Outspoken by Lora Richardson Book Spotlight

Title:  Outspoken

Standalone novel

Published: August 16, 2015

Summary:  

Penny Beck is a girl who says yes when she means no.  She keeps to herself, follows the rules, and does what she’s told.  After a disastrous experience with her boyfriend, she's determined to change from the spineless person she’s always been into the strong woman she wants to become.  All she needs is a little practice.  

 

On a cross-country trip to check on her grandpa, she strives to become bolder and more outspoken with the strangers she meets.  Penny's plan is to practice saying and doing what she wants without worrying about what anyone else thinks.

 

Then she meets Archer, an introspective loner to whom she finds herself drawn.  She realizes she does care what he thinks, very much.  Will Penny be able to stick to her plan, or will she revert back to her people-pleasing ways?

Excerpt

Her first list was finished.  The other one had two more items Penny had yet to find:  pickled eggs and canned tuna.  She walked back and forth at the end of the aisles, peering down each one and searching the shelves.  She didn’t even know what pickled eggs might look like.  Were they canned?  She got out her phone and started an image search for pickled eggs.

“I can help you find something, if you want,” a deep voice said from behind her, startling her.  “What are you looking for?”

She turned around.  Archer stood with his arms crossed over his chest, leaning against the meat cooler at the end of the aisle.  She didn’t know how he did it, but he made the green polo look spectacular.

“Pickled eggs.”  She tried to force her cheeks not to flush.  Those had to be the first words she ever said to him?

He pushed off from the cooler, and walked over to aisle six.  Penny followed.  As they walked, she gauged his height.  Her eyes had a great view of his armpit.  She sighed.  All through high school her height had gotten her dubbed as cute.  She feared she’d never be seen as a grown woman.

Archer stopped in the middle of the aisle, and she pushed her cart up beside him.  He pointed to a big glass jar of pink eggs.  They looked like specimens in formaldehyde.  Whale eyeballs.  It took two hands to grab a jar of them, and she put them in her cart.

“Thanks,” she said, but he was already gone.

Author Bio

Lora Richardson always dreamed of being a writer.  As a child, she wrote stories on her mom’s typewriter, and bound them with cardboard and tape.  She put away the stories for a time, but now that her own children are old enough to give her bits of quiet time here and there, she decided to make her dream of writing a novel come true.  

She lives in Indiana with her husband, two children, and two guinea pigs.  She spends her time reading, writing, homeschooling her kids, and hanging out with her people.

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