Today we are proud to be a part of the blog tour on Heidi Cullinan’s latest release Carry the Ocean

Heidi shares a post on the real Roosevelt and there is also a tour wide giveaway to participate in

Welcome Heidi 🙂

Release Date: April 7, 2015

Format: Novel

Genre: Contemporary New Adult

Length: 89,300 words

Publisher: Samhain Publishing, April 14, 2015

Blurb:

The Roosevelt, Book 1

Normal is just a setting on the dryer.

High school graduate Jeremey Samson is looking forward to burying his head under the covers and sleeping until it’s time to leave for college. Then a tornado named Emmet Washington enters his life. The double major in math and computer science is handsome, forward, wicked smart, interested in dating Jeremey—and he’s autistic.

But Jeremey doesn’t judge him for that. He’s too busy judging himself, as are his parents, who don’t believe in things like clinical depression. When his untreated illness reaches a critical breaking point, Emmet is the white knight who rescues him and brings him along as a roommate to The Roosevelt, a quirky new assisted living facility nearby.

As Jeremey finds his feet at The Roosevelt, Emmet slowly begins to believe he can be loved for the man he is behind the autism. But before he can trust enough to fall head over heels, he must trust his own conviction that friendship is a healing force, and love can overcome any obstacle.

Warning: Contains characters obsessed with trains and counting, positive representations of autism and mental illness, a very dark moment, and Elwood Blues.

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The Real Roosevelts: Independent Living for Adults With Special Needs

Emmet smiled, but it was a wicked smile that made my insides jumble up. “I don’t think you should go home. You should come live in an apartment with me.”

I blinked, several times. “Live—in an apartment? Are you crazy? I thought you said you couldn’t handle that?”

“No, I’m not crazy. You shouldn’t use that word.” He rocked back and forth, but I could tell it was happy Emmet, not nervous Emmet. “I can’t live in a regular apartment, but Mom found a special kind of place for us to live. You know the old elementary school on the street north of our houses?”

I did—Roosevelt School was an old brick schoolhouse which had closed before I went to kindergarten. People had a huge fit about it closing, and four times people tried to reopen it, but it never did. There had been a lot of construction around it lately. “What about it?”

“They’re turning it into apartments. It’s called The Roosevelt now. It’ll be open soon. I asked to see the blueprints. I didn’t know about how blueprints worked exactly, but I read a book and did some research, and I think they did a good job.” He smiled his mischievous smile. “The Roosevelt was full, but Mom talked the owner into letting us have a room they were using for one of the social workers. They’ll share an apartment so we can have a place in the new building. We could move in there. Together. We could both be independent.”

                                             —Carry the Ocean

In Carry the Ocean I invent a vibrant, supportive assisted living scenario, but in real life a place like The Roosevelt is something of a unicorn. Group homes (like the Icarus House) are common, but vary in quality. Most housing for this population is funded by state and local governments, and funding is rarely abundant.

Recently, however, HUD (federal funding) has made money available for adults with disabilities to get rental assistance in some states. These kinds of funds are important because it’s difficult for this population to find employment, and it’s rarely high-paying. Care often falls to family members, but quality care is expensive. It’s often not simply a matter of a place to live, but aides to help shop and pay bills and sometimes provide day-to-day care such as dressing and cleaning.

As a whole, our culture is failing this community, especially the mentally ill. Since fiscal year 2009, states have cut more than 1.6 billion in general funds for mental health budgets. This leads to less assessment, management, and medication assistance. Federal Medicaid also cut aid to the mentally ill in 2011, making this a double whammy.

Without family aid or government intervention, adults with mental and physical special needs end up in homeless shelters or prison. Their medical treatment consists largely of emergency room visits.

Read Carissa’s Review of Carry the Ocean HERE!

Heidi Cullinan has always loved a good love story, provided it has a happy ending. She enjoys writing across many genres but loves above all to write happy, romantic endings for LGBT characters because there just aren’t enough of those stories out there. When Heidi isn’t writing, she enjoys cooking, reading, knitting, listening to music, and watching television with her husband and teenaged daughter. Heidi is a vocal advocate for LGBT rights and is proud to be from the first Midwestern state with full marriage equality. Find out more about Heidi, including her social networks, at www.heidicullinan.com.

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