Hello! I’m Jenny and I’m happy to be here to celebrate the release of Infamous. Infamous is book two in the Famous series, which mixes m/f and m/m romance. (And mixes famous musicians and regular people!) In Infamous, Jesse, our resident bad-boy rock star has to decide if he’s willing to risk his career to be with Hunter, a doctor he’s rapidly falling for. I hope you enjoy it!

Infamous Inspiration: “If You’re Gone”(yes, the awful Matchbox Twenty song)

Jenny Holiday

 

Infamous is my twelfth published novel, but the kernel of its story has been in my head since forever.

 

Well, since the summer of 2000, actually (so basically forever). This was before I started writing romance novels. Before I started reading them, even. (I was a late bloomer on the romance front.)

 

I was a grad student, and I was borrowing a car that summer because I was doing some research that required me to cover a large geographical area. The car had a CD player (remember those?). It contained like two CDs, one of which was from Matchbox Twenty. I was sort of out of the pop culture loop in those days, so I didn’t know who they were. I listened to that CD a lot as I logged miles in that car. My initial interpretation was that the singer was gay and closeted. I later found out that Rob Thomas was married to a (female) model, so much for that theory. (Sometimes I have an imagination-runs-wild problem. But honestly, I didn’t even think it was that subtle. Go listen to the lyrics of “Bed of Lies”)

 

Anyway, I got sort of fixated on the song “If You’re Gone”in particular. Yes, I know Matchbox Twenty is not going to appear on any critics lists of the best bands of the twenty-first century, but I thought it was an interesting song. The singer isn’t sure if the object of his affections is gone. He’s scared about needing that person in his life. “There’s an awful lot of breathing room, but I can hardly move.” If the missing love is in fact gone, he sings, “baby, it’s time to come home.” There was one line in particular that got me: “I bet you”re hard to get over. I bet the room just won’t shine.”

 

So are they together or not? Have they broken up or not? We don’t know, because he doesn’t know. I started thinking about scenarios in you wouldn’t know if a person was gone. They’d probably have to be literally gone, as in physically absent, but for the song to make sense you’d also have to be unsure of your status with them.

 

So naturally what immediately jumped to mind was a closeted bisexual rock star and a doctor. Ha! I’m not kidding, though. Something happened between them, and the doctor took off suddenly for a Doctors Without Borders assignment in a war zone, and the rock star was left behind to worry and overanalyze their relationship. And, you know, to write tortured, ambiguous songs about it.

 

I carried that set-up around for all these years. The process of writing Infamous became, then, figuring out what the “something happened” was.

 

The funny thing was that I didn’t stay in academia. All that research fed into my dissertation, but ultimately it never went ant farther than that. Thank God I had that Matchbox Twenty CD in that car, otherwise, what a waste that summer would have been!

About Infamous

All that up-and-coming musician Jesse Jamison has ever wanted is to be on the cover of Rolling Stone. When a gossip website nearly catches him kissing someone who isn’t his famous girlfriend, and also isn’t a girl, he considers the near miss a wake-up call. There’s a lot riding on his image as the super-straight rocker, and if he wants to realize his dreams, he’ll need to toe the line. Luckily, he’s into women too. Problem solved.

After a decade pretending to be his ex’s roommate, pediatrician Hunter Wyatt is done hiding. He might not know how to date in the Grindr world, how to make friends in a strange city, or whether his new job in Toronto is a mistake. But he does know that no one is worth the closet. Not even the world’s sexiest rock star.

As Jesse’s charity work at Hunter’s hospital brings the two closer together, a bromance develops. Soon, Hunter is all Jesse can think about. But when it comes down to a choice between Hunter and his career, he’s not sure he’s brave enough to follow his heart.

Available now from Riptide Publishing!

Amazon

About Jenny Holiday

Jenny Holiday started writing in fourth grade, when her aging-hippie teacher, between Pete Seeger songs, gave the kids notebooks and told them to write stories. Jenny’s featured poltergeist, alien invasions, or serial killers who managed to murder everyone except her and her mom. She showed early promise as a romance writer, though, because nearly every story had a happy ending: fictional Jenny woke up to find that the story had been a dream, and that her best friend, father, and sister had not, in fact, been axe-murdered. Today she is a USA Today bestselling author of historical and contemporary romance. She lives in London, Ontario.

Connect with Jenny:

• Website: jennyholiday.com
• Blog: jennyholiday.com/blog
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/jennyholidaybooks/
• Twitter: @jennyholi

 

To celebrate the release of Infamous, one lucky winner will receive a $20 Amazon gift card! Leave a comment with your contact info to enter the contest. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on December 2, 2017. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries. Thanks for following the tour, and don’t forget to leave your contact info!