A warm Love Bytes welcome to author Lorelie Brown joining us today to talk about new release “Her Hometown Girl”.

Lorelie plays a truth and lies game with us and there is a giveaway to participate in!

Welcome Lorelei 🙂

Hi folks! I didn’t go to enough sleepovers as a teenager, so I missed out on some stuff. Such as two truths and a lie! Let’s play.

1. When I was in 5^th grade, my teacher ripped my copy of The Diary of Anne Frank in two.I was kind of a terrible kid in some ways. I read constantly. Like, all the freaking time. ALL. THE. TIME. I don’t have any memories of playing on the playground in fourth grade, but I have a crystal clear memory of reading a hard-back copy of Little Women while sitting under the ease way outside my classroom. It was a thing. Other kids called me Encyclopedia Brown because I read so much. (I didn’t even like those books! Nancy Drew was SO MUCH BETTER, with the Hardy Boys in second place.) I finished Where The Red Fern Grows in a classroom and do you know how hard it was to not cry when I wanted to sob?? The book fair came so I lifted cash from my mom’s wallet. (I told you I was a terrible kid.) (Also, if you read this Mom, I’m really, really sorry. I owe you like $30.) My godmother had actually given me my first copy of The Diary of Anne Frank, but it was used when it got to me and I read it so many times that pages were falling out. So there was really no reason at all why I couldn’t wait to read that book, but I had no patience. (Terrible kid.) I held it in my lap & read in Spanish class. I missed when the teacher called on me. He lost his shit and snatched the book out of my lap. He tore it in two. Have I mentioned my dad was a lawyer and my mom worked for the L.A. Times? Oh, and my mom was raised Jewish.They weren’t happy. I got a personal apology from the teacher.

 

2.  I started a brawl in a Fayetteville, NC club. After my four years in the Army, I was still married to a soldier, which meant that I was still stuck in the realm of military bases. My ex was stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, but then he got deployed. A lot. I had a friend whose husband was also deployed and we’d go out together sometimes. Have you ever been to Fayetteville? It’s not exactly a bastion of culture and entertainment. That meant my friend and I went to bars. And because my friend was pretty bossy and a bit of a bitch if she didn’t get her way, that also meant we went to country bars. Country bars meant country boys. Guys in super-tight jeans with cans of dip wearing circles in their back pockets. Dancing meant two-stepping. (Running backwards around the dance floor while trying not to let the dude trip you with his two left feet.) But still, it could be fun, especially once I’d had a couple red bull and vodkas. (It was the early 2000s. People still drank those.) You know how in Regencies, if a heroine dances with a guy three times in one night, people think it Means Something Serious? I honestly had a guy do that to me. He propositioned me, I said nah, I’m totally good, and he said “But we’ve danced. Three times!”

 

I pointed out that I was married, and he accused me of hiding it, to which I held up my left hand and the big diamond on there and mostly was really confused. But I boot-scooted my way off the dance floor and found my friend and started telling her about the dude. I laughed. She laughed.

 

Turned out he was pretty much right behind me.

 

Right about the time that my friend pointed out he was burning holes in the back of my head, he got up. He started getting belligerent and shouting stuff, but then there were these other guys who took exception to that. I think he swung first? I’m not sure. It started as a two-way scuffle with him & another dude, but then there was a friend trying to pull someone off and then someone else caught a punch in the face and it all kept going from there. Bouncers got involved. The cops got called.

Oops.

 

3. I was married for thirty minutes without realizing it. I got married to a fellow soldier when I was stationed in South Korea. We had to go down to Seoul and make three stops: first go to JAG, get a stamp at the Mayor’s office, and then stop in at the American Embassy.    The whole thing was rather anti-climactic, and it turned out the marriage was too! (Pro tip, kids: Don’t marry someone who jokes about running on your first day of marriage. They probably mean it.) I regretted getting married in a t-shirt and shorts for a very, very long time, but then I got to wear a floor length sparkly gown for the RITA ceremony when I was nominated, so it was all good. My dress had a train! Trains make up for lots of things.

“Oh. Huh.”

The day was super casual. I wore a pair of elastic waist shorts because I was already pregnant and a t-shirt with the acronym of an on-post club. At the Judge Advocate General office, we did a bunch of paperwork, mostly swearing that we were eligible to get married and not already wedded to anyone else. Then we went to the Mayor’s office, where I used my really crappy Korean language skills and we paid about ₩5,000 ($5 in American money) for a stamp that was licked & put on our paperwork. Easy peasy. We took a cab over to the embassy, and as we were stuck in traffic, my (now) ex joked about how it’s “not too late” and he should “run while he still could.” We waited our turn, got up to the window and said we’d like to get married. The clerk looked up at us in surprise. “Oh, that was what you did at the Mayor’s office.”

 

About Her Hometown Girl

I had doubts before the Big Day—doesn’t everyone?—but I didn’t expect to find my fiancée banging the caterer’s assistant right before the ceremony. Especially because he’s a guy. And we’re lesbians. The proper sort of Southern Californian lesbians who invest in hedge funds and wear bedazzled wedding dresses and wouldn’t be caught dead in a Subaru.

But then I became a runaway bride, headed straight for Belladonna Ink to get the kind of tattoo I always wanted and my ex always called trashy. She didn’t approve of a lot of things I did. I think maybe she didn’t approve of who I am.

So I’m determined to be as much of myself as I can manage. Dating my tattoo artist? I’m in. Cai is smart, sexy, and mysterious. Exactly what I need for a rebound. She keeps herself guarded, but I understand—I’m holding on to secrets too. The kind of secrets that make a girl want to run home to Mom, even if home is Idaho. Maybe especially then. I just didn’t expect Cai to come with me.

I wonder what it would take to get her to stay forever.

Now available from:

Riptide Publishing.

Amazon

 

About the Belladonna Ink Universe

Belladonna Ink is the hottest female-centric tattoo parlor in Southern California. It doesn’t matter if you’re cis, trans, het, gay, or spectrum, our host of female tattoo artists will give you beautiful ink, personally designed. We don’t believe in paint-by-number drawings—you’re worth more than that. Give us a chance and we’ll help you find the meaning in your personal scribbles, and turn your skin into our professional canvas.

Just one thing: it’s really weird, but all our friends and some of our artists keep falling in love. Maybe it’s something in the ink.

Check out Belladonna Ink!

After a seminomadic childhood throughout California, Lorelie Brown spent high school in Orange County before joining the US Army. After traveling the world from South Korea to Italy, she now lives north of Chicago. She writes her Pacific Blue series of hot surfers in order to channel some warmth.

Lorelie has three active sons, two yappy dogs, and a cat who cusses her out on a regular basis for not petting him enough.

In her immense free time (hah!) Lorelie cowrites award-winning contemporary erotic romance under the name Katie Porter. You can find out more about the Vegas Top Guns and Command Force Alpha series at www.KatiePorterBooks.com or at @MsKatiePorter. You can also contact Lorelie on Twitter @LorelieBrown.

Connect with Lorelie:

Website: loreliebrown.com/

Twitter: @LorelieBrown

Facebook: facebook.com/lorelie.brown

To celebrate the release of Her Hometown Girl, one lucky winner will receive a bottle of Macallan single malt whisky! Contest IS restricted to both US entries and to those over the age of 21. Leave a comment with your contact info to enter the contest. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on September 9, 2017. Thanks for following the tour, and don’t forget to leave your contact info!