

“Why would I want you more if you did?” he asked.

This size-20+ girl needed to lose weight... but not the kind of weight you think. She needed to stop carrying around all the baggage that everyone wanted to heap onto her shoulders, to make her feel lesser than because she didn't fit in.

Both Jace and I agree...why fit in when you're born to stand out?

Jace Riga gave her permission to be herself, without shame and without apology. What better hero could there ever be?



Keep your men who fall in love with those "beautiful-but-don't-know-they're-beautiful-even-when-everyone-else-says-they're-beautiful" girls. I want the man who can see me at my worst and still think I'm the best damned thing that ever happened to him. Not sure why it's some unrealistic fantasy to find the guy who can love you for being "real." To me, that IS the fantasy. And it's worth chasing because it's every dream come true when you finally catch it.



I can't really "cast" Jace because the man I used to mentally fill in the photo was a man I lusted over when I was a kid myself, and I am currently not in possession of a time machine. I dug way back into the 1980s, when Blackie Parrish landed in Port Charles, bringing a little swoon-worthiness to my afternoons watching General Hospital.



Those who has read the book had directed me towards Alex Minksy, who is a hot vet with an artificial leg just like our Jace. I did pursue getting Alex to model for the cover, but at the time, I couldn't afford his rates. He was worth every penny, though, cuz ... look at him.



He's the reason that my squeaky clean vet got all tatted up and drove a motorcycle.

Like Graham, Jace pops up in whatever story that tickles my fancy, including THE UNDISCIPLINED BRIDE, ENTANGLED and CHASING THUNDER. And every time he appears, I swoon a little bit. He is by any definition the perfect man... simply because he can love an imperfect girl. And take it from me, Jordi and Bonnie Tyler, that's a hero totally worth holding out for.



Start your adventure with Jace Riga in FIERCE, which is free to read across all platforms.

Swoon-a-Palooza Book Boyfriend #7 - Alex Fullerton (And a $0.99 sale! Limited time only!)

Yesterday we talked about Drew Fullerton, today we get to talk about his brother, Alex. Alex is by most definitions the yin to Drew's yang. Whereas Drew is a dominant alpha male, Alex prefers to keep things more low-key. Whereas Drew moves everyone around on his own personal chess board, Alex appeals to reason and logic - often using his sardonic snarky behavior to irk people into doing what he thinks is right.

Honestly that's what motivates Alex most of all. Despite coming from a long line of ruthless corporate raiders, Alex is a misplaced hippie who is more at home on a horse than he is in a boardroom. His love for the youngest and most vulnerable of the Fullerton clan makes him a fierce protector, though he has no illusions that he's any kind of savior. He understands his position in the family as "the black sheep" and plays the part accordingly.

That was why Rachel had no use for Alex from the first moment they met, even though he made it clear that she was the one with something to prove.

“Well, well, well,” I heard a male voice drawl from just beyond the fence. I turned to see what might have been Drew Fullerton’s scruffier, more uncouth twin. He was just as tall as Drew, with the same dark hair and light eyes and sculpted features. This man, however, sported longer hair and a close beard, topping off his rogue ensemble with a flannel work shirt, faded jeans and dusty, worn cowboy boots.

“Uncle Alex!” Jonathan exclaimed as he shot up off of the chaise lounge. He ran to the gate and around the yard until Alex Fullerton hoisted him up in one powerful arm.

“How you doin,’ kiddo?” Alex asked with a wide smile. He tugged at the orange belt. “You’re not a black belt yet? What’s wrong with you?”

Jonathan laughed at Alex’s teasing tone. “It takes time, Uncle Alex.”

“For everyone else,” Alex dismissed. “But for Jonathan Fullerton? I think not. You are made of too much awesome.”

“Lemme show you some new moves!” Jonathan offered as he hopped down.

“Now, buddy,” Alex chastised gently. “Don’t forget your manners. Why don’t you introduce me to your new friend?”

Jonathan walked closer to the fence where I sat. “This is Rachel Dennehy. She’s my new teacher.”

I stood and approached the iron fence. “We’re still working on that part,” I corrected. “I’m in the interview process, you could say.”

Alex’s hands landed on either of Jonathan’s shoulders. “Hope Master Jonathan here went easy on you,” he offered with an easy smile that never quite made it up to those steely eyes, which gave me the same critical once-over his nephew had.

“Hey, are those Cleo’s homemade chocolate chip cookies?” he asked. Jonathan nodded, so Alex patted him on the back. “Feel like fetching your old uncle a plate?” Another vigorous nod before Jonathan raced off into the house to accommodate a man he clearly idolized.

Knowing what little I knew of their family history, I found it a tad ironic.

Alex leaned over the fence. “So my brother finally did it,” he commented as his eyes swept over me.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

“Brought in a ringer,” he clarified. “What better weapon to prevent his ex-wife from getting full custody than putting a matronly female influence right in the house?”

Matronly? Was that a nice way of calling me fat? I stood straighter. “I’m just here to teach,” I informed him stiffly.

“Good,” he said as he glanced down at me with narrowed eyes. “Because if you’re looking to cash in, you’re barking up the wrong tree.”

My eyebrow arched. “Excuse me?”

“It’s not like we haven’t seen this before,” he offered offhand. “Single billionaire, big, empty Beverly Hills mansion and a lonely kid who desperately needs a mom. Easy pickings for a smart gold-digger.” My fur started to rise but he went on, undaunted. “Hell, we even saw it when he was a married billionaire. One of the main reasons he’s single now.” He looked me over again, another liberal sweep of my fuller curves that grated against my last nerve. “I will give him credit, though. He’s definitely casting against type this time around. Natural hair color, no breast augmentation and no designer clothes. You really do look like a school teacher.”

My eyes narrowed. “That’s because that is what I am. I don’t appreciate any insinuation otherwise.”

He held up a hand. “No offense intended,” he said. “And if I misjudged you, I apologize. I’m more than willing to be wrong.”

“Really?” I challenged as I crossed my arms in front of my chest.

“Yeah,” he said as he glanced toward Jonathan, who approached with a plate full of cookies. “For his sake. You really want to do him a favor? Go back home. Let his mother have a fighting chance to raise him way the hell away from this poisonous family.”

Needless to say, it wasn't the best first impression. Even worse, Alex inserts himself wherever he can to needle this outsider. His objective is simple. Get his young nephew as far away from Drew as possible, before he loses him forever to the curse of their family. If he has to hurt a few feelings to achieve that, then he's perfectly okay with that. He quickly shoots to the list of Rachel's least favorite people. Like everyone else, she believes Alex can't hold a candle to his older, more successful brother, Drew.

I found Alex in the living room, standing in front of the family portrait. He seemed lost in the image, so much so I had to clear my throat to get his attention. “Mr. Fullerton,” I said as I stepped into the room.

He turned around to face me. “Rachel,” he greeted. “Can’t say I’m surprised you came back, but after everything Jonathan told us about you, I can honestly say I’m disappointed.”

“Is that why you summoned me? To chastise me for accepting a job in my chosen profession?”

His brow furrowed. “This isn’t some teaching job and you know it. You can’t be that naïve, no matter where you’re from.”

I bit back a sigh. “So I take it I’ve graduated from gold-digging tramp to ignorant hick, is that it?”

He sent a snarky smirk in my direction. “Who says you can’t be all four? You look like a multi-tasker to me.”

My fur started to rise. “Is there a point to this little meeting?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest as I stared at him.

“Since you are now living full-time with my nephew, his mother and I want to make sure that you are both qualified to teach him and emotionally equipped to handle the changes that are going to happen in the near future.”

My eyebrow arched. “And who exactly is fit to judge me for either?”

“Is there anyone who is better to decide this than a child’s mother? Clearly she would want to meet with you, to see if your motives truly are sincere.”

“If I wasn’t, I doubt very much Drew would have hired me,” I said. This made Alex chuckle.

“Seems you’ve gotten a little chummier than the last time we spoke,” he pointed out. “First name basis and all that. What exactly is your title again?”

I smiled sweetly. “Take it up with my boss,” I directed before I spun to leave.

Only this time he was on my heels before I could make it to the stairs. “What’s the matter, Rachel?” he asked as he spun me back around with one hand. “Afraid you’ll open your mouth and a bone will fall out? There are no skeletons in your closet this family doesn’t already possess. You can be honest with me.”

“I can be,” I agreed. “I just don’t want to be. Frankly, it’s none of your business what I do or don’t do. You’re not Jonathan’s father.”

“I also don’t have a $28-million dollar mansion in Beverly Hills,” he returned.

“You really think that’s what this is about, don’t you?”

He shrugged. “Not the first time. Doubt it will be the last.”

Rachel trusts him even less when he changes tactics.

“Having fun?”

And just like that, my good mood ground to a halt just like my swinging did. I dragged my feet in the sand until I came to a complete stop, then I turned to Alex Fullerton, who stood nearby. “I was,” I said pointedly.

He didn’t take the hint. Instead he walked to the swing next to me and sat down. “I guess I win the bet,” he said as he started to swing.

My teeth ground together as my jaw clenched. “What bet is that?” I finally asked as I resumed my swinging as well.

“I knew you’d take over the visitations. Elise said that you would never be so presumptuous. But she doesn’t know you like I do.”

I kicked harder as I swung higher. “Funny. Considering you don’t know me at all,” I said.

We passed each other as our swings crossed, his going up as I was coming back down again. “I knew you’d be here,” he smirked.

“I’m here because Jonathan asked me to be,” I clarified. “These meetings upset him. But I assume you already know that since you know everything.”

It came out much snarkier than I had intended. He chuckled in response. “At least we agree on one thing,” he said as he swung even higher.

“Is there a point to your pestering me? Or are you just bored?”

“I don’t get bored,” he said as he passed me again. I slowed my own swing considerably at his surprising revelation, which so closely mirrored my own thoughts on boredom. I couldn’t help but wonder exactly how much Jonathan had told him about me. Had he unintentionally armed this man with things he could use against me? Before I could ask, Alex went on. “I saw you swinging. You looked like you were having fun. So I joined you. Simple as that.”

“Simple, huh?” I questioned. “This has nothing whatsoever to do with your isolating me away from everyone so that you can further your case to let Elise have more access to Jonathan?”

This caused Alex to laugh harder. “Sounds like my brother already got into your head, Miss Dennehy. It’s not as nefarious as you make it sound. I just wanted to swing next to a pretty girl. No harm in that, is there?”

I made a face as I stopped the swing. He really had gone too far. “Good day, Mr. Fullerton,” I said as I rose from the swing and pointed myself back to the pier.

Unfortunately he jogged to catch up to me. “Was it something I said?” he tried to smirk in good humor.

I spun on him. “I know what you think of me, Mr. Fullerton. And that’s fine. Think whatever you want. Whatever helps you sleep at night, I don’t care. But don’t you dare try to butter me up like I’m some airheaded wallflower at the mercy of your insincere flattery.”

He held up both hands. “Cool your jets, sister. I wasn’t trying to butter you up. I was just paying you a compliment. It’s customary to say ‘thank you,’ not bite a guy’s head off.”

As you can see, he doesn't have a whole lot in common with Drew. He does, however, have a lot in common with Rachel. The shocking revelations unravel in book one, proving exactly how much. Rachel finds herself batted around between the two very different, very powerful brothers, and has to muster all her emotional fortitude to handle it.

Like I said yesterday, these two brothers were born from my experience living with a man with bipolar disorder. Like Rachel, there were days I didn't know who I would be dealing with from moment to moment. I know a little bit about loving and hating the same person all at the same time. In the FFS, I split them up into brothers and let my heroine try to figure it out from there.

For that reason alone, Alex is near and dear to me. His good qualities are indeed good and noble. His bad qualities, well... those were a part of the deal too. I love him every bit as much as I love Drew, and sometimes hate him every bit as much as I sometimes hate Drew. They equally hurt her, and by default equally hurt me. Yet, like Rachel, I could see what they *could* be, and that's why I hung in there. As their creator, I split their personalities right down the middle. My task was to have them meet more in the middle by the time the series was done, letting the lines blur accordingly.

Boy, did they, especially as Rachel gets to know the painful backstory that both Drew and Alex share. We had a LOT to wade through, hence the three books.

Like Drew, Alex has been such a part of my life for so long, I can't really "cast" him with anyone. He looks a lot like Drew, but unlike Drew, he doesn't care about fancy clothes and cars. He wears his hair long. He sports a beard. He has no interest in being contained to some stuffy office. Instead, he fights for right outside the boardroom. His money and his last name mostly embarrass him. Still, he's got the innate swagger of a true Fullerton.

If y'all have suggestions, I'm all ears.

The song for Alex is actually my song for Brandon, the son that I lost just before I wrote this story. It's a song about loss, which Alex knows a lot about. Honestly this connects Alex and Rachel more than anything else.



Since they are such kindred spirits, Rachel is the only one, aside from Jonathan maybe, who sees what Alex could be. He knows it, but doesn't know what to do with it. Just like she did with Drew, she rocks Alex to the core, shaking his entire foundation. Better still... she gets through to him.

“Ho, ho, ho!” Alex greeted jovially. We turned to see him in full costume as Santa Claus, complete with a full bag slung over his shoulder. “Merry Christmas, y’all,” he added as he glanced at me.

“What are you doing?” Drew hissed.

“Spreading joy and cheer,” Alex answered with a wide smile. Nothing made him happier than putting his brother off his game. “Tis the season and all that.”

“You look ridiculous,” Drew muttered. “Why must you take every family function and make a mockery of it?”

“How can you expect anything else when you insist on parading around our mockery of a family?” Alex challenged. “Unless, of course, your miracle worker has fixed that, too.”

Drew put his arm around me to pull me close. “I don’t think that is any of your business, Alex.”

“Of course not,” Alex sneered. “I’m just a Fullerton, after all.”

“Alex, please,” I said under my breath. “Don’t make a scene.”

He laughed. “I’m a big fat guy in red velvet. Santa doesn’t exactly play it small, sweets.” He put the bag on the ground. “But I come bearing gifts.” He withdrew a stocking for Drew, which happened to be full of charcoal. “Bad luck again, old man,” he said with a shrug. “Guess you’ll have to get all your goodies from your good pal, De Havilland. He owes you after your generous donations to his campaign and Entrepreneurs for American Liberty, don’t you think?”

“That is none of your concern,” Drew hissed through clenched teeth.

“Of course not,” Alex repeated. He dug around in the bag and brought out a gift-wrapped box. “And for the good teacher,” he said as he handed me the gift. His eyes were hard on me as I opened the flat box and withdrew the one-way ticket back to Texas. “It’s the gift that keeps on giving. You get your freedom, and Elise gets her son back. It’s a win-win.”

Drew was livid as he tore the ticket in half. “I want you out of my house, Alex.”

Alex laughed as he hoisted the bag back over his shoulder. “No can do, brah,” he said. “You can’t kick Santa out of your house on Christmas. It’s the one time the trespasser is more welcome than the thief,” he added as he glared at me. He spun on his heel and went into the ballroom, hollering, “ho-ho-ho” like he was a part of the venue entertainment.

Drew stalked to his study and slammed the door shut. I honestly didn’t know which brother to chase after. I decided to curtail as much damage as possible by tracking down Alex, who was bestowing gifts to his favorite nephew near one of the majestic trees in the ballroom. Jonathan had no clue how much of a problem his uncle’s presence caused for his dad. All he knew was that all the people he loved were in the same place. I let them interact for a few minutes before I gently interrupted and pulled Alex out of the ballroom.

Since the common areas downstairs were open as a holiday showcase, I had to pull him into my office so that we could speak privately. “You’ve made your point,” I said after I closed the door. “Can’t that be enough for once?”

Alex laughed. “You are something else. Not only are you Jonathan’s governess, but you’re a party planner, hostess and now… bouncer. You take multi-tasking to the next level, princess.”

“Look, I know you don’t like me…,” I started, but he was quick to interrupt.

“Who says I don’t like you?”

“You do. Every chance you get.”

He walked to where I stood at the door. “If I didn’t like you, I wouldn’t care what happened to you,” he pointed out as his eyes swept across my face. “You may not see it now, but I am trying to save you.”

“From what?” I challenged.

His eyes slid down to my mouth. “From us.”

I backed up a step, but he pulled me back. “Elise… Nina… my mother… Fullerton men always destroy the women that they love. You think you can save us, but you can’t. You’re just prolonging the inevitable. Especially where Jonathan is concerned. You want to give us a gift? Leave. Let this house of ruin fall to decay like it should have done years ago.”

“I know you’re bitter,” I said softly, and he chuckled in response as he pulled away. “I don’t need the dirty details. I know it’s bad… poisonous… between the two of you. But you are still a family. You just need one person to give a damn. To fight.”

“And you think you’re that person, is that it?”

“I think you’re that person,” I told him as I squared my chin. “You’ve got a good heart, Alex. I’ve seen it. With Max, with Jonathan, with complete strangers at the mission. And I know you got that from your mom.” He looked away. “She did everything she could to save her boys by binding you both together. All this fighting and bitterness, it can’t be what she wanted for the both of you. Nothing is worth the hatred. Not the money, not the women, not the kids. It just takes one of you to decide to be the bigger man. You want to prove to me how sincere you are? Let it be you.”

He turned to stare at me for a long moment. Clearly he was dissecting what I had said, looking for something, anything, to use against me. I no longer cared what he thought about me. It was time to end the bitter feud between these two brothers once and for all.

I turned to leave, but his words stopped me.

“Don’t you have a gift for good ol’ Saint Nick?” he asked softly.

I turned back to face him. “What did you have in mind?”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a sprig of mistletoe as he approached. He stopped a breath apart and held it above his head. His eyes dared me to defy his request. Maybe it was a test. I had come to expect that from him. Instead I stepped closer, braced myself on his arm and stood on my tiptoes to plant a soft, lingering kiss on his stubbly cheek. “Merry Christmas, Alex,” I said as I pulled away.

His eyes engulfed me. “Merry Christmas, Rachel,” he murmured. He hoisted his bag onto his shoulder and slipped through the door. I followed him down the hall, but instead of going into the ballroom, he walked right out the front door.

Suffice it to say, it's up to Rachel to save BOTH of them.

Will she? Won't she? Buy THE FULLERTON FAMILY SAGA to find out. I've dropped the price of ENTANGLED, the second book of the series (and the book we really get to know Alex,) to $0.99 for a limited time only. This brings your total cost for all three books to $3.50. Not a bad price to fall in love with two very different brothers, and possibly get your heart ripped out in the process. Seriously I re-read the series last night and...



If you love angst, and you love passion, and you love complications and drama and *feeling* something when you read a story, this may be the story for you.

Swoon-a-Palooza Book Boyfriend #6 - Drew Fullerton

Undeniably my most successful series has been my Fullerton Family Saga. It really isn't even a contest. Even two years after its release, I sell more of these books than anything else I've written - the GROUPIE saga included. This series touched a nerve with so many readers, even though it was probably one of the riskiest story lines I had ever crafted. The accepted wisdom among writers is that you should always write in a way that scares you, and I try my best to live up to that mantra. The further I got into this story, the more it had me nervous as hell. With each click of "publish," I was sure I was going to lose everyone with how each book ended. Given the first and second books were so well received, publishing that third book, not knowing how these readers who had invested so much time in these characters would react to the way it all ended, was one of the scariest fucking things I'd ever done. And it's true, I lost some readers just like I feared I might. In fact, I think it'd be safe to say that ENRAPTURED, the third book in this series, probably garnered more 1-star reviews than any of my other books, from readers who simply hated the way I ended it. I shattered their hearts with this story, and Drew Fullerton was a huge reason why.

He's also the of the biggest reasons why there are enough people who loved the story to keep the average rating well above 4 stars, which came as a pretty big surprise to me. Many a reader clicked 5-stars through their tears, which I didn't expect. Many were cursing me all the way, which I kinda did.

"Why?! That same question has been on repeat in my head over and over and over since I finished this book. Why?! Ginger, WHY?! I waited a full day after finishing the book before even attempting to write up this review and I'm still not sure how I'm gonna get through it without completely losing my $**t. I should have know, I did know, that there was a real good chance this book was going to destroy me-between the blurbs leading up to this final installment and that terrifying little sneak peak at the end of Entangled....I wasn't wrong to be worried, typing this up days later (now months later) and I'm still in an emotional tailspin. If I could hunt down Ms. Ginger Voight I would hug her, beat her with my pitchfork, then cry on her shoulder. I can't remember the last time a book has affected me like this, so I guess no matter how I feel about how it all went down at the end, there is no denying Ginger Voight is an amazing author for bringing such strong emotions out of me through her pen alone." - 5- Heartsick, Broken and Pi$$ed off -Stars*****, Jenn Green August 21, 2014

And I feel your pain. Really I do. This book devastated me too. Part of me wants desperately to apologize, even though I know that this was how the story was always meant to be.

Some backstory, for those who don't know. I originally wrote the book the FFS was based on in 1995. This was the year my youngest son died when he was only nine days old, so there wasn't a whole lot of rest that year. We're talking endless sleepless nights where I needed something to keep my mind preoccupied. I needed to focus on those things I could control. Like always, I took to the page. I immersed myself in the highest highs, and the lowest lows, to make sense out of a world that suddenly didn't make any sense at all. I worked day and night to finish. It took only a few months, and... truth be told... it wasn't very good.

I actually have a copy of that first book somewhere around here, written out in longhand.



I wrote this story based on the genre tropes I had been introduced to when I was a kid. The very first romance novel I remember reading was a Harlequin. It was pretty old when I got it (easily early 70s, and I didn't read it until 1980,) and it was exotic in that the book was both published in and centered around England. A young ingenue moved in with a handsome, rich single dad, to work as a nanny for his child where the question of "will they/won't they" wasn't answered until the very end, which kept me turning the pages furiously to see them act upon this undeniable attraction.

Somehow that stuck when I'd craft this tale some fifteen years later.

By then, though, I wouldn't have known how to be an ingenue if I tried. I was pretty broken and beaten by that point, so the heroine I wrote ended up wearing my scars. In those early days my heroine was still breathtakingly beautiful though. When I was writing books in the 1990s, I thought that was just how it was supposed to be done. I made her everything I wasn't physically, even though I really didn't have any experience what it is like to live in that kind of woman's skin. The book ended up being very long, much longer than what you might find in your typical Harlequin romance novel. This meant it felt muddled and unfocused, with me going way too far on things that didn't really matter while stopping just short of tearing the wounds off of all the things that did. I knew when I finished it that I had a lot of work in front of me to turn it into the story it deserved to be.

Not to mention I broke some pretty big rules, so I knew that I would have to shelve that project because there wasn't any way it was going to get past any kind of gatekeeper in the shape it was in.

Back then you had to worry about those things.

I didn't resurrect the story until 2013. I had always planned to rewrite and release it, and by then I had the beyond brilliant idea to change my heroine into a size-12 and allow it to guide my story accordingly. This made it way more interesting to me, especially when I also decided spread the story out into three books, since this particular plot worked best broken off into manageable chunks that were made that much stronger by how focused I could be.

Since I was an indie, I didn't let the so-called "rules" deter me from writing the story I knew I needed to write. This was way more a saga than a traditional romance story, and truthfully, these are the kinds of books I like to write best. Don't get me wrong. I love a good romance like anyone else. But I also don't mind getting down and dirty, talking about life and love and pain and death and loss and fear and all the other ingredients that spice up our lives outside of the bedroom. If you're going into the book to see a woman hook up with a billionaire, this book will probably frustrate you. Most of the connection my heroine, Rachel, initially has with any Fullerton male is with the billionaire's son she has come to tutor exclusively. Theirs is a tender, healing relationship, where she swoops in to save this poor kid from getting lost in the drama that surrounds his life, and he saves her from a painful cocoon that has left her isolated and afraid to give her heart away.

We get around to the romance because I mean come on. This is Drew Fullerton. He is a commanding, take-charge alpha, one who didn't get to become CEO of a multi-billion-dollar company by shyly letting opportunities pass him by. He was a man who took what he wanted and felt very entitled to do so, thanks to his privileged breeding alone. He was born to be the king of his world and planned to do whatever it took to keep it that way.

But this story is so much bigger than a romance between a billionaire single father and his nanny. The reason I call it the Fullerton Family Saga is because that is exactly what it is - a family saga. I go after everything in this story. I deal with divorce and death, pregnancy, marriage, infidelity, betrayal, parenthood, brotherhood, murder, power, corruption... you name it, it's in there. It's about our modern life, but turned up to 11. (Why? Because life GOES to 11.)

So what can I tell you about Drew Fullerton?

Well, he's ridiculously rich, obviously. He lives in a $28-million-dollar home in Beverly Hills, with a fleet of exotic cars he can change right along with his mood.

“You certainly don’t mind making a statement,” I muttered as he peeled away to scream down the street to the very next stoplight.

“We weren’t created to live small,” he responded with a confident smirk.

He's also ridiculously handsome, obviously. Because he demands excellence in every area of his life, his physical health is in as good of shape as his bank account. By the time he is 30, he has created a world around him that he can control with nothing more than the crook of his finger, much like his formidable father before him, who trained him well on how to be one of the privileged elite.

To put it bluntly, he's a sophisticated, self-involved smooth-talking asshole.

He's a very powerful man because he was raised to be powerful at any cost, which might explain his failed marriage. Well, that and the many rumors that this magnate had a roving eye for the ladies, one that only got worse after his beautiful ballerina wife gained a ton of weight when she was pregnant with their son. Despite any allegations of his infidelity, he somehow retained custody of their son when they finally split. He ran one of the biggest companies in the world, amassing a fortune and making or breaking the lives of all the little people that might get in the way. He's not used to being denied or having his plans circumvented, making sure anyone who might dare to do so - including the mother of his child - would be punished accordingly.

Enter Rachel Dennehy, a strong Texas woman with even stronger principles and a low tolerance for bullshit. And Drew's life is filled to the brim with bullshit, thanks to a bitter divorce and even more contentious rivalry with his only surviving relative. His brother Alex has defected to "the other side" in a vain attempt to save vulnerable Jonathan from the curse of the Fullerton family. His main purpose in life? Being such a big thorn in Drew's side that he can't ignore him.

As you can see, it's complicated from the start. I needed a strong heroine who could, despite their different economic classes, stand toe-to-toe with Drew Fullerton to demand - and get - the respect she deserved.

“I think you misunderstood exactly what kind of educator I was seeking for my son. He is going to be a titan in business, following four generations of Fullertons before him. He needs to be prepared. You’ll forgive me if I don’t think measuring ingredients and shopping at the market qualify as the higher education for which I’m paying very good money.”

I placed the fork on the plate, my appetite totally obliterated under his heavy disdain. “You wanted me to teach your son, and I have done that. More importantly, I’ve reached him. He knows he can trust me, especially after I shielded him from that family debacle yesterday. This morning I gave Jonathan four different tests. In math, he was tested on fractions and word problems. The skills he learned with a quick trip to the store helped him score in the 99th percentile testing at near seventh-grade levels. He earned similar marks on his science paper, where he was tested on how certain elements react to each other, something he learned hands-on with a simple cooking lesson. For his history essay, he researched and wrote a thousand-word document on the Greystone Mansion and Park where we walked and explored which—if I’m not mistaken—qualifies under your physical fitness requirement as well. Finally I tested him on the book he’s been reading for pleasure, with a questionnaire that helped him think critically about the material he was reading simply for the joy of it, giving him several key vocabulary words to note as he read along. Though it isn’t a classic, it is a book that has been in my own curriculum for years, and I’m confident at least one student who reads it will go on and get an Ivy League education.”

His jaw clenched as he realized what I had done. I had taken Jonathan from a stale, unchallenging classroom environment with endless tests and bookwork, all of which had been crippling his curious and playful nature. By putting him in an entirely foreign setting, he learned how to do the things Drew wanted him to do, right down to the budgeting skills at the market, but in new ways that would naturally keep him more engaged than the boring ol’ status quo. All these experiences had been an adventure for him. And Jonathan had never even realized what I had done until I had quizzed him on it that very morning.

My hazel eyes glittered just as hard as Drew’s icy blue ones. “You may question my methods, Mr. Fullerton, but my results are indisputable. Considering I did all this in two days, even playing keep-away with your ex-wife and your pain-in-the-ass brother, I’d say I’ve done a hell of a lot more than the previous instructors you have hired to do this job.”

Normally I wouldn’t have cursed at an employer. But his elitist attitude really pissed me off. Did he really believe his son was too good to wash a dish or cook a meal, as if these mundane tasks held no value for such powerful, wealthy people? And if that was true, how did he regard anyone who had the misfortune of being born average? Did he think we were all beneath him, simply because we had no one to treat us like gods? The Texan was coming out, and he was either going to prove he could deal with that or he was going to send me home anyway. I had nothing to lose. In fact, the only one who had anything at all at stake was Jonathan.

“Now, if you don’t approve of my more unconventional methods, then you can gas up the jet and send me home tonight. But I’m willing to bet that you won’t find anyone else who can reach Jonathan the way that I have. I have a connection with him. That was what you wanted. That is what you got.” I grabbed a glass of ice water and gulped it down. “Do with that what you will.”

Before he could reply, Jonathan raced back into the room, wearing a new jade green kimono and holding the entire box set of his favorite Anime program. “Thanks, Dad!” he said as he rushed to hug his father. “Let’s watch it together,” he pleaded hopefully.

I used that opportunity to slide my chair back and rise from the table. “I think I’ll retire for the evening. Let you two catch up.”

Jonathan was crestfallen. “No, Rachel,” he said with a plaintive whine in his voice. “Please don’t go. You haven’t even had any pudding.”

“Pudding?” Drew echoed.

Jonathan nodded. “She made homemade Southern banana pudding.”

I shook my head. “You enjoy it. I’m stuffed,” I lied easily. “The dinner was excellent, Jonathan. You did a great job.” I turned to Drew. “It was very nice meeting you, Mr. Fullerton. I trust you’ll think about what I said and let me know if there has been any change in plans.”

Jonathan was panicked as he looked between his father and me. “Change of plans? You’re not leaving, are you, Rachel?”

“No decisions have been made,” Drew filled in before I could speak. “Why don’t you go get us some pudding, Jonathan? That sounds delicious.”

Jonathan nodded and disappeared into the kitchen. Drew rose to his feet and walked around the table to face me. “Obviously I’m not used to being spoken to in such a way in my own home,” he said, his voice hard but quiet. “But obviously I offended you. I apologize.” He offered his hand.

It was a gesture of civility, but his eyes were still lethal as they stared down at me. My hand shook as I placed it in his. His fingers closed around mine powerfully as he pulled me closer. I gasped as I stopped short mere inches from that massive chest. I hadn’t been this close to a man in many years, especially a man as intimidating as Drew Fullerton. I was certain that he could feel the tremble in my grasp when my eyes shot to his. His face broke apart in a victorious smile. “Start over?” he asked softly. “Rachel?”

She wasn't going to put up with his mess, and she let it him know it in short order. But he was sure to wrestle the power back the minute he could... in whatever way he could. And he could simply because he's Drew Fullerton, and he plays to win.

The boys approached the traveling rings course, where they could swing from ring to ring and work out their upper bodies. Drew hoisted Jonathan up to grab the first ring, and then encouraged him (and spotted him) along the course as far as he could make it, which was about six rings. Jonathan hopped down, rubbing his arms with happy grimace. “Dad, can you believe it? I can do six now!” he said, beaming with pride.

“Way to go!” Drew praised with a congratulatory fist bump. “My challenge is seven, then.”

“Five!” Jonathan giggled.

Drew turned to me. “Looks like you are my impartial observer. How many do you think I should do?”

I held up my hands. “Don’t get me involved. This is a testosterone thing.”

He laughed as he peeled his shirt from his body, which he tossed to me for safe keeping. I nearly choked on my tongue as my eyes scanned across his perfectly chiseled torso. His skin had a satiny glow under the blazing sun overhead, and a light smattering of dark hair covered his chest, tapering all the way down to a thin line pointing straight towards his shorts like nature’s arrow. I was speechless as he walked to a more advanced ring course. We followed silently behind.

His muscles rippled under his skin as he jumped to grab that first ring. His arms were rock solid as he swung from the first ring toward the second. He maneuvered his body with such mastery along the course that bystanders gathered to watch. He paused only briefly from ring five to ring six, glancing down to his son with a teasing smile. “Should I go for it?” he asked.

Jonathan’s head bobbed up and down. “Go for it, Dad!”

Drew swung easily all the way to the end of the course, where he used two rings to do a flip and hold before he dismounted. When he landed on both feet in the sand, his audience of fans clapped, even though I was willing to wager not one of them knew who he was. He gave them a salute before he trotted over to where we stood. He grabbed the shirt I had forgotten I was holding to wipe the glistening sweat from his face and chest.

Though I never considered myself one of those girls who would go bug-eyed over a hot physique, I found myself unable to speak.

He wore that same affable grin. “Your turn.”

I shook my head but Jonathan bounced next to me. “Yes! Rachel, do it!”

“Do I look like a gymnast to you people?” I asked as they pulled me back to the wussier course.

Drew took me by the hand and guided me under that first ring. “You can do this. Summon your superpower,” he added with a wink.

I glanced at the ring and shook my head. “This is more your thing,” I said, but Drew was undaunted. He stepped closer, and I had to physically stop myself from taking a step back.

“I’ll help you,” he said softly as he wrapped those strong hands around my waist. “Jump,” he commanded softly.

I jumped, and he effortlessly lifted me higher to reach the ring. “Swing backward, use your momentum to get to the next ring,” he instructed, his hands still around my waist as he guided me to swing to the next ring. I missed it twice before I grabbed it in my hand, but I couldn’t muster the transition to the third ring.

“You got it, Rachel,” he said.

I tried to swing and let go, but ended up slipping right out of the ring and toppling headlong into the sand, taking one of the most powerful men in the world along with me. We landed together in a thud, his body covering my own.

For a moment, I was completely discombobulated. His eyes drifted to my open mouth as I gasped.

Jonathan was on his knees beside us in a flash. “Are you OK?”

A smile tugged at the corner of Drew’s mouth as those knowing eyes scanned my face. “She’s perfect. Aren’t you, Rachel?”

Granted it is not uncommon for me to break down my Asshole Heroes, rather gleefully in fact, to turn them into something even remotely resembling a Prince Charming worthy of the heroines and happily ever afters we all want for them. With some stories, this is more of a struggle than others. With Drew, we battled daily. Just when he would do something terrible, where I was absolutely sure no one could forgive him, he'd take control back away from me. He was Drew Fullerton, g*ddammit, and he was going to have his way one way or the other.

“Tell me, Rachel,” he continued as he fit my body against his hardening contours, “do you long to be held? To be kissed?” He bent toward me and whispered, “To be taken?”

My brain scrambled as he lifted me up to crush his mouth on mine. It was every dream realized, though I was blissfully conscious. I groaned under him as he parted my lips and dominated my mouth. Every alarm in my head sounded, but my treacherous body ignored each and every one as it strained for him with a hunger so strong I felt powerless to control it.

His fingers wound in my hair as he stole the very breath from my lungs with each kiss. His mouth dragged to my neck, his breath hot in his ear. “Tell me you want me, Rachel.”

I shuddered against him. “Drew.”

“Tell me,” he begged in a hoarse whisper as his hands slid down the arch of my back and over the curve of my hip.

My hands braced on his chest, but instead of pushing myself away, my palms delighted in how solid he felt. This was no dream. It was real. He was real. This was actually happening. It sent a jolt through my entire body. “I don’t want you,” I eked out in a pitiful whisper.

“Liar,” he growled as he picked me up into his arms and carried me around to the bed.

So... yeah. Suffice it to say, I couldn't say no to Drew either.

Drew is such a strong presence to me that I can't even cast him, even if I wanted to. I have never found anyone anywhere who matches the guy I have pictured in my head. I have yet to find the man who is that intoxicating mix of male beauty and sheer strength, one with a strong chin and sculpted cheekbones, or those bright eyes framed with jet black lashes that only make those icy blue depths appear bottomless. And they need to be intense. He needs to be intense, with such a powerful aura that alone will take your breath away. All the physical stuff is just gravy. But even then, their hair isn't black enough. Their eyes aren't blue enough. They don't have his same physical build, which I can only describe by referring to Bruce Willis in his David Addison Days. Tall but not too tall. Broad but not too big. Strong enough to take control of an embrace, but slight enough that you don't disappear entirely. The kind of guy that whether he's wearing a suit or nothing at all, you kinda want to climb just like a rock wall.



(That's one of the songs from the playlist, by the way. And quite appropriately, I think.)

Ian Somerhalder comes the closest, but even he looks almost too boyish for the picture I have in my head.



He left a lasting impression on my readers and reviewers, too. From Bookworm Betties:



If you take a chance on Drew, I can only tell you that he will break your heart. Repeatedly. Despite his being a gazillionaire Hottie McBody, he's a real fixer upper. He was born out of the ashes of my own life. I met my first husband when I was 17 and he was 27. For the next seven years, I walked through the fires of bipolar hell without even knowing what it was. He struggled with two parts of himself, the good one, the one who would walk my mother to her car in the snow so she wouldn't slip, and the "Shadow," the one who would push his weight around even (sometimes especially if) if it terrified around him. It was his way or the highway, and God help anyone who might challenge him.

Drew was born from this dominant side and brings with him all the complications that entails. He needs the love of a good, strong woman to save him from the curse of his family name. Whether she does or doesn't, I won't say. This is strictly a spoiler-free zone, simply because these books have a stronger emotional impact if things are revealed in the timeline of the books.

I will only say that if you're the kind of person who needs a warning to read a book, these are *not* the books for you. In fact, you might want to skip my catalog altogether.

Discover Drew Fullerton in ENTICED, which is free across all platforms.

Swoon-a-Palooza Book Boyfriend #5 - Jonah Riley

For today's blog, I'm featuring a tall glass of Southern Comfort by the name of Jonah Riley.



Confession: I don't like to do people on the covers of my books. I would go so far as to say I have a bias against it when I myself am browsing for books to read. Personally I find it intrusive. When I read a book, part of the experience is conjuring up what these people and places look like. Every single book is different in that way, just based on the perspective of whoever is reading it. That's the beauty of imagination, and I never want to interfere that egregiously with the process.

And even if I did like it, the worst part of it is that I can never, ever find anyone who matches the person I, as the creator, see in my head. There are times that I'll use actors as physical prototypes, mentally casting them so I can watch them act out the scenes for me and bring them to life. And so finding someone to use on a cover is always a bit of a let down, particularly when most of my heroines are NOT the women typically photographed in heated embraces. Unless I have thousands of dollars to spend on specific models, which, sadly, I don't, then I usually have to rely on stock photos and my own skills as an intermediate graphic artist. (Trivia time: I design all my own covers.) Finding larger women, particularly white women, in these photos, being all fierce and sexy, is a bit of a challenge.

Finding men is even trickier, because I am picky when it comes to what makes a man "hot." Despite what many men think about the "desperate" nature of a fat girl, I'm not that easily impressed. If ten good-looking men walked into a room, odds are maybe one of them would make me look twice. They have to have a certain... something, and it usually goes way beyond what someone looks like on the outside. I've gone through thousands of photos and maybe saved a tenth of them, if that. Some I haven't used because other folks have used them first, but inevitably they cross over because that's the way it goes with stock photos, and you have to tread carefully.

That being said, I write in a genre that many times puts people on the cover. So I have begrudgingly dipped my toe in that pool a time or two. (The original Groupie and Fierce series did not have people on the cover, the new ones do.) Because of this, I typically try to find the people FIRST now, for promotional material if nothing else, and then build the story around them. It just saves time.

With my SOUTHERN ROCKER TRILOGY, I found Lacy first. In fact, I found her looking for someone else and just saved her so that I could write about her some day. The picture was that provocative to me.



The minute I saw her, I saw a rock star in the making, one with toughness and edge. I've never written that kind of heroine before and I was ready to jump in. I ended up creating Jonah before I ever found a model that fit what I wanted to do with this character. All I knew is that he had tawny eyes, because that sounded really sexy to me. I began my search high and low, and finally I happened upon this little hottie...



It's because of him Jonah eventually grows a beard. The reason he didn't have it in the first place? I didn't have the photo yet. (Which is why the model on book one has his back turned.)

Jonah is a sexy southern boy from the great state of Texas. I know a bit about those kind of men considering I was born and raised there. I had an idea of what would make him the kind of man I always wanted to meet. He had manners, of course. He loved his family. He was smooth, like fine aged whiskey. He knew how to two-step and could fill out a pair of skin-tight Wranglers like nobody's business. He could ride a horse as easily as strum a guitar, and all he ever wanted was to make an honest living to take care of the people he loved.

He loved women and women loved him, but he had a code. He wasn't going to lead anyone on and he wasn't ever going to say "I love you" unless he had met The One. Such a declaration was a promise he knew he couldn't break. This ladies' man wasn't a heart-breaker if he could help it.

He would need to be strong, because a really strong woman needs a really strong man. And Lacy is full of piss and vinegar. She has no use for men. She is single-minded in her pursuit of a lifelong dream - to be a singer.

Jonah decides if that's one way he can get closer to her, he'd be a singer too.

Just like that, my Southern Rockers were born.

Because of their personalities, I decided to write this trilogy a little differently. I wrote my first book from a male POV in SOUTHERN ROCKER BOY, where you get to know Jonah first. You get inside his head. You know what he's thinking, but Lacy remains a frustrating mystery. In SOUTHERN ROCKER CHICK, it's all Lacy's POV, where you learn why she does the things she does. Both of these books end at the same moment in time, which is where SOUTHERN ROCKER SHOWDOWN picks up. This book, written in third person, encompasses ALL of the people you've met in the first two books, so if you haven't read both books, you might be a little lost. Not a lot, but maybe a smidge.

Sadly, more people have read SOUTHERN ROCKER BOY than SOUTHERN ROCKER CHICK. I think that is because people are afraid of reading the same story twice. I can guarantee you that isn't the case here. Whereas Jonah's story picks up right around the time these two meet, Lacy's story starts years before, way back when she was a twelve-year-old girl. SOUTHERN ROCKER CHICK covers ten years, and is more the kind of book I read growing up. It wasn't just about one couple as much as it was about one person's life. In her story, Jonah is a mystery, someone she has to figure out if she can trust after a lifetime of being let down by any man who claimed to love her.

Because of this critical backstory, Jonah doesn't come in until about the last third, which is where the two stories overlap. Scenes and dialogue are repeated, but with a shift of perspective. This was an interesting exercise in what is said versus what is heard/understood. Much of our human interaction involves those things we DON'T say, and many times we can get things wrong when we don't openly communicate. The Lacy you meet in Jonah's story is vastly different than the Lacy you meet in her story, simply because you're in her head, not his. Likewise, the Jonah you meet in Lacy's story is a bit more mysterious than the guy in SOUTHERN ROCKER BOY. They don't know the true motivations behind a stranger's smile, so they have to fill it in with their particular history. Essentially, though, it is only half the story, shaded and guided by each individual's unique perspective.

With this trilogy, I wanted to explore what that old saying meant about three sides to every story; his side, her side and the cold hard truth.

Unfortunately most people have skipped her side altogether, which makes me sad for her. I would have never written this saga without her motivating me to do so, and her story was so much fun to write because it covered so much ground I never really get to cover, like being in the brain of an adolescent girl, or young lady on the brink of womanhood. Critical events in those vulnerable times can (and did) change everything.

But I mean I get it. Jonah is compelling. He was fun to write, although it was odd being inside the man's head for a change. He's one of my "Good Guys" though, so it was a pretty safe place to roam. The Douche Bags are always more fun to peel back layer by layer. With my Good Guys, I can dive in the deep end. I know they won't disappoint.

I love Jonah for a variety of reasons. He's the kind of man I wanted to raise my sons to be, and pretty much did. He's got the code of honor of my son Tim, and the easy laid back nature of my son Jeremiah. He's out to have a good time but he's not out to use people or hurt people. He actually values women, starting with his own mother and sister. You want to talk about swoon-worthy, check out this scene with his sister, who suffers from Cystic Fibrosis.

Again, we heard Leah coughing. “I’ve got it,” I said before lumbering down the darkened hallway to my sister’s sunny yellow room. It had been painted to replicate the outside world she had loved so much. Since she had been sick so much in her childhood, she wasn’t able to enjoy the outdoors as much as she wanted. So Daddy brought a little bit of sunshine indoors for her, hoping it would boost her spirits and keep her well. I rushed to her side as she hacked and sputtered. “I’m here,” I said softly and her bloodshot eyes met mine. She couldn’t say a word, but conveyed her gratitude with the squeeze of my hand.

“Sing to me,” she croaked, and of course I complied. How could I not? Her eyes were as clear as a blue summer day, and her long brown hair tangled in two pigtails, resting on her sweaty nightgown stained with sputum. She was like a stained glass window, scratched and cracked, but beautiful and priceless. Wordlessly I reached under her bed and fetched my guitar. It was the most logical place to keep it, considering I never sang or played anywhere else.

Leah was my audience of one.

I picked one of her favorites. Somewhere Over the Rainbow had been a sentimental favorite for my little sister from the first time she watched The Wizard of Oz. She was three when she first became enchanted with wizards and cowardly lions and flying monkeys, and I had sung that song to her every week since.

She leaned against her propped pillows as I sang softly. I knew she wanted to join in so badly, but she could barely breathe, much less whisper. She mouthed the words as I lent her my voice. After the last note faded, her hand touched mine.

“Love you,” her voice strangled to say before trailing off. Instead she made a heart with her hands, resting it on her heaving chest as she gave me a brave smile. The littlest Riley, the strongest fighter of us all.

That's the kind of man Jonah is. Just like Graham Baxter who came before him (and who shows up in his story too, by the way,) Jonah is a bit of a white knight. Not so surprisingly, this is how he first meets our lovely heroine, right when she needs someone the most.

I headed out to my truck by ten-thirty. Before I could turn the key, I spotted someone across the parking lot kicking and screaming at a POS special with its hood up.

That someone was wearing ripped blue jeans and a hoodie.

I started the truck and drove slowly over to her section of the darkened, mostly abandoned parking lot. Most of the crowd, including those who were giving her the most grief, were all inside getting their buzz on, listening to the next act.

I rolled down my window as I got to her. “Having trouble?”

She whirled around to glare at me. When she saw my face she rolled her eyes. “I’m fine,” she said as she turned around to the stalled vehicle.

I stopped the truck and slid out. “You may be fine but your car is on its last leg.” I glanced down at the engine, which looked to be about a hundred years old. “Let me give you a ride.”

She glanced me over with disdain. “Yeah, no thanks.”

“Fine, then how about a jump?”

“How about get lost?” she snapped. “Go play Boy Scout somewhere else.”

She was clearly pissed, but I would have been too after what happened after her gig. “I’m just trying to help.”

“I don’t need your help,” she spat.

“Look, I know it’s been a rough night…,” I started but she whirled around, a tiny, fiery bundle of fury.

“Do you understand English? Get lost!”

My blood started to boil. “Fine! Stay here all night. See if I care.” I turned toward the truck, but before I got to the driver’s side I stopped myself. She wasn’t angry with me, I tried to remind myself. I couldn’t very well leave her there, not with all the aggressive drunks who had tried to get at her in the club. They wouldn’t stop at no, and that was no kind of guy to run into in a dark parking lot. I took a deep breath before I turned back and walked over to the car.

Her eyes widened as I approached. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“I’m helping you,” I told her before I circled her waist with my hands and lifted her away from her car so I could figure out what was wrong with it. “Too bad you’re too damned stubborn to see that.”

“Fuck you!” she spat, hissing at me like an angry cat.

I ignored her as I fiddled with the engine. I sidestepped her to climb inside and turn the key. Nothing. I got out, rounding to the front of the car to test the connections. Despite the ancient car, the battery was new. I retrieved my tools from my truck and within a minute her car fired to life. She stood staring at me, stupefied.

“Connection was loose,” I told her as I put my tools back in the box. “Shouldn’t give you any more trouble.”

I put the tool box back in the bed of the truck before I hopped in the cab and gunned my own engine. She walked, reluctantly, to my window. “Thank you,” she managed.

I looked her in those big doe eyes, which were a lot more contrite than angry. “You’re welcome.”

“I’d offer you money, but…,” she trailed off, looking embarrassed.

I held her gaze for just a minute longer before I said, “Don’t worry about it. Finding out you are a woman and not just a feral cat was payment enough.”

I left her sputtering behind me as I squealed out of the parking lot.

Needless to say there's a LOT of heat between these two. They're both struggling to keep control and you know what I already told you about power being sexy. It's a struggle from the beginning with these two, and it gets pretty intense...



Lacy doesn't make it easy for him, but Jonah's no quitter. He'll fight all the way to the bitter end, for love, for family and for the honor of being a true southern gentleman.

As for who I would cast, I have no idea. It was hard enough to find the photo.

But here's their song... let your imagination fill in the rest.



For a limited time only, I have put the SOUTHERN ROCKER TRILOGY in the Kindle Unlimited program, so that means you get to read all three for free. For today only, SOUTHERN ROCKER GIRL is free for EVERYONE, so get your copy and give it a read. It's definitely not some rehash of another book. Hopefully you'll come to love Lacy as much as I did when I fell for her photo.

Swoon-a-Palooza Book Boyfriend #4- Graham Baxter

I have to say that I have been looking forward to today. It would be fair to say that all my book boyfriends have some qualities of my husband, Steven, in them. It started with Jake Dalton (we'll get to him in a few,) where I inserted Steven's humor and no-nonsense attitude, which helped balance Shannon, who led more with her heart and not her brain.

But Graham embodies Steven's inner white knight in a way that all my younger guys (Jace and Jonah for instance,) will eventually work their way up to mastering. Why else do you think he keeps showing up book after book, essentially showing them the way? To be blunt, Graham is who ALL my book boyfriends should aspire to be. He's stable, mostly. (Angst makes fools of us all.) He knows how to make a woman feel like she's the most important thing in the world, which definitely filled the void left by certain manwhores who chased after "strange" to feed their ego. *COUGH*Vanni*COUGH*.



Graham was a rock, one that Andy knew she could count on. More than that, he had the stability and the resources to make her dreams come true, which, of course, was all he wanted to do because he cared about her happiness more than his own. (Mostly.)

My best friend often asked me as he read the book, "Does Graham have a gay brother??" (And when I told him last night that this was who I was blogging today, I was met with an enthusiastic "TEAM GRAHAM!")

But it was Steven himself that made someone initially intended to be a minor character into the man he ultimately became.

Truthfully, Graham wasn't part of the original outline to Groupie, which I had always intended to be a standalone book. I wanted to put my couple through the paces and give them their happily ever after, just like a good little romance writer is supposed to do. At first, I indulged the rock-n-roll fantasy quite selfishly. I had waited a good long while (32 years) to scratch this particular itch, and I wrote Vanni so tempting to me personally that I just wanted to have a little fun with him for a while.

I was also working some shit through in Groupie, so of course Vanni came with a lot of built-in complications that I needed to navigate on paper, even if I couldn't make the people around me at the time act the way I wanted them to act. You know... honestly and forthright, kind of what they had built themselves up to be. Instead I felt used, deluded and rejected for not being (insert anything I really wasn't here) enough. This was a point in my life that I felt like I was being misled, led on and generally neglected and tossed aside no matter what I did personally to help other people and be there for them, so I was tearing through the bullshit in the only way I knew how - through a story.

When Andy and Vanni get to Vegas in Book One, Andy was standing there all alone at an after-party, looking incredible but feeling invisible thanks to the girl(s) on Vanni's arm as he lived the great rock star life. Since I knew a lot about that personally, and how much it SUCKED, I decided to give her a little ego boost via a handsome stranger, who would look at Andy and see that she was enough. He'd find her attractive. He'd act on that. He'd treat her like all of us girls want to be treated; like she was special.

Graham starting tickling my ear in the following passage:

The V.I.P. spots were reserved in the balcony, which meant I couldn’t get a front-row seat. I sat with the other executives and high rollers, but Jasper, Athena and Lourdes were all M.I.A. Instead I chatted with one of the other band’s managers and the champagne flowed while the four acts performed.

So later, whenever Andy showed up at the after-party, it was only natural to expound on this person a little more. When I first introduced him into the scene, he didn't even have a name. He was just "some manager" for another band performing at the music festival. He was supposed to take her for a spin around the dance floor and that was it. Yeah, I presumed that it would stoke Vanni's jealousy a bit, to see his best girl (and he knew damned well she WAS his best girl, even if he didn't know what to do with her half the time,) being romanced by another.

I quietly exited the balcony area after they left the stage, heading back downstairs to the club that hosted the huge after-party celebrating the first night of the concert series. At first I didn’t see any of the guys, and I felt a little awkward standing there by myself looking like a lost rabbit.

“I hate these things,” I heard a male voice say from behind. I turned to see the manager I sat next to during the first couple of acts. His name was Graham something-or-another, and he had flown in from L.A. to support the opening act.

We had only shared insignificant small talk during the concert, but he was a familiar face at least. “Me too,” I said. “Someone needs to tell famous people not everything is cause for celebration.”

He laughed and then looked down at the empty glass in my hand. “Can I get you another?”

“Sure,” I said, and followed him over to the bar.

He ordered my drink and then turned to me. “Andrea, right?”

“Andy,” I corrected. “And you’re Graham…?”

“Baxter,” he supplied in good humor, then handed me my drink. “So do you work at a firm in Los Angeles?”

I shook my head. “I’m actually just a writer from Nashville, doing a favor for a friend.”

He laughed. “I guess that’s not so bad then. You can come out here, have fun, then go back to the real world on Monday.”

I smiled. “That’s the idea.”

“In that case,” he said as he put his glass on the bar, “Allow me to contribute slightly to the debauchery. Dance with me.”

I started to shake my head but out of the corner of my eye I saw Vanni walk into the room with Lourdes on his arm. I swallowed down the handful of rocks that had mysteriously appeared in my throat, smiled at Graham and said, “Sure.”

He walked me to the center of the floor, and of course the minute we get out there one of DIB’s more suggestive tunes played overhead. Graham rested his arm around my waist and casually pulled me close. “They’re really good,” he said near my ear, referring to the band. “It kills me Jasper Carrington got to them first.”

“Timing is everything,” I remarked as I tried not to look at Vanni, where he stood now with Lourdes at the bar.

“If they ever want a change in management, give them my number,” he said.

I chuckled. “I will.”

He looked down at me with a devilish grin. “And you can have it too. You know, in case things get too boring in Nashville.”

I laughed. He had to be at least forty-five years old, with short, dark hair and a touch of silver at the temples. But he had the warmest brown eyes I had ever seen and a nice smile. There were worse ways to spend an evening in Las Vegas than flirting with a harmless stranger.

I glanced back over at the bar only to spy Vanni and Lourdes dancing close in the corner. This caused me to grip Graham’s shoulders a little tighter, which he seemed to take as a green light to pull me even closer.

The beat of the song was sensual and intense, like a quickening heartbeat. “Say my name,” Vanni crooned from every speaker overhead. “I’ve got what you’ve been waiting for.” I closed my eyes and allowed Graham to swing me around the floor with some fancier footwork. I followed where he guided, surprised my feet even knew what to do to keep up. It didn’t take long for me to realize some other dancers had moved out of our way to watch us dance. Some of the other guys in the band had come into the club and set up a table in the back with Jasper, who had now arrived. Felix watched me curiously as my dance partner led me into a sexier move in time to the beat. As the song ended Graham dipped me backward with a playful grin and I giggled in spite of myself.

We walked back to the bar. “Not bad for a guy who hates these things.”

“Necessary evil,” he informed. “Besides, my wife insisted we take dance lessons for our wedding.”

I glanced down at his hand. I hadn’t noticed a ring. “You’re married?”

“Occasionally,” he responded in good humor. “It’s an expensive hobby, I’m afraid.”

He perched on the barstool next to mine. “How about you, Andy? Anyone special waiting for you in Nashville?”

I nodded. “His name is Simon.” Graham’s grin faltered just a tad. So I went on. “He’s extremely jealous. And a cover hog. And can unravel a roll of toilet paper in ten seconds flat.”

His eyebrow rose, then together we said, “He’s a cat.” He laughed and then leaned closer to me. “So it wouldn’t be extremely inappropriate then if I gave you my phone number?”

“I suppose not,” I said with a slight blush. “After all that’s information I need if the band ever decides to make a change in management, right?”

He glanced over to where Jasper sat with the band, along with Vanni and Lourdes. Then he looked back with a serious expression. “It may be in poor taste and completely self-serving for me to say so, but I hope that they do. Jasper knows how to make people but he also knows how to break them, too. It can be a toxic environment. He’s going to offer the sun and the moon but God help the person who crosses him. And sometimes that just means standing up for yourself or your principles.”

I looked back at their table. Graham’s warning echoed what Vanni had said back in Brooklyn. His life was not his own, and he felt powerless to change it. Graham dug a card out of his coat pocket, pausing only briefly to write something on the back.

He slipped the card across the bar toward me. I reached for it and he placed his hand on mine. “That warning goes for you too,” he added. “In case you need it.”

His eyes were kind and sincere. Almost fatherly. “Thanks,” I said.

He motioned for the check. “And on that note, I think it’s time I return to the normal, quiet world of my hotel room.” He took my hand in his and brought it to his lips. “But thank you for a lovely dance, Andy from Nashville.”

He graciously paid for both of our tabs, and my eyes lingered after him as he departed. He stopped only momentarily at DIB’s table to say congratulations to the band and to Jasper, who didn’t seem all that pleased to see him. I used the distraction to look down at the business card. My eyes widened when I caught the name of his company. This wasn’t some mid-tier manager. This was Graham Baxter of Baxter Mega-Worldwide Media Corporation… the only record label in the country that could stand toe to toe with Jasper Carrington.

More curious I flipped the card over. The message he had written: Room #1225.

Slowly Graham revealed himself to me in that scene, including the way he went for what he wanted. I was just a hair ahead of Andy the whole way as I got to know this new, intriguing gentlemen. He was sophisticated, he was charming, he was commanding. He was everything a successful man should be. Little did either of us know he was a puzzle piece that was about to slide into place, tying up so many strings that were just lying about unresolved. I've learned to trust my storytelling instincts over the years. Nothing is ever "nothing," including his leaving her a card with his hotel room number. And just like that, Graham landed in my universe and has refused to let go.

I received some criticism about Graham, in that a record producer with that kind of money and clout could *never* want a size-16 girl, much less battle an mega-hot rocker for her affection. The (size-16) lady who wrote the review said it just wasn't "realistic."

I think Ashley Graham might disagree...



If you think two men wouldn't fight over that, you don't know that many quality men, because only an asshole would discount a quality woman based on her size alone. While I realize that our culture is populated way more with those types of guys, and they are pretty damned vocal about that kind of thing, that doesn't mean there aren't PLENTY of men out there who not only accept bigger women, they kind of really have a passion for them.

True story: I met Steven online, through an AOL chat room. In 1999, the Internet was place you could meet new folks, and I had been testing the waters for a while. At first I, like this particular critic, thought that guys wouldn't give me a chance if they knew how much I weighed. So I did what a lot of people tend to do... I edited that information out.

Oh, who am I kidding? I lied.

And yes, there were PLENTY of men who fell hard for the person I was pretending to be. If you put my personality in Scarlett Johansson's body, guys find the combination quite attractive. Many of the guys that clamored for me the most were generally already married, and were no Ryan Reynolds themselves. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.) Because I actually wanted to meet folks men for real, I decided I could lie no longer. I'd just be me, and that would have to be enough. The minute I put BBW (big beautiful woman) on my profile, I got SLAMMMMMMMMMMMED with more attention than I knew what to do with. That was surprising enough. That it was by young, single, good-looking men was the real jaw-dropper. Poets. Actors. Professionals. They were all eager to get to know me. The REAL me. It was quite the revelation. Granted some of the younger ones had fetishes (to be dominated by a larger woman,) but I also managed to find some hotties just for the casual good time I was looking for, men who liked me not only because of what I thought and said, but how I looked, too. They thought I was sexy and I was WAY bigger than a size 16.



The night I met Steven, we ended up talking on the computer for a few hours, and on the phone an hour or so more. When I confessed to him I was a BBW, just to make sure he wasn't going to bail like some men did, he didn't even know what that meant. I told him, "It stands for big beautiful woman." He said, "Oh, I don't care about that." And he legitimately didn't. I sent him my photo and we met within a week. On our first date, he not only bought me a rose from the flower lady at the restaurant, he made out with me right there in the booth in front of everyone. His passion for me was clear right from the start, because he wasn't afraid to show it. (That, too, was a revelation.)

Seventeen years later and he's still around, often fighting to stay when everything should drive him away. I think he's sticking around. He does everything in his power to make me feel happy and beautiful and loved. If that's not a quality man, I sure don't know what is.

Many years later, when we went to the Charmageddon viewing party, Steven charmed every single woman at our table by buying them roses, making them laugh and generally making them feel attractive and valuable. Whether they were big or small, he didn't care. He wanted them to feel beautiful, because he thinks every single woman SHOULD feel that way. MEANWHILE a former Pick-up Artist wannabe sat in the corner and talked to nobody. One guess who was the guy getting laid that night.

So tell me again why I should bend over backwards to attract those kinds of guys, because I sure don't see the benefit in it.

This idea that all men - and certainly the most desirable men - won't like you if you're fat is such a tired, played crock of shit, I deliberately make my book boyfriends smoking hot to show doubting Thomases (and Thomasinas) that this IS realistic. It happens in the real world all the time. People buy what you tell them. Whether you think you're fat and ugly or sexy as hell and rule like a queen, they'll agree. That was the entire POINT of Groupie, and why I wrote Andy the way that I did.

Why couldn't a successful record mogul AND a rock star love Andy? She was a smart, strong, independent lady who could give as good as she got. She was funny, she was kind, she was a devoted friend and a talented go-getter who knew how to make things happen. She didn't need a man to make her dreams come true. She was fully capable of doing that for herself. She was a sensual creature who didn't need outside attention to own her own sexuality, to see past all the superficial boys who might discard her for her size to find the men who might value her for ALL of who she is, not just something as arbitrary and as superficial as her dress size. Do you really, *really*, think that two intelligent, sensual, successful men wouldn't find this single lady attractive at the same time and want to battle it out to see who might be the best man? Just because of her size, which happens to be about the average of most women? Are you freaking kidding me?? What a sad, limited world view. So glad it isn't mine. I don't entertain the fantasy that I have to be someone ELSE to live a fabulous life full of the love I desire. I write the books I want to read, that tell me that I can be loved for who I am. That IS my reality. And I'm damned proud to offer that viewpoint into the world.

It became crystal clear to me, particularly after Andy's trip to L.A., that my new "triangle" presented a pretty significant challenge to my original HEA. Let's face it. Where Vanni was a boy chasing after the attention of others just to patch up his ego, Graham was a successful executive who could offer Andy the entire world, including the love and stability she deserved. I knew it. My best friend Jeff knew it. And Steven knew it, too. By the time I got to the cruise, he told me in no uncertain terms that if Andy chose Vanni, he couldn't buy that ending. It wasn't believable and he just didn't understand it. "She's too smart to do something that dumb." He said it felt cheated, like I was patching it up just to end the story. Graham was simply the better choice, and it would have been emotionally unsatisfying for him to see her just forgive and forget all that Vanni had done. Graham was free to love her and made sure to stay that way. Unlike Vanni, who filled his arms and bed on the regular, Graham was prepared to offer himself as a one-woman-man to her... provided she could let go of Vanni.

Of course she couldn't, because I mean hello? It's Vanni. She tried, God bless her. I always chuckle when people say that she let him get away with stuff and always took him back, when she spent most of her time trying to stay away from him. (This is why there are three books, people.) In those times that she couldn't, because her future was so deeply entwined with his because of her friends and the work she wanted to do, he was like a hit of heroin for her. (Who of us hasn't had one of THOSE guys in our past?)

There was a reason this was her song for Vanni...



On paper, it just made sense that she'd choose Graham. She grew up without a father, and he provided a strong, loving influence that she knew she could trust. Honestly it's the best kind of triangle, because she couldn't help but love BOTH these very different men for very different reasons. Talk about being torn. Even *I* am torn, to this day.

Vanni just had to learn how to embody more of Graham in order to deserve her, and that wasn't going to happen in one book.

Because of that... and because Graham deserved (demanded) to have his story told as well, I kept going. And wouldn't you know it? He shows up in almost every other book I can think of, just because I myself can't let him go.

Sure he had a little stumble off his pedestal in ROCK STAR, but who can blame him? He was going through some stuff. This powerful man got tested in a pretty big way. He was understandably a little selfish and entitled. But Graham is as perfect a book boyfriend as I can imagine, which is why I'm so glad I'm married to his prototype. That a stubborn redhead was introduced into Graham's life to whip him into shape was no accident.

As for who I would cast, I'm torn between two. I wrote it leaning heavily towards RDJ, but the Cloonster would make an *amazing* Graham. Swoon-a-palooza, indeed. Maybe I'll have to give my bestie Graham's gay brother after all... (and he might be closer than you think...)



So that's Graham. Get to know him in GROUPIE, which is free to read across all platforms. His story continues through ROCK STAR and MOGUL, and he plays a pretty significant role in FIERCE, UNSTOPPABLE and EPIC, and returns in my SOUTHERN ROCKER trilogy. He pops up in books outside the GROUPIE universe, in THE UNDISCIPLINED BRIDE, ENTANGLED and even the MASTERS saga (in MASTERS FOR LIFE and MASTERS FOREVER.)

Not bad for a nameless character who showed up to dance with a lonely lady. He wedged his way into my world and made it impossible not to love him. And I'm never letting him go. Never, ever, ever.