Ex-Bandmates
Local Beats Series, Book One
Zoe Lee
M/M Contemporary Romance
Release Date: 08.06.20
Cover Design: Emilie DeMun Designs
Cover Photo: Stock Photo
Blurb
Asher
From the second Lucas Carlson shows up in my garage for band practice, I’m drawn in by his eyes, his awkward rambling, and his incredible musical talents. But we share a best friend, and he’s only our temporary drummer while he’s in Chicago for a summer internship. It should be easy to ignore the way he brings something out in me that no one has before.
Lucas
Asher Bernthal is a grumpy stockbroker whose band, Signal Fire, is vital to my best friend’s happiness. I don’t want to mess it up for her, so all I have to do is drum and keep my head down. It should be easy not to crush on a man so beyond my grasp, who writes lyrics that pierce straight through me.
Despite all of the reasons to stay away, we’re drawn together and bring something new out in each other. Every song pulls us closer together, but we won’t be bandmates forever.
This is the first book in the Local Beats Series, an 80,000 word MM romance featuring musicians with day jobs, a night club, and lots of songs, with a guaranteed HEA and no cliffhanger.
Thank you to Love Bytes for having me today.
Everyone likes to say they’re a planner or a panster when it comes to plotting, but I’m some mishmash of the two. I have a clear idea of the very beginning, an opening scene or a dialogue exchange or a meet-cute, and that gets written in the zone, usually really fast in one sitting.
Then I write maybe three or four more chapters, expanding on that jumping off point. I use the chapters almost like writing exercises to help me get a feel for the characters. What has happened to them, what’s important to them, and what are they missing? I throw them into a few situations to see how they react, trying to see what kind of arcs seem to work and which ones dead-end. I’m pretty excited, but also pretty lazy, during this part, so it’s pure pantsing. I know I’ll only keep some of this material, or at least the best quips or descriptions, but maybe not the action of each scene.
By this point, I’m proud of myself, I’m thinking, These characters are awesome, I could go a million directions with this! But then… I could go a million directions with this? Which direction should I pick!? Is that opener I wrote actually the first chapter, or is it a quarter of the way through, or should it be thrown out now that I really know these characters?
All of this aggravates me, because how dare these characters do this to me! I switch to plotting mode. I get out a notebook or note cards and a black pen, a blue pen, and a red pen. I write in my absolutely terrible handwriting everything I’ve got so far. I make character sheets with basic biographical information, plus what they want versus what they need, and, of course, their sexual preferences. I write out story beats I’ve written or want to write. I write out the conflict or my first thought of what the grand gesture or epilogue might be.
And then… I arrange the numbered list in the notebook or the note cards. I imagine what that plot arc would look like as a whole. If it’s not feeling quite right, I walk away and eat, then come back to tweak it. Sometimes it only takes a few tries before I’m happy and sometimes it feels like a trillion tries. But once I’m happy, I stick with it and only go back to pantsing if the characters surprise me or a pivotal moment just isn’t working the way I want.
It’s never exactly the same twice, so far, and I really love that!
ASHER
“Hey hey,” Amy said once we were up there, shimmying a bit. “It’s about to get soulful up here!”
Dan pushed Lucas so that it was Dan, Lucas, and me ranged just behind and stage right from the girls. “I hope you know how to shake it, Lucas,” he said with a giant, happy beaming smile.
Before Lucas could seem to decide if he was going to puke or shake it, the song started.
I grinned, immediately putting one hand on my hip and bopping my hip and shoulder, recognizing the opening bars of Aretha Franklin’s ‘Chain of Fools’ right away.
Lucas hissed when the girls started belting it out.
I looked over and found him doing the exact same classic soul back-up singers’ moves that Dan and I were executing, while Dan and I also chimed in with our part of the song. Lucas’s mouth shaped the words perfectly, but I knew he wasn’t actually singing because I was too close to miss it if he were.
Leslie moved to dance right up in Lucas’s face, her hips swiveling and her finger crooked, making the audience whistle and cheer, and I heard Tilda yelling loud and clear from our table.
Lucas’s chest started rising and falling like it had when we’d shared my shower, but it wasn’t lust… not exactly. When Leslie took a step back towards the mic, it was as though Lucas was hooked to her and had no choice but to take a step forward, even though I could see him gulp, paling.
Leslie kept her eyes on Lucas in challenge and then, with a flourish, invited him up to the mic.
Lucas’s eyes closed for a beat and then…
He sang.
Sang.
Oh fuck. I swear my cock turned to fucking steel—titanium—whatever the hardest metal in the known universe was—within one measure of him fucking singing. It was more than hitting all the right notes, the little trills and gentle vibrato of Aretha’s voice, more than the way his voice filled up the space like it was coming from everywhere at once, more than the way he was working his hips from side to side like was in Dreamgirls. It was the way that he utterly understood what he was singing, as if he had written the song himself, experienced this himself and knew every nuance of it, as if it was happening to him at that very moment, without it being melodramatic at all.
The audience had to be going wild, but I wasn’t paying attention to anything but the fraction of his face I could see, and Leslie’s full profile, the visible eye full of tears.
The song ended and Lucas bolted off the stage, pushing through the people complimenting him, and made for the bar as if his ass were on fire—or under fire.
“Oh fuck,” I whimpered.
Amy grabbed my arm and hauled me back to our table and I went along like a zombie, letting her shove me into one of the chairs when we got there. Dan patted my shoulder as if he pitied me.
“Oh fuck,” I whimpered again, slumping until my too-hot forehead settled on the rim of a water glass. “It’s not just the voice, it’s—”
“Damn, Asher,” Tilda whispered, “you are so fucked.”
“Leslie, you evil witch,” Lucas shouted from behind me, but I didn’t move, and he probably didn’t notice because he was ranting now, his shouts lowering in volume to whisper-yells, “I cannot believe you did that to me, that was a fucking cheap shot, and to drag Amy into your scheme!”
“You’re a fucking evil witch,” Amy cried. “How could you hide that voice from us!”
“Dude,” Dan said in his heartbroken, guilt-inducing tone. “Not cool. Penalty box.”
“No, he can’t sing if he’s in the penalty box,” Amy argued, fucking up Dan’s sports metaphor without noticing. “You’re an amazing drummer, but like… why…”
“How about a round of shots?” Leslie interjected as if that would derail things for long.
“You’re not off the hook!” Lucas grumbled, but he seemed like he was already losing steam. Leslie clicked off towards the bar to get the shots, and then he asked, “What’s with Asher?”
Tilda, Amy, and Dan snickered and I gave them the finger without moving otherwise, not even knowing if Lucas could see it or not since my eyes were still squarely aimed at the table.
Tilda took a little bit of pity on me and said, “Just brooding like usual. Ignore him.”
Lucas’s hand appeared in my field of vision, his pinkie tapping a quick beat. “Asher?” he checked in very quietly, as the heat of his body sizzled my arm and neck and ear nearest to him. “Are you okay? You’re just kind of… looking defeated over there.”
“Shots!” Leslie exclaimed, saving me from having to come up with a response.
They shot the shots, while I didn’t move, staring at Lucas’s hand now. In the grand scheme of things, it was an ordinary looking hand. Maybe the fingers were a little more graceful, the veins a little more prominent, the freckles a little less common, but it was still just a hand. At the same time my brain knew that, other parts of me, less intelligent and more fucking unrealistic, head-in-the-clouds, knew that Lucas’s hand was extraordinary, magical. It was one tool that he used to express himself, to display his talent and his skill, to punctuate his words, and to show desire and care.
If I was this obsessed with his hand, then how obsessed was I with the rest of him?
Zoe writes contemporary romances and believed everyone will get extraordinary love stories since before she ever fell in love. She lives with her family near the mountains in Colorado, where she writes while listening to music, never drinks coffee, reads books in one sitting, and watches too many movies and tv shows. She’s been writing since she was a kid, but luckily she knows how grown-ups work now. Mostly.
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