Thursday, April 13, 2017

For A Good Time, Call by Anne Tenino and E.J. Russell - Blog Tour with Giveaway




As part of this blog tour, Anne and E.J. are giving away a $50 Riptide Publishing Gift Certificate to one lucky winner! *confetti* To enter the giveaway, please comment on any official tour post with your name and contact info before midnight (EDT), April 15th. Good luck, and enjoy the tour!

Tarkus

I’m not sure when I decided that Nate needed a dog. In my earliest notes about his character (which tend to be rather . . . um . . . free-form), I have this:

“Nate has a dog—an older one who’s blind in one eye. He adopted him to keep him from being put down. This isn’t the first older dog Nate’s adopted—once-loved pets who are abandoned when they’re no longer spry or become inconvenient. Consequently, he’s an expert on loss.”

Although I later decided to make Nate’s dog younger, I must have subconsciously already decided that he’d be a GSD/Keeshond mix named Tarkus—after the puppy my brother got after I’d already moved away from home. Nate’s Tarkus shares traits with the original Tarkus and with two other dogs I’ve had since moving to Oregon.

Book-Tarkus looks like the real Tarkus. When he was an adult dog, my parents gave him to my cousin who lived in rural Illinois. That’s where Tarkus sustained the injury that resulted in his milky eye—although it was a run-in with barbed wire rather than a car accident (Book-Tarkus’s mishap) that did it. In the days when my Curmudgeonly Husband and I were first dating, we visited Illinois. Tarkus would accompany us on walks through the woods, always off the path in the underbrush. He kept up though—leaping like a dolphin out of the waves.

Book-Tarkus’s love for Frisbee came from another dog. When CH and I bought our house in rural Oregon, a dog came with the deal. In fact, ownership of the dog—a shepherd/lab mix named Frodo—was written into the purchase contract. Frodo loved Frisbee. I mean, he was a serious Frisbee addict. He loved Frisbee so much, he would actually consume the disks, taking them under the deck and chomping on them. When CH picked up the Frisbee for a play session, Frodo was so focused on it that he paid no attention to anything else. He once barreled straight over Lovely Daughter (who was only about two at the time) on his way to catch it.

LD didn’t hold it against him—she desperately wanted to toss the Frisbee, but due to her relative lack of pitching skills, she generally only managed to throw it directly downward. Frodo didn’t care. He grabbed it anyway.


Tarkus’s propensity for tossing his Frisbee into the air on his own is behavior based on our current dog, Nino, an Italian Greyhound. He’s passionately fond of his squeaky toys: squirrels, bunnies, pigs, a rotund donkey (although LD insists on calling it a hedgehog), a duck (like Tarkus’s). They’re apparently quite satisfying to shake within an inch of their little stuffed lives. He doesn’t always keep his grip on them, however, so as I’m working, sometimes a squirrel comes flying over my shoulder to land on my desk.

If only I could teach him to announce, “Incoming!”


About For a Good Time, Call…

Thirty-seven-year-old Nate Albano’s second relationship ever ended three years ago, and since he’s grace—gray asexual—he doesn’t anticipate beating the odds to find a third. Still, he’s got his dog, his hobbies, and his job as a special effects technician on Wolf’s Landing, so he can’t complain—much.

Seth Larson, umpteenth generation Bluewater Bay, is the quintessential good-time guy, content with tending bar and being his grandmother’s handyman. The night they meet, Seth’s looking for some recreational sex to escape family drama. But for Nate, romantic attraction comes before sexual attraction, so while Seth thinks they’re hooking up, Nate just wants to talk . . . genealogy?

Dude. Seriously?

So they declare a “just friends” truce. Then Seth asks for Nate’s help investigating a sinister Larson family secret, and their feelings start edging way beyond platonic. But Nate may want more than Seth can give him, and Seth may not be able to leave his good-time image behind. Unless they can find a way to merge carefree with commitment, they could miss out on true love—the best time of all.

Now available from Riptide Publishing. http://www.riptidepublishing.com/titles/for-a-good-time-call



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. WittL.B. GreggZ.A. Maxfield,  Heidi BelleauRachel HaimowitzAnne TeninoAmy LaneSE JakesG.B. GordonJaime 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 Landingmedia empire. 



About Anne Tenino

Catalyzed by her discovery of LGBTQ romance, Anne Tenino left the lucrative fields of art history, non-profit fundraising, and domestic engineering to follow her dream of become a starving romance author. For good or ill, her snarky, silly, quasi-British sense of humor came along for the ride.

Anne applies her particular blend of romance, comedy and gay protagonists to contemporary, scifi and paranormal tales. Her works have won awards, she’s been featured in RT Book Reviews, and has achieved bestseller status on Amazon’s gay romance list.

Born and raised in Oregon, Anne lives in Portland with her husband and two kids, who have all taken a sacred oath to never read her books. She can usually be found at her computer, procrastinating.

Connect with Anne:
·         Websiteannetenino.com
·         Blog: chicksanddicksrainbow.com
·         Twitter: @AnneTenino
·         Facebook: facebook.com//Anne-Tenino-Author
·         Goodreads: goodreads.com/annetenino


About E.J. Russell

E.J. Russell holds a BA and an MFA in theater, so naturally she’s spent the last three decades as a financial manager, database designer, and business-intelligence consultant. After her twin sons left for college and she no longer spent half her waking hours ferrying them to dance class, she returned to her childhood love of writing fiction. Now she wonders why she ever thought an empty nest meant leisure.

E.J. lives in rural Oregon with her curmudgeonly husband, the only man on the planet who cares less about sports than she does. She enjoys visits from her wonderful adult children, and indulges in good books, red wine, and the occasional hyperbole.

Connect with E.J.:
·         Website: ejrussell.com
·         Blog: ejrussell.com/bloggery/
·         Facebook: www.facebook.com/E.J.Russell.author
·         Twittertwitter.com/ej_russell
·         Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/ejrussell/


Giveaway

To celebrate the release of For a Good Time, Call…, one lucky winner will receive a $50 Riptide credit! Leave a comment with your contact info to enter the contest. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on April 15, 2017. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries. Thanks for following the tour, and don’t forget to leave your contact info!




7 comments:

  1. Congrats on the new release, Anne and EJ. Thanks for the post on Tarkus. I love Keeshonden. It brings back memories to learning to read. To picture for the letter 'k' was the Keeshond.
    tankie44 at gmail dot com

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    1. You had a much more interesting alphabet book than I did!

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  2. Congrats and thanks for the story of Tarcus, and he's on the cover. This looks like another good addition to this collaborative series. One draw is the theater/tv aspect (my husband is an actor). I also like idea of an older, asexual guy, and I'm curious to see what you do with the premise of "grace" meets gaymer. -
    TheWrote [at] aol [dot] com

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  3. Thanks for sharing about Tarkus with us and about the cover. I don't know or have much experience with dogs so it's nice to hear about what they enjoy and their mannerisms.
    humhumbum AT yahoo DOT com

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  4. Fun to meet both Tarkuses!

    vitajex@aol dot com

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  5. Thanks for the post about Tarkus. I'm a cat person however I adore my brother & SiL's lab.
    legacylandlisa(at)gmail(dot)com

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  6. Thanks for stopping by, everyone. I realized I used another of Frodo's attributes for Tarkus: although he was a pretty laid-back dog when it came to people showing up at our house (we live out in the country), he absolutely loathed the FedEx delivery guy. So when our house was burglarized, we knew that the only one who was really in the clear, was the FedEx driver! Thanks, Wicked Faerie, for hosting us today!

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