Today on Love Bytes we have author L.A. Witt with her blog tour for Rain Shadows.

Thanks for joining us here, L.A.

Blurb:

Jeremy Rose came to Bluewater Bay to work as Anna Maxwell’s bodyguard, not to escape his increasingly bitter relationship with his estranged kids. He just wants to focus on his job and be alone for a while. He’s done with love, especially now that three years after his long overdue divorce, he’s got a front-row seat to the rapid deterioration between Anna and her girlfriend. Cynical doesn’t even begin to describe him.

Then Anna and Leigh’s attempts to reconcile put him in the crosshairs of marriage counselor Scott Fletcher. Scott’s exactly what Jeremy needs right now: gorgeous, hot, horny, single, and 100% uninterested in a relationship. The problem is, too much no-strings-attached sex — and too much time in each other’s company — inevitably builds emotional connection.

Except Jeremy refuses to seek counseling for his broken family, and Scott refuses to get seriously involved with men who work dangerous jobs. They both need to realize they can only hide for so long from the pain they came here to escape. They must face their pasts before they lose their shot at a happy future.

Rain Shadow is available from Riptide Publishing.

Older Characters vs Younger Characters

Rain Shadow, like a number of books I’ve written in the last couple of years, does not feature twenty-something lads with six-packs and the endurance of an entire rugby team. Lately, my boys have been heading well into their forties. I still write the younger guys, of course, but there’s something to be said for the finely-aged gentlemen.

Writing older guys is definitely different, particularly in LGBT books. Of course they have more experience with the world in general, but that doesn’t necessarily apply to their experience with other men. Some guys have been out for decades. Some, though, don’t figure it out until later. Maybe they were raised in a homophobic environment. Maybe they were just scared. Maybe they were in denial.

So sometimes, you wind up with an older guy who doesn’t have a lot of experience with men. Jeremy, the protagonist of Rain Shadow, is in his early forties, but has only been involved with men since his divorce three years ago. He knew he was gay before that, but denial kept him in the closet. That, and he and his wife worried about how a divorce would affect their kids, so they tried—with disastrous results—to stay together.

Scott, on the other hand, has been out for over twenty years. Same with some of the guys in my other books. Rick and Jon from Not Safe For Work are both in their mid-forties and have been out for quite a while. Ethan and Rhett from The Distance Between Us have been out for at least fifteen years.

But there are others like Jeremy, too. Greg from my current work-in-progress, To Live Again, has been married for twenty-five years, but now that he’s (rather unexpectedly) divorced at forty-seven, he figures now’s as good a time as any to explore those fantasies he’s been keeping a secret all this time. Like Jeremy, he has loads of life experience—they’re both parents of mostly grown kids, they’ve got years of marriage under their belts, not to mention long term careers—but when it comes to dudes? Totally new.

So that’s a fun thing to explore—the older guy who’s relatively recently come out of the closet, trying to navigate a different kind of sex life and a different kind of relationship. There’s a sense of having more to lose, I guess. They’ve got careers and families to think about, where a younger guy might be a bit less established and set in his ways. The younger guy might be more willing to take a risk on a potentially disastrous relationship, or make some huge life change like moving across the country, where an older one might balk because . . . I mean, seriously. Do you know how much work it is to move across the country at the drop of a hat? And jumping into a relationship that could quite possibly go down in flames . . . exhausting.

Also, the older guys tend to creak and groan a bit more during sex scenes. Which can actually be funny. Nothing spices up a roll in the hay like “Was that your back or my knee that just popped?”

The list could go on and on, and obviously nothing is universal, but those are just some interesting tidbits about older versus younger characters.

So what say you, readers? Do you like them young and wild? Or finely-aged?

L.A. Witt is an abnormal M/M romance writer who has finally been released from the purgatorial corn maze of Omaha, Nebraska, and now spends her time on the southwestern coast of Spain. In between wondering how she didn’t lose her mind in Omaha, she explores the country with her husband, several clairvoyant hamsters, and an ever-growing herd of rabid plot bunnies. She also has substantially more time on her hands these days, as she has recruited a small army of mercenaries to search South America for her nemesis, romance author Lauren Gallagher, but don’t tell Lauren. And definitely don’t tell Lori A. Witt or Ann Gallagher. Neither of those twits can keep their mouths shut…

L.A.’s backlist is available on her website, and updates (as well as random thoughts and the odd snarky comment) can be found on her blog or on Twitter (@GallagherWitt).

Every comment on this blog tour enters you in a drawing for a choice of two eBooks off my backlist (excluding Rain Shadow) and a $10 Riptide Publishing store credit. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on October 24^th, and winners will be announced on October 26^th. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries.