the book also meant the world to me, as does her friendship.
To all my other Romancelandia friends on Twitter, who support me always and helped me power through my edits as the world burned: Thank you. Thank you. Special gratitude to my dear friends Therese Beharrie, Mia Sosa, Kate Clayborn, and Ainslie Paton.
My husband loves me without conditions, just as I am. With him at my back, anything is possible. Anything. My daughter is sunshine in my life, so dazzling and warm I have to blink sometimes. Every time I see her in my personal sky, my day turns bright. My mother has had one of the hardest stretches of her life recently, but she is still moving forward, still determined, and still so caring to the people she loves. Thank you for being my family, all of you, and thank you for loving me.
And, finally, to all the fanfic writers out there: I love you. For over a year, my anxiety meant I couldn’t seem to read published books, but I could still lose myself in your work. Hilarious stories, gut-punching stories with unparalleled angst, stories of such unbounded creativity and talent I could only read in awe—you offer them all to the world for free, and you saved my sanity (or at least its remaining shreds). A special shout-out to the Braime fandom, among whom I lurked for that year. You, uh, may see some signs of that throughout this manuscript? Just a guess. :-)
Excerpt from Slow Burn
Don’t miss Alex and Lauren’s unforgettable love story in
SLOW BURN
Coming Summer 2021
“NEXT TIME YOU GET IN A BAR FIGHT, DON’T BOTHER COMING back to the set, asshole,” Ron shouted. “Do you even realize what you’ve done? That kind of juvenile—”
By this point, the rant had entered—Alex craned his neck to catch a glimpse of Ron’s Rolex—its tenth minute. And counting. The amount of blustering tedium the Gods of the Gates showrunner could pack into such a short span of time was impressive, truly.
Alex would applaud if he weren’t too busy fighting both a yawn and his desire to nut-punch his boss.
Ron’s nostrils flared with each harsh exhalation, but he made an attempt to lower his voice. “Legally, given the amount of negative publicity you’ve generated with your drunken stupidity, we had several avenues of financial and professional recourse available to us, including—”
The showrunner was still speaking, but Alex had stopped listening. Instead, he was studying the woman sitting approximately five feet to Ron’s left.
Sharp features, including a beaky, crooked nose. Bright eyes. Very round body with comparatively skinny limbs. Short as hell.
His newfound nanny looked like a bird.
A silent one, though. Not a chirp to be heard despite the advent of dawn.
As soon as Ron got word of the events that had transpired overnight, he’d demanded a meeting first thing in the morning. Even though Alex had left the Gates set near midnight and departed the local jail’s holding cell maybe an hour ago. He’d barely had time to take a shower and grab an apple by the hotel’s front desk before returning to work.
The three of them could have met in a private trailer, but the showrunner preferred public humiliation. So they’d gathered outdoors, near a ragged stockade, where hundreds of Alex’s coworkers could conceivably overhear his disgrace, and so could she.
This pale-cheeked stranger. Whoever she was. Whatever she was.
His eyes were bloodshot, his right eyelid swollen, his vision blurry. If he squinted in the early-morning fog, that lank, ash-brown hair ruffling around the woman’s soft jaw might as well be feathers.
Yes, definitely a bird. But what kind, what kind . . .
She was white, so maybe an albatross? It certainly worked on a metaphorical level.
No, albatrosses were too long and narrow for the likes of her.
Once Ron had begun his lecture, she’d perched on a makeshift bench several feet away from both men. Quiet and still, she sat silhouetted before the chaos of their faux-battlefield set as it sprawled along the Spanish shore. Yet somehow, even amid the large-scale staged destruction and ceaseless bustle of extras and crew members, she stood out in sharp relief. Incongruously small in stature, if not circumference. Calm. Avian.
The ocean breeze flipped up the hem of Alex’s linen tunic, and he absently batted it back down, wishing he’d brought his woolen cloak to set. A bird-watching guide, too, to help him pinpoint the exact species she resembled.
Also noise-canceling headphones, because Ron was still railing at him—something about contractual obligations and my cousin Lauren and