A warm love bytes welcome to author Joanna Chambers joining us today to talk about new release “Tribute Act”.

Welcome Joanna 🙂

Hello, book lovers! I’m Joanna Chambers and this is the blog tour for Tribute Act, my new romance which is book #8 in the Riptide’s Cornwall-set Porthkennack series. I’ll be sharing thoughts on writing my first full length contemporary, writing Christmas songs as an extreme form of authorly procrastination and my love of men with sad eyes. Please join me for a chance to win a copy of the book and a $25 Riptide gift card!

I’m here to talk about my new release, Tribute Act, and today I’m talking titles.

I find picking story titles really hard. Ideally, I like a title to be meaningful in some way – preferably by actually cluing in the reader to the story they’re going to get, or some aspect of it. Take an example: Cards On The Table by Josh Lanyon does this really well. In that story, the two heroes had an embryonic relationship that didn’t work out and they never talked about why they stopped seeing each other. They come together again in the context of a murder mystery featuring tarot card clues. As they interact, they are forced to discuss what went wrong between them. So, we have actual (tarot) cards leading us to the truth of the mystery plot and we also have emotional truths being disclosed. Cards On The Table. Perfect title.

That was the sort of title I wanted for this book but all the way through writing my first draft, I couldn’t come up with anything I liked. For a long time, I had a working title which was “Safety Net”, but that never felt right to me and when I sent it out to my beta readers, I presented it to them, rather uninspiringly, with the heading “Untitled”

So, what’s the story? Well, it opens with my two MCs, Nathan and Mack, meeting for the first time at a nightclub, both looking for a hook up. They spend the night together and part ways the next morning, only to discover when Mack turns up Nathan’s family home, that they are in fact stepbrothers who have never previously met. The reason they meet now is because Mack’s dad, Derek has recently written to Mack to ask if he will help his half-sister Rosie, who needs a living organ donor. Mack agrees to help, despite his hostility to Derek who abandoned him as a teenager. The only thing that father and son have in common is music—Derek was a minor pop star in the 1980s and Mack is a talented amateur musician.

My provisional title of “Safety Net” related to the different ways families do (and sometimes don’t) help one another, physical, financial, emotional. But that title wasn’t quite hitting the mark—what I really wanted was something that referenced more directly the big gestures that are made in the story by my heroes: Mack’s donation of part of his liver to the sister he’s never before met and Nathan giving up his own money and career to save the family business.

As I approached the end of the book, I came to an important scene that I’d been preparing to write for a while. It’s a scene in which Mack sings one of his dad’s old songs. When I’d planned that scene, I’d had an idea that this would be a way of Mack confronting Derek over his abandonment, but when I came to write it, it turned out differently. It was then that the title Tribute Act finally came to me and tied the other elements—Mack’s gift to Rosie and Nathan’s service to his family—satisfyingly together.

About Tribute Act

Nathan Bridges hadn’t intended to settle down in his hometown of Porthkennack—he just ended up staying after saving the family business from ruin. The truth is, Nathan can’t stop himself from stepping in when problems arise. He’s a fixer, the man everyone turns to. But even fixers can’t solve everything.

When Nathan’s sister needs an organ transplant, it’s his stepbrother, Mack, who the family turns to as Rosie’s only potential living donor. Nathan’s curiosity about the stepbrother he’s never met turns to shock when he realises that Mack is his latest—and hottest ever—one-night stand.

Nathan and Mack agree to forget their single night together, but that’s easier said than done. When Mack moves in to Nathan’s place to recuperate after surgery, it’s not just the sexual tension between them that keeps growing. Against all the odds, and despite Mack’s wariness of intimacy, the two men grow close enough that Nathan begins to wonder what it would take to mend the rift that’s kept Mack and his father estranged for over a decade . . . and whether Mack might consider staying with Nathan in Porthkennack for good.

Available now from Riptide Publishing!

Amazon

About Porthkennack

Welcome to Porthkennack, a charming Cornish seaside town with a long and sometimes sinister history. Legend says King Arthur’s Black Knight built the fort on the headland here, and it’s a certainty that the town was founded on the proceeds of smuggling, piracy on the high seas, and the deliberate wrecking of cargo ships on the rocky shore. Nowadays it draws in the tourists with sunshine and surfing, but locals know that the ghosts of its Gothic past are never far below the surface.

This collaborative story world is brought to you by five award-winning, best-selling British LGBTQ romance authors: Alex Beecroft, Joanna Chambers, Charlie Cochrane, Garrett Leigh, and JL Merrow. Follow Porthkennack and its inhabitants through the centuries and through the full rainbow spectrum with historical and contemporary stand-alone titles.

Check out Porthkennack! 

About Joanna Chambers

Joanna Chambers always wanted to write. In between studying, finding a proper grown up job, getting married and having kids, she spent many hours staring at blank sheets of paper and chewing pens. That changed when she rediscovered her love of romance and found her muse. Joanna’s muse likes red wine, coffee and won’t let Joanna clean the house or watch television.

Connect with Joanna:

• Website: www.joannachambers.com
• Facebook
• Twitter: @ChambersJoanna
• Goodreads

To celebrate the release of Tribute Act, one lucky winner will receive an ecopy of the book and a $25 Amazon gift card! Leave a comment with your contact info to enter the contest. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on January 20, 2018. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries. Thanks for following the tour, and don’t forget to leave your contact info!