Bluewater Blues (A Bluewater Bay story) by @GB_Gordon Virtual Tour | Spotlight, Guest Post, Excerpt, Universe links & #giveaway #mmromance #BluewaterBay @RiptideBooks

G.B. Gordon is stopping by today to share the release of the latest story in the Bluewater Bay Universe, Bluewater Blues. To celebrate the release of Bluewater Blues, one lucky winner will receive $20 in Riptide Publishing credit! Now buckle your seat belts, we've got a ton of stuff to share with you today.

 

 Jack Daley left his music career behind—along with his domineering father—and is struggling to make a new life for himself and his autistic sister in Bluewater Bay. When a summer storm sweeps a handsome stranger into his general store, Jack is more than ready for a fling. No strings attached, because Jack can’t share the secrets he and his sister are hiding from. Unfortunately, his feelings refuse to stay casual.

Mark Keao is married to his job as a costume designer on Wolf’s Landing. He’s autistic, so he’s used to people not knowing how to interact with him, but that doesn’t mean he wants to be a hermit. Especially when he meets Jack Daley, who dances with brooms, shares his love of the blues, and gets him like no one else. But relationships have proven complicated in the past.

Just when Mark is ready to try anyway, Jack pulls back. But Mark isn’t giving up, and neither is Jack’s sister. And then there’s the music both men love, bringing them together time and again. It will take trust, though, to bring them together for good.

Bluewater Blues is available from Riptide Publishing and Amazon!

Guest Post with Author G.B. Gordon

My Writing Kryptonite

The thing that kills my mojo, that sends the muse into a whimpering ball in a corner, and makes me do dishes and laundry--anything but write--is fear.

So, here I am, a neurotypical writer, planning a novel with not one, but two autistic characters, one of them a protagonist. Talk about writing outside my line. What if I can't do it? What if I try and screw it up? What if I break someone's heart?

In the end I had to try. Because every time I hear 'what ifs' from writers, my teenage reader self cries, "Just fucking try!" Because there was nothing but a huge void. Nothing even to rail against, nothing to define myself against, if only in opposition. (And no, I don't have an all-valid answer to whether you should write outside your line. It's a contested topic. And one that every writer has to answer for themselves.)

I told myself that if I screwed it up, I could still bury or burn it and never mention it again. A shout-out at this point to Riptide Publishing and sensitivity readers. For me, knowing Bluewater Blues would get a sensitivity read from an autistic editor before it ever hit an unsuspecting public was an immense relief. I suspect circus artists feel like that about safety nets. Thank you for that.

So, I researched, and plotted, and researched, and wrote Bluewater Blues. Mark incorporates bits and pieces and traits from a number of different people who, to my knowledge, have never met. But Margaret owes a large chunk of her existence to a girl with a shy smile and an angelic singing voice who blew me away.

To this day I don't know if I did it right. I only know I did it with all the love and respect I've come to feel over that year of research. And with a heart full of gratitude. For letting me in, for sharing yourselves, for giving me your time, and pieces of your lives. Thank you so much.

For anyone interested in autistic own voices blogs, I cannot recommend Amythest's accessible and generous contributions enough. She blogs as neurowonderful on tumblr and youtube.

Please also check out disabilityinkidlit.com It's an invaluable font of recs and information.

An Excerpt from Bluewater Blues...

* * * * *

When he opened the store on Thursday morning, the rain had stopped, and the sun was breaking through the clouds here and there. Steam rose from the asphalt like the setting of an apocalyptic movie. He glanced at the corkboard, then went and picked the poster off it. Classical choral music wasn’t his thing, but Margaret loved it. Which was reason enough to go. If she felt like it, that was.

He stepped behind the counter and leaned against the doorway to the office, flyer in hand. Margaret sat in her chair, skirt moving in the breeze from the fan she insisted on when it was hot. She hated sweating. Jack didn’t mind it. The steamy heat reminded him of home.

“Someone’s birthday is coming up.” He watched her closely for any response.

“Margaret’s,” Margaret said immediately. “On August seventh Margaret will be twenty-six years old.”

“Very true.”

“Birthdays are for presents,” she said in a voice so like Mawmaw’s that he was momentarily breathless, as if he’d been punched in the gut.

Margaret tilted her head and sat with her shoulders straight as she looked around the room and then, for a fraction of a second, straight at him. She was clearly excited about it.

“Want to go listen to a classical choir concert, love?”

She folded and unfolded her hands in her lap. Yup, definitely excited now.

“Love,” she said, and the word spread in Jack’s chest as luscious and soothing as sweet tea on a hot summer day.

She didn’t always let him call her love. When she was stressed or afraid, she’d insist her name was Margaret. When she felt all right, she let it go. And then there were those rare occasions when she’d repeat the endearment with an expression as if she were listening to the music of the word, and to Jack it always sounded like she was saying it back to him. Her way of telling him she loved him.

“Make no other plans for Saturday, then. I’m taking you out,” he joked, trying to keep his own excitement in check. Anything could happen between now and the weekend. If Margaret had a good day on Saturday, they would go. If not, well there was always their favorite spot by the river or, if things were really bad, a book or a DVD while Margaret spent the day in her fort.

Back in Chatham County they’d said she was touched, just like her mother. And when she sat like this, hands in her lap, watching a spark from her prisms dance across the wall, her head cocked as if it made a sound only she could hear, she looked like her too.

Not that he remembered much of their mother. When he was small she had still come down to dinner sometimes, though she’d already been quite shut-off and living in her own head back then. She’d increasingly shied away from people until, by the time she was heavily pregnant with Margaret, anyone entering the same room, especially Charles, would throw her into a screaming panic. Charles’d taken to having her dinner sent up to her room, and after that Jack had found her door locked. From which side, he didn’t know.

Two days after her daughter had been born, she’d run outside in her nightgown and thrown herself off the edge of the ravine behind the house. The official version was that she’d fallen, but Mrs. Hardwick, the cook, had known better. She and Mr. Simmons, who’d delivered from Simmons’s grocery store, threw glances in Jack’s direction whenever they talked of his mother, so that for months he’d been convinced her death was his fault.

Mawmaw had been adamant, though, that she’d killed herself because of that man, which was what Mawmaw had called Charles. Jack had been brought up to call him Sir, and to stay away from him. No hardship there, because he’d been terrified of Charles. It wasn’t until school enrollment that he’d learned that Charles was his father.

Jack had been six when Margaret was born. Charles and Grandfather hadn’t cared enough to protest when Mawmaw had taken him under her wings, and they didn’t care when she had taken another one. They’d had no use for children. Especially girls. Even less when it had become apparent that Margaret was as touched as her mother had been.

“We need to protect her,” Mawmaw had said, and Jack had taken one peek at the tiny fingers and solemn eyes and had known that she was right.

* * * * *

To read this excerpt it it's entirety, learn more about Author G.B. Gordon and available titles, or to learn more about the series, Bluewater Bay... visit Riptide Publishing. 

About the Bluewater Bay Universe...

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, Aleksandr Voinov, Heidi Belleau, Rachel Haimowitz, Anne Tenino, Amy Lane, SE Jakes, G.B. Gordon, and Jaime Samms. 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. 

To purchase other books in the Universe - Riptide Publishing - Amazon 

G.B.Gordon worked as a packer, landscaper, waiter, and coach before going back to school to major in linguistics and, at 35, switch to less backbreaking monetary pursuits like translating, editing, and writing.

Having lived in various parts of the world, Gordon is now happily ensconced in suburban Ontario with the best of all husbands.Santuario is G.B. Gordon’s first published work, but many more stories are just waiting to hit the keyboard.

Connect with Gordon:

• Website and blog: gordon.kontext.ca
• Twitter: @gb_gordon
• Goodreads: goodreads.com/gbgordon

Riptide Giveaway 

To celebrate the release of Bluewater Blues, one lucky winner will receive $20 in Riptide Publishing credit! Leave a comment with your contact info to enter the contest. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on October 22, 2016. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries. Thanks for following the tour, and don’t forget to leave your contact info!

TTC Giveaway

Be sure to leave a comment to be entered into the TTC Books and more monthly comment giveaway. EVERY comment that is relevant to the specific post will be entered. Prizes include various gift cards and swag donated by Publishers, Authors and blog Owner. REMEMBER TO LEAVE YOUR CONTACT INFO! How else will I notify you if you win?