BACK TO YOU *SIGNED* GIVEAWAY & PRISCILLA GLENN INTERVIEW

PRISCILLA GLENN

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“Right back to him. Always to him.”

When Lauren Monroe first laid eyes on Michael Delaney back in high school, she had every reason to stay away from him; within minutes of their first encounter, his volatile actions confirmed his notorious reputation. But Lauren saw something in him that caused her to question his bad-boy persona, and against her better judgment, she took a chance. She had no way of knowing that the unlikely friendship they formed would become so important to her.

Or that it would end so painfully.

Eight years later, when Lauren begins her new job at Learn and Grow Day Care, Michael is the last person she expects to see. Refusing to revisit the hurt and confusion of their past, Lauren vows to keep her distance from him. But staying away from Michael proves to be more difficult than she thought, despite her lingering grief and her instincts for self-preservation.

As Lauren and Michael recall the friendship that changed them forever and the events that tore them apart, will they finally be able to heal? Or will the ghosts of Michael’s past prove to be too much to overcome?

My spoiler-free review of BACK TO YOU
(5 stars!!!)

Guys, you all HAVE to read this book!

Its a beautiful, believable second-chance friends-to-lovers story that was both heart breaking and heart warming, with an uplifting, satisfying ending that left me clutching my heart, with happy tears in my eyes and a smile on my face 🙂

I  absolutely loved it!!!!!

“I always knew I would fall in love with you,” he said softly, “But you were never supposed to love me back,”

PS. You may recognize this book from the old cover (shown below).
It is the same book, just a new cover 🙂

Here are some of our readers’ questions answered by Priscilla.

Nicole K – I can’t believe this is your first novel, it was absolutely amazing! When did you first start writing?

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Priscilla ~   Thanks Nicole! I’ve been writing since I was a kid. I remember being around ten years old and playing this game with my cousin. One of us would write a story in a composition notebook, and then when we saw each other at my grandmother’s house on the weekend, we would hand it off to the other person. Then that person would take it home, read the story, and pick up writing where the other left off. The following weekend, we would hand it off again. We did that for years. I wrote a lot in high school and college too, but it was mostly poetry and short stories. The first time I actually tried my hand at writing a novel was back in 2009. I wrote two novels before I started Back to You in 2011.

Raina – What inspired you to start writing? Which character came to you first?

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Priscilla  ~   Michael came to me first. One of my good friends growing up had this “public persona” that he put on for everyone else, but was very different when he was with me. I took that idea and just developed it a bit more. As soon as I figured out what shaped Michael – who he really was and what caused him to hide behind the facade he created for himself – writing Lauren was easy, because I already loved him.

        Amber D – This is one of my FAVORITE books because of how it grabbed me emotionally!! I need more! What is your next project?

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Priscilla  ~  Thanks so much Amber! My next project is called Emancipating Andie. It’s about a girl who thinks she has her life figured out until – due to circumstances out of her control – she ends up having to take a two-day road trip with her boyfriend’s best friend, who she happens to despise. The trip becomes a catalyst for all sorts of chaos in both their lives. It should be out some time this spring.

Heather K – Do you have a favorite quote that guides you when writing?

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Priscilla ~  I’m a big “quote” girl. I pull quotes from everything I read. In college, I used to have quotes plastered all over my dorm room walls, and now that I’m a teacher, I start each year by giving my students a list of quotes that I love so they can analyze them and apply them to their own lives. When I write though, I usually steer clear of quotes. It’s hard for me to “get in the zone” if I have other people’s words in my head, if that makes sense. 

Paula N – What do you think it is about friendship to love stories that resonate with so many people?

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Priscilla  ~   Well for one thing, they’re extremely relatable. I think at some point in almost everyone’s life (whether we admit it or not) we’ve all been in a situation where we felt something more than “friendship” for a friend. So, I think a lot of readers connect for that reason. But for me, it’s the realistic spin it puts on falling in love. With friendship-to-love stories, there is a solid foundation that exists between the characters before the line is crossed into anything more. Don’t get me wrong: there’s a time and place for insta-love, but the stories that have always gripped me and stayed with me are the ones where we actually get to watch the characters fall in love. We see it happening. We feel it. We believe it. And because of that, we are falling in love at the same time that they are. And any time you fall in love, it sticks with you 🙂

Gina S – Do prefer to write in quiet or while listening to music? And do you write every day? How long did it take you to write Back To You?

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Priscilla  ~  I try to write every day, but it’s not easy. I’m a teacher and a mom of three little ones (ages five and under) – so my writing schedule consists of “whenever I can squeeze a few words in.” It took me about a year to write Back to You, but within that year I gave birth to my youngest, so things were sort of hectic for a while. 

I absolutely love listening to music when I write. Sometimes I can’t write without it, depending on the scene. I think the only two scenes I wrote in complete silence were the scene where Aaron comes to pick Michael up from the old woman’s house, and when Michael is at Trashed.

I had a playlist on my ipod specifically for the novel, and some of the songs I listened to religiously when writing it were: Fix You by Coldplay (obviously), Hold You In My Arms by Ray LaMontagne, Sullivan Street by Counting Crows, Time After Time (cover) by Javier Colon, To Make You Feel My Love (cover) by Adele, and Never Think by Robert Pattinson. 

        Amanda L – Will there be a sequel?

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Priscilla  ~  I actually didn’t plan on a sequel. When I finished Back to You, I felt like Lauren and Michael were right where they were supposed to be. However, something I hadn’t prepared for was the Adam Fan Club that emerged after I published the novel 🙂 I’ve had quite a few people ask me if I would ever write his story. I could see myself doing that one day. 

Emancipating Andie teaser

To be released Spring 2013.

Andie shook her head in amazement as she turned to walk back upstairs, stopping when she spotted a third doorway at the opposite end of the hall. What the hell, she thought. She’d already given in to her shameless snooping. When would she ever get to be in a house like this again?
She realized what it was before she even crossed the threshold: a wine cellar. “My God,” she said under her breath as she reached the doorway. It was practically the size of her apartment; the walls were floor to ceiling shelves full of bottles, and in the center of the room were several more independent shelves, filled to capacity. There had to be hundreds of bottles.

She stepped into the cellar in complete awe, her eyes fixed on the soaring shelves bordering the entire room, nearly tripping over something underfoot. Andie looked down to see a small wrought iron step-ladder on the floor next to the door, and as she lifted her eyes back up to the impossibly tall shelving, she bent to grab it, dragging it over to the nearest wall of wine.

Just as she was about to climb up and take a closer look, a loud slamming sound caused her to jump, and she whipped her head around to see the cellar door closed behind her.

“Crap,” she mumbled, stepping down off the stool. She walked back toward the door and twisted the handle.

Nothing.

Andie froze, her eyes widening for a second before pulling a bit more forcefully. “No,” she whispered, twisting the handle the other way and trying again. “No, no, no,” she begged, leaning back on her heels and grabbing the handle with both hands, yanking back with the full weight of her body. The substantial oak door didn’t budge. It didn’t even squeak. “Oh God, please no,” she whimpered to herself.

The voice came from behind her. “Well that sucks.”

She screamed before he’d even finished his sentence, whirling around and flattening herself up against the door.

Instead of being startled by the ear-piercing shriek that ripped from her throat, he seemed amused by it. The corners of his mouth curved up in a smile as his eyebrows lifted ever so slightly.

Andie felt the panic begin to swell in her chest. Locked in a cellar with a strange man at a party where she didn’t know anyone, where practically no one would be looking for her. Weren’t there scary movies that began this way? For all she knew, the room was probably soundproof. She felt a surge of adrenalin heat her veins as she kept her eyes on him, her back against the door.

“Did you think that was down there for show?” he asked, nodding toward the iron step stool she had dragged over to the shelves.

Andie brought her hand to her still thudding heart. “I…I didn’t know…I’m sorry,” she said, reaching behind her with her free hand and twisting the handle again. The uneasiness in her chest was beginning to mix with embarrassment. “How do we get out?”

He shrugged indifferently. “We wait. Someone will probably be down here any second now after that scream. Nice pipes, by the way,” he added with a smirk.

A frown tugged at the corners of her mouth. His lack of urgency bothered her. As did his flippant response. Not to mention the look he was giving her. It was a combination of amusement and condescension, that little smirk playing at his lips. He was dressed much more casually than anyone she’d seen so far upstairs: jeans and an open button down over a T-shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. The cellar was too dim for her to pinpoint the color of his eyes, but she could tell they were light, and his hair, a sandy brown color, looked like it was in need of a cut; it flipped away from his forehead and the tops of his ears in little curls. As if he could read her mind, he ran his hand through it, tousling it in a way that made it look stylishly disheveled.

Whatever this guy was willing to do, waiting was not an option for her; there was no way she was going to sit in the wine cellar with this stranger until Colin came to rescue her and she had to fumble through some feeble explanation as to why she was in the wine cellar in the first place. She turned and twisted the handle again. This time, she pulled back on the door so hard that a guttural grunt escaped her lips, and she heard him laugh behind her.

Andie looked over her shoulder.  “A little help would be nice,” she said, trying to keep the annoyance out of her voice.

“When that door sticks, you can’t open it from the inside. Hence the doorstop that someone chose to ignore.”

“Well excuse me for assuming a house like this would have functioning doors,” she snapped, irritated that he was mocking her. He didn’t even know her, for Christ’s sake.

He grinned at her.

Andie turned, balling up her fist and banging sharply on the door. The muted thudding rang through the space just as a dull ache shot up her arm, and she dropped her hand to her side, flexing her fingers.

“No one’s gonna hear that, and you’re gonna hurt your hand,” he said, the amusement prevailing over the concern in his voice. “And for the record, I have no medical training. Although there’s plenty of wine, so I guess we could just get you drunk enough so that you wouldn’t feel it.”

Ignoring his taunts, she turned around and used the flat of her other hand, banging again. Andie knew he was right; it was fruitless. No one would hear her and she probably would end up hurting her hand, but she refused to give him the satisfaction of conceding.

“If you’re in such a rush to get back to the party, why don’t you just use your phone and call someone upstairs?”

Yeah, she could just see how that conversation would go. “Hey Colin, it’s Andie. I locked myself in the wine cellar while I was snooping around your friend’s house. Can you come let me out?” She turned around, folding her arms. “If I had my phone with me, do you think I’d be standing here abusing my hands on this door?”

“Well I told you to stop, didn’t I?”

She shot him a look and he laughed again. “Relax. Trust me, someone will want more wine eventually,” he said, walking toward the first shelf in the middle of the room. He sat on the floor with his back against it, his feet wide apart and flat on the floor in front of him. He rested his elbows on his knees as he looked up at her.

“I’m Chase.”

Realizing that she very well might be trapped with him for a while, she figured it was probably in her best interest to at least attempt civility, even though he seemed determined to get under her skin.

“Andie,” she said before turning back toward the door and inspecting the doorknob, praying for some magic button that would set them free.

“Andie, huh? Interesting,” he said, and then after a beat, “Well, Andie, are you a friend of Justin’s? Or Stella’s?”

She turned to look at him, the confusion evident in her face.

He smiled slowly. “Justin and Stella? You know, the people who are hosting this party?”

“Oh. No…I don’t…I’m here with Colin Tate,” she added by way of explanation, turning back toward the door and examining the hinge, trying to remember anything she could about the show MacGyver.

“Colin’s here?”

Andie spun quickly to face him, her eyebrows raised. “You know him?”

“Of course I know him.”

Yes, definitely in her best interest to attempt civility.

“Oh.”

A silence filled the space between them, and he smiled, running his hand through his hair again. “So…you and Colin? You guys are a thing?”

With a resigned sigh she gave up, walking away from the door and over to one of the shelves against the wall, sitting cross legged in front of it. “Not a thing. We’re dating.”

“What’s the difference?”

Andie looked down with a shrug, feeling cautious since she had no idea how close he and Colin actually were. “It’s…new.”

“Ah. Haven’t decided if you’re gonna bang him and bail yet?”

She whipped her head up, an offended expression on her face, and he laughed, shifting his weight as he reached in his back pocket. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes, tapping them against his palm and then glancing up at her from under his lashes as he held the pack out to her.

“No.”

He chuckled, shaking his head as he held the pack to his mouth and removed a cigarette. “That’s rude, you know,” he said, the unlit cigarette wagging between his lips as he spoke.

“What is?” she scoffed. “Declining a cigarette?”

“No, that face you just made,” he said, pulling a lighter out of his pocket. “It’s like grimacing at someone’s food while they’re eating it.”

“Well if the food in question killed the person eating it, or anyone within breathing distance of it for that matter, then I’d say it’s perfectly acceptable to grimace.”

He chuckled again as he held the lighter to the end of his cigarette, taking a long pull until the flame caught and the tip glowed orange. He put the lighter back in his pocket as he lithely pulled the cigarette from his lips with his thumb and forefinger, locking eyes with her as he blew the smoke out the side of his mouth, sending it away from her. “Just don’t breathe over there and I’m pretty sure you’ll survive.”

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T I N A   R E B E R
(author of Love Unscripted )