Guess what? Yesterday we finished the rough draft of Heart’s Peak 2!! And we’re finally ready to announce the official title! As you can guess from the blog post title, the new book will be called My Latest Mistake.
The title is fitting because both Aria and Luka feel like their love lives have been nothing but a series of mistakes. Their latest mistake is when their spontaneous (and public!) hook up ends in pregnancy. They barely know each other, they’re complete opposites, and they live in entirely different worlds. It seems like the worst thing that could’ve happened to them. Could it possibly be a blessing in disguise?
It’s exciting to finally have this draft done! We started working on this in May, and it had a grudgingly slow start. The chapters came sporadic. We didn’t really find our flow until July. If you’ve been following us on Instagram, you’ll notice how our weekly word count suddenly gained speed there at the end. It felt great when the chapters just started flying! The early chapters do need a lot of work. The edits are going to be a pain in the tush, and yeah, we’re both dreading that stage. But hey, at least the draft is finished!
Despite the slow start, this story has been fun to write. Being a sequel to Redemption, we got to bring back Dove and Burley as strong supporting characters. It was interesting getting to explore their friendships with Aria and Luka from the other side, you know? We got to develop more of Heart’s Peak as a setting, too. And the leading characters are great together!
Luka is a country boy, through and through. He’s rambunctious and reckless and completely fun-loving. He has a reputation in town for being a dog, so of course he can’t help flirting with Aria every time they meet. Aria, on the other hand, is a high maintenance city girl who’s low key appalled at how messy and untidy Luka is. She doesn’t see any potential in him as a serious partner. That doesn’t stop her from becoming weak in the knees at how insanely attracted she is to him, though. Luka is nothing she normally looks for in a man, yet she returns to Heart’s Peak to get to know him better.
Complete strangers now set on a path to parenthood, they have to figure out if everything happens for a reason, or if this is just their latest mistake.
We hope you’re as excited about My Latest Mistake as we are! If you’re interested in reading the first book before this one releases, Redemption is available for only 99¢ on Amazon! I’ll leave you now with a little excerpt from the unedited draft, and if you’re looking for more, you can find teasers on our social media posts.
-A
Excerpt from My Latest Mistake
Aria scoffed at him and didn’t say anything back to that. She took another sip of her drink and watched him work on his car. She liked the way the muscles in his arm tensed as he moved the sponge in a circular fashion. Then she thought, she didn’t need to be thinking about how freaking attractive he was. How could she get the conversation away from his flirting? What was something completely not sexy? Oh, definitely his SUV.
He was giving it a clean wash today, but she remembered how cluttered and dusty it had been inside. And on the outside, she could see nicks and dents in the paint. It was a dull shade of dark green and it was so bulky and old looking. Like it was from the 90s or something. It was ugly.
“Why do you drive this thing?” asked Aria after a minute or two of silence. Luka had finished with the hood and was now squatting down in front of the grill. He paused what he was doing to look up at her.
“Whatta ya mean?”
“I mean, it’s so old. Why don’t you get something new? This thing doesn’t even have powered windows.”
Luka laughed and went back to washing the grill. “Why waste money on something new when this baby works just fine? She hasn’t failed me yet.”
Aria didn’t know why he kept talking about the ugly SUV as if it was a woman.
“Because new cars are just nicer,” she said, matter of fact. “They have heated seats and back up cameras and, like, automatic locks.”
Luka was shaking his head in amusement, as he shifted over to scrub a headlight.
“I bet your car has all the bells and whistles, don’t it?”
“I don’t have one,” she answered. “But if I did, yeah, of course it would have everything.”
“Wait, you don’t got a car?” Luka met her eyes with genuine surprise.
“No, I don’t need one. I live in the heart of the city, so I just take a taxi everywhere.”
“Well damn, I can’t even imagine that.”
Now it was Aria’s turn to laugh. She didn’t see what the big deal was. Why deal with city traffic and fight for parking when she could just get rides? Or walk? It wasn’t like she lived miles away from civilization, like these two houses were.
“It really doesn’t matter,” she said. “I don’t even know how to drive.”
“What?!” Luka sounded even more surprised. He completely stopped what he was doing, looking at her now as if she’d just told him she was an alien from Venus.
Amber is half of the co-author duo that is Danica Avery. She lives in Maryland with her three furbabies. When she’s not being a crazy cat lady, or working on books, she enjoys playing video games, baking sweets, crocheting, and other artsy hobbies.