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Brittany McMahan

Brittany McMahan spends her days at her home in Oregon with her special needs son, black Labrador Retriever, and cat.

She enjoys writing spicy romances and empowering bigger bodies in finding their confidence, loving their bodies, and encouraging them to find their own happy ending.

She enjoys reading romance as much as writing it. She is an avid Passionflix fan and enjoys spending her spare time with the Passionista friends she has made along the way.

Leighann was faced with the most trying time of her life by raising her daughter alone. With her self-esteem plummeting and her bank account draining, she never pictured she would catch the eye of a celebrity at the lounge she worked in. The mere thought of him being interested in her was unbelievable to her. Can she get over her own self-doubt to accept the possibility of true love?

Evan had his share of one-night stands and fame bunnies and was no stranger to the tabloid scandals. He has never dealt with a woman who could not only hold her own but wanted nothing to do with him or the life he was so comfortable with leading. Nothing has been more important to him than protecting her and her daughter from the invasive species of the paparazzi, which leads him to a feeling he has never felt before.

America’s leading man could finally find love with someone real, unlike the string of women he has been used to.

Will he be able to get her to believe in love, or will his team step in and put an end to them before his bachelor antics are gone for good?

Excerpt from Boston Darlin

You grow up thinking you can be anything that you want to be until you learn you aren’t as special as you might think you are. I grew up in “Adam’s Village” or Dorchester, Massachusetts. I was never the little girl who was outgoing or had a lot of friends. I was the shy girl who sat alone wearing weird thrift shop clothes, I never got invited to birthday parties, and I was always picked last for the soccer team. I lived in a triple-decker in the village on the third floor. I loved the view of Boston in the distance that could be seen from my bedroom window. It looked like a faraway city, almost out of a fairytale. A city shrouded in make-believe that only I could see. I never had sleepovers, and I never played outside with the neighborhood kids. In fact, the sounds of children playing and bikes crashing to the ground always was a trigger of annoyance for me. Looking out the window and seeing the children with happy lives and parents braiding their hair and shit, would make my animosity boil to the surface.

 

My mom frequented the Eire Pub down the corner nearly every day. I would come home from school and know immediately where she was. The stack of dishes in the kitchen from the days before were still in the sink, and the liquor bottles were still collected on the coffee table as if it was some type of alcoholic shrine. Looking back now as an adult, I never understood how my mom was able to afford our apartment and even food for that matter. She was never home. She was never working. She only drank herself into oblivion with her “people.” It wasn’t until years later that I understood what welfare and food stamps were, and how that raised me and not her. I started to realize at a young age that the only people my mom cared about was herself and her favorite skeezes at the pub. She never wanted anything to do with me as a kid. I was an unfortunate burden to her, and she had no problem showing it. I taught myself how to style my hair and cook for myself at the age of six. You have no idea how fast you must grow up until you don’t have any other option. I had curly brown hair, freckles splattered across my cheeks, and a thick body that left little to be desired by teenage boys with the attention span of a squirrel. Often high school girls blossomed into womanhood and got the attention of the boys. I wasn’t one of them.

 

I focused on my studies, my books, and my love of music. More specifically my love for the beautiful music from a piano. My favorite person in the world was my neighbor, Mr. Taylor. He was an older man with tan olive skin and wavy salt and pepper hair. He said he was Mediterranean, but at the time I had no idea what that meant. He helped take care of me when my mom was gone. He had the most beautiful keyboard piano, and I would spend hours just listening to him play. Soaking up all the music I could.

One day, he was gone. His keyboard and songbooks were the only things left in his apartment. Along with a note that read:

 

Keep playing songbird.

 

I never saw him again. My first heartbreak at eleven years old, and definitely not my last. I never understood the pull toward all that frilly bullshit that’s supposed to make you feel like a girl. I never had a date, nor did I even want one.

I just wanted to finish school and get away from the Dot as fast as I could. I was always basic and beat, and it never bothered me because I have been told that my whole life. You get told something enough times when you’re younger, you will believe it. Only I refused to believe that I would grow up to be a hoodsie like my mom. It wouldn’t be me. Everyone needs inspiration to help take them out of a bad situation. Music was always that for me. The piano was something ethereal and holy, and something that was truly mine.  Pouring my feelings into writing songs was not only my favorite pastime but I wanted it to be my career. I didn’t care what I looked like because I figured I didn’t need to look like the stereotypical Hollywood crowd in order to write songs for a living. So, from the time I was fourteen until I was eighteen, I worked at the neighborhood convenience store down the block. I saved every dime I could inside the empty space of my keyboard.

 

The day I moved my golden tassel over to signal I graduated, was the day I packed my suitcase and left to journey across the country. The city that made you or broke you. Los Angeles was rough and filled with rejection and tears. Last calls, auditions, and meetings with other songwriters is what I imagined and longed for. What I got: eating stale bread from the dollar store, living in a Geo Metro, and late-night jam sessions at seedy bars on Hollywood Boulevard while men stuffed fake business cards in your back pocket while you tried to work your second job. When I felt like giving up and my confidence level plummeted, my saving grace walked through the double doors of the small bar I was waitressing in. A young man with dark hair, and dark mysterious eyes. His guitar hanging behind his back like a musician, much too cool for the scene as he walked inside the bar. His name was Redd Carter, and today he is a well-known singer and songwriter. Back then, he was just Redd. He’s my best friend and my biggest supporter.

Q&A with Brittany McMahan

From the time I was in high school, I always wanted to be an author. I faced rejection after rejection after high school and through college and my love for writing really diminished and disappeared. Life happened and I became a wife, and a mom, and writing took a backburner until Covid. Like most authors, COVID really opened this space and time to really fall back in love with writing. I published my first novella in 2020 and I haven’t stopped since. I absolutely love it.

My writing process is very visual, and I have been told chaotic depending on whom you talk to. I have ADHD and OCD, and I am extremely visual. I map out my characters and their images as well as their outfits. My writing is very descriptive and visual so it’s important to me to have photos that paint the story in my head as I write about the locations and characters. Down to what car they drive, what pet they have, or what they are going to wear on a date.

My special needs son takes up all my time when I am not writing. However, when I am not writing I love to craft…and frequent trips to Hobby Lobby.

I usually will have a celebratory dinner of my favorite food and take a break. I get just as invested in my characters as readers so oftentimes I need a break just to breathe and say goodbye to them.

I love virtual release parties! They are so much fun. I tend to go live on IG or on TikTok and I often times will have a Zoom with readers to talk about the book about a week or two after release which is always really fun.

This was a dream I had about Chris Evans at a Comic Con and saw a plus-size woman in his meet and greet and fell for her immediately. I had to write a love story like that. I feel like plus-size women especially feel like that could happen to someone thin and beautiful, but not to someone like us. I wanted to be Leighann as much as readers do.

So many! This was my first novel so there’s a lot of familiarity with everyone.

Madison is based on my son. He is developmentally disabled, so I know firsthand her struggles as well as Leighann’s being a special needs parent.

Evan is based on Chris Evans. His mannerisms from interviews and family camaraderie are very much present in this book.

Passionflix and my love for them are very present as well as my bond with my best friend, Redd Carter. We don’t have conversations like Redd and Leighann do (that’s fiction) but we very much have a close bond as they have.

Hands down the Boston accent! I had to make Boston proud with my descriptions of its locations and its lingo. They are completely passionate, and it was important for me to bring that out and let readers fall in love with Boston as I did while researching. Thank God for my many Bostonian friends who really helped me out.

The comedy! Leighann is hysterical…and her jokes are often one I say. The one-liners she pulls out in this book are just hilarious!

I wanted a HEA where a plus-size woman fell for Chris Evans, and he fell for her. I can count on one hand how many books exist like that. This book was more inspiration for me to get this book out into the world and really gain confidence as a woman and as a mom. I would say I wanted the reader to get the heartwarming love feelings they get reading a Debbie Macomber novel…with my added potty mouth.

There are so many good moments! My favorite LOL moment is the confrontation at the Red Sox game with her inner monologue. I laughed for hours writing that.

My most heartwarming moment is definitely Evan and Leighann talking at the aquarium. Special needs parents will immediately feel for Leighann. I often times had those feelings myself.

Oh geez…Evan would probably make me faint (because Chris Evans) and there’s no way I could function.

I would love to meet Leighann. She is one of the strongest FMC I have ever written and definitely the funniest!