Book Spotlight and Giveaway: AGAIN by Lisa Burstein

 

Age Group: NA/Adult
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Release Date: 9/22/14


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How far would you go for a second chance?

 Eleven years after flunking out of college, Kate has finally hit rock-bottom. Losing her job and boyfriend in one drunken night, she’s determined to fix her life by going back to the moment when she let partying and sex take over and do things right. At twenty-nine, she heads back to freshman year of college, with a catch.

 Pretending she's nineteen with a new roommate and full class schedule is easy. When she meets her shy, sexy and seven-years-younger RA Carter, following her self-imposed sobriety and celibacy rules is proving to be anything but.

 A senior enduring years of regret, Carter is more than ready to graduate. He’s anxious to move on from the party his freshman year where he witnessed his frat brothers about to commit a sexual assault. Instead of doing the right thing and stepping in, he looked the other way and left. His guilt has made for a lonely four years.

 When he meets the new freshman on his floor, spunky and confident Kate, he wonders if his time as an outcast has finally come to an end.

 Kate and Carter’s growing friendship and undeniable attraction make it harder to hide the demons from their respective pasts. But when their secrets are finally revealed, will their chance at starting over together still be there?

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About Lisa Burstein

Lisa Burstein is the author of the Young Adult Novels: Pretty Amy and Dear Cassie, and the New Adult Novels & Novellas: Sneaking Candy, The Next Forever & The Possibility of Us. She is also a contributor to the essay collection, Break These Rules: 35 Young Adult Authors On Speaking Up, Standing Out, and Being Yourself. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her very patient husband, a neurotic dog and two cats. Again is her self-publishing debut.

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Cover Reveal: Again by Lisa Burstein

We are so excited to share the cover for Again, by Lisa Burstein! We also have an excerpt from chapter one. Be sure to let us know what you think!

 

Title: AGAIN
Author: Lisa Burstein
Age Group: NA/Adult
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Release Date: September 22, 2014


GoodReads

How far would you go for a second chance?

 Eleven years after flunking out of college, Kate has finally hit rock-bottom. Losing her job and boyfriend in one drunken night, she’s determined to fix her life by going back to the moment when she let partying and sex take over and do things right. At twenty-nine, she heads back to freshman year of college, with a catch.

 Pretending she's nineteen with a new roommate and full class schedule is easy. When she meets her shy, sexy and seven-years-younger RA Carter, following her self-imposed sobriety and celibacy rules is proving to be anything but.

 A senior enduring years of regret, Carter is more than ready to graduate. He’s anxious to move on from the party his freshman year where he witnessed his frat brothers about to commit a sexual assault. Instead of doing the right thing and stepping in, he looked the other way and left. His guilt has made for a lonely four years.

 When he meets the new freshman on his floor, spunky and confident Kate, he wonders if his time as an outcast has finally come to an end.

 Kate and Carter’s growing friendship and undeniable attraction make it harder to hide the demons from their respective pasts. But when their secrets are finally revealed, will their chance at starting over together still be there?

Excerpt

Chapter One

Kate

  College-take-two started with me hiding in the dorm lobby men’s bathroom. Unfortunately, I didn’t notice the urinals until after I ran inside.

  I stood with my back tight against the wall gasping air like it was Riesling and I was at an all you can drink happy hour.

  How the hell did I think I’d ever pull this off? Pretend to be a nineteen-year-old freshman at twenty-nine-years old?

   Going back to college might not have been one of my best ideas—but it was the only one that might finally change my life. I wanted to change my life. I needed to. It was just hard to convince myself of that once I was actually on campus with tons of real freshman all around me.

  I guess it’s a lot easier to fantasize about living your life over again than to actually go through with it. 

 

  “Are you lost?”

 

  I turned and found a built, blonde-haired hottie washing his hands. He dried them quickly, crossed his arms over his broad chest and leaned against the sink.

  That was the moment I realized I was in the men’s bathroom. The moment my breathing went from gulping Riesling at an all you can drink happy hour to puking it up into the disgusting toilet at the back of the bar when drinks went back to full price.

  My knees went wobbly. My mouth was dry; my head seemingly floating on top of my neck. I couldn’t tell if I was suddenly unbalanced because of how handsome he was, or the realization I clearly was lost.

  Minus a penis lost.

  “Shit,” I reached for the door handle with sweaty palms. At least I was making the kind of a stupid mistake a real freshman would.

  My wide, wild eyes probably made me look as confused by my surroundings as any other student arriving, but honestly I was terrified and not because I’d almost caught this guy with his pants down, because this whole idea was insane.

  “It’s okay,” he said, walking toward me, waving his large hands to calm me. “This is definitely not the worst thing I’ve seen someone do the first day back.” He smiled showing teeth that reminded me of toothpaste commercials. It brought out the sweetest dimple the size of an M&M on his chin.

  Fuck me. I smiled back.

  He paused; eyeing me up and down, perhaps noticing the tight body I was showing off in a desperate attempt to appear nineteen.

  “What makes you an expert?” I asked hoping to change his focus, Maybe he wasn’t regarding me for the reason I thought; tight body or no, I was not nineteen. I was twenty-nine. Why the hell would anyone believe any different?

  He pointed to his red polo shirt.

  Turns out he was doing his job.

  The area above his right pectoral muscle read Resident Advisor, Hudson University. There was something I couldn’t identify in his sea-glass blue eyes; almost like he was holding back, putting up a good front.

  I knew his look well. It was one I’d mastered. When it got too hard to wear my own everything-is-fine-mask I doused it in alcohol and sex and bad choices, but that wasn’t a solution anymore.

  And clearly, everything wasn’t fine.

  “I need to get out of here,” I grasped for the door latch again, trying to put out the fire blazing in my neck and face.

  He reached from behind me and also went for the door. His hand brushed against mine blistering enough to brand my skin.

  My pulse popped like the last minute of popcorn in a microwave. I needed to get away from him. I would have usually chastised myself for even glancing in his direction. Not that I had much choice considering I’d been the one who put us in such close and uncomfortable quarters.

  Twenty-nine-year-olds didn’t spontaneously combust from a college kid’s accidental touch. But damn, this guy was fine. My RA back in college-take-one was nothing like this. If he had been I might have made it past the first semester.

  I might have passed my actual college-take-one classes.

  Of course, I also might have spent it studying what was under his khakis.

  “Let me help you,” he said, pushing on the latch as I continued to pull. His voice was a deep vibrato, as deep as his blue eyes seemed.

  “I can open a door,” I said, pulling as hard as I could. Nothing happened.

  Apparently I couldn’t.

  He lifted his arms I-surrender-style and stood back stifling a laugh. “It’s a push.”

  “I knew that,” I looked down as I finally pushed the door open and we exited the bathroom. Not because I was embarrassed, though who was I kidding?

  I kept my eyes away from his. I didn’t want to show him my face. Have him laugh and say, what the hell are you doing here old lady? Or even worse, are you here helping your daughter or son move in?

  It was one thing to be told you had a baby-face your entire life. It was another to put it to the test next to actual babies!

  That was why I’d run into the bathroom. Too bad my early-onset cataracts had obscured the mammoth M and stick figure dude.

  We stood in front of the door, the dorm lobby brimming with students and their parents. I should have just walked away, but I liked the way he was checking me out, his gaze sliding from my just purchased Uggs to my just purchased white winter hat with cat-ears smashed over my recently highlighted blonde hair. I had been doing my best to look student-like.

  But I was pretty sure I looked like Hannah Montana.

  It had been easy to Photoshop my high school transcript so it seemed like I graduated a year ago. Simple to change my one semester of F’s to A’s, to take the SATs again, to get a fake ID, to dress like any other nineteen-year-old. It took an hour to sublet my rent-controlled New York City apartment.

  Being here and acting like a college freshman would clearly be a lot harder.

 Be sure to add Again on GoodReads!

About Lisa Burstein

Lisa Burstein is the author of the Young Adult Novels: Pretty Amy and Dear Cassie, and the New Adult Novels & Novellas: Sneaking Candy, The Next Forever & The Possibility of Us. She is also a contributor to the essay collection, Break These Rules: 35 Young Adult Authors On Speaking Up, Standing Out, and Being Yourself. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her very patient husband, a neurotic dog and two cats. Again is her self-publishing debut.


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Book Spotlight: Sneaking Candy by Lisa Burstein

Quote:

"SNEAKING CANDY is wicked smart, sexy as hell, and completely un-putdownable. Definitely a MUST READ. I loved it!"  

Katee Robert NYT and USA TODAY Bestselling Author of Wrong Bed, Right Guy

Blurb:

All I ever wanted was to make a name for myself as Candice Salinas, creative writing grad student at the University of Miami. Of course, secretly I already have made a name for myself: as Candy Sloane, self-published erotic romance writer. Though thrilled that my books are selling and I have actual fans, if anyone at UM found out, I could lose my scholarship…and the respect of my faculty advisor, grade-A-asshole Professor Dylan.

Enter James Walker, super-hot local barista and—surprise!—my student. Even though I know a relationship is totally off-limits, I can’t stop myself from sneaking around with James, taking a few cues from my own erotic writing…if you catch my drift. Candy’s showing her stripes for the first time in my real life, and I’ve never had so much fun. But when the sugar high fades, can my secrets stay under wraps?

Author Bio:

Lisa Burstein is a tea seller by day and a writer by night. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from the Inland Northwest Center for Writers at Eastern Washington University. She is the author of Pretty Amy, The Next Forever and Dear Cassie. As well as a contributor to the upcoming essay collection, Break These Rules: 35 YA Authors On Speaking Up, Standing Out, and Being Yourself. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her very patient husband, a neurotic dog and two cats. 

Excerpts: 

Teaser #1

I don’t think I can wait much longer, I wrote into the Facebook chat window. Surprised how adept I was at typing with one hand. It was me touching me and him touching me. What happens now?

Now? he typed. I’m coming over.

While I waited for him, I searched my room for the pale pink bra and panties I’d described. I found them at the bottom of my underwear drawer. I hadn’t worn them since a Valentine’s Day years ago.

It sounded like James was kicking down the door instead of knocking. I answered in my robe, my underwear and bra underneath. I guess I wasn’t ready to be full-on Candy yet.

But when he kissed me and led me down the hall to my bedroom, I didn’t care who I was so long as I was with him. I couldn’t even talk and didn’t want to ruin the moment by asking him any of the questions in my head.

Forget my head. Forget my heart.

I had more enjoyable body parts to deal with. He walked me backward, our kiss sealing us together, our arms and legs tangled up in each other the whole way. We reached my bedroom. I pulled off my robe. He pulled off his shirt.

“I thought I already took those off,” he said, pulling on the floss of my thong.

“Not with your teeth,” I replied.

Teaser #2

“I’d rather be here with you,” I admitted, a bullet so true it could have knocked me back when I said it.

“Then be with me,” James said.

“I want to,” I said. I did. I wanted to be fearless. I wanted to “let go.” I wanted to be everything Professor Dylan and my parents thought I shouldn’t be. In my writing, in my life, in the love I chose. In the love that chose me.

I couldn’t stand it anymore. I kissed him hard. So hard, he stumbled and had to steady both of us.

He held the back of my head firmly, like he was afraid I would stop.

There was no way.

He turned me and pushed the exit door so we both fell outside, our lips and bodies still joined, tripping blindly alone and with solid certainty together.

We were out in the alley behind the restaurant. I was going after his belt, and he was raising my skirt. He pressed me against the wall and the humid air hit my thighs.

He put his finger in the waistband of my skirt, glided it back and forth, tickling my hip. “You sure about this?”

“I was always sure,” I said, pulling the condom from my pocket and handing it to him. It was true, even if Candice couldn’t admit it until now. Denying my feelings, denying me was done. This was what I wanted, who I wanted.

His tongue was in my ear and my mouth was on his throat when his body and mine connected, crackled. It was the first time I’d ever been with someone where I felt like I was in charge of what my body was doing. What my body was making his body do. I chose this. I chose him, and he had no choice but to comply.

Teaser #3

James swam closer to me. “I would ordinarily try to kiss you right now, but we’re on campus,” he said, continuing the fantasy of the two of us just being together without the complications of being the two of us.

Here it was—the kiss conversation. I guess it was impossible to deny there was something happening between us. Whether he finally said it or not, I could feel it. My whole body was begging for him, pleading on its knees.

“What about any of this is ordinary?” I asked. We were floating side by side. Toe-to-toe, shoulder to shoulder, cheek to cheek. I could have ducked underwater. I could have run out of the pool, or away. There was a whole world I could have put between us if I wanted to, but instead I hovered there waiting to see what he would do next. Waiting to see what I would do next.

“The part where we are supposed to stay away from each other,” he said, turning to me. His lips were so close, waiting for mine to connect, to make a choice, to show him I could make a choice.

“I’ve been thinking about revising that rule,” I said, the words out before I could stop them.

“Ooh, revision. We going to take a red pen to this relationship?” he asked his breath as warm as the water on my face.

I shrugged. I couldn’t respond. I’d already said too much. It was easier to write the words, easier to hide behind silence. Confessing my real feelings for James would only do one thing—get me hurt. Sure, he wanted to kiss me now, to be with me now, but that would change. I would never let myself be in a situation like that again.

“I think I’m going to get out.” I swam to the wall, climbed up the stairs, and sat on the edge with my legs dangling in the water.

James swam over to me. “It’s too bad we can’t be together,” he said, his face parallel to my wet knees, “because this gives me some ideas.”

Droplets from his hair pinged against the surface. He exhaled so close to my thighs it felt like each freckle on my skin was the result of a lightning strike.

Maybe I could leave Candice behind and just be like one of Candy’s characters. Why couldn’t James and I have a purely physical relationship? It was clear my Miami life was sorely, or not so “sorely,” lacking in that department, and after drinks with Professor Dylan, it appeared James could be trusted to keep his mouth shut.

“What kind of ideas?” I wanted to know what they were, badly, but could I go through with them?

“Not the kind a student should be thinking about his teacher.”