Jesse will be awarding a $25 Amazon gift card to two randomly
drawn winners. To be entered for a chance to win, use the form below. To
increase your chances of winning, feel free to visit other tour stops and enter
there, too.
Bio:
Jesse Pearle grew up in the mountains of Western North Carolina in
a place where there was no danger in dancing naked in the moonlight at the top
of a mountain. Always possessed of a creative mind, but never quite the right
amount of focus, she wandered for decades. She received a degree in fine art
which she put to poor use working an uneventful desk job for an engineering
company when she started writing her first really ambitious piece of fiction.
She lives in sunny Southern California with her ever supportive husband and
four attention-whoring cats.
Second Skin is part love story and part coming-of-age
story. It’s a love triangle, and there are three main characters. Pilar Flores
is the daughter of a drug lord, eighteen at the beginning of the story and
trying to find her place in her father’s business. Leo Reyes is one of her
father’s employees and the leader of an LA street gang who becomes her father’s
right hand later in the story. Sam Blanco is a boy in the neighborhood Leo’s
gang holds dominion over, whose goal is to make enough money selling tattoos
after high school to get the hell out of dodge and away from his abusive
father. The three characters’ worlds collide in unexpected ways, from Pilar’s
first encounter with the tragic hero, Leo, to the complicated entanglements
that occur when the young tattoo artist, Sam, comes into the picture. While the
love story is most definitely between Pilar and Leo, every love story has its
obstacles to overcome. Sam is one of those obstacles for Pilar and Leo, but in
truth he may be the catalyst that allows the two lovers to understand each
other more.
At its heart, it is
Sam’s story, even though the “happily ever after” isn’t his. At least not yet.
What inspired you to write this book?
I wrote a fan fiction
back in 2012 that needed a fresh, original character to play a small role—the
role of a rough and world-weary tattoo artist approaching his 50s. The
character sprang to life so vividly in my mind at the time that I just had to know what his life story was, so
I began writing it. The teen-aged Sam came first, then the other characters
gradually began to evolve out of my imagining of the story of this young artist
who aspires to be a famous tattoo artist like his idol. Sam’s little sister,
Celie, came next, followed by Pilar and Leo, then Benny, then the rest of the
cast of characters came to life, one by one. They each told me their stories as
they evolved.
My plan for the
Second Skin series follows Sam through significant milestones in his life,
every event shaping him into that older, wiser, but still rough around the
edges and incredibly sexy man.
Excerpt:
(Leo’s POV)
The small plane touched down on the
runway of the airfield outside Los Angeles. After taxiing to the hangar, Leo
powered down the engines and pulled off his headset. He felt like a weight had
been lifted, but anxiety twisted in his gut as he worked through his
explanation to the old man.
Gustavo had needed to be taken care
of, that fact had been clear to him for months. The only reason he hadn’t gone
to Arturo Flores about Gustavo’s consistent series of fuckups was because of
his promise to Pilar to leave her father out of it.
The deed was done, the memory of the
corpse he’d left behind in the little shack in the Sonoran desert still left
him ice cold to his core. He’d had to ignore the spark of memory of another
pair of eyes whose light the same gun had extinguished two years earlier. Two
years to the day, he thought.
Leo no longer regretted any of those
bullets, starting with the very first one from his brother’s gun that had
pierced his own chest. Each had brought him closer to her. Now all he had to do
was claim what was his.
The phone at his hip buzzed as he
made his way across the tarmac to the parking lot. He settled in his car and
started the engine, turning the AC on full blast while he checked his messages.
911! Call me when you land!
It was from Pilar. Goosebumps rose
up on his arms in spite of the hot August air that baked the interior of his
car.
What exciting story are you working on next?
I have too many
projects to count at the moment! I have a series of paranormal erotica novellas
in progress that are written under a separate pen name to protect the innocent
(or guilty?). These novellas feature dragon shapeshifters and their human
lovers.
I am also planning a
short series of romantic suspense novels with a tough female protagonist dead
set on revenge against a man who wronged her. During her quest for vengeance,
she develops a deep connection with a man who works for her, and it grows into
an intense love affair neither party expected. All they were after was a casual
fling, but it turns into love. Who’d’a thought? There are tattoos involved in
that story, too… (you might be noticing a trend here).
And, of course, the
sequel to Second Skin is in progress, along with the rest of that series. I am
planning five books for the series, each one exploring a different segment of
Sam’s life and his ties to his past that somehow keep haunting him even from
thousands of miles away. He’s met a new woman, but will she be his happily ever
after?
When did you first consider yourself a writer?
I’ve been writing my
whole life, though not to the degree that it monopolizes my waking hours. It
wasn’t until November 2011 that it really hit me that writing was my true
passion and something I needed as much as I need air to breathe.
Do you write full-time? If so, what's your work day like?
If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
I do write full-time.
My work day is a lot of struggling to avoid the internet and stay on track. I
actually turn off my wi-fi if I’m on a deadline (which I set for myself) and I
use a Pomodoro timer to segment my work time vs break time. I have 25 minutes
of concentrated writing followed by a 5 minute break. Every two hours I take a
longer break to eat/exercise/clean house or whatever else needs doing. Before I
wrote full time I tried to squeeze writing in wherever I could, which was
generally after work and late into the night. I can’t say I get more sleep now
than I did when I had a full-time day job.
What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
I like adding Easter
eggs in my writing. In particular, I like to include a dragon somewhere in
every story, even in my non-dragon related stories. I’m just a little bit gay
for dragons. There’s one in Second Skin,
as well as each of the following books in the series. I don’t always manage to
find a good spot for it in my shorter stuff, but I try.
As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I wanted to be an architect,
but once I got to college I completely lost focus. I even dropped out, once I
found the internet (this was the early 90s, too… so my internet options were
limited to chat rooms. Read into that what you will). It took me seven years
and three college transfers before I finally graduated with a Bachelor of Fine
Arts degree (summa cum laude, even… who knows how I acomplished that!) and I
still had no idea what I really wanted to do.
Now I finally know at
the ripe age of 41 and it’s incredibly liberating!
Second Skin is a pretty steamy story as it is, but if anyone’s
interested in steamier (and shorter) stuff, there are links to my alter-ego on
my website’s main menu. I also have several Pinterest collections that I add to when I find inspiration and I
love getting new pin recommendations!
Website | Facebook | Twitter | Amazon | Barnes and Noble | All Romance
