The primary focus of this podcast episode centers on the introduction of the novel "Chance," authored by the duo Aaron and Sam, collectively known as E.S. Rosalyn. This engaging work is delineated as a small-town, slow-burn romance tailored for adult readers, characterized by its unique voice and endearing setting in the town of Serendipity. During our discussion, we delve into the nuances of the narrative, exploring the pivotal characters, including James, a teacher and part-time contractor, and Ivy, a bookshop owner, as they navigate the complexities of their lives and relationships. The authors share insights into the inspiration behind their writing process, emphasizing the significance of community and humor that permeates their storytelling. As the episode unfolds, listeners are invited to appreciate the warmth and charm of Serendipity, a backdrop that is almost a character in its own right, and to anticipate the subsequent installments of this promising series. The podcast episode showcases the dynamic conversation between Rich Bennett and E.S. Rosalyn, authors of the novel 'Chance'. With a focus on the themes of community and connection, the authors delve into the intricacies of their work, describing their narrative as a slow-burn romance set in the quaint town of Serendipity. This locale is not merely a backdrop but a vibrant character in its own right, reflecting the warmth and humor that permeates the narrative. The authors emphasize their intention to create a setting that resonates with readers, invoking a sense of nostalgia and charm associated with small-town life. Throughout the discussion, the authors share insights into their creative process, illustrating how their backgrounds and experiences have influenced their storytelling. They express their aspiration for readers to feel a sense of joy and anticipation for the subsequent installments of their series, reinforcing their commitment to crafting engaging and relatable narratives that reflect the quirks of everyday life.

Takeaways:

• The podcast episode emphasizes the importance of a strong foundational narrative for both stories and homes.
• Bel Air Window and Door is presented as a community-oriented business that prioritizes quality and customer service.
• The authors E.S. Rosalyn articulate that their novel 'Chance' features a unique voice set in a charming small town.
• Listeners are encouraged to follow the authors' journey and engage with their upcoming works, enhancing community connection.
• The episode showcases the collaborative dynamic between the authors, highlighting their distinct contributions to the storytelling process.
• Listeners are reminded to support authors by purchasing books and leaving reviews to foster literary communities.

• A Novel Chance by E. S. Rosalynn
• Bel Air Window & Door
• E.S. Rosalynn

Before we begin today's pitch, I want to thank Bel Air Window and Door for sponsoring this episode. Every great story starts with a strong foundation and same is true for your home.

Bel Air Window and Door is a local window depot dealer that offers high quality, energy efficient windows and doors with honest service and professional installation. They are part of our community and take pride in helping homeowners create spaces they love.

Visit bel airwindowanddoor.com to see how they can help you. What if discovering your next great read only took a few minutes?

Welcome to the Author Pitch, the short form podcast where writers from around the world deliver a powerful pitch for their book and read a standout excerpt in their own voice. I'm Rich Bennett. This is the Author Pitch and your next great read starts here. Foreign.

Welcome to the Author Pitch where writers from around the world deliver a powerful pitch for their book and read a short excerpt in their own voice, or voices in this case. I'm your host, Rich Bennett. And today's guests are Aaron and Sam, known as E.S. Rosalyn, authors of a novel, Chance. So first of all, welcome.

You too.

Thank you.

And behave.

Thanks for having us.

Oh yeah, my pleasure. All right, so I want want to start with the pitch. Give listeners a tight, high impact overview.

What the book is, who it's for, why it matters, and what makes it unique.

All right, so a novel, Chance is a small town, slow burn romance for readers of adult romance because we are just transitioning into adult novels now. It is unique because it has its own special voice and its own special town. It's warm and cozy and it's really fun and we're hilarious.

So you definitely need to dig in and figure out what makes us so funny. You're gonna.

No, no.

Oh, so wait a minute. You two are the characters?

Yeah, but we're. No, but we are hilarious and you can tell when you read it. And I'm saying we. It's really Aaron. Aaron is the hilarious one.

I'm just here so we think we're funny at least.

Well, we're going to find out how.

All right.

We're gonna find out how funny you really are, Aaron. All right, all right. So let's hear the excerpt that you brought for us today. Go ahead and take your time, settle in, read at your natural pace.

I'll give you a little bit and just start when you're ready.

Yo, Mr. Reed. Heads up.

A neon green Nerfs football sailed down the hallway while a gaggle of upper elementary age boys watched it soar. Each anticipation glittered in their eyes as the ball whizzed just above the heads of their peers.

James Reed reached out an abnormally long arm and caught the ball in one effortless swoop. He tucked it against his side with an air of nonchalance and continued his stroll down the hallway.

Told you he'd catch it.

One of the students chirped.

Hey.

He shouted before turning to try to match James long strides.

That's my ball. It's mine now.

Mr. Kingsley, James returned in his teacher voice, a throaty baritone that was perfected over years of practice.

You can get it back at the end of the day if I see you at Creative club. Aw, man, Mr. Reed.

Lucas Kingsley whined. With a deep furrow in his brow and a cross of his arms over his chest, he pouted.

I told you I ain't coming to no Creative Club. That stuff's for nerds.

James shook his head and gripped the ball tighter.

Guess it's mine forever then, he replied.

At the same time as a flash of yellow ran past his peripheral vision.

Norman.

James called after the fleeing life sized piece of fruit.

What did I say would happen if I caught you wearing that banana suit in school again?

Take it off.

Look the other way, Mr. Reid, the.

Banana in question yelled back and James heaved a great sigh. Sixth period was about to begin. That particular costume fruit was going to have to be someone else's problem.

James leaned against the doorway of his room, ready for the bell to ring for his last class of the day.

He flicked the ball into the air in front of him, catching it before deciding to throw some easy tosses and small passes with the students who looked up from their desks. They beamed and giggled, eventually all settling down to join in the game. He smirked. Just another ordinary day.

As a 5th grade English language arts teacher at Curiosity Creek elementary, he loved his job.

It was challenging at times, certainly like now, when the kids were more focused on the winding clock than the significance of the reading assignment. Still, James enjoyed it. Not because he got to teach kids, but because of the colleagues he worked with and the atmosphere they created.

The school was truly welcoming. This brick and glass building boasted a light and airy contemporary design outfitted with modern furniture and new technology.

Each classroom doorway was lined with a bright block of coordinating colors, golden yellow and forest green, to showcase the school's long standing tradition and pride.

The hallways were painted a crisp white, dotted with an occasional dragon logo, and adorned with classroom art that nearly covered the gray and beige design stretching halfway up the interior.

Interior grouped in the common area Were sleek meeting tables and flexible seating arrangements, allowing students a place for study groups, socializing and more. They were somehow always packed with kids, Even at this moment.

After the final bell of the day sounded in dismissal, the students began shouting James name As he made his way out of the school to his second job. They offered him high fives, fist bumps and a range of secret handshakes. He knew every one of them by heart.

An hour later, after swapping his teacher badge for a tool belt, he he was driving toward downtown.

Though the halls of curiosity creek were technically the same ones James used to walk when he was younger, there had been massive improvements made over the years, all of which were completed by his dad's construction company, dreamgrid solutions. Just like his two younger brothers, and at some point in their lives, the majority of the people in this town, James worked for his father.

Well, truth be told, James still worked for his father most nights and weekends. Which was why his had been one of the many sets of hands that helped turn the school into what it was today.

The others belonging to his co workers and fellow citizens of serendipity. That was what he loved most about the town. The people actually cared about their community.

The mass majority of them, himself included, were born here, raised here, and stayed to build a life here.

Though the population could not have been made up of more than 7,000 people, they were the same familiar faces James had grown to love and appreciate. There was Frankie, one of his former football teammates who now own main street music company and taught lessons to some of James's students.

A few doors down from Frankie's, Lizzie, James's old lab partner, opened her dream retro ice cream parlor, scoops and smiles creamery. She concocted some of the best flavors he had ever tasted, as was known to add an extra free scoop on every kid's order.

She ended up marrying the class clown, Connor, who owned the pickle jar deli, A quirky sandwich shop with walls covered in varieties of, you guessed it, pickles. A free sandwich went to anyone who could make him laugh with a good pickle joke. This was a taller task than one might believe.

After owning the deli for a number of years, Connor just about heard them all. Getting him to actually laugh was a really big deal.

Oh, so we like dad jokes.

Okay, shh. Those were just a few of the many vintage storefronts you could see walking the sidewalks of downtown serendipity.

Hidden treasures could be found on almost every block.

From the back alley boardwalk with its wrought iron signage and victorian lampposts to the several parks and green spaces that were shaded by their mature, deep rooted trees. A favorite spot of James's Market Square was an enclosed community space surrounded by the rear entrances of several restaurants.

Patio tables and oversized long games were scattered about and a mini stage was lifted near the center for weekend performers. People would gather to share food and laughter as they danced and chatted the night away under the stars.

There was just something magical about his hometown.

It could have been the beautiful scenic views with its ski mountains and nearby lake, or the charming shopping district where there was a charming little bookstore with its charming young owner that James definitely wasn't staring at through the charming front picture window as she hung items to display concentration furrowing deep in her brow.

Why did you choose that particular excerpt? And I think in all honesty, you did it because when Erin yelled hey, she yelled hey. And nearly busted my eardrums.

Well, you're welcome. I'm sorry for your eardrums.

That scene is a really good look at the town and it gives you a good introduction to Serendipity so that you can kind of see, you know, pieces of our humor with the children in the classroom. You can get a very good look at our main male character. His name is James. He's a teacher and on the side he works construction.

He's the oldest of three and it's a three part series. Hint, hint.

And so you can also see the town, which is really cozy and sweet and I think one of our favorite parts of the series because we really wanted this setting to feel like its own character.

So, because if you two writing as a pair, what actually sparked this book for the both of you?

You.

Oh, goodness. I really think we started with the place. We started with Serendipity.

We both just had this like, vision of a town that we wanted to create a story in.

And as you know, as long as we've been writing, since we've been in different locations, we've met in the middle in a little town called Bedford, Pennsylvania, which honestly is kind of like the feel that we're going with with this, with this book. And it was kind of. It was important to us in that sense that it was like, oh, okay, we, we are experiencing this small town, cozy setting.

We really like it. We think our readers will too.

Yeah. And we like to do a lot of tinkering on the side. We write together, but we definitely brainstorm a lot separately.

But it's kind of fun to see how those ideas morph and into what we actually put down on paper. Because Erin is the one who came up with Serendipity.

She had another kind of scene going on on a document, and it was called A Series of Serendipities. And I just knew that was going to be our next series because I loved the name. I was like, this is the town name.

And it's funny because everything is based on luck. So we have so many, you know, puns and plays on. Yeah, we have a lot of dad jokes in the town. And it's just.

It's cozy and it's magical because it's serendipitous. And. Yeah, so the.

We actually had the plots of books two and three first, because book two was something I had been kicking around in my brain for a while. Sometimes we just, like, randomly talk out ideas to each other. We just, you know, I'll be like, hey, we should write a book about.

And this book was completely different when it started, but the. The bones are the same. It's kind of the, you know, the main idea. So book two is really, like, my idea I was kicking around.

And book three is hers that she was. That she was toying with in sort of a different iteration than it will become.

We made one to tie it all together so that we can introduce you to the town, introduce you to this new couple, but really set up those next two books.

And what do you hope that readers feel after finishing it, happy that they.

Want to read the next one?

I think you're gonna get a lot of readers, you know, emailing you, saying that you guys should just write a book of dad jokes.

We're really good. I. I shouldn't say we. I. I mean, Aaron is really good at jokes. She.

When you're getting, like, the punchy, silly things that actually, like, make you cackle, that's Aaron. I'm not that funny. So I'm just saying I give her full credit. Sometimes I'll be reading else, but if.

There's a line that you need a joke in, I'm. I'm your woman.

Seriously, like, sometimes I will go through, and that's. Okay. Okay, wait. I wasn't agreeing with the first part.

I was skipping over the first part and just saying if you need a joke somewhere, Aaron is the person to put the joke in there. That's what I mean. That's not fair, you guys.

Wow.

I think she's red for me.

No, no, she doesn't get red.

I get red. Yeah. Oh, I get red. I get red. I wasn't being mean. I would never.

All right, all right. So Besides books two and three, what's the next big thing for Es Rosalind?

Oh, besides that. This is the next best thing.

The next best.

This is the. The big thing that we're doing. We launch on June 2nd. So this is the first of three.

The series is called A Series of Serendipities, and the first book is called a novel, Chance, and it follows two characters. James, who is a teacher and a part time, part time contractor. You also learn that he has another little, little secret job throughout the book.

That becomes sort of a plot line throughout the book. And he. What else? So it's about him and our main. Our female main character, and her name is Ivy, and she's a bookshop owner. So she's new to town.

She owns the bookshop.

And all of the chaos that ensues that you can imagine, because we have a regular cast of 5th grade students that are in the book, throughout the book, and they just add so much life to the story.

Oh, and our club.

Oh, yeah, we have a book club. They're old and their name is. They're. They're called the Saucy Seniors. And guess what? They're. Guess what Their. Their icon is in their logo.

Rich, guess what.

Don't even say me.

Guess. No, it's not you.

Well, you said it's you with the.

And now you're red. You're welcome. Holding a chili pepper. That is the logo for the Saucy Seniors.

I'm sorry, what is it?

It's actually a chili pepper, but now it's going to be your face holding.

Oh, God.

You know, I'm gonna go make a.

Logo beard and then a.

A chili pepper.

Why do I. Why do I punish myself like this?

Just leave it.

Leave it out there in the open. I mean, I said, guess who the icon is. And you sent me. You started.

Because you said old. You said it's old people book club.

Yeah.

You all say I'm older. Both of you always say I'm older than dirt.

I never. Aaron said that a couple times. Whoa, whoa.

Not those words. Specifically those words. Adjacent.

Yes. Ish. If you would. Yeah.

Wow.

I didn't.

All right, so something.

But wait until I get you a T shirt of the new Saucy Seniors icon. Their. Their logo. And it may or may not have your face. Chef's kiss right there.

Whether it does or does or doesn't. You know, I would wear it just for you to promote it. I wear a size small.

Oh, okay. Okay.

All right.

You're right. All right, so something important. Where can people purchase the book and also follow you guys?

So you can purchase the book on Amazon. You can search us, es Rosalind, you can find our [email protected] and we actually are going to be out and about all year.

We have so many events this year. I think we have eight or nine, which is the most events we've ever done in a year together.

I mean, we are kicking off this series and trying to do a you, you know, really hard push for book one. And we are going to have really beautiful special editions with us every time we're out.

And those of you listening, you know what I'm going to tell you. When you purchase the book, make sure you leave a full review and purchase copies for other people and also follow them on Amazon.

Because this way, if you purchase a lot of your books from Amazon, Amazon will notify you when the new books come out.

And there are two more coming after that, so you'll want to be notified. That's a great. It's a great point, Rich.

Yeah, I never noticed that or knew that. And then when I started following authors, it was like. And then Lexi will say, rich, so and so has released a new copy.

Would you like to put it in your cart?

Did you just call her Lexi?

Well, I don't want to say her name out loud because she'll. Come on.

Okay. So that was intentional. That wasn't.

Yes.

That wasn't an old man joke.

I was just checking the face. I know.

I think I'm gonna take that face and put it on the.

The Saucy Sea.

That was a good one.

Oh, God.

We're gonna give him, like, a hat with a chili pepper on it, I think. Yes. Oh, that's what it's gonna be. It's gonna be rich and a hat with the chili. The beard.

And a hat with the chili pepper on it.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

That's a good one, too.

There we go. We're. See, we're brainstorming with you, and you.

Keep inviting us back. I don't. Yeah. Wait a minute.

Is it going to be the goatee or the Santa beard?

Probably this part. Well, how much? I don't know. Like, you do have the Santa beard longer, right? Because that starts in like.

Oh, yeah. I start doing that June 1, then.

Make probably the Santa beard. I would think. Don't worry. We'll capture your likeness.

That's what scares me. I want to thank you both. God,.

You're thanking us for this?

No. You know what? You know, with everything going on today, with these storms, I needed this. God, I needed this. I needed a good. Oh, God.

Thanks for listening to the author pitch. I'm Rich Bennett, and until next time, keep turning pages and discovering new voices.

Thanks, Rich.

Thank you.