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Excerpt Three - Day Three
LEAVE YESTERDAY BEHIND
by Lauren Linwood
order now:
Let's set the stage for today's excerpt:
Actress Callie
Chennault has been confronted by a knife-wielding stalker late one
night. He’s in love with Jessica, the character she’s played for a
decade. Callie decides to turn the tables and give him what he
wants—Jessica, at her sexiest.
Scroll down to read Excerpt 3 of 5
Callie Chennault vaulted to fame on the nighttime soap Sumner Falls,
but after a decade of playing the same role, she is ready for a new
acting challenge. When Callie is attacked by a stalker on the streets
of New York, she takes a leave of absence from the show and returns to
her roots in Aurora, Louisiana, to heal both physically and emotionally
and determine her next career move.
Excerpt 3
Former professional baseball pitcher Nick La Chappelle has also come to Aurora to lick his own wounds after a messy divorce. A Cy Young winner and one-time ESPN broadcaster, Nick longs for the quiet of a small town in order to write murder mysteries under a pen name. Sparks fly when Callie believes Nick is taking advantage of her great-aunt’s hospitality, but they resolve their differences—and surprise themselves by falling in love. Their bond is tested when both Nick and Callie become the focus of a serial killer nicknamed Lipstick Larry. Can they outwit a murderer bent on seeing them dead and survive to build a lasting relationship?
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Why me?
She’d never seen the need to use any type of bodyguard. For God’s sake, she was just a soap star. Soap fans were friendly. They didn’t really treat you like a movie star because you came into their homes every weekday. They thought they knew you. Fans considered you family. But fan was short for fanatic. She knew she’d just run into the motherf**ker of all fans. What would work? He said he wanted Jessica—so Callie would unleash her alter ego’s persona in all her glory. Maybe Jessica could get her out of this situation. Immediately, her posture changed. She tilted her head as she pressed her lips together, sealing the color. The Jessica juices began to flow. The flirtiness. The sexiness. The pout. “You are a very interesting man.” She ran a slender hand along the arm without the knife. Don’t think about the knife. “We need to get to know one another better,” she said huskily. Whenever Jessica wanted something, she turned on all her charm. “What’s your name? I want to know all about you.” She observed the uncertainty in his eyes. He’d been calling the shots a moment ago. Yet in the space of seconds, Jessica was now in charge. This creep may have thought he wanted Jessica, but he had a tiger by the tail. “Simon,” he whispered. “Oh, I love that name. Simon,” she purred. “It sounds strong. Masculine. Sexy.” She ran a manicured nail down his chest. He shuffled uncomfortably. Good. She’d hit the right button. She was in Jessica’s element. She couldn’t worry about not having a script. Flying by the seat of her pants with some knife-wielding fanatic. She was in full-blown character. Stay in control. Keep in the zone. Be Jessica. She moved into him, away from the wall. She became the aggressor, the one wanting something. He was the nervous one now. “I’m glad we ran into one another, Simon. Would you like to get a drink? I’m mad for whiskey sours these days. They make me . . . lose control.” “No,” he said unsteadily. He stepped back, but Callie moved right back into his space. She placed a hand on his arm. “Then what would you want to do?” She ran the back of her other hand along his cheek. “K-k-kiss you.” The thought revolted her, but she realized the hand with the knife had totally gone limp, as if he’d forgotten it was there. Keep going with the flow. But without a script, who knew where this train wreck was headed? She studied him a moment. She’d suck it up and kiss the bastard. Then somehow she’d get away. Maybe she could knee the creep in the groin to disable him. Or lightning would strike Stupid Simon dead. Really, really dead. “We barely know each other, Simon. Don’t you want to go somewhere quiet? We could talk awhile.” He frowned. “You barely knew Alec or Ricardo. That never stopped you before, Jessica.” She smiled seductively as she played with his lapel. “You know so much about me. I don’t know a thing about you.” “Would it make a difference?” he asked, a sad look haunting his eyes. She let Jessica consider his question. “Sometimes,” she answered. “I’m fond of money. I won’t hide that fact, Simon. Power. Position. I like a man with all those things.” “I can take care of you,” he said earnestly. “I can do it better than anyone because I love you more than all the others. Let me love you.” He put a hand behind her neck and pulled her close. Warning bells blasted in her head. The survival instinct of fight or flight kicked in, pouring adrenaline into her bloodstream. She willed herself to keep improvising. She’d done something like this a thousand times in acting class. She could do this. He lowered his head. She shut her eyes. Don’t think. Just do. He smelled of spearmint gum and Old Spice. She didn’t know they still made that. Her dad had worn the cheap aftershave for years. The scent threw her for a moment. Then his lips touched hers. She tightened her mouth as he clamped his arms around her. Where the hell was a cop in New York when you needed one? And then he pulled away. She didn’t realize she’d been holding her breath till she gulped at the air. “No. This isn’t right,” he said to himself, as if she wasn’t there. “It’s not supposed to be this way. I need to feel your love. I need to feel you.” Callie popped off, “It’s not like we can do the dirty right here on the street.” Immediately, she knew it was a mistake. She could tell by the shock on his face that she’d blown it. She’d had him believing that she was Jessica. Then big-mouth Callie Chennault blurted out from nowhere and ruined everything. She licked her lips and stepped smoothly back into Jessica. “We could go somewhere more private, Simon. I love a bed with satin sheets.” A hard look crossed his face. The non-descript little fan turned angry. Very angry. She knew all about angry. She’d run when this same light came into her father’s eyes. Callie took off, letting things slide from her shoulders to hit the pavement behind her, hoping they would trip him up. “Bitch!” he roared above the rain. She ran no more than fifteen yards when he caught her. His hand locked on her arm as he swung her around and smacked her hard. Her cheekbone exploded in pain. Before she could call out, he’d punched her hard in the gut, knocking the wind from her. He was dragging her. She was aware enough to feel her hip bumping along the pavement. Her eye had begun to swell, but she saw they’d entered an alleyway. They went a few yards before he lifted her, slamming her into the wall. Panic flooded her as he pressed against her, holding her wrists as he forced his tongue inside her mouth. She gagged and began to struggle, but her claustrophobia kicked in. She couldn’t breathe. The dark, tight space enveloped her. She thought she might pass out. The stinging was almost incidental. An afterthought in the back of her mind. Something was terribly wrong, but a break in her synapses wouldn’t let her brain process the information. Suddenly, her legs went rubbery. She slid down the wall. Simon moved away from her, and the cool of the night hit her. Her butt hit the concrete, and her vision started to blur as a burning sensation began along her side. “You’re like all the rest. You’re not really Jessica. You just pretend to be Jessica. You aren’t perfect at all.” She recognized the contempt in his voice as he walked away, his hand swinging by his side, the knife dripping. She was confused. It was blood. Her blood. It hit her. He’d stabbed her. More than once. She reached a hand up and touched herself. Blood flowed. Sticky. Messy. She needed help. Callie had never been more helpless—alone, in the dark, the thunder rumbling angrily as the rain continued to come down now in sheets. She could hear the rats scrambling through the garbage behind her. She couldn’t die. She wouldn’t die. She had too much left to do. Things began to fade to black. Not good. She needed to move where she would be seen. Could she stand? She tried and almost passed out. Okay, standing’s out. But she could crawl. She pushed herself to the alley’s entrance and then collapsed on the sidewalk. She was so tired. So cold. The warmth of Sun Burst pose no longer flowed through her. Every breath hurt, and she had to force herself to do it. Breathe. Breathe. In. Out. In. Out. She could hear Rodney Yee from her yoga DVDs encouraging her in his quiet tone. Breathe in. Breathe out. Follow the movement of your breath. But it hurt like hell, Rodney. Bet he never tried to practice yoga while bleeding profusely. She couldn’t inhale deeply. Instead, the air came in shallow spurts, like a panting dog in the sweltering heat of a Louisiana summer. She quit struggling. She knew it didn’t matter anymore. She wouldn’t make it. And it pissed her off to think that every obituary would shout that “Jessica Had Died.” Not Callie Chennault. Every picture accompanying every article would be of Jessica. Not her. She’d lost her identity in a character so long ago that no one knew the real her anymore. Even if someone passed by on foot, they wouldn’t stop for a bloody, limp Callie. She was a stranger, not the sophisticated beauty on the cover of In Style or Entertainment Weekly, the cool blond with the fiery lips and temperamental attitude. No, she would die alone on a New York sidewalk. A no one. Callie took one last, painful breath and gave up.
(excerpt continued on Thursday)
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SYNOPSIS:
Welcome Author Diana Fisher to our Blog. She is going to share her interview with us and her books.
When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?
I
cannot remember when, but I wanted to be a writer my whole life.
How long does it
take you to write a book?
It
all depends on my mood and how the characters push me into telling
their story. Sometimes I can easily knock out a hundred pages in a
week, and other times, it can take a couple months to get to a
hundred pages.
What
is your work schedule like when you're writing?
I
work full time, go to school full time, and have a 5 year old. My
writing schedule is basically when I can find the time.
What
would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
I’m not too sure on that one.
HAHA
How do your
books get published?
I
self-publish. I use the createspace.com and Amazon. I was fortunate
to come across Teresa Mummert’s book,
http://www.amazon.com/Indie-Author-Awesome-Teresa-Mummert-ebook/dp/B00GBL0J9E/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
and I read this over and over again. Then, I found an editor in there
and contacted that editor….and this woman, a truly amazing and
wonderful author and person, Genevieve Scholl, and she helped me turn
my dream into a reality.
Where
do you get your information or ideas for your books?
They come from anywhere. Movies, songs, other books, seeing someone in the mall that gives me an idea. Anything and everything. The ideas just hit me when they want to or something strikes them.
When did you write your first book and how old were you?
My
first complete book, one with an actual plot, a beginning and an end,
was Set My Soul Free
which I wrote two-three years ago, But I just published on Amazon a
month or so ago. Emmerson’s
Heart was written last
year and published in September. I have others that I never put up or
went back through…which my grandma is still hounding me for the
second part of one of my books that is sitting on my jumpdrive.
What do you like
to do when you're not writing?
I
like to watch “Chopped” and think that I am a chef in the
kitchen…but it usually turns into making frozen pizza. I do like to
cook and I like trying to make something good. 
What
does your family think of your writing?
My
grandmother, aunt and uncle are the ones who urged me into following
my dream and they always let me know how proud of me they are. As for
the immediate family members, I think they are just laughing at me.
What was one of
the most surprising things you learned in creating your books?
I’ve
learned that my stories are good and people do have good things to
say about them. But what really surprises me the most is….just how
much my brain scares the bejeepers out of me sometimes. The things I
can think of…yeah, it’s far out there.
How
many books have you written? Which is your favorite?
I
have two published and one in editing that will be coming out at the
end of May. I don’t know which one in my favorite. Emmerson’s
Heart was a tear
jerker in which I hated what her life was before the Hucks and then I
hated what stuff life brought onto her even after living with a good
family, but I liked the outcome and Ben! Set
My Soul Free was my
favorite because of how not one person has picked up the biggest hint
in the book at all. I do love how it is different and it is one that
needs to be read all the way through to make the fullest sense. Love,
Lies, and Dog Tags is
my favorite because it just…it’s about a soldier and I love
anything with the military life. There is just something about this
one that really gets to me. But this one I have started writing on,
White Russian on the Rocks…This one, I would have to admit, is
going to be super fun to write because it is a little different, once
again, but I can take this and just run.
Do
you have any suggestions to help me become a better writer? If so,
what are they?
Suggestions
to becoming a better writer….the biggest one I would say, and only
because this helped me the most, read. Read anything and everything.
Read different authors and check out their styles. Get on board with
some people you can trust to give you good advice. I have a writing
partner and she is the best. She has a great style and I have learned
so much from her. If you can find someone like that, it helps. And
don’t let anyone tell you “not to” or “that will never be
good”. I let too many people in my life tell me “that writing is
just a waste of time” and it brought me down too much. Keep on
keeping on. I have a couple of good, trustworthy people who will tell
me if something doesn’t sound good or are there to help throw
around ideas. I’d say that helps so very much. 
Do
you hear from your readers much? What kinds of things do they say?
I
do hear from my readers only because the people who have purchased my
books are ones I know personally. They have good things to say about
them and have mentioned things where there were issues, but the
criticism helps! When it is constructive, that is.
Do
you like to create books for adults?
I
do like to create books for anyone to read really. I am not
comfortable writing erotic scenes, but I don’t mind putting in a
touch. I just like to create something that a person can read and
enjoy. In my book that will be coming out at the end of May, there is
heavy swearing in the read, but that is expected from soldiers, I
believe and have heard how they speak. It’s not really for
underage, but I do like to be able to write something my nieces would
be able to read.
What
do you think makes a good story?
Good
characters and a good plot. If you don’t have a roadmap to where
the story is going, how are we ever going to find our way through? I
think there are a lot of great stories out there that have great
plots. Even though they may not be in my genre, I can still
appreciate a great plot with strong characters. Oh! I am a sucker for
the character that grows within the story. That is a great bit there.
I have this one character on one of my “In works” that no one has
liked at all, but once you get into the middle of the story, you
start appreciating her and liking her.
As
a child, what did you want to do when you grew up?
I can’t really say anything I wanted to be something, but I wrote all the time to escape the bullying and get into this world where “my characters” actually mattered and meant something to someone. And if I made those characters matter to someone, in fiction of course, it made me feel better in the real world. Then, when I did grow up, it was still in my life and I have my uncle tell me that if I wrote all the time, then to just keep writing and one day, I will become someone in the wide world of books. Now, being in my thirties, I have already filled my goals and now….to just keep at it and maybe I can help someone else go for their dreams.
Please take the time to leave her a comment.
Thank you.
My website address is www.authordianafisher.weebly.
