The Ro Bro Read Online J.A. Huss

Categories Genre: Alpha Male, Contemporary, Funny Tags Authors: J.A. Huss Advertisement

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I wanna do something that I feel matters. That touches people. That makes them think and has a real impact on their lives. I want to write the kind of thing that stays with someone long after they’ve finished the story. That’s my goal, anyway.

And that’s why I became a romance writer.

Well, that and the fact that I’ve been addicted to romance novels since I read my first one when I was, like, nine.

I was in the library down the street from our house in Santa Monica, by myself (partially because I didn’t really have a ton of friends and partially because the friends I did have didn’t want to spend their afternoons hanging out in a dusty old library when they could be at the beach), and I just happened to wander out of the kids’ section and into the grown-ups’ section.

And there I found an old, weathered, beaten copy of Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. I don’t know what drew me to it. Something about seeing the words on the spine, maybe. The P and the P so elegantly alliterative and simple all at once. Or maybe it’s just because when I pulled it out and saw an artist’s rendering of a busty Elizabeth Bennet on the cover, looking like a porcelain doll, it made my mind wander to far-flung places that my nine-year-old brain didn’t even know existed yet. But, whatever the reason… I started reading.

And I was done. Cliché though it may be to say, I was… transported.

And that’s been my dream ever since. To transport someone the same way. To ferry them away to magical places where love conquers all and happily ever afters aren’t some unachievable fantasy, but real, honest, sincere aspirations that we shouldn’t feel embarrassed to want.

My dream—candidly and with a little embarrassment of my own—is to be one of the greats.

I’m not there yet. But I’m getting there. I really believe I am. And that’s why I’m particularly nervous just now.

Because I think this book is the best thing I’ve ever written.

I spit away another bit of nail shaving from my index finger, noticing that if I chew anymore I’ll surely draw blood, and attempt to still my thoughts by taking a deep, deep breath. I close my eyes and just try to feel the sun streaming down onto my face. It’s nice out today. There’s a tiny bit of a breeze that’s causing the palm trees to sway gently, the rustle of the fronds creating a pacifying white noise.

It’s been hot this summer, even for LA. Or so I hear. I haven’t really gone outside much. Just been working on getting this book finished.

I really feel like I turned a corner. Unlocked some kind of code. I think maybe before I was too hung up on ‘rules’ and ‘expectations.’ And this time, I just let my imagination run wild and allowed the story to take me wherever it wanted. It was almost like I wasn’t in control anymore. There was some kind of muse who entered my body and came pouring out through my fingertips, conducting the orchestra of my imagination and allowing me unfettered access to my own creative freedom.

Which, I suppose, sounds awfully grand, but it’s how it felt while I was writing it.

But now I’m a little freaked out, waiting for Brit’s notes. She’s taking an awfully long time to finish and give me her thoughts.

I trust Britney. She’s one of the only people I can say that about. It’s why I asked her if she’d be my assistant. My first read on everything. Because I’m writing exactly the kinds of books she reads too.

We met online, in a reader group for one of our favorite authors, SS.

That’s it. Just ‘SS.’ Her real name is Essie Smith-Scott, but SS is her pen name. I like it. It’s simple. The S next to the S. For some reason, something about it reminds me of the P and P in Pride and Prejudice. To be clear: SS writes very different kinds of books than Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë. Jane and Charlotte had far less, um, choking, and, y’know, fellatio in their books (at least on paper; you can’t tell me that Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy weren’t getting all kinds of freaky off the page), but there’s just something about the way she writes. It’s… I don’t know. There’s a real beauty to it that makes me swoon. Even with all the choking and handcuffs and stuff.

But that’s where Britney and I first became friends. And then we discovered that we both live in LA and decided to meet up IRL. It was Britney who encouraged me to try writing romance.

“Oh, no, no,” I said. “I don’t think I could.”

“Why not?” she asked.

And I enumerated for her the number of reasons I thought I was not cut out for it.

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