When I met Steven, I was tied up in a tangle of unhappiness and helplessness. I was behind the eight ball in every area of my life, from my job to my personal relationships. I had even contemplated ending it all by January of 1999. When Steven came along in March, it was a tough, dark time that my Peter Pan instantly brightened.
With his even-keeled personality and his good humor, this manchild showed me it was OK to have fun. It was OK to dream big. It was OK to be happy. He saw me as I was, not as I saw myself (or even how others saw me.) It was a brand new perspective for me and one that facilitated every single one of my dreams coming true.
Steven is my partner in every sense of the word. He's been my first (and usually most brutally honest) beta reader since the very first piece of writing I've ever shared with him. He's responsible for creating characters in notable books, (i.e. Twitch in COMIC SQUAD,) and usually is a receptive and intriguing soundboard whenever I want to bounce ideas around. There are times when his input changes the trajectory of a story because he's the one who calls me on any lazy bullshit writing. When he finished reading GROUPIE, he was 100-percent #TeamGraham. This is not surprising given that he was the major prototype for Graham. But he voiced my gut instinct that I couldn't tie up the first book of GROUPIE as the full story, with some manufactured HEA tagged on at the end that just didn't make sense. There was more to the story. There had to be.
So I broke a few rules. Cracked a few eggs. And because of my own personal Graham, I wrote the trilogy that launched my career.
He comes with me with my signings, my helpful sales manager doing the nuts and bolts sales stuff I can never bring myself to do.
That's how we work, you see. My strengths are his weaknesses and vice versa. We don't "complete" each other, given we were pretty complete people when we met in our late 20s. But we complement each other perfectly. I really don't know if there is anyone anywhere who could have been a better mate.
Hence why we're still going strong after all this time.
There are some who say that Rubenesque romance (i.e. books that celebrate heroines in all their shapes and sizes) is unrealistic because fat girls simply can't find love. The whole reason I opted to write my first one, LOVE PLUS ONE, was because I was living proof that we could. Jake Dalton, the hunky best friend of my heroine, was able to see Shannon in a way she couldn't quite see herself. And that was almost letter for letter how Steven romanced me. He was her friend first, a strong and devoted voice in her ear that could make her laugh, even when he was telling her when she was being an idiot.
EXCERPT LOVE PLUS ONE:
Shannon had plenty of time to think during the two-hour drive from the studio to Jake’s ranch in Ventura County. Ninety-eight of those minutes she gleefully plotted Rex’s painful but imaginative demise. Do spark plugs come in that size? Plus she’d need an awful lot of duct tape. And where, exactly, would one buy a pillory?
About the time she rounded the last turn to take her to the Dalton ranch, she finally dismissed the idea. Despite her creativity there just didn’t seem to be a way she could do it and not end up in jail. And stripes just weren’t a good look for her body type.
What she would do, she had no idea. Hopefully Jake would know.
She hopped out of her car and didn’t even bother with the formality of knocking on the door of the main house. There was no point. It was still early enough in the day. Jake would be out at the stables, doing the labor that he loved so much.
Honest work, he called it.
Manual labor, said she. She tried it for exactly one summer in her junior year before she and the entire Dalton clan (including the horses) decided ranching just wasn’t for her.
She found Jake in the stables, making time with his other favorite girl – his horse, Lightning Lane. “Jake?” her voice trembled. Jake looked up with surprise. She hardly ever – scratch that - she never came to visit him on the ranch during a workday.
“Shan?” She nodded. Her bottom lip trembled as her eyes filled up. Immediately Jake knew something very wrong had happened. He rushed to her side and she threw her arms around him and began to sob. “Oh my God. What happened?” He immediately imagined the worst.
“Rex,” was all she could eke out.
Jake was confused. His normally unflappable friend was quite flapped, and no one had died? His grip tightened. If that rat even thought about –
“He stole my idea!”
“He what?”
Shannon pulled away and plopped down on a big block of hay. “You know that idea that he said was so cliché? He told Dixie about it. She loves it. She gave him the job.”
Jake joined her. “I thought you were going to tell her about it.”
“I choked. Every time I got up my nerve I lost it just as fast. Rex assumed that meant the idea was up for grabs and he went for it. And she loved it.”
That last part came out as a wail. Jake put his arms around his friend. “I’m sorry, Shan.”
“And the best part? Dixie assigned me as his assistant. She actually expected me to work for him.” She pulled away and pulled a sorry-looking piece of tissue from her pocket to blow her nose. “No. The best part was when he tried to get me to his place to ‘work’. That’s when I quit.”
“You quit?” Jake was incredulous. Quitting was not in Shannon’s nature. Not starting, that was one thing. But quitting?
She nodded. “I couldn’t stay there after that. Not with that lying snake as my boss. Are you kidding?”
“Just go back and tell Dixie the truth.”
Jake infuriated her sometimes. He was so level-headed. If A happened, do B. No sweat. Well, dammit, she thought to herself. Sometimes there was some sweat. “It’s not that easy.”
“Why not?”
She was going to hit him soon. “Because I have no proof for one thing.”
He laughed. “I think Dixie would give you the benefit of the doubt.”
She shook her head. Worst case scenario, Dixie would think she was the kind of person who would undermine another employee just to get ahead.
She’d think Shannon was someone like Rex, and Shannon couldn’t bear that. If only she hadn’t thrown away that outline, Shannon thought with a groan.
Jake took her hand in his. “It is that easy, Shan. This is your promotion. You need to fight for it.”
She sighed. She didn’t even know what she’d do with it if she got it. Rejection she was used to. But failure? That was another issue altogether. So the idea was good, but was it good enough? What if they spent all this time and money and the show flopped anyway? She’d never be able to face Dixie again.
Dreams were all about endless possibilities. Reality had a nasty way of destroying those possibilities one by one. To her, it was just easier to start over somewhere else and forget all about Rex, Dixie and Love Plus One. When she said as much to Jake, he finally did something he never thought was possible with Shannon.
He got mad.
“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.”
He pulled her into a hug, where she proceeded to soak his shirt. He had always been her biggest cheerleader. By the time she left the ranch she felt like she could tackle the world.
That was just the kind of spirit Jake was. He could motivate anyone, touch anyone. And he had faith in her. Maybe, just maybe, she could finally find a little faith in herself too.
This isn't too far different from how Steven challenged me to change my own life. His belief in me, his support and encouragement, have been the fuel to my rocket.
So happy anniversary, honey. You really are the reason I believe in love, from this moment on. xoxo
In honor of my anniversary, once again I'm giving y'all the gifts. I'm holding over my $0.99 cent sale of GROUPIE all weekend!
I'm also giving away free copies of my books LOVE PLUS ONE and COMIC SQUAD, in honor of the Hubs, in addition to my gritty drama, DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS and my rom-com fairytale PICTURE POSTCARDS. Get em now while they're FREE!!
BTW, there is an EPIC giveaway coming up VERY soon (think Labor Day) worth $150 (at least.) It's a scavenger hunt that only those who have been downloading my freebies can really "win." So download like the wind this week and next so you can be ready to play!!
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