A warm welcome to author Marguerite Labbe who is joining us today at Love Bytes to talk about her new release “A Beautiful Disaster”.

Welcome back Marguerite 🙂

Favorite Vacation Spots

Hello everyone. It’s good to be back at Love Bytes Reviews. Today I’m going to talk about a topic that I would think is a big favorite with many people. Vacations. That wonderful time when you can escape work and let go for a bit. In my head, I’m writing this from our old beach house in the Outer Banks and I can hear the waves through the open window. In reality, I’m at my desk at work, stealing a few minutes to write.

I’m a big fan of getting away from home from time to time, even if it’s just for a weekend away visiting friends in Richmond or Cumberland. For my family, vacations involve visiting our sprawling family whether it’s heading north to see my aunts and uncles and cousins in New Hampshire or visiting my husband’s extended family in Alabama. I have a sister out in Kentucky that I’ve managed to go see once, but I haven’t yet taken my guys. I think they’d like it. Then there’s my parents, another sister, and a brother in Charleston, South Carolina. That’s a yearly event.

My husband and I had a deal, I can’t take him to New Hampshire in the winter anymore (I’m sorry it was -20 that year. I was a freak freeze!) and he can’t take me deeper south in the summer. (Alabama in July save me. I thought I was going to die.) Though that’s about to be broken because our son is going to Space Camp in Huntsville so we’re going to be doing the Alabama family tour after we pick him up from there. It’ll be good to see my husband’s cousins again. It’s been a few years, but I’m already wilting.

However, family visits are more of a kind of fun madness than vacation. My family is loud. His family a little less so, but not by much. And there is so much family on both sides that it is a nonstop round of visits. Awesome, really awesome, but tiring. Sometimes I long for a quiet weekend away to just be. If I can swing the time off and the money, I’d like to kidnap my men and take them to Ocean City for a long weekend before school starts.

For a true vacation feeling, every other year we go to Hilton Head for Thanksgiving. Now it’s still family, we share a condo with my in laws, but it’s so laid back there. And we see each other all the time so we can just hang out and have fun instead of catch up. I have a spot on the balcony that I love to write at in the morning when the rest of the house is still asleep. I’m the only early riser. There are miles of wetland trails for hiking and biking. There’s the beach. The resort has daily activities that are so much fun (my nieces, son, and I always hit the Smore campfire) and we usually head to Charleston for a day of pampering. I cannot wait for the trip this year. CANNOT. It is circled in the calendar in my mind.

In A Beautiful Disaster the subject of vacations comes up. Dakota and Brenden are buried under their to do lists to launch their mega con. Dakota recognizes that Brenden is the kind of guy who’d admit that needs a vacation but never actually take steps to go on one. So, he takes it upon himself, as Dakota does, to arrange one for them after the mega con is over. Only, I neglected to mention where they go, I was too caught up in Dakota’s joke as they are sitting in the airport. My editor, the wonderful Rose asked that I address it in a blog so here we are.

I actually had a difficult time with this. They need some real down time relaxation. Morris and Theo had already gone on the geek themed Disney/Universal Studios honeymoon. They are men who are used to keeping busy, so I think after a few days at a beach both of them would be going stir crazy and snarking at each other. So, it needed to be a combination of relaxation and engaging their interests.

Then it hit me. They both love wrestling. Like really love wrestling. They have the videogames. They watch the shows. They get into matches with each other. So I hit on the idea that Dakota is going to surprise him with front row PPV tickets and all access fan passes in New Orleans. It’s a perfect mix of fun activity and lazy hedonism that suits these two men and their long deserved vacation. It’s also one of my favorite cities. I learned to love food in NOLA, maybe a little too much. My husband and I honeymooned there. And I had my first book signing in New Orleans. I can’t wait to introduce our son to the city with his love of jazz he’s going to fit right in.

What are some of your favorite vacation spots?

Blurb:

When best friends Brenden and Dakota launch the biggest comics and pop-culture convention of their careers, they finally realize what everyone around them already knows: they’ve been in love for years.

Now what are they going to do about it?

Meticulously organized Brenden Wade and easygoing Dakota Nye turned their love of geek culture into a business, running conventions all over the Chesapeake Bay area. Now the weight of their pasts is threatening not only their friendship but their dream. Brenden fears losing his foster family when his secrets come out, and though the last thing Dakota wants is to hurt his plus one, he doesn’t know if he’s capable of settling down.

One night of passion challenges both men’s preconceptions and forces them to evaluate what they want from the future. They’re both scared, and though they’ve always been able to figure out anything together, hearts are on the line. Will taking a chance on romance lead to a beautiful disaster, or just a disaster?

Buy Links:

Dreamspinner Press

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Marguerite Labbe loves writing stories about the beauty of love and the strength of family, whether it’s the family you’re born into or the one you create. She married her next-door neighbor and best friend, and they have one son, one dog, and two cats who rule them all. She has finally converted her Alabama born husband into being a Red Sox fan and now only needs to convince her son. She runs Apocrypha Comics Studio with her husband and they often trek off to comic book conventions on the weekend where they celebrate all manner of geek culture.

Social Media:

Author website: http://margueritelabbe.blogspot.com/

Twitter handle: @MargueriteLabbe

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marguerite.labbe.3