Today I am so pleased to welcome Layla Dorine to Joyfully Jay. Layla has come to talk to us about her latest release, Halfway to Someday. She has also brought along a great giveaway. Please join me in giving her a big welcome!

Thank you so much for inviting me onto your blog today to talk about my newest release, Halfway to Someday. This novel was almost four years in the making. In fact, there was quite a significant stretch of time when I felt as if this one would never see the light of day. Jesse’s story came together in pieces and spurts on notebook paper over the course of several road trips. As I started working on the gaps between the scenes, I began to realize that the relationship I’d expected to see develop was not the one that was emerging on the page. I think that is one of the most amazing things about being an author, those surprises the characters share with me over the course of developing the work.

For Halfway to Someday’s musician main character Jesse Winters, music is as much of an escape as the cabin he’s hold up in. It’s a gift given to him by his parents, but it’s cost him a great deal too and he’s at a place in his life when he’s questioning everything he’s sacrificed and everything he’s lost along this path towards stardom. The focus has changed. He’s drowning in the events of his life that have turned the sound dark, cold as the snowstorm raging outside. He wants to give the band the songs he’s come to expect from himself, not the ones that reflect what he’s truly feeling.  That’s something he’s looking to hide beneath layers of flannel and avoidance.

It’s a good thing the cabin is too small of a place for him to hide the truth from Ryker for long. Of course, readers will discover that Ryker has his own secrets and that up in those mountains, with only one another to rely on, past struggles and present day threats can weave ties that even a blizzard can’t blind them to.

Excerpt

Knocking loudly, Ryker shivered, pulling his coat tighter around him as he waited. He was about to knock again when the door swung open to reveal wary green eyes in a too-pale face framed by dark, cascading waves of blond hair. Ryker blinked, stunned at the outright hostility that pulled the man’s lips down into a scowl, his trim beard and mustache only serving to emphasize it more. His wrinkled long-sleeved T-shirt was backward and inside out, and it twisted near the waistline, revealing a swath of pale abs. It looked as though he’d hastily donned it on his way to the door.

“Pretty sure you’re at the wrong cabin,” the guy growled, moving to shut the door in Ryker’s face. Slamming his hand against it kept Ryker from being left out in the cold.

“Even if it’s the wrong cabin, which I don’t think it is, there’s a storm coming, in case you hadn’t noticed, so I think I’ll just come in out of it, thanks.” Ryker took a step forward and trying to wedge through the opening. The other man held firm, however, and they stood there glaring at each other.

“Look,” the man snapped, “you could be a psycho or a serial killer for all I know, so you ain’t getting in here. I’ve got enough problems without accidentally ending up dead.”

Ryker felt the impatience radiating off the other man, which was fine by him; he was getting pretty goddamned impatient and cold himself.

“You look—” Ryker retorted, studying the guy more intently through bleary, snow-clouded eyes. Something about him looked really damned familiar. “I’ve been on the road for hours. It’s fucking cold out here, and it’s snowing buckets. I’m supposed to be at my cousin’s cabin, which the GPS says is right here. So here I am, and I’ve got no intention of driving anywhere until the shit lets up.”

Blurb

Rocker Jesse Winters just wants to be left alone. If he could melt into oblivion, he would and bid farewell to the wild child of rock n’ roll so many had dubbed him in recent months. Truth is there was never anything reckless, wild, or even deliberate about most of the things that had happened on Wild Child’s last tour, but had anyone cared to listen? No! Which was precisely why he was sitting in a cabin high up in the Colorado mountains, hoping the incoming blizzard would bury him forever.

Ryker Jorgensen left the VA hospital with a bunch of prescriptions and pamphlets on how to deal with reentering the civilian world, not that he’s in any hurry to do so. His nightmares still keep him up at night, and every new limitation he discovers gives him more reason to believe that he’s hopelessly useless now. Better to drive up to his cousin’s cabin and lick his wounds. Come spring, maybe, he’d look into being around people, if only for long enough to make the kind of money he’d need to buy his own secluded place.

The last thing Ryker ever expected to see was the man whose face had been plastered in his footlocker and his dreams for the better part of the past six years, but Jesse Winters is nothing like he imagined. When trying to leave Ryker out in the storm doesn’t work, Jesse resorts to ignoring him. But two wounded souls trapped in a snowed in cabin have little choice but to reach out for one another when emotions get frayed. His only hope is that Jesse will trust him enough to let him drag him back from the edge before he’s just another burned out star in the legacy that is rock n’ roll.

Bio

Layla Dorine lives among the sprawling prairies of Midwestern America, in a house with more cats than people. She loves hiking, fishing, swimming, martial arts, camping out, photography, cooking, and dabbling with several artistic mediums. In addition, she loves to travel and visit museums, historic, and haunted places.

Layla got hooked on writing as a child, starting with poetry and then branching out, and she hasn’t stopped writing since. Hard times, troubled times, the lives of her characters are never easy, but then what life is? The story is in the struggle, the journey, the triumphs and the falls. She writes about artists, musicians, loners, drifters, dreamers, hippies, bikers, truckers, hunters and all the other folks that she’s met and fallen in love with over the years. Sometimes she writes urban romance and sometimes its aliens crash landing near a roadside bar. When she isn’t writing, or wandering somewhere outdoors, she can often be found curled up with a good book and a kitty on her lap.

Giveaway

Layla has brought a $10 NineStar Press gift card to give away to one lucky reader on her tour. Follow the Rafflecopter below to enter. 

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