Excerpt: Waking Up in Your Forbidden Crush’s House. Wearing His Shirt. You Know. Normal Things.
“Hey.”
She stiffened. Her heart gave a little flutter. She knew that voice. His deep, husky baritone was unmistakable.
Maddy looked back over her shoulder.
It was him.
Oh good lord.
He stood at the entrance to the kitchen, a towel over one shoulder.
Their eyes met.
She felt a little zap of lightning.
She swallowed. Hard.
Maddy turned around slowly to face him. She was shocked. He was her secret. Secrets were supposed to remain hidden. Not standing before her, face-to-face.
This was her first time standing so close to him outside of work, in broad daylight, without a dark moonlit forest obscuring his physique. His honey-hazel eyes glimmered beneath stern brows. His black hair, a warm tone like rich earthen humus, fell freely past his shoulders.
His massive chest made two little mountains under his white T-shirt. He was very tall and packed with muscle; she guessed him to be three or four inches over six feet.
A full sleeve of tattoos covered each arm. She had never really looked at them before. Up near his left shoulder, partly hidden by his shirt, she saw a vibrant, grinning skull in the sinister style of Dios de Los Muertos. The word LOBO in rustic Southwest font ran down his right forearm, while LOCO ran down the left. If his arms were both down, it read “lobo loco.” His right arm also carried the astrological symbol of a Scorpio, or maybe it was just a big fucking scorpion. The rest of the sleeve was too intricate for her to really appreciate at a glance.
His skin was deep tan. He wore blue jeans and steel-toed work boots. Something like car grease stained his shirt. She wondered, not for the first time, if he worked at a garage.
Maddie realized she was staring with her mouth slightly open. She shut it. She met his eyes again. She really didn't know what to say.
“You hungry?” he asked.
Then he walked back into the kitchen.
Maddy followed him with some hesitation. She felt like a stray cat who had wandered into someone’s house. He set a plate of bacon down on the kitchen table, and she pulled out a chair and sat down. Next to the bacon was a plate of scrambled eggs and two big waffles with maple syrup.
“I didn’t know what you liked,” he said, like he needed to explain why he’d served her an entire breakfast buffet. “Eat up. I’ll finish the rest.”
“Uh . . . thank you,” she mumbled.
She picked up her fork and speared one of the waffles onto her plate. The sight of so much food made her suddenly ravenous. She felt like she had burned ten-thousand calories the night before. She started shoving warm, syrup-covered waffles straight into her mouth.
He continued washing the dishes. The voice on the TV droned on. Maddy’s ears suddenly perked when she heard her name. “Now on local news, five bodies were found in the woods just outside Black River, NY . . . Police are saying animal attack . . . nearby mobilehome abandoned . . . currently searching for Madeline Donovan, a student at Black River High School. If you have any information about her whereabouts, please call . . . .”
So the police were looking for her. Wow. Color her impressed. Someone must have reported her missing. Maybe because of the gunshots. Certainly not her father. Sounded like Dean still hadn’t come home.
Another voice interrupted Maddy’s thoughts, a memory from the night before: “Rough up the guy. . . Toss his place . . . Leave a message.”
Maddy’s hands started to shake.
Her fork slipped through her clumsy fingers. It clattered to her plate. Then to the floor. It made a lot of noise.
The man turned to look at her.
“Sorry, uh . . . sorry,” she muttered.
Her hands clutched the bottom of her shirt as she tried to stop trembling.
He was still watching her. That made it worse. This isn’t normal. Nothing about this is normal. She was in his house. Her head was bandaged, and she was sitting in his boxers and a T-shirt. She felt a weird sense of vertigo. Everything was surreal.
She stared at her plate. Her cheeks were burning. She tried not to think of the unnegotiable fact that she was wearing his clothes, which meant someone must have undressed her the night before, which meant he absolutely saw her naked.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
He shut off the sink. Then he passed through the kitchen and into the living room, where he picked up the remote. He turned off the TV.
“Sorry if that bothered you,” he said.
“It’s alright,” she said.
She turned in the chair. She could see him clearly; he was only about ten feet away. She studied his face again. The light from the window cast shadows beneath his high cheekbones.
Devilish. He had a masculine neck, a cleft chin, a straight nose and a slightly prominent brow that gave his face a stern appearance. His lips were firm and sensual. His lashes were long and dark. His eyes were a bright, unusual hazel color. Sometimes they were green, and sometimes they were gold. She couldn’t tell if he was Native American, Mexican, Brazilian or a little bit of everything. To her, he looked like an exotic model from somewhere warm and tropical.
She felt a flutter in her stomach. It was not a shy tickle, but a steroid-enhanced butterfly striking her ribcage. She liked him so much. But . . . he was an adult, and she was only nineteen.
So, like, probably too young for him. God, she could not stop blushing.
The Book Junkie Reads . . . Interview with . . . A. Mariposa. . .
How would you describe your style of writing to someone that has never read your work?
Dreamy and steamy. Character-centered storytelling with a plot that’s “small town life,” heavy on the spice. My stories are about my characters and their relationships, and the plot is used as a backdrop for their character growth.
Do you feel that writing is an ingrained process or just something that flows naturally for you?
It flows naturally. I think most writers feel this way. You get lost in the movie in your mind and just write what you see and feel. Writing is the best therapy and the greatest escape!
Do you take your character prep to heart? Do you nurture the growth of each character all the way through to the page?
Yes, I think this is the backbone of good storytelling. I struggle to read books with flat characters. A book is not like a movie script. A movie script is just about action: the setup and events of each scene. Reading a novel, even fluffy genre fiction, should feel like an internal, transformative experience. It’s about self reflection, growth and realization. There’s nothing better than the moment a book really hits you, and you feel like a different person.
Have you found yourself bonding with any particular character(s)? If so, which one(s)?
Every character I write with, I have to bond with. Otherwise I can’t write them. So I often tell my husband, I am my villain and I am my hero. In Heart of the Wolf, I am Maddy the orphaned girl, but I am also Gareth, the badass Alpha. Every character is a facet of our own self concept.
Do you have a character that you have been working on that you can't wait to put to paper?
They’re already on the page. I grow my characters organically as I write. It all happens in the moment.
Have you ever felt that there was something inside of you that you couldn't control? If so, what? If no, what spurs you to reach for the unexperienced?
Impulse control is part of emotional maturity, so we should all seek to develop a sense of self-control that allows us to deeply regulate our emotions. Once we can live in a perpetually calm state of mind, we can truly be creative and reach for our highest potential as human beings. As far as reaching for the “unexperienced,” I call that “wanderlust.” I get wanderlust a few times a year. I like to book AirBnB’s and travel to different spots I haven’t visited before just to break up my routine. Camping is another way to do this. A lot of inspiration comes from being out in nature. That sense of wanderlust definitely makes its way into my characters. Maddy often runs out onto the mountains at night when life gets too overwhelming. Gareth, as well, spent years hitchhiking around the U.S. They’re both free spirits, but I guess that’s also why they’re werewolves. To me, being a wolf shifter embodies the wild part of our nature, the part that yearns to be free, to seek the “unexperienced.”
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LIGHTNING ROUND
What genre do you read? Fantasy / Romance / Webtoons
What genre do you write? Fantasy / Paranormal Romance
What was the first book you fell in love with? Redwall by Brian Jacques
What was a book you said you would never pick up again? Pretty much everything I read in my English Lit program.
Which fiction character do you love? Harry Potter
Which fiction character do you love to hate? Captain Hook
Which fiction character do you hate? I don’t really have one.
What beverage do you drink while reading? Green Tea, coffee, occasionally a Monster, Mt. Dew or Gatorade.
What do you snack on while reading? I can’t eat while I read, too much going on.
Have you always enjoyed reading? Yes, it was something I very much enjoyed as a child with my parents. My dad would read The Hobbit to me and my mom would always take me to the library.
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