Madness
By J.L. Vallance
Blurb:
I never wanted to fall in love.
I lived a life tainted by mental illness and the stigma that came with it. That illness almost claimed my life once and I had a promise to keep¬¬, a promise that I would live, no matter how much it hurt. All I craved in life was marginal happiness, a little success, and an unfractured mind. I longed for the normalcy that the rest of the world thrived on while fearing the intimacy that could snap the thin thread with which I held onto sanity.
I may not have had it all, but I was close...until he crashed into my world.
He turned everything upside down and shifted the scales of my balanced world. He was charming and charismatic with a healthy dash of trouble and volatility rolled in. He was completely and perfectly damaged. I tumbled hard and fast.
I fell in love with Rory O’Neill and our world was little more than madness....and it was fucking beautiful.
Release Date:
September 2, 2014
Excerpt
I had all the time to fall in love.
I’d been blessed with more than ample amounts of
opportunities to meet a good, stable, healthy man and settle into a blissful
happiness. Never, in all my years of adulthood, especially after my break, had
I wanted that. I was happy with my life the way it was--simple and ruled by my own
wants and desires. I lived by my own failures and triumphs. The last thing I
ever needed was the trauma that came with romance. I also didn't require
validation.
Stupidly, I waited until the most unstable and
volatile man in the state came into my life to decide that just maybe I should
give romance a whirl. I was a moron for thinking I was falling in love
with him--this man that was quite nearly a stranger. But that was exactly what
was happening.
Lukas was strong, a superior on too many levels to
keep track of. He was good to me, treated me with respect and adoration. But
Rory, he was a different animal altogether. He was suffering, drowning in his
own grief and illness that he couldn't see the life buzzing around him. He was
the kind of animal I could easily recognize and associate with. I’d seen it in
his face the night we met; it was the thing that drew me into him in the first
place.
We were mutually damaged.
There was something in the way his eyes drew me in.
They drank in every ounce, savored every last morsel, and they never held any
judgment. They held fascination and wonderment; they burst with lust. But they
never held pity. It’s been well over two years since anyone looked at me that
way.
That’s what made me start to tumble--the way he could
see me and accept me without condition.
About the Author
J. L. Vallance is a wife, mom, and nurse by day, while posing as a writer by night. Plagued with an overactive imagination, a lover of all things supernatural in nature, she has an extraordinary flair for the dramatic that adds flavor to life. There’s little in her world that Otis Redding and buttercream icing can’t fix. And of course, coffee always helps too. True story.
I love this! We need more female cover models with tattoos ;-)
ReplyDeleteI tried emailing the address under "contact" but I didn't receive a response yet. Just wondering which amanda b. won it, seeing that i am an amanda b.
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