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The journey begins with the first step, but in this case it's the first word! I'm delving into a new genre, ripe territory and I guess that makes me a virgin of sorts. When I was first encouraged to write the New Adult genre by a really good friend, I was nervous. First person male POV--young male POV. Yikes. But being a virgin is all about exploration, so I jumped in and wrote what I know. What lives and breathes inside me. Pure romance.
This book doesn't really pretend to be anything, not a clone, or a profound treatise on growing up. It's about falling in love and finding the one. My characters Aubree Walker and Booker Outlaw have some growing up to do in this book as they fall into each other. I so hope if you take the chance to read this novel, that you will enjoy it and that it takes you back to the freshness of that first aching true love. You know what I'm talking about.
Excerpt:
Booker
Aubree freaking Walker.
Yeah. She hadn’t changed one bit. Still gorgeous, still distant and buttoned up, still curvaceous. I shifted. My thoughts and my purely male biological reaction to her. They weren’t a good combination. Yeah. Heavy wood in the morning.
I turned over onto my back and glared at the goddamned ceiling fan.
And my brain took a track I’d tried very hard not to travel down for the past nine months. What had she been doing all this time at Tulane? Had she thought about me? Or had she lost herself in another guy?
Another guy inside her.
F**k
I felt awful about the way she had just taken off, and sick about both that and what had happened. I was also really angry. Disappeared without even a goodbye.
But now she was back because of her aunt’s terrible accident. Was that the only reason, or was Aubree looking for closure?
Only two times I’d been one-on-one with her, on Wild Magnolia Road and again really early this morning, and both times there had been something terrible going on. Would I ever have the chance to relate to this girl in a completely normal setting? I wasn’t some kind of knight, but I also wasn’t going to let her get hurt. Whoever had thrown that rock better watch his step.
Would she ever get it that I’d crushed on her in school? I hoped not. I knew Aubree’s sort. Forever kind of girl was how I pegged her type. Sure, I could flirt and I could tease, but getting involved with her was a bonehead move. And, if there was anything that I did well, it was looking out for myself.
She looked good, though. Really good. But I felt a pang that she had not only avoided me and Suttontowne, but her aunt, too. Poor Lottie. She was upset about Aubree’s all-too-transparent excuses not to come home, not even for the holidays. Aubree was all Lottie had. I hoped this wasn’t about me. I would hate that. People should never abandon the ones they love. My father popped into my head, but I pushed that thought away. The old man didn’t deserve even one thought from this son.
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Time to get moving. When my thoughts started down this ole tired road, it was time to find something else to occupy my mind.
In the bathroom I splashed cold water on my face, and then stood in front of the sink, forcing myself to keep my hands relaxed. No matter what my feverish little brain could come up with, wooing Aubree into bed was not going to happen. That much I knew.
After another minute of just standing there, watching the water drip off my face, it hit me. That was the only goddamned plan I was going to come up with—not sleeping with her.
I was a f**king genius.
