Rough Road by Vanessa North Blog Tour, Guest Post, Excerpt, Review and Giveaway

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Hi guys, we have Vanessa North popping in today with her new release Rough Road, we have a great guest post, a fantastic excerpt, a fabulous giveaway and Zane’s review, so enjoy the post and click that rafflecopter link <3 ~Pixie~

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Rough Road

(A Lake Lovelace Novel 02)
by

Vanessa North

Eddie Russell is many things: A wealthy pillar of the community. An outrageous flirt. A doting best friend. A masochist with a kink for brawling with his bedmates. But he is definitely not a man who invites intimacy. His friends are close but few, his lovers rarer still.

When Eddie runs his Mercedes off the road on a hot July afternoon, Wish Carver comes to his aid—and leaves his number in Eddie’s phone. Wish, a road crew worker half Eddie’s age and sexy as sin, seems fascinated by Eddie’s different sides. Mutual attraction and compatible kinks ignite the sheets, but it’s their connection outside the bedroom that Eddie begins to crave.

When the two come down on opposite sides of a local issue, Eddie finds his growing feelings for Wish at odds with his business interests and his devotion to his best friend, local wakeboarding legend Ben Warren. Torn between old loyalties and his new love, Eddie is reluctant to make a choice. But he knows he can’t make Wish wait too long to make up his mind.

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Vanessa North

I’m Vanessa North, and I’ll be sharing some of my thoughts throughout the week on writing the second book in the Lake Lovelace series, Rough Road. Join the conversation by commenting on the posts and you’ll be entered in the drawing for a $25 Riptide Publishing gift certificate. Thanks for reading!

You can find all of the Rough Road tour stops at http://riptidepublishing.com/titles/rough-road

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Age Gaps

by Vanessa North

There is a long and rich tradition of age gaps in romances and romance-adjacent literature. There were nearly two decades between Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester. Many of Heyer’s wonderful historicals featured a decade(ish) spread of years between the ages of their main characters. In Lavyrle Spencer’s Years, the heroine is closer in age to the hero’s son than to the hero himself. And no blog post about May/December relationships would be complete without referencing Terry McMillan’s “How Stella Got her Groove Back” with a twenty-year age difference—and a heroine in her forties.

May/December romances aren’t exactly unfamiliar territory to me either—Double Up features an age difference of ten years, and Hostile Beauty fifteen years. So why did I decide to explore an age gap, again, in Rough Road?

Let’s have some real talk about kink for a minute. In romance novels, kinks often align magically (usually dominance and submission, but I get into that more in another post for this tour, so I won’t repeat it here) with mutual attraction and age-appropriateness. However, in real life, finding someone with compatible kinks in a small town—or anywhere, really—might lead someone to a dating pool outside of their typical dating age range, and that’s exactly the sort of relationship I wanted to portray here.

But more than anything, the biggest reason I wanted to explore an age gap in this story is because Eddie states over and over again that he prefers older men, and he kept teasing Ben about his younger boyfriend in Double Up. I figured a little turnabout was fair play. Maybe Wish wasn’t the only sadist involved in the making of this book…

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Excerpt

I wake to the sound of rhythmic breathing—snoring? No. I lift my head enough to see a moving form backlit by gray window light. Yoga. Wish is doing yoga.

I glance at the clock.

“Oh God, you’re exercising? At five in the morning? That’ll teach me to let a sadist spend the night.”

I pull the pillow over my head, blocking out the noises and the light.

My body hurts. Everywhere. And while some of it is a good hurt—I clench my ass cheeks and feel the pleasant sensitivity of a few light bruises—most of it is a holy-fuck-I-crashed-my-car hurt. Which is most certainly not.

“Good morning, S-Class.” He pulls the pillow off my head. “How ya feeling?”

“Like I smashed up a $150k car with me inside. Ow. I don’t know which hurts more, me or my pride.”

His hand traces down my naked back. “You want me to call someone? I’d offer to stay, but I have to be at work at six thirty.”

“You’re as bad as Ben,” I grumble. “Morning people.” I grab for the pillow, but he holds it out of reach. He really is a fucking sadist.

“Who’s Ben? Who you were on the phone with when you cracked up your car?”

“Ugh, now? We have to talk about him now?” I peek over my shoulder, and he’s smiling at me, all serene like “coffee before talkie” isn’t even a thing in his worldview.

“Well, I need a shower, and then I gotta get out of here. But we could meet for dinner later and you could tell me about him then? I’m guessing he’s either your brother, a fuck buddy, or a friendly ex.”

I groan, and not only because I need to stop this talk of dating before it gets off the ground, but because these days Ben truly is more like a brother than a lover to me. It doesn’t even matter that I don’t want him that way; it still hurts that someone else is closer to him than I am. But maybe not as much as it hurt yesterday. “He’s my best friend. There, nothing to talk about. We—you and me—we can’t date, Wish.”

His hand pauses its stroking on my back, then resumes again slower, lighter. “Why not? I’m not in the closet, and I would guess you aren’t either. We’re hot as fuck in bed together, and I like you. I think you like me, or at least, you smile at me a lot, but that could be gas I suppose.”

I give an offended snort, but my heart isn’t in it, and I end up laughing instead. Damn him for being so sassy and cute I can’t help myself. I roll onto my back, wincing in not-sexy pain. “Because, lovely, you are twenty-four years old. I’m nearly twice your age and that creates an awkward power dynamic for me. I like you. I had a great time last night. But you should date someone closer to your own age. Someone in the same stage of life.”

He frowns at me. “So this was just a hookup for you?”

Ouch. Not often I get slut-shamed by my own date. Not date. Hookup. Still, I make my voice soft and conciliatory, because I do like him, and he needs to understand that it isn’t personal. “I don’t expect a relationship when I have sex with someone I just met. Especially not kinky sex. A lot of people like us get what we need outside of monogamous relationships. You know this, right?”

He nods. “Yeah, I felt last night . . . it was special. I felt really connected.”

“I’m not going to tell you it was ordinary, everyday kinky fuckin’. But it wasn’t the start of a relationship. Don’t get attached.”

“Okay.” He shrugs, but his posture is stiff. “I don’t suppose there’s anything I can say to that. May I use your shower?”

I nod, a lump in my throat, wanting to take back my words. But they were the truth. He shouldn’t get attached. This is for him, not for me. He can find some sweet young thing like himself, get married, adopt kids. His generation has opportunities I still feel like I’m peering at through a locked window.

When he finishes in the shower, he comes and sits on the bed, fully clothed.

“Thanks for last night, S-Class.” He leans over me and presses a kiss to my forehead. “Call me if you ever want to do it again. No strings.”

I close my eyes for a long moment while I try to figure out what to say, and when I open them, he’s gone. I sigh and pick up my phone to dial Ben.

“Hey, Ed.” Davis. “How are you?”

“Why are you answering Ben’s phone at six in the morning? Oh, Bedhead, tell me he hasn’t converted you into one of them.”

“No, no, I’m still in the snooze alarm club, but I have an early flight this morning. He’s in the shower, want me to tell him you called?”

“Where are you going? Why haven’t I heard about this?”

“My former business partner is receiving an award. I promised I’d go be his plus one at this banquet.”

His . . . yeah, that raises some protective hackles. “His plus one, Bedhead? Is your former business partner gay?”

“No. But his wife is hugely pregnant and on bed rest. It’s a thing—preeclampsia or something. I’m the backup plus one.”

“Breeding is just not natural.” I wrinkle my nose. “Fine, tell him I called, tell him I’m all banged up from the accident and won’t be there to help with his month-close books, but he can email them to me. He should get with Jerry about some package deals for gear with the sale of wake boats—our gear sales have slowed down. And he can bring me pizza from Portofino’s after work. Plain cheese.”

“I’ll let him know. You okay? Ben got the impression it wasn’t serious?”

“Yeah, I am. Only sore all over. And I picked up a very energetic twenty-four-year-old sadist to take advantage of my bruised and battered self, so I am taking the boss man prerogative of working from home.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. A twenty-four-year-old sad—?”

“Bye, Davis, talk soon!”

I hang up.

I like Davis Fox with his freckles, his dimples, and his daddy’s work ethic. I love that the guy loves my best friend. But I don’t want to talk about Wish with him until I’ve told Ben. Because Ben and I loved each other first, and we don’t let each other find out important shit secondhand.

And why the fuck was I filing a hookup under “important shit”?

For more excerpt click here: http://riptidepublishing.com/titles/rough-road (Just click the excerpt tab)

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About Vanessa

Author of over a dozen novels, novellas, and short stories, Vanessa North delights in giving happy-ever-afters to characters who don’t think they deserve them. Relentless curiosity led her to take up knitting and run a few marathons “just to see if she could.” She started writing for the same reason. Her very patient husband pretends not to notice when her hobbies take over the house. Living and writing in Northwest Georgia, she finds her attempts to keep a quiet home are frequently thwarted by twin boy-children and a very, very large dog.

Connect with Vanessa:

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Giveaway!

Win a $25 in Riptide Publishing store credit!

(Just leave a comment on this post)
Don’t forget to leave your email so we can contact you if you win!
(Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on October 3rd. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries.)

Review

Vanessa North - Rough Road‏ 600x900Title: Rough Road

Series: Lake Lovelace #2      

Author: Vanessa North

Genre: Contemporary

Length: Novel (185 pages)

ISBN: 1626492999 (ISBN13: 9781626492998)

Publisher: Riptide Publishing (September 28, 2015)

Heat Level: Explicit

Heart Rating: ♥♥♥♥♥ 4 ½ Hearts

Reviewer: Zane

Blurb: Eddie Russell is many things: A wealthy pillar of the community. An outrageous flirt. A doting best friend. A masochist with a kink for brawling with his bedmates. But he is definitely not a man who invites intimacy. His friends are close but few, his lovers rarer still.

When Eddie runs his Mercedes off the road on a hot July afternoon, Wish Carver comes to his aid—and leaves his number in Eddie’s phone. Wish, a road crew worker half Eddie’s age and sexy as sin, seems fascinated by Eddie’s different sides. Mutual attraction and compatible kinks ignite the sheets, but it’s their connection outside the bedroom that Eddie begins to crave.

When the two come down on opposite sides of a local issue, Eddie finds his growing feelings for Wish at odds with his business interests and his devotion to his best friend, local wakeboarding legend Ben Warren. Torn between old loyalties and his new love, Eddie is reluctant to make a choice. But he knows he can’t make Wish wait too long to make up his mind.

Product Link: http://riptidepublishing.com/titles/rough-road | http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1626492999

Review: “Rough Road” is the second book in Vanessa North’s “Lake Lovelace” series, but if you don’t read the first book, “Double Up” first, you won’t be lost. Having read it myself, though, I do recommend you give it a go.  I loved Ben and Davis and adored Ben’s best friend, Eddie, a supporting character who generated his own little spotlight. News of a book about Eddie was a delightful surprise; I could not wait to get my hands on it! For all my excitement, Eddie and Wish (short for Aloysius) did not disappoint.

Flirty kinky Eddie is out and proud. Adorable and direct, you never know what he’s going to say. He’s even more fun to read now that he’s got his own story. And Wish… Wish is the stuff my dreams are made of. Young, hot and just as kinky, he’s perfect for Eddie.  Forty-four year old Eddie and twenty-four year old Wish are a May December fantasy come to life for this reader (I do LOVE that trope)!

So… the kink. Let’s talk pain kink. There is no typical dom-sub relationship here; this one is pure sado-masochism. Eddie the unapologetic pain slut is the perfect companion to Wish, who gets off on giving him what he wants. From chance meeting to sexy exploits, this one night hook up continues beyond anything they imagine; their instant attraction blossoms into something real. Rough and raunchy sex turned into love – who could ask for more?

Outside of the bedroom is where the conflicts arise – their struggle to get past their differences (political, financial, emotional) is their Rough Road. Though at first their differences seem to be insignificant, deeper issues lie beneath the surface. Much to this reader’s relief, Eddie and Wish work past it all, and they do navigate the way to their HEA.

This is another winning read from Vanessa North, one of the few authors that makes first person present tense seamless and easy to read, in my opinion. Truth be told, I haven’t read anything from this author I don’t like, and this book is no different.

Filled with romance, sweet sexy moments and fun loving kink, Eddie and Wish made my day.  Pleasure, pain and piercings – What’s not to love? Rough Ride is an easy recommendation, as is Vanessa North. Hop on board for a sweet romance with some kinky fun – you won’t regret it.

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Check out the other blogs on the blog tour

September 28, 2015 – Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words
September 28, 2015 – Up All Night Read All Day
September 28, 2015 – Love Bytes Reviews
September 28, 2015 – Joyfully Jay
September 29, 2015 – Cup o’ Porn
September 29, 2015 – All I Want and More
September 29, 2015 – Fangirl Moments and My Two Cents
September 30, 2015 – The Jeep Diva
September 30, 2015 – My Fiction Nook
September 30, 2015 – The Day Before You Came
October 1, 2015 – Booklover Sue
October 1, 2015 – LeAnn’s Book Reviews
October 1, 2015 – Sinfully Sexy Books
October 2, 2015 – Prism Book Alliance
October 2, 2015 – MM Good Book Reviews
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8 thoughts on “Rough Road by Vanessa North Blog Tour, Guest Post, Excerpt, Review and Giveaway

  1. Congratulations on the release and looking forward to reading it! Sounds so interesting and going on my large pile!

    juliesmall2016(at)gmail(dot)com

  2. I have both Double Up and Rough Road loaded on my Kindle and ready to go. Can’t wait to get started on them! Thanks for the review and the giveaway. 🙂
    lkbherring64(at)gmail(dot)com

  3. Congratulations on your new release! I enjoyed the excerpt! Thank you for the post and the giveaway!

    ree.dee.2014 (at) gmail (dot) com

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