Behind the Scenes of My Current Project

Before I get to the actual post, I just wanted to say we’ve got a new blogger in our lineup! Torrance Sené has joined us! Yay, Torrance, and welcome!

As I mentioned in an earlier post, this year has been rough writing-wise, but things are starting to pick up a little, and in a month or so, I’ll be releasing one of the next Bound books.

My next contribution to the series that Jess Jarman I write, is called The Sportsball Book. 

That is a lie. It’s actually called In Bounds. But I still call it The Sportsball Book. Because I’m not really into any kind of sports. And with the exception of baseball, which I get, but don’t really have any interest in, all the sports are sportsball to me. So I had some research help from a couple friends including Kayleigh Jones. Because she’s awesome. And knows about sportsball things.

The hero, Will Darby, is an injured football player (British football – not American) and his visiting his sister while he’s recovering from surgery. Also visiting his sister is one of her best friends, Ivy Wright. The same woman he had drunken sex in a closet with at his sister’s wedding, twelve years earlier.

Ivy’s in England staying with her friends and tutoring their kids after losing both her elementary teaching position and her husband to his affair earlier in the year. She’s horrified to see Will and is seriously hoping he doesn’t remember her. Unfortunately for her, he remembers everything. Which makes things super awkward since her BFF has noooooooo clue Ivy hooked up with her little brother. The BFF’s. Not Ivy’s. Ivy doesn’t have a little brother.

In case you were wondering, the above is in no way a blurb. I haven’t written that, yet.

In my head, Will looks a bit like Richard Madden. A sportsball playing Richard Madden.

And Ivy looks a lot like Rose McIver.

So…there’s some sportsball that happens in this book. And sex. Kind of a lot of it, really.

And angst. Because, really, what fun is a romance without some angst? And maybe some heartbreak?

The Sportsball Book will be out in about 6ish weeks. And I’ll be revealing the cover later, but trust me – Norris outdid herself. Again.

But here’s a short (unedited) excerpt from The Sportsball Book. 

“I don’t want to do my lessons.” The petulant child crossed her arms over chest and glared balefully at Ivy Wright. “I want to play footie with Uncle Wills.”

Ivy stared down at eight-year-old, Phoebe, her best friends’ daughter and one of her two pupils for the summer holiday. Well—her summer holiday, anyway. The children were currently attending classes, and she was tutoring them in their off hours. “I understand that, but we all have to do things in life that we don’t particularly care for.” And wasn’t that the understatement of the year? “Right now, you need to do your reading assignment. You can play soc—footie,” she corrected herself when Phoebe rolled her eyes, “with your uncle afterward.”

The uncle, in question, was slowly jogging down the hill toward them from the huge manor house. Jogging slowly, she assumed because his knee was in a brace. Ivy forced her features into a semblance of pure, professional detachment as the man drew closer. She hadn’t seen him since Caleb and Charlotte’s wedding reception, and she prayed to the deity of drunken hook-ups that Phoebe’s uncle didn’t remember her. It had been twelve years and zero contact. Chances were good that she might look vaguely familiar to him, but he’d never make the connection. At least, that was her fervent hope.

“It’s not fair,” Phoebe whined, stomping her foot.

“Few things are,” Ivy murmured. “Let’s get this over with, and you can run and sweat to your heart’s content.”

And Ivy could go back to the guesthouse she was occupying for the foreseeable future, crack open a book and a bottle of wine and think of a good excuse not to go to the main house for supper. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to have a meal with her friends and their children. However, she’d prefer to avoid as much contact with Charlotte’s brother, Will, as possible. The last thing Ivy needed to top off this shit sundae of a year was for him to remember her and that they’d had ridiculously tanked sex in a closet at his sister’s wedding. Well, she’d been drunk off her ass, anyway. She wasn’t sure about Will. Hell, she wasn’t even sure if he’d even been old enough to drink at the time.

A little hand tugged on Ivy’s, and she smiled down at Kit, Phoebe’s younger brother.

“Can I take this back to the house to finish reading it?” he asked.

She glanced at the dinosaur book he held. “Sure, honey. Go ahead.”

“Hey, Kit,” Will called to the little boy as he drew closer. “You want to kick the ball around while your sister does her lesson?”

Ivy tried to ignore the way the low timbre of Will’s voice combined with his English accent settled heavily in the pit of her stomach. She couldn’t remember if his voice had been that deep before, but the accent was the same. And there was something stupidly arousing about it.

She needed to shove that thought right away. There was nothing arousing about Will Darby. Nothing at all. Not his soccer—she corrected herself—football-chiseled body. Not the myriad tattoos curling down his arms and legs. Not the honey-streaked, too-long, brown hair pulled up in some kind of ridiculous man bun. Not the brilliant green eyes that currently watched her from beneath dark eyelashes or the short, trimmed beard that covered his beautifully sculpted face. And certainly not the large, broad hand he currently extended toward her.

“You’re Caleb’s friend, from the States,” he said with a devastating smile. “I’m Charlotte’s brother, Will.”

She reached out and shook his hand—his big, warm hand. The hand he’d clamped over her mouth as she’d orgasmed, muffling her scream in a broom closet at the wedding reception.

“Nice to meet you,” she said, forcing a smile and hoping he didn’t notice that she hadn’t offered her name. He didn’t look as if he recognized her, but the oddball name, Ivy, might be enough to ring a bell. Or maybe not. The man played professional football. He’d probably had enough concussions to knock any memory of her right out of his head. Was it wrong to hope that he’d had enough head injuries that was the case?

Okay – that’s it from me this week. Be sure to check out the other bloggers’ posts by clicking their names.

Jess

Kayleigh

Torrance

Gwen

Jessica

Kris

Paige