Taking Turns (Turning #1)(110)
“I’m sorry,” she says. The baby cries again and she makes a little shushing sound. “Just tell him I’m sorry.”
And then the line goes dead.
GET THE SECOND BOOK, TURNING BACK, HERE.
END OF BOOK SHIT
Welcome to the End of Book Shit. I write these in place of an author’s note at the end of each book just to let out my thoughts about the story. Sometimes I really have a lot to say. Sometimes I’m worried about certain topics in the book and I feel the need to write about them. But oddly, I have nothing controversial to say about this ménage thing at all.
I really don’t think this book is all that controversial. It’s just a love story. I tried telling this to Jana Aston. She likes straight contemporary romances and, as you know, I really don’t write those. But I thought I had in this one. I really did. Until she read it and messaged me something along the lines of “What the f*ckity-f*ck, f*ck was that?”
I was like, “What? What’s wrong?”
“That wasn’t a straight love story. My mind is spinning.”
I’m paraphrasing. Let me just get a screenshot of this message stream.
Please hold.
OK. I forgot that most of the conversation happened on the phone. In the paperback version of the EOBS I used the screenshots. It’s 100% different and you can read them. It’s f*cking funny.. But trying to format images on the ebook is kinds of a nightmare. So I’m going to skip it for the ebook version. But let’s just say - the f*ckity-f*ck reference from Jana was pretty close.
I don’t think this book is that twisted. Like at all. I think this book is probably more contemporary romance than anything I’ve written. So it has quad ménage? There were no guns, people. Not even a mention.
Wait. Wait. I take it back. Fucking Chella had to go and pull a gun on Smith when he broke into her house. Dammit. I really thought I left the guns out this time.
But no one died! Ha. And the mother three years does not count. So there. This is the JA Huss version of contemporary romance.
The weirdest thing about this story is where it came from. Straight out of The Forbidden City episode in Seinfeld. That’s right people, you see how contemporary this romance is? Came from Seinfeld.
Well, the concept did. Underground Sex Club. For some reason in my head it was set in Montreal, that’s why I have all these French names. But I’ve only been there once and the thought of trying to do research on a city—a French speaking city at that—was just a big no. Write what you know. And I know Denver. So… yeah.
I remember back in like 2014 someone wrote a review and it said something like - “I had no idea Denver was such a hot spot for erotic modeling?” It was snarky and she was making fun of me, I think. But I thought it was funny.
So that’s how this started. Just your everyday, underground, forbidden city, sex club.
That was a while ago. I got this idea like two years ago and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. Trying to piece it together and have it make sense for each of the characters. Trying to flesh out the world inside Turning Point Club.. By the time I actually sat down to write it (started this book on December 5th - finished it on December 31) everything had changed. I didn’t want a seedy underground club. I wanted something stable, and luxurious, and filled with people from The Great Gatsby - minus the killing, mind you.
And I wanted it to be highly structured. The idea for the game came long after the rules, which is kinda funny. The rules came from the premise of how each man would fill a need for Chella.
Quin was the easygoing friends with benefits.
Bric was a date for public events and parties.
And Smith was the one she’d fall in love with.
It’s just a peek. That was the very first thing I wrote for this series. I built the whole story around a girl who liked the dark side a little more than she was comfortable with and had a lot of bottled up shame. And I’m really happy with the characters. I think if you were going to do something like this, you couldn’t find a better trio of men to take care of you than Quin, Bric, and Smith. :)
Rochelle was a huge part of the initial story. And it always started with her missing and Chella taking her place in the bed. I wanted to keep Rochelle as part of this story too because I always knew she’d have to face the music eventually. And that’s book two, which is already up for pre-order. It’s called Turning Back and now that you’ve read the end of Taking Turns, I’m sure you can see where this is headed. There will probably be four books in this series, but each story is it’s own. Especially the last one. That book is probably more like a spin-off because Turning Point Club kind of intrigues me. So many, many possibilities for stories in that place.
The next book coming in 2017 is Anarchy Missing. And it’s weird, because I came up with the concept for that series around the same time as Turning Series. Only Anarchy is all about having sex with supervillains. Lol. Well, falling in love with them too. So that’s going to come out next.
The audiobook for The Turning Series was picked up by Podium Publishing (as was Anarchy Series) and they are in production. Should be out soon.
If you haven’t read 321 yet, I recommend you pick that up ASAP. It’s a lot like this book, and nothing at all like this book. You can find it here
If you enjoyed Taking Turns please consider leaving me a review where you purchased it. I’d really appreciate that. And you don’t have to write anything earth shattering. Just a few lines with your thoughts is just fine. :)