Guest Post - Perri Forrest

Today I'm delighted to welcome a guest post from Perri Forrest, author of 'A Lioness Tale'.

A Lioness’ Tale is the debut novel, from Amazon bestselling author, Perri Forrest.

It touches on themes around, sexual openness, entrepreneurship, and the blueprint of relationships.

Gabriella Alexis Sandoval is the story’s heroine. She is beautiful, sassy, goal-driven, and fiercely independent. The daughter of an advertising executive, and a public relations guru, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree, as Gabriella becomes a success, in her own right.
As the story begins Gabriella’s first love reveals that he’s been offered – and plans to accept – a full football scholarship 3,000 miles away. Gabriella is blindsided by the news but remains optimistic about the state of the relationship, until the other bomb drops: He suggests hitting the pause button on their union while he focuses solely on college and football, telling her, “I have to give this a chance. The opportunity is too great to sacrifice.”

With her world shattered, Gabriella’s mother, wanting to console her daughter, arranges for a trip to the family’s annual vacation spot, Brazil – the place she’s come to love as her second home.

Brazil holds many surprises for Gabriella, and she returns home refreshed, with a renewed confidence, and ready to take on the world.

You’ll laugh with her, you’ll cry for her, and you will see her grow from a young woman to a full grown powerhouse. A Lioness’ Tale is the story of life, love, and all that falls in between.

About the author

Perri Forrest was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and raised in sunny California. She describes herself as a trilogy – a Businesswoman who navigates through Corporate America flawlessly from Human Resources to Project Management, a Sociologist with a burning desire to save the world, and an Author who loves writing life into fiction.
While her pen and paper consummated when she was pre-teen, her written words would not be seen until a long time after. Perri’s dream was always to write a book, but she didn’t take steps to do so out of fear that readers wouldn’t be interested in what she had to say.
When Perri suffered the devastating loss of her first cousin, in 2006, with a few months left to complete her undergraduate studies, she barely made it through. A good friend not only suggested that she begin blogging, that friend gifted her with a newly designed blog platform, which birthed her first e-journal.
The blog opened a whole new world for Perri and served as a place she could express candidly, about life. When her blog was discovered and she began receiving compliments on not just her candor, but on her writing style, it fueled the fire, and thoughts of penning a novel resurfaced.  
The lingering doubts of, “Who would even want to read your work?” were replaced with, “Worry about an audience later, and just do it.”
And that she did.

Perri writes what she likes to call, Sensual Romance.  “I call it romance with a lot of heat and passion,” she says. “It’s a sexy kind of intimacy that I love exploring through my characters. I enjoy seeing them connect on both intellectual and physical levels. That connection allows me to build erotic moments, with purpose, and satisfaction.”

Perri plans to perfect her craft and delve into other genres, down the line. With “Amazon bestselling author,” added to her list of credits, Perri is in the writing game for the long haul and has no intentions of putting down her pen any time soon.

Website: www.perriforrest.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/PerriForrest

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/perriforrest

Guest Post

Once upon a time there was a little brown girl who wanted to be Lucky Santangelo.  She loved the life of an Italian Princess and the glamour that the life portrayed. In her mind, Lucky was the BFF she never had, but wanted. Everything about Lucky’s life was appealing – from her jet black curls, to the powerful mafia daddy, Gino Santangelo. Then that brown girl grew up and a shift took place…she wanted to be Jackie Collins, writer of many books with interesting characters, enough steam for the sauna, with twists and turns that keep readers coming back for more.

Reaching for Jackie Collins status is going to take oodles of dedication, I know. But I’m up for the challenge that has been a very long time coming. I’ve entered the race, and it has been a whirlwind of sorts, dating back to 2011, when I was approached by a reader of my blog about being ¼ of an anthology project. I had no idea who she was, and it was the perfect case of, “You never know who’s watching.” She told me how much she liked my writing content, and that although she had never left a comment, she had read each and every blog post. I was amazed.

Needless to say, I accepted the offer to participate. I didn’t tell her, however, that I had no damn clue what an anthology was. There was no need for her to know just how green I was, so I went with the flow. The pen mates, as I like to call them, were all writers who had been published before so the pressure was on. The prompt was easy – write whatever you want as long as it’s erotica, and not to exceed 5k words. Well, there were a few complexities. For one, I drew a total blank of what to write about…like total blank. Then, I had only ever adhered to a word count in undergrad and hated it even then. Finally, there was the whole erotica thing. Eeek! See as much as I love grown up activities in my own life, erotica caused me concern. Why? Because I’m a romantic at heart. Yeah, yeah, I know. Romance segues to the down and dirty, so what’s the problem?

Well, I was honest with the group’s leader and told her that I’d rather pull of a romance with some erotic flavor. I thought she’d kick me off the project, but she agreed. A closed mouth don’t get fed, right? I was on cloud nine. At the completion, there were mixed reviews on the stories, and a lot of people bashed my story. Quite honestly, I wasn’t the happiest about it myself, but damn, folks can be downright mean.

After that initial story, the group’s leader advised that we should keep writing because people would want to hear more from us once the anthology was released, but since I hated my story (proud that I’d done it, but detached, nonetheless), I didn’t rush to do anymore writing and life returned to normal as usual for me. But then, I got the surprise of my life when I was contacted again at the end of 2012, to collaborate on another project. I was ready. This time the theme was Mardi Gras and our choice of where in the world we wanted it to take place. The word count was to be no greater than 10k, and to start out with a bang.

My story Rendezvous, featured my first key character Gabriella Alexis Sandoval. I was in love with the story, my characters, the theme, and the way I set it up. I was proud of myself, and I began to feel a greater sense of confidence. When I looked at how much I had grown from the first story to Rendezvous, I cried. It was the best feeling in the world to see that I was finding my way. I learned a powerful lesson about myself – writing gave birth to a new me.  

When Rendezvous was released in time for Carnival 2012, I was in full mode. I penned and extended version, (my debut novel) of Gabriella’s life in A Lioness’ Tale. While that story was being edited, I grew restless. Literally for four months…everyday/all day, my time was given to that book and now there was nothing for me to do. In four days I wrote a short story called, The Color of Lies, and readers loved it! I had no idea that misplaced energy would lead to such great things. It put me on Amazon’s bestseller’s list for weeks! Then came installment II, What Lies Beneath the Surface, and the response from that one was greater than the first.

So there I was. The girl with the dream to write and with the delayed start had written a full length novel, a novelette, and two novellas – all in the course of 1 year. All of my works are self-published, but I recently finished another full length novel, Tangled Webs, that I am shopping with various agents for representation.

I can honestly say that I’ve found my flow, and I have no intentions on stopping until I reach my highest ground. I hope that you’ll be interested enough in what I had to say to explore my works.