by Huss, JA
That’s what I love most about our picture in the hallway.
I’m now part of their history and I spend a lot of time in the front of Sick Boyz Tattoos dreaming about how it could hang there for fifty years. And how one day, some girl dating one of my great grandchildren will stop there in the hallway and look at us.
And she might be a lost girl, like me. And she might say to herself… “I want that too.”
And maybe she is a smart-assy go-getter with pink hair like me. A girl with nothing left until she finds my future offspring who completes her and makes her feel wanted and special.
Vann winces. Because he’s still thinking about my little white lie. “Gramps really needs to hang up his apron. But you don’t have to eat it, ya know. You’re the only one who does.”
“I can’t disappoint your gramps. It’s our bonding time. I’m literally like two afternoon prune-juice breaks away from making him spill the whole story about how he got this house.”
He chuckles. “In your dreams. He’s leading you on. Trust me, we’ve all tried to get that story out of him. It’s not going to work. You’re just gonna eat prunes and oatmeal for six weeks and see way more old-man tattoos than you bargained for.”
That makes me smile and I lean in to Vann’s chest. Enjoying him. Enjoying our little break from the game that’s coming.
Because it is coming.
We know when to make a move. We’re just biding our time until everything is in place. We’re gonna clean up everyone’s money, make that trail impossible to follow, polish their reputations, and then… bam. We win.
Tony and Soshee are down in Key West right this very minute pulling it all together. And pretty soon—
“What did I just say?”
“What?” I ask.
“You’re thinking too loud. Stop it. You can’t save the world all by yourself, Belinda Baker. And you definitely can’t do it before the sun comes up. It’s practically illegal to save anything before the sun comes up.”
“Says who?”
“It’s just the law.”
I giggle. “The law, huh?”
“Yup.”
“Which one?”
“The Law of Starting Over. The Law of New Things. Pretty much all the laws of second chances state it explicitly.”
“Hmm. I don’t remember it being in those laws. And I’m a licensed expert in both starting over and second chances.”
“No.”
“Yes,” I laugh.
“No. That’s not true. This isn’t starting over. You’ve always belonged here.”
I reach up and place both my hands on either side of his face and fall into his easy gaze. Just get lost in those blue-eyes of his.
Then I kiss him. It’s a soft, slow kiss that only very familiar lovers know how to do properly. And they only happen when you’re immersed in bliss.
We haven’t been actual lovers for very long. Less than a week, actually.
But we are very familiar.
He rolls over on top of me and boxes me in with his forearms on either side of my head. So close to me, I can read the tiny circle words around the double X’s on his shoulders.
I’m obsessed with him. My love for Vann Vaughn feels very all-consuming.
It’s a sweet, sweet sick feeling in my stomach that makes me hungry for more.
It’s a simple love too. A cliché kind of love that comes from watching too many rom com movies. Pure. And innocent, but still sexy in a fun way.
The kind of love you only find when you fall for your best friend.
The kind of love that only comes along when you’re ready to accept that everything you’ve been craving has been right in front of you the whole time.
“And now a soft kiss,” I whisper. “—Aye, by that kiss, I vow an endless bliss.”
“Surrounded,” he adds. “On all sides.”
I am surrounded on all sides. Protected in every direction.
“You’re right,” I whisper. Kissing him again.
“I am?”
“Mmhm. That’s the lesson I needed to learn. I was never in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was always right where I was supposed to be.”
With him.
Have you read Rook & Ronin yet?
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END OF BOOK SHIT
Welcome to the End of Book Shit, Covid-19 Edition! Also, Mother’s Day Edition! It’s Mother’s Day, May 10, 2020 as I write this.
If, by some weird set of circumstances, you find yourself reading this going what the fuck is an End of Book Shit, then I know you read this book out of order! Bossy Tony is book 6 in the Bossy Brothers series and it not a standalone! lol Also these EOB’s are never edited, so you can focus on my typos if you’d like. But I don’t give a fuck.
Anyway, this is the EOBS and you all know what it is. Just my rambling thoughts on the story. And I actually have a lot of thoughts about this one.
First of all – fuck this Coronavirus. I was originally planning on releasing this book in April. I think the original date was April 15, actually. And by the time we were all pretty certain that this virus was going to be a major disruption, and possibly even cause the end of the world, I was about 60% done with the book. I very close to finishing. But shit kinda went off the rails and I just stopped writing and started making candles! Hah.
BTW – if you want to win a cool bookish candle, and you’re reading this pretty close to release day (which is supposed to be May 12, but my promo company literally just informed me a few hours ago that they have clients who have books stuck in Amazon limbo for going NINE DAYS NOW! So who knows? This book might actually release with Pretty Nightmare on May 26 by the time it goes live!) – but I’ll be doing a ton of giveaways for these special bookish candles I made while I was NOT writing Bossy Tony. And they are very pretty, and smell divine, and each have their own custom label! If you stop by any of my socials or my website, there will probably be a post with info.
So that’s the first thing. I wrote this book during a very strange time in the history of the world, ya know? It pretty much happened to all of us. And that’s not common. That’s something along the lines, as far as natural disasters go, like a fucking asteroid hitting the earth.
But I didn’t really mind the break in writing. It actually gave me a lot of time to think about Vann. Because even though I knew this was a book about TONY, I was pretty sure when I wrote Bossy Alonzo that I wanted Vann and Belinda to be a thing.
This choice was kind of a risk in romance. Um… romance readers have very specific expectations about the couples in the stories. There are lots of rules and I was definitely breaking them.
But I was so convinced that Tony and Belinda were not meant for each other, and that she was meant for Vann, and Tony was meant to be with an “Ameci” girl, that I finally decided that I was just going to write my book my way, and if that bothered readers who have strict rules about what they expect in a romance story, then… oh well. I can’t change the story in my head to fit other people’s expectations.
That never works.
And in fact, I was listening to Veronica Roth (of Divergent fame) on a webcast a few weeks ago when her new book, The Chosen Ones, released. I felt super bad for all the authors who were releasing books during the first few weeks of Corona—especially first-time trad published authors, because this book-release timeline, for them, was like… years in the making. They can’t just say—OK. Let’s postpone this book for a month, like we indies can. So I was paying super close attention to the authors in the young adult sci-fi fantasy world, trying to support them by buying their books and audiobooks.
So this webcast that Veronica Roth did was replacing her book tour. And she literally had to pull the virtual tour together in like a week’s time. So that’s what this was. One of the webcasts she did for her virtual tour. And one of the last questions –I don’t remember whi
ch webcast it was specifically; she was asked a question like—how do you deal with reader disappointment? I think we all know how Divergent ended. lol. And some people were upset. But, so her answer was “I always make sure that the loudest voice in my head is always my own.” Because she knew by the end of book one, in Divergent series, that (spoiler alert) her MC was going to die at the end of the series. And that’s not typically how books end in her genre. lol
And she said she debated whether or not to change that. And maybe she even came up with some alternate endings. But let me let tell you, as a very experienced writer, once you get that idea in your head—it’s real. It’s really hard to change things. This is why I don’t “normally” write scenes in books out of order. Because my story likes to change on me. And I try not to get too attached to scenes in my head so I can change them if I feel it to be necessary.
But some scenes cannot be changed, no matter how hard you want to change them and make readers happier. No matter how much Veronica Roth knew that she was going to upset her readers, by this point this was just the fuckin’ story. And it can’t be changed. Or if you force the change, it ruins everything.
And maybe there are readers out there who say – “Well, she DID ruin the series for ME.”
Which sucks. I get it. My favorite series of all time is Altered Carbon by Richard K Morgan. And I’m just gonna not comment on the Netflix version of it. Because I fucking hated season two. Season One was “Fine” I would not call it great, but it was “fine.” But season two I just turned off. It was not the story I fell in love with.
But… lots of people did still like Season Two. They probably had not read the book, so they didn’t give a fuck that the plot was all twisted up. And I did. But I’m not really the important person in this, right? As a viewer of the TV show. The writers are the ones in charge and if this was their story, fuck it. That was their story.
So even though Veronica Roth knew people were going to be upset, this was her story. And in the end, she needed to live with herself after it was over. There is nothing worse than writing a story you hate. Especially if it’s a series. It feels like such a waste of energy and time. And writing books is both an energy and a time suck. Like, it sucks your life away. There is no point writing books you hate.
So when those controversial scenes or plot twists come along, and you know in your heart that this is just how it goes, you, the author, need to respect that and do your thing.
You need to be the loudest voice in your head.
I didn’t have that level of angst with Bossy Tony. I definitely think having the two POV characters in a contemporary romance not hook up and get that HEA is atypical, but I didn’t kill anyone. No one cheated in this book. And I will fight you to the death if you say they did cheat. They didn’t.
So in the end I was still a little bit nervous about my unorthodox choices, but I’m super happy I did it this way. And I hope you enjoyed this little twist on the romance genre.
I always try and do something different. I do not write the same story over and over again. I try really hard to have something surprising or unconventional in my books. Every time. And that’s pretty hard now that I’ve written 75 of them.
And I had never told a story like this before, so I’m really happy with how Bossy Tony turned out and I hope you enjoyed it too.
There are two books left in the Bossy Series. Luke’s book and Zach’s book. Luke’s book will wrap up this whole mystery that started in Bossy Jesse and then Zach’s book will a surprise. :)
So I’m really happy that you’re still following along in this Bossy series and I hope you’re ready for the big ending.
And Pretty Nightmare, which is sorta related to the Bossy series in certain ways, will be releasing on May 26. Pretty Nightmare is book two in the Creeping Beautiful series.
Creeping Beautiful series has four books – BUT THEY ARE TWO SETS OF DUETS. So that big mystery I started in Creeping Beautiful will also wrap up by the end of Book Two, Pretty Nightmare. And then books three and four will move on with, not a new set of characters, but a new set of point of views.
I’m also starting ANOTHER series next week that will be releasing in early July. I’m not going to say too much about that. But it’s also a duet. And it’s going to be really angsty, and dirty, and sexy.
So you have that to look forward to, as well.
OK, I think that’s it for me. I’m going to go upload Bossy Tony and pray to the Amazon Corporate Gods that it doesn’t take NINE DAYS to go live!
Thank you for reading, thank you for reviewing, and I’ll see you in the next book!
Julie
JA Huss
P.S. – If you’re into YA sci-fi/fantasy the new Veronica Roth book, THE CHOSEN ONES, was super good! I really enjoyed the story and the narration on audiobook! Five stars from me!
Just in case you didn’t know - this Bossy Brothers Series is also connected to a few other series of mine and this is how all that plays out:
All the back story that Vann refers to in this book happened in the Rook & Ronin Series. Specifically, the books Panic and Spencer.
Rook and Ronin Series
Tragic
Manic - Vaughn Family and Sick Boyz first appears here.
Panic - Vaughn Family and Sick Boyz appear here.
Ford – Sasha Cherlin (age 12) and Merc first appear here
Spencer – James Fenici first appears here – Five is born. Vaughn Family and Sick Boyz appear here.
Have you read Rook & Ronin yet?
First Two Book FREE at:
Amazon US
Nook
Kobo
Apple
The Company - Rook & Ronin Spin-off – new entry point into the series
The Company – James and Vincent Fenici age 28, Sasha Cherlin age 13, Nick and Harper Tate age 18.
This is the full story of the “Santa Barbara Incident” where Adam and Donovan’s fathers die.
(MAJOR TIE-IN with Creeping Beautiful)
Meet Me In The Dark – Merc, Sasha Cherlin age 21, Sydney Channing (Company Girl like Indie and Sasha)
Three, Two, One – STANDALONE BOOK – Jax Barlow first appears
Wasted Lust – Sasha Cherlin, age 24, with Jax Barlow. (MAJOR TIE-IN with Creeping Beautiful)
Nick Tate, age 29, plays a major role and the rest of the Company characters also show back up.
First appearance of Angelica Fenici and “other Adam”.
First appearance of Max Barlow and “Madrid”.
Wasted Lust takes place DURING Creeping Beautiful. Specifically when Indie is 15 years old and the “Company falls” and when Nick meets Adam in Daphne, Alabama.
Vaughn Family and Sick Boyz appear here.
The Mister Series – Rook & Ronin/Company Spin-off – new entry point into the series
Mr. Perfect
Mr. Romantic – First appearance of the Silver Society – i.e. The Company
Mr. Corporate – First appearance of “Five”
Mr. Mysterious – Spencer’s daughters
Mr. Match – All the Rook & Ronin Kids come back to play.
Mr. Five (or just Five) – Ford’s son and Spencer’s daughter
Mr. & Mrs. – Ford and Spencer show back up with all the kids. Vaughn Family appears here.
The Bossy Brothers Series
Rook & Ronin/Company Spin-off – new entry point into the series
In to Her – STANDALONE BOOK – Logan first appears
Bossy Brothers: Jesse – First appearance of The Way – i.e. The Company
Bossy Brothers: Joey
Bossy Brothers: Johnny – Logan shows back up Indie first appears at age 14, Chek’s first appearance
Bossy Bride: Jesse and Emma – Chek and Wendy mentioned
Bossy Brothers: Alonzo – Chek and Wendy have a plot point. Angelica Fenici’s back story starts. Max Barlow mentioned and “Madrid” appears. Vaughn Family and Sick Boyz appear here.
Bossy Brothers: Tony - V
aughn Family and Sick Boyz first appears here.
Creeping Beautiful – Rook & Ronin and Company Spin-off – new entry point into the series
The complete story of Nick Tate, James and Vincent Fenici, “Wendy”, “Chek”, Indie Anna Accorsi, Angelica Fenici, Adam Boucher, Donovan and Carter Couture, Core McKay, and Nathan St. James.
Creeping Beautiful out now
Pretty Nightmare releasing May 26
Gorgeous Misery (book 3 2020)
Lovely Darkness (book 4 2021)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JA Huss is the New York Times Bestselling author of 321 and has been on the USA Today Bestseller's list 21 times in the past five years. She writes characters with heart, plots with twists, and perfect endings.
Her new sexy sci-fi romance and paranormal romance pen name is KC Cross and she writes novels and teleplays collaboratively with actor and screenwriter, Johnathan McClain.
Her books have sold millions of copies all over the world, the audio version of her semi-autobiographical book, Eighteen, was nominated for a Voice Arts Award and an Audie Award in 2016 and 2017 respectively. Her audiobook, Mr. Perfect, was nominated for a Voice Arts Award in 2017. Her audiobook, Taking Turns, was nominated for an Audie Award in 2018. Five of her books were optioned for a TV series by MGM television in 2018. And her book, Total Exposure, was nominated for a RITA Award in 2019.