Meet The Characters of Love Reborn

Hello all!

With the release date a couple of weeks away, I figure that I should introduce you to my character and give you pictures of the muses behind them. If Love Reborn were to become a movie, I would definitely choose these people to play them!

If you're familiar with Love Unbroken, then you're familiar with Ahmad Dawson. I mean, even if you haven't, I'm sure you wouldn't mind making yourself familiar. Look at him! This photo is pure sex to my eyes and I decided to use Keston Karter as my muse for my sexy Ahmad (no explanation is needed). Anyway, in Love Reborn, Ahmad goes on a journey to learn to let go of his past. Now a business man and single father, he blocks himself from love until he meets a woman that makes him feel "alive" again. He comes across a few obstacles that nearly knock him down completely, but he survives! You'll have to read for yourself to see if he gets his happily ever after though.

Whitney O'Neal is the Editor in Chief of Miami's tabloid, Hot Miami. She meets Ahmad at a party that she attended to get a story and fell for him as soon as she laid eyes on him. She goes through a lot of ups and downs with Ahmad and at one point gives up on him. Will things work out of them? Or will they just continue being good friends?

Things get a little weird when Paris Elise comes to work for Ahmad. After deciding that he needs a little help around his gym, Ahmad hires Paris to be one of his trainers in his elite A+ Fitness gym. Ahmad immediately is attracted to his new employee which causes a lot of confusion and unusual events to take place that make him question her true identity. Paris is definitely not who she appears to be...but who is she? You can find out on June 12th!

                 

 

Carlos and Lynn are Whitney's sassy, witty sidekicks that keep her on her toes. You'll definitely fall in love with them through their bantering, witty comebacks, and comments! I definitely loved creating them and I'm sure you'll love them as well!

Stay tuned for little teasers here and there as I prepare for the release of Love Reborn! I'm so excited and I can't wait! Mark your calendars for June 12th. You definitely don't want to miss this!

xoxo,

Victoria

The Art of Moving On with Writing

Hey there, love muffins! Wait, do you guys like being called love muffins? I figured that everyone likes muffins (I particularly like blueberry the best, but that's neither here or there). But it shall stick for now...unless someone organizes a protest to declare that I absolutely stop using. No? Good! Anyway, this post is about the realization that I came to yesterday and I would like to go into more depth about it. But first, let me take a selfie.

Ignore the bandage. Horrible hospital visit and blah blah blah. Anyway, back to my realization. So as I stated yesterday, I was talking with my best friend about Love Unbroken after she had read what I added and gave me her comments. I was telling her that the book was basically a bunch of analogies of my last relationship and that my "naive, childish Camille" character was actually ME in my relationship. You know, always feeling down about not being able to spend time with her man, easy to forgive just because she's happy to be around him and all that jazz. I've stated time and time again that the ending of my book represents how I felt when that relationship had ended. I felt like I had permanently lost a part of myself that I could never get back.

Writing Love Reborn was hard. I remember when I started writing it, I scrapped like four chapter ones. It took me 3 WHOLE MONTHS to write a chapter one that I was satisfied with and once I got over that hurdle, it became a little easier. As I wrote this story, I basically followed through with my character and learned some things about myself. I learned that in order to grow, you have to stop living in the past and wondering about the what ifs. You know what I'm talking about. What if I did this differently? What if I didn't do this so much? What if we had more time? Things like that. I also learned that it WASN'T my fault. Sometimes things just fall apart. Sometimes people are better off as friends. Placing blame on yourself isn't going to change the situation. All you can do is learn from your mistakes and grow from them.

Taking this journey with Ahmad was challenging, but very eye opening. For the first two years or so, I had a hard time moving on myself. I didn't want to be with anyone else. I couldn't picture myself being with anyone else. I was actually afraid of moving on because I held on to a tiny thread of hope that things would change. But life isn't a fairy tale. Realizing this, I wrote Love Unbroken to express my feelings. My ending was my wake up call to myself to let me know that there were no more chances. There was no more hope. It was gone. Dead. Finished. It was time to move on. In Love Reborn, I was finally able to get the closure I needed to move on. 

It took a good while to get to the point that I'm at now, but I'm content. I'm glad that I was able to get through this with my writing. These two books are very personal to me because they helped me find myself again. I was so lost in my emotions, but it's nice to be free from them. That chapter of my life officially ended when I wrote "The End" for Love Reborn. Oh, I'm just speaking figuratively, I didn't really write "The End" because I find it to be rhetorically stupid. Like, duh, there's no more words, so I would assume this to be the end of the book. That's just me though. Anyway, to move on means to move past the hurt, past the blame, past the what ifs, and to just let go. 

The most important love you can ever have is self love. If you can't love yourself, how can you expect anyone else to? Until again, love muffins!

xoxo,

V

Cover Reveal and Other Loonish Activities

Wow.

It has been forever since I have made a blog post. I think the last time I made one, I was a fetus or something. But seriously, it's been way too long! I shall never, ever, ever leave you-- wait, what was I going on about? I already forgot.

Anyway, I released the cover for Love Reborn about a week or so ago. It's definitely a piece of eye candy. I definitely can't wait to get this thing printed along with poster to go with my Love Unbroken poster. Sometimes I stare at this stuff and can't believe that these pictures, these covers, translate and depict the stories that I'm telling. These posters reflect the hard work that I've put into something that I love so much and it makes me so happy.

The original cover that I had for this was pretty and simple, but I became bored with it pretty quickly. I have the attention span of a hummingbird, I swear, it's horrid sometimes. I wanted something that would have me addicted just as much as my Love Unbroken cover, which is just absolutely sexy. Do you guys remember it?

Sorry, I started staring again. Anyway, yeah. I wanted a cover that gave me the same effect that Love Unbroken did. I think it definitely captures the story and I'm super grateful for my cover designer Laura of Bookfabulous Designs (hey girl, hey!).

I've finally finished the edits for Love Reborn today. 230 pages of grief! Although I edit other books for a living, editing my own work is SO tedious. That sounds crazy, right? That's because it is! When I edit my own work, I have to read slower because I have to read it as it's meant to be read, not what I know I should have written down. There were so many petty, tiny mistakes that were made due to typing too fast, but I caught them all (I think so anyway). 

I need to start working on the rewrites for Love Unbroken. To be honest, I'm super nervous about it. What if people don't like it this time around? My biggest fear is that they won't like it and won't give Love Reborn a chance. Maybe I'm worried about the wrong thing, but being a perfectionist causes me to think about these things. I'm excited about publishing them both. I finished Love Reborn during Camp Nano, so that was pretty cool as well. As weird as it sounds, I miss Camp Nano! It was a great push that I needed to finish a book that I had procrastinated on for so long.

I think that's pretty much it for the moment. I'm releasing both Love Unbroken (re-release) and Love Reborn on June 12th, so I have a lot of work that I need to do before I'm even close to being ready! I'll catch you loons on the flip side!

xoxo,

V