Spotlight & Giveaway: The Muse Next Door by JD Spero

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author JD Spero to HJ!

Hi JD Spero and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, The Muse Next Door!

 
I’m so grateful for your time.
 

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

This lovely story is a second-chance, enemies-to-lovers romance that will keep you smiling and turning the pages until the very end. Set in quaint Bainbridge Island off the coast of Seattle, the story features a gallery owner who’s got her sights on a famous international artist, and a neighboring coffee shop entrepreneur who’s staving off a midlife crisis. After a prickly first impression, the famous artist arrives as well as a longtime high school crush…triggering confusion of the heart for both. In the end, only one option brings clarity, and they eventually find their happy ending.
 

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

The early light of day beamed down like nature’s spotlight over the striking image on his easel. Willow stifled a gasp as she took it in. The image on the canvas had the Domingo-signature thick brushstrokes, where strategic shading and dollops of color tricked the eye into seeing a human form. It was a woman, her porcelain skin as pale as the white slip she wore—a post-coital glow lighting her from inside. But that’s not what got Willow’s heart hammering. The face—unmistakably hers—held an expression she didn’t recognize. Stark and strong, in severe shadowed strokes, the woman portrayed here was fierce, yet fear and uncertainty radiated from her eyes. It seemed a paradox—her body fluid, sensual, and oozing with desire, while her facial expression was sharp, complex, and daring.
As mysterious as she was beautiful, this could not be Willow.

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• I was once a model for a portrait artist, which informed a pivotal scene in the book.
• The story idea came to me through the characters and their very first argument.
• I live on the opposite coast from where this book is set, and though I’ve been to Bainbridge Island, I had to get creative and “call a friend” to get certain details right.
• Bainbridge Islanders use a ferry to go back and forth from the mainland. This ferry is an important motif in the book. And the working title of the book was “Across the Puget Sound”
• Dancing — especially salsa — takes center stage in this book…and I listened to many music tracks while writing, often taking dance breaks.
• There’s lots of Spanish dialogue in the book, and yet I don’t speak a lick of Spanish. Ha!

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

Willow had been used to being the tallest person in the room. When she first meets Austin, she thinks he might be standing on a platform. His muscular physique matches his stature, and his handsome handyman skills come to her rescue in short order.
For Austin, Willow is gorgeous but scary, with a spicy temper but also an insecure side that makes him want to take care of her.

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

This scene occurs when Willow is trying to get her famous artist out of his hangover in his hotel room and to his next speaking engagement at a local college. It makes me laugh every time I read it. She’s so annoyed with him, and yet… LOL!

Without warning, he flipped over, giving her a full frontal. She gasped. And gaped. He had a very large penis. This irked her even more—how unfair. Yet, she couldn’t tear her eyes away, even as the thought of interacting with it—touching it—made her slightly ill.

Readers should read this book….

Readers should read this book on the beach or in the hammock, knowing they are in good hands and won’t ugly cry but be filled with warmth and hope by the end of the story.

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

My next book HACK WARE is a dystopian cyber-thriller to be released August 2023. Here is the blurb:

It’s 2065.
Half the world’s population is made up of droids—
droids with such sophisticated AI,
they pass for humans.

In an apocalyptic New York City, Chevy Rose is still grieving her parents’ deaths when her boyfriend Gage collapses unconscious. When his diagnosis confirms he suffered a Ransomware attack, Chevy must admit he is not human, but a droid.

Chevy’s desperate journey to save Gage leads to shocking discoveries. A terrifying motive by Russian hackers is revealed as the computer virus spreads well beyond Gage’s operating system. If Chevy can’t reverse the damage before it infiltrates the world’s fragile healthcare infrastructure, a life-saving serum her late mother created will be at risk…and so will the lives of all surviving humans.
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: $20 Amazon gift card (US only)

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: Many art forms are great communication tools (writing, dancing, drawing). What art form best conveys emotions? Which, if any, art do you create? Do you use it communicate your feelings?

 
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Excerpt from The Muse Next Door:

CHAPTER 3
Austin
Austin lingered on the sidewalk after the gallery girl stomped off with the water bottle, the laughter leaving him. He looked up at the clouds and wiped his head free of sawdust. How did he royally screw that up?
It was no secret—he did not get women. Years of working construction with a bunch of guys’ guys, cut from the same cloth with varying levels of grime on their boots, did that to a man. It was his preferred excuse for all the crap in his life. It’s why Shannon left him; why he’s pushing forty and still single. And why he traded his toolbelt in the city to open a coffee shop in a hoity-toity island community in hopes of staving off a mid-life crisis.
He glanced up at her sign—Weeping Willow—and a pang of regret settled deep in his stomach. He shouldn’t have laughed. Not in front of her, anyway. But, man, part of him wished the guys were here to see this. After he sold his construction business, he insisted on doing the buildout of the coffee shop by himself. It was a form of therapy, or maybe a desperate grasp at penance. Now, he wondered if he should’ve recruited some of the guys for the company alone. At times like these—when the hot gallery girl next door turned out to be cray-cray—he missed the guy-to-guy banter, the shared jokes, the end-of-a-long-day beer.
But he shouldn’t have laughed.
With a sigh, he trudged back into his shop, wondering how he could pull off a miracle and finish renovating in total silence…so he wouldn’t bother the sensitive ears of the gallery girl named Weeping Willow.
His phone buzzed in his pocket.
Amy.
The name lit up on his screen and lifted him a bit.
“This is a surprise,” he said, after clicking green.
A laugh. “It’s been a while and you’ve been on my mind so I thought, I should just call.”
In Amy’s presence, he wasn’t the guys’ guy on the cusp of a mid-life crisis. He was a big fluffy marshmallow with a never-ending sweet spot for his dear friend Amy, his childhood crush, and her daughter Mia, whom he loved as if she were his own child. “You should always call. How’s Mia?”
“Mia’s fine. You know, seventeen.”
Austin chuckled. He could imagine Amy’s eyeroll. “No, I don’t know. What do you mean?”
“Oh, she’s the typical teenager, I guess. Moody. Sleeps a lot. Always staring at her phone.”
He savored the image of Mia that formed in his mind. “And how are you, my friend?”
Rustling on the other line echoed through the speaker, and a picture of Amy came clear. All dressed and made up for the day, sitting at her kitchen table, tapping an empty mug with a fingernail.
“Bored,” she said. “You know, summer.” Amy was the best second-grade teacher in all of Washington state. But she struggled during the long, empty summer days that lacked routine and purpose. Especially with Mia being older—almost an adult—he worried about Amy every summer. “Tell me about the shop,” she said brightly. “How’s it coming?”
“Good, good,” he said.
Of all people in the world, Amy knew him best. She knew how hard he took the Shannon breakup. She’d held his hand through the tough decision of selling his construction business. And although she’d been surprised at his new business venture, in a new town where he didn’t know anyone, she’d been supportive.
“How’s the coffee?” she said with a snicker. The irony wasn’t lost on him. Austin, the non-coffee-drinker opening a coffee shop in the coffee capital of the world.
He stuck to his lane. He built beautiful spaces and let others pour the drinks. Amy had to school him with the proper vocabulary way back when: They’re called baristas. Austin had shrugged but came to appreciate a cappuccino if he added cinnamon and an obscene amount of raw sugar.
He sat on a crate and picked up a fresh bottle of water, and the gallery girl neighbor floated to mind. “We haven’t opened yet, silly.”
“I know. But when you do, I’m coming down to celebrate.”
“Yeah…” The word, a sigh.
A pause. “Hey, what aren’t you telling me?”
“Nothing. Just that I have a neighbor. She runs the gallery next door. And she’s kinda nuts.”
“Aren’t all artists a little whackadoodle?”
“No, no. She’s not an artist, she’s…” He trailed off. He knew nothing about the gallery girl named Weeping Willow. But that her fiery temper matched her smoking hot looks. He gazed at the wall that separated his space from hers and imagined what she might be doing on the other side. “Maybe she is an artist. Who knows?”
“She pretty?”
“Oh gosh, Amy. I don’t know.” He did know. The blush in his face would be proof, if they were FaceTiming.
She clucked her tongue. “Wouldn’t be the worst thing.”
“What?”
“To have someone close by.”
“Amy. I just said she was nutso.”
“Just how you like ‘em!” Amy’s laugh was musical and infectious.
Austin pulled himself together. “Okay, I gotta run. This place isn’t going to build itself. Say hi to Mia for me.”
“It would be faster to text her yourself.”
“I’m all thumbs.”
Another cackle. “That’s how you do it. Use your thumbs!”
She was still laughing when he clicked off. He opened his Messages app with care, tapped to find Mia. It took a few…
Austin: Hey kiddo. Hope you’re good.
Not a second passed before:
Mia: Yup. So good. Miss you!
It startled him—her quick response. He brushed off that someone’s-watching-me feeling. Amy had warned him she was attached to her phone.
Austin: Miss you too. *heart, heart, heart*
He pocketed his phone, and then pulled on his safety glasses, undaunted now. A little love through his cell phone was all he needed to conquer the world. He could make all the noise he damn-well pleased. If the gallery girl named Weeping Willow wanted to pick a fight, so be it. He had the freaking hammer and nails—let’s see what she’s got.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

Newly divorced gallery owner Willow Fitzpatrick has a second chance at love in an online fling with a famous Spanish artist—the great Domingo Rodriguez. When noisy construction interrupts her pined-for ping, Willow meets Austin Miles—the burly, blue-eyed ex-contractor remodeling his coffee shop next door.

Willow’s new neighbor grates on her nerves, until Austin’s handsome handyman skills come to her rescue. Still, she refuses to fall for this gentle giant. She’s saving herself for her Spanish artist, who has finally agreed to hold a show at her humble gallery.

Domingo’s flamboyant arrival coincides with the return of Austin’s high school crush—and now Willow can’t source the flutter in her chest. If she can’t sort out her true feelings soon, it may be too late.
Book Links: Amazon | B&N | iTunes | kobo | Google |
 
 

Meet the Author:

Johannah Davies (JD) Spero’s writing career took off when her first release, Catcher’s Keeper, was a finalist in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award in 2013. Her small-town mystery series, Boy on Hold, has won similar acclaim—IPPY Gold for Best Mystery/Thriller. Check out her bestselling romantic suspense, The Secret Cure, and be on the lookout for her cyber-thriller, Hack Ware, coming in August. She lives with her family in upstate New York where she was born and raised.
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