Spotlight & Giveaway: The Astronaut and the Star by Jen Comfort

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Jen Comfort to HJ!

Hi Jen and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, The Astronaut and the Star!

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

The Astronaut and the Star is a grumpy-sunshine romance about gothy, “unlikeable” astronaut, Reggie Hayes, who finds herself in the awkward position of having to rehabilitate her public image if she wants a shot at a mission to the moon. Enter stage left: ray of chaotic sunshine, action star actor Jon Leo, who’s assigned to Reggie for astronaut training in advance of a space movie that could make or break his career. He’s a secret space nerd who’s got a major crush on Reggie, but Reggie’s all about casual hookups and not relationships… her first love is the moon, after all. Even if she does find Jon ridiculously attractive–and strangely endearing.

Jon and Reggie are slated to spend four weeks training at a NASA analog moon base out in the desert, an neither of them can afford a PR scandal. But I think we all know how sharing close quarters can fuel lust–and romance!
 

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

REGGIE:
“She was a human iceberg. Dead inside, nothing to offer—beware all ye softhearted souls who dare pass betwixt these thighs, for this beast is the product of a Cold and Lonely Childhood™ and has no warmth to spare. She’d always been up front about that; it wasn’t her fault if people didn’t take her seriously.”

JON
“For one, she was a stone-cold smoldering babe. Could one be both cold and smoldering at the same time? Like dry ice? Yeah, Reggie was a dry ice kind of babe, which was exactly Jon’s type—he’d imprinted early on comic book villainesses, with their black lipstick and cunning brains, and never quite grown out of it.”

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

This book was originally pitched as a gender-flipped take on the TV show “I Dream of Jeannie.” I wanted to write Jon as an agent of magical chaos, with Reggie as his stuffy, no-fun astronaut foil, but we decided to take the story concept a little more down to earth for my debut novel (well, as down to Earth as Reggie can get while dreaming of walking on the moon). In the end, I think it works, because just like Jeannie on the show, Jon’s trouble-causing-yet-good-hearted exuberance is only how they’re perceived by the outside world. There’s evidence Jeannie knew exactly what she was doing with every mischief-causing “incident” she was involved in, and I think as the readers gets to know Jon, they’ll see he has more complex depths, too!

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

Well, if you ask Reggie at the start of the book, she’d deny being attracted to Jon in the first place. He’s certainly not her type–she prefers the ambitious, science-y type who have a similarly career-focused mindset, and Jon’s just this big, goofy, accident-prone guy who makes dorky space puns. Buuuut, Reggie’s only human, and Jon’s in action-movie shape. Plus, his space puns are kind of cute…

I think Jon is far more sure of why he likes Reggie. She’s smart, accomplished–she’s a freaking astronaut!–and he likes Reggie’s goth look. He’s kind of got a thing for tough chicks like her, and can you blame him? Sure, she’s kind of snippy with Jon at first, but he’s not deterred by her sharp tongue. If anything, I think he likes the challenge–and I think Reggie likes being challenged, too.

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

It’s so hard to choose! But I think one of my favorite funny/sexy scenes occurs about a third of the way into the book, when Jon and Reggie are heading out in a fake moon rover to do a little training in the field. He overslept his alarm even when he swore he’d be on time for training, and so Reggie’s been giving him side-eye for showing up late (and looking so cute and tousled first thing in the morning… how dare he?). In this scene, she gets even by teasing Jon a little bit. In more ways than one…

***

Once he clambered into his seat, Reggie helped him strap into the five-point seatbelt harness, her hands coming dangerously close to brushing his abdomen as she did so. She tightened the buckle, and he carefully sucked air along the roof of his mouth, trying not to imagine her hands straying any lower.
“Now, I’ll warn you,” Reggie said when she’d finished torturing him. “I’ve flown some of the fastest jets in creation, and when I trained on this rover, I still wasn’t prepared for the experience. Are you ready to gun it? Do you think you can handle this?” She revved the engine, and the rover vibrated roughly beneath them.
Excitement shot through him. “Fuck yeah, I am.” He gripped the handlebar below the dash, bracing himself.
Reggie donned a pair of mirrored shades, closed both hands tight over the joystick-like control, and slammed the gas. Beneath a golden sunrise, they launched forward into the rust-hued desert.
Slowly.
Excruciatingly slowly.
Jon glanced at the mounted console. The odometer read ten miles per hour.
“Come on,” he groaned, falling back into his seat.
A smug smile spread across Reggie’s face even as she kept her eyes locked straight ahead. “I told you. It’s an experience.”
He shook his head. “You are a cruel, cruel woman.”
“And you were late,” she returned, primly. “But I think you’ve had enough punishment… for now.”
[italics]From you, never.[/italics] He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. She was not flirting with him. Not possible. Not even remotely.

Readers should read this book….

If you like bonkers plots, borderline satirical humor, grumpy-sunshine, opposites attract, forced proximity, and high heat level in your romance reads. Above all, if you’re into “unlikeable”, ice queens who melt for cheerful himbo men! Bonus points if you’re a space nerd, because there’s plenty of real-life astronaut detail woven into the narrative.

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

My next book, Midnight Duet, is coming from Montlake in January 2023! It’s a modern Phantom of the Opera retelling, except the Phantom is a former Broadway diva on a path to redemption and our beautiful ingenue is the lead singer of a German hair metal band. Think Phantom of the Opera meets Spinal Tap. This book is both wildly different than “The Astronaut and the Star” in some ways, but most things remain the same: the humor, the loveably weird scene-stealing side characters, the bonkers plot, the high heat, the unlikeable heroine… except this book is more. The plot is MORE over-the-top, the steamy scenes are even MORE risque, and the heroine is truly a piece of work. You might even call her a proper villainess at the start of the book! But would it be a proper homage to my all-time favorite goth musical if the Phantom wasn’t a sexy, dramatic b*tch?

I can’t tell you what I’m currently working on, because it’s still Top Secret! And by that I mean, as of this interview’s date, I don’t have a contract for it yet. It’s killing me to keep quiet about it, because I think anyone who liked “The Astronaut and the Star” will be very excited if this book comes to fruition. I’m sure having way too much fun writing it!

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: A print copy of The Astronaut and the Star by Jen Comfort

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: I always wondered who I’d be in a grumpy-sunshine pairing. I like to think I’m a Reggie, but let’s be real–I’m definitely a Jon. Who do you relate to more in the grumpy/sunshine dynamic?

 
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Excerpt from The Astronaut and the Star:

Kurt from Media Relations had decided Reggie should be at the space center’s landing strip to greet the film crew when they arrived, so, two weeks after her disastrous spacewalk simulation, she stood on the weathered gray tarmac watching the Gulfstream G650’s pilot execute a very average landing.

From the corner of her eye, Reggie spied movement and turned to see Yekaterina Volkov—Katya, to her colleagues—approaching with a deceptively casual stride.

“I thought you were training with the new rover today,” Reggie said, loud enough to be heard over the noise of the taxiing plane.

“I am finished early. Very convenient.”

“Convenient, my ass.”

Katya was a Russian cosmonaut training here in Houston for a year as part of NASA’s collaboration with Roscosmos, the Russian space agency. They’d been friends ever since they’d had to survive Siberian Wilderness Training together for their joint mission to the space station three years ago, and while Katya had no official reason for being here on the tarmac, her superiors were currently asleep on the other side of the world, which meant Katya could technically do whatever the hell she wanted.

Katya gave the barest of smiles—the equivalent of a full grin on anyone else—and sipped from her coffee thermos, her glossy fawn-brown ponytail whipping in the wind and her green eyes hidden behind mirrored shades. It was a rare, clear day in December, and her lenses reflected the crystalline blue sky.

“I am here for support. And also, I am told this Jon Leo is very handsome.”

Reggie turned back to watch the plane come to a stop in front of them, eyes narrowed. “Go away, Katya.”

“Perhaps you will be married. He will fall in love with your friendly smile.”

Reggie gritted her teeth.

“I look forward to this wedding. I have not met a Hollywood actor before. Perhaps my true love, Zendaya, will be at this wedding. I will ask him if he knows my true love.”

“I think you shouldn’t talk to these guys at all. Did Kurt okay this?”

“Da, of course. Special diplomatic dispensation.”

That meant she’d bribed him with a can of the highly-coveted Russian caviar she got mailed to her from back home. Reggie glanced behind them, where a tall, salt and pepper-haired man with a hang-loose grin was leaning against the VIP tour van.

“You’re a traitor to our country, Kurt!” Reggie called, knowing he was too far away to hear her.
Kurt gave them a cheerful double-thumbs-up.

Human-shaped silhouettes moved behind the dark windows as someone lowered a set of stairs. The first to deboard were a man and a woman in matching black hoodies—probably the film crew.

The man approached them. He was sandy-haired, wore plain glasses, and had a complexion that suggested he didn’t get outside often. Reggie immediately felt a kinship with him.

“Zach, sound tech,” he said, offering Reggie a handshake.

She introduced herself in kind, then gestured to the demoness at her side, “And this is Katya Volkov from Roscosmos. She’s a huge Space Dude fan.”

She could feel Katya’s eyes boring laser death holes into the side of her head.

Zach nodded. “That’s Mimi over there on cameras—you’ll meet her once we get the deplaning shots. We’re going to film the first meeting for the media footage, if that’s okay with you.”

“Sure,” she said, forcing a cheery smile. Thirty days. She could do this for thirty days, couldn’t she?

Zach handed Reggie a wireless mic to clip to her shirt before jogging over to his colleague, a tall, generously-built Latina woman with pigtailed braids who could be heard cursing at her video camera.

At least today would be easy, since Kurt was handling the tour. He’d even commandeered one of the vans they used for VIP tours, so they wouldn’t have to cram onto the visitor tram. All Reggie had to do was tag along and listen to Kurt make small talk for two hours, suffer through a “let’s get acquainted” dinner with the crew, and then she could go home for the weekend. They didn’t leave for Arizona until Monday morning.

“What is this Space Dude?” Katya asked.

Reggie snagged Katya’s coffee and took a slow sip. Black, hot, and caustic—just the way she liked it. She handed it back. “The movie that Jon Leo is famous for.”

The cosmonaut’s top lip curled in exaggerated horror. “No.”

“Yes. According to this guy’s Wikipedia page, it’s a ‘satirical space opera with a cult-like following.’”

She hadn’t been impressed by anything else on Jon Leo’s sparse profile. Born in an LA suburb to an aspiring actress, Jon had attended the California Institute of the Arts for four years, and then spent several years doing nothing notable until he was cast as a reoccurring character in the remake of the British comedy show Business Place. Then he’d done a few other straight-to-TV movies that Reggie had never heard of before getting his big break in Space Dude.

There was a photo of him on the page, and Reggie hadn’t been blown away by that, either. He looked like a classic pretty boy, with flawlessly tanned skin, high cheekbones, and eyelashes for days. His dark hair was short and coiffed in an expensive sort of way, and he had the kind of half-cocked, self-deprecating grin that attractive men seemed to have collectively weaponized to deceive naive love interests into believing they were blithely unaware of their own appeal (not her, of course, because she’d never had time to waste being anyone’s naive love interest, but she’d observed the phenomenon often at local Navy watering holes in her post-graduate days, and it had made her supremely grateful about having the option to sleep with women, instead.)

The only piece of information that had caught Reggie’s eye was that, at twenty-six, he’d finally been publicly acknowledged by his birth father and legally changed his last name from Stern to Leo—as in Brian Leo, the world-renowned actor and martial artist that even Reggie had heard of. Shortly thereafter, his acting career had taken off.

A cynical part of her had wondered if Jon’s acting success was merely a product of nepotism (and, in one particular photo, bedroom eyes so potent a single photo could melt a hole in one’s computer screen—not her screen, because she’d immediately closed her browser and lowered the thermostat by two degrees, but it could happen someone else’s.) Gushing reviews from fans, however, implied he could actually act.

Not that it mattered—especially not the part about his looks. In her experience, flashy packaging often disguised disappointing contents.

“Okay, we’re rolling!” Zach called out.

Down the plane steps came a man she recognized from her Internet search as the movie’s director, Rudy Ruffino. Rudy was a wiry man in his mid-fifties with a scruffy goatee and gray hair pulled back into a thin ponytail. He clamped one hand over his baseball hat to stop it from blowing away in the brisk wind and gave them a broad wave with his other hand as he approached.

“If it isn’t the infamous Space Queen of Darkness herself,” Rudy said when he was close enough to be heard. “Gotta say, I’m stoked about this collab. Loved you in that viral clip, by the way. You’re a real firecracker, kid.”

Reggie’s cheeks ached from the effort it took to smile instead of scowl. “Regina Hayes,” she said, extending her hand for him to shake. His fingers closed over hers, hot and clammy. She squeezed back firmly—though not as firmly as she’d have preferred. “Welcome to the Johnson Space Center. We’re excited to have you here.”

She began to introduce Katya, but Rudy had already turned on his heel, effectively dismissing them as he stalked toward the film crew to micromanage them. “Hey guys, I want a wide-angle shot as Jon gets out of the bird…”

Katya raised a brow and took another sip. “Space Queen of Darkness? Kid?”

Reggie gave her a warning glance, then pointed at her mic. She’d already learned the hard way what happened when you said the wrong thing while cameras were rolling.

Then she looked up to see Jon Leo ducking out of the plane, the wind plastering his gray t-shirt against his muscled torso, and she was suddenly, briefly, out of breath—because of a wind gust hitting her right as she inhaled. Nothing else.

She drew in a second breath, more carefully this time.

He’d grown his hair out since the picture she’d seen, and he wore the top half of it pulled back in an honest-to-goodness man bun. Inky strands whipped free around his face as he squinted into the sunlight. He’d grown facial hair, too, and it suited him. Gave him an edge that his clean-shaven face lacked.

He was better looking in person than in photos. Much better. So much better that it almost hurt to look at his impossibly muscled body as it flexed and moved beneath clinging cotton and designer denim; it was like staring directly into the sun.

In fact, she decided in that instant, Jon Leo was probably the most attractive man she’d ever seen in person.

You don’t care about that kind of thing, remember?

“This Jon Leo has very impressive musculature,” Katya said.

“Steroids,” Reggie said, dismissively. “Or he spends way too much time in the gym.” Worth it, a devilish voice whispered.

“It is unfortunate about this”—she made a circling gesture around the back of her head–“man biscuit.”

“Man bun?”

“Yes, this. Maybe you can cut it off before the wedding.”

Reggie sort of liked how the hairstyle looked on him, but she’d never admit that to Katya.
Jon descended the steep staircase with ease, then waited at the bottom with an arm raised to assist a woman who wore dangerously high heels with her slim-fitting jeans and snowy blazer. He looked like some gallant knight assisting a princess, and Reggie hated herself for thinking it.
Under the guise of adjusting her mic, she muffled it with the collar of her shirt. Then she muttered to Katya, “He better have more than two brain cells bouncing around in that biscuit, or this is going to be a rough thirty days.”

“Hmm,” was all Katya had to say. The reflection in her sunglasses revealed an entirely below-the-belt view as Jon approached.

He shook Katya’s hand first and exchanged pleasantries. His voice was deeper than she’d expected, which wasn’t relevant to the training she’d be doing with him and therefore she wasn’t sure why she’d noted it, but now that she had, Reggie could see why people might pay money to see him in a theater with surround sound. His baritone was very… lush.

Katya—thank God—feigned professionalism and didn’t ask about Zendaya.

Then, suddenly, he was in front of her, his brown eyes looking down into hers. He was grinning, wide and lopsided, his expression open and eager, like a Golden Retriever who was excited just to exist. If he weren’t so much larger than a puppy and the top of his head wasn’t so far away, she’d be tempted to ruffle his hair.

“Jon Leo,” he said.

“Regina Hayes.” She shook his hand. It was warm and dry and large enough to make her own work-callused hand feel dainty. What were these things—bear paws? She resisted the urge to glance down. “Call me Reggie. We’ll be spending a good deal of time together.”

“Cool,” he said.

“This should be fun,” she lied, a bit pleased with herself for delivering her rehearsed small talk so smoothly. “You looking forward to the tour of the Space Center?”

He looked like he wanted to say something, but a beat passed. Then another. The cameras continued to roll. Her hand was still wrapped up in his, and she was instantly aware of the awkwardness of the empty seconds passing between them, stretching out like infinite, time-dilated monstrosities of social discomfort.

More than two cells. Please, let there be more than two.

“Cool,” he said, finally. “Very cool.”

Reggie’s hopes withered. Jon Leo was an utter meatloaf. An attractive one, but a meatloaf nonetheless.

And she had to spend the next thirty days training him to be an astronaut without getting frustrated and losing her temper at his lack of competence.

Great. No problem.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

An out-of-this-world romantic comedy featuring an astronaut tasked with training a Hollywood actor for a space flick.

Astronaut Regina “Reggie” Hayes wants to be the first woman on the moon—it’s all she’s ever dreamed of. But after a PR disaster, Reggie is off the list for a lunar mission. To rehabilitate her reputation with NASA, she agrees to a different kind of assignment: astronaut “training” with a Hollywood action hero.

Jon Leo is a charmer. With credits that include an underperforming sitcom and a campy action flick called Space Dude, his upcoming role in a prestigious movie could prove he’s a star. But Jon isn’t just big muscles and an otherworldly smile—he’s also a total space nerd. He’s pumped about his own personal space camp…until he meets ice-cold Reggie.

Although Reggie and Jon are polar opposites, their mutual attraction is undeniable, and it only takes a few weeks in close quarters for them to give in to its magnetic force. Jon is set on convincing Reggie this is a match made in the heavens, but her future is in space, and his is among stars of the Hollywood kind. The odds of successfully launching a real relationship outside the confines of the training base are anything but optimal.

Reggie, content with keeping things casual, is forced by a sudden turn of events to confront the possibility of losing Jon forever. Now, she’ll do whatever it takes to win both the man and the moon.
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Meet the Author:

Jen Comfort is a Portland, Oregon, native who dabbled in astrophysics before spending a decade working in restaurants in New York City and Portland. Now, she writes romantic comedies about hot nerds with very cool jobs. She spends her free time growing plants destined to die before their time, playing video games, and encouraging her two cats and malamute-husky dog to become internet famous with zero success.
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