GUEST POST/GIVEAWAY: Jennifer James - Love Kinection

Nerd Nuggets: Incubating LOVE KINECTION

I know, I know. It’s a weird title. I couldn’t help myself. See, the kids were having chicken nuggets for lunch today, and I’d been chewing over what to call this blog post. I’m writing about geeks, the kids are eating nuggets…where did my ideas come from….and voila! Nerd Nuggets.

LOVE KINECTION came about from bits and pieces of the things I happened to be paying attention to at the time. I’d just finished writing a novel with vampires and loads of sex and needed a new project. But I was stumped as to what I wanted to write. So, I started to troll publisher websites and looked at their submission calls. There were calls for Valentine’s Day, (or Anti-Valentine’s Day, as it were), Geeks, Military, Contemporaries…a whole mish-mash of stuff.

I’m not a fan of Valentine’s Day. So, I jumped on an Anti-Valentine’s Day story. And I loved the idea of a hero (in particular) who was geeky, and yet sexy. I’ve read books where the awkward heroine meets smexy man and they ride off into the sunset in smexy’s super cool car and the heroine’s hair never ruffles and even though she had little to no sexual experience, she’s suddenly a super star in the bedroom. I wanted to write something different than that. ‘Cause I think geeks are sexy. And if there’s one hard and fast writing rule you should follow, it’s to write what you want to write. Being in the middle of a project and hating the shit out of it sucks.

So, here I was with a tiny seed for a story. Anti-Valentine’s Day. All I really knew was that my heroine was pissed off, she hated the holiday, and if she could, she would shoot cupid in the face with his own arrow. When the hero Tom finally walked on stage, their banter flowed naturally. They debated nerd collections, and I gave Abby, the heroine, a large book collection that looks awfully similar to yours truly’s. (I no longer own ALL the books she mentions, but I’ve read them all. J )

Then Skyrim launched. Here I was, writing this book, and all the X-box fanatics I knew were going bananas. Now, I love to play video games. LOVE. But, a few years ago, our house was hit by lightning and it destroyed half the electronics. My old faithful PS3 included.

But, the nugget was there. I heard Tom’s voice in my head, all excited to play Skyrim. Right after he finished a particularly brutal raid on World of Warcraft. X-box was definitely in.

When we got to content edits, my editor Dana told me that she wanted to see Tom and Abby really geek it up. Heh. Fine, the gauntlet was thrown. The challenge issued. Except, I’m not a gamer. Not to Tom’s level, anyway.

What to do?

I did what any author trapped in a writing rut does. I put out a call on social media for help. I’m totally shameless when it comes to these things. The answers I got to my question “What kind of geeky stuff would you guys like to see in a book?” helped fuel the nerd humor in LOVE KINECTION. Yes, I did have to Google search some of it. But it was fun and exciting to interact with followers that way. And it made me realize that there is a whole section of the market dying for someone to write books for them.

I will totally admit to having a zombie fetish, owning every movie mentioned in this novella, being addicted to thinkgeek.com, having a small beloved cache of comic books, and that I will, on occasion spout movie lines. I also think Buffy should have stayed with Spike, video game monsters terrify me (I suck at first person shooters), and I’m desperately waiting for the opportunity to say, in public, “You’ve got red on you,” to a random passerby and have them respond with something like, “Bring it frat bitch.”

So, I hope you all have your towels ready in case Arthur Dent happens by.

I’m going to give away a copy of LOVE KINECTION to a lucky commenter. Give me one of YOUR favorite nerd movie or book quotes. I’m having swag made up, but I’m not sure when it will arrive. So, if you’d like something swaggy, I’m happy to send you some when I get it. But you might have to wait a bit. Leave me your e-mail addy and I’ll snail mail you something geekalicious.

Author Bio:

For a girl whose first book was called “The Scariest Forest Ever,” the jump to romance may seem to be a far one. But a love of happy endings and the stories she kept making up in her head for strangers on the street lead to an unhealthy amount of time spent behind the keyboard typing away and giggling mischievously over sassy heroines, sexy heroes, and healthy sprinklings of eek humor.

With time split between a day job staring at teeth, two little girls, college courses, workaholic husband, and too many voices in her head, Jennifer still finds time to sneak off and devour all the books she can find – even if it means hiding in the closet to read them.

She insists on her jokes being dirty, drinks spiked, and tattoos placed in intriguing, muscular places you can only find when the clothes come off.


Links:
Website: http://www.authorjenniferjames.com/
FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jennifer-James/212335188856799?ref=hl
Twitter: @JenniferJames34
Blogs I contribute to: Paranormalists http://paranormalists.blogspot.com/
Love Scenes and Wet Dreams: http://lovescenesandwetdreams.wordpress.com/

If you thought this post rocked then wait until you read Love Kinection! The fabulous Jennifer James is giving away a digital copy of Love Kinection to one lucky Riverina Romantics reader. That's right ladies for your chance to snuggle up to that hunkalicious geek Tom all you have to do is fill out the rafflecopter form below. And of course this giveaway is international! Good luck everyone!!

a Rafflecopter giveaway