Are you ready for a different kind of love story?
Meet Michael & Laine in this Hollywood themed second chance romance by CD Reiss!
Amazon US: http://amzn.to/1RXBv1n
Amazon UK:
http://amzn.to/1FlYvSs
Barnes & Noble:http://bit.ly/1d3hzub
iBooks: http://apple.co/1KS8bUC
Kobo: http://bit.ly/1bBO020
Blurb:
ONE movie star on the cusp of greatness
ONE broken girl who touched him
TEN years to forget her
A MILLION stories in Hollywood
I am not hurt. I don’t need a second chance with him, or a life I thought I had. While he was out forgetting me to become a movie star, I was building a career out of nothing. A career as a paparazzi, but a career. For a foster kid who bounced around every home in Los Angeles, that wasn’t easy. This camera is all I have. He’s nothing to me. Every time I take his picture and sell it, I remind myself that I did it all without him or his approval, his cinnamon smell or his clear green eyes. He lights up the screen like a celestial body, but he’s nothing but a paycheck to me. He can throw my camera off a balcony, and nothing has to change. We can stay king and queen of the same city, and different worlds. Except this is Hollywood, and here, anything can happen.
Ellen’s Review:
Shuttergirl is a bittersweet, second-chance love story that is at once sweet and poignbant and gritty as well. The City of Los Angeles is as much of a main character here as Laine and Michael and adds a dark and gloomy undercurrent to the themes of the book. CD Reiss’ City of Angels is not the snhiny, glamourous world we might see on TV or in the moves or glossy magazines, but instead is a gloomy city of darkness beneath all the glitter, populated by scores of paparazzi all trying to land their next big payday off of the next big celebrity.
This story fascinated me on many different levels. Our hero and heroine Michael and Laine are from different worlds, whos paths crossed for a brief time in high school. She was the scruffy foster child and he was the Golden Boy, the son of Hollywood royalty. She had know incredible pain and suffering in her short life and he was raised in the privilged world of Hollywood. Laine was a tough-as-nails street child who hid a sensitive heart. And now, years later, their paths cross again. Only this time, she is a member of the reviled pack of paparazzi who stalk the every move of Hollywood’s golden elite.
He looked over his shoulder at me. “Shuttergirl.” I stepped forward, putting my hands on the railing. “Is that the only name you know me by?” “It’s the name I can repeat in company.”
Michael has lived his life according to plan and just once, aches to break out of the public persona that has been created for him:
My life had been written at birth, a list of opportunities read out loud to the world. Beginning, middle, and end. I had found security in that room to make decisions, yet the safety of limits. Laine had come and folded the paper, creasing my expectations in high school with her life story. Now, with her breath on my shoulder, she folded my life into an airplane and shot it out the window. The writing was the same, but the choices had changed, become wider and yet more limited. I’d gone from fake to real. From painting to sculpture. From acting as if I was living to actually being alive.
Laine has lived a hard life and the details of her childhood were heartbreaking. But she is whip-smart and strong and savyy and has made a name for herself as one of the best paparrazi around. But she holds no illusions as to how the paparazzi are thought of. And she doens’t think she is good enough for Michael. But he is persistent and lonely and still aches for his first true love. Slowly, Laine allows herself to feel something real and geniuine for this gorgeous movie star, who suprisingly, is actually a very decent guy.
He was wearing me down, layer by layer, like a heat gun peeling off coats of paint and toxic lead whitewash to the bare wood.
I was fascinated by this tale of the darker side of Hollywood stardom and was immediately drawn in by the author’s crisp, clean writing style. Shuttergirl is a refreshingly different take on a second-chance love story and I highly recommend this fast-paced, sometimes heartbreaking but always swoony story.
Excerpt:
I stroked his hair, waist deep in peace, all worry gone for the moment, and floating in no more than an ocean of gratitude. I must have been more vulnerable than I realized, or he’d reopened some wound with his kindness, because though my sweet reverie stayed, as the minutes passed, a layer of need fitted itself on top of it.
I needed to tell him, if not the details, the outlines of who I was.
“I want you to know,” I whispered, starting somewhere small, then everything I didn’t want to say spilled out. “I have stuff. I’ve never been to jail, but you know, it’s stuff, and it’s ugly, and it scares me. Because, I mean, you’re so perfect, and I’m… I’m just a mess. I’m not whole. I’m a bunch of pieces of a person I cobbled together.” My eyes got wet when I thought of the comparisons between us and that picture in my silverware drawer. “So if you have to move on when you realize that, I’ll understand. You have an image, and if anyone understands protecting a career, it’s me. I mean, I’ll be mad, don’t get that wrong, but also.” I swallowed and blinked, shifting my head so he wouldn’t feel the tear on his forehead. “I won’t blame you.”
I waited for an answer. Anything. A change in position or a word on any subject. The weather. Sports. Something. But all he did was breathe.
I smiled so wide, tears fell into my mouth. He was sleeping.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
CD Reiss is a USA Today and Amazon bestseller. She still has to chop wood and carry water, which was buried in the fine print. Her lawyer is working it out with God but in the meantime, if you call and she doesn’t pick up, she’s at the well, hauling buckets.
Born in New York City, she moved to Hollywood, California to get her master’s degree in screenwriting from USC. In case you want to know, that went nowhere, but it did embed TV story structure in her head well enough for her to take a big risk on a TV series structured erotic series called Songs of Submission. It’s about a kinky billionaire hung up on his ex-wife, an ingenue singer with a wisecracking mouth; art, music and sin in the city of Los Angeles.
Critics have dubbed the books “poetic,” “literary,” and “hauntingly atmospheric,” which is flattering enough for her to put it in a bio, but embarrassing enough for her not to tell her husband, or he might think she’s some sort of braggart who’s too good to give the toilets a once-over every couple of weeks or chop a cord of wood.
If you meet her in person, you should call her Christine.
Website:http://cdreiss.com/
Twitter: @CDReisswriter
Facebook:https://facebook.com/CDReisswriter
GIVEAWAY & NOTE FROM AUTHOR:
I am so happy with the response to Shuttergirl, and I cannot wait to send Michael and Laine out into the world, because who doesn’t swoon over a second chance at love?
It’s a new genre for me, and I’m exploding with excitement, so I’ve dropped some fantastic reasons for readers to get the book right away.
TREAT YOURSELF LIKE A MOVIE STAR!
$500 Spa Gift Card
If you could get an hour, or ten away from the daily grind of paparazzi and interviews (or the job and kids), what would you do?
Get a foot rub/slash/pedicure? A massage? Maybe something called a Sleep Treatment that right now sounds better than sex?
Maybe you’d bring a friend or two, or maybe you’d just get a manipedi when you wanted one. Because the life of a megastar ain’t for the weak-willed or lazy, and running from paparazzi can really wear down a girl’s nails.
Woodhouse Spas are no joke. They’re all over the country and they’re….sigh. Fabulous. But if you don’t live near one, we can do Burke Williams, Halcyon Days or Red Door.
HOW TO ENTER:
Take the fun SHUTTERGIRL READER QUIZ!
The link to the quiz is in the back of the book, and yes, that’s the ONLY place to find it! There are bonus questions relating to Jonathan and Antonio for extra prizes. You have until June 3rd to enter! That gives you a solid two weeks to read the book and get your chance at a $500 movie star spa treatment!
If you are a paperback reader, email me and we’ll work it out .
Thank you!