Hi everyone —
I’m so happy to welcome my friend, Heidi Cullinan, to the blog today. She’s introducing her new book, FEVER PITCH, which is the second book of the Love Lessons Series and i adored the first book. I’m putting this one on my Kindle and can’t wait to read it. Heidi has placed an exclusive excerpt here on the blog. Check that out. And be sure to enter on the Rafflecopter. Go!
FEVER PITCH
Book Two of the Love Lessons Series
Sometimes you have to play love by ear.
Aaron Seavers is a pathetic mess, and he knows it. He lives in terror of incurring his father’s wrath and disappointing his mother, and he can’t stop dithering about where to go to college—with fall term only weeks away. Ditched by a friend at a miserable summer farewell party, all he can do is get drunk in the laundry room and regret he was ever born. Until a geeky-cute classmate lifts his spirits, leaving him confident of two things: his sexual orientation, and where he’s headed to school.
Giles Mulder can’t wait to get the hell out of Oak Grove, Minnesota, and off to college, where he plans to play his violin and figure out what he wants to be when he grows up. But when Aaron appears on campus, memories of hometown hazing threaten what he’d hoped would be his haven. As the semester wears on, their attraction crescendos from double-cautious to a rich, swelling chord. But if more than one set of controlling parents have their way, the music of their love could come to a shattering end.
Warning: Contains showmances, bad parenting, Walter Lucas, and a cappella.
Buy links: Samhain, Amazon, Amazon UK, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play, iTunes
Book Page for Love Lessons (book one in the series)
HEIDI’S BIO
Heidi Cullinan has always loved a good love story, provided it has a happy ending. She enjoys writing across many genres but loves above all to write happy, romantic endings for LGBT characters because there just aren’t enough of those stories out there. When Heidi isn’t writing, she enjoys cooking, reading, knitting, listening to music, and watching television with her husband and ten-year-old daughter. Heidi is a vocal advocate for LGBT rights and is proud to be from the first Midwestern state with full marriage equality. Find out more about Heidi, including her social networks, at www.heidicullinan.com.
Exclusive Excerpt: Fever Pitch
Intellectually he understood friends and lovers weren’t mutually exclusive—his future happiness with a long-term partner depended on that truth, in fact. Giles hadn’t ever thought much about how to navigate the friend part of a potential boyfriend.
Aaron was a friend—but not like Brian or Mina. Giles could flop onto a futon and whine with either one of them because being with his besties relaxed him. Being with Aaron made him feel like someone had ratcheted his tuning pegs to the breaking point. He dressed more carefully for Salvo rehearsal than he did for twenty-and-under night at the Shack. He sat straighter in his chair beside Aaron while they went over compositions than he did in chamber orchestra. He stashed breath mints in the pocket of all his jackets and kept several packs in his instrument locker for fear he might chat Aaron up with taco breath by accident.
His breath and clothes were the only way he could come close enough to Aaron’s orbit to even dream of entering it. In addition to being model gorgeous, Aaron was taller than Giles and a lot more filled out, well proportioned where Giles was eternally lanky and awkward. When they worked together at the table in the lounge, Giles would sometimes catch glimpses of their reflection in the mirrored plate between the top and bottom instrument lockers, and the difference between the two of them could have been a comedy sketch. Giles would be hunched over, hair standing on end like he’d stuck his finger in a light socket. Aaron’s hair would be messed up too, and he’d be bent over his work as well, but somehow he always managed to look like a model photo in a brochure for how to study. Either that or an opening scene to a porn shoot.
They truly were friends, though—they smiled every time they saw each other, and at a thrilling moment in early December they had, at long last, exchanged numbers.
They were finishing up a Salvo planning session, and somehow the two of them ended up alone in the room. Aaron was packing up his backpack, no real rush, almost lingering. It occurred to Giles this would be a great moment to ask Aaron out.
For coffee. Ice cream. Lunch. A movie. It wasn’t hard. All he had to do was open his mouth.
Do you want to go have a latte? My treat.
What are you up to right now? Feel like coming over to play some Xbox?
You hungry? I was thinking about grabbing a burger. Care to come along?
So many ways to make a date, all of them casual.
None of them would come out of his mouth. All Giles could do was stand there, paralyzed.
Aaron glanced up at him and paused with a folder half into his bag. “Is something wrong?”
Say something. You have to say something now. “Um. I…wondered. If maybe we should exchange phone numbers.”
Aaron went still. “Oh?”
Was that panic on Aaron’s face? Revulsion? Surprise? Mayday. Mayday. Abort. Abort. “F-for Salvo. In case.” His mouth went dry, his hands became clammy. “Planning. Stuff.”
And what was that expression? Relief? Regret? Gas? “Sure.”
They’d exchanged numbers. Neither one had yet to use them.
Thank you so much for coming by! : )