Today we are proud to be the last stop on the Roped In Blog tour by Authors Marie Sexton & L.A Witt
Stop by to find out both authors view on working together and enter the giveaway on the bottom 🙂
Blurb:
Graham and his roping partner Jackson have ruled the rodeo scene for ten years running, but lately, Graham’s heart isn’t in the game. He’s tired of the bruises, the cowboy mentality, and the animal rights activists who picket every event. And then there’s Jackson.
Graham and Jackson have been friends since they were boys. But ever since their drunken sexual encounter the year before, things have been awkward. Graham’s accepted that he might be gay, but no matter how attracted he is to other men, he always panics and runs when the clothes start to come off.
Then Graham has a run-in with one of the rodeo protesters, and everything changes. Kaz is young, idealistic, and sexy as hell. And Kaz has an idea for getting Graham past his nerves and into bed.
All they need is a bit of rope.
Guestpost :
Hi there! Lori and Marie here today, talking about our first co-written book, Roped In. Whenever co-writing comes up, two questions get asked: 1) Why? 2) How?
The ‘why?’ part is easy. While this is the first book Lori and I have written together, we both have several previous titles written with other authors, and we’ve both learned that co-writing can really be a fun kick in the pants. Writing a book with a friend means half the work and double the enthusiasm. In many ways, it’s a win-win proposition, assuming you work well together.
But that, of course, is the real crux of the issue, and leads right into the second question. How exactly did this work?
I don’t actually remember how this story came about. I know Lori and I had been saying for two years that we should write together someday, but she’s always busy, and I’m frequently distracted, and it didn’t happen for a long time. But then one day… I don’t know. I probably asked Lori what she had coming up (because she’s always tackling ten projects at once), and when I heard one of them was an “opposites attract” story, maybe I raised my hand and said, “I’ll help!”
Is that what happened?
Lori: Yep, that’s pretty much what happened. I’d been wanting to write something with Marie for a long time, and when she offered to help me lighten my workload by co-writing something, I was all for it. Marie came up with the idea of an animal rights activist protesting a rodeo, and from there, we got the idea of hooking him up with a cowboy. Then the bondage angle came into play, and, well, the story pretty much fell together.
It was remarkably easy, too. We opened a live Google doc and just went for it, which Lori has done before, but it was a new method for me. We’d stop occasionally to chat about exactly how we wanted a scene to play out, or what we wanted the conflict to look like, but mostly we just wrote. I don’t think we ran into trouble or disagreed even once.
Lori: Nope, everything went smoothly. We both had different ideas at times, but that’s just part of brainstorming. There was never any head-butting or arguing at all.
And, as Lori said, the story just came together. It practically wrote itself. On our own, neither of us writes in order, but when co-writing, we thought it made more sense to write start to finish. It mostly worked, although occasionally I’d get antsy and say, “I have to skip to the rimming!” and Lori would patiently fill stuff in behind me until she caught up with me.
Lori: We did skip around a bit, but it *mostly* happened in sequence. There’s one scene I wrote on my own because it deals with horsey things that I’m more familiar with, and I’m pretty sure there was a scene Marie did on her own, but my memory is really foggy about anything that happened prior to lunchtime today, so I could be wrong.
That sounds right. I think there was a bit with Jackson that I was dying to write. I developed a real soft spot for him. I think I got up early one morning and cranked it out, because I couldn’t wait to get the words on the page.
I also remember that with one of the sex scenes, I wanted to write one part and Marie was chomping at the bit to write the other (as she mentioned above), so we basically said, “I’ll write the blowjob, you write the rimming. Go!”
And we’d have chat going at the same time, so we could say things like, “I need him to have his pants off by the time he gets into the bedroom,” or, “You want his hands tied in front of him, or behind him?”
The awesome thing about co-writing, especially in real-time, is that it tends to go very quickly. Normally, when I write alone, I’ll write a few paragraphs, then hit kind of a lull. Or I’ll get stuck and have to stop and think. With co-writing, as soon as I hit that lull, I can hand the reins over to my co-writer, who then writes until s/he hits a lull. Do that back and forth for a few hours, you end up with loads more words than you would have on your own. Plus it’s great fun. Even if you and your co-writer know where the story is going, you’ll surprise each other constantly, which keeps things very interesting.
And by the time we finished, we were already planning another book, because poor Jackson deserves a HEA. Hopefully we’ll get to that one this summer.
Thanks for hanging out with us today, and check out Roped In. 🙂
About the authors:
Marie Sexton lives in Colorado. She’s a fan of just about anything that involves muscular young men piling on top of each other. In particular, she loves the Denver Broncos and enjoys going to the games with her husband. Her imaginary friends often tag along. Marie has one daughter, two cats, and one dog, all of whom seem bent on destroying what remains of her sanity. She loves them anyway.
Website: http://mariesexton.net/
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/MarieSexton
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarieSexton.author
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarieSexton
Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/msextonauthor/
L.A. Witt is an abnormal M/M romance writer currently living in the glamorous and ultra-futuristic metropolis of Omaha, Nebraska, with her husband, two cats, and a disembodied penguin brain that communicates with her telepathically. In addition to writing smut and disturbing the locals, L.A. is said to be working with the US government to perfect a genetic modification that will allow humans to survive indefinitely on Corn Pops and beef jerky. This is all a cover, though, as her primary leisure activity is hunting down her arch nemesis, erotica author Lauren Gallagher, who is also said to be lurking somewhere in Omaha.
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).
$20 Amazon Giftcard and 1 ebook from EACH of the authors’ backlists (2 books total)
Check out Vicki’s 4 star review on Roped In here:
https://lovebytesreviews.com/2014/04/18/pre-release-review-roped-in-by-marie-sexton-l-a-witt/
I ejoyed reading the interview I can’t wait to read the book.
ShirleyAnn@speakman40.freeserve.co.uk
I’m a big fan of both authors. It’s nice to hear that they plan on writing another story together.
Great article & the story sounds wonderful!
Great interview. Thanks for the giveaway.
Great interview! Looking forward to reading the book!
It’s been a great tour…good luck with the release!
Looking forward to see if I can figure out who wrote what.
Sounds like an amazing story. Thanks for the chance to read it.
Love both authors and cant wait to read this!!
Interesting to read about how you collaborated on the book. Thanks for the giveaway.
Looking forward to reading.
I enjoy these two author’s books and can’t wait to see what they have done together. Thanks for the chance at winning a copy.
Awwwww… the last stop. This has been such a fun tour and it makes me sad to see it over. 🙁 Thank you for all the great interviews, excerpts and giveaways. Congratulations!
I loved reading the post. It makes the book reading so much better.
I love rope in stories 🙂
The cover is really nice and good interview.
really want to read this 🙂
Thanks for the interview. 🙂
Loved the interview. Awesome that you can work so cohesively. I have been really eager to read this.