Spotlight & Giveaway: Becoming Wilde by HK Jacobs

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author HK Jacobs to HJ!

Hi HK Jacobs and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Becoming Wilde!

 
Hello! I am honored to be here today.
 

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

Becoming Wilde is the second book in the Alex Wilde series–a trilogy of books about a tragically flawed doctor who travels the globe caring for critically ill children and her path of self-discovery as she navigates falling in love. In Wilde Type, which is book one of the series, the story begins with Alexandra Wilde working in a hospital in Botswana, where she meets privileged philanthropist, Ian Devall. Despite Alex’s reservations, she is enraptured by Ian, especially after glimpsing the depth of his character. Because of a traumatic childhood, Alex struggles to accept his love until a life-changing realization happens after her father dies. Becoming Wilde begins after Alex has returned to Botswana and reignites her blazing romance with Ian. The couple immediately bond over an adventurous visit to an elephant preserve in Tanzania, where Alex finally reveals the details of her past. Not long after, Alex is faced with the challenges of saving lives at the hospital as her commitment to Ian deepens. She knows that eventually being with Ian will ask her to make sacrifices that she isn’t sure she can make. While she wavers in her decision-making, an unforeseen tragedy sends her into a spiral of grief that makes her question not only who she has been..but who she will become.
 

Please share the opening lines of this book:

Everything felt swollen—her eyelids, her cheeks, her lips. Especially her lips that had been kissed furiously and desperately the night before. A reminder of her transgressions in the form of a single copper strand of hair rested lightly but resolutely on her sleeve. Alex picked it off and flicked it to the floor.

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• I used places and events from my personal life to structure my fictional story.
  Once I created Alex and Ian, they truly became real! Alex is loosely based on me–but she drinks more than I do. Ian is completely fictitious–and a result of my undying obsession with Ian Somerhalder from The Vampire Diaries.
• I wanted these books to be I created an “Alex Wilde” playlist on Apple music for the songs that inspired the story. Some of my favorites that inspired certain scene in the book include: Wildest Dreams (Taylor Swift), Gravity (Sara Bareilles), Yours (Ella Henderson), Poison & WIne (Civil Wars), No light No light (Florence + the Machine), Skin (Rihanna), Always (Gavin James), Burst into Flames (Cavale)
•  In order to write the steamy scenes, I drank loads of champagne. It’s harder than you think to come up with poetic ways of capturing really potent intimacy. I didn’t want the typical sex scenes. I wanted indulgent but thoughtful…steamy but relevant.

Please tell us a little about the characters in your book. As you wrote your protagonist was there anything about them that surprised you?

I wrote Alex Wilde as a strong, female protagonist. She is a badass doctor who saves children’s lives but maintains a part of herself that is unreachable. At one point, she even asks Ian to let her go in order to save him the trauma of loving her. She is flawed but extraordinarily generous and is on a dynamic path of self-discovery. I wrote her as the heroine of her own story.
Ian, her love interest, has a level of complexity that will come as a surprise to readers. He struggles with his own traumatic past and takes a very different path in order to deal with it. Despite his arrogant exterior, he loves deeply and has the heart of a dreamer.
My favorite character has to be Rox–Alex’s best friend. She is also a physician and, unlike Alex, is vibrant and emotionally secure. Much of Becoming Wilde is about the bonds of female friendship as she and Alex weather the storms of life.

If your book was optioned for a movie, what scene would you use for the audition of the main characters and why?

What a fabulous question! Definitely the scene of Alex and Ian in Tanzania after their adventure rescuing a baby elephant. Take a peek below!

“I’m not sorry,” he said quietly, his voice calm but hard like a river stone.
She could imagine his emotions swirling around it like rapids, bubbling around its solidarity. Before she could respond, he continued.
“I’m not sorry for dragging you out of there and I would do it all over again. I will never support choices that put you in danger or hurt you or threaten you, so if that’s your expectation, I’ll never live up to it, and you should do us both a favor and walk away right now.”
At a different time in her life, Alex would have obeyed. The fear of rejection…the feeling of being unworthy of such love would have carried her out of the barn, slamming shut a physical and emotional door that she would have kept closed for an eternity. But she wasn’t the girl she once was. She was choosing to live a life that rose above her most basic fears.
Put on your phoenix wings, whispered her subconscious. She stood but didn’t make a move toward Ian, not even a gesture. Instead, she stayed perfectly still, breathing in the sweet smell of hay and elephant musk.
“I don’t always make the best…decisions. And I don’t expect you to like all of them, but there is one that I will never give up.”
“And what’s that?”
She sensed him steel himself for her answer.
“You.”

What do you want people to take away from reading this book?

Any dream that you can imagine can become a reality, including epic love.
Female elephants bond for life–find your herd!
Just because you can’t see what’s ahead of you, doesn’t mean you’re lost.

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have planned?

We are about to release Wilde Type on audible and then start producing Becoming Wilde for release later this summer. I am also working on the third book in the Alex Wilde series, which will be released in early spring.
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: Summer giveaway: 10 Special boxes containing copies of Wilde Type (book 1) and Becoming Wilde (book 2) including exclusive author swag! (US and International delivery) 

25 E-book copies of Becoming Wilde delivered via Amazon

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: When reading a provocative scene in a romance novel, do you prefer exquisite detail or things left to the imagination? Or a little of both?

 
a Rafflecopter giveaway

 
 

Excerpt from Becoming Wilde:

Alex’s insides somersaulted with anticipation. Ian’s reference to their time in Paris flooded her with a torrent of desire that would not be contained any longer. On her way home from Botswana last year, she had met Ian in Paris. At the time they barely knew one another, their attraction raw but deep, even then. The weekend had culminated in sensual dream sex amidst the provocative melody of the Top Gun soundtrack, their intertwined silhouettes framed by a backdrop of the Eiffel Tower. It had been her first time with a man. And not just any man—the man she was hopelessly in love with.
Plunking her half-empty wine glass on the side table, she grabbed Ian by the hand and whispered, “with pleasure.”
He was as docile as a Sunday pony when she led him by the hand up the short flight of wooden stairs to her rented bedroom. With the creak of each step, Alex’s confidence rose. One more step. Then another. Into the life she had chosen. Yearned for. Fought for. She would make it a life of dreams.
Lost in her imagined fairytale, Alex startled when they arrived on the threshold of her room, and Ian’s lips tickled the tender spot below her ear. He ran his nose up the back of her head, inhaling the scent of her hair before letting go of her hand and entering the room.
Alex lived in what she referred to as “controlled chaos.” Books littered the surface of her bed, and a pile of folded laundry decorated one corner. Her desk exploded with stacks of medical journals on which sat framed photos separated by various artifacts—a blown glass penguin from Cape Town and a painted wooden bowl from Guatemala.
Surveying the chaos through narrowed lids, Ian sauntered over to the bed where he carefully cleared off the books, stacking them against the wall. Spying the lion pendant, he cast Alex a carnal look and walked over to pluck it from its spot draped over the picture of her and Ian from New Year’s Eve last year. Alex joined him in the middle of the room and eyed him quizzically before he spun her around.
“What are you—?”
“Shh,” he whispered. Alex felt the weight of the lion on her sternum as Ian deftly attached the clasp. “I am going to strip you naked of every single thing you have on—except for this.” He adjusted the rose gold lion so that it hung delicately from the end of its chain.
Letting out a slow even breath, she waited while he curled his warm fingers under the hem of her sweater, biting her lip while a current of desire electrified even the tips of her toes. Her black cashmere top sailed through the air like a crow and landed neatly in the doorway.
Expert hands unfastened the top button of her jeans, and she heard the distinct buzz of unzippering right before a sharp tug sent her pants into a puddle around her ankles. She daintily stepped out of them, a surge of feminine power—instead of what a year ago would have been timidity—overtaking her. She heard Ian’s quick intake of breath at the sight of her posterior and smiled to herself as she took out her hairband to send her long dark chocolate waves rippling down her back.
Turning around, she encountered him in a statuesque stance, so still that his chest was barely moving when he breathed. Her undergarments were simple but as black as night and contrasted with her porcelain skin. She felt anything but made of porcelain. His eyes hungrily roved her form as she watched the blaze in their depths escalate to an inferno.
“I don’t know about you,” she said, “but I’ve had enough slow burn for one night.”

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

Is this the beginning of our epic love story?

Alexandra Wilde’s life is beyond her wildest dreams. After a tumultuous year, she has returned to Botswana as a full-fledged pediatric ICU doctor and reignites a consuming romance with Ian Devall, the privileged philanthropist who has captured her heart. Her new position at the hospital is fraught with challenges as saving lives pushes her resourcefulness to the brink. Meanwhile, her connection with Ian deepens, and she realizes that forging a commitment with him will require a sacrifice she isn’t ready to make. As she teeters on the precipice of decision, tragedy strikes and sends her into a spiral of grief where she must find hope in adversity…or risk losing everything she has become

Book Links: Amazon |
 
 

Meet the Author:

HK Jacobs is native to a small town in Texas that gave her both wings and roots. She holds a Doctor of Medicine from Baylor College of Medicine and a Master of Public Health from the University of Texas. She is a board certified pediatric critical care physician whose passion is traveling the globe caring for seriously ill children in low-middle income countries. She currently resides in Texas where she continues to balance the many roles in her life—mother, physician, humanitarian, dreamer, and author.
Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | GoodReads |