Guestpost & Giveaway Kelly Jensen – When Was the Last Time

Today we say Hello to author Kelly Jensen visiting Love Bytes to show her new release “When Was the Last Time”.

She also brought a giveaway along with her.
Welcome Kelly 🙂

Stories Waiting to Be Told

Like most writers, I have a collection of notebooks—though “collection” implies they’re stored in a somewhat orderly fashion. I have…notebooks. Many notebooks. They’re all over the house, in the car and in every bag I own. I even have notebooks at other people’s houses. Then there are the online notebooks. And a phone designed to take notes. Apps full of notes.

A lot of these notes are story ideas and they range from a single thought to several pages of outline. I can’t write all these stories. I know I can’t. Even if I wasn’t already, um, middle-aged, I wouldn’t have time to write all these stories. But I love collecting the ideas.

Last year at a writers’ retreat, Chuck Wendig gave a talk on motivation and touched on the subject of ideas. He used to have notebooks full of them too. Now he subjects every random thought that might be an idea to the Thunderdome. He lets them battle for dominance. If they’re still with him after a couple of weeks, or say a month, he writes them down.

I write them all down. My career is younger than his, and nothing gives me greater joy than finding a place to use them.

When Was the Last Time begins with a line of dialogue:

“Did you know it’s been a year since we last made love?”

I woke up one morning with this line circling my thoughts. It was an idea and I dutifully jotted it down, unsure of how or where I might use it. I was intrigued by the notion of writing a romantic story about a couple who needed to reconnect. I didn’t know how long these two had been together, but I did have the sense they were older, that they’d been married or partnered for some time. There aren’t a lot of romances about older, established couples, so, like a lot of my ideas, this one dwelled on a single page of a single notebook for months. Some of those ideas have been there for years (one day I am going to do something with the magazine article I clipped about a former SAS sniper studying to become a butler). The fuller synopses will hopefully become novels, but a line of dialogue? It’s like having a jigsaw piece from the wrong puzzle.

When the right puzzle comes along, it’s often the key piece, however. Dreamspinner released a call for Valentine’s Day stories, and this line popped directly into my head. I didn’t even know which notebook it was in, I just knew it was the beginning of a story about love—and that’s exactly what When Was the Last Time is. It’s also about remembering to appreciate what we have and how, like the moon, the brightness of love can wax and wane, even when it’s always present.

When Was the Last Time is one of my favourite stories for several reasons. Chief among them is that I enjoyed writing and sharing Paul’s journey, and now my collection of notebooks contain one less story waiting to be told.

When Was the Last Time

Paul Summerfield is stunned by the gentle reminder it has been over a year since he and his partner, Evan, have made love. He vows to take Evan out for Valentine’s Day. Dinner and sex. Lots of sex. There’s only one catch—he’s supposed to be in San Francisco that week cataloging the art collection of an important new client. No problem, he’ll just change his schedule and cut his trip short by a day.

In San Francisco, Paul struggles with regrets and the fear his love is slipping away from him. Every call to Evan seems only to prove the distance between them is increasing. All this, and a key piece of his client’s catalog is caught up in customs. To keep their Valentine’s date, Paul will have to choose between the career he’s built over fifteen years and the man he’s loved for just as long.

Amazon | Amazon UK | B&N | Kobo | ARe | Dreamspinner Press

About Kelly

If aliens ever do land on Earth, Kelly will not be prepared, despite having read over a hundred stories of the apocalypse. Still, she will pack her precious books into a box and carry them with her as she strives to survive. It’s what bibliophiles do.

Kelly is the author of a number of novels, novellas and short stories, including the Chaos Station series, co-written with Jenn Burke. At lot of what she writes is speculative in nature, but sometimes it’s just about a guy losing his socks and/or burning dinner. Because life isn’t all conquering aliens and mountain peaks. Sometimes finding a happy ever after is all the adventure we need.

Visit Kelly Online:

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Kelly is offering a giveaway for a copy of Out of the Blue

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Good Luck!