AUGUST LANE

A country music heartthrob who's lost the limelight takes another run at stardom by reuniting with the uncredited writer of his only hit, the enigmatic daughter of a Black country music pioneer and the woman he's loved since they wrote songs together in high school. Mickey Guyton's "Remember Her Name" meets Seven Days in June.

Every Thursday night, 36-year-old former country music heartthrob Luke Randall has to sing "Another Love Song." God, he hates that song. But improvising acoustic covers of his decades old hit at an interstate motel lounge is the only regular money he still has. After another lackluster performance at the rock bottom of his career, Luke receives the opportunity of his dreams, opening for his childhood idol90's era Black country music star, JoJo Lane, who's being inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. He needs the money and impressing JoJo could mean a nationwide tour and a second chance at stardom. But the concert is in Arcadia, Arkansas, the small southern delta hometown he swore he'd never see again. Going back means facing a painful past of abuse and neglect. It also means facing JoJo's daughter, August Lanethe woman who wrote the hit song lyrics he's always claimed as his own. Everyone in Arcadia knows two things about August Lane. The first, is that she's JoJo Lane's prickly disaster of a daughter. The other is that she's the worst waitress in the Arkansas Delta. What they don't know is that at seventeen years old, August asked Luke Randall for two-hundred dollars in exchange for song lyrics. When Luke needed social redemption after being publicly dumped by his popular girlfriend, August convinced him the best way to win her back and sanitize his reputation was an original love song, performed grand gesture style at the Delta Music Festival amateur showcase. She insisted they meet in secret to avoid the inevitable rumors that the town pariah that ruined everything she touched was corrupting the town golden boy. The music they made together bonded them in a way that August never expected. Luke became her best friendthe only person she could talk to about the humiliating rumors about her sex life or the painful ambivalence of her famous mother. But the summer before their senior year, Luke left town without a word. A year later, the song she wrote for him became the lonely cowboy anthem of 2003, and August was too embarrassed about being the latest invisible Black songwriter propping up a white singer to tell anyone that those words were really hers. Now she hates that stupid song. And she hates Luke Randall even more. When he shows up twenty years too late tries to apologize for lying about "Another Love Song," August isn't interested in receiving credit for a song she despises. Instead, she offers him penance: he can co-write and perform a new song at the concert, something that will launch her out of her mother's shadow and into a songwriting career beyond Arcadia's limits. Desperate to make up for the pain he's caused, Luke agrees to put on the rogue performance during JoJo's show, despite the risk of losing his shot at a tour and new record deal. When Luke's guitar reunites with August's torchlit alto, neither can deny that the spark that drew them together as teenagers is still there. But while finally facing her fears of being compared to her famous mother pushes August further away from the prison of her small-town life, Luke slowly rediscovers everything he left behind when he ran away. Like his passion for the bluesy folk, he abandoned for the country pop voice that wasn't his. And his decades-old, unrequited love for the only woman who could put those feelings into words. As the concert nears, August will have to choose between an overdue public reckoning with the boy who betrayed her or trusting the man he's become to write a different love song. AUGUST LANE is a dual POV romance told in alternating timelines, with snippets of interviews from members of the Arcadia community. The book explores themes of small town, Black southern life and the visibility of Black women's voices in country music. Regina Black is a former civil litigator, current law school administrator, and lifelong romance reader who has always been passionate about the depiction of Black women in popular culture. She currently resides in the southeastern United States with her husband and daughter.