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:
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.
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.
"I own this city. I walk with it's rhythms, run with its breath, speak its language. Los Angeles is my lover. It knows I'm a survivor." ~ Laine
Laine is a paparazzi who has lived a hard life, tossed around the foster care system. She made a living taking pictures of celebrities. One such celebrity that she was enamored with Michael. You see they shared a piece of their pasts together. One foster home she was placed in had her in school with him. They became good friends. Then life happened. Now she saw him through her lens.
A new set of circumstances brings them together and at first she tries to keep him at an arms length knowing it'd be career suicide if the became "friendly". But some feelings you just can't stop.
"... the feeling was new and worth defining." ~Michael
But determined to keep her job, her livelihood, she denies them even more.
"I believed love was forever. I knew people should always choose love over a job, but this wasn't love. This was a set of circumstances that led to real heat between two people. I wasn't choosing between two worthwhile objectives." ~Laine
Laine also has a past, a past she knows could be crippling to herself and Michaels career.
Can they overcome Laine's past? Can they make it work? Go one click to find out! You won't be disappointed!
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.
If you meet her in person, you should call her Christine.
GIVEAWAY & NOTE FROM AUTHOR
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
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!
If you are a paperback reader, email me and we’ll work it out .
Thank You!
