Welcome to the Riptide Publishing/L. A. Witt blog tour for Get a Grip, the latest Bluewater Bay story!

Every comment on this blog tour enters you in a drawing for a choice of two eBooks off my backlist (excluding Get a Grip) and a $10 Riptide Publishing store credit. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on July 29^th, and winners will be announced on July 30^th.  Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries.

Kids…not my area of expertise

People sometimes ask me about researching things for my books. After all, if I only wrote what I knew, I’d run out of things to write about in a hurry.

So yes, research is necessary. Sometimes it means diving into some books or interviewing people. Sometimes it’s as simple as reading a few articles to get the basic gist (like if it’s something mentioned in passing). With this book, there was research about smoke jumpers, firefighters, mechanics, and grips, though I did have a basic understanding of all of them aside from smoke jumpers.

But sometimes I have to pick people’s brains about subjects you wouldn’t expect. Things that are everyday and normal and mundane.

Things like… kids.

If it’s a book about horses, I’ve got it. Photography, cats, Okinawa, Spain…I’m your man.

Kids? Nope.

Of course I was a kid once myself, and I draw on those memories quite a bit, but when it comes to parenting (especially parenting today), that’s totally not in my wheelhouse. I was the youngest child in my family, usually the youngest among my friends and relatives, and didn’t do a lot of babysitting. And now I don’t have kids of my own. So kids are not my area of expertise.

When my characters are parents, it means stepping outside of “write what I know.” And as it happens, a number of my Bluewater Bay characters are parents. Jeremy in Rain Shadow. Zafir in All The Wrong Places. And now Shane in Get a Grip.

So… what’s a childfree youngest-child author to do?

Ask a lot of questions and make a lot of observations. How do my friends interact with their kids? How do kids interact with their parents? I’ve even got a couple of parenting guides on hand, which has convinced Amazon that I need to be recommended every prenatal, postnatal, antenatal, teen-natal, and empty-nest-natal book imaginable. Yay targeted advertising?

So anyway, kids are one of those topics that are completely everyday for most people but require research for me. What’s your “everyone knows about it but me” subject?

About Get a Grip

If a tree falls in Bluewater Bay . . . could it be fate?

A year after his divorce, Shane Andrews isn’t interested in dating—not that he has time, between three kids and a demanding job as a grip. When a windstorm knocks a tree onto one of the Wolf’s Landing soundstages, Shane’s there to help with the mess . . . and so is firefighter Aaron Tucker.

A former smoke jumper, Aaron’s an adrenaline junkie and way too restless and reckless to be relationship material. As far as he’s concerned, monogamy is for penguins, and he’d rather be alone than tied down. Signing up to be a stepparent? No, thank you.

But after a scorching-hot night together, they’re hooked. Aaron is a taste of the excitement Shane’s been lacking, and Shane’s pushing buttons Aaron didn’t know he had. The more they’re together, the less Aaron craves wild nights with other men . . . but the more Shane wants to play the field like he never got to in his twenties.

This could be the love neither man knew he needed, but only if Shane gets his feet back on the ground before Aaron walks away.

Now available from

Riptide Publishing

Amazon

About Bluewater Bay

Welcome to Bluewater Bay! This quiet little logging town on Washington state’s Olympic Peninsula has been stagnating for decades, on the verge of ghost town status. Until a television crew moves in to film Wolf’s Landing, a soon-to-be cult hit based on the wildly successful shifter novels penned by local author Hunter Easton.

Wolf’s Landing’s success spawns everything from merchandise to movie talks, and Bluewater Bay explodes into a mecca for fans and tourists alike. The locals still aren’t quite sure what to make of all this—the town is rejuvenated, but at what cost? And the Hollywood-based production crew is out of their element in this small, mossy seaside locale. Needless to say, sparks fly.

This collaborative story world is brought to you by eleven award-winning, best-selling LGBTQ romance authors: L.A. Witt, L.B. Gregg, Z.A. Maxfield,  Heidi Belleau, Rachel Haimowitz, Anne Tenino, Amy Lane, SE Jakes, G.B. Gordon, Jaime Samms and Ally Blue. Each contemporary novel stands alone, but all are built around the town and the people of Bluewater Bay and the Wolf’s Landing media empire.

Check out Bluewater Bay!

About LA Witt

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).

To celebrate the release of Get a Grip, one lucky winner will receive two ebooks off L.A.’s backlist and a $10 Riptide credit! Leave a comment with your contact info to enter the contest. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on July 29, 2017. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries. Thanks for following the tour, and don’t forget to leave your contact info!