Contemporary romance lovers will for sure want to get their hands on RISING STAR by Susannah Nix, available November 8th! Be sure to check out an excerpt below!
About RISING STAR
Available November 8th, 2018
Alice
Carlisle has problems.
Her sociology Ph.D.
dissertation is going nowhere, she’s about to lose the TV extra job that’s been
paying her bills, and her roommate is kicking her out. She needs to find a new
place to live ASAP, so she can focus on finally finishing her doctorate.
Enter Griffin, one of
Hollywood’s rising stars, who offers to let her move into his guest room if
she’ll dog sit for him. Four months rent free in a nice house with an adorable
dog is an offer Alice can’t turn down—even if she has major qualms about her
movie star roommate.
Griffin Beach has it
all.
He’s gorgeous, newly
jacked, and poised to make the leap from TV show regular to box office
superstar. Until his dog sitter bails, leaving him desperate to find somebody
he trusts to look after his precious fur baby.
Enter Alice, the extra
who’s never seemed to like him but loves his dog. Griffin has his doubts about
the arrangement, but living with Alice opens his eyes to how empty his
workaholic lifestyle has become. The more time they spend together, the more he
realizes she might be exactly what he needs in his life.
Can Alice let her guard
down and learn to trust again? Can Griffin stop trying to please everyone else
long enough to show her how he feels? Will they get their Hollywood happy
ending? Or will their love story bomb at the box office?
RISING
STAR releases November 8th - preorder your copy now!
Read an excerpt of RISING STAR!
The hot doctor beside
Alice—better known to television audiences as the adorably charming Dr. Ethan
Convey—bent over to check the patient’s chest drainage unit. “Chest tube output
is twelve-hundred cc’s. Prep for thoracotomy.” His hip bumped against Alice’s,
and she shuffled aside to give him more room. They were working in tight
quarters, and part of her job was to stay out of everyone else’s way. But as
she reached for a scalpel on the tray of instruments beside her, she misjudged
how close it was and knocked the whole thing over, sending hemostats, forceps,
and scalpels flying with a deafening clatter. “Ow!” the man dying on the gurney
cried out as he flinched away from the flying medical equipment. “Shit. Sorry,”
Alice muttered. Good thing their scalpels weren’t actually sharp.
“Cut!” The director ripped
off his headset and approached with a thunderous expression on his face. It was
Dean Harwell’s first time in the director’s chair on Las
Vegas General, and the technical challenges of filming the show’s complicated
trauma scenes had been giving him fits all week. Dean was moonlighting from his
regular job as star of Las Vegas General’s better-rated
lead-in, and had only ever directed two episodes of his own show before this.
The producers had done him a favor letting him direct, but at this point it was
clear to everyone that they’d made a grievous mistake. The guy was in way over
his head, and had been taking it out on anyone and everyone with the misfortune
to attract his attention. Alice’s feet weren’t the only ones that shifted
nervously as Dean stormed toward them. The other two nurses in the scene—a
background actor named Diane and a minor recurring cast member named
Abby—shrank back and hung their heads. Even Griffin Beach—who was in his
seventh season as series regular Ethan Convey and had recently blown up the box
office in the fourth installment of the blockbuster Troublemakers franchise—visibly
winced. Only Alfie Crosby, a forty-year veteran of stage and screen sitting
comfortably at the top of the call sheet seemed unfazed by the oncoming
tantrum. “Why is the dead guy talking?” Dean demanded, red-faced under his
backward Yankees cap. “And moving?” Once upon a
time, Alice had actually thought Dean was hot, but that was before she’d had
the pleasure of working with him. Funny how much less attractive some people
became once you got to know them. “He’s not dead yet,” Alfie said, looking more
amused than anything. “There’s another page of dialogue before he codes.”
According to The Hollywood
Reporter, Alfie was being paid a cool half million per episode, so he
could afford to be amused. “She threw a tray of sharp instruments at my face,”
the not-dead-yet actor mumbled in his own defense. “Sorry,” Alice said again.
In an entire season working background, this was the first time she’d ever
ruined a take—but of course Dean didn’t know that. “Background
are supposed to be seen and not fucking heard!” he shouted.
“It’s right there in the goddamn name: background!” All the extras
on his own show despised him. Alice had talked to some of them in the
commissary last week, and they’d offered their condolences over Dean’s guest
directing stint on LV Gen. Now she knew why.
Dean started to take a menacing step toward Alice, but Griffin Beach inserted
himself between them. “It was my fault,” he said, facing down Dean with a level
stare. “I bumped into her and made her knock the tray over. If you’re gonna be
pissed at someone, be pissed at me.” Alice could have hugged him for taking the
bullet for her. Not that she ever would. There was a strict caste system in
place on set. Extras who got too familiar with the talent would quickly find
themselves out of a job and unlikely to be assigned a new one by the casting
agency. She hid gratefully behind Griffin’s broad shoulders and kept her mouth
shut while Dean railed about professionalism and the fact that it was only
eleven a.m. on Wednesday and they were already four hours and ten pages behind
schedule. Someone might have pointed out that they were only behind because of
Dean’s inexperience and repeated tantrums—this was his second outburst of the
day and they were still hours away from lunch—but no one did, because it would
only antagonize him and lengthen the duration of his tirade. It was a full five
minutes before he lost steam and stalked back to the monitors. “Thank you,”
Alice whispered to Griffin as soon as Dean was out of earshot. Griffin gave her
a wink so devastatingly sexy she felt her knees go wobbly. So much for not
paying attention to how attractive he was. “Don’t worry about that apple-faced
goon,” he whispered back, covering the mic tucked under his shirt as he leaned
toward her. “He’s not even qualified to be the assistant manager at PetSmart.”
Alice swallowed, momentarily paralyzed by the perfect storm of Griffin’s
kindness and sexy proximity, combined with her own overwhelming gratitude and
embarrassment. “Boy, what a dickhead,” Alfie announced loudly, not caring who
heard him. “Who told that moron he could direct?” Griffin snorted and wandered
back to his mark, leaving Alice to pull herself together and reapply her veneer
of detached professionalism. Props came through and reset the scene, Dean
called action, and they started again from the top. This time, Alice managed
not to throw a tray of scalpels at anyone.
About Susannah Nix
Susannah Nix is the author of quirky contemporary romances about smart women and swoony men, including the Chemistry Lessons series of romcoms featuring STEM heroines and the Starstruck series of movie star romances. She lives in Texas with her husband, two ornery cats, and a flatulent pit bull.
When she’s not writing, Susannah enjoys reading, cooking, knitting, watching too much television, and getting distracted by Tumblr. She is also a powerlifter who can deadlift as much as Captain America weighs.
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