A warm welcome to author N.R Walker joining us today to talk about her new release “Exchange of Hearts”
Welcome Nic 🙂

Exchange of Hearts

Vegemite v’s Marmite: the age old war between Australia and England that doesn’t involve cricket.

Let me just preface this post by saying that I’m Australian, therefore Vegemite is better and Marmite (and the Brits) are wrong. LOL

Okay, so not really.

But I grew up on Vegemite, so I’m allowed to be biased.

I understand that the love of vegemite is an Australian thing, and I can concede the Brit’s love of Marmite is a British thing. Because I tried Marmite once and I was… confused?

It looked like Vegemite? Same colour, same texture… But it sure as hell didn’t taste like it.

And in Exchange of Hearts, it’s Levi—the English character—who says the Aussies got Vegemite so very, very wrong. But I can assure you, it really is the other way around. 😉

It’s fun, as an author, to show cultural differences in the banter between characters. If you’ve ever read my Red Dirt Heart series, the Australian and American characters quite often joked about their differences in food, sport, word choices and phrases. But there really isn’t much of that in Exchange of Hearts.

In fact, the main character Harrison, leaves Australia and finds his true home in London. Though he does request to have some Vegemite posted over to him. You know what they say… You can take the person out of Australia, but you’ll never take the Australia out of the person.

Buylinks:

N.R Walker

Amazon

Blurb:

Eighteen-year-old Harrison Haddon has grown up alone. Surrounded by wealth, nannies, and material things, all he craves is the approval of his father. Sent away to the boarding school his father and grandfather attended, it’s assumed he will follow in their footsteps from Sydney’s prestigious Ivy League school straight into medical school.

But Harrison doesn’t want to be a doctor.

He dreams of music and classical piano. His only true happiness, his escape from the world expected of him, is dismissed by his intolerant and emotionally detached parents.

Levi Aston arrives from London for a three-month student exchange program. Free-spirited and confident in who he is and what he wants to do with his life, Levi convinces Harrison not give up on his dreams.

But convincing Harrison not to give up on his family might not be so easy.

On Tuesday at school, I had music Studio 1 to practice the piano by myself. I needed to get my practical down before my finals, and Father Phillip graciously allowed me to use the room as I pleased.

I hardly needed his guidance. Even he admitted I was a better pianist than him, and he’d been playing for fifty years.

I got lost in my music. I always had. Especially Mozart.

I didn’t hear the door open and I didn’t see someone step into the room. Only when the Concerto no. 9 was finished did I become aware of being watched.

I turned to find Levi. He was standing against the door. His eyes were wide, but he didn’t say a word. I turned back to the keys and opened my mouth to say something, anything, but when I looked back at him again, he was standing behind me.

Slowly, he sat on the edge of my seat, right beside me, and whispered, “Play for me.”

So I did.

But I didn’t play Mozart or even Beethoven.

I played him my song.

It was nameless. It was melodic and sweet, and something I’d worked on with him in mind. Each note captured the butterflies I got when I saw him, the warmth in my chest when he kissed me, the fleeting, most perfect high in the world.

He was looking at me like I was a puzzle to be solved, like he couldn’t believe the music was coming from my hands. When in actual fact, it wasn’t coming from my hands at all. It was coming from my heart. And when the last notes of the song held in the air, he shook his head. His eyes were filled with unshed tears, and he whispered, “Harrison… holy shit!”

My heart was hammering. “Didn’t you like it?”

He blinked. “Harrison, you have to play.”

I looked at him, unsure. “Play what?”

“Just play, Harrison. Forget being a doctor. The world needs to hear you play.” I laughed off my embarrassment and his eyes narrowed. “I’m being serious,” he said a little loudly in the acoustic room. He quietened down, “Harrison, I’ve never heard anything like that.” He shook his head. “You have a gift.”

I told him quietly, “Yeah well, my father doesn’t think so.”

“Fuck your father!” he snapped, and I blinked back my surprise at his tone. He huffed out a breath, “Sorry. Sorry. I just… it just kills me that you’ll give up on your dreams so easily.”

I looked at him, but I had no comeback. Because underneath it all, I knew he was right.

“What about you, Harrison?” he asked me. “What about what you want?”

I looked down at my hands. I tried to say something; my mouth opened to say something… anything. But I couldn’t. Instead, I told him, “I have to go to class.”

I got up and left him sitting at the piano.

N.R. Walker is an Australian author, who loves her genre of gay romance. She loves writing and spends far too much time doing it, but wouldn’t have it any other way. She is many things; a mother, a wife, a sister, a writer. She has pretty, pretty boys who live in her head, who don’t let her sleep at night unless she gives them life with words.  She likes it when they do dirty, dirty things…but likes it even more when they fall in love. She used to think having people in her head talking to her was weird, until one day she happened across other writers who told her it was normal.  She’s been writing ever since…

N.R. Walker’s Internet Links:

nrwalker2103@gmail.com

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