Excerpt from Punting on the River Cam by Lainey-Jo Charles

Part of the Naughty Escapes Boxed-set – Available July 1st

Blurb: Having escaped being roped into wedding party activities, two American strangers turn a day of sightseeing in Cambridge, England into a series of passionate encounters.
Contemporary

Click here to pre-order on Amazon http://goo.gl/AxvZnH

Copyright © Lainey-Jo Charles, 2015

Carissa willed her heart and breathing rates to slow down. Niell had quite the introspective look on his face and she didn’t know him well enough to know whether that was good or bad.

 “I was just thinking how you make me forget that I didn’t know you yesterday.”

“Wow,” she whispered in answer. “I’m assuming that’s a good thing, right?”

“Very much so.”

He dropped his gaze to her lips, and they suddenly felt as dry as a desert. She slipped her tongue out to wet them, and Niell closed the distance between them, his lips landing on hers, not too light, but not too rough. Perfect. His lips were soft as they moved against hers. He pulled back slightly, looked into her eyes, and his stomach growled.

Carissa tried so hard not to laugh. She truly did. But she obviously wasn’t doing a very good job.

“Oh, just let loose. Of course my stomach would have to add a punch line to a beautiful moment. At least I thought it was.”

She scooted her chair back and stood next to him, looking down into his gorgeous face.

“It was a perfect moment.” She initiated the kiss this time, taking a half step closer to him and leaning down to press a quick kiss to his lips.

“Let’s go find you some food for that stomach of yours before you decide you need to eat me for lunch instead.”

“That idea has some merit.”

“What? Oh my God. You are not eating me for lunch. And I so cannot believe I just said that out loud. You’re a menace.” She could feel the blush heating her cheeks.

“No one’s ever called me that before. Must just be you.”

She shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Let’s go find you some food.”

Niell took her hand this time and a small thrill zinged through Carissa. She’d grabbed his hand earlier without thinking, but he hadn’t tried to turn loose, and in fact, had continued holding it the entire time they were walking around after that. Now he initiated the gesture, and she was feeling like a teenager walking through the halls of school, holding hands with her boyfriend.

A boyfriend she’d only known for a few hours and had already kissed.

Maybe not quite like high school. And definitely not a boy.

Writing Sticky & Sweet

This story ended up being quite hard for me to write even though I’d seen the small kernel for the idea in my mind from the very beginning. Turns out, it’s actually pretty hard to write about spring/summer activities when you’re dealing with wintertime cold weather, illnesses, and on top of all that, depression.

A family member I help take care of became very sick in December, about two weeks before Christmas. We were going along okay, trying different things to help him get well, but nothing was working. Then, when the doctors gave him something different, a bit stronger, it looked like that was going to work.

And it did.

For a day.

He fell ill again. And again.

At some point, something inside me just…broke. Has that ever happened to you? I don’t know that that same broken feeling would’ve happened had I been able to go outside where it was warm, or gotten him outside where it was warm. We had an unusually cold winter for our area for the second year in a row and it added to the helpless feeling I had.

So a combination of less light, colder than usual weather, and dealing with an illness I could do nothing to make better all added up to leave me feeling helpless and broken. Depression set in and I needed to write a story that was fun, lighthearted, and about spring and summer love.

The first time I wrote the story, that’s not what I wrote. Luckily, I found that out, but that meant I had to rewrite it. But I still didn’t have the story right. So I had to rewrite it again. And the deadline came and went, and I was rewriting it a third time.

Luckily, the Naughty Literati editors are a group of amazing women. During edits, I rewrote portions again, but I didn’t have to rewrite the whole entire thing. And as more sunshine appeared, the weather began finally warming up, and surgery on my loved one began allowing him to finally heal, I was in a much better place mentally.

It was hard writing Sticky & Sweet, but not once did I ever consider throwing in the towel. My readers are too important to me to just give up. Y’all are the ones who kept me going, who kept me wanting to make the story better, even if my mind struggled to do so. Readers are very powerful motivators for writers and I thank you all so much for your support of what we write.

I write, not only for my own enjoyment, but for y’all’s entertainment as well. When you read Sticky & Sweet, you’ll have to let me know if it makes you want ice cream as much as it made the members of my writing group want ice cream. They sent me ice cream emojis every time they read another version of the story. Yum!!

Excerpt from Sticky & Sweet by Lainey-Jo Charles

Part of the Naughty Flings boxed set - Available May 15^th

Blurb: Spring time. Parks. Baseball. Ice cream trucks. Ah, the sweet memories of youth. Ten years later, create new sweet and sticky memories as an adult.

Contemporary

Copyright © Lainey-Jo Charles, 2015

Thoughts like noticing how muscular his arms had been getting as he’d gotten older, all the baseball he’d been playing doing a nice job of shaping them. Those same arms now peeked out from beneath a fitted t-shirt, the arm holes wrapping around his well-defined biceps and triceps. Even his forearms showed how strong he was, and she wondered if he still played baseball.

Before she could ask, he moved slightly, and the motion had the muscles flexing in such a way, her mind tried filling in the blanks of what he’d look like without his shirt on. Hmmm. She should ask him to take it off so she could get a complete picture. Compare reality to what her mind had come up with. It was all part of the scientific method—observation, comparison—something like that.

“Are you going to get me the ice cream sandwich, or are you going to stand there a while longer, eating me up with your eyes? Because I didn’t realize I was on your goodies menu.”

Amanda didn’t think her cheeks could burn any more than they already were, but with that statement, she was proved wrong. Since he was the one who’d made it a point to walk over here, she was fairly certain he’d been checking her out, too, when she wasn’t looking. “Did you really just call me out for ogling you?”

“I guess I did.”

“Well, then maybe I was mistaken and I don’t have one more Neapolitan ice cream sandwich.” She folded her arms across her chest, but realized too late that all that did was bring more focus to her own assets. Nick’s eyes dropped immediately and lingered before making his way back up to her face. “Hello? What was that?”

“Me ogling you. I figure that way we’re even and I can get my ice cream sandwich.”

“But, but…,” she stuttered, unable to think of anything to say. Somehow the counter-move worked, she just wasn’t sure how. “Fine. I ogled you and you’ve ogled me. I’ll get your ice cream sandwich.”

“Thank you.” He gave her a smile that was even more powerful than the ones she remembered from long ago. And this Nick Collins was way more self-assured or something than the guy she’d sort of talked with every time they saw each other through the window. She’d liked the old Nick and had been attracted to him. This Nick intrigued her and somehow, she liked that just as much, if not more.

Changing Tastes

When I first found romance books, the shortest novels I read were Harlequins. I could go to the library, pick up several from the different lines, and have them all read by the time I returned the next week. I preferred my books to be longer—novel length versus category—but I didn’t want to deplete my library’s selection each week. So, I picked up a few novels, several Harlequin categories, and I was set with reading material for another week.

I did that for quite a while until my life got busier and I got an ereader. All of a sudden, there was a whole new world available to me. I found out about the world of ebooks—especially those books that are only available as ebooks and not available as print books.

It was even easier to fit reading into my life because I could make sure my ereader was with me at all times. I found out about new authors by going to the websites and blogs of authors I’d already found out about and getting their recommendations. I had new authors to try out, tons of new books to read, and new genres to check out.

Eventually, though, I added new clients through my consulting business, and it competed for time with my primary training business. Luckily, I’m the boss for both jobs which meant I could plan out my time as needed—maybe cut back on one of them one week while increasing hours on the other.

But then I also had this nagging dream that began burning hotter and hotter inside me: to become a writer.

Now, I knew all that needed to happen to become a writer was to write, so I began doing that. I began writing stories, and rewrote the beginnings of stories, and rewrote the beginnings again, and wrote new stories, and rewrote those beginnings…you get the picture. The thing was, I knew my writing wasn’t good enough yet because I’d spent so much time reading. I’d read so many well-written, excellent books by so many different authors, that I knew my writing wasn’t up to par yet.

But I kept trying.

And only when I finally felt as if I was telling the story I wanted to tell, the way I wanted to tell it—in other words, the way I saw the story play out in my brain—only then was I willing to submit something to a publisher.

But what I’d noticed in both my writing and my reading was that the busier I’d gotten, the more I’d wanted short little quickies to read, to escape into when I did have the time to read anymore. My reading tastes had changed. No longer did I have the time to invest in long novels. I wanted short stories to read in the middle of the day to give my brain a break. Or maybe something quick to read right before bed. I was too tired and too swamped with work to have the emotional energy to invest in a long novel.

At the time, there weren’t a whole lot of novellas or quickies being written. So that’s what I worked on writing. I wrote what I wanted to read—short little stories that allowed the reader to take a brief brain vacation before having to return to the real world.

Now, there are a lot of short stories, quickie novellas, and boxed sets put together with a slew of stories coming in at different lengths. Authors who normally only write novels are now writing novellas to introduce new series or are releasing ebook-only novellas that fit in between their novel releases.

I’m a very happy reader chick these days. I can find any type of story I want to read, from any romance genre, and allow my mind to escape the busyness of the real world for at least a little while.

So you tell me: do you like mixing it up by adding in quickies between novels you read? Do you have time to read novels anymore? Or, like me, do you only have time to invest in the shorter stories during this time of your life?

If you get the chance, I’d love for you to come say “Hi” to me. You can find me on:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/laineyjocharles (@laineyjocharles)
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/laineyjocharlesauthor
Website: http://www.laineyjocharles.com

 

Excerpt from UNDER THE HOOD by Lainey-Jo Charles

From the NAUGHTY HEARTS boxed set - Available February 1st

Copyright © Lainey-Jo Charles, 2015

When he opened the door to the truck, not only was he blasted by the heat that had quickly warmed up the truck cab, but he also experienced Lisbeth’s scent in concentrated form. The scent he caught brief snippets of when she was in the garage filled his nostrils and lungs until he imagined he could taste her.

The scent of berries. That’s what the scent was. No wonder he could almost taste her. No wonder he wanted desperately to taste her.

God, he hoped her scent didn’t leave his truck cab.

He was so screwed.

“How long do you think it’s gonna take?”

Her voice interrupted his musings and he tried kick starting his brain into working and thinking and coming up with answers to questions. The car. She’s asking about her car.

“I’ll be able to give you a better estimate of that tomorrow after I’ve gone in and made sure everything has been catalogued so we’re working from a master repairs list.”

“Oh.” She turned from him and looked back out the front window at the closed bay door shielding her car from sight. “That makes perfect sense.” She paused again before turning toward him. “I guess I need to line up a rental car, depending on how long it’ll take.”

“Yeah, I’ll definitely call you tomorrow morning with what I know so you can figure all that out.”

A small grin broke out that she tried to hide.

“What?”

“It’s nothing. Really.” She shook her head and turned toward the side passenger window, but not before he saw the blush spreading across her cheeks.

“Come on. Tell me.”

“I was just thinking, here I’ve got a guy who’s taking me home, and I’ve already gotten a promise that I’ll get a phone call from him tomorrow morning. All the single ladies would be jealous.”

“I seriously doubt that.” Was she…flirting with him? “I don’t exactly have women beating down my door.” Why had he said that? He needed to install a filter between his brain and his mouth.

“Uh-huh. I hear you.”

He let it go. There were exactly zero women interested in him, well maybe that number was now one, but it wasn’t like he had this super busy social life. He picked up his coffee mug from the holder and took a sip.