Need
by Madison Wentworth
Date of Publication: August 30th 2021
Publisher: Madison Crest
Cover Artist: Bookcoverzone.com
Genre: Paranormal Erotic Romance
ISBN: 979-8468157046
ASIN: B09F3WVDZC
Number of pages: 165
Word Count: 24,000
Tagline: Sometimes you crave what’s good for you. Sometimes he craves you too.
BLURB
Cherie just met the love of her life, but there’s a catch: He’s dead.
It’s not every day you find true love on an adult website, but that’s the most normal thing about Cherie’s new boyfriend, Evan.
To start with, he isn’t actually new. They’re engaged, or so he says. But she has no memory of planning their wedding, or even meeting him, for that matter, because for her, it hasn’t happened yet.
The bond is there, though. She can feel it. As a vampire of the soul, she can taste it, and she needs to taste more of it. It’s a bond so strong that it awakened his spirit in order to find her. Now, she must save him in order to free him from death... so she can have all of him. She needs that.
Need isn’t a word she uses lightly. She’s never truly needed anyone before. But she’s discovering she needs him now, even as their time together appears fated to be cut tragically short. And he needs her, too, more than she knows.
Yet their mutual craving is only just awakening. Can they find a way to cheat the fates and find a future together?
Time alone will tell.
Excerpt:
How are you supposed to feel when you find out the man you’ve fallen in love with, who you’ve never even met in person, reveals that the two of you were once engaged, and that you were—inadvertently or not—the cause of his death?
I try to plan for every contingency, but even super-prepared Cher hadn’t seen that one coming.
“Does that mean the whole thing has to happen all over again the same way?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Does it mean we’ll get to meet, after all? Or do I meet another version of you instead?”
“I don’t know.”
This was exasperating. The odd thing was, I found it almost impossible to be mad at him. It wasn’t his fault, anyway. He had no idea how to get out of the place where he was, wherever or whenever that might be, or what would happen if he did. I had no idea how to get him out, either, but I did know I had to find a way—and without him getting run over by a car again. I’d strap him to the bed if I had to.
“If we were engaged before, does that mean we still are?” I asked.
“I think so, unless you want to break it off. Do you?”
“No, I like being your fiancée.”
“Good. Because I like it, too.”
I still didn’t feel comfortable telling anyone else about Evan, or telling Layla anything more about him, because now it was even weirder than before. So, the only person I was left with as counselor was my inner voice.
I need to get him back here again. I need to see him.
Need. It was a word I’d hardly ever used before, and certainly not in connection with myself. But I seemed to be using it more and more with Even.
How do you think you’re going to do that if he’s dead?
It was a good question.
I could call my ghost-hunter friends.
You don’t need to hunt him. You already know where he is: In that smartphone screen of yours! You drew him to you through the internet. Now you just need to bring him the rest of the way.
How?
By being yourself. He hungers for you and can’t resist you. He will come.
Could it possibly be as simple as that? It couldn’t be. I remembered the voice had asked me once before who I was, and I’d answered that I was just me. But I was only that person when I was alone. Otherwise, I was always pretending—except when I was with Evan. I could be myself with him, too. So maybe it really was as simple as that, after all. It had to be, because I couldn’t think of anything else. But how could I be my true self, my vampire self, when the world was watching?
You can’t. You need to go someplace.
It didn’t help that I was having this conversation with myself at work.
“Cher, can you come over here for a sec?” Joy motioned toward me. “This customer needs his frames adjusted.”
“Coming.”
Fortunately for the eye clinic, and for my own job security, I was great at multitasking. I was able to keep brainstorming about how to get some privacy even while I was adjusting Mr. Thompson’s new glasses to fit him perfectly without pinching the bridge of his nose or pulling down too much behind the ear.
“Thank you,” he said. “You’re very good at that.”
I laughed easily. “I should be. I’ve been doing this long enough. But you’re very good at being a patient patient, and that makes all the difference.”
He nodded slightly and... was he blushing? So often, I found that the smallest kind word or gesture was appreciated beyond what I’d expected. People didn’t treat each other with kindness enough anymore. It had become rare enough that, when it happened, it was unexpected.
And they were grateful. It was sad that common courtesy had fallen so far out of style.
But being nice to people was how I’d been raised; it was part of who I was.
Vampires are known for their courtesy. They only enter where they’re invited.
That was it!
I had to be myself—my vampire self—to draw Evan back to the land of the living, but I had to invite him, too. That was the one thing I’d been missing. He might be dead, but he was also a vampire, and if I invited him, he would have no choice but to accept.
Author Info
Madison Wentworth grew up on syndicated reruns of Dark Shadows and The Twilight Zone, coming of age not far from the Malibu surf. A job as a reporter for a small-town newspaper meant digging through police reports, gossip, rumor, and innuendo. And that led to more work as a writer, and a move east and northward to the opposite coast, a venue far more conducive to night-owl vampires and their felines.
An interest in cinema — and outings to see movies such as Ghost and The Sixth Sense — reignited a fascination with the paranormal, and stirred an interest in blending the mystical with the sensual.
The result is NEED, the author’s debut novella.
The Book Junkie Reads . . .Reckless Dreams Interview with . . . Madison Wentworth . . .
How would you describe your style of writing to someone that has never read your work?
NEED is a paranormal erotic romance-adventure. That’s a lot of things to pack into a novella. I like to keep the plot moving so readers stay interested. It’s a story for mature audiences, but my characters have to have an emotional connection. The romance element is what holds it all together, along with a plot with some unexpected twists and turns.
Do you feel that writing is an ingrained process or just something that flows naturally for you?
If I’ve got a good idea for a story, it just flows. It’s like drilling for oil and striking a gusher.
What mindset or routine do you feel the need to set when preparing to write (in general whether you are working on a project or just free writing)?
I just need to sit down and write. I have a basic outline in my head, but I let the plot develop in my head based on how the characters react to each other. For example, I had an ending in mind for NEED, but when I got there, I realized something slightly different had to happen. I won’t give it away, but I thought what happened organically was a lot better than what I had planned. There’s another scene, too, that I went back and changed. It’s a sensual scene that involves two specific characters. Originally, it was just what it seemed to be on the surface. But then I realized I could create a great plot twist by making it much more, and a lot different than it seemed to be at first glance. That was fun.
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?
I’ve experienced the kind of need Cherie feels in this story. It’s very powerful when you meet the right person.
More generally, I’m driven by an almost insatiable desire to learn. I love hearing stories, whether they’re real or fictional.
Many of the things that happen in real life are like ghost stories, because most of us have forgotten them. Most of us don’t think about the past much anymore because we’re so consumed with instant gratification, and because of that, we feel disconnected from others and even from ourselves.
But for people who have been deeply affected by the past, it’s entirely different. Things have happened to them that have affected them deeply, and the memories of those things still haunt them. They can’t get them out of their heads and hearts. That’s a great source of emotional connection, and I like to draw on that connection in my writing.
If you could have dinner/dinner party with 7 fictional characters, who would they be?
Hermione Granger from “Harry Potter”
Ellen Ripley from “Alien”
Alice from “Alice in Wonderland”
Samantha from “Bewitched”
Atticus Finch from “To Kill a Mockingbird”
Doc Brown from “Back to the Future”
Sherlock Holmes
Where would you spend one full year, if you could go ANYwhere, money is not a concern? What would you do with this time?
I’d go as many different places as I could. I’d love to travel to Europe and visit the castles in Germany, and of course I’d like to visit Transylvania and see Bran Castle. My romantic side loved “The Sound of Music,” so I’d like to see Austria. It’s hard for me to choose between natural beauty and historic sites, but a year’s a long time, so I’d see the ruins of Greece and Rome, the Swiss Alps, the fjords of Scandinavia, the pyramids of Egypt, and Stonehenge. I’d also love to visit the island of the South Pacific. Here in the United States, I would like to see Yellowstone, and I’d like to travel north through Canada to see some glaciers before they melt. Have I mentioned I like to travel?
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