Guest Post - Cindy Miles
From choosing a name to 3-D character:
How Stupid Girl’s
Brax Jenkins was born.
Naming characters is at the top of my list of fun things to
do when beginning a new project. Names mean a lot to me. Not only are the
characters, like our children in real life, stuck with the name you choose, but
having certain meaning behind the name adds an edge to their character. It did
for the bad boy Southie pitcher from Boston, BRAX JENKINS, in my New Adult
novel, Stupid Girl.
Just another bad boy? No way. In Stupid Girl, Brax was
abandoned at a Chinese restaurant on Braxton Street as a baby. That’s a pretty
bad start in life for a kid. But it didn’t stop there for Brax. He was passed
from foster family to foster family, some not-so-nice, raised by the judicial
system, and learned the hard way how to survive on the streets. The harder it
got for him, the tougher he became. He had no choice. He grew angry. Defensive.
And he had no real family. What he did have was baseball. And you don’t have to
necessarily love baseball to get that in order to survive you have to have something that matters. It was the
driving force of Brax’s survival. His desire to be something more than a
delinquent street kid with a crappy home life. All these qualities, to me, make
him a 3D character. Add in his cockiness, his swagger, and his wicked fast ball?
Seems like he’d be someone real.
When he meets the heroine in Stupid Girl—Olivia, whom he
affectionately calls ‘Gracie’—she stuns him by not tripping all over herself to
be with him like all the other girls do. Olivia is smart. Goal-driven. And
despite having her own horrific ordeal the summer before her senior
year—followed by her entire senior
year—in high school, she prevails, determined to take the scholarship she’d
earned in astronomy and make something of herself. Make her dreams come true.
Her hard-working ranch family proud of her. When she first meets Brax and all
his cocky swagger, she doesn’t think there’s a chance in hell they could be
friends—much less anything else. They both proved to be wrong.
All of these things combined affected Brax Jenkins in a way
that made him want to be a better person. Not just a survivor of the streets.
Not just someone who was thrown away as a baby. But of who he wanted to be for
the rest of his life. Olivia makes him whole.
And to me, that makes a character real.
Visit me on the web! I love to hear from readers J And be sure to join my
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Website: www.cindy-miles.com
Twitter: @cindymilesbooks
My Thoughts
Olivia's worst nightmare comes true when the guy who drugged and raped her in high school follows her to college.
Olivia has gone to college with the mindset that she will be concentrating completely on her studies of astronomy. After everything she went through after trusting Kelsey, she decided never to be vulnerable like that again. No falling in love.
Then she meets Brax on the first day of school. He's quite the player and has set his sites on her. Everyone warns her to stay away from him including her roommate. She doesn't and they become friends spending quite a bit of time together. Then he kisses her and everything changes. But what about the bet? Did I forget to mention that? Yeah so did he.
I give Stupid Girl 4 hearts!
Giveaway
About the Book
Only fools fall in love...
After her senior year of high school leaves behind nothing
but heartache, Olivia Beaumont is sure of this: She’s no stupid girl. She sets
out for Winston College, promising herself that she will remain focused on her
first and only love – astronomy. But all it takes is cocky sophomore Brax
Jenkins and an accidental collision with a football, to throw her entire year
off course.
A quick-tempered Southie who escaped the inner city streets
of Boston to pitch for Winston, Brax is known to play way more fields than just
the baseball diamond. So, when his name is drawn to take part in his
fraternity’s hazing dare, Brax eagerly accepts the mission to take Olivia’s
virginity. But he doesn’t plan on falling hard for the sweet and sassy Texas
girl who sees right through his bad-boy persona.
As Olivia and Brax battle their feelings for each other,
echoes of the past year begin to surface. A boy who once turned Olivia’s whole
world upside down reappears, and “harmless” pranks wreak havoc. Pretty soon the
aspiring astronomer is on the verge of revealing her most difficult,
heartbreaking secret. All the while, Brax must wrestle with the irrevocable
dare, and Olivia struggles against all logic as she does the one thing only a
stupid girl would do: fall in love.
Purchase Links
About the Author
Cindy Miles is the best-selling author of twelve novels, one
anthology and three short stories. She also writes as Elle Jasper, and grew up
on the salt marshes of the Vernon River in Savannah, Georgia.
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