Five Minute Man: A Contemporary Love Story
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Synopsis
"I write sex, Liz. I don't have it."
Holly McTierney is a romance writer with zero romance in her life. She creates heroes who can sweep a woman off her feet and satisfy her needs in five minutes flat. But in real life? Holly would be happy to find a guy willing to snuggle up for a movie and get some Chinese takeout.
Adam Grayson works hard on his renovation business - too hard to have any time for dating. Years of construction have given him a rugged look that women can't help but notice, but he never seems to notice them back. Apart from a crazy ex who makes any excuse to run into him, it had been years since he had held a conversation with a woman for more than five minutes. However, his matchmaker nephew has a plan to change all that.
Holly and Adam are perfect for each other, but Adam's ex will stop at nothing to keep them apart. When she gets her claws back into Adam, will Holly let him go? Or can he prove to her that he really is her five-minute man?
Release date: September 6, 2017
Publisher: Abbie Zanders Romance
Print pages: 258
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Behind the book
You know, it’s funny where the seed for a story originates sometimes. In my case, I never know where my next idea will come from. Sometimes it starts as a dream; other times, I hear a song and the lyrics create an alternate reality. In the case of Five Minute Man, the impetus was a phrase on the Urban Dictionary website: ass-tag convention. It was the word of the day on September 21, 2013.
So, how did something as innocuous as the “ass-tag convention” become a story? Well, it’s just one of those things that stuck in my head. First, I wondered what, if any, harm I was bringing to my family by being one of those women who tends to cut the tags off things. I mean, it’s impossible to have an ass-tag convention if there’s no tag, right?
Then I began to wonder who would actively employ the ass-tag convention. Male or female? Young or old? Someone concerned with hygiene, obviously. Someone not overly touchy-feely, who likes to set definitive personal limits.
A character started to form in my mind, a woman, past youthful ambivalence chronologically and on the cusp of middle-age mentally. Adorably prickly, but soft at heart. Pretty and natural, but not beautiful. A woman who, through both nature and nurture, preferred to distance herself from the world, to create and be content with her own little bubble of existence.
As with all my stories, I added in a few snippets from my own life. My love of animals, and my profound belief that almost any dog is worth a dozen humans. Regular GNOs with my BFF to keep me sane and talk about things that no respectable wife or mother should probably talk about over under-550-calorie menus and unsweetened iced teas. A love of reading and writing romantic and erotic fiction that provides an escape, allows me to lose myself in alternate worlds cruelly hinted at by professional taunters like Walt Disney and goddesses like Lora Leigh and Sherrilyn Kenyon.
(I just want to add here that I have met both of these amazing ladies, and I am even more of a fan now as I was when I first started writing.)
Which is where the whole five-minute man thing came in.
Fantasy? Sure. But we all need something to believe in. When we outgrow Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, when we realize the hot guy in the famous boy band is NOT going to spot us back in the hundred and seventeenth row and profess his true love, when we get out on our own and realize that men are not the perfect creatures we’ve always dreamed of, we find ourselves looking for that next thing we can close our eyes and fantasize about.
Like Holly, when I write, I create a world I’d like to live in, with people I’d like to hang out with. When I read my favorite authors, I enter their worlds. Their works are my mind’s vacation from real life, from laundry and dishes and scrubbing bathrooms and worrying over ass-tag conventions and the long-term psychological damage I’m inflicting on my kids without realizing it. Their stories give me a place to go, something to think about, when I’m waiting or driving or doing any of the thousand things wives and mothers are supposed to do.
Hopefully, reading Five Minute Man was a little mini-vacay for you, too.
