Spotlight & Giveaway: Becoming Family by Elysia Whisler

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Elysia Whisler to HJ!

Hi Elysia Whisler and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Becoming Family!

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

Sweet Tabitha Steele is just turning thirty and is feeling lost about her future. A Navy veteran with PTSD and a service dog, she’s just on the cusp of getting back out into the world and always feels like an imposter in her own life. Chris Hobbs, Marine Corps veteran and fun fitness coach, has a playboy persona that is mostly a costume he uses to hide his upbringing at the hands of his violent father. The two made a connection early on when Tabitha joined the gym, but now that Tabitha is studying to become a massage therapist the feelings that they have for each other are progressing to the next level—despite the fact that both of them are scared out of their wits to let the other in. When Chris’s elder brother and younger sister enter the picture, his past is thrust to the forefront of his life, to a place where he cannot look away. With the help of a bunch of rescue dogs (and a cat!) Tabitha and Chris find the strength they need in each other to get through the tough times and become who they were meant to be.
 

Please share your favorite line(s) or quote from this book:

“There was something about him, starting way back on the Fourth of July, when she had pulled out of her panic attack and found his warm, strong hand gripping hers. He helped free something inside of her, with his cavalier attitude and bullish optimism, his strength and easy charm. It was like finding a companion on a dark, gloomy trail. You were still in the fog but you were no longer alone.”
“’It’s like that tricky birthday candle, isn’t it? You think you got this and then suddenly one pops back to life. But really … do we really want all the candles to go out? How exciting is that? We all need a little light. We all need a little surprise in our lives. We all need sparks to make us grow.’”

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• I actually am a massage therapist and one of the things I enjoyed portraying, both in this book and in RESCUE YOU, was a deep, meaningful representation of my vocation, rather than how massage therapists are often portrayed in books and film.
• Lily, the fearless sixteen-going-on-thirty-year-old who rescues animals in her spare time turned out more like my real life daughter than I intended!

What first attracts your Hero to the Heroine and vice versa?

Chris is the fun, laissez-faire fitness coach that knows how to make traumatized, toe-the-line Tabitha come alive, let go a little, not take herself so seriously, have a little fun and believe in herself. Tabitha is the woman who has somehow always been able to see that Chris is not all fun and games—he’s got a lot of trauma behind his big smile and her budding massage therapist hands are just sensitive enough to rub their way inside and reach his troubled heart.

Did any scene have you blushing, crying or laughing while writing it? And Why?

In the Third Act, when Tabitha confronts Chris about hiding behind his happy-go-lucky persona, Chris’s reasons for why he joined the Marine Corps broke my heart:

“When I joined the marine corps at eighteen years old, it was because I wanted to be the biggest, baddest, toughest mother fucker on the planet. I wanted to get away, and I wanted to go somewhere that would turn me into a killing machine, so that nobody could ever lay a hand on me again. And when I was in combat, the only thing that scared me was the thought that I might get hurt enough to get sent back home. I either wanted to be healthy enough to stay as far away from Omaha as I could, or I wanted to be dead. Now, how fucked up is that?”

Readers should read this book….

Readers should read this book if they want a sweet, yet gritty, love story with realistic characters that provide a deep delve into a lot of the tropes that Romance Readers love! (Military, fitness, massage, rescue dogs). They should also read this book if they want to find out how all those Alpha heroes really get buff—those cut abs take a lot of work and the real deal is in my books!

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have in the works?

I actually have two different projects going in the romance realm that could not be more different, but they are both contemporary and full of heart. I am also working on a literary horror novel.
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: (1) Print copy of BECOMING FAMILY. US only

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: What emotion from the list above do you prefer to feel most while reading Romance? Blushing, laughing or crying?

 
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Excerpt from Becoming Family:

The drops of orange light were like little candle flames bursting inside the cold October air. The tree’s giant dome would otherwise have been cloaked in nightfall, but Tabitha spied it from the road, her eye caught as soon as she strode up the walk. She peered inside the overhang of pendulous branches, spellbound by what looked like a million pulsing firefly hearts. A cat skeleton climbed the trunk and a human one hung from the thicker apex of an inner branch. Below them both, on the ground, was a dog skeleton, jaw unhinged in a silent bark. A ghoul, hung from a higher branch, flitted in the breeze.
“Trick or treat.”
Tabitha turned to the voice—a young girl in shredded clothes and face paint. She clasped a bulging pillowcase. Tabitha parted her lips to speak.
“A doggy!” The girl’s face split into a smile as she spied Trinity, calm, patiently waiting out Tabitha’s obsession with the tree, sitting on the lawn near her ruby-red slippers. “Is she supposed to be Toto?” The girl looked Tabitha up and down, taking in the shoes and the blue-and-white gingham dress.
“Sure,” Tabitha lied.
The girl scrunched her nose. “Toto didn’t wear a vest.”
“This is true.” Trinity, in her camo service vest, had no hints of Toto whatsoever. Not even a basket. “She’s a working dog. Dressing her up didn’t seem right.”
The girl shrugged. “She’s cute. And your shoes are cool.”
“Thanks. I like your costume, too.” Tabitha didn’t know what the girl was supposed to be. She looked like some kind of zombie Barbie, if that was a thing, with shredded bright colors and eerie face paint. Kids were so creative these days. When Tabitha was young they just cut up sheets or put in those plastic fangs that made your saliva pool. “Are you a zombie Barbie?”
“What’s a zombie Barbie?”
“I don’t know.” Tabitha shook her head. Awkward, even with kids.
After a long pause the girl said, “Don’t you have any candy?”
“Oh.” Tabitha laughed and pointed at the front door. “Ring the bell. I don’t live here.”
The girl’s eyes shifted to the front porch. The glass door revealed a group of women already inside—they’d gathered for the car pool over to the Halloween party at the gym. They milled between the rooms inside, all clad in costumes. “Why are you standing out here in the dark?” The girl looked the tree up and down, perhaps as impressed as Tabitha by the size, the great sweeping umbrella of lit-up branches, the careful placement of fake skeletons.
“That’s a good question.” I’m already late, she didn’t add. I got stopped by the tree. I wouldn’t mind living under this tree. No use saying things like that, unless she wanted to scare the poor kid for real. “I’ll go up with you.” Tabitha nodded at the door. This was the first time she’d ever been to Clementine’s house, even though they’d been gym buddies for about six months. She wouldn’t have pegged Clementine as a Halloween person, but this display was something else.
Braver than Tabitha, the girl rang the bell. Some time went by before Clementine appeared, clasping a plastic cauldron. She pushed open the door and the women’s voices filled the night. Clementine, dressed up like a marathon runner, complete with what looked like an official Marine Corps Marathon race bib from some years past, smiled at them both.
“Trick or treat.” The girl opened her pillowcase.
“Cool costume.”
“Thanks. I’m a clown who’s been murdered.”
Tabitha could totally see that now.
Clementine didn’t miss a beat. “Specific,” she said, and dropped in a candy bar.
“Thankyoubye!” The girl closed the bag as soon as the candy bar hit, was two steps away before she turned back and added, “’Bye, Toto!” She stooped down, ignored the service vest and gave two pats to Trinity’s head before she skipped away, past the tree and over to a woman who’d been waiting patiently under a streetlight, clicking on her phone. The neighborhood was on the classy side, with large homes situated on lots at least an acre wide. Rather than a steady throng of trick-or-treaters, kids moved in groups trained by flashlight beams, chattering in the distance.
“Get in here, birthday girl.” Clementine ushered Tabitha and Trinity inside. “You’re late.” The storm door closed behind them, locking out the night and the far-off cries of kids hyped on adrenaline and sugar.
“Not on purpose or anything.” Tabitha was surrounded by a different sort of energy now: happy women, ready for a Saturday night party. Trinity stood by her side, unbothered, but Tabitha wished she could go back to the tree and hide under its umbrella of branches.
Clementine grinned at the lie. “Not at all like you rushing into the gym seconds before the class starts, every single time.”
“I’ve gotten a lot better.” Six months ago, Tabitha had sat in her car with Trinity, outside the gym, unsure if she’d ever muster the courage to go in.
“This is true.” Clementine patted her arm. Her nails were neither long nor short, neatly manicured and painted a pumpkin orange with a little black spiderweb on her thumb. Tabitha wondered how Clementine managed to keep her nails so pretty when she was slinging weights around the gym three days a week and unpacking cartons in her running shop all day long.
From somewhere in the house, a dog barked. It was yappy, like it came from a little thing.
“That’s Roscoe,” Clementine said, tilting her head toward a stairway that led up. “I put him in the spare room for now.
He’s half-blind and wigs out around other dogs. Lily’s latest rescue from the shelter. He was going to be put down today.”
“Aw.” Tabitha frowned. “Poor guy.”
“She’s got someone lined up to adopt him. It’s just going to take another week.” Clementine shrugged, like she’d been through it a million times. “He’ll calm down in a minute.”
“I love your tree.” Tabitha motioned to the front door. “What is it?”
“That—” Clementine gave her blond ponytail a toss “—is a European weeping hornbeam. Tyler planted it when we moved in fifteen years ago. Just a tiny thing back then.” Her voice dropped, a wave of sadness crossing her petite features, then disappearing so fast Tabitha wondered if she’d imagined it.
“The lights and skeletons are so cool.”
“Lily did the decorating,” Clementine said. “Halloween is her favorite holiday. If it were left up to me, there’d just be a happy jack-o’-lantern on the porch, not skeletons crawling around.”
Tabitha followed Clementine into the kitchen, warm and smelling of baked goods. The sight made her edges soften. A small group of women—all of whom she’d grown to trust—clustered around the table. They smiled and waved and greeted her at once. Right in the center of the table was a giant sheet cake, covered in candles, that screamed Happy Boo-Day, Tabitha in orange frosting. Only once she saw that cake did she let herself admit just how disappointed she’d been that Auntie El had skipped the birthday dinner and brownies. She hadn’t woken before Tabitha left and Tabitha had decided to leave her be.
Tabitha scanned the room for the elusive Lily. Clementine talked about her sixteen-year-old daughter all the time, mostly about her escapades while on the job at the local animal shelter, but Tabitha had never met her, had no idea what she looked like, for that matter. She pictured a younger version of Clementine—tiny, blonde, athletic build, bright green eyes.
“Lily’s not here.” Clementine must’ve read her mind. “Out hanging with friends.”
“You’re late to your own birthday party,” Sunny scolded, then slugged a glass of red wine. She owned Pittie Place—the dog rescue that had saved Trinity. Tonight she sported a set of cat’s ears atop her long, straight blond hair and a black leotard with a tail attached.
“I didn’t know there was a birthday party.” Tabitha suddenly felt lit up inside. Maybe this day wasn’t going to be totally horrible after all. The agreement had been for the five gym friends—Tabitha, Clementine, Delaney, Sunny and Red—to meet up at Clementine’s, the designated driver, to ride over to Semper Fit together for the Halloween party. If anyone had too much to drink, then they would crash here later instead of driving home. Nobody had said anything about surprising her for her birthday. With a cake. “I can’t believe you made me a cake.”
“Sunny made it,” Clementine said.
Sunny snorted. “Sunny bought it. Because Delaney said you had a bad day. And the last thing a sweet lady like you deserves for her birthday is something I baked.” As the room rippled with laughter, Sunny turned her attention to Trinity. “There she is. There’s my good girl.” She squatted down. “The most badass of The Matrix litter. Look what a good worker you are.”
“Go see Sunny,” Tabitha told the pittie, who waited patiently.
Sunny opened her arms and Trinity went to her, her whole bottom wagging. Sunny’s hands rested on the dog’s back as she laid her muzzle on Sunny’s shoulder. As Sunny stroked her fur, the other women made a collective “Ahhhh” sound at the cuteness of it all.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

A completely standalone novel, #3 in the Dogwood County series
On her thirtieth birthday, Tabitha realizes she hasn’t much to show for her life since she left military service. Tabitha makes a hasty vow that she will make this the best year of her life, which is a tall order considering her mish-mash of unfulfilling jobs, her stagnant social life, and the crippling PTSD she has to overcome on a near-daily basis. But she thinks she can do it with the help of her beloved service dog, Trinity.

Chris Hobbs, the playful and wild-hearted bad boy of the Semper Fit gym, is Tabitha’s complete opposite. Which is why, despite his habit of dating any woman who bats an eye at him, he’s always steered clear of Tabitha, even though they’ve formed a tight friendship. Especially because of that.
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Meet the Author:

Elysia Whisler was raised in Texas, Italy, Alaska, Mississippi, Nebraska, Hawai’i and Virginia, in true military fashion. If she’s not writing she’s probably working out, coaching, or massaging at her CrossFit gym. She lives in Virginia with her family, including her large brood of cat and dog rescues, who vastly outnumber the humans.
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