My New Romance Novel “My Bodyguard”
So my newest published romance novel is My Bodyguard written under my pen name Angel Ray. Lydia Swanson is one of the hottest new singers around after winning the popular TV singing competition show America’s Top Singer. Life couldn’t be better for Lydia. However, she’s harboring a dark secret: Lydia has a dark past she’s worried will come to light due to her newfound celebrity. Her father was a drug dealer serving time in prison and her mother overdosed on drugs. She and her younger brother Robbie also became drug addicts until Lydia got herself clean and sober once and for all. Then Lydia begins receiving these mysterious death threats that seem to be coming from the same person. Her manager Ross hires a bodyguard who’s a former military man named Brock Peters. At first, Lydia hates having a bodyguard around with her 24/7, although he is certainly easy on the eyes. However, as time passes and Lydia and Brock grow closer to one another and Lydia comes to depend on Brock more and more, especially as the threats against her become greater and more dangerous not only to her but to those around her, she comes to the realization that maybe she sees him as being more than just her bodyguard.
I began writing on this novel back in early-2019 and wrote on it steadily for a few months. Then I stopped writing on the novel when I couldn’t come up with what I felt was a satisfactory ending to the book. I stopped writing on the book altogether for a while as the story took a backseat to other things that were going on in my life at the time (which, of course, I won’t delve into). I started trying to work on the book again when things in my life began quieting down, though I still couldn’t come up with what I thought would be a satisfactory ending (though I did have one or two ideas). I then started posting what I had written so far of the book on the site Wattpad thinking-hoping, anyway-that that would inspire me to finish the story. Again, it took me a while longer to actually finish the book. Then, finally, I came up with an ending for the book. When I was finally done writing the book, I then submitted the manuscript to the romance book publisher Books To Go Now-which had already published two other of my romance novels WHEN LOVERS MEET & NOT THAT INNOCENT (which are still published with them, by the way)-and they accepted it after they had read the only the first three chapters of the book that I had initially submitted to them, which, to be honest, rather surprised me.
As for where I got the idea for this story, one day I started thinking about the movie The Bodyguard starring Kevin Costner and the late Whitney Houston. I admit, I’m not the biggest fan of this movie as I think it’s OK. But I thought it would be interesting to write a similar story about a singer who gets threatened and hires a bodyguard to protect her. Of course, the “bodyguard” trope is a familiar one within the romance genre in books and in movies (such as, of course, The Bodyguard). This is also the very first “clean” romance story I have written since started penning romance stories over a decade ago in that, unlike the other romance books I’ve written and had published over the years (all of which are still available, by the way), this one doesn’t contain an explicit sex scene, though there is an implied sex scene between the two main characters. I did consider writing an explicit sex scene for the book but I decided against doing it (pardon the pun!) since, for one, I felt the story didn’t need one, and two, I don’t think there’s as much of a market for “erotic” romances as there used to be, especially after the immense popularity of the book (and movie) 50 Shades Of Grey some years ago.
Here is the Amazon book link for My Bodyguard:
Also, here’s the Amazon book link for my nom de plume Angel Ray:
