Hi peeps! We have Francis Gideon stopping by today with their new transgender romance Hopeless Romantic, we have a great excerpt and a fantastic giveaway so check out the post and leave a comment to enter the giveaway! <3 ~Pixie~

Hopeless Romantic

Francis Gideon

Nick Fraser is a true romantic. He wants the guy instead of the girl, but other than that, he wants everything his favorite rom-coms depict: the courtship, the passionate first kiss, the fairy-tale wedding. But after breaking up with the love of his life, Nick wonders if anything fairy-tale will ever happen for him.

Then he meets Katie, who’s just like a rom-com heroine. She’s sharp, funny, sweet, and as into music and punk culture as Nick is. What’s more, he’s incredibly attracted to her—even though she’s a woman. Nick has never considered that he might be bisexual, but his feelings for Katie are definitely real.

When Katie reveals that she’s transgender, Nick starts to see how much he doesn’t understand about the world, queer identity, and himself. He is hopelessly in love with Katie, but this isn’t a fairy tale, and Nick’s friends and family may not accept his new relationship. If he wants it all, he has to have the courage to make his fantasy a reality.

Francis Gideon!

Hello everyone! I’m Francis Gideon and I’m touring for my new release Hopeless Romantic, a trans rom-com of sorts. Follow along this week as I talk about all thinks romantic comedy, trans identity, and being pretty in pink! I’m looking forward to sharing some serious 1980s nostalgia; be sure to comment with your own bit of nostalgia for a $10 giveaway for Riptide publishing.

Excerpt!

It was too early. Way too early for Nick-and the sad part was that it was only ten in the morning. As he contemplated his poor life choice of staying up until 4 a.m. in order to watch Pitch Perfect (and then reading fanfiction about the film), he sipped coffee from a travel mug he’d borrowed from Tucker. Being an English grad student had spoiled Nick tremendously. Without classes to attend or actual in-class sessions to teach, he had too much power to decide his bedtime. And he clearly was not ready for this responsibility. Not if he still wanted to make it to Toronto for a tux fitting and a possible lunch with Levi and Alex without bags under his eyes.

Nick was wearing a zip-up hoodie with the hood over his bedhead, and his backpack over one shoulder. A couple of other people who seemed as tired as Nick also waited for the bus. It was easier to wait here than any stop in town, since he would be able to get first pick of the bus seats, and with how groggy he was feeling, he was not even remotely up for any kind of social contact or seat sharing. He was about to flick on his iPhone for music, when another group of people with giant suitcases at their side, most likely undergrads, swarmed the bus stop. Nick groaned and wanted to curse Alex for needing him on a Saturday-the busiest day for travel. Nick was scanning the crowd and attempting to do a head count so he could decipher whether or not he could sit alone when he skimmed a familiar white leather jacket.

The woman he’d run into from before stood in the lineup with a small red purse over one arm and a large backpack at her feet. She didn’t seem to notice him at all; she was completely engrossed in her phone. Something familiar-yet-foreign twisted inside Nick once again. He tried to see if she was wearing another Bouncing Souls T-shirt, or any kind of pop punk from the 1990s, but couldn’t tell. When he lifted his gaze from her shirt to her face, she was staring at him.

Nick froze. It looks like I was staring at her tits, doesn’t it? Shit. Nick turned away quickly as he heard his oldest sister’s recriminations in his head for his bad behavior towards women. There had been a solid year and a half before he came out to his sisters and parents as gay that Cheryl would pinch him anytime his eyes sunk to a woman’s chest when they were out in public. He imagined Cheryl now doing the exact same thing to her future son, teaching him how to respect women and to be terrified to look anywhere below a woman’s shoulders.

“Hey . . . you.”

Nick’s heart hammered again. The woman now stood next to him, her smile slightly crooked. “Hi . . .?” His voice hitched.

“Help me out here,” the woman went on. “Do I know you from the Grad House or somewhere else?”

“You- I- We bumped into each other. Yesterday.”

As soon as the woman made the connection, her smile fell. “Oh, of course. I’m so sorry.”

Nick shrugged. “Hey, it happens.”

“Are you all healed? I didn’t actually break anything, right?”

“No, no. I’m fine.”

She nodded slowly, then smiled. “Sorry, it’s coming back to me now. I see a lot of faces, so I sometimes forget who is from where. You’re the Bouncing Souls guy.”

Nick beamed at the name. “I am? Awesome. Are you the Bouncing Souls girl, then?”

“I can be. Not today, though.” The woman undid her leather jacket and displayed a bright-pink and black T-shirt with the name Letters to Cleo on it.

“Ah, very nice. I don’t know much by them, but I appreciate the vintage quality of it.”

“Totally.”

Their conversation became fragmented as the people around them began to stir. The green GO Bus was stopped at the lights closest to the school. Nick gathered his bag from the ground and noticed the woman had hers by her side.

“So,” she said as she dug through her purse, “I normally hate riding GO buses like this. Super uncomfortable, and I’m never sure if I’m going to get a weirdo or not. But you seem nice, so I think I’d like to take my chances with you. Do you mind if I sit with you?”

Nick laughed. His cheeks heated. Why did this kind of attention feel so nice? It wasn’t quite the same thing as approval from his sisters or his best female friends. This was the same kind of butterfly swooning he first got when Greg had said he was smart and sexy (even though, at the time, he’d definitely had a soul patch) or when Barry had said he’d write a song for him (even if the song itself had never materialized). It was attraction-desire. But she’s a woman. And that’s just plain weird. So it has to be something else.

“Sure,” Nick said. “I think I’d like that. But only if we can keep talking about music.”

“Of course. I’m Katie, by the way.” She extended her hand for a shake as the bus pulled up. Her palms were large in Nick’s, but her skin was soft.

“I’m Nick.”

On the second floor of the bus, it felt like Nick could see all of Waterloo laid out before him. Katie sat in the aisle seat after putting her bag in an overhead compartment, while Nick kept his at his feet. As they’d shuffled onto the bus, he realized that Katie wore no heels but was still as tall as him. When they sat down, Katie seemed smaller only when she crossed her legs.

“So, you like the Souls and Letters to Cleo,” Katie said after getting comfortable next to him. She was about to say something else when Nick jumped in.

“Well, I can’t really say much about Cleo. I mean, I just know the 10 Things I Hate About You reference.”

“Ah, but that’s still lots.” Katie tilted her head, as if to assess him. “Are you a film buff?”

“I love movies, yeah.” Nick smiled. When she mirrored the action, he had to look away. He fisted the material of his jeans-a nervous tick he hadn’t done since defending his master’s thesis. “But . . . I’m not a buff. Not in the film-critic kind of way.”

“What do you mean?”

Nick sighed, realizing that this was a much larger discussion than they maybe wanted to have. Her heart-shaped face was open, though, and a faint trace of a smile was still on her lips. She wanted to hear about his random movie opinions, whatever they were. “So, most of the people I know who are into film are grad students who fawn over French New Wave cinema. Or tell me that Kubrick is a god among men. And yeah, I’m all for Jean-Luc Godard and Clockwork Orange, but that’s not what I stay up really late watching at night, you know?”

“Okay, I see that. So what do you stay up late watching?”

Nick chuckled lightly, looking away in subtle embarrassment. “Let’s just say I watched Pitch Perfect last night when I should have been sleeping.”

Katie’s eyes widened. “Oh my God. I love that movie.”

“Really?” Nick said. “That’s amazing. I’ve been expecting everyone to give me shit for it.”

“Everyone?” Katie lifted a perfectly manicured eyebrow. She pursed her lips in a dramatic way, as if she was about to give him sage-like advice. “I think you may need to find better people to hang around if they’ll give you shit for watching a movie.”

“Yeah, probably. Comes with the territory as an English grad, though. Some people in my program are actual film buffs who write long academic papers for journals about this stuff. Which means I get into an argument about Citizen Kane at least once a week. Or I used to, when I was on campus more.”

Read more at: http://www.riptidepublishing.com/titles/hopeless-romantic (Just click the excerpt tab)

About Francis!

Francis Gideon is a nonbinary writer who dabbles in romance, mystery, fantasy, historical, and paranormal genres. Francis credits music, along with being an only child to a single mother, as why they write so much now. Long nights at home were either spent memorizing lyrics to pop-punk bands or reading voraciously. Add a couple of formative experiences in university, a network of weird artist friends, and after years of writing stories Francis never showed to anyone, they now have books to their name.

After receiving an MA in English literature, Francis wanted to do something a bit more fun. They soon found the LGBTQ romance community and fell in love on the spot. Since then, Francis has attempted to balance writing romances with as many different types of couples as possible while also attending school for their PhD. When not writing fiction or teaching university classes, Francis works on scholarly articles on everything from character deaths in the TV show Hannibal, the online archive of Canadian poet and artist P.K. Page, and transgender representation on YouTube. Francis is a middle name, used to keep students from Googling their teacher and asking far too many questions.

Francis lives in Canada with their partner, Travis, where they often spend nights disagreeing about what TV show to watch and making bad puns whenever possible. Travis receives dedications in Francis’s novels because he tolerates Francis’s long hours and listens to random story ideas late into the night. Francis also might be a bit of a hopeless romantic—as if you didn’t already guess.

Connect with Francis:

• Website & Blog: francisgideon.wordpress.com
• Twitter: @francisgideon88

Giveaway!

To celebrate the release of Hopeless Romantic, one lucky winner will receive a $10 Riptide credit!

Thanks for following the tour, and don’t forget to leave your contact info!

Check out the other blogs on the blog tour!