Ramblings From This Chick: My First Love Event with A.J. Pine

Monday, April 1, 2019

My First Love Event with A.J. Pine

A teen librarian by day and a romance writer by night, A.J. Pine can’t seem to escape the world of fiction, and she wouldn’t have it any other way. When she finds that 25th hour in the day, she might indulge in a bit of Netflix and Hulu, nourishing her undying love of vampires, superheroes, and a certain high-functioning sociopath detective. She hails from the far off galaxy of the Chicago suburbs where she resides with her two amazing kids and three little devils disguised as cats. Her latest book, Hard Loving Cowboy, is available now from Forever Romance.

My First (unrequited) Love…

Happy Eighth Birthday to Ramblings from This Chick! I figured that since Dani’s blog is one that celebrates the stories that make us swoon I’d talk about the crush that eventually led me to write my first romance.

Picture a twenty-year-old girl on a train from London to Aberdeen, Scotland. She’s an English major who loves all things British. She’s going to spend the entirety of her junior year at the University of Aberdeen where she knows no one but hopes to make new friends, have new adventures, and maybe even fall in love.

I’m sure my coyness has fooled no one. That twenty-year-old girl was me, and I was equal parts excited and terrified for the year ahead. And while there is so much I could tell you about that year, we’re talking crushes, so here we go. I met a cute American boy—let’s call him “Griffin”—on the train who was another Midwesterner and who was also going to my school. We made a quick connection, but both of us knew it wouldn’t be anything serious because he was only staying for first semester. But we wanted to date, have fun, explore Aberdeen together, and that’s exactly what we did.

Fast forward to later that first week when all the new exchange students met for the first time. Enter boy number two—we’ll call him “Noah”—another Midwesterner who was also an English major and also dating someone else. He was cute, too. And we had the same major. Naturally, we hit it off. Because we had similar schedules and even some classes together—like Shakespearean Comedy where we got to put on a play—we often walked to and from campus together. But we were friends. Nothing more. After “Griffin” went back to the states at semester and I was single and in full-blown crush mode, still nothing ever happened between “Noah” and me. It was the crush to end all crushes, one I would never forget, yet he never knew.

This was the 90s, folks. The days before cell phones and before anyone had an email address that wasn’t tied to a university, so we never kept in touch. In fact, of all the photos I took when I was in Scotland, he’s not in a single one! Maybe it wasn’t even real. Maybe I made it all up. Or maybe, exactly two decades later in 2014, I published my first book, IF ONLY, and turned reality into fiction, only this time with a happily ever after.

Twelve books later, no matter what happened in Scotland from 1994 to 1995, it inspired me to do what I love most—write stories that have lots of crushes and kissing and love that is always requited so that readers (and my heroes and heroines) always get their HEA.

This cowboy's handsome, sexy, and definitely off limits . . .

Walker Everett spends his days at the Crossroads Ranch wrangling cattle-and steering clear of anything that would complicate his already too-complicated life. Until Violet Chastain, the ranch's newest employee, asks him to pretend to be her boyfriend for her parents' anniversary party. She's the most beautiful woman he's ever met and needs his help. How can he refuse?

Violet isn't about to fall for a brooding bad-boy cowboy, no matter how sizzling their chemistry. But she also never expected Walker to go along with the charade. Before long, he's charming her parents at their weekly dinners and kissing her way more than necessary. Spending so much time together tests the limits of their "just friends" relationship, but what happens when their game of pretend becomes all too real?

Purchase: | Amazon | B&N | Apple | Kobo |