Spotlight & Giveaway: The Name Curse by Brooke Burroughs

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Brooke Burroughs to HJ!

Hi Brooke and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, The Name Curse!

 
I’ m excited to talk to you about my newest release, The Name Curse!
 

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

Bernie has always been plagued by the memory of her namesake, Great Aunt Bernice, an adventurous woman who lived life to the fullest, while Bernie has done the opposite—moving back into her childhood home after her father’s death, and somehow just stayed there, doing more existing than living. Everyone sees that she needs to be snapped out of her funk (except for her) and when her boss tells her to take a vacation, her mom buys her a Groupon for a weeklong trek in Alaska. This is where she meets Matthew, a struggling screenwriter and roughing it enthusiast, who takes a trip into nature every year to get inspired for his next big project, and relish the peace and quiet that nature brings. The trip organizers assumed Bernie was a man, because of her name, and they’ve paired the two of them in a tent. It’s cringe at first sight. But along the way, the two of them find out that they have more in common than they think.
 

Please share the opening lines of this book:

Great-Aunt Bernice had been haunting Bernie Purcell ever since she departed this world fifteen years ago with a whiff of Chanel No. 5 and a reputation—if you believed the stories—that rivaled that of Mata Hari. And every time Great-Aunt Bernice was mentioned, which was almost daily because she was her namesake, Bernie felt a little ripple going through her body, reminding her of who she was, and who she wasn’t. Especially during every conversation she’d ever had with her mother, who seemed to relish using her full name in spite of the fact that Bernie had asked her not to.

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

I got inspired to write the story when my husband and I were having margaritas with a friend and were talking about camping (we go camping, or I should say glamping in our Airstream, a lot). Our friend told us about a week long backpacking trip he went on, in which there were two strangers who were forced to share a tent. On the last night of the trip they voluntarily stayed in a hotel together, and had been cultivating a secret relationship along the trek. I was like, “Romance novels are real and I’m going to write this story!” The one advantage of 2020 was that I couldn’t go anywhere so I was able to get a lot of writing done.

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

Bernie is definitely struggling, but I was wondering how to get her out of this self-induced funk that she’s stuck in. I think a lot of times when we find ourselves in a situation that we need to escape, even if we’ve put ourselves in that place, we can get trapped. We’re so used to doing things a certain way, change is HARD. So I had to think of what drastic measures would get Bernie to change, and how much would she let Matthew help her change. Turns out, it took a pretty major situation that practically disables her in order to snap out of it and embrace a new fantastic life she could have, with Matthew.

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

One of my favorite parts of a book is the dialogue between the characters—the more banter the better! There are quite a few scenes in which the two of them are arguing but eventually the arguments turn to funny conversations and into each of them questioning exactly what their feelings are for this other person. Here’s one that I think would make a great audition:

“Trevor said it’s our turn to make dinner.” She opened up the bear can and pulled out two packets of beans and rice. “I hope you like Cajun.”
“I’ve had worse. One time I was on a camping trip, someone had brought shrimp alfredo pasta we had to rehydrate, and . . . well, I feel like the concept of rehydrating shrimp and cream just says it all.”
Bernie looked up from the bear can, her lips turned down in a grimace. “There is a special place in hell for people who rehydrate seafood products.”
He turned and smiled into his bag. “Definitely. And the people who slap the word vegan onto reconstituted whatever it is that tastes like meat and is made in a lab. It’s just wrong.” Of course he was thinking of his ex specifically for this.
“Processed food is for the weak.” Although he meant it to sound funny, it came out way more serious than he’d intended.
“Wow. Are you like one of those hard-core paleo warriors who only eats raw meat and drinks the blood from newborn calves?”
Maybe this was his chance to make up for his declarative weakness statement that had made him sound like a pro wrestler in a “Beef: It’s What’s for Dinner” commercial. “Only on the weekends. You know, I have to let up on the bloodletting for most of the week.”
“Or else your cholesterol goes through the roof?”
“It just gets completely out of control. Then I have to eat egg whites exclusively for a whole week . . .”
“And it’s hard to start your morning without your egg yolk–calf’s blood milkshake? Totally get it.” Bernie smiled as she got out the rest of the supplies for tonight’s dinner, and Matthew really had to rein in the giant, jolly laugh that wanted to absolutely burst out of him.
Her gestures were careful but curious. Her little pixie face twisted as she examined all the jars and packets that were in the bear can, as if she’d never actually looked at them. Her hair was this interesting shade of brown. Like sparks of gold and amber were sewn through it. For a moment, he wondered what it would feel like in his hands.

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

I think that everyone has their love story to find, and I want that to sit with readers as they finish reading. Even if it’s in the most unexpected of places, with the most unexpected pairings of people, if it’s meant to be, it will be. I’m a total romantic and believe that everyone has their someone out there.

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

The project I just finished is a romcom inspired by the small town I grew up in. I’m originally from eastern Kentucky (AKA Appalachia) and I wanted to write something about the area because it’s gone through so many changes in the past several years. Also, it was an opportunity to highlight some of my favorite (and not so favorite parts) about growing up there. This story is about a woman who always wanted to escape the place she’s from, and when she’s brought back to stop her sister’s wedding, she gets roped into actually planning it with the groom’s son who happens to be her high school nemesis.
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: A print copy of THE NAME CURSE by Brooke Burroughs

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: Have you ever been on a week-long trip the wilderness? If not, would you go if someone asked you to? If you have, would you do it again and why?

 
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Excerpt from The Name Curse:

Bernie climbed in the tent and decided to read her book for a little while to decompress before sleeping. Matthew was talking outside to Trevor about something and laughing, and she couldn’t help but pay attention to them. He laughed fully to Trevor. He must really think Bernie was annoying if he didn’t think she was funny at all. Not that she was a comedian, but her father had always said she had the gift of making people laugh.
She gave up listening and had turned back to her book, ironically a love story, the last thing she should be reading, when Matthew unzipped the tent and crawled in. She tried to ignore his presence, hoping he’d just put his blindfold on and go to sleep, but it was difficult, even when he tried to fold his body up like his own personal brand of origami. Or a human lawn chair.
He thunked down to the ground, and he put his sleeping mask on. “Good night.”
“Good night,” she said back, glancing over at him. She could see him clearly still. The angles of his jaw, disguised by this beard that grew and expanded like moss every day. The sharp tip of his nose. Along the bridge he had a faint bump, like someone had hit him with a baseball when he was a kid, and its top became flattened out and never grew straight again. And he had very unusual lips. The curves were sharp somehow. They were almost as intimidating as his eyes. He was much easier to look at when she couldn’t see his eyes. Those dark-brown wells—almost black so you couldn’t even see his pupils. That must be why they were so off-putting. Why Bernie was worried he could transmit her thoughts when they locked eyes for too long.
“Are you looking at me?” he said.
“What? No!” She pivoted back to her book. Shit. How did he know?
“It felt like it.”
She’d reacted too much. No one ever denied something that hard when they were being truthful. “You have a mask on. Why would you think that?”
“I could sense you were looking at me.” He adjusted himself in the bag. “I just read this study about how people who are born blind have a heightened sense of hearing, smell, and touch. It was like that. I shut down sight, and my other senses are alive.”
Sometimes he reminded her of her middle school biology teacher the way he rattled off useless information. But maybe he did have extrasensory Bernie perception. “Well, I’m just reading. Staring at my book.”
“What are you reading?”
“Oh, it’s a story about France.” Which was partially true. It was a love story set in France, and she didn’t want him to know exactly what she was reading.
“Like a history book? That’s an odd choice of reading material.”
“It’s about people in France.”
He whipped off his mask. “Sociology? Is that something you read about for your marketing job? Like, you have to figure everyone out to determine how to sell clothes to them?”
“It’s not sociology.” She set the book down and glanced over at him. “I thought you were going to bed.”
“I would call it ‘going to bag.’ That’s more appropriate, don’t you think?”
“Maybe.” Although “going to bag” sounded like some new trendy slang that meant you were going to steal someone away in a sack to have sex with them. That was not what they were doing.
He grabbed her book where it lay between them, her finger still inserted like a bookmark. She lunged for it, and his monstrously long arms pulled it out of her reach, whisked it up like a Ferris wheel, far far away, and read aloud. “And while Camille had missed the embrace of his arms, ensconced around her waist, clutching her tight as he had before the war, this was what they both needed now. His explorative fingers drifting inside her blouse, seeking the heat under her skirt . . .”
She frantically wiggled out of her bag and, on her knees, grabbed the book from his hand. Her face was hot. She was sure it was red. “That was a violation of tent code!”
“Sounds like Camille was the one about to get violated.” He fake coughed.
“Seriously, that’s rude. And you’re a writer—why are you making fun of my book?” She turned on her side, away from him.
“I’m not making fun. Just wanted to see what you were reading. You were being so evasive; I knew it had to be juicy.” With these last words, he leaned toward her and whispered darkly near her ear. She tried to ignore the tremble in her abdomen that occurred. That aching, ticklish feeling like butterflies in your stomach, but much, much lower. Juicy.
Another side effect of reading about Camille and Patrice’s love affair broken by the war.
“No more book grabbing.”
“Okay . . . so that’s your tent code? Disappointing, but I can live with it.”
“I’m sure there can be other rules.”
“Okay, then my rule is . . . no snuggling with me in the morning.”
“I wasn’t snuggling!” Bernie’s chest tightened as if even her lungs were protesting.
“Mmhmm. Sure.”
There was a pause, and he rearranged himself into his bag. She turned on her back, since sleeping on her side was less than comfortable, and resumed reading. His sleep mask was now on, and hopefully he would just pass out soon.
“So you watched The Unbreakables?” he asked.
No luck there. She willed him to go to sleep. Just a few moments of peace.
“Yes. I saw the first season.”
“Well, there was only one. I was sad it got canceled. It was a fun show to work on.”
“It was funny.” She almost added a snarky comment about how she was surprised he’d worked on it but refrained.
“You liked the dog?”
“I liked the characters too.”
“Which episode was your favorite?”
Bernie put her book down and slid its bookmark in. She was clearly not going to read. “Um . . . the one where the son accidentally shoplifts something, and then he has to work at the Salvation Army for community service and finds such good stuff he opens his own resale shop on the side.”
Matthew erupted a brief chuckle that wheezed out like the sound of nostalgia. “Yeah, that was a good one.”
“So what happened to the show?”
“Oh, you know . . . everything’s about the ratings and ad dollars, and the show wasn’t making it. So they canceled it. It happens all the time.”
“But that show was actually good. Clever, even. It’s a rarity.”
“Yeah, but I don’t think most people want clever. They want cheesy reality. There are more TV shows being produced now than ever before, and most of them are not great. Like at the hotel, I had cable for once, and flipped through the channels and still couldn’t find anything I wanted to watch.”
Bernie hummed in agreement. “The same thing happened to me.” Her legs and feet and shoulders were doing that thing where they finally succumbed to exhaustion against the hard dirt and sank into the ground. She grabbed Matthew’s bandana, which she had kept, since he hadn’t asked for it back yet, and wrapped it around her eyes. It was amazing what the body could do when it was tired. She could be on a bed of dirt or a pillow-top mattress and she would probably drift off to sleep as equally as fast.
Just as she was about to fall into the sleep zone, Matthew’s voice whispered from a few feet over, “Bernie?”
“Hmm?”
“I’m glad you liked that episode. I wrote that one.”
Something like an inhale swept through her body, as if it was briefly filled with life, even though she must have been on the brink of a REM cycle. But she didn’t say anything. She tried to ignore the feeling, the thought that they actually might have some thread of commonality that strung them together. The countdown in her head, the Advent calendar of this hiking trip, where she ripped off another day leading to the glorious end, ticked another close to the day. A day where they hadn’t actually argued. In fact, he’d laughed, even though he’d tried to hide it from her.
Maybe instead of counting down the days until the end, she should be tallying the times she could get Matthew to laugh. Twice that day had been seemingly a record. But what else could she do to distract herself from her sore feet, her aching calves, and the way her shoulders cried every time she removed her pack?
Let a new countdown begin.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

In this flirty wilderness adventure by the author of The Marriage Code, two hikers who drive each other crazy discover they might have a lot to learn from one another about navigating life, love, and living up to family expectations.

Ever since her father died, Bernie’s life has been stagnant. When concerned friends and family suggest she join a hike through Alaska to gain new perspective, Bernie reluctantly agrees to go, even though she’s never been the adventurous type, unlike her namesake, Great-Aunt Bernice.

Matthew is a struggling screenwriter who needs a week off the grid to gain some inspiration for a new project and to process the reappearance of his absent father.

When the two meet at the trailhead, it’s annoyance at first sight. He’s dismayed to discover that he’ll have to share a tent with Bernie, who doesn’t know the first thing about camping, while she finds he’s a little too into “roughing it” to be a reasonable human being. But as they’re forced to hike through the wilderness together, their relationship becomes a surprising source of empathy and inspiration…and maybe other feelings too. Can the two adversaries find the path to breaking the curse of family expectations—and each other?

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Meet the Author:

Brooke Burroughs is an award winning writer of fun love stories about women with a heart for adventure. Brooke lives in Austin, Texas with her husband, who she met on one of her own real life adventures living in India. When she’s not writing, she conducts experiments in vegetarian cooking, performs with a Bollywood dance troupe, travels whenever she can, and is frequently seen at the dog park with her Great Dane which is often mistaken for a horse.
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