Welcome to author DJ Jamison and the Buyer’s Remorse blog tour! We’re happy to have DJ joining us today to share a bit about the book, including an excerpt, as well as the chance for one lucky reader to win an eCopy of book one in the series, Full Disclosure. This is a comment-to-enter giveaway, so be sure to check out the prompt question below!

I’m happy to be here today celebrating the release of BUYER’S REMORSE, book 2 in my Real Estate Relations series that blends romance and mystery!

I love reading romantic mystery, but it’s a relatively new thing for me to write it. And it can be unnerving, wondering if you’ve created a mystery that’s interesting and also plausible. And as we all know, truth can be a great place to start for fiction.

I started my research for Buyer’s Remorse by looking into stories about synthetic drugs. Buyer’s Remorse is a term commonly used in real estate for a buyer who’s having second thoughts about their purchase. Since this series has a strong real estate angle (that research was easy considering it’s my husband’s profession!), it seemed like the perfect title. And I liked the idea of how Buyer’s Remorse could apply to drug use, as well.

My research led me to the news report that I loosely based my mystery on. In North Dakota, a couple of teens died after taking a mysterious drug. Officers discovered it was a synthetic drug not yet among the list of controlled substances and were able to track it to the dealer. The drugs came from a company overseas to a US man who’d launched a sort of drug boutique online to the people who’d directly given or sold the drugs to the teens who died.

Obviously, Buyer’s Remorse has significant differences in how the situation plays out and is resolved. But by researching true crime, I could be certain the mystery I delivered was plausible as something that might happen in real life.

As to whether it’s entertaining, well, I guess you’ll just have to read it and judge for yourself!

I’ve brought an excerpt today from early in the book, when Lee and Miguel discover a dead girl in a building for sale that Lee was hoping to purchase. You’ll see that Lee, as a more jaded character, is coping with cynicism, while Miguel — far more naive when it comes to criminal activity — is really shaken.

I hope you enjoy =)

About the Book

Will love persevere when the truth comes out? 

LEE

I changed my name, but I can’t change what I did. My brothers died, and I spent three years in witness protection. Returning to Fields, where I once hid out, feels right. Seeing Miguel again feels even better. But when a dead body interrupts my tour of a building for sale, my start isn’t as fresh as I’d like.

MIGUEL

I’ve been trying to curb my habit of leaping into bad relationships, but when Lee comes back to town, he’s hard to resist. Kids are dying, and life’s too short to shy away from a good thing. But will Lee’s mysterious past come back to bite me?

Between police questioning and trials of trust, it’s far from smooth sailing. If we don’t figure out who’s selling synthetic drugs and convince the police Lee is not their man, we may all have a severe case of buyer’s remorse.

**Buyer’s Remorse is a romantic mystery of approximately 80,000 words. It can be read as a standalone, but it has backstory that links back to Full Disclosure, Book 1 in the series, so for the most enjoyment, you should read them in order.

Buy the Book Here

The Excerpt

MIGUEL

While Lee prowled the room and asked me the occasional question about square footage, storage, and more about why Kay Forester had shut down the place (she’d found traveling more appealing than making my favorite roast beef/cream cheese/roasted bell pepper sandwich, sadly), I skimmed the property disclosure on file to be sure I didn’t forget to tell him anything. Glancing up, I noticed he’d gone into the kitchen.

“How’s the kitchen look?” I called.

He didn’t answer.

I approached the door, pushing it open. “Lee? Something wrong?”

“That was not in the property description,” he said in an odd tone of voice. Sort of strangled.

I stepped up behind him, looking over his shoulder to see what he meant. Then jerked back in shock, stumbling into the stainless-steel cabinets behind me. “Jesus! Is that … is she …?”

Swallowing hard against nausea, I stared at a young woman lying on the floor. My gaze darted to her, then away, then back. No matter how many times I looked at her, though, the sight didn’t make sense to my brain. I couldn’t really focus on what I was seeing because it was just so … wrong.

“Dead,” Lee confirmed.

Bile rose in my throat as the smell overpowered me. She was rotting already. She didn’t look decomposed, but she’d been here long enough to smell, which meant—

I ran from the room.

LEE

I followed Miguel outside, breathing easier in the fresh air. I’d been so focused on his reaction, I hadn’t realized how affected I’d been to see that girl lifeless on the floor. Pushing down my own nausea, I watched him heave into the bushes.

That wasn’t in the property description. How cold-hearted could I sound? I’d been surprised, and as usual, my brain-to-mouth filter had failed me. I turned sarcastic when unsettled, and it’d gotten me into trouble more than once.

Maybe Miguel was so shocked he didn’t notice? He was certainly preoccupied now, what with heaving up his breakfast and all.

I approached where he bent over the decorative shrubbery in his sharp suit. “Okay?”

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “She was dead.”

“Yeah.”

The worst I’d expected to see today were signs of cockroaches or mice. Maybe some wood rot or mold. The best? Miguel’s handsome face. It was as if no time had passed. While I felt decades older, he looked the same: thick, wavy dark hair that made my fingers twitch with the urge to run through it, a layer of stubble I wouldn’t mind scraping along my throat, and a boyish grin that caused major indigestion (because butterflies did not flap around in my gut).

Just now, he also had a sheen of sweat on his forehead that was less attractive. Poor guy.

Miguel straightened, using his shirt cuff to wipe his lips, and I had to resist the urge to offer my sleeve, just a ratty hoodie I’d tossed over a T-shirt, unlike Miguel’s sharp suit. I’d been determined not to dress to impress Miguel. I’d figured the building would be dirty, and I might be poking my head into a crawl space or an attic.

Dead bodies hadn’t figured into my plans.

I should have known better than to get my hopes up. The place had seemed perfect, but anytime something seemed too good to be true, it was, well, not good. At least, in my life, that’s how it went. One day you were a new graduate with a shiny business degree and the next you were creating a business plan for a drug operation with your delinquent brothers instead of joining your father’s investment firm, which had gone bankrupt anyway.

“How did she die?” Miguel asked, looking troubled. “Was there … did you see?”

“There was no blood,” I said.

“So, it wasn’t a murder?” Miguel asked hopefully.

The flecks of vomit around her lips suggested a drug overdose or possibly alcohol poisoning, but there was no vomit on the floor that I’d seen.

“I don’t know,” I answered.

Miguel leaned back against the building beside me, reaching into his inner breast pocket to withdraw a cell phone. “Sorry, I know you’re not the expert on dead bodies. I’ll call 911.”

Not an expert, no, but I’d seen more death than I’d ever wanted to see. There weren’t supposed to be anymore dead bodies in my life. No drugs, no guns, no crime. Just tasty sandwiches and business plans on the right side of the law.

So much for that.

The Giveaway

Today, I’ll offer a copy of Full Disclosure, book 1 in the series, to three random winners! To enter, comment with your favorite mystery writer. Mine is a tie between JL Merrow and Josh Lanyon in the M/M genre.

About the Author

DJ Jamison is the author of more than a dozen m/m romances, including the Ashe Sentinel series and the Hearts and Health series. She writes a variety of queer characters, from gay to bisexual to asexual, with a focus on telling love stories that are more about common ground than lust at first sight. DJ grew up in the Midwest in a working-class family, and those influences can be found in her writing through characters coping with real-life problems: money troubles, workplace drama, family conflicts and, of course, falling in love. DJ spent more than a decade in the newspaper industry before chasing her first dream to write fiction. She spent a lifetime reading before that, and continues to avidly devour her fellow authors’ books each night. She lives in Kansas with her husband, two sons, two fish and, regrettably, one snake.

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