Hi guys, we have Tia Fielding popping in today with her upcoming release Like Breathing, we have a brilliant guest post where Tia chats about dogs and a great excerpt, so check out the post and enter the giveaway! ❤ ~Pixie~

Like Breathing

Tia Fielding

A love as easy as breathing.

Life started out rocky for Devin Rice, but it’s turned out pretty well. He has adoptive parents and a brother who love him, and he works as a coder for his dad’s video game company. Romance is scarce, but a chance encounter leads to more than he ever expected.

While dropping off an assignment for his sick brother, Dev meets his mentor. Art history professor Seth Kent is brilliant and gorgeous, just what Dev has been looking for. Except that he’s in a long-term committed relationship.

Seth’s partner, Leaf, is older and sees the world differently due to his unusual upbringing. To him, the clear attraction between Seth and Dev isn’t a problem, it’s an unexpected gift. After all, Leaf is often on the road, going wherever rescue dogs need rehabilitation.

When Leaf meets Dev, all the missing pieces fall into place, and three men from different worlds and at different points in life fill each other’s empty spaces. For them, building a future together is the most natural thing in the world. But their unconventional love causes waves in their careers and family dynamics, and each man has his own doubts and fears to overcome.

Tia Fielding!

Hi, everyone!

I’m Tia Fielding, and today I’m here to talk to you about… dogs. Specifically, The Dogs of my life so far. But first I should say that I’m Finnish, which means the culture around dogs is different here than it probably is where you live.

See, in Finland, there isn’t a stray dog problem. Dogs aren’t randomly dumped, nor are they dropped off at shelters. Sure, every now and then there are dogs that are in need of new homes for different circumstances and reasons, but especially compared to the States, we do not have a problem with stray dogs.

People here like purebred dogs, so mixed breeds are sometimes thought of as somehow less, in fact I grew up having been told so. I’ve changed my mind about that long time ago, and we’ll come to the why, or maybe the who soon.

But I’m here to talk about The Dogs. So, let’s begin, shall we?

My earliest memory of a family dog is this: I’m toddling toward the back edge of my grandparents’ yard. I have a goal, for some reason, to get to the end of the yard and to the path that leads to the woods. Suddenly, there’s a wall of black fur in front of me. Every time I try to walk past it, it moves with me, blocking me completely.

That dog, a black short-haired German Shepherd, called King (in English, btw, for some reason I don’t know, it probably sounded cool to my dad) was a staple in my childhood. He was the dog who my dad had trained himself while recovering from an injury and having all the time in the world. King was my friend and my protector, until he had to be put to sleep when I was… well, more than five, less than ten years old, I can’t remember exactly.

After King came the first dog I called my own. He was a Finnish hound, a rabbit hunting dog of my dad’s. His name was Heppu, which could be loosely translated into “Dude.” He was a lovely boy, and I have dozens of stories about him.

My mom wanted a dog of her own while we had Heppu, so she got an Airedale terrier who was promptly named Ransu after a Finnish children’s show puppet. Being an Airedale meant that Ransu was a big dog, and he was… clever. Sometimes too much for his own good.

Once, one of my parents found a mink collar of a jacket on our yard. Nobody still knows where it came from, which neighbor did Ransu steal it from. He also liked to grab shoes and bury them around the yard and the forest lining it.

All in all, we always had a rabbit hunting dog or two and another larger dog in the family. There were many rabbit hunting dogs; Lola, Lahja (means present in Finnish, because my brothers got the puppy for my Dad’s birthday one year), Hoppu, Hulivili…. And then there was Peto (Beast) who was the sweetest black German shepherd you’d ever meet.

When I moved out of my parents’ house, Peto was still alive and kicking.

After living alone for a while, I realized that while I had two cats, I wanted a dog, too. Being a poor student, I couldn’t pay for an expensive dog, and I couldn’t find a dog to adopt easily, because as I said, we don’t have a stray issue here.

So I went online and found breeders who had a papillon puppy that needed to be homed as soon as possible, because they didn’t want to take her to a kennel with their adult dogs when they left for a funeral across the country in a few days’ time. They would also let me pay in parts, which was huge for a student, as even back then, a purebred papillon puppy cost roughly $700.

The puppy, who I named Hertta (Heart, as in “hearts” in a deck of cards, also an old-timey feminine name), was the smallest dog my family had ever had. She grew up with the cats and had some catlike habits, and when eventually I moved to back to my parents’ house just to be able to live in the countryside again, she became the sweetheart of the whole family.

She loved my dad, and didn’t want to let him out of her sight. My dad, who didn’t “get” little dogs, especially of the more fragile looking type, warmed up to her surprisingly quickly. Because she loved my dad so much, she moved to my parents’ side of the house and stayed there, even after I moved out after almost a decade.

Hertta loved the outdoors. She enjoyed trips to the woods, and kept up with whatever large dog my mom had. She would even chase rabbits sometimes!

She lived to be almost thirteen, which wasn’t super long for a papillon, but I think we all felt the loss of her when I had to make the decision for her quality of life.

After Peto, my mom wanted another German shepherd, and ended up getting a long haired one from a local breeder. She named him Otto, and he’s still around today, being the most handsomest boy ever!

Before I moved out of my parents’ place again, a few years ago now, I wanted a new dog. Hertta was getting old and she wouldn’t move with me if I was to move out and so on. I wanted a new friend. I’d lost my dearest cat child recently, when I took the step I’d wanted to take for years; I adopted a dog from abroad.

I originally wanted a pitbull type of dog, and found an organization that rescued pitbulls in Spain, and then rehomed them in Europe, mostly to Finland. They were small scale, relatively speaking, because they did super thorough jobs with vetting the dogs so that no dog fighting or bait dogs were adopted out, as they didn’t have the capacity to operate in two countries if problems were to arise.

On their listings, I saw a white dog. She wasn’t a pitbull, but a bull terrier mix, they assumed. She was a funny looking white dog, maybe ten months old, and a little bit shy but also surprisingly brave in the video I saw. I fell in love instantly.

She came to Finland on a plane a little over five years ago. I named her Tara, and I now joke that she’s my soulmate. She effortlessly filled the gap left behind by my cat baby who I’d had for 12 years, and kept my mind off Hertta leaving us a few years later.

Two and a half years ago I had come to the conclusion that I could handle two dogs. I wanted Tara to have a dog sibling, because we’d moved out of my parents’ and their dogs weren’t her pack anymore. That led me into talking to local dog people, and one of them tipped me off about a bull terrier litter that had been born recently and… well, the rest is history. Tara now has a sister, her name is Nova, and she’s the funniest, most affectionate dogs I’ve ever met.

I once was a child who had been taught that mixed breed dogs are somehow lesser, but now I have one that’s stolen my heart completely, and I couldn’t imagine my life without her. I also have a purebred dog, who is as much part of our pack—me, the dogs, and three cats.

In my July 10^th release, Like Breathing, you sort of get to meet my Nova, because one of the dogs in the story is roughly modeled after her. The book has dogs, plenty of them, and a lot of love and family. And aren’t those the most important things anyway?

Excerpt!

THEY HAD been born something like a few days apart, at least social services thought so. It was weird, how Devin and Angel had become brothers, but they had, and nobody was more important to Dev than Angel, and vice versa.

Dev drove their shared old Fiat to the campus and parked it in the first spot he found. He wasn’t too fussy about walking a bit more than necessary, especially after sitting down the whole morning.

These days, his anxiety didn’t bother him too much. New, crowded places sometimes freaked him out, but he’d built his life in such way that it made sense to him and thus calmed his anxiety. He wasn’t too concerned about going to find Angel’s mentor—the campus wasn’t foreign to him, even though he hadn’t gone to the offices before.

As if on cue, his cell rang just as he got out of the car.

“Hey, Mama,” he answered, smiling already.

“How’s my devil child today?” Her voice made his heart squeeze a little. Even after two years away from Anaheim, it felt weird to know she was so far away.

“I’m good, Mama. Walking on the campus as we speak,” he said casually, his evil side chuckling within.

“Picking up Angel?”

“No, I’m taking this assignment of his to his professor because he’s not feeling so well.”

“What’s wrong with him? How long has it been going on? Why didn’t you tell me?”

Score.

“He’s had this cold for a week or so now. Sounds pretty awful, if I’m honest. Coughing his lungs out and all that,” Devin gleefully explained as he dodged a few students on the steps to the building where he knew Professor Kent’s office was located.

“I will strangle that child myself!”

“Mama, we’re twenty-five now. We’re not little kids. I guess he wanted to just—”

“Be a man about it! That’s what he wanted to do. I’ll call him myself. Stay safe, Devin. I love you.”

“Love you too, Mama.” He put the phone back into his jeans pocket and approached the directory on the wall to see where exactly he was supposed to go.

He hadn’t met Angel’s art history professor-slash-mentor before. All he knew was that the guy was supposedly about a decade older than them and easy on the eyes. Even Angel, who was mostly straight, had paid attention. It wouldn’t be a hardship to get the papers to Professor Kent, Devin thought, smiling a bit.

It was surprisingly easy to find the right office. He knocked on the door and a pleasant voice called him in.

He still wasn’t quite prepared for how handsome Kent was.

“Uh, hi,” he said, trying to mentally take hold of himself. “I’m Devin Rice, Angel’s brother?” He stepped inside fully and tried not to fall over his own fucking feet. Clumsily, he tried to close the door behind himself, but it didn’t latch properly.

“Are you asking me or telling me?” the gorgeous man behind the desk asked him, blue eyes twinkling and crow’s feet scrunching in an extremely attractive way. “You need to really push it to latch it sometimes,” he advised, when the door refused to cooperate.

Finally, Dev’s brain caught up with the program. “Well, given that I look nothing like him, could be either, don’t you think?”

Where Dev had dark hair and pale skin with light brown eyes, Angel had light blue eyes that stood out with his much darker complexion and black hair.

“That is true,” Kent admitted, then held out a hand. “I’m Professor Kent, as you know already. Nice to meet you.”

They shook hands, and Devin could swear a hint of electricity sparked between their palms.

“So, what can I do for you, Mr. Rice?”

“Angel’s got a killer cold, and you needed this on paper,” Dev said, holding out the assignment.

Professor Kent nodded and took the sheets from him. “I’m sorry to hear that he’s ill. There’s some sort of a crud going around the campus apparently. I’ve been saved so far.”

“Ouch. Well, I won’t linger here too long, then,” Dev said, wincing at the thought of catching the awful thing here when he’d so far managed to avoid it at home.

“We have a lecture on Monday at nine in the morning. Tell Angel that if he’s still feeling bad, I’ll have my TA send him notes.” Kent looked at him with a compassionate expression that somehow warmed Dev’s heart and made him even more appealing.

“I’m sure there’s a classmate or something who can help him out. He wouldn’t want to be too much trouble—”

“Nonsense. By now I know Angel, and I know he wouldn’t skip lectures if there wasn’t a good reason. I know he would hate to draw attention to himself, but my TA always has good notes just in case someone is too sick to come to lectures. Mind you, she never gives them to people who were too hungover to show up or things like that, but, you know, illness is different, even for Antoinette.” The grin Kent directed at Dev told him this wasn’t a new topic for him by any means, and it made Dev’s stomach fill with odd flappy things.

“Oh, okay. I sicced our mom on him just before I came in, so he should be getting better soon. If not with medicine, then by pure fear of Mama getting on the plane and heading over from Anaheim.”

Kent threw his head back and laughed out loud. “She sounds a lot like my own mother,” he said, chuckling still.

“Good. I like the idea of people having good mothers,” Dev said, not really knowing where the thought came from. His expression must’ve changed, though, because Kent looked at him more seriously then.

“I take it that statement has some personal experience behind it?” he asked and immediately raised his hands. “No, never mind. I shouldn’t have asked that. It’s none of my business. I don’t know where my manners went.”

Professor Kent looked so embarrassed, Dev grinned. “Should I be calling your mom to have her tell you off?”

Kent ducked his head and chuckled sheepishly. “Yeah, might be best, to be honest….”

Since there was no reason to linger, as much as Dev would’ve liked that, he looked at the time on his cell phone and sighed. “Okay, I need to go get lunch somewhere. Then get back to listening to Angel whine about how miserable he feels. And maybe do some work too.” He smiled at Kent.

“It was nice to meet you, Mr. Rice.” Kent got to his feet to see him out, despite there being no need to do so. Not that Dev minded the guy coming closer.

“Please, call me Devin or Dev.”

“Fine, Dev. If you call me Seth instead of Professor Kent. I hear that all day and it’s just….”

“Too much?” Dev asked, turning around at the door. He realized how close Kent—Seth—had gotten when he almost bumped their chests together.

Seth opened the door for him, looking apologetic, and nodded. “Way too much.”

“Alrighty, then, Seth. Have a nice rest of the day,” he said, in lieu of his mind producing anything better with the close proximity and all.

“You as well, Devin,” Seth said, smiling as Dev threw him a small wave over his shoulder.

About Tia!

Tia Fielding is a thirtysomething Scandinavian who is a lover of witty people, words, cats, sarcasm, autumn, and the tiny beautiful things in life. Tia struggles with stubborn muses and depression, but both are things she has learned to live with. Tia identifies as genderqueer, but isn’t strict about pronouns. Why? Because luckily, in her native language there aren’t gender-specific pronouns. Being a reclusive author living with her fur-babies is another fact of life for Tia, among the need to write that seems to be a part of her psyche by now. In 2013 one of Tia’s novels was recognized by the industry’s Rainbow Awards in the Best LGBT Erotic Romance (Bobby Michaels Award) category.

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