A warm welcome to author J.E Birk joining us today to talk about new Riptide release “Dating Ryan Alback”.

J.E talks about snark and there is a giveaway to participate in.

Welcome J.E 🙂

Sneaking in the Teacher Snark

 

Writing Dating Ryan Alback gave me the chance to experiment with a lot of different things. It was first time writing a full-on romantic comedy. My first time writing in an animal as a major character. (More on that in another blog post.) And my first time writing a main character who was a teacher.

Hooo boy, was I excited.

 

In case you haven’t already guessed, I myself am a teacher. Unsurprisingly, I share many things in common with Jason Santos, such as a passion for my career and my students which is only outweighed by my frustration for educational bureaucracy. We also share a pattern of drinking too many margaritas with our favorite co-workers on Friday nights.

 

My favorite part of writing Jason was, without a doubt, writing his teacher snark. Not sure what teacher snark is? It’s basically everything we teachers end up saying over those Friday night margaritas—and sometimes in staff meetings and during school board meetings if we’re not filtering ourselves properly. Jason’s got plenty of good teacher snark in Dating Ryan Alback, and almost all of it is either things I’ve said or things I wish I had said. That moment in chapter two where Jason keeps pointing out typos on the district’s Powerpoint slides about standardized tests? Yeah, that definitely happened in one of my staff meetings.

 

Like me, Jason is far from the perfect teacher. He makes mistakes and gets obsessive and I suspect that, like me, he second-guesses everything his substitutes do while he’s away. But he genuinely loves having the privilege of getting up every morning to go to a school and teach students how to read and write, and the fact that we share that love made him great fun to write. So much fun that I suspect you’ll be seeing more teachers appear in my future books.

 

I mean, plenty of things were said in my last staff meeting that need to be written into a novel. Plenty.

 

 

About Dating Ryan Alback

 

Ryan Alback has almost everything he’s ever wanted: a successful acting career, a dog who adores him, great family and friends, and a life outside the closet. The only thing missing is a boyfriend—but Ryan’s been burned by Hollywood relationships before, and he’s not eager to try one again.

 

Jason Santos has almost everything he’s ever wanted: a fulfilling career teaching middle school, a house in a city he loves, and parents who support him in every way. Too bad he can’t seem to forget the ex-boyfriend who rejected his marriage proposal.

 

When a talk show host launches a dating contest to find Ryan a boyfriend and Jason accidentally wins, neither of them expect anything to come from it. Yet somewhere between a disastrous massage and a mud sinkhole, they both start to wonder if this date could be more than just a public relations stunt. But before they can move into the future, they’ll both have to learn to let go of the past.

 

Now available from:

Riptide Publishing

Amazon

 

About J.E. Birk

 

J.E. Birk has been telling stories since she could talk and writing them since she was introduced to the alphabet. She hails from Colorado, where you can usually find her skiing, training for a 5K she won’t end up running, or watching people run into each other on football fields and in hockey rinks. You can follow her ramblings on Twitter by looking for @jebirkwrites. She’s also been known to ramble on Facebook as J Elisabeth Birk.

 

Connect with J.E. Birk:

• Facebook: www.facebook.com/jebirk
• Twitter: @jebirkwrites

 

 

To celebrate the release of Dating Ryan Alback, one lucky winner will receive a $10 Riptide Publishing credit and their choice of ebook from J.E.’s backlist! Leave a comment with your contact info to enter the contest. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on February 25, 2017. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries. Thanks for following the tour, and don’t forget to leave your contact info!