Renovating a House – In Fiction!
Hi and welcome. I’m so happy to be here to introduce you to my new release, HOME IMPROVEMENT – A LOVE STORY. This is a stand-alone novel (so far), the first set in my new hometown of Ashland, Oregon; a single dad, opposites attract, hidden-identity love story that I hope you’ll find really romantic.
One of the key elements in the story is that an odd, mysterious guy hires my hero to oversee the renovations of a rundown estate and the two fall in love over the modifications to this unusual house. The fun part is that this house is a real place and the renovations to the house are based on actual plans that were created by my husband.
When my honey and I were first considering Ashland as a place to live, we visited the town with an eyen to finding a house we could make our home. We saw one house at the very top of a hill with a beautiful view that we loved, but then our realtor took us to this amazing property that we’d seen online. It’s a Craftsman style, mid-century modern, sprawling, two-story, full-on gorgeous property on a couple acres with a huge swimming pool and tons of trees.
Now since we are nowhere near rich, you have to know that this property was priced ridiculously low. And it had that price for a very good reason. It’s in terrible shape — crumbling exterior patios, problematic decks, water damaged drywall, dead trees that had to be removed, leaking pumps – and on and on. At the same time, the basic structure of the house was sound, heat and air conditioning worked, and did I mention it’s amazing? Since the house was inspiring and my husband is an architect, we got delusions of grandeur! LOL.
What ensued was two months of nightmare. While we’re living in a hotel with our dog, every email we receive is some other problem with the house from the lender or the inspector – asbestos, the need to repair drywall before closing, more and more dead trees, fees we didn’t know about. The news kept getting worse and the interest rates kept going up! Finally, our escrow ran out and we gave up in a heap of tears.
With that surrender, the universe smiled, our realtor called to say the house at the top of the hill we’d liked originally was back on the market for 50K less, we made an offer and moved in a month later! Bye-bye hotel and hello wonderful, manageable new home.
That could have simply been the happy ending of that, except I got an idea for a story about a guy who buys that amazing, rundown house and has the money to really turn it into what it could be. I happened to have plans handy and step-by-step got to make real every wild idea my honey and I ever had for that property – in a book.
Renovating a property like that is ever so much more satisfying, when you don’t have to pay for it. When it comes to advanced remodeling, I recommend fiction.
I hope you love HOME IMPROVEMENT – -A LOVE STORY as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Release Date: July 9, 2019
Book Blurb:
Romance on Aisle Sixteen—opposites attract amid the hammers and screws of the home improvement store.
Gabe Mason became a father at seventeen, and his daughter, Ellie, is the most important thing in his life. But being the parent the courts demand means Gabe has given up most of his dreams—education, making furniture, a gay social life—to be a model dad with a steady, reliable job in a home improvement store. Life’s predictable until Jerry, a shy, eccentric guy in a hat and sunglasses, begs Gabe to oversee the renovation of his run-down mansion.
Gabe loves the house and the work, and Jerry’s pretty lovable too, but when Gabe discovers Jerry’s secret identity, he fears their passion could overturn both their lives forever.
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When he got to the end of the aisle, he looked casually to his left. Tight against a display of light fixtures, back turned to Gabe, stood the guy in the beanie. He had long legs in baggy jeans, an equally baggy sweatshirt that still stretched across really wide shoulders, all his hair covered by the cap, and still the total strangeness didn’t obscure the view of one world-class ass inside the jeans.
Gabe cleared his throat but didn’t get too close. “Can I help you find something, sir?”
“Wha—” He half turned, and Gabe saw he’d put on sunglasses after he’d withdrawn from peering around the corner.
“Can I help you, sir?” Gabe thought he should probably walk away, but the guy had become kind of a challenge.
The customer reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out a drawer handle. He muttered, “Need handles this size.”
Gabe took it. “All right, sir. If you’ll come with me, we have the drawer pulls at the end of aisle sixteen.”
The guy nodded and turned but never raised his head enough to look Gabe in the eye. Still, his high cheekbones and full lips made his face striking, even when it was pointed at his shoes.
Gabe started walking, trusting from the soft scuffling of sneakers behind him that the man was following. Those footsteps slowed when they passed the woman with the kids as she gathered the last of her screws, but he sped up again after she dragged the children toward the checkout registers. In front of the rows of drawers containing handles and knobs, Gabe pointed to the samples attached to the front of each drawer. “See any you like?”
The guy’s head barely moved, so through the glasses, Gabe couldn’t see if he even looked. He shrugged.
“Do you like modern? Traditional?”
“Modern.”
“Brushed nickel, maybe? Or are you a chrome guy?”
The slim nose wrinkled.
“So no chrome. Nickel, then.” Gabe walked to the drawers and held out the sample the guy had given him to check for size and spacing center to center. He picked a couple of modern pulls he liked and took them from the drawers, then held them out to the man.
He looked at the pulls intently, cocked his head, and then ripped off the glasses somewhat impatiently, as if someone had made him wear them.
Gabe sucked in a soft breath. The guy’s eyes were two different colors, one a deep blue and the other light green. Startling and very distinctive. Maybe it affected his eyesight or sensitivity to light and that’s why he was wearing sunglasses in ImproveMart?
The guy reached out a long-fingered hand and tapped the handle that was Gabe’s favorite—a simple wide U-shape of brushed nickel. Gabe nodded. “Yeah, that’s a good one. How many do you need?”
“Uh, eight.” His voice was soft to the point of nonexistence.
Gabe pulled the drawer out farther and began counting out the plastic packages that contained the handle and necessary screws, piling them on the shelf beside him. “Need anything else?”
The guy had put his glasses back on by the time Gabe turned to him. Darn. Those eyes are something. The man nodded his head and pointed to some simple, ball-shaped drawer pulls. “Ten.”
“Oh, I hope I have enough.” Gabe pulled open the drawer and started counting.
The dude stepped closer to watch the counting, which turned out to be a bad idea for Gabe’s autonomic responses. What is that smell? Like some mix of orange and spice. Whatever it was, Gabe’s lower regions came out for a sniff. He shifted his feet and pressed his elbows against his work vest to be sure it covered his crotch. Down boy.
He forced a smile as he scraped the last package from the drawer. “There you go. We just made ten.” Gabe looked around. The guy had no cart. Not even a carry basket. What exactly was he planning on hauling stuff in?
The man seemed to realize it at the same time as Gabe. He grabbed his lip between his teeth, looked down, took hold of the hem of his giant sweatshirt, and held the bottom out like a bag.
Gabe chuckled. “Excellent save.” The problem with the dude’s invention was it raised the shirt from his narrow hips—and what might, just might, have been a half-mast condition thrusting out the front of his jeans. Don’t need to know that—if it’s true. Hell, just what he needed. To get turned on by weird customers.
Tara Lain believes in happy ever afters – and magic. Same thing. In fact, she says, she doesn’t believe, she knows. Tara shares this passion in her best-selling stories that star her unique, charismatic heroes — the beautiful boys of romance — and adventurous heroines. Quarterbacks and cops, werewolves and witches, blue collar or billionaires, Tara’s characters, readers say, love deeply, resolve seemingly insurmountable differences, and ultimately live their lives authentically. After many years living in southern California, Tara, her soulmate honey and her soulmate dog decided they wanted less cars and more trees, prompting a move to Ashland, Oregon where Tara’s creating new stories and loving living in a small town with big culture. Likely a Gryffindor but possessed of Parseltongue, Tara loves animals of all kinds, diversity, open minds, coconut crunch ice cream from Zoeys, and her readers. She also loves to hear from you.
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Website: http://taralain.com/
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Please tell me there’s a stud finder reference somewhere in the book! Seriously, so happy to have another Tara story…
LOL!! I don’t recall including one. But there’s a lot of other stuff! Hope you love it. : )