Valentine’s Day From Hell post
Thanks for having me on Love Bytes Reviews!
Valentine’s Day… love it or hate it? Whether you have strong feelings either way, most people have some feelings about the holiday dedicated to romance. Several months ago, some of my authory friends and I embarked on a journey to write the romance stories about all the worsts there are in life and love. Our first offering was the Worst Holiday Ever anthology which came out in November 2018. For that collection, I created two of my favorite characters to date. Rock star Orrie Jones and Silicon Valley darling Dalton Bishop spent the Thanksgiving Day Parade from Hell together, and their story was full of the feels. When my Worst friends got together for a Valentine’s Day excursion, I decided I wasn’t done telling Orrie and Dalton’s story. In fact, I have plenty of Days from Hell in store for these two lovebirds. The rest of the Worst Valentine’s Day Ever is full of tales of couples going through all kinds of drama and include #ownvoices, multicultural and interracial, award-winning authors, and a diverse cast of characters. Here’s my blurb from the anthology:
Valentine’s Day From Hell:
Orrie Jones can’t wait to come home from tour and surprise his fiance Dalton Bishop with a romantic getaway for Valentine’s Day. After their Thanksgiving Day Parade From Hell, which resulted in a sort of mutual proposal, they hadn’t nailed down a date, and Orrie’s nervous his absence has Dalton doubting him. When he arrives, all hell breaks loose. Dalton has agreed to keep Orrie’s nephews overnight so Orrie’s sister and her husband can have their first date since giving birth to their daughter, and Dalton’s brother Terrence has asked him for a huge favor.
Instead of room service and a view at the Bay Area’s famed Claremont Hotel, Orrie and Dalton will visit a local wildlife sanctuary and learn about the mating habits of animals with some hands-on demonstrations while the boys wreak havoc and Terrence attempts to woo the woman he’s fallen for while doing his community service. Will Orrie and Dalton survive The Valentine’s Day From Hell and finally nail down a date for their nuptials? Will Terrence convince the woman he loves that he’s more than the dude working off his DUI? Will Clapton and Hendrix recover from learning about the mating habits of animals?
Why give them days from hell?
Because in life, being able to survive the obstacles thrown in your path together is one of the most important qualities for a relationship to have. Knowing your lover/best friend is there for you despite and in spite of all the sludge you’ve had to slog through to get to this point in your life is the best kind of love. Having someone next to you to elbow, squeeze a leg under the table, or give funny looks across the table at an awkward family dinner provides the support and, often, the humor necessary to make it through. All of these things are true for Dalton and Orrie as well as for my husband and I. We’ve had plenty of drama-filled holidays and events during the twenty-three years we’ve been together and I anticipate many, many more.
On this particular Valentine’s Day I had my boys take Orrie’s nephews to a nature class at Sulphur Creek Nature Center in Hayward, California. In real life, I was lucky enough to take my children to this very place for many events in their early childhood. We held birthday parties there and I even paid for them to come to my children’s school for a hands-on learning event. They were introduced to creatures such as tarantulas (who really do give “hugs”), owls and ducks, snakes and tortoises, and other creatures who go bump in the night. The center also has a pair of coyotes, but their names have been changed to protect…whatever, I needed to change their names for this story. Sulphur Creek also has a rehabilitation center for local wildlife and they were wonderful when we brought them a stunned bird that had smacked into a window in our backyard. In their outdoor pens they have large birds of prey, including a giant golden eagle like the one Orrie encounters in the story. They EVEN have a lending library for families. You can take home a hamster or other small critter for a period of time for a trial. We’ve always had plenty of critters of our own, so I held fast to my decision to not bring home a trial-critter.
I also actually took my husband once to the San Francisco Zoo to hear a keeper’s talk about the mating habits of animals while we dined, drank champagne and partook of their chocolate fountain. It was really interesting! The whole discussion of cloacas promptly smothered any sort of woo I might have been feeling, but I loved it! I drew on these experiences to write this story as well as doing a little internet research. I swear, if you google animal mating habits, you will either be scarred for life or wildly entertained for an evening!
How many of you have done out-of-the-ordinary things for Valentine’s Day? Have any fun rituals? Have any plans go horribly wrong? I’d love to hear about it! You can share your stories here in the comments, or you can post them on my Facebook page at www.facebook.com/rlmerrillauthor and we can all have a laugh together. As the illustrious J. Geils Band once put it, “Love Stinks.” Yeah, yeah.
You can pick up the anthology on Amazon. It’s also available on KU.
Thanks again for coming by today. I’d love to keep in touch. You can follow me on the socials and subscribe to my website at www.rlmerrillauthor.com. Stay Tuned for more Rock ‘n’ Romance with R.L. Merrill!
Once upon a time… a teacher, tattoo collector, mom, and rock ’n’ roll kinda gal opened up a doc and started purging her demons. Several self-published books and gay romance novels with Dreamspinner Press later, R.L. Merrill is still striving to find that perfect balance between real life and happily ever after. A sucker for underdogs, Ro has adopted a wide variety of pets including cats, dogs, rats, a snake and fish. Her love of horror is evident the moment you walk in her door and find yourself surrounded by decorative skulls and quirky artwork from around the world. You can find her lurking on social media where she loves connecting with readers, educating America’s youth, being a mom taxi to two busy kids, in the tattoo chair trying desperately to get that back piece finished, or head banging at a rock show near her home in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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