Category: Riptide Publishing

An Alisa Review: The Remaking of Corbin Wale by Roan Parrish

Rating:  5 stars out of 5

Last month, Alex Barrow’s whole life imploded—partner, home, job, all gone in forty-eight hours. But sometimes when everything falls apart, better things appear almost like magic. Now, he’s back in his Michigan hometown, finally opening the bakery he’s always dreamed of. But the pleasure of opening day is nothing compared to the lonely and beautiful man who bewitches Alex before he even orders.

Corbin Wale is a weirdo. At least, that’s what he’s heard his whole life. He knows he’s often in a fantasy world, but the things he feels are very real. And so is the reason why he can never, ever be with Alex Barrow. Even if Alex is everything he’s always fantasized about. Even if maybe, just maybe, Corbin is Alex’s fantasy too.

When Corbin begins working at the bakery, he and Alex can’t deny their connection any longer. As the holiday season works its magic, Alex yearns for the man who seems out of reach. But to be with Alex, Corbin will have to challenge every truth he’s ever known. If his holiday risk pays off, two men from different worlds will get the love they’ve always longed for.

I loved this story, both Corbin and Alex have wanted someone that they needed or that needed them but they either weren’t looking for it or were too scared if it were to happen.  Alex and Corbin first begin with a tentative friendship which builds up to more on both sides but they have to learn how to really open up to each other to risk everything.

Corbin is considered strange but I think he has persevered despite his non-traditional upbringing.  I love the world he has built around him and how he sees the world differently than most.  These things are what initially draw in Alex and he just wants to learn more about this elusive man.

I liked that we got the opportunity to see this story from both characters’ points of view.  We get to see Alex’s open mindedness and
how he doesn’t allow others to influence his life negatively.  I also loved seeing how Corbin’s mind worked, at times it was harder to
follow that others but that was expected but also how he was willing to try and change what could happen in his life despite what he was told as a child.  I loved their support of Alex’s best friend, Gareth, and the support and push they need in return.  I was so happy to see both of these men find their HEA and would love to see a story about Gareth someday.

Cover art by Natasha Snow is wonderful and I love it.

Sales Links: Riptide Publishing | Amazon | 

Book Details:
ebook, 237 pages
Published: November 27, 2017 by Riptide Publishing
ISBN: 978-1-62649-692-7
Edition Language: English

Riptide Publishing Tour and Giveaway: Operation Green Card (Bluewater Bay #21) by G.B. Gordon

Operation Green Card (Bluewater Bay #21) by G.B. Gordon
Riptide Publishing
Cover art: L.C. Chase

Read an Excerpt/Buy it Here at Riptide Publishing

Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words is happy to host G.B. Gordon’s Operation Green Card tour.

About Operation Green Card

Arkady Izmaylov is a family man. He’s also gay. In Russia. His sister Natalya has been telling him to get out for years, but it’s only after an attack in the street that he finally concedes and says yes to her desperate plan of him marrying a stranger for a green card.

Jason Cooley was taught from birth that he’s no good to anyone. Then the military taught him he was good enough to save other lives, but that purpose got amputated along with his leg. He’s now working security at Wolf’s Landing and sending monthly checks to his ex for their daughter’s education. When Natalya asks him to marry her brother, Jason knows right away he’ll do it more for the mission than the money she’s offering. But when he actually meets Arkady, his mission turns complicated.

Jason quickly discovers he’s not as straight as he thought. He’s also the man of Arkady’s dreams. Arkady must convince Jason that he’s worth loving, and that Arkady won’t disappear from his life like everyone else. Because Arkady has always wanted a family of his own, and he’s not letting go of this one.

Available now from Riptide Publishing!

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 GB Gordon

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.

Connect with Gordon:

● Website and blog: gordon.kontext.ca

● Twitter: @gb_gordon

● Goodreads: goodreads.com/gbgordon

Giveaway

To celebrate the release of Operation Green Card, one lucky winner will receive a $10 Riptide credit! Leave a comment with your contact info to enter the contest. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on December 16, 2017. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries. Thanks for following the tour, and don’t forget to leave your contact info!

Riptide Publishing Tour and Giveaway: Junkyard Heart (Porthkennack #7) by Garrett Leigh

Junkyard Heart (Porthkennack #7) by Garrett Leigh
Riptide Publishing
Cover Artist: GD Leigh

Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words is happy to host Garrett Leigh’s Junkyard Heart tour. Thank you for such a wonderful interview.

~ Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words Garrett Leigh Interview ~

  •  House of Cards featured Calum Hardy and Brix Lusmoore, and Kim Primrose was a part of their story.  Now we have Junkyard Heart, Kim’s story.  How much of that cast returns?

Pretty much all of them. There’s Kim and his BFF/Ex Lena, Lee, Brix, and Calum. Plus new character Jas, and his family. It was a lot of fun to bring them all together again, and add the new faces to the mix.

  •   Since Porthkennack is such a small, ancient village with tight connections everywhere, will those be as visible as they were in the previous story?

Yes. Kim is a Porthkennack native, and Brix’s oldest friend, so he has the same connections and links that Brix had, as well as some unique to him. For example, much of the furniture that comes out of his woodshop is made from materials scavenged on the beaches.

  •    What draws you to write where such a location is as much a character in the story as Porthkennack is?

I was super excited to be invited to write for the Porthkennack series. I’ve never written about a location such as Porthkennack, and unraveling its mysteries was a complex task, especially when there were four other authors to consider. Pulling all our ideas together was awesome.

  •   Would you or do you live in such a small tightly woven community as Porthkennack?  If you don’t, would you like too and why?  If not, why?

I like the idea of a tiny community like that, but I don’t think I’d want everyone knowing my business! That being said, Porthkennack turned out to be far more diverse and welcoming than you might imagine of a small English town.

  •   When you write a character such as Kim who’s a carpenter, how much research do you do into his profession?  Or the professions of all your characters?  Or does sometimes it work in the reverse?  You get interested in a profession and then assign it to a character?

My partner is a jack of all trades, so the carpentry thing wasn’t too hard. He’s also a pro photographer, so that was Jas covered. I usually to pick professions that I have a good knowledge of beforehand. I worked as a chef for many years, and know a lot about tattooing. My brother was in the military, and I know a lot of nurses who work in various hospital departments. I think it’s a dangerous game to set a book in a profession/location that you know nothing about, and getting bogged down in research can really affect your word flow.

  •  How many more stories do you intend to write in this Porthkennanck series?

No more, I’m afraid. To the best of my knowledge, the Porthkennack series is complete.

 

 

About Junkyard Heart

Tired of the London rat race and the heartbreak that comes with it, photographer Jas Manning returns to Porthkennack, the Cornish seaside town where he spent every childhood summer on his father’s farm. Resigned to year-round rain, wind, and homemade jam, he’s sorely unprepared for the impact that artsy carpenter Kim Penrose has on his heart.

Kim’s free-loving reputation precedes him, and he’s as generous with his inked-up body as he is with his time. The sex is hot, the easy friendship even better, and Jas’s time with him building his family’s new farmhouse canteen is everything Jas was missing in his empty city life.

But Kim’s carefree existence isn’t as simple as it appears. He’s worked hard to vanquish his demons and build his dreams, but the devil on his shoulder is ruthless, and when it comes to call, their happy bubble bursts like it was never there at all. The canteen opening looms, but Kim is gone in more ways than one, and it’s down to Jas to shore up Kim’s soul and convince him that he deserves his place in Jas’s heart.

Available now from Riptide Publishing.

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! http://www.riptidepublishing.com/titles/universe/porthkennack

About Garrett Leigh

Garrett Leigh is an award-winning British writer and book designer, currently working for Dreamspinner Press, Loose Id, Riptide Publishing, and Fox Love Press.

Garrett’s debut novel, Slide, won Best Bisexual Debut at the 2014 Rainbow Book Awards, and her polyamorous novel, Misfits was a finalist in the 2016 LAMBDA awards.

When not writing, Garrett can generally be found procrastinating on Twitter, cooking up a storm, or sitting on her behind doing as little as possible, all the while shouting at her menagerie of children and animals and attempting to tame her unruly and wonderful FOX.

Garrett is also an award winning cover artist, taking the silver medal at the Benjamin Franklin Book Awards in 2016. She designs for various publishing houses and independent authors at blackjazzdesign.com, and co-owns the specialist stock site moonstockphotography.com with renowned LGBTQA+ photographer Dan Burgess.

Social media:

Website: http://garrettleigh.com

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Garrett_Leigh

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/garrettleighbooks

Cover art enquiries: blackjazzdesign@gmail.com

Giveaway

To celebrate the release of Junkyard Heart, one lucky winner will receive a $20 Riptide credit! Leave a comment with your contact info to enter the contest. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on December 9, 2017. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries. Thanks for following the tour, and don’t forget to leave your contact info!

RIPTIDE TOUR & Giveaway: Infamous by Jenny Holiday

Infamous (Famous #2) by Jenny Holiday
Riptide Publishing
Cover art: L.C. Chase

Read an Excerpt/Buy it Here at Riptide Publishing

Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words is happy to host Jenny Holiday here today on tour with Infamous. Welcome, Jenny.

✒︎

Hello! I’m Jenny and I’m happy to be here to celebrate the release of Infamous. Infamous is book two in the Famous series, which mixes m/f and m/m romance. (And mixes famous musicians and regular people!) In Infamous, Jesse, our resident bad-boy rock star has to decide if he’s willing to risk his career to be with Hunter, a doctor he’s rapidly falling for. I hope you enjoy it!

About Infamous

All that up-and-coming musician Jesse Jamison has ever wanted is to be on the cover of Rolling Stone. When a gossip website nearly catches him kissing someone who isn’t his famous girlfriend—and also isn’t a girl—he considers the near miss a wake-up call. There’s a lot riding on his image as the super-straight rocker, and if he wants to realize his dreams, he’ll need to toe the line. Luckily, he’s into women too. Problem solved.

After a decade pretending to be his ex’s roommate, pediatrician Hunter Wyatt is done hiding. He might not know how to date in the Grindr world, how to make friends in a strange city, or whether his new job in Toronto is a mistake. But he does know that no one is worth the closet. Not even the world’s sexiest rock star.

As Jesse’s charity work at Hunter’s hospital brings the two closer together, a bromance develops. Soon, Hunter is all Jesse can think about. But when it comes down to a choice between Hunter and his career, he’s not sure he’s brave enough to follow his heart.

Available now from Riptide Publishing!

About Jenny Holiday

Jenny Holiday started writing in fourth grade, when her aging-hippie teacher, between Pete Seeger songs, gave the kids notebooks and told them to write stories. Jenny’s featured poltergeist, alien invasions, or serial killers who managed to murder everyone except her and her mom. She showed early promise as a romance writer, though, because nearly every story had a happy ending: fictional Jenny woke up to find that the story had been a dream, and that her best friend, father, and sister had not, in fact, been axe-murdered. Today she is a USA Today bestselling author of historical and contemporary romance. She lives in London, Ontario.

Connect with Jenny:

● Website: jennyholiday.com

● Blog: jennyholiday.com/blog

● Facebook: www.facebook.com/jennyholidaybooks/

● Twitter: @jennyholi

Giveaway

To celebrate the release of Infamous, one lucky winner will receive a $20 Amazon gift card! Leave a comment with your contact info to enter the contest. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on December 2, 2017. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries. Thanks for following the tour, and don’t forget to leave your contact info!

In the Spotlight: The Remaking of Corbin Wale by Roan Parrish (Riptide Publishing 2017 Charity Bundle Tour and Giveaway)

The Remaking of Corbin Wale by Roan Parrish
Riptide Publishing

 Read an Excerpt/Buy it here at Riptide Publishing

Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words is happy to host Riptide Publishing’s 2017 Holiday Charity Collection Tour.

About The Remaking of Corbin Wale

Last month, Alex Barrow’s whole life imploded—partner, home, job, all gone in forty-eight hours. But sometimes when everything falls apart, better things appear almost like magic. Now, he’s back in his Michigan hometown, finally opening the bakery he’s always dreamed of. But the pleasure of opening day is nothing compared to the lonely and beautiful man who bewitches Alex before he even orders.

Corbin Wale is a weirdo. At least, that’s what he’s heard his whole life. He knows he’s often in a fantasy world, but the things he feels are very real. And so is the reason why he can never, ever be with Alex Barrow. Even if Alex is everything he’s always fantasized about. Even if maybe, just maybe, Corbin is Alex’s fantasy too.

When Corbin begins working at the bakery, he and Alex can’t deny their connection any longer. As the holiday season works its magic, Alex yearns for the man who seems out of reach. But to be with Alex, Corbin will have to challenge every truth he’s ever known. If his holiday risk pays off, two men from different worlds will get the love they’ve always longed for.

Available now from Riptide Publishing!

About the 2017 Holiday Charity Collection

20% of all proceeds from this title will be donated to the Russian LGBT Network.

Each year, Riptide Publishing releases a holiday collection in support of an LGBTQ charity. Twenty percent of the proceeds from this year’s collection will be donated to the Russian LGBT Network.

The Russian LGBT network was founded in April 2006. It is an interregional, non-governmental human rights organization that promotes equal rights and respect for human dignity, regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity. They unite and develop regional initiatives, advocacy groups (at both national and international levels), and provide social and legal services.

To learn more about this charity or to donate directly, please visit their website: https://lgbtnet.org/en.

This collection would not be possible without the talent and generosity of its authors, who have brought us the following holiday stories:

● Cecilia Tan, Watch Point

● Roan Parrish, The Remaking of Corbin Wale

● Katie Porter, Came Upon a Midnight Clear

Buy all three in the collection and save!

 

About Roan Parrish

Roan Parrish lives in Philadelphia where she is gradually attempting to write love stories in every genre.

When not writing, she can usually be found cutting her friends’ hair, meandering through whatever city she’s in while listening to torch songs and melodic death metal, or cooking overly elaborate meals. She loves bonfires, winter beaches, minor chord harmonies, and self-tattooing. One time she may or may not have baked a six-layer chocolate cake and then thrown it out the window in a fit of pique.

She is represented by Courtney Miller-Callihan of Handspun Literary Agency.

Connect with Roan:

● Website

● Newsletter

● FB group

● Twitter

● Instagram

● Bookbub

● Amazon

● Goodreads

Giveaway

  • To celebrate the release of The Remaking of Corbin Wale, one lucky winner will receive a $20 Amazon gift card! Leave a comment with your contact info to enter the contest. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on December 2, 2017. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries. Thanks for following the tour, and don’t forget to leave your contact info!

 

An Ali Review: Watch Point by Cecilia Tan

Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
Eric Sakai-Johnson joined the Navy SEALs to protect his country and the people he loves. After discharge, he finds himself relegated to protecting big pharma billionaire Aiden Milford from assassination attempts and kidnapping. Until Aiden reneges on a promise, fires Eric, and lets Eric’s mother die with millions of dollars in medical debt.

Now Eric is the kidnapper. Snatching Aiden’s twenty-two-year-old son, Chase, for a multi-million-dollar ransom is the only way to get justice. It’s time for Aiden to learn what it’s like when someone you love is at the mercy of forces beyond your control. Eric has it all planned out. The one thing he didn’t plan for is the intense erotic spark between him and Chase.

Chase has been chafing under his father’s autocratic control. A gay hookup app has been his only ticket to rebellion—to clandestine moments of freedom, excitement, and danger. Now it’s his ticket to a deep connection and amazing sex with his “captor.” On the rocky island where they’re sequestered, Chase finds Eric to be everything he wants in a man: quiet, strong, capable, and honorable . . . until he finds out he’s been captured for real.
This was just over the top and I only finished it because it was an arc book.  The plot is in in the blurb.  Pretty much that’s the entire plot but with a bazillion sex scenes thrown in.  Nothing either of the MC’s did made sense to me.  The plot did not make sense to me.  Their actions made no sense to me (ie you’re a highly trained Navy Seal & your idea of torture is to beat someone with a sock with a bar of soap in it?)  Their attraction to each other made no sense to me.  Just nothing did.
There were way too many sex scenes.  The majority of the book was a one sex scene or another.  Maybe this was supposed to be erotica but it didn’t feel like it.  It felt like it was supposed to be a regular book.  Just one with way too many sex scenes that over shadowed the plot.
This was a new author for me and I was hoping for a new author/series to immerse myself in.  Unfortunately this was not for me and I won’t be trying this author in future.
 
The cover was done Natasha Snow and I think it’s a great cover.  It’s what caught my eye and made me want to try this book.
Sales Links:  Riptide Publishing | Amazon
Book Details:
ebook, 177 pages
Published November 6th 2017 by Riptide Publishing (first published November 2017)
ISBN139781626496705
Edition LanguageEnglish