Thursday, October 29, 2015

NEW ADULT SCAVENGER HUNT - A WARM WELCOME TO AUTHOR JOY PENNY


What is the New Adult Scavenger Hunt?
Read more details HERE


Preview of Moon Meadow, a NA superhero/villain romance written by Joy Penny to be released someday!

Chapter One


“So basically … I’m your Lois Lane.”
Just once—would just once be too much to ask for?—I’d like a boyfriend who didn’t, at some point, spit those words at me like they tasted like sour milk. Sure, the words are a little different from time to time—I got a “I’m your Mary Jane” once, must have been a Marvel fan—but the sentiment is the same.
The guy I’m dating is my damsel in distress. Or what’s a word for male damsel? Gentleman in grief. Chap in trouble. Fellow in misfortune. I’m genuinely curious now, so I’m doing a thesaurus check on my phone while he rants on and on, tossing his hands up in the air over and over like he’s trying to grab hold of something.
“Joey, what are you doing?” Nolan is standing in front of my face, snatching my phone out of my fingers before I’ve finished my search for living-target-boyfriend synonyms. He snarls, looking down at the screen. “At a time like this, you’re checking your— Really?” He looks up and holds out the screen to me, and my Google search results for “What do you call it when it’s a man who’s the damsel in distress?”
“Yes, really.” I snatch the phone back out of his hand and toss it on the couch, almost hitting Autumn, who’s sitting cross-legged on the small two-seater with her laptop on her lap.
Oooo-kay,” mutters Autumn, giving the word an extra emphasis on the ‘o.’ She cradles her laptop and tries to tiptoe around Nolan and me to get to the door. She can’t help send me a sharp look as she bumps Nolan with her computer screen, since the room is barely big enough for one human occupant, let alone the two the school assigns there. Plus or minus two or more boyfriends at any given moment.
Nolan crosses his arms to match my crossed arms and I can see his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he grits his teeth and waits patiently for Autumn to exit. Poor Autumn. She’s witnessed this scene unfold more than once. Better here than in public. Too many minds to wipe. Not that I should even be exposing my dates to that, but better just them than half the Moon Meadow population. And that’s only a slight exaggeration.
After the door has closed and Autumn’s retreated into the dull din of college dormmates going about their business in the hallways and the rest of the rooms—thank god for blares-her-music-way-too-loud-every-single-day in 106, she camouflages just about every noise that comes out of my room—Nolan drops his death-glare and lets his arms fall limply to his sides. Sighing, he runs a hand through those iced-blond locks, probably knowing full well that drives me want-to-pounce-on-him crazy, and looks out the solitary window in Autumn’s and my dorm room. I left it open after I brought Nolan back here, and there’s a gentle breeze swaying the curtain.
“Why here?” he asks. That’s another question they inevitably get to sometime during this argument.
And they certainly have a point. In comic books and movies, it’s like some unwritten rule: everyone with the superpowers congregates in the metropolitan areas. Bad guys? Check. Good guys? Well, that makes sense if all the bad guys are there. Maybe it’s the more people = more potential victims theory. Perhaps nuclear/radioactive/cosmic ray explosions just happen there more often. Or maybe they just all like being able to rely on public transportation on those days when it’s too stormy outside to safely fly.
But you don’t enroll in Moon Meadow College without knowing you’re kind of walking into what’s more or less Soar’s territory. I mean, he and his little ‘Forfeiters’ group don’t exactly pay taxes on the land and have the deeds to prove it, but there’s a reason why real estate is dirt cheap in the county and tuition at MMC can’t be beat. Because you’d have to be crazy to live here.
Or have a really damn good reason to live here.
I take a deep breath and stop myself from explaining the whole story. Not only because it takes a lot of time, but because it only makes things worse. And the guys never remember it anyway. So I just say the one thing I owe him, for putting him in harm’s way: “I’m sorry.”
Nolan chokes out a curt laugh, and it isn’t pleasant. As if to flip me the bird, he runs his fingers through his hair for probably the last time in front of me. “Yeah, I’m sorry, too. Sorry I ever got involved with you.”
I can’t help myself. “Nolan, it’s not I wanted you to get captured. I tried keeping it all from you—”
“But that’s just it, Joey.” Nolan points a finger at me accusingly. “You shouldn’t keep something that important from someone you’re dating.”
I chew my lip. “We’ve only been going out two weeks—”
“What does that matter?” Nolan tosses his hands up again. “Was there a specific milestone where you were going to tell me? Our one-month anniversary maybe?”
I shake my head. “No … ”
Nolan scoffs. “Then don’t try to talk yourself out of this. You know what? I don’t care.” He thrusts his hands forward, palms outward, as if to wash his hands of me. “I’m done. You’re done.” He shifts slightly to get around me, but we have to awkwardly shimmy past each other, bringing us in way too close contact—reminding me I’m never going to jump him again—as our backs scrape against the two top bunk bed/desk contraptions that take up the bulk of the space in the room. Nolan uses the opportunity to sneer down at me, even as his arm brushes against chest. “I’m going to warn every guy on campus. No, fuck that, I’m going to sell the truth about you to the first media buyer—”
The window smashes—again—and there’s a beam of white light pointed right at Nolan’s head and Nolan crumples to the floor, although I swoop in to cushion the fall, wrapping in my arms and guiding him down slowly.
“Really?” I ask toward the window, laying the unconsciously newly-ex-boyfriend on my lap. “I left the window open this time! Ugh!” I seize two huge chunks of my hair in my hands in frustration. I don’t even care that I’ve made a mess of the thick black mop now covering my eyes.
There’s a knock on the door, and I’m praying the RA didn’t happen to walk by and hear that. Well, if she heard that, she’d be unconscious on the other side of the door. But if she just heard my window smash for oh, the tenth time or so since the school year started, I’m going to get another “Josephine Diaz and Autumn Copeland: Exceeded reasonable property damage. $100 fine” letter in my mailbox. Because people totally smash their own windows just to annoy their RAs. And get fined hundreds and hundreds of dollars.
Probably tired of waiting for my answer, Autumn lets herself in, her laptop still balanced in one hand. She wrinkles her nose as she stares at Nolan. “I’m not helping you move that one.” She balances her laptop over her head and takes a giant step to step over poor Nolan’s collapsed body, plunking herself back down on the couch after inspecting it for shards of glass. Her slippered feet shattered a few pieces on the way in, and I’ve just about had it with having to clean up by myself. She feels me glaring at her and looks up from her screen for a second. “What? He said some pretty nasty things, Jo. He’s a jerkwad.” She goes back to typing without a care in the world.
I sigh and step back, tucking my hands under Nolan’s shoulders to get a good grip. Naturally, super strength isn’t something anyone I know is blessed with. Although that’s actually a good thing, considering it might be a problem for me if I didn’t exactly get along with whoever has it.
Nolan’s legs make a terrible cracking, smashing sound as I drag them over the glass and I wince, praying none of the shards pierce his jeans or shoes. I stop in front of the door and look over my shoulder and then at Autumn. “Can you at least get the door?”
Autumn growls. “Argh. Fine!” She practically slams her laptop down on a pile of glass on the couch beside her and crunches her way across the room to slip behind me.
“After you,” she says mockingly, gesturing for me to exit. Dragging my unconscious ex-boyfriend into the hallway.
Autumn doesn’t have a change of heart. The door slams as soon as—or maybe she doesn’t even wait quite that long—Nolan’s feet clear the doorway. I blow a wad of hair out of my face and keep dragging him, shuffling my feet backward, praying no one opens their doors—
Music-too-loud-in-106 does just that, the very instant I pass her doorway. She has a toothbrush handle hanging out of her mouth, and her lips are painted ‘en toothpaste foam.’ I freeze and she does too, her eyes flicking from me to Nolan and back again.
I try to smile. I know I look like a grinning, disheveled madwoman when I do. “Drunk,” I say, like that explains everything.
Apparently it does. 106 shrugs, keeps brushing and takes a giant step to walk over Nolan, making her way without comment to the floor bathroom.
I go back to shuffling backward, dragging Nolan through the hallway. Damn, Nolan, maybe try not to put on so much muscle. It’s not like it’d save him anyway. Not from anyone who’s actually a threat in this small town of 3,000.
By the time I get to the common room, I’m sweating buckets, probably yellow-staining my brand new blouse irrevocably. Not that the Forfeiters didn’t already do a good job of utterly destroying it. It’s practically only strips charred black at this point.
With one final heave, I drag Nolan onto the ratty, smelly old sofa. I collapse backward in order to catch my breath a second, and then I snatch the remote sitting on the chipped glass coffee table next to the piles of newspapers, Kleenexes, and ew, that might be a used condom, and turn on the old cathode ray tube, dropping the remote into the nook between Nolan’s arm and side to make it look like he dozed off watching TV. Not that he’d have any idea why he was watching TV here. No one watches TV here. That’s precisely why I can always count on it to be a good dumping ground for mind-wiped boyfriends.
“In Moon Meadow, authorities are reeling from yet another show of bravado from known domestic terrorist Derek Beitel, a.k.a. ‘Soar,’ and his so-called group of Forfeiters.” The TV switches from a shot of the practically-bored straight-lipped anchor to a helicopter view of downtown Moon Meadow, where the streets are still glowing with white light energy. It looks like something out of a Parade of Lights or Tron. Or a typical Thursday evening when your boyfriend gets taken hostage. “The Forfeiters left another message for rogue member of the group, former Forfeiter member, Mutiny.” The camera zooms in for a close-up on the top of a smoking building. The last of the fire extinguished there is still burning. I couldn’t get it out. It was like wine on a t-shirt. The harder you rub, the more it stains.
I’ve already seen it, but I still wince to see Torchlight’s flames crackling my other name: “Mutiny, you were good to me. Now I’m going to light up for all to see.”
That wasn’t Torchlight composing the message, of course. Just writing it. And probably telling Soar how stupid every word was. She had a point.
I spare Nolan one last look of remorse, knowing that at least getting it all out in the open will spare him from all that. What the ‘authorities’ don’t know is that Nolan was up there on that roof, tied up in ribbons right next to the message. Ribbons that were catching on fire and about to burn the poor man to cinders.
Dating really sucks when your first love was a super villain.






ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Joy Penny is a pen name for a writer who adores books. She also writes YA under a different name. A Love for the Pages is her new adult romance debut.

Discover more about Joy Penny on her BLOG HERE.



ABOUT THE BOOK

Kiss. Marry. Kill. Nineteen-year-old June Eyermann has always known exactly which of her favorite Byronic heroes goes where. She’d kiss moody and possessive Rochester from Jane Eyre and marry prideful but repentant Darcy from Pride and Prejudice, leaving obsessive and spiteful Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights to be chucked off a cliff—but no. She couldn’t leave any of her heroes behind. She lives for her favorite fictional worlds.

But June is about to get a serious wake up call when she returns home for the summer after her college freshman year. Stuck somewhere between feeling like a kid again under her parents’ roof and being forced to start acting like an adult with worries about her future career, June looks at the library volunteer position offered to her as a way to keep her sanity for the next few months before she can go back to school.

What June doesn’t expect to find at the library is her favorite romantic heroes brought to life—all in the same man. Obstinate, prideful and even a bit rude, Everett Rockford shouldn’t exactly be “dating material,” even if June’s heart rate accelerates whenever she’s near him. But after discovering his enigmatic past and witnessing a few fiery moments of tenderness, June can’t help but see Rochester, Darcy and even Heathcliff in Everett. If she’s going to make it through the summer without becoming a tragic heroine in her own story, she has to separate the man from the ideals of fiction in her head. Because if there’s one thing she knows about Byronic love stories, it’s that they don’t always end happily ever after.

Purchase a copy of A Love for the Pages HERE.

*** Since you made it this far, I'm happy
to confess that my lucky number is 15.***

***Your next stop on the tour is author



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