Help us give a warm welcome to JL Peridot! JL is here this week to share her sci-fi office romance, It Starts With A Kiss with us this week. Welcome JL! I know we are all excited for you to share It Starts With A Kiss with us.
It Starts With… the right music
Guest post from JL Peridot:
Nothing gets me in the mood like a good playlist. This goes for work, exercise, hot dates… all the things that come after a hot date 😏 But it’s especially the case when it comes to writing.
I write mostly sci-fi romance and, let’s face it, sitting in a present-day living room listening to petrol-powered cars drive past is hardly the kind of ambiance you need to put you in the distant future.
Some writers have a “writing playlist”—I don’t. Every story has its own vibe, its own mood. Even if it’s similar to another book set in my universe, I feel strongly about this. Every story gets its own playlist.
For the kind of science fiction romance I write, I fill my ears with a genre called synthwave. It’s kind of hard to explain, but you’ll recognise it when you hear it. Much of it is like music from the 80s, but… better. Crisper. Cleaner. It’s got enough modern polish to make you forget the things about your childhood that kind of sucked. It’s music for the ageing idealist. It’s nostalgia for a future that never happened.
That’s the kind of future I write about. My novella, “It Starts With A Kiss”, is exactly what you’d expect from an office romance, except it’s set in space, at some point in time maybe not too far away from now.
It’s about a clever girl and a charming boy who realise it’s not enough to be clever and charming. If you ever want anything meaningful to happen, you’ve gotta wake up, grab life by the balls, and own yourself. I don’t know about other synthwave listeners, but that’s what this music does to me. It makes me feel brave enough to love and excited enough to reach for my dreams.
This is the playlist that inspired this book. I hope it inspires you too:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAdNGhCoif21GEan_-vzgg3FRH_Ow3xe4
It Starts With A Kiss, a sci-fi office romance by JL Peridot
Celeste is a talented engineer who doesn’t realize her job’s going nowhere fast. She’s a little naïve. She’ll cut code and solder cables forever as long as Owen’s around. Owen, on the other hand, knows exactly how badly things suck—he just doesn’t care. Sure, his skills aren’t what they used to be, but they’re still better than what Halcyon Aries deserves.
Then it happens. The company’s toxic management team finally cross the line. As both techies race to upgrade the station and to free the team from their oppressive contracts, they come to learn that life—and love—can only ever be what you make it.
Strap in for a steamy office romance in space, because sometimes It Starts With a Kiss!
Excerpt from It Starts With A Kiss:
Owen’s chair rattled. He brushed down the front of his station uniform, picked up his tablet—his personal one—and gave Celeste a salute.
“Same time, same place tomorrow, then.”
“Hey,” she began, leaning over the desk. “Thanks for backing me up today.”
“No problem.”
“I mean, that was really nice, um, what you said.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“You meant it, right?”
“Of course. You do good work. I trust you know what you’re talking about.”
“No, not that…” She fiddled with the corner of her desk. A bit of plastic cracked off in her fingers. She flicked it aside. “I mean, you believe it’ll work?”
Owen lumbered around to the walkway. Celeste could feel blood pumping through the veins in her neck. This was where he’d let her down gently. It had all been lip service, just a way to keep their team looking good in front of the boss.
He crossed his arms and leaned back against the low partition panel. A sinkhole opened in her belly. Sure, it was a considerate gesture, but she didn’t want the gesture. She didn’t work her arse off, keeping her skills sharp, just to tick a bloody box. She wanted to do work that made a difference. She wanted to knock this automation project out of orbit.
And maybe she wanted to impress this gorgeous engineer who she respected as much as she fancied. She wanted to blow him away the way he’d blown her away, then have him pick her up, take her to the storeroom and fuck her against the shelves.
About JL Peridot:
JL Peridot writes sexy, cosmopolitan love stories with scifi and retrofuture vibes. In her spare time, she watches movies, plays Dungeons & Dragons, and consumes wholesome memes on Twitter. With the help of supportive friends, a loving partner, two bossy cats and a well-used music subscription, she writes and writes in her sunny, sea-girt, Australian home.
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