Exciting giveaway opportunity!

Two book Advanced Reader Copy #giveaway through August 26, 2021! Visit my Instagram page to enter: https://www.instagram.com/brookeburroughswrites

In celebration of the upcoming release of THE NAME CURSE by #BrookeBurroughs on August 31th, and GOOD CATCH by #JenniferBardsley on October 5th, we're giving away advanced review copies of both books to one lucky winner (USA only).
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Here's more about both books:
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THE NAME CURSE: In this flirty wilderness adventure by the author of The Marriage Code, two hikers who drive each other crazy discover they might have a lot to learn from one another about navigating life, love, and living up to family expectations.
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GOOD CATCH: A pair of frenemies navigates the shallow depths of a small-town dating scene only to find the romance they need is right in front of them.
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GIVEAWAY
Enter to win an ARC copy of #THENAMECURSE and #GOODCATCH
TO ENTER
- follow @brookeburroughswrites and @jenniferbardsleyauthor
- tag a friend you think will be interested
RULES
- Giveaway will end Aug 26th at midnight PST
- USA only
- not affiliated with Instagram or Facebook
- must be 18 to enter
- must be a public account

Romance is real. And real camping is hard.

It's no secret that I love a good love story. All romance writers and readers do. But the genre still has a lot of baggage to overcome. I feel like I'm reminded of on a weekly basis every time someone writes an article about "Most annoying tropes" or refers to every romance novel as a "bodice ripper" or dismisses a book because it's written by a woman for women. I mean does anyone NOT want to read a book they can rely on giving them a happy ending after the last year and a half?

While I love the bumpy ride that is the emotional rollercoaster of a romance book, I love it even more when it happens in real life. My first book, The Marriage Code, was inspired by my own real life love story of meeting my husband--a relationship that felt doomed from the start because of our cultural differences and his parents' longing for a traditional match for him. But the heart wants what the heart wants! And we made it work (after the roller coaster ride).

My second book which comes out in August, The Name Curse, is also inspired by a real life romance, using a much beloved trope--one bed. We were out with my friend Marty, drinking margaritas at an old school divey Mexican restaurant (as one often does in Austin), talking about camping. My husband and I go camping all the time, but have never done a big time backpacking trip as we have two big dogs, live in Texas and like to sleep NOT on the ground. (I mean, kudos to you hardcore campers who can sleep on the dirt, and make coffee on a fire you built yourself with a twig and a stone, and carry your belongings on your back for a week- I’m truly in awe!) So what we do is really glamping. Marty talks about a backpacking trip he went on once with his ex-wife and how there were two strangers who had to share a tent. But the last night they were back in the city, they voluntarily shared a hotel together.

I slapped my hand on the table and let the wave of vindication rush over me. "Romance  novels happen in real life!" I exclaimed, probably drawing some stares from those around us. "I'm going to write a book about these campers."

And that's how The Name Curse was born.

I'm so excited for you to meet The Name Curse at the end of August! It's available now to pre-order on Amazon and look out for a few giveaways in the coming weeks! https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08L3972N2/

Nature has kinda saved me

I feel like I fared fairly well over 2020 during the pandemic. That is to say, I have been very lucky and very fortunate. I avoided the news which helped me keep my sanity. I met with my book club online, and had virtual zoom birthday parties and baby showers like everyone else. And feel so grateful that I live in Austin where even in the winter you can sit in a friend's backyard, socially distance and still feel like you're going out for a cup of coffee.

 But I do love to travel.

 That was the thing that started being the stressor for us at home. Feeling cramped up in our small house with two big dogs was starting to get us down. We'd had plans to work out of Ireland all through April. Cancelled. We had a two week European vacation planned after that. Cancelled. We didn't even think about going overseas. Visiting my in-laws in India was dream more distant than the miles that separate us. But that's when we really looked at the country we did have access to and questioned how we could have an escape safely, in our little bubble, and still feel like we were getting away and taking a break from the day in and day out of our lives.

 And that's when we really embraced nature.

 We used our Texas State Parks pass as much as we could. We took roadtrips to Colorado twice and immersed ourselves in the Rockies. We drove to North Carolina and walked on the beach even though it wasn't summer. We kayaked in Florida with manatees and alligators. We figured out how to work from our airstream and like so many others cherished the newness of camping and the ability to be away, but home, in our camper. In the wild, but still accessible to civilization. In our bubble, we able to keep our distance from others as need, but stay close to the trees and water and wildflowers.

 I feel so lucky that we were able to do this, but also I really cherish all that this country has to offer. My parents had taken me when I was sixteen on a two month cross-country journey in a conversion van towing a pop up camper. We drove from Kentucky up through the Dakotas, through Yellowstone, to Seattle, down through California, and back through Las Vegas. My husband always tells me how lucky I was to have such an experience as a child. All I remember was being a terrible sixteen year old who crept off in the campgrounds at night to sneak cigarettes and detested being away from my friends for a whole two months that I whined out the window at the glorious rocks jutting up from Monument Valley instead of being absolutely awed by them.

 I don't have a lot of regrets in life, but one is that I really truly wish I could go back into that summer before my junior year of high school and slap myself in the face. Tell her that twenty years from now you won't care about two months in your teens, that you'll wish you could have knocked off that hormonal devil on your shoulder, and appreciate the privilege you have to go on such a trip, and how that trip would set the stage for so much that you'll do later in life.

 Because now, all I can think of is another road trip. Retracing those same steps, hopscotching across America on its national and state parks and appreciating this giant chunk of land that we have.

 Part of that appreciation of nature is what led me to write THE NAME CURSE, which releases in August, 2021. It's a small homage, in my way to the glory of the American landscape, centered in Alaska, and looking for the next adventure that we all need.

Happy anniversary…and a book giveaway!

Today, February 10th marks 15 years of being married to my amazing husband! Our meet-cute (and ensuing relationship drama) was the inspiration for The Marriage Code! While the details in the book are completely different, the heart of the book is not. And I’m super excited to celebrate this year because I have books to give away as part of this month celebrating lots of love (and lots of chocolate and wine and romantic dinners we should all have more of)!

To enter the giveaway, visit my Facebook page and check out the pinned post at the top. All you have to do is share your dream destination by the end of February and you’ll be entered to win!

The Name Curse…is coming!

So excited that it’s official! My next book, The Name Curse, is set to launch in August 2021. Just another reason to look forward to 2021—I can’t wait to share this book with the world. It was super fun to write and I love Bernie and Matthew, the two characters who have starring in roles in this Alaskan adventure!

You can pre-order The Name Curse on Amazon!

Librarians say what?

As The Marriage Code is getting ready to release in January, I think the most excited I’ve been was to see that my debut was featured in Library Journal in their Romance Preview. Because, yeah…librarians! Are they not the rockstars of the book world?

I remember as a little kid walking into the meager library we had in the town I grew up in, and just being overwhelmed by all the books. And how when doing research papers in high school I would sit in the library with microfilm and look through the library archives fascinated by people and history and even sometimes just the old font they would use. Just the fact that a library is up there with something like a church, a hallowed ground that deserves shushing and quiet, where you have to whisper. It makes you feel like you need to be alone, which is probably why introverts unite in the joy of libraries!

And let’s not mention some writers that I am in absolute awe of, also being featured here! So, thank you librarians! It means a lot.

The desire of food

I remember the first time I met my husband’s (then boyfriend) mother like it was last week. A memory that is etched in my mind because of its equal parts significance and embarrassment. It was Tamil New Year, and one of those Indian holidays where you feast like there’s no tomorrow. I had been promised good food, the best I’d had since living in Bangalore, a chance to meet his family, and even though it might be awkward, it was something that needed to be done. Plus, I wanted to meet these people I’d heard so much about. Even if they hadn’t heard about me.

As I sat on the back of his motorcycle, wearing my nicest salwar kameez, on the way to his apartment, I asked what he’d told his mother.

“That I was bringing a friend.” He said over his shoulder. “From the office.”

I knew from our previous conversations about dating, there was no word for “dating” in Tamil, his mother tongue. That the concept of dating was foreign to his parents who had met on their wedding day. That especially, in small towns, like the one he was from, things were just done a certain way. I understood, myself being from a small town in the foothills of Appalachia. Things were just the way they’d been done for years.

So I was just a friend. In a lot of ways that made things easier. I would not be perceived as shattering the dreams of his mother whose potential brides he was constantly refusing to meet. Or a threat to their way of life and tradition to her son I’d been seeing for at least six months at this point.

As we went inside his apartment, the air was filled with spices, the sound of twin pressure cookers whistling their journey towards done, and the light bickering of his grandmother and mother, two women who’d coexisted for decades together. They said hi to me and then the three of them spoke in Tamil together, while I stood awkwardly on the sidelines, smiling as if I knew what was happening. Eventually we sat on the floor and ate together. The food, indeed, was what he had promised. Amazing but simple. A complexity of flavors not overwhelmed by spice. Vegetables and lentils and ghee doing that magic dance on my tongue where they joined hands, bowed together, and then went their separate ways.

I sat there, trying to jump in with comments on how delicious the food was now and then. But his grandmother didn’t speak English at all. His mother and I stumbled through each other’s accents. And then apparently, Prabhu had been cooking up his own plan this entire time and announced he was going to take a nap.

I’m not sure if my eyes betrayed the panic that leapt up at every pulse point, banged those cooking pots in my brain, emptied my mind of every topic that I had ever relied on to have small talk. The traitor didn’t even look at me as he picked up his plate and walked toward the bedroom. And shut the door.

I smiled like a crazy person at these two women who were speaking between themselves. What could we discuss? What was within limits of being a friend from the office.

Food. Cooking. Common ground. We all ate. And it was so apropos.

“So Prabhu told me you don’t cook with onions and garlic. Why is that?” I asked this casual question because I, like them, was vegetarian. I got the ethical, and all other aspects, of being vegetarian. But what had perplexed me was why in his particular caste and community they eschewed the beloved onion and garlic.

“Oh…” his mother looked thoughtful. “Because they increase desire.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. Clearly this must just be some simple issue of word choice.

“They increase the heat in the body. They cause desire.”

“Desire for what?” I asked, sipping the delicious South Indian coffee that was a mere three inches tall. What I really wanted to know was if I could have another cup without seeming greedy.

His mother said something to his grandmother and they murmured back and forth.

“Loving feelings. Heat in the body. You know, desire.”

And at this I spit out my coffee.

She looked at her mother and more murmuring about why I would ask such a thing. She’s quite dense, isn’t she? That look said. Why does she keep asking us about desire? The murmur said. Is she sleeping with my son? The side eye said.

This is what I got for trying to have small talk with the man’s mother, who of course, I had heat and desire for, and at all costs needed to hide it. The most awkward conversation possible with a woman who I wanted to approve of me.

“Oh, uh…So tell me how you cooked the aubergine,” I asked quickly, trying to pull a hood over the idea of desire and not have her look at me with the obvious suspicion she must have already. She’d basically found the most tactful way possible of not saying, “It makes you want to jump someone’s bones.”

She explained the process for cooking the eggplant, and I kept wondering about how garlic and onion, the two stinkiest vegetables on the planet, were supposed to incite passion. Then I thought about the Italians. And that summer in college I spent two weeks in Rome, amazed at the amount of cat calling that could be thrust upon a person. Maybe this garlic and onion desire thing was something.

So I went down the internet rabbit hole trying to find this out. Turns out there is a belief in Buddhism, that you can’t eat “pungent vegetables” which include garlic and onion, and some pretty interesting Reddit threads. (Not to mention an article where someone said salad was a turn on. Uh…")

The next time his mother refused to eat something that caused desire, I was married to her son, we were sitting in our apartment when she’d come to visit, and I’d given her some wasabi peas to try.

She ate two and then tossed the rest of them.

“You don’t like them?” I asked.

“They produce heat in the body.”

Got it. Now I knew. No more questions.

But really…wasabi peas?

The page of squee

(AKA, a list of my favorite books)

I love a good love story. Even the last Star Wars (Rise of Skywalker) movie which people seemed to hate was my favorite one. Why? Because Adam Driver, that’s why. He and Daisy Ridley finally got to kiss. Seriously, I know he died right after, but he got to go to Jedi heaven so it was ok. HEA, right? Sort of?

I know I’m not a diehard Star Wars fan (hence can’t even remember the characters’ names) and I know there was a lot of disdain towards the movie for whatever reason, but after the sexual tension between these two in the last movie, I was like FINALLY! It’s really all I want to see in a movie, or a book. And yeah, it’s way better if they can get together, but even if they can’t, if the love story is genuine, clever, and true (with bonus points for being funny), I will love it.

So here is my top ten list. And yes, they are all over the place. A little erotica mixed in with some YA fantasy? Uh, yep. We are complicated people, are we not? Enjoy!

1. Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuinston: I flat out luurve this book about the Prince of England and the “First son” of the US. It’s hilarious and witty and weird and political fantasy escapism and it’s just perfect. Bonus points for being set in Austin!

2. The Hating Game by Sally Thorne: Another book I love about two rivals in an office that are so adorably cruel to each other you know they’re secretly in love before they get together.

3. The Idea of You by Robinne Lee: This book is HOT. I never had a thing for Harry Styles but after reading this (and even though it’s not technically about him, you kinda know it is), I do now. You also will. Even if you think boy bands are lame. It’s about a mom who takes her tween to a boy band concert and the lead singer and the mom fall for each other. So good!

4. Priest: A Love Story by Sierra Simone: Another beyond steamy read. I think we can all blame our priest fetishes on Fleabag, right? And it’s ok now, isn’t it? Tell me it is because I want to feel guilty when I read this but just can’t bring myself to because it’s so beautifully written and super hot.

5. Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi: I probably should have reordered this list, because this book shouldn’t come after Priest, but oh well. I also love this YA fantasy book that feels a little indescribable because it has EVERYTHING in it. It’s got the adventure of Indiana Jones, a teenage girl who's lost everything from an evil ruler, witchy powers, a princess best friend, and a love story rife with tension and conflict (note, do not necessarily expect an HEA with this one!)

6. Hex Hall by Rachel Hawkins: Another YA about witches. And vampires and fairies. But it’s sooooo fun! It’s clever and witty, I just love this book. The whole series is good, and if you like the new Sabrina series, I think you’ll like it. I keep thinking of the hero in this book as Nicholas Scratch.

7. Emergency Contact by Mary HK Choi: Another set in Austin book about a freshman college student and her texts with her “emergency contact” who is a practically homeless, tattooed hottie in a cafe. But again, it’s super funny and witty and sweet and I love how the hero in this book is not some uber Alpha dude.

8. A Princess in Theory by Alyssa Cole: The premise of this book is so clever, about a super busy, genius grad student who keeps receiving phishing emails about being betrothed to an African prince. When she marks them as junk mail (of course), he has to show up and pretend he’s someone else. Also I feel like this book made up for what I wish was a stronger love story in Black Panther (if you read the second half of this book you might get what I mean—I needed a great love story set in a magical African landscape).

9. Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins: Another cute YA about a wannabe fashion designer and the boy next door who makes Rube Goldberg contraptions. Need I say more? The whole series is fun, but this one is my favorite.

10. For Real by Alexis Hall: So let’s finish this list off with the sexiest of sexy books. Get ready for this one about a curmudgeonly bitter 40ish man and the pixie boy (I think he’s 19) who stands up to him at a club. One of the most beautifully written books I’ve ever read. And it is HOT, people!