A warm welcome to Kelly Haworth joining us today here at love bytes on her riptide blog tour for her debut book “Y Negative”.
Welcome Kelly 🙂

Hi guys! I’m Kelly Haworth here with my debut release Y NEGATIVE. At various stops on this book tour, I’ll be sharing with you what it’s like to live in Ember’s world: where mascs rule and a guy’s gotta fight for his right to live and love freely. Posts will range from what the difference between a masc and an andro is, to what on earth a guy does for fun in a dystopia. Hope you come along for this in-depth look. You’ll also have a chance to win a $20 Riptide voucher!

Please follow the tour to check out all the stops.

Bundles of Joy – Surrogacy in Y Negative

You’ve probably gotten the sense from the blurb that Ember lives in a very different world than ours. And I’ve mentioned it briefly in an earlier tour stop, but for those just stopping in, his world has an uneven distribution of sexes: only 20-25% biologically female. To add to this, the grand majority of the world’s relationships are homosexual. So surrogates are not only a necessity for the population to remain stable, but a required duty for all Y negatives.

Masc couples will petition to have biological children, and a young Y negative is “hired” to carry their child. I put hired in quotes because they aren’t really given much of a choice. Registration for surrogacy service is mandatory when a Y negative turns sixteen. And then he can expect to carry from 3-6 babies, depending on how things go.

Ember had six surrogacies, each one requiring dozens of hospital trips and recovery periods out of school. These bouts of helplessness and the lack of control only added to the already-painful life of being considered lower status, barely worthy of being called a “he” instead of an “it”.

Now, Y negatives (and their parents) are compensated for the inconvenience of being/caring for surrogates. That’s better than nothing, but obviously pales in comparison to the difficulties not only in carrying a child but also in the social stigma against pregnant Y negatives. Many mascs don’t want to see where their babies come from, and once the surrogates are far enough along, it’s much less stressful to simply avoid situations where all the mascs around you give you disgusted looks.

The consequences of being a surrogate and being in and out of the hospital for the latter half of his teenage years has a lasting impact on him and the role he ultimately gets to play in society when he get older.  Many are delayed in graduating high school by a year or two. Y negatives are discouraged from going to college, and once they transition and become andros, their ability to afford college while also paying for testosterone becomes insurmountable without parental assistance.  Ultimately, an andro learns that his place is likely going to be in a service job: food or retail or janitorial for example.

But of course, he shouldn’t have to accept that fate.  Ember sure didn’t, choosing instead to continue to follow his childhood passion for electronics and tinkering with technology.  He doesn’t have a college education, but thanks to some help from his father, he’s learned what he needs to have a successful business as a freelance computer technician.

Being born Y negative in Ember’s world means having your whole life already decided for you, a neat little path that leads through surrogacies, to an under-paid and under-appreciated services job, to maybe having a life-long relationship with another andro.  Ember pretty much said screw you to all of that, and blazed his own path.  I think we all can learn a little something about ambition from that.

Thanks for joining me on this stop of the tour, I hope to see you at the next stop!

About the Book

In the last surviving cities of a ruined world, the concept of “woman” has been forgotten to history. Those unfortunate enough to lack a Y chromosome live as second-class citizens in a world dominated by mascs.

Ember is Y negative. He is scorned, bullied, abused by every masc he encounters, at work and at the gym. Not even his Y negative roommate cuts him any slack. He wants so desperately to be accepted as a masc that he’d rather buy black market testosterone than food. Something’s gotta give—he needs a change in his life, but has no idea how to find it.

Jess is a masc with a passion for studying the recovery of their devastated world. His boyfriend is pressuring him for more commitment, and his father expects him to take over the family business. He can’t wait to get away from civilization for his seasonal research out in the wild.

When Jess offers Ember a job, their lives collide in the isolated wasteland, and their initial attraction turns into a relationship that horrifies those around them. Soon their struggle to stay together and to be who they are turns into a fight for their lives.

Buy Links:

Riptide Publishing

Amazon

Kelly Haworth grew up in San Francisco and has been reading science fiction and fantasy classics since she was a kid. She developed way too active an imagination as a result, thus, she started writing. Being genderfluid and pansexual, she loves to write LGBTQ+ characters in genres such as science fiction with diverse aliens, and urban fantasies with shifters and fire sorcerers. With degrees in both genetics and psychology, she works as a project manager at a genetics lab. When not working or writing, she can be found wrangling her toddler, working on cosplay, or curled up on the couch with a good TV show or a good book.

Connect with Kelly:

• Website: kellyhaworth.com
• Twitter: @KellyLHaworth
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KLHaworthBooks/

The Giveaway

To celebrate the release of Y Negative, Kelly is giving away $20 in Riptide Publishing credit! Your first comment at each stop on this tour enters you in the drawing. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on November 21, 2015. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. Entries. Follow the tour for more opportunities to enter the giveaway! Don’t forget to leave your email or method of contact so Riptide can reach you if you win!