Best Friend Extraordinaire

"I just loooovvvve Billy Joe!"

I heard this so many times while my beta readers read the manuscript of True Blue Forever that I ended up putting it in the book itself. In typical Billy Joe Dubose style, he tells Jeana, "Yeah, everybody loves Billy Joe. It's a tough job, but somebody's gotta do it."

Here's six sentences to show you a little bit of why Jeana loves him.

He handed it to her and she tore off the paper to reveal a framed sketch of herself, and Jeana gasped as she realized she actually remembered the day depicted: a scorcher in late August the summer they were twelve. They’d been spraying each other with the hose, and her shirt was drenched and clinging to her budding breasts. She was pointing the nozzle at an unseen Billy Joe, laughing with her head thrown back and leaves caught in the dripping ringlets of her hair.

“You never gave a damn about how you looked,” he said, “and I’ve always thought you were the most beautiful creature on the face of the Earth. That was the day I finally got up the nerve to tell you how I felt about you, or I thought I had anyway. I remember watching your face while you were laughing, and I knew I couldn’t stand it if things ever got awkward between us because you didn’t feel the same way about me, so I chickened out and told myself that being your best friend was better than not having you at all.”

As always, you can find my books here. Please also check out the other Six Sentencers here, especially my BFF Lee Ann Ward.

And this time the hunk featured in the picture is my adorable son TJ when he was sixteen--the absolute embodiment of Billy Joe. Everybody loves him too, especially me.

~Stay true to yourself and your dreams will come true!

Meet My Blue-Eyed Yankee

This week's six introduces you to Mickey Royal, one of the three boys who fell in love with Jeana at the fifth grade honors program. This scene takes place well into the book and gives a few things away, but it does such a great job of showing just how driven Mickey is about everything important to him that I had to use it. This is also one of those times I'm grateful that I write really, really long sentences!

After watching Mickey crush the ball repeatedly one night, the park manager asked him if he played anywhere locally. When he learned Mickey would be playing for the University of South Alabama in the fall, the manager offered him access to the cages late at night, along with a pass-key so he wouldn’t have to use any money. In return, Mickey promised to get the man tickets to the Jags’ games.

Mickey stayed in the cage every night until he was so exhausted that he thought he might be able to sleep in the bed where he’d made love to Jeana without the memories torturing him with the ghostly touch of her hands on his skin, teasing him with the scent of her hair on his pillow, and mocking him in the dark with the whispered promises she hadn’t meant.

It wasn’t something he could talk about with his mom or anyone else. The only person who would have understood why he went there was the reason he had to go.

You can find all my books here. Please also check out the other Six Sentencers here, especially my BFF Lee Ann Ward and critique partner Stephanie Lawton.

Oh, and feel free to drool over those legs in the picture, but don't get your hopes up. They belong to my husband and still look that good. You may envy me now. ;-)


~Stay true to yourself and your dreams will come true!

Premature Expatiation

Yep, I jumped the gun on my last post. Went off half-cocked. Shot from the hip. Belabored this metaphor way too much . . .

ANYWAY! I decided that I should have started with an excerpt from the prologue of True Blue Forever that would introduce all four main characters and what ties them together. So, although I've already shown the girl my heroine grows up to be, here's a glimpse of her as a child. This scene takes place at the fifth grade honors program, and Jeana has just recited a poem she wrote.

Three of Jeana’s listeners were captivated by the girl who recited with such presence the words she had written. Eleven-year-old boys are notorious for hating girls, and yet three of them sat on metal folding chairs in the stuffy, overcrowded room permeated with the smell of corn dogs they would be served later for lunch and felt their hearts quicken at the luminescence of Jeana’s smile. They knew this girl was special, and each of them fell in love with her. Eleven-year-old love that could be felt but not admitted. Not yet, anyway.

And the three boys shared a thought: Someday, she’ll be my girl.

You can find all my books here and the other Six Sentencers here. My favorites are my BFF Lee Ann Ward and critique partner Stephanie Lawton, whose dirty mind I'm sure had a field day with the title of this post and the resulting idioms. ;-)

~Stay true to yourself and your dreams will come true!

Showing with Six Sentences

Welcome to my virgin post for Six Sentence Sunday!

I guess the best place for me to start is at the beginning (what a novel concept--bad pun intended!) so my first offering is from my first book, True Blue Forever. It’s classified as YA, but it’s really a coming-of-age novel with a nostalgic look back at first loves, first kisses, lifelong friendships, heartbreak, and some really tough choices the teenage characters have to make. And the setting is so Southern you can practically feel the humidity and smell the magnolias.

I think the best way to introduce The Blueness is by offering excerpts that show what makes each of the four main characters special. First up is our sixteen-year-old heroine, Miss Jeana Lee Russell—future valedictorian and proud band nerd.

“Don’t you know how incredible you are?” Mickey’s eyes searched her face and slowly widened. “You don’t, do you? God, you’re like a perfect work of art, and you don’t even know it.”

Jeana had never thought of herself as even close to beautiful, but now—looking into Mickey’s amazing eyes so full of his love for her—she had no choice but to believe it. Even if nobody else ever thought she was beautiful, she knew Mickey did, and that was all that mattered to her.

You can find all my books here, and please also check out the other Six Sentencers, especially my BFF Lee Ann Ward and writing bud Stephanie Lawton, who introduced me this fun promotional tool.


~Stay true to yourself and your dreams will come true!