A warm Love Bytes welcome to author Anna Zabo joining us today for their blog tour on new release ” Outside the Lines”, part of Riptide’s succesfull Bluewater Bay series.

Welcome Anna 🙂

HEAs are for Everyone

 

One of the things I feel really strongly about is that happy every afters (HEAs) should be for all people regardless of their gender, romantic, or sexual orientation. Or really, any identity. HEAs are for all people.

 

I also believe that defines a happy ever doesn’t always have to be along the same lines as the traditional romantic man/woman monogamous relationship. There’s nothing wrong with monogamy, or indeed men and women having HEAs, but it’s not the only template out there.

 

And that’s part of the reason why I wanted to write about a polyamorous couple in Outside the Lines. Well, it’s more Ian’s story about falling for said couple, Simon and Lydia, than it’s about Simon and Lydia as a couple. But it’s also that too.

 

See, I know people who have formed familial units comprised of more than one partner, and not all of them have sex with each other, and yet there are loving bonds there that are just as valid and strong as your typical monogamous relationship.

 

But I also didn’t want to write a typical ménage where everyone loves and bangs one another, because there are other types of polyamorous relationships and we don’t see those in books that often. In the case of Outside the Lines,  it’s a married couple, Simon and Lydia, who are in an open marriage, and it’s Simon who brings in at third.

 

Simon is still deeply in love with Lydia. But for him—and for Lydia—that doesn’t preclude them falling in love or dating other people. They have their HEA, yes, but that doesn’t close them to having more HEA.

 

So along comes Ian and he hit’s it off with Simon on every level.

 

But Ian also gets along famously with Lydia, too. While he’s not sexually attracted to Lydia, it turns out he’s biromantic, so he does form a romantic relationship with her.

 

That’s something I also wanted to show—that sexual and romantic attraction is different. You can be desperately romantically in love with someone and never want to bone them. That’s an absolutely valid HEA.

 

Heck, you don’t even have to be romantically in love with someone to form a strong bond and get your HEA, too. Aromantic folk can absolutely have HEAs. I believe this with every fiber of my being. HEAs are for EVERYONE.

 

Bottom line for me is this:

 

Just because someone might not understand someone’s else’s relationship or happiness…that doesn’t make that HEA invalid in a book or in real life.

 

If people are happy in their relationships, whatever those relationships look like, and they can walk into the sunset together (metaphorically), that’s a happy ever after. And that’s valid.

About Outside the Lines

Miniature artist Ian Meyers has one week to rebuild his damaged set. Needing help, he goes to End o’ Earth, the local comic and gaming shop. Owner Simon Derry pushes all of Ian’s buttons, and he also has steady hands and the skills Ian needs.

Before they can even grab a beer, Ian meets Lydia Derry, Simon’s wife. If Ian had any interest in women, he’d suggest a threesome, but then Simon explains that he and Lydia are polyamorous, and if Ian wants Simon, neither of them will complain. If anything, Lydia encourages the relationship.

Ian’s all in, and it’s fantastic working with Simon to piece together his set and then take each other apart at night. His friendship with Lydia grows too. The only problem is, the more time he spends with Simon, the more he wants everything Simon already has with Lydia: A house. A cat. A commitment. So Ian runs, and shatters the trust he has with them both—right when they need him the most. Piecing their relationships back together might prove harder than a smashed set.

Available now 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 it out at Riptide Publishing!

About Anna Zabo

Anna Zabo writes contemporary and paranormal romance for all colors of the rainbow. They live and work in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which isn’t nearly as boring as most people think.

Anna grew up in the wilds of suburban Philadelphia before returning to their ancestral homelands in Western Pennsylvania. As a child they were heartily disappointed to discover that they couldn’t grow up to be what they wanted (a boy, a cat, a dragon), so they settled on being themself whenever possible, which may be a combination of a boy, a cat, and a dragon. Or perhaps a girl, a knight, and a writer. Depends on whom you ask. They do have a penchant for colorful ties and may be hording a small collection of cufflinks.They can be easily plied with coffee.

Anna has an MFA in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University, where they fell in with a roving band of romance writers and never looked back. They also have a BA in Creative Writing from Carnegie Mellon University.

Twitter: @amergina

 

To celebrate the release of Outside the Lines, one lucky winner will receive a $25 Riptide credit! Leave a comment with your contact info to enter the contest. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on December 23, 2017. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries. Thanks for following the tour, and don’t forget to leave your contact info!