Are you
ready for a different kind of love story?
Meet
Michael & Laine in this Hollywood themed second chance romance by CD Reiss!
NOW
AVAILABLE!
ShutterGirl Book Trailer:
Blurb
ONE movie star on the cusp
of greatness
ONE broken girl who touched
him
TEN years to forget her
A MILLION stories in
Hollywood
I am not hurt.
I don’t need a second chance with him, or a life I thought I had.
While he was out forgetting me to become a movie star, I was building a career out of nothing. A career as a paparazzi, but a career. For a foster kid who bounced around every home in Los Angeles, that wasn’t easy.
This camera is all I have.
He’s nothing to me. Every time I take his picture and sell it, I remind myself that I did it all without him or his approval, his cinnamon smell or his clear green eyes. He lights up the screen like a celestial body, but he’s nothing but a paycheck to me.
He can throw my camera off a balcony, and nothing has to change. We can stay king and queen of the same city, and different worlds.
Except this is Hollywood, and here, anything can happen.
I don’t need a second chance with him, or a life I thought I had.
While he was out forgetting me to become a movie star, I was building a career out of nothing. A career as a paparazzi, but a career. For a foster kid who bounced around every home in Los Angeles, that wasn’t easy.
This camera is all I have.
He’s nothing to me. Every time I take his picture and sell it, I remind myself that I did it all without him or his approval, his cinnamon smell or his clear green eyes. He lights up the screen like a celestial body, but he’s nothing but a paycheck to me.
He can throw my camera off a balcony, and nothing has to change. We can stay king and queen of the same city, and different worlds.
Except this is Hollywood, and here, anything can happen.
Excerpt
I stroked his hair, waist deep in peace, all worry gone for
the moment, and floating in no more than an ocean of gratitude. I must have
been more vulnerable than I realized, or he’d reopened some wound with his
kindness, because though my sweet reverie stayed, as the minutes passed, a
layer of need fitted itself on top of it.
I needed to tell him, if not the details, the outlines of
who I was.
“I want you to know,” I whispered, starting somewhere small,
then everything I didn’t want to say spilled out. “I have stuff. I’ve never
been to jail, but you know, it’s stuff, and it’s ugly, and it scares me.
Because, I mean, you’re so perfect, and I’m… I’m just a mess. I’m not whole.
I’m a bunch of pieces of a person I cobbled together.” My eyes got wet when I
thought of the comparisons between us and that picture in my silverware drawer.
“So if you have to move on when you realize that, I’ll understand. You have an
image, and if anyone understands protecting a career, it’s me. I mean, I’ll be
mad, don’t get that wrong, but also.” I swallowed and blinked, shifting my head
so he wouldn’t feel the tear on his forehead. “I won’t blame you.”
I waited for an answer. Anything. A change in position or a
word on any subject. The weather. Sports. Something. But all he did was breathe.
I smiled so wide, tears fell into my mouth. He was sleeping.
If you’ve only known CD thru her erotica books, then this is a departure from that. What’s not a departure is the quality of her writing. I know this already, I may have said this before in previous reviews, but I just want to say it again anyway. CD Reiss can write anything!
CD paints a world for you then layers it with her prose and what you get is film noir quality in a book. In this case, it’s a world set in Hollywood with its movers and shakers and everyone else that drives the cogs of its publicity wheel.
Laine and Michael couldn’t have been any more opposite in their upbringing and the worlds they inhabit. It so happens that their paths crossed in their childhood, and as it turns out, it left an impact that neither one forgot. Whether it was apparent immediately or not, that dictated their interactions as adults, again, in 2 opposing ends, one behind the lens and the other, the subject of the lens.
Laine has such a harsh past which made her the way she is. Michael is like royalty in the movie industry. Laine has a lot of rough edges to her. Michael, whether he wanted to or not, was raised to be at everyone’s good graces. That is until they re-connect and somehow, Michael started showing more bite to him and Laine slowly started exposing her vulnerable side that just calls out to people’s good nature.
Laine and Michael together are like the stuff of romance. Second chances, star-crossed… against all odds type… and at the very heart of it, when stripped down, it all becomes about undeniable smoldering connection and all about love conquering all… sigh…
I practically highlighted the entire book. There is so much emotion in every page. There is such poignancy in every introspection and interaction. I really tried to read this as slowly as I could as I want to savour every word, or sometimes, the words strung together just force me to savour it regardless. I felt every bit of Laine’s and Michael’s struggles. I felt every bit of their tiny slices of happiness. I felt every bit of pain and frustration, and of hope at the same time, And I felt every bit of love. I’m not sure why but the whole time I was reading this, there’s a melancholic feel that didn’t quite leave me. As a matter of fact, it's still with me even after days of finishing it. And I say that in the most complimentary way, truly.
The city itself plays such a character, and I loved it. I also loved how CD infused it with settings/characters that are familiar from her previous works and real people from the indie writers’ world. See, that’s just another way of how she pulls you in and get you entangled and enmeshed in her fictional world... that good feeling that you're privy to something, almost like a privilege...
There are so much more words to say, to write… sigh… Oh, Christine, I’m just such a slave to your words… what’s next, pleeeease?
CD Reiss
CD Reiss is a USA Today and Amazon bestseller. She still has to chop wood and carry water, which was buried in the fine print. Her lawyer is working it out with God but in the meantime, if you call and she doesn’t pick up, she’s at the well, hauling buckets.
Born in New York City, she moved to Hollywood, California to get her master’s degree in screenwriting from USC. In case you want to know, that went nowhere, but it did embed TV story structure in her head well enough for her to take a big risk on a TV series structured erotic series called Songs of Submission. It’s about a kinky billionaire hung up on his ex-wife, an ingenue singer with a wisecracking mouth; art, music and sin in the city of Los Angeles.
Critics have dubbed the books “poetic,” “literary,” and “hauntingly atmospheric,” which is flattering enough for her to put it in a bio, but embarrassing enough for her not to tell her husband, or he might think she’s some sort of braggart who’s too good to give the toilets a once-over every couple of weeks or chop a cord of wood.
Critics have dubbed the books “poetic,” “literary,” and “hauntingly atmospheric,” which is flattering enough for her to put it in a bio, but embarrassing enough for her not to tell her husband, or he might think she’s some sort of braggart who’s too good to give the toilets a once-over every couple of weeks or chop a cord of wood.
If you meet her in person, you should call her Christine.
Stalk Her: Facebook | Twitter | Website | Goodreads | Pinterest
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GIVEAWAY & NOTE FROM AUTHOR
I am so happy with the response to Shuttergirl, and I cannot wait to send Michael and Laine out into the world, because who doesn’t swoon over a second chance at love?
It’s a new genre for me, and I’m exploding with excitement, so I’ve dropped some fantastic reasons for readers to get the book right away.
TREAT YOURSELF LIKE A MOVIE STAR!
$500 Spa Gift Card
If you could get an hour, or ten away from the daily grind of paparazzi and interviews (or the job and kids), what would you do?
Get a foot rub/slash/pedicure? A massage? Maybe something called a Sleep Treatment that right now sounds better than sex?
Maybe you’d bring a friend or two, or maybe you’d just get a manipedi when you wanted one. Because the life of a megastar ain’t for the weak-willed or lazy, and running from paparazzi can really wear down a girl’s nails.
Woodhouse Spas are no joke. They’re all over the country and they’re….sigh. Fabulous. But if you don’t live near one, we can do Burke Williams, Halcyon Days or Red Door.
HOW TO ENTER
Take the fun SHUTTERGIRL READER QUIZ!
The link to the quiz is in the back of the book, and yes, that’s the ONLY place to find it! There are bonus questions relating to Jonathan and Antonio for extra prizes. You have until June 3rd to enter! That gives you a solid two weeks to read the book and get your chance at a $500 movie star spa treatment!
If you are a paperback reader, email me and we’ll work it out .
Thank You!
Thanks for dropping by!
~Leftie
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