Hiya GUYS, we have Jaime Samms stopping by today with her upcoming release Like You’ve Never Been Hurt, the second book in her Dance, Love, Live series. Jaime has written a wonderful guest post, there’s a fantastic excerpt, so check out the post and enjoy! <3 ~Pixie~  

Like You’ve Never Been Hurt

Jaime Samms

About to lose the only thing he ever loved, Adam Pittaluga is at a crossroads in a dancing career that has hardly begun. He has always wanted to be a ballet dancer, but now that it’s impossible, he turns to Peridot for comfort. Peridot has been rebuilding his life after losing his ability to dance professionally, his marriage, and very nearly his daughter. He has a lot of reasons to be leery of starting something new, especially with a man as young as Adam.

Adam and Peridot have to believe that starting again can lead to love and success and that sometimes, the strength needed to love like you’ve never been hurt can be borrowed from unexpected places for a while. But ultimately, they must find it inside themselves to be each other’s happy ending.

Jaime Samms

I went to a local writer’s guild meeting the other night. It’s sneaking up on a decade since I last went to one of these, and I was reminded of few things. 

• We writers are pretty tenacious. Once we have it in our heads we are going to publish something, good luck changing our minds.
• We writers are pretty tenacious. Once we get it into our heads we are going to publish something a certain way, good luck changing our minds.
• We writers need to learn how to be a little less tenacious about some things.

At the meeting I was pleased to see some familiar faces from the last meeting I attended so long ago. I was less pleased to learn that many of them were still struggling to get their books published in the traditional way. I want to tell them to put that dream away and be more practical. Look at the world we live in and use the tools technology has given us to get this done.

The last time I had been to a meeting, I wasn’t yet published, but was trying hard to find a place to take a short story, a magazine, or a an anthology, to figure out a way to get a foot in the door. Then I found digital publishing and look at me now!

And if I could do it, surely these writers who have been doing this a lot longer than I would be able to as well. If only they could accept a different way. Move forward. Stop holding onto an old and outdated hope for something, and grab hold of the new and attainable.

Of course, sometimes, people refuse to leave a dream they’ve had for a long time behind. You can’t force them to. That was where my Adam was in this book. He had dreamed of being a danseur for so long, he developed tunnel vision. I was afraid I was never going to get him to take away the blinders and see all the things he could be in the dance world, once he realized ballet was beyond his reach.

I was happy, then, when I stumbled onto the crumbling relationship Adam had with his father and to be able to use that fading connection not only to give Adam support from an unexpected source, but to find the real reason behind his reluctance to leave ballet behind.

Sometimes the reasons we have for holding onto old dreams has nothing to do with the dream itself, but stems from something or someone we feel we might lose if we don’t hold onto with all our might. Have you ever had a moment when you realized the thing you thought you wanted so badly had nothing to do with the thing itself but maybe was about hanging onto a memory or a friendship? Or that letting go of a dream let you focus on what was really important, and maybe brought something even better into your life?

Excerpt

“I wish I could tell you something else, believe me,” Annie told him as he hopped delicately off her table. “But you just have to trust me.”

“I do trust you. I know you’re right.”

“But you don’t want to hear it.”

“I don’t want to hear it.” He slumped, setting his ass on the edge of the table. Her ministrations hadn’t been easy on him. She had insisted that he show her what was going on, and the continued manipulation of the joint after a spectacular pop that had other patients and therapists turning to glance at him had him wanting to slap her hands away.

“It will heal, Adam. But only if you rest it.” She kept her voice low in the quiet room and began to pull the privacy curtain closed.

“I—”

“You’ll ruin any career you could have if you don’t do this now.” The shush of the curtain almost overrode her words.

“In a year, I won’t be able to do what I can do now. I’ll take another year to get back in shape. By then….”

“Maybe you ought to think about something other than ballet.”

“I’m a dancer!”

“Ballet isn’t the only dance there is. It’s just one of the very worst things you can do to your body. There are hundreds of other things you can do in dance that don’t include torturing your body into doing things it isn’t capable of.”

“What would you know about it?”

About the Dance, Live, Love series: 

To dance is to put one’s heart and soul on display for the world to see and judge. Conrad, Peridot, and Cobalt always knew this. For years, this small group of men has danced in and out of the spotlight and one another’s lives. Now, settling in one place, one studio, they all have to find a place on the stage—or behind the scenes—and find the even greater strength to once more dance like no one is watching. To love like they’ve never been hurt before. But most of all, to live their lives like they have found their heaven, both in the music and in the eyes of those who love them.

About Jaime

Jaime has been writing for various publishers since the fall of 2008, although she’s been writing for herself far longer. Often asked why men—what’s so fascinating about writing stories about men falling in love—she’s never come up with a clear answer. Just that these are the stories that she loves to read, so it seemed to make sense if she was going to write, they would also be the stories she wrote.
These days, you can find plenty of free reading on her website. She also writes for Freya’s Bower, Dreamspinner Press, Totally Bound, and now, Riptide Publishing.

Spare time, when it can be found rolled into a ball at the back of the dryer or cavorting with the dust bunnies in the corners, is spent crocheting, drawing, gardening (weather permitting, of course, since she is Canadian!), or watching movies. She has a day job, as well, which she loves, and two kids, but thankfully, also a wonderful husband who shoulders more than his fair share of household and child-care responsibilities.

She graduated some time ago from college with a fine arts diploma, and a major in textile arts, which basically qualifies her to draw pictures and create things with string and fabric. One always needs an official slip of paper to fall back on after all . . .
Connect with Jamie:

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