Spotlight & Giveaway: Seven Rules for Breaking Hearts by Kristyn J. Miller

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Kristyn J. Miller to HJ!

Hi Kristyn and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Seven Rules for Breaking Hearts!

 
Thank you so much for having me! I’m excited to be here.
 

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

Commitmentphobic podcaster Margo Anderson’s career is thrown into question when her best friend and co-host decides to get married. They take up a sponsor’s offer for a destination wedding on Catalina Island, their listeners are pissed, and now Margo has to scramble to put a fresh spin on the podcast. Her solution: break all their own dating rules, just to prove that it’s a bad idea. And she finds her guinea pig in the groom’s best man, Declan Walsh. He was a bit of a prankster back in high school and annoyed Margo to no end, so she’s confident she’ll never catch feelings for him. But as they spend more time together leading up to the wedding, she starts to see things in a different light. Declan’s not the class clown she remembers. And their chemistry is undeniable. There’s just one problem: she’s not sure how to let go of the rules to let him in.
 

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

“It’s okay to be lonely, you know,” he said as we started up the road toward our hotel, the bachelor and bachelorette parties forgotten. “It doesn’t make you weak or anything. It makes you human.”

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

I had the initial idea for Seven Rules while listening to the song “How to be a Heartbreaker” by MARINA. From there, I started listening to podcasts like Call Her Daddy to get a feel for tone and content. I’d always wanted to write a story set on Catalina Island, so as soon as I realized this book was going to be centered around a couple of L.A.-based influencers, everything fell into place.

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

Declan has always been drawn to Margo for what he perceives as her unabashed commitment to being herself—something she’s lost sight of ever since starting the podcast.
Margo finds him physically attractive from the get-go, but it’s his sense of humor and the ease with which he matches her energy that finally starts to break down her walls.

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

The dressing room scene had me blushing for sure! It’s a little taboo—they’re in this public place, and despite talking a big game on her podcast, Margo hasn’t done anything quite like this before. She’s completely caught off-guard.

He didn’t say anything, kissing up my neck until his lips found mine again and caught them in a rough kiss. His fingers fumbled with the button of my jeans. Then, to my surprise, he dropped down to the floor, onto his knees, tugging my jeans down with him.
“What are you doing?” I hissed. My bold idea had been a make-out session and a bit of groping, but nothing more until we got back to the hotel. I tried to peer around the curtains, half-expecting there to be some slit the shopkeeper could spy through, but they were closed.
He shot me a roguish look as he pulled down my underwear as well. There was that damned dimple again. “Making up for last night.”

Readers should read this book….

… if they’re fans of flirting-disguised-as-roasting, summery settings, red-headed heroes, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, and reverse grumpy-sunshine,

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

I’ve just wrapped up another round of edits on my second rom-com, tentatively titled GIVEN OUR HISTORY. It’s a dual-timeline friends-to-strangers-to-lovers about a couple of history professors who met at sleepaway camp when they were fourteen. I’m obsessed with it and can’t wait to share more info down the road.
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: Three physical copies of SEVEN RULES FOR BREAKING HEARTS

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Excerpt from Seven Rules for Breaking Hearts:

Jo was obviously kayaking with Peter, so my options were pretty limited. I stole a glance at Declan. He’d set his backpack on the counter at the rental shack and was tugging his T-shirt over his head, revealing broad shoulders and a toned chest with a dusting of coppery hair. I was fairly certain he could pull his own weight, but he also hadn’t made any effort to talk to me after our hike yesterday, and I didn’t really know what to do with that. I was used to leaving a few breadcrumbs, but it was mostly on the guy to actually make a move, and usually they were tripping over themselves to talk to me—at least up until we jumped into bed together, at which point I’d made a habit of ghosting them without a second thought. Still, I didn’t exactly have infinite time to waste making this happen. If he wasn’t going to initiate things, it was up to me. I crossed over to where he was standing by the lockers, tucking his shirt into his backpack and extracting a bottle of off-brand sunscreen.
“Declan. You’re a—” I struggled to describe his build in a way that wouldn’t sound completely objectifying, but the lack of a shirt was making that difficult. Biceps and shoulders and—look at his face, Margo. His face. “Capable-looking guy,” I finished lamely. “You’d punch a shark for me, right?”
He gave me a bemused look, stepping out of the way to allow Liv and Autumn to pass with their own kayak. I didn’t miss the way they cast curious glances in our direction. “What?”
“Speaking hypothetically, if the kayak were to tip over, and if a shark happened to be swimming by—”
“If this is your weird way of asking me to share a kayak with you, then I accept.”
“Great.” I watched him slather sunscreen over a muscled arm, my eyes drinking in the curve of his bicep a little too readily. I needed to focus. “Do you need me to get your back?” I offered, reaching for the bottle where he’d left it on the counter.
He slowed in the middle of smoothing sunscreen across his chest. His expression should have been unreadable behind his dark sunglasses, but the slight downward curve of his lips betrayed his hesitation. “Why?”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, there’s this thing called the sun,” I said cheerfully. “And sometimes it can burn you, and we call that a—”
“Okay, I get it,” he said, and—finishing up with his chest—he turned his back to me. Good. I kind of liked him being cooperative. Except now I was faced with a broad, masculine back. His shoulder blades were dotted with freckles, and I had to resist the urge to trace them like constellations, instead squirting some SPF30 into my palm. It was surprisingly cool in the hot afternoon sun. I frowned, trying to decide where to start. I reached for a shoulder.
His skin was warm and he twitched away from my touch. “Shit, that’s cold.”
“Sorry.” I probably should have rubbed my hands together to warm it up first, but it warmed up as I worked it over his back. A prickle at the back of my neck told me that Jo was watching us from where they were waiting down by the water, but I pretended not to notice. She’d be asking for updates on our little experiment pretty soon, and I wasn’t sure what I was going to tell her—in part because I had no idea whether things were going well or not—so I focused on rubbing sunscreen on Declan instead.
I’d touched my fair share of guys before, but that had mostly been a lot of fumbling around in the dark, a few Tequila shots deep, never making an effort to memorize their body. Not that I was making a conscious effort to memorize anything now, but there were details I noticed that I wouldn’t normally have noticed. The indent of his spine. The dusting of freckles across his shoulders. The way his back rose and fell with his breathing, which was weirdly in time with my own, and I found myself holding my breath for a second to break the rhythm. “There,” I said when I’d finished, acutely aware of the fact that this had been a lot less sexy than I’d imagined it in my head. “No sunburns in your near future.” I didn’t know what to do with the film of sunscreen left on my hands, so I wiped it on my own arms, feeling strangely self-conscious.
“Thanks.” He turned around to face me again, shrugging on his life vest and buckling it, which left only his arms and a sliver of flat, toned stomach visible. “Your turn.”
“What?”
He arched a brow at my clothes. “I assume you’re not leaving those on.”
Obviously, I wasn’t, but now I was conscious of every movement as I stripped off my tank top to reveal the crocheted bikini I’d worn for our partnership with the swimsuit boutique a couple years back. Declan’s sunglasses left most of his expression to the imagination, but a muscle in his jaw feathered as I stepped out of my leggings and added my clothes to the pile of possessions that the rental shack was supposed to stow for safekeeping. I twisted my hair off my shoulders, pinning it to my head with a hand as I turned my back to him.
“Because I’m considerate, I’ll actually warm it up for you,” he said, stepping in closer as he squirted the lotion into his hand. His breath tickled the loose hairs at the nape of my neck. I reflected, briefly, that the sputtering sound of the lotion bottle was the antithesis of sexy, but then his hands found the small of my back, warm and slick against my skin.
He smoothed the sunscreen up my back and across my shoulders before working his way back down. He was plainly better at this than I was. His hands slid around to my sides, working over my hips. He was only doing it for the sake of coverage, I reminded myself, but I found myself imagining what it might feel like for his grip to tighten, drawing me backwards until I felt the fabric of his board shorts brush up against the back of me. Warmth pooled in my belly, seeping downward.
“You two almost ready?” Jo’s voice called from somewhere down by the water, and my eyes shot open. We were still standing beside the rental shack. Beachgoers zipped past us on bicycles and roller skates. Somewhere nearby, a stereo blasted “Under the Boardwalk.”
“Shit,” I mumbled, snatching my life vest off the counter and brushing past Declan as I shrugged it on. I hoped he didn’t pick up on how thoroughly his touch had disconcerted me, but for good measure, I explained, “We’re supposed to be on a schedule.” I’d only booked the rentals for three hours, and I had every reason to suspect that the manager had started the timer the moment she sent lobster-boy to fetch the kayaks out of the shed.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

Love breaks all the rules.

Margo Anderson is sworn off commitment. Alongside her best friend Jo, she runs a viral podcast featuring rules for hooking up without catching feelings. So when Jo surprises her by deciding to get married and takes up a sponsor’s offer to host an all-expenses-paid wedding trip on Catalina Island, they have the whole internet to answer to.

In a scramble for content to appease their disappointed listeners, Margo cooks up a social experiment: break all her own dating rules, just to prove that it’s a bad idea. And she’s found the best man for the job in the groom’s best friend and her old high school nemesis, Declan Walsh. He may be easier on the eyes than Margo remembered, but he’s sure to be as smug and annoying as he was before. There is no chance Margo will ever catch feelings for him…until she does.

The more time they spend together through cake tastings and wedding party activities, Margo can’t ignore their obvious spark, and she may actually be enjoying getting to know Declan. But can she let go of the rules to let him in?
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Meet the Author:

KRISTYN J. MILLER is an author and freelance editor with a background in marketing and museum work. She grew up in Southern California, where she spent summers escaping to Catalina Island, but these days she lives in Maine. She has a B.A. in literature from University of Redlands and is working on her M.A. in history and museum studies at University of New Hampshire. Seven Rules for Breaking Hearts is her debut novel.
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