The One Woman by Laura May

 

How many of you have had the experience of the right person at the wrong time? Today we welcome author Laura May to the blog as she tells us about creating her characters in The One Woman and also shares an excerpt. Let her know your thoughts in the comments as you follow the tour! Best of luck in the giveaway!

Right Person. Wrong timing.

Julie manipulates what the eye can't see as a graphic designer but no matter what lens she uses, her life and her relationship with her boyfriend Mark remain mundane. Until she meets Ann. Ann is successful, beautiful, and charismatic. Julie can't deny the spark during their chance meeting. When their present entwines once again in Barcelona the spark is impossible to extinguish. When tragedy strikes, Julie must decide between her devotion to Mark and her love for Ann. Can true love survive when the timing is all wrong?

Read an excerpt:

We took our seats towards the back. I was so nervous I was going to faint. Good, at least I would not need to endure this hell for long. I stared forward at the seat in front of me, paralyzed. I am going to die here, played on a loop in my head.

Something warm touched my hand, I looked down and through the fog I saw Julie's hand squeezing mine.

"Breathe," she told me. She was calm. "You are brave—"

And it started. Momentarily, I was pressed deep into the seat. Julie screamed but didn't let go of my hand. A great force made it hard to even take a breath.

As we rushed up, I glanced down. It was so high my poor hammering heart skipped a beat. Now we were on the top, and the wind was freezing here. In the next second, we were falling.

Now, I screamed. Everyone screamed. It made it easier. Julie was not holding me anymore; she clutched me. And we were down. My heart had never beaten so fast in my life.

I turned to Julie, feeling like we were running on pure adrenaline. Time stopped as I drowned in her pools of caramel. She was breathing hard, and I felt her grazing my hand up and down with her thumb. I looked down, but she quickly removed her hand.

"You did it," she said breathlessly.

***

She closed her eyes, the sun shining on her face, and again I couldn't take my eyes off her. Thank God I stopped for the red light; she was a dangerous distraction to have in the car. She opened her eyes and looked at me, her smile tugging at the corners of her lips.

I heard the honk from the back; the light had switched to green some time ago. I pressed the gas, and we giggled.

As the car hit the highway, we immediately got stuck in a traffic jam.

"It's like this almost all the time here, don't worry. We shouldn't be here long. We’ll probably be home in twenty minutes," I assured her.

"I don’t worry," Julie said, touching my hand on the steering wheel. We were not moving at all.

I watched mesmerized by how she took my hand and how she entwined her fingers with mine. Her touch sent jolts of pure energy through my body. I had waited for her, and I would always wait for her. She looked directly at me, her liquid caramel eyes pausing my heart. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement.

"We need to move," she said, breaking the spell.

Damn it, the road. The traffic moved faster and moments later, we were speeding down the highway again. Julie left her hand on my knee, tracing circles. She was talking about work, how it and books had saved her sanity during the last week.

"With each passing day, it was physically painful to stay so far from you," Julie sighed.

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Character creation

Julie and Ann. Ann and Julie. They are the two main characters in The One Woman.

I want to talk about Ann here. If I ever met Ann in real life I think I would be smitten, self-conscious, and shy around her. She has this powerful veneer of a strong career woman, authoritative, independent.

She was nothing like this with Julie from the first moment they met. Ann was herself with Julie. She didn’t hide her vulnerabilities, she wore them openly while battling the crashing feeling of being attracted to this woman, who lived in another part of the world, and who had a long-term boyfriend.

Ann’s character was like no one I met in real life. Her story was woven from different particles. But I wanted to show the reader how she was…alone. When her family abandoned her she taught herself to walk through life by herself, holding her chin high. Hiding from everyone, including herself, how lonely she became. Until Julie.

I wanted to show how Ann fights for more women to be represented in the IT industry, how she cares for her people, and how her interactions show who she is. How when she’s with Julie she can’t believe that the woman by her side is going to choose her.

All this magnitude of feelings, meetings, and events compile a character.

Hope you’ll love reading about Ann and Julie as much as I did writing them.

You can find The One Woman here: LauraMayAuthor.com

And more about Laura at LauraMayAuthor.com, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.

About the author:

Laura May is a pseudonym of a Ukrainian-American author. Laura lived in Kyiv till her mid-twenties. Now she can be found traveling around the world. The One Woman is her debut novel published by Creative James Media.

Laura May will be awarding a $10 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

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