Fearsome
S.A. Wolfe
Publication Date: October 2013
Genre: New Adult, Contemporary, Romance
Jessica Channing’s big city life should be more exciting than sixty-hour work weeks and popcorn nights with her girlfriends, but it’s not. She has worked hard fulfilling her role as a child prodigy and graduating college years before her peers. She’s the good girl, the brilliant girl.
Unfortunately, she’s also the dateless young woman.
That all changes with one phone call. Jess’s rigid, predictable life upends when she must visit a small, obscure town to deal with a relative’s death. This isn’t just any little speck of a town, though. Long lost memories come crashing down on Jess’s world when two men, the Blackard brothers, seem to lure her in.
Dylan is cover model handsome, and pursues Jess the minute she comes to town. Then there is tall, dark and gorgeous Carson, who hides his own secrets behind his hardened reserve.
For someone who has been governed by her own obsessive behaviors and fears, Jess lets her guard down and jumps at the opportunity to have an affair with a man she actually finds attractive for a change.
There’s just one problem. Jess discovers that she can’t have a simple romantic fling because true passion does indeed come with some very big strings attached to it. She will have to own up to her own truths about love and face the two extraordinary men; both troubled in their own ways and both determined to have her
S. A. Wolfe
Author of Fearsome
Jessica’s role as a computer specialist in coding and optimization comes from my experience with being around people like that and hearing their lingo all the time, especially from my husband. What was more fascinating to me was how to capture Jessica’s art and describe her paintings. All of that is based on the work of real-life artist, Lora Zombie. Yes, great name. Google her and you’ll get an idea of what I was trying to convey in Jessica’s paintings. Lora Zombie is a 23-year old self-taught painter who is a rising star in the art world. I adore her work, and I think her images are exactly what Jess would try to do because they are on the opposite side of the spectrum from Jessica’s linear-thinking computer job.
I come from a family of scientists, engineers, and artists, which means we have a lot of “weird” going on in my family. In my experience, OCD behaviors in moderation can play a necessary role in ingenuity and creativity, in worst-case scenarios it can be a severe obstacle. My real-life family and relatives have the full spectrum of behaviors, good and bad.
Carson’s talent in woodworking, furniture, and sustainable homes come from some of my new and old research. Years ago I read an article about furniture maker, David Marsh, out of Texas, and then a few years later, I actually bought one of his whimsical pieces. I fell in love with his work. Also, the surge in sustainable homes being built all over the NYC tri-state area is a very big deal here. That just seemed perfect for Carson since he originally planned on attending college to study engineering and then ended up starting a business that renovates homes and builds new “green” homes. I added the whole Blackard Designs workshop with a particular furniture catalogue in mind where they describe in detail their new process of weathering wood. I thought, That is so Carson!
Having lived in cramped NYC apartments and spending so much time in my favorite neighborhoods - that was easy to write about. I also did my fair share of waitressing during and after college, and I’m a fan of art galleries, restaurants, and parks all over NYC but particularly in lower Manhattan. I like unpretentious places where anyone feels comfortable going in jeans.
A very good friend of mine owns an art gallery in Chelsea (a neighborhood in Manhattan) and along with that gallery and some of my favorite galleries in Soho, I have learned to love gallery hopping. That might be my own term since I always invite gangs of friends for a night of gallery hopping. To all my readers; you do not need a vast knowledge about art, and you don’t need money – loving art is about curiosity and that’s what I wanted to come across in Fearsome. I hate the stereotypical thinking that art is for rich snobs. I’m a firm believer that art is for everyone, regardless of their socioeconomic status. Unlike her parents, Jessica is not a snob about art, and she is not an academically trained artist. And like Jessica, I love exploring galleries and observing the clients. One of my favorite real-life anecdotes is when I ran into a very famous, very leggy super model at a Soho gallery. When I complimented her coat, she brought me into a private huddle and divulged how she found the best sales and when I should go to certain upscale NY stores to get the major price reductions. After that encounter, whenever I saw that model in Neutrogena commercials I remember how I met her in her torn jeans and her lovely sheepskin coat - she looked like a beautiful shaggy emu - and how kind she was to me. That’s New York to me, real people being genuine. Naturally, I needed some of those people to move to Hera.
*A note about Hera: Although I know the Catskills area well, Hera is a fictional place. There are too many famous little towns in the area, so I felt the need to create my own funky little town of fun and drama.
*Funny side note: Another critical part (at least to me) of the novel is Jessica’s love of Rao’s Marinara Sauce. Seriously, it’s awesome. Rao’s is a famous old-school Italian restaurant in Harlem. The bottled sauce is sold in grocery stores all over the tri-state area here. It’s a testament to Jessica’s obsessive taste in familiar foods and lowbrow items like instant ramen noodles.
About the Author
S. A. Wolfe lives with her wonderfully loud, opinionated children and awesome husband. She is a voracious reader and passionate about writing, and when those two activities don’t keep her locked away in her room, she loves hiking mountains as much as she adores all the thrills New York City has to offer.
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