Practice Makes Perfect

Book 0: Southern Comfort

by Sarah Title

Genres: Short Stories; Small Town & Rural; Southern; Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

“ Charming . . . an endearing gem ” in the Southern Comfort romance series from the author of Two Family Home and Home Sweet Home ( All About Romance). Helen Lee has a top-secret dream: to publish a romance novel. There’s just one problem, and her most recent rejection letter doesn’t mince words: Helen can’t write a love scene to save her life. As Head of Reference at Willow Springs, Kentucky’s Pembroke College, Helen is hoping her library research skills will do the trick. But she may have to resort to a far more “hands-on” course of study. Luckily, there’s someone who’s more than happy to instruct her . . . History professor Henry Beckham has noticed that his friend, Helen, is behaving strangely. Known for her laser sharp focus—not to mention her snorting laugh—she’s been oddly distracted. He misses that laugh. But it all makes sense when he catches Helen researching erotic writing and discovers her ambition. She seems to think her only option is to die of embarrassment or give up and surrender to spinsterhood in the company of her two basset hounds. Good thing Henry has a much more real-life approach in mind. And his tutorial just might teach them both a thing or two . . . Praise for Sarah Title’s Southern Comfort Romance series “Wild, witty, and wonderful.”—Jo Goodman, New York Times bestselling author “Quite a sexy book.”—USAToday.com “A really cute and fun story . . . It’s sexy and made me laugh!”— Smexy Books “A fast-paced read that provided just as many smiles from the humor as it did sizzles from the romance.”— The Book Diva’s Reads “Sexy and made

Release date: August 30, 2016

Publisher: Lyrical Press

Print pages: 90

Sample

Dear Ms. Lee,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to the Romantic USA Annual Editors’ Choice Contest. Of the hundreds of submissions, only one could be selected for the grand prize publishing contract. The judges had a difficult choice to make. Unfortunately, Worth the Wait was not selected.

Thank you again for your interest, and keep writing!

A note from one of our editor/judges: Your voice is strong and it stands out from the pack in many ways. I just cannot offer you a contract for an erotic romance because, honey, your story ain’t erotic. The timing of the sex scenes is spot-on, and I can see how, in theory, the sex moves the plot along. But something seems to happen once Rennie and Hawk start taking their clothes off, and that something is that the book gets boring.

I’d love to work with you on this book. There’s a market for it. But unless you can spice up the love scenes, my only other suggestion for you is to tone down the spiciness and submit it as a sweet read to a more traditional publisher. I am warning you, though: If you do that, you will break my heart.

Please, please spice it up. You said you knew nothing about MMA when you started writing, and whatever research you did was seamlessly integrated into the story. As someone who follows MMA, I would have thought you were a fellow fan. I suggest you apply your considerable research skills to the sex scenes as well.

Good luck. I would love to see this again, with more spice in the spicy parts.

Helen read the first paragraph of the email, recognized it for the rejection letter that it was, and was about to file it with the others in the folder she’d succinctly labeled “Nope.” It was getting to be her most popular folder, almost the size of the “Dumb Questions from Students” folder. Almost manuscript-sized. She could probably craft some kind of meta-novel from all of her electronic rejection letters. Maybe she’d be more successful in the world of literary fiction, anyway. Apparently her love scenes were bad enough. Maybe she could get on a book tour with Franzen.

This letter, though, was different. It was more than two sentences long. It actually referenced the content of her submitted manuscript. It was not just a generic “thanks but no thanks.” It was specific with changes, and included an invitation to resubmit. And it implied she knew nothing about writing sex.

Great. Just what she wanted to hear. A single librarian who spends more time with her elderly basset hounds than she does with human males definitely wants to hear that her ability to portray a steamy love scene on the page is an accurate reflection of her actual recent sex life. But she knew about sex! She had it all the time! Just not terribly recently. In fairness, the only reason she wasn’t dating at the moment was that she was focusing on her writing.

Oh, the irony.

But when she did have sex, it was great! She was super into it! Dammit, she knew about sex!

She just couldn’t write about it.

That was a small but significant difference. She thought back to the last time she got down and dirty. When was it? Definitely before she adopted George and Tammy, and that had been, what? A year?

A year!

Not great. But not terrible, right? In fact, it was the breakup with that visiting professor that had propelled her to the dog pound. Get a dog, everybody said. You’ll meet tons of guys if you have a dog. And she had! Really cute, nice guys with dogs, who also had really cute, nice wives. Or husbands. Either way, George and Tammy were clearly not pulling their romantic weight.

“Good thing you’re cute,” she told their floppy, mooshy faces as they followed her up to bed.

Oh, the irony.

Hands, warm and strong, touching every inch of her body. Her calves, her thighs, her hips, her back. She arched and writhed, and everywhere she moved, the hands moved too, into just the right spot. They were mapping the terrain of her body and she was an arching, writhing, moaning . . . beeping, beeping, beeping, beeping.

Helen moaned in frustration as the alarm on her phone interrupted her sexy dream just when it was getting good. She reached for the notebook she kept by the side of her bed and started scribbling everything she could remember, before it was gone. Hands. Hips. Maps.

Maps. Sexy, sexy maps.

She threw herself back onto the pillows in frustration. Tammy growled in protest as Helen moved her foot, which was falling asleep, and which the dog had been using as a pillow.

“I’m sorry,” she said, moving over so there was space on her warm pillow for both heads.

“You’re spoiled, you know.” She reached up to scratch behind Tammy’s ears and the dog snuffled in pleasure, which caught George’s interest, and soon Helen was deeply ensconced in some slobbery morning cuddles.

Maybe she should spend less time with her dogs. But then she thought about how George and Tammy had been found tied to a dumpster behind a GoMart, and she nuzzled them close and whispered sweet dog-nothings to them.

Maybe she should write dog mysteries. She lived in a small town; there was plenty of fodder. A librarian who finds nothing but trouble . . . and murder. Good thing she has two prescient hounds who point her to the clues. And they keep her warm at night, until a new cop comes to town, asking all the right questions, and suddenly the librarian wants more in her bed than two sets of walking jowls . . .

. . . And this was why she was writing erotic romance. Because wherever her stories started out, they always ended up in bed.

Too bad that was where they got boring.

She looked up the email on her phone again, just to start the morning off right with a little self-flagellation. “Considerable research skills,” it said. She did have considerable research skills. She was a librarian, after all. And she apparently had the knack for integrating research into a story so it looked like she knew what she was talking about. So, OK. That was it.

She would just use her considerable research skills to find out about great, toe-curling sex.

See? She already had the toe-curling thing. That was new. She jotted it down in her notebook.

Research.

Into great sex.

She could do this.

No problem.

After she walked the dogs.

Helen was upset, and Henry didn’t like it. He also didn’t like not knowing why. They were more than just colleagues. They were friends. They shared things. But he also didn’t like that he didn’t like that Helen didn’t share everything with him. That was her prerogative, and he needed to respect it.

He just hated to see her upset.

And maybe there was something he could do about it. He had helped her out of jams before. He’d driven her and Lindsey home when they’d had too many margaritas on a girls’ night a while back. He’d gone to her cousin’s wedding with her, and endured her mother’s not entirely subtle comments about how he wasn’t a real doctor, jus. . .