Guest Blog by Anne Rainey
April 21, 2008 by shilohwalker
While some of us are away playing at RT, Anne’s graciously agreed to do a guest blog for us and guys, she came bearing a prize for one of you. To win, all you need to do is post a comment down below~I’ll draw a winner and post it here. Just a reminder, you do need to check back to see if you’ve won!
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Secret Crushes
Thanks so much for allowing me to hijack your blog for the day. It’s quite an honor!
I’m giving away a free copy of FORBIDDEN FRUIT at the end of the day, and will choose a winner from those who post a comment.
The interesting thing about writing romance is you can sort of change your own ending through your characters. It’s so much fun to take a situation in my own life, twist it around, dramatize it a bit and make it into the story I never had, but secretly wanted.
As a teenager, I always had my head in the clouds. I was a daydreamer. I grew up with three brothers and zero sisters. Plus, I’m the youngest. It’s a little like being an only child, with the exception of getting nuggies and teased on a regular basis. LOL I tended to go off on my own a lot and either dream about my future husband, or just imagine what it’d be like to actually meet Matt Dillon from The Outsiders.
Still, I wasn’t so much a daydreamer that I didn’t notice Rick B. He was so cute and oh so oblivious to my existence. The only time I ever spent with Rick was in my own imagination. And I did a lot of imagining let me tell you! Then one day I talked a friend into asking Rick if he’d go out with me. He said no. My heart was crushed! I had carved his name in the bench outside school. I’d scribbled his name all over my notebooks. I went to bed thinking of him and woke thinking of him. He was always in my head. Alas, it wasn’t to be. I graduated high school, found my real true love and moved on to better things.
From time to time, I do wonder what Rick might be up to. Did he age well? Did he get married and have kids? Did he go on to be a billionaire rock star or did he maybe end up in jail (he was sort of the bad boy of the school, lol). I’ll probably never know and that’s okay with me. Those girlish crushes are a thing of the past. I guess that’s why I find it so hilarious that my two recent releases, TOUCHING LACE with Samhain Publishing and FORBIDDEN FRUIT with Red Sage Publishing have a plot that’s some variation on secret crushes. I think my heart still wants revenge or something. LOL
I must confess it’s fun to play out those old wishes from my youth. It’s exciting to see the girl with the crush, get the bad boy who never noticed her. In my opinion, the best part of being a romance author is giving my characters a very happy ending!
So, confess! Did you have a secret crush and did you marry him? Or did he turn out to be the boy you never kissed?
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You can check out Anne’s site here.
Anne’s going to give away one download of her ebook Forbidden Fruit
The blurbs for the stories mentioned up above are below…
TOUCHING LACE:
Taking friendship to a whole new level…
Lacey Vaughn is tired of being dumped on by men. It’s clear she needs help in the ways of seduction. Over cappuccinos, Lacey shares her worries with pal Nick Stone. Being the good friend that he is, Nick offers to give Lacey a few pointers in the ways of sexual pleasure. From his first touch, Lacey forgets all about lessons. Now all she wants is more of his luscious body and skillful touches.
Nick’s craved Lacey for months. He’s done watching her waste herself on losers. It’s time she saw him as more than the dreaded good friend. He’ll do nearly anything to have the little spitfire all for himself.
But in order to get Lacey past her insecurities, Nick will have to put it all on the line—including his heart—and pray he doesn’t lose her forever.
FORBIDDEN FRUIT:
Veterinarian assistant Ava Sweet has lusted in secret after bad boy Luke McGiffin since high school. Years pass, but she never loses hope that he will come to see her as a desirable woman.
Then one day she overhears Luke scorning her. “Dr. Doolittle? Sexy? How can you tell when every piece of clothing she owns is big and baggy and ugly as sin?”
That’s it. No more of him treating her like a kid sister. It’s time to show the hunky roofer her feminine side. The plan? Step One: arrange a fake date right under Luke’s nose to drum up some jealousy. Step Two: let her best friend Jen give her a seductive, innocent-vixen, miniskirt makeover. Step Three: tempt Luke right out of his sexy jeans.
But can Ava handle a man with such strong appetites, or is she in over her head?
Thank you for guest-blogging, Anne!
**edited on Wednesday 4/23-contest is now closed. The winner’s name has been drawn and will be posted tomorrow. At this time, comments are now closed to prevent confusion and future spam attacks by stupid spam bots that love to spam the blog. (Gee, I love spambots, can you tell?) - Shiloh
16 Responses to “Guest Blog by Anne Rainey”
Sounds very interesting and loved the excerpt.
I had some secret crushes .. one in college that I remember - I did get to kiss him but no I didn’t marry him.
Hi Anne,
Both these books sound great!
Of course, I had a secret crush in high school…he was a secret crush because we were good friends and I did not want to ruin that…plus, one of my friends liked him, also. Eventually, I did get to date him and we did get married and still are.
What a fun topic.
Hi Anne. Great post.
I had a secret crush on a football player in high school. He was a senior I was a freshman, but it wasn’t meant to be. He was a boy I never kissed, but I did marry someone from high school. We shared a class and he had a crush on ME, but I didn’t even know who he was. Years later we met on line and started talking. He new who I was and we met at a show he was doing…he’s a local musician. And that was the beginning of the end. We haven’t been a part since. We married and we’ve been together 9 years in September.
These comments are so fun! It’s so interesting how love can sneak up on you unexpected isn’t it?
Anne, thanks for the great post and excerpts! As for a secret crush, I had a quite a few of those and I can remember back to elementary school! Alas nothing ever happened with any of them and it all worked out in the end as I’m with my for-real forever “crush” whom I met in University. Like you I too think of them once in a blue moon, and I figure they missed out on a great thing
ha!
There is a guy at the gym who I have a crush on now, though I am married. He is not drop-dead gorgeous, but just so cute and you should see his muscles. Every time I run into him in town or at the gym, my heart skips a beat. Truth is, I have lots of crushes and I think that’s healthy.
I used to have a crush on my neighbor’s grandson. He would skateboard out on the street and I would set on the front porch and play New Kids on the Block on my portable stereo. LOL. I never did get to kiss him, but I enjoyed looking.
I wasn’t in school much as my parents decided to home school their kids. But that didn’t stop a secret crush from happening with the boy next door. We were the close to the same age and we both were red-heads so all the neighborhood kids, and even some of the parents, used to tease us about being ’so cute’ together. And I admit a bit of a crush developed for me there, and for a time I tried to get his attention, but alas nothing came of it, and then we moved later that year.
So there are times when I wonder what happend to the red headed boy next door named Billy.
I had a couple of crushes in elementary school. Nothing ever came of them because we moved both times! My last crush was in high school and we were friends. Our moms were always trying to get us together but it never happened. Oh well, I still have some pretty good memories.
I still wonder about what happened to the “young” crushes and have tried finding them on the internet with no luck.
Hi Anne, just got thru reading the excerpts on your website, and big congrats on the great reviews. I did have a secret crush on a boy in high school, but fell out of lust fast when he got arrested for vandalizing the school, sigh…
Your post reminds me of that song by Garth Brooks, Unanswered Prayers.
It’s funny, but the guy I dated the longest in my late teens and the girl Eddie dated the longest in his late teens both now lives less than a mile from us. His old gf actually lives in our neighborhood and my old boyfriend and his family attend the same church as us.
I see I’m late to the party again. I apparently had you on digest. That’s now changed to individual email.
Forbidden fruit sounds VERY Tasty.
I think most women had a secret crush. I did. We were friends, and he was the football hero who saw me more as a little sister. I grew out of it after a while. But he did give me some daydream material. LOL
sandie
This isn’t really a secret crush but I’m dating a guy whom I dated back in college…. 27 years ago! I’ve thought of him over the years and he had thought of me as well and now that we’re both single we’ve been dating for almost a year. We wonder how our lives would have been had we never parted ways all those years ago….
I had a huge crush on a ninth grade football guy when I was in the seventh grade. He lived down the street, and a girlfriend and I would hang out near his house and hope to see him on his front porch.
I can’t even remember his first name, but his last name was Wilder. I would have swooned if he had looked my way…
Ah, memories…
Janice Maynard
Yes, I had several crushes throughout gradeschool, none in highschool because once I found out they were either taken or too arrogant for me, my crush never fully bloomed and a couple co-workers over the years I worked as a secretary…haha. But the one I had a crush on for what seemed like forever started in the second grade when I attended parochial school and continued on until I moved away to another state after I married my hubby.
I remember going to his house right after school one day when I was in the third grade and played checkers with him, which led to my getting grounded because I never asked my mother if I could go and was never allowed to go to his house again…hehehe. But I could never bring myself to tell him how I felt about him…it was sort of like two ships passing in the night. When my parents could no longer afford for me to go to parochial school, I was crushed because I’d never get to see my secret crush on a daily basis anymore and only when we’d bump into each other at the grocery, which was very rare.
We’d lost our two front teeth at the same time and he would sneek to hold my hand whenever we had to go to Mass during the day at school. Still, I could never let him know I really liked him enough to ask him to be my boyfriend, nor did he ask me to be his girlfriend…hahaha. As the years went by and we grew apart, I continuously thought of him. And whenever we bumped into one another, he never failed to give me goosebumps and butterflies in my stomach. It’s whenever he would say hello to me that I became speechless or babbled words out that you couldn’t make heads or tails of, when usually I talked up a storm.
There was one day when the both of us were married to other people that I got the courage to speak to him first. I just whispered in his ear, “we could have made beautiful babies together, but too bad, so sad that wasn’t what fate held in the cards for us!” That made him laugh, but nothing more…hahaha He was my one and only “long-term” blonde-haired, blue-eyed crush I reminsce about even today. I’m sort of glad he never knew about my crush on him because I have a feeling he would have crushed me if he rejected me and those feelings, so I’m left with a fond memory instead thinking about what could have happened if he really liked me “like that”…haha
Sounds great!
hot stories and covers.