Ashby Sebastian Sterling-Haynes has had a lot of boyfriends, but he's never found the one.
The only person he can form an attachment to is his fourteen year old niece, and even that is in jeopardy when babysitting her cat goes all kinds of wrong.
Veterinarian, Connor Lawson is much happier working with animals than with people. He has deliberately returned home and to the Summer House he recalled from childhood holidays for peace and quiet and the chance to heal from wounds no one would ever see.
When his next door neighbor comes into the practice with a cat that has been in a fight he hides in his office because this Ashby guy is all kinds of dangerous. Too hot, too rich, too titled, and way too sexy for his own good.
Can two men who refuse to believe in love ever learn that love is the easy part of the journey to forever?
SUMMER HOUSE - AN ENGLISH HOUSE STORY #1
EXCERPT
“You missed the photos.” Connor advised. “And the church,” he added with a smirk. Mick and the vicar there had never really seen eye to eye, something about a beer and a horseshoe. Connor never liked to ask.
“Course I did,” Mick said. “Don’t think much on hanging around the church at the moment. Why’s your face looking like a slapped arse?”
Connor ran a hand under his collar and rolled his neck. That had been a startling change in direction and he didn’t have the time to filter his reply. “Don’t want to be here,” he muttered.
“So what you doing here?”
“Lost a bet with Rachel.”
Mick nodded. “Poker?”
Connor wished it was that exciting. “Scrabble.”
Mick snorted a laugh and Rachel looked their way. “Scrabble?”
“She hid the J.”
“Was there drink involved?”
“Two bottles of wine.”
Mick narrowed his eyes. “Tricksy thing she is, and just how much of that was poured for you so you wouldn’t see her hiding the tile?”
Connor thought back to the night last week. There was two bottles, one white, one red, both very nice, and two glasses. There were definitely two glasses and he could picture Rachel filling them. Well, filling his at least. And he’d had a fifty-point word if only he’d picked out the J. He would have won.
“Not a lot,” Connor admitted.
“There you go, then. You were played, suck it up, lad.” Mick sat next to Connor and adjusted his pint of cider so it rested on the seat between them. “Wanted to talk to you actually.”
“Oh no, is Bessie okay?” Bessie was an ex-working Border collie, fifteen years old and sharp as a tack mentally, but slowing down physically. Mick had been to see him a year back about her not eating and cancer had been dealt with but she wasn’t getting any younger. Every time he met up with Mick he expected to be having the conversation about whether she’d passed on in her sleep, or worse that Connor had to help her pass on.
“Bessie’s fine. Not work, Vettrin’rry, it’s about the old house, I’m selling her on.”
Connor’s stomach sank. Mick was selling the place that held so many memories for Connor of many a hot summer spent in Upper Fordham as a kid.
“Oh” was all he could manage. Last time he’d been up there, he’d been sad to see it falling into disrepair, but Mick wasn’t getting any younger and he didn’t have kids, just his dogs. The place wasn’t Mick’s first residence, just the old house that he’d inherited from a cousin, or some such convoluted relative, just before Christmas.
“Garden’s a mess, inside’s old, but you said you like her and I’ll give you first refusal if you want it now. Agent said it’s worth one twenty the way it stands, maybe a buyer’d knock it down and use the stone.”
“What? No, they can’t—”
Mick interrupted. “Forty-seven thousand and it’s yours s’long as you fix her up and live in her for at least five years. Tha’s’ the deal.”
What advice would you give a new writer just starting out?
Read as much as you can, and as much in your genre as possible. I read at least a couple books a week in my genre. I also read National Geographic magazine, various Internet news sites, and of course the back of every sauce bottle I find. Jokes aside, I’m not sure you can ever write a story if you haven’t read stories and you learn structure, and plot devices, and find out what you love about character.
Do you ever suffer from writer’s block? If so, what do you do about it?
Generally I would say no to this. I have periods of time when the writing isn’t there, but they are few and far between. Sometimes I feel like I don’t want to sit and write and then I make myself sit at the PC and somehow that is the trick and the words flow. So my advice is to write through it. You may delete what you wrote, it may take you in new directions, but at least you wrote.
What comes first, the plot or characters?
For me it could be either. In my latest release, The Summer House, I had hero 1 very firmly in my head, he is a Veterinarian with a past that has made him wary of certain guys, and has made him shut himself off to love. Hero 2 was a little more sketchy and he came out of the research trip I took to the Cotswolds. So the story I had of Hero 1, and his return to the place his parents used to take him every summer, was set in stone, and hero 2 became who he was because of storyline and the facets of hero 1. Sometimes it is different and I have two characters set in stone and the story evolves around them. So, no, I don’t have a definitive answer – it’s a bit like the chicken and the egg!
When did you first consider yourself a writer?
I have always been a writer. That part of me, since I can first remember, has always been there. I started by writing (or rewriting!) classic fairytales with princes and princesses, I discovered humour in stories at school, I wrote fan fiction for my favourite TV Show. But all of this is constant writing, not just on paper but in my head. I have a head full of stories!
The bigger question is when did I first consider myself an author, although why I gave author a different definition to writer I don’t know. ROFL. I first really felt like an author when I wrote books like The Gallow’s Tree, and The Decisions We Make. Books that were published some time after my first books. Clearly I am a deep thinker and it took a while to think I deserved to be called an author. Go figure!
What is your work schedule like when you are writing?
ROFL. This is an interesting question. I can sometimes write twelve hour days, a mix of writing, marketing, chatting to authors, writing blog posts and so on. Mostly though I write when my son is at school so that there is peace – he does tend to demand attention when he is home, and can be quite loud. I write at my desk in my office, and I try to clear a minimun of 3000 words a day Monday to Thursday. Friday is my morning off for girlie coffee meet ups, and the weekends I write as much as I can. I aim to clear around 15-20,000 words a week and most of the time I manage it.
I write with a small group of friends always at the other end of a private Facebook sprint group, and then there is Meredith Russell. She is my online bestie and we are generally online with each other, just sitting there, sometimes not talking, but always knowing we are there for each other. Very comforting.
I do break for ten minutes for lunch, and my writing is fuelled by tea and the resulting need to wee! ROFL... I suffer from shoulder and neck pain directly linked to writing, so I visit a chiro every two weeks L.
Over all though, when I write and the story is flowing it is the best natural high you could have. Wonderful.
What do you like to do when you are not writing?
Spending time with my close family, reading and watching movies J
How many books have you written? Which is your favorite?
Oh this is like choosing between my kids. ROFL. I have written something like eighty published stories. I love some more than others. But once they are published they are kind of *done* in my head, and then I am in love with my newest project. I bet a lot of authors feel like that. The ones that other people seem to like the most are the Texas series, the Sanctuary series, Deefur and of course The Christmas Throwaway.
Do you hear from your readers much? What do they say?
I hear from readers all the time, and they say some of the nicest things. I find it hard to believe all the nice stuff, but then I am english so I don’t do praise very well... ROFL.
I love ALL my readers and love chatting to as many as I can.
What did you want to be when you grew up?
Lots of things. A princess in a big dress, a wife, a mother, an astronaut, a pilot, but most of all I wanted to be a writer.
I am the luckiest woman alive.
RJ Scott has been writing since age six, when she was made to stay in at lunchtime for an infraction involving cookies. She was told to write a story and two sides of paper about a trapped princess later, a lover of writing was born.
As an avid reader herself, she can be found reading anything from thrillers to sci-fi to horror. However, her first real true love will always be the world of romance where she takes cowboys, bodyguards, firemen and billionaires (to name a few) and writes dramatic and romantic stories of love and passion between these men.
With over seventy titles to her name and counting, she is the author of the award winning book, The Christmas Throwaway. She is also known for the Texas series charting the lives of Riley and Jack, and the Sanctuary series following the work of the Sanctuary Foundation and the people it protects.
Her goal is to write stories with a heart of romance, a troubled road to reach happiness, and most importantly, that hint of a happily ever after.
www.tumblr.com/blog/rjscott (some NSFW (not safe for work) photos)
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