The Hardest Part About Writing by Samie Sands – Guest Blog and Giveaway

This post is part of a tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. Samie Sands will be awarding a $10 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

Most writers, myself included, have other priorities that sometimes take over everything else, and I always seem to find that these are the times when the ideas are swirling in the back of my mind, needing to get down on paper. I just don’t have the time to actually make that happen. When I do have the time, and I mean a good amount of time because half an hour here and there isn’t enough time to really get into the swing of things, I sometimes feel stuck, like I can’t quite translate what I want to say. The characters in my brain go very quiet, or the words simply won’t flow. It’s very frustrating!

For me, the best part about writing is creating characters that are very real and relatable to. Yes, they are flawed and they don’t always make the wisest choices, but who can honestly say that they always do the right thing, one hundred percent of the time? With Lottie, I think I’ve created a character with a strong – albeit very confused – voice which remains very much her as she delves into her past, trying to work out whether her present would be better or worse, had her childhood sweetheart not been ripped from her life. It’s a situation that might not be exactly relatable to, but I’m sure everyone has something in their past that they’d like to do differently.

My previous book series, which features the zombie apocalypse, so of course no one has been through that before, but I hope readers can relate to some of the characters included in the plots…even if they aren’t always the smartest or the most likeable at times!

“Will you marry me?”

Four words I’ve waited my whole life to hear. Four words I was sure would change my life forever…and they did. Just not in the way I expected.

Finding out my extremely gorgeous rock star boyfriend was about to propose had the complete opposite effect I thought it would. Rather than catapult me into a future I’ve always wanted, it plunged me back to a past I tried to forget.

Now I can’t get him out of my head. I can’t help but wonder what could have been, how our lives would have ended up if he didn’t leave me behind, a shattered mess.

All these memories are dangerous. They’re bringing my past back to ruin my future. And worst of all, they’re taking me right back to him, my childhood sweetheart, my first love…my biggest regret.

Enjoy an Excerpt

“Will you marry me?”

They were the words I’d wanted to hear my entire life. Didn’t every girl fantasize over the perfect man buying the perfect ring and getting down on one knee in the most romantic way possible, before telling them they loved them so much they wanted to spend the rest of their life with them?

I knew I certainly had.

Me and my best friend Cici used to talk about it all the time. We used to plan our dresses, the music, the flowers—every part of the ceremony down to the very last detail. Of course, the man didn’t really matter. We were young enough and naïve enough to believe we would magically meet the perfect man without even trying.

And I really thought I had. I really, truly believed my dream had come true.

Me and Danny had begun our love story in a very typical fashion—our eyes had met across a bar, where we’d had long, lingering eye contact, sparking all kinds of emotions within me. The only difference between my story, and that of every other rom-com ever, was that Danny was a genuine up-and-coming rock star, playing on a fairly big stage, and I was a fan who already felt a lot of love for this man. I’d been admiring him from afar ever since I first heard their album a year or so before.

I certainly hadn’t expected it to ever go any further than that moment, so when he came and joined me at the bar later on for a drink, despite being mobbed by other members of the audience, I felt like my entire life had been leading me up to that moment. I felt like everything I’d experienced had drawn me closer to Danny, the love of my life. Here was a gorgeous man who was destined to be famous, and who could have any girl in the world hanging off of his arm, talking to me, asking me questions, and actually showing me interest.

It seemed like a dream—one I was terrified to wake up from.

As he flicked his wavy auburn hair from his warm, chocolaty eyes, and he gave me that smile that had already melted the hearts of the nation, I thought for a dreaded, wonderful second that he was going to kiss me in front of all of those people. But after a few beats of pure terror, he didn’t. Instead he handed me his phone number, and he asked if I would like to go on a date with him.

Me—boring old Charlotte aka Lottie Jones—on a date with Danny Boreom, drummer of the now very famous band Jax. It didn’t seem real.

Yet, it was real, and it did happen.

It was the start of my real life.

After a night out on the town where he well and truly wined and dined me, he walked me home to my tiny flat, which must have looked ridiculous compared to the mansion I now know he lived in with the rest of the band at the time, and he finally kissed me. As his lips met mine, I felt myself flying on top of the world—he was an amazing kisser, and there seemed to be an endless chemistry between us. One I never wanted to end.

Breathless and turned on by the power of his mouth, I invited him inside. Although he coolly and calmly turned me down, it was still the best night of my entire life, made even better by a phone call the next day to say that he only didn’t come inside with me because he wanted to be something real. He didn’t want our love to end with a one-night stand, he actually wanted us to develop, and for him to become my boyfriend.

Fast forward three and a half years and we were blissfully living together, grazing by every day happily and easily. Although he was away for a lot of the year touring, it didn’t seem to bother us. We were so strong and so solid with what we had, nothing would get in our way.

It was perfect, still a dream come true, and that intense chemistry hadn’t burned down one bit.

Which made it even weirder that my reaction to Cici telling me that Baz—another member of the band—had just told her that he’d been engagement ring shopping with Danny, wasn’t one of pure joy.

“What…what do you mean?” I asked, my heart racing frantically in my chest. I could tell that my voice was breathless and kind of terrified, but my mind was spinning too fast for me to be able to do anything about it.

“Aren’t you happy?” She giggled. “I thought you’d be over the moon to finally be Mrs. Boreom.”

“No, no, I am,” I half lied. The idea had always been at the edge of my thoughts. I knew Danny was the one for me, and despite all the car crash relationships around us, we’d even managed to survive the fallout of him becoming mega famous. It helped that I had no interest in the spotlight and I did everything I could to avoid it, but even despite all of that, I felt like it proved we could go the distance, and be together forever. So why wasn’t I excited for us to take the next step? “It’s just a bit of a shock, that’s all.”

But that was normal, right? Everyone freaked out at first when they learned they were going to become someone’s wife…didn’t they?

Of course, I already knew that wasn’t true. I’d already been proposed to once in my life before, and that time, I didn’t hesitate one bit. Panic didn’t even come into the equation, I was happy, over the moon at the thought of becoming his wife. This was nothing like that had been. I felt completely different.

For the first time in a very long time, I allowed myself to think about Joe again, and almost the second I allowed that vault to open in my mind, I felt myself fall into a tailspin. As his face filled my brain once more, it was almost as if the last five years hadn’t happened at all, and I was still his proud girlfriend, waiting to be his wife.

As the wound reopened, I could barely hear what Cici was saying. I felt like I was gaping, exposed, and extremely vulnerable all over again, and I did what I’d always done when I was younger when things got too difficult for me. I started to talk to Joe in my mind.

Where are you now? What became of you? What happened to your life?

It was so strange to have gone from the closest people in the world, to absolutely nothing, and I struggled to imagine that he’d changed one bit. Of course I had, my life was completely different, but I couldn’t think of Joe without viewing him as the other half of me. The boy that I’d adored, and the one I never thought would leave my side.

“I…I’ve got to go,” I finally announced to my friend. “I’ll speak to you later, okay?” And then I hung up the phone, without even waiting for her to answer. I knew I was being rude, acting more than a little strange, but I needed some time. I needed to be alone with my thoughts to try and process all of this.

So how I found myself sitting at my computer with my fingers running along the keys, I wasn’t quite sure.

Don’t press anything, I willed myself. As soon as you do, everything will change.

Since we had gone our separate ways, I hadn’t contacted Joe once, and with the rising of social media, I hadn’t looked him up either. I just couldn’t face it. He was like an imaginary fantasy in my mind now, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to ruin that with reality. What if he was married now? Or into drugs or something? His life could have gone in any direction, and I wasn’t sure I really wanted to find out which one.

Plus, my life really was amazing now. Why would I want to even consider risking that? I had a gorgeous, passionate man who actually wanted to be with me forever, even though he was about ten leagues above me. I had a teaching job I loved, and friends that would do anything for me. That was a hell of a lot more than most people had!

In the end I forced myself to stand up and to move away from the computer screen before it lured me in. I couldn’t do it; I just wasn’t willing to take that step into the unknown. It terrified me far too much. But as I wandered aimlessly from room to room, I realised I couldn’t just do nothing, either. I needed to calm this beast within me, which meant delving into my past whether I liked it or not.

I stood at the bottom of the attic ladder, wondering what awaited me up there. When me and Danny decided to buy a place together—well, he put the most money in, of course, but we still classed it as ‘ours’—I shoved everything related to my old life away, not wanting to even consider it. But it was always a comfort, knowing it was there, knowing I could access it at any moment if I really wanted to.

And I could feel myself finally taking that step.

I creaked up the ladder, feeling my heart thump and my palms sweat with nerves. This was a mistake, I knew it was, but at the same time I couldn’t stop.

There would be no way for me to get married without taking this step anyway. Right now, things were comfortable, but if I was ever going to have a future with Danny, I needed to confront my past first. At least, that was my excuse and I was sticking to it.

Danny knew about Joe anyway. Well, he’d been told some of it, the very basics, so I supposed I was probably going to have to confess all before we finally took the plunge. With that thought in mind, I tore open the first box I stumbled across, and I ended up looking at the few photographs I had of me and Joe when we were very young, when we first met…

About the Author:Samie Sands is the author of the AM13 Outbreak series, published by Limitless Publishing. She’s also had short stories included inAmazon best selling anthologies and work featured on Wattpad. Lottie Loves is her first book in the contemporary romance genre.

To find out more, please check out samiesands.com.

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