Good morning, everyone! Hope you are all doing well and staying safe. Hope you have had a good morning, but if not, I hope this post brings a smile to your face. (It definitely brought one to me when I first saw this cover!). I’m so excited to be revealing a new Adele Buck book cover. Actually it’s the sequel, or companion novel, for Acting Up which was her debut romance novel. Method Acting is the second book in the Center Stage series and it’s releasing on April 16th. Are you ready to see the magnificent, luscious, breathtaking cover? The glamour and charm this cover exudes… damn.
Cover designed by Marika Bailey.
About Method Acting:
All the world’s a stage until your heart is on the line.
All Alicia Johnson has ever wanted is to be able to slip into someone else’s life, clothing, and makeup to become a murderess, a socialite, a mother, or a nurse for an episode or a season. And she’s good at it.
Being an actress comes with a healthy dose of financial insecurity and a willingness to live out of two jammed suitcases, ready to go wherever the next director wants her. Up until now, it’s been worth it for the creative escape and the thrill of applause.
All Colin St. Cyr has ever wanted is to win, going all-in to get Congress to see things his clients’ way. Despite being a Brit in Washington, D.C., he is well off, well connected…and well on his way to becoming a boring bachelor forevermore after a heinous breakup.
Especially as he’s just made an arse of himself with the first woman who has knocked him sideways in years. It won’t matter how much money he donates to the theater; Alicia Johnson is still going to look at him like a goddess looks at a flea.
The only thing he can do is use his highly attuned persuasive skills to talk her into giving him a second chance.
The stage is set, but by the final act, is it a love story between the provocative actress and the cultured power-player or will it end in tragedy?
Frolic-Exclusive Excerpt:
Alicia hustled into her charge’s room, urging the girl to wake, get dressed, and greet the day. Moving rapidly around the room, she opened the curtains and chattered about the events to come. She marveled that the girl still slept.
Teenagers.
Alicia bent over and shook her—then froze, her heart thudding, nausea crawling up her throat. The young woman did not move. Did not breathe.
Angels and ministers of grace…Grace… Her mind stuttered and spun for what seemed like an age, time slowing almost to a standstill, then rushing into double time.
Screaming for help, Alicia almost ran into the girl’s mother, who was racing in to see what was wrong. Unable to do more than point at the still form of the girl on the bed, Alicia spoke barely intelligible words, tears sliding down her cheeks as the other woman gripped her in a vain attempt at understanding or comfort.
The girl’s father entered, seeming to dismiss both weeping women at the same time as he demanded why his daughter was not already at the wedding.
Useless man. Alicia didn’t bother to keep the sneer from her face, despite the fact he was her employer. What did she care, now that the child she had raised, nursed, comforted and corrected, was gone?
Pointing at the bed with a shaking hand, Alicia swiped at her tears. “She’s dead, deceased, she’s dead.” Punctuating each mention of death with a stab of her finger, her mouth crumpled as she saw the realization finally flow across his face. “Alack the day,” she choked out, a lump lodging in her throat.
The priest and the bridegroom entered on the heels of the father’s next flowery, pointless words.
His fault. All of it. Love and insistence on blind adherence to duty. This is what comes of it.
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Colin leaned back in his chair, his brows coming together in a slight frown as he watched the play unfold in front of him.
Interesting.
Most actresses playing The Nurse broke down here, wailing and helpless at the sight of the apparently dead Juliet. This one was different.
She was angry.
Specifically, she was furious with Lord Capulet, her face contorted in a rage-filled sneer at his next lines. The actor playing Juliet’s father seemed nervous of her, as if he was afraid she would grab the sword from Paris’ hip as he entered and run the older man through.
Her dark eyes practically glittered with malice as she spat her final speech in the scene, a lament for the lost Juliet, her proclamations of the horror of the day seeming to contain more rage than grief. And when she intoned, “Never was seen so black a day as this,” she pointed a long, shaking finger at Capulet, threatening him, her subtext clear to Colin.
Today may be my blackest day, but yours is yet to come.
Colin was disappointed when the final act of the play didn’t bring further surprises. He half expected a new plot twist added to the old story—The Nurse murdering Lord Capulet. When the cast filed out for their curtain call, he found his eyes straying to the woman who had startled him. The position where she took her bows was at the opposite end of the stage from where he sat and he couldn’t make out her features clearly. He wondered if the actress was as interesting as the character she had created.
Her performance had been the only thing to distract him from the empty seat next to him for the entire production.
About the Author:
When not writing, Adele is a librarian at a Washington, D.C. law school. Prior to that, she had a short stint as an index editor and over a dozen years in corporate communications and executive relationship management. Even prior to that, she was an actress and stage manager.
She holds a theatre degree from Syracuse University and graduate degrees from the University of Maine School of Law and the University of Maryland’s iSchool.
A New Hampshire native, Adele has lived in the D.C. area for over 20 years with her fantastic husband and the requisite number of neurotic cats.
