Blog
31
Oct
2014

Garrett Leigh’s Slide

I am so excited to have Garrett Leigh on my blog today. Slide, the first book in the Roads series is a book you don’t want to miss. If you like characters with some past problems they need to deal with then you’ll love this book. I had the chance to sit down with Garrett and talk about the book a bit. We had some fun with it and hope you enjoy reading the interview. After the interview read all about the book along with an excerpt that will make you want to know what happens next. At the very bottom be sure to enter for a chance to win a copy of the book.

Amanda C. Stone: Good morning I’m so glad to have you here with me today. I love that your characters have some kind of dark past. It’s more realistic since pretty much everyone has their demons in the real world. Did you go into writing knowing you would write characters with pasts that haunted them, or did it happen accidentally?
Garrett Leigh: I always knew I’d write dark characters. Fluff just isn’t in me. I can read it, if it’s done brilliantly, like say, Jay Northcote, who I love, or someone like that, but I can’t write it. Perhaps that makes me dark…who know? But when I sit down to write, I find myself with a manuscript loaded with demons.
ACS: Demons make for some great reading. As a major tattoo fan, your descriptions of the art make me very happy. Where did the ideas for the tattoos in your book come from?
GL: I love ink. I have quite a bit of my own, and I’ve spent a lot of time in tattoo shops. Pete’s oilrig tattoo came from his backstory. His father was killed in an accident out on a rig when Pete was fourteen. Ash’s tattoo was a little more mysterious, but the basic premise was he was having such a tough time, the fantasy theme of wizards and ghouls kinda took him away from that for a while.
ACS: They sound beautiful. Will there be more Ash and Pete in the future? (Please say yes, please say yes!)
GL: Not in the near future. I have a plan for a kind of catch up novella with them, and perhaps some characters from other books, but it’s not visible enough for me to write it yet (and I don’t have time 🙁 )
ACS: At least there’s plans for them in the future. Time for some fun questions! What kind of tattoo would you have Ash put on you?
GL: Ash has already left his mark on me. I have a watercolour compass on the inside of my left bicep that commemorates something Ash and I have in common.
ACS: Oh man I’d love to see a picture of it! How far would you to get Pete to “rescue” you?
GL: Ahem. How long is a piece of string? I reckon I’d go pretty far. Pete is hot stuff, uniform, stubble, brown eyes…those tattoos…

Yeah. I’m not above a little drama 😉
ACS: Nothing wrong with that! Thank you so much for letting me interview you. It was a pleasure having you!

Blurb:
Don’t look back. Don’t you ever look back…

Shy tattoo artist Ash has a troubled past. Years of neglect, drug abuse, and life on the streets have taken their toll, and sometimes it seems the deep, unspoken bond with his lover is the only balm for wounds he doesn’t quite understand.

Chicago paramedic Pete is warmth, love, and strength—things Ash never knew he could have, and never even knew he wanted until Pete showed him. But fate is a cruel, cruel mistress, and when nightmares collide with the present, their tentatively built world comes crashing down.

Traumatic events in Pete’s work life distance him from home, and he doesn’t realize until it’s too late that Ash has slipped away. Betrayal, secrets, and lies unfold, and when a devastating coincidence takes hold, Pete must fight with all he has to save the love of his life.

Excerpt:
Ash was Texan by birth, but his southern roots only laced his speech when he was too tired to repress them… too tired to block out all the horrible shit that kept an invisible barrier between us.

He was just seventeen when his friend Ellie found him drawing on the streets of Philadelphia. He was homeless and drew comic book characters on the sidewalk for money. The way she told it, he was one of the best street artists in the city, but he said he just did it to survive. Ellie was in college at the time, and she spent the next three years trying to get him to go to a shelter. Eventually, she got her way, and when she moved back to Chicago a few months later, she asked him to come with her. It took him a year of procrastination and pulling his shit together, but after finishing his tattoo apprenticeship in Philly, he did just that.

Living together was a huge adjustment for both of us. Some days I thought we’d cracked it, but others….

I draped the comforter over us and tucked it around his shoulders. He settled against me with his arm stretched out across my torso. I ran my hand absently along his bicep and enjoyed the rare moment. Though he could be tactile when his mood was right, he rarely cuddled up to me so freely. Most times, he preferred our positions reversed—him on his back with his arms around me.

Curious, I pressed a kiss to the top of his sweat-dampened head. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I just missed you.”

I smiled into the darkness. “I missed you too.”

A light hum was his only answer, so I held him a bit tighter and made the most of having him curled against me. After a while, I felt him shift. I opened my eyes and quirked an eyebrow, too mellow to speak. He just stared at me, but his blazing eyes told me what I knew he found so hard to articulate.

I put my hand to his head and nudged it back down with a sad smile.

About Garrett:
Garrett Leigh is a British writer and book designer, currently working for Dreamspinner Press, Loose Id and Black Jazz Press. Her protagonists will always always be tortured, crippled, broken, and deeply flawed. Throw in a tale of enduring true love, some stubbly facial hair, and a bunch of tattoos, and you’ve got yourself a Garrett special.

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. That, and dreaming up new ways to torture her characters. Garrett believes in happy endings; she just likes to make her boys work for it.

Garrett also works as a freelance cover artist for various publishing houses and independent authors under the pseudonym G.D. Leigh. For cover art info, please visit blackjazzpress.com
Website: http://garrettleigh.com
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Garrett_Leigh
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/garrettleighbooks
Cover art enquiries: blackjazzdesign@gmail.com

Buy Links:
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Slide-Roads-ebook/dp/B00FVPL9E0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1381827634&sr=8-1&keywords=Slide+Garrett+Leigh
Dreamspinner Press: http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=4259

Tour Stops:
9/12: Rainbow Gold Reviews, Nephylim, Iyana Jenna
9/19: Parker Williams, Velvet Panic, Jade Crystal
9/26: MM Good Book Reviews, Smoocher’s Voice, Cate Ashwood
10/3: EE Montgomery, Inked Rainbow Reads, Regular Guys, Hot Romance
10/10: My Fiction Nook, Book Reviews and More by Kathy, Scattered Thoughts & Rogue Words
10/17: Emotion in Motion, Queer Town Abbey, Foxylutely Book Reviews
10/24: Fallen Angel Reviews, The Blogger Girls, Love Bytes
10/31: Amanda C. Stone, Prism Book Alliance, The Novel Approach

Giveaway:
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