Love. Local. Latebreaking. by H. Laurence Lareau – Guest Blog and Giveaway

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. H. Laurence Lareau will be awarding a $15 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

Romance is all about hero and heroine finding fulfillment in one another. An important part of that—a fundamental aspect of our humanity—is sexual. Yes, personalities have to clash at first, then find places of vulnerability where they can connect. Yes, there have to be life issues that separate hero and heroine, and they have to overcome them to find a place where they can find belonging. Yet the lion’s share of the fuel that powers the romance rocket lies behind closed doors.

Whether it’s full-on ‘mommy porn’ like 50 Shades or if the reader is left to imagine what happens once the bedroom door closes, the moments when hero and heroine come together are—pun intended—climaxes that give the reader’s and characters’ experience real meaning.

The conversation explores the tension between work life and sex life when the L.L.L. heroine, Karli, gets together with Mary Rose and their other friend, news anchor Bailey Barber. The three have been discussing a news consultant’s three-step guidance on how to report inspirational stories:

“Okay,” Karli conceded, again engaged with the earnestness that comes with just about enough alcohol and as though Bailey really were the consultant. “Some of that, yes. But you know lots of news directors will say stories on emotional effects are puff pieces or hand-wringing or whatever. They aren’t necessarily going to advance my career, in other words.”

“My career, my career,” Mary Rose mocked. “Haven’t you got anything better to talk about?” She waggled her eyebrows first to Karli and then at Bailey. “The inspiration stuff is boring. And so is your career. Let’s talk about sex.”

Karli looked desperately at Bailey, hoping to avoid that conversation. “So, Understandable and Emotional we’ve got. What does he have to say about Memorable?”

Bailey shrugged. “He doesn’t have much to add there. Just that memorable things come in threes. That’s about it.”

“Threesomes?” Mary Rose shrieked. “You two have been holding out on me!”

Karli was appalled that so many eyes in the bar had turned their way in response to Mary Rose’s exclamation. “We did NOT have a threesome, Mary Rose,” she said in her best shushing tone. “It was just the two of us.”

Mary Rose ducked her head down secretively, and Bailey eagerly returned to her seat and leaned in toward Karli. “Two of you is plenty,” Mary Rose blurted. “Girl, we need details. FULL details. Grooming and acts and dimensions and everything.”

“And when did all this go down?” Bailey asked. “We haven’t been out for drinks in forever.”

“We didn’t have sex, okay?” Karli’s blush felt like it covered her whole body. “We just had another kiss.” She caught herself and added, “Well, we had a few more kisses. But that’s it.”

Mary Rose’s face looked suddenly downcast. “How come you run warm-up laps and never do the race? This is frustrating as hell, girl. I don’t know about you, but I want more!”

Rest assured, there’s more to come for Karli and Jake. The challenge in writing the more to come scenes is daunting. Not only is it embarrassingly voyeuristic to write sex scenes for characters who’ve practically come to life for me, it’s difficult to make the sex reflect the characters’ connection. There is, after all, a lot to explore. Not only is there the difference between a blushing first time and the comfort of long intimacy between partners, there can be a profound space between encounters that where partners meet in self-giving vulnerability and soulful connection and where the encounter is just a meh means to an orgasm.

Writing sex that is truthful to the characters’ experiences and attitudes is a difficult task. Every heroine and hero need to find an authentic connection, one that is meaningful for them. Yet being faithful to the characters requires an author to draw them out of themselves and into one another appropriately to who they are, individually and together. So while I’m blushing tomato-red writing their scenes, I’m also striving to make their encounters truthful to them and satisfying to the reader.

Since excerpts would be spoilers, I don’t include any here—consider these thoughts about sex scenes as holding hands on the way home. There’s a lot to anticipate, I promise! Reader’s reactions have been positive, which is nearly as gratifying as . . . well, no it isn’t, but it’s really wonderful.

Here’s to your own happy endi¬– . . . um, I mean, here’s to your own happily ever after!

Please share your thoughts about romance with me any time. You can contact me at: hlaurencelareau.com; FB: @HLLareau; Amazon: amazon.com/author/hlaurencelareau

Professional passion in the tradition of Julie James, Love. Local. Latebreaking. is a page-turning romance shining a spotlight into television news.

“Heart-tugging relational tension but with a sophistication that raises it above the romance genre.” — Jlaird, verified purchaser

“Mr. Lareau manages humor beautifully–I was able to envision certain scenes/situations/people so clearly that I was chortling into my coffee. I highly recommend this novel as a light-hearted (and sexy) diversion.” — Sarah K. Clark, verified purchaser

“The heroine had a career that she worked hard for and that she didn’t give that career up simply because she’d found love” — A. Geek, verified purchaser

Local TV news reporter Karli Lewis has one goal: escape Iowa’s cornfields and podunk local news scene to hit the bright lights of the Chicago’s newsrooms. Karli’s career is on the rise, thanks to her talented, dizzingly handsome, yet enigmatic news photographer, Jake Gibson, a dedicated hometown boy who is staying put. Will Karli listen to her heart, or will she choose a dateline over her favorite date? Can she reconcile her unbridled ambition and her longing for the man she could lose forever?

Enjoy an Excerpt

Her eyes and the smell of her skin and the pulse beating in her neck all told Jake that she was ready to be his. Her raised eyebrows and her erect, squared-off posture told him to stay away. He saw all of this in an instant, then fumbled for something to do that wasn’t kissing, in spite of the thudding pulse and the insistent twitch that urged him—now—to find the sweetness of her lips.

Jake wasn’t thinking through the feelings, the urges, the choices. Evolution or God or something had equipped men—and Jake more especially than most—with a finely calibrated system to gauge a woman’s readiness. Something—the pheromone density in the air or her posture or the pace of her breathing or some combination of those things or some other primal indicator—wasn’t yet right. One more moment of intimacy, though, and they would both be ready. Instinct guided him to the movie’s moment of consummation.

“When the heroine finds out that he really does love her and wants to marry her—that’s pretty powerful, isn’t it?”

Jake knew immediately that he’d said the wrong thing. Karli shook her head slightly and turned her blue eyes from his. She reached up and took Jake’s hand and the napkin it held from her face.

“Shut up,” she ordered him. “You think I was rooting for that insipid girl?” she asked. “No, Jake, I don’t identify with girls who need men to define them. I was cheering for the reporter. He had finally found his way to a real news job in a real market. He had escaped Des Moines.”

About the Author: H. Laurence Lareau fell in love with romances the first time Pride and Prejudice came home from the library with him. Since that high school summer, he has earned an English degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, worked as a television and print journalist, built a career in law, and has remained a Jane Austen junkie through it all.

The Newsroom Romance series draws from his careers, his voracious reading, and his curiosity about the tensions between real life and real love.

Real life now is dramatically different from the real life of Austen’s times—privileged women no longer choose between eligible members of the landed gentry, nor are they imperiled by the sexist mysteries of the entailed fee simple estate in land.

Modern women with the privileges of education rather than birth now embark upon careers that can satisfy many personal and material dreams. Seemingly inevitably, though, careers fall short of the promise that they’ll fulfill women as people.

Strong, modern women have defined Lareau’s professional and personal lives, and strong women fully occupy center stage in their own newsroom romance stories. Their high-profile journalism and legal careers matter deeply to them and to the people they serve.

Then love comes walking in. These book boyfriends don’t have kilts or billions or pirate ships, though. Their career goals meet and often clash with their romantic counterparts, requiring both the men and women to make hard choices about what happily ever after should look like and how to achieve it.

When he isn’t writing, practicing law, or raising children, he’s working on martial arts and music.

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