51 Love VBT

Blurb:

This story is about Abram, a hopeless romantic who enrolls into college and begins leaving love notes for the girl, Jec, who works at the front desk of his student apartments. About why they know each other when neither have even met. That's right, she had seen his face only two weeks earlier, when he tossed his book bag in the middle of the street, holding up traffic like a mad homeless man. But what she doesn't know is that just before he came to grab his keys to move in, the handsome albeit strange eyes and the person they belong to had just been released from the county jail.

The jail cell talk without any cameras around to record make his last 51 minutes in the pen with a sketchy bunkmate a do or die conversation that may explain why he became homeless, why he wrote the love letters in the first place, and if both were random at all.

Excerpt:

The same day in August, 2015

I think, for the price of a pizza, the experience of the novel is priceless.

A literary ecstasy, this was not a book I wanted to lend. I had to have it.

My co-worker interjects my thoughts, “Is that lighter fluid? What is he burning out there in our fire pit? I’m telling you Jec, that dude killed somebody. You haven’t seen him around as long as I have. The way he’s always scrunching his face, looking like a stone cold killer with all that stinking thinking. Some people struggle with who they really are. And when it goes foul, you know they don’t always catch these people.”

He picks up and holds out the book I am reading titled Wait For You, and says, “Some novels you have to read twice to really see all the beauty in the nuances, but these plots don’t always end beautifully Jec. You should start reading more of them.”

I take a bite out of an apple and stop scratching my thumb across a squiggled smear on my permanent marker to look out the window as I reply to my front desk co-receptionist, “Bobby, you’re being ridiculous. It just looked like he pulled some papers from a box and threw them into the pit. Hey, where’d he go?”

Bobby answers quickly, “No really, have you seen him using his hands on the street? He’s probably practicing some lethal judo that nobody knows right now. Hi-yah!—”

Ding-Ding.

At the sound of the front door bell I tried to smother my giggle in professionalism, but I no longer found it necessary to suppress as the blurry silhouette of the person entering the front door became clear and my laughter came to a sudden halt.

Do you have any tattoos?  Where? When did you get it/them? Where are they on your body?

LOL. Yes. I love body art! I had all of my tattoos done while I was completing my bachelor’s. I have a rose on my right chest, a cross on my left chest, and my twin sister’s nickname (since we were little kids) on the inside of my right bicep.

Is your life anything like it was two years ago?

That’s a humongous no. I was homeless two years ago, living in a tent.

How long have you been writing?

Since I was in that tent a couple years ago. It started as a journal in the tent. And I eventually couldn’t stop writing, but I wasn’t writing this story. After revisiting the journals one day in February 2016, the scenes of this story came to mind and I decided to write this novel.

What advice would you give a new writer just starting out?

 Write what you want to write, and live in it.

Tell us something about your newest release that is NOT in the blurb.

I’ll give you something that’s between the lines in this one, and on the pages of the next:

Trouble.

You are on your way to work, trying to balance the brown liquid in your coffee cup by avoiding the pot holes, when suddenly, a young man throws his book bag down in the middle of the four-way intersection just as you take your foot off the break. He is irate, and besides the book bag, he possesses all the symptoms of homelessness typical of your city, leading you to believe this is no extraordinary event. Somebody down on their luck, and unable to control their own impulse to blame the rest of us who get up and drag ourselves to a nine to five.

It is not until you come home one evening, turn on your television, and see a familiar face on the five o’clock news that you realize you had seen this face before. “Breaking news. A bomb detonated in South Georgia kills one, and it is believed that the victim, a young female working at a local apartment complex, was specifically targeted.” Oddly, you had seen the face on the screen somewhere else earlier that day, riding in the passenger seat of a car driven by a young female who everybody knows in town as Jec, short for Jack Ellie Christianson. A hardworking and unassuming receptionist for a local apartment complex, Jec is a quiet feminist with plenty of promise.

The news anchor reports that the perpetrator had recently been released from the city jail, and was known to be in close contact with the victim for months. A relationship? With all the publicity around gender equality, the push for women’s rights, and the prominence of women in major politics, it makes you wonder, was this a case of domestic violence, or domestic terrorism, and what is the difference? Who is this mysterious guy who showed up out of nowhere and what part of this is love? There is no love without trouble. And it makes you want to support what you have seen on the internet about the HeforShe movement that much more. The seventeen minutes before he, Abram, was released from jail, may just prove to be the most important seventeen minutes of his story, and Jec’s. The reporter continues, “The suspect is a Georgia native who people say went under the radar, until recently.”

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Don’t forget to visit the remaining stops on the tour!

Author Bio and Links:

Jeremy lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He grew up in the south Atlanta area, where he eventually earned a football scholarship to Duke University. After experiencing enough life to form his own opinions, he enjoys sharing some with friends, reading, watching fantasy thriller and romance films, listening to music, and jogging when he is not writing. He writes new adult fiction.

Jeremy would love to hear from you. Follow him on Twitter @JTRingfield, friend him on Facebook, or visit his webpage at www.jeremytringfield.com

Website     |     Facebook     |     Twitter

Buy Links:

Amazon Kindle     |     Amazon Print     |     B&N     |     iBookstore