Title: Always
Author: Amanda Weaver
Genre: Contemporary romance-age 20-30.
Publish Date: April 15, 2014
Publisher: Independently Published
Cover by: AngstyG/ www.angstyg.com
Event organized by: Literati Author Services, Inc.
~ Book Synopsis ~
From the moment they meet, their connection is perfect in every way but one.
It’s New Year’s Eve, 2006, and Justine James is fronting her dead-end band for a less-than-adoring crowd. But there’s one person there who sees what she could be—one person who changes everything for her.
Dillon Pierce clawed his way up from the LA streets with no one to count on but his best friend, Ash. Their years of struggle finally pay off when their band, Outlaw Rovers, gets signed and their single takes off. With Ash as the magnetic lead singer and Dillon as the band’s musical soul, they’re destined for greatness, provided Dillon can keep Ash from self-destructing first.
Dillon might not be fronting Outlaw Rovers, but he’s always been the only one Justine sees. She’s followed his career from afar and when he shows up at her crummy New Year’s Eve gig, nothing will stop her from meeting him. They forge an intense connection, rapidly moving from friends to musical soul mates. Justine wants much more, but she’s not willing to climb over groupies and industry bottom-feeders to make it happen. Dillon becomes a fixture in her life, but she has to figure out how to keep him out of her heart.
Outlaw Rovers begins to implode as Justine’s star is on the rise. The years that follow bring equal parts fame and ruin. For Justine, a new love supplants her old heartbreak, and Dillon has to reboot his life after losing nearly everything that matters. Despite the odds, Dillon and Justine remain devoted friends and musical collaborators. After all the missed chances, wrong turns and painful detours, can they finally find the happiness together that seemed destined from the start?
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Excerpt
From Chapter 3:
The steel gate clanged behind her. “Justine, wait.”
Justine spun around to face Dillon. He was breathing hard from sprinting after her.
“That is not what I came here for!” She stabbed a finger towards the backstage entrance. “I’m not some fucking groupie who’s happy to wait in line just to give you a blow job!”
He held up both hands as he moved closer. “I know that. I know you’re not. And that’s not what I wanted from you when I asked you here.”
“Right. I forgot. You wanted to talk about music.”
“Yes, I did.” He stepped closer, into the pool of light from the streetlight behind her. His eyes were wide, his pupils tiny pinpricks, and he was still breathing hard, harder than he should have been from just chasing after her.
He’s lit, Justine thought miserably. Could the night become any more of a cliché?
“So where were we going to fit in the rock and roll? Before the sex but after the drugs?”
He sighed and raked a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry. I was hanging out with Ash after the show and things got a little crazy. You know how it is.”
She laughed, short and humorless. “Yeah, I know how it is.”
“Listen, I still want to hang out with you.”
“I’m not waiting around until the coke wears off and the girls go home—”
“Not tonight,” he cut her off. “It’s too crazy back there and I meant it when I said I want to talk to you. I do. But not here, like this.”
Justine looked down at her feet while she thought about it. She was a smart girl and the smart thing to do would be to turn around and go home. But she also knew she and Dillon had something. Music, for sure. Maybe something else, too. It was the “something else” that made her nervous. She was attracted to him, she couldn’t lie to herself about it. But she didn’t want him like this, like that girl in his dressing room had him, and not if it wasn’t going to matter to him.
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About the Author
Like many writers, Amanda Weaver spent her childhood constantly telling stories. College steered her in a different direction and into a successful career as a designer. Several years ago, she picked up writing again strictly as a hobby, to blow off some creative steam. One thing led to another, National Novel Writing Month happened, and here we are.
Amanda Weaver grew up in Florida and now lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband, daughter and two crazy cats.
Social Media
Website: http://www.amandaweavernovels.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AWeaverWrites
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Amanda-Weaver/642963329073960
Pinterest (inspiration boards for current and future projects): http://www.pinterest.com/AWeaverWriter/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7855753.Amanda_Weaver?from_search=true
Deleted Scene:
This used to live somewhere in Chapter 6. In the end, it didn’t serve to move the story forward so it got the axe. But I really did love the scene. It said a lot about the dynamics of the characters at this point in the story, Dillon and Ash sharing this intimate creative moment together onstage while Justine watches from the wings every night and falls in love with Dillon over and over:
Justine took a long swig from her water bottle. One of many lessons she’d learned on the road was that if she didn’t get serious about hydration when she came off stage, she’d be sorry the next day. Playing a concert every other night, sometimes every night, had been an amazing trial by fire. She’d learned how to play to crowds of all kinds, ones who wanted to hear her and ones who had no interest at all. She’d figured out how to draw them in, seduce them, own them. It was a pity she didn’t have better music to offer them, but she did the best she could with what she was singing. Sometimes it was all in the delivery.
In those back-to-back dates, she’d also figured out how to survive on the road. Her voice was less fragile than some, but she was still prone to overuse and exhaustion. She figured out the hard way to avoid smoky rooms and not to over-exert herself off stage. And water. She could never drink enough water to replace what she lost on stage. She’d also learned that drinking and drugs were a death sentence for her performance. She was no good for singing if she did either one. She’d lost her taste for both after watching how it owned Ash and Dillon.
Her good sense told her she should be resting in her dressing room or on the bus, unwinding after her set. Instead, she was hovering in the darkness of the wings, just to watch something she’d seen dozens of times at this point.
She rarely watched Outlaw Rovers play their whole set, but she never missed Valley of the Years. Dillon wrote it, of course. He wrote all their songs. At its heart, it was a rock ballad, but he’d written an acoustic guitar intro for two that he and Ash played together. For the audience, it was a bit of a stunt. Ash, who sang and never played, would strap on an acoustic, and Dillon would trade his electric for an acoustic, too. The crowds ate it up. But Justine heard it for what it was—a lovely composition, so nuanced and layered it almost sounded classical. Dillon played the meaty part; Ash’s abilities lent themselves to a strictly supporting role. But they were so good together, perfectly balanced.
When they played the duet, she could feel the weight of the long years of their friendship. Facing each other onstage, spinning out the delicate, interlocking chords, it was like watching them speak without words. Every performance found Justine in the wings, holding her breath as it unfolded, watching them exchange glances, sly smiles and silent cues.
Most of the time, though, she couldn’t take her eyes off Dillon. He was born to play the guitar. It seemed like an extension of his body. Watching his hands on the strings was hypnotic. Listening to the way he made the song rise and fall, the notes wrapping around her and moving through her, was something that never got old.
When the duet began to wind down, a roadie came out to take Ash’s guitar and he made his way to the mic. Dillon wrapped up the intro, bringing it to a heart-rending end, before another roadie came to trade off his acoustic for an electric. The song opened up into a surging rock ballad then, good in its own way, but in Justine’s opinion, the opening was the magic. The opening was when she fell in love with Dillon night after night.
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