Audrey
Sean-Paul Thomas
Publication date: May 21st 2021
Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Romance
From the author of My Sister and I and The Old Man and The Princess (recently optioned to be a motion picture) – comes a new, suspenseful romantic tale that will knock you off your feet. A story that has a reminiscence of ‘500 days of Summer’ and ‘Midnight in Paris’ with a fair dollop of ‘The Graduate’ thrown in. And of course Audrey, a delightful, older female protagonist who takes the young and wayward ex-con Joe under her wing.
Just out of prison Joe, a young builder from Edinburgh who writes movie scripts in his spare time, randomly meets Audrey, a washed-up, hard-drinking, chain-smoking, middle-aged French film actress at his local film festival. After hitting it off and spending one crazy, magical night together, Audrey sees some potential in Joe and his writing and tries to help him win back his estranged daughter by getting his first screenplay made into a movie in Paris. And so, the adventure of a lifetime begins…
Goodreads / Amazon
EXCERPT
“Don’t
say that. Jesus. You were brilliant up there. And you barely look a day over
twenty-nine.” Joe said with a reassuring grin. Audrey’s eyes widened and she
smiled with delight at the compliment.
“Well
the dim lighting out here in this dark alleyway is fantastic, yes?” she teased.
“It hides all of my lovely wrinkles and skin imperfections.”
“Okay,”
Joe said rolling his eyes. “Maybe thirty-five then when you were outside
earlier in the natural light,” Joe said, teasing her back, trying his best to
flirt with her now, but it had been such a long time since he’d played the
flirting game with anyone, that he didn’t even know if he was doing it right
anymore. They both chuckled at his words and Audrey even slapped him lightly on
the arm. Joe took it as a pretty good sign that she enjoyed his rusty flirting
banter, even if she was only humouring him. He was just about to ask her
something else. Something a little bit deeper and meaningful. That was when the
festival host suddenly appeared through the fire escape, desperately searching
for Audrey. Joe realised instantly that he was coming to steal her away even
before he gave Joe a quick dismissive look.
“Miss
Beart? We need to take some more pictures now. Can you please come back
inside?”
Joe
had never felt so gutted before in his life. It was like the brick alley walls
around him were all crumbling in and there was nothing he could do to stop the
imminent disaster. They both hesitated and looked deeply into each other’s eyes
like they knew they had so much more to say and ask of the other. At first, the
festival host just assumed that Joe was only a starstruck fan and would be
dropped by Audrey like a hot piece of coal effective immediately at the host’s
mere white-knight presence in front of them. But after a long but comfortable
silence, even Joe felt surprised that Audrey was still standing there and
hadn’t made her excuses to leave already.
“So…”
She finally uttered with that cute and delightful smile of hers, which was
directed straight at him once again. “It would appear as if they remembered who
I am after all…”
Audrey
threw her almost finished cigarette down onto the ground and stamped it out
with her shoe.
“I
guess it was nice meeting you then… Joseph…”
“Please,
just call me Joe”
“Hey,
Joe, what do you know?” Audrey replied right back at him with a playful smile
and a casual wink.
“You
too, Audrey. It was an absolute pleasure,” was all Joe could fire back even
though he wanted to say a million and one other things.
There
was another fleeting second of hesitation. Joe didn’t want her to go anywhere
and he knew she could feel it too, but in the end, he felt utterly powerless to
make her stay. Who the hell was he to demand such a thing? In a normal world of
boy-meets-girl, this would have been the ideal time to ask for her number or
e-mail address or at least add her on bloody Facebook. But Joe did nothing. Not
only was he well out of practice on the boy-meets-girl market front, but who
the hell was he to ask anything of her? Joe knew he didn’t belong there. He
knew he didn’t belong in Audrey’s world at that particular moment in time. He
hadn’t yet earned that kind of accolade or respect as an artist. He was a
nobody, and she was a somebody. Joe lived in Edinburgh as an ex-con, part-time
plumber, and a starving writer and she lived in the vibrant, stunning, and
equally chaotic city of Paris, or so he’d read on her IMDB page, deep within
the magical film world that Joe hadn’t even begun earning the right of entry
into. Plus, it felt even more awkward to him with the festival host still
impatiently leering over them, still wondering why on earth Audrey hadn’t made
her excuses and left with him yet, but at the same time not wishing to appear
verbally rude by enforcing her to come back into the cinema.
“Good
luck with the movie, too, and your writing.” Joe finally added, still not
taking his eyes away from the middle-aged beauty.
“Merci Beaucoup,” Audrey replied, still gazing right
at him before finally turning away and beginning to make her idle move back
through the fire exit doors and into the cinema. “See you then,” she continued
in a tone that suggested if Joe would only man the hell up and ask her to meet
him later that evening for a drink or a late-night coffee so they could chat
some more about movies, writing, or whatever the hell other life subjects that
came up, then she would absolutely and positively accept his invitation. But
Joe didn’t say another damn word, because Joe wasn’t that bold, or charming, or
confident. Had he ever been? Yes, perhaps, once upon a time, before five long
years of living in a lonely cell had robbed him of some crucial part of his
personality and socialising skills to the extent where two minutes conversing
with a French film actress convinced him that was two minutes more than what he
actually deserved. Then, to the cinema host’s deep frustrations, Audrey
suddenly paused at the fire exit door for much longer than he would have liked.
“What
are you doing later, Joe?” Audrey asked out of the blue. Joe found himself
utterly taken aback by her question, but quickly composed himself with a sharp,
cool, and confident response that he would thank himself for in the not too
distant future.
“Nothing
I can’t get out of. Why, what do you have in mind?”
“Can
you show me where to buy some cigarettes around here?”
“Aye.
I can do that.” Joe replied, utterly delighted but trying his best to hold it
in.
“Good.
Why don’t you meet me out front in say… thirty minutes, and I’ll maybe even let
you show me around your wonderful city, too, if you’re lucky?” Audrey said,
finishing with a wink.
Joe
smiled with utter pleasure. He couldn’t quite believe what Audrey had just
said, but he went with it all the same.
Author Bio:
Scottish Author/Screenwriter.
Sean is an author from Edinburgh in Scotland. He is the best selling Kindle Author of ‘The Old Man and The Princess’ which was recently optioned to be a major motion picture.
Sean spent most of his childhood and teenage years on the move with his Scottish and Irish army Parents growing up in the likes of Cyprus, Germany, Wales, and England, as an army brat.
With a keen interest in both reading and writing, he was diagnosed with travel and writing bugs very early in life. Now, writing, travelling, reading, cinema, and Scottish football (Supporting the mighty Edinburgh City for his sins) are his main passions in life.
His main inspiration for writing today comes from living in such a beautiful, charming and hauntingly, Gothic city, such as Edinburgh. An awe-inspiring wee city that has given him so much amazing inspiration to write the more time he spends there.
Recently, Sean has been working on a couple of screenplay adaptations of his books. One of which ‘The Old Man and The Princess’ made the final of the Nashville Film Festival Screenwriting Competition 2018 and has since been optioned by an award-winning Director /Producer team. Scheduled to go into production in Ireland in the summer of 2021 filming has been postponed until 2022 due to the recent covid pandemic.
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