Hello everyone! Today I am so excited to welcome Abigail Roux to the blog. Abi is here to talk to us more about her new release, Shock & Awe. It is the first book in her new Sidewinder series and a spin off to the fabulous Cut & Run books.  I absolutely LOVED this one and definitely recommend it.  Abi also has some great giveaways for commenters on her tour so be sure to leave a comment at the end of the post to enter.  Please join me in giving Abi a big welcome!

shock and awe tour banner

Hello everyone! Welcome to Day Three of the Shock & Awe blog tour! Thank you to Joyfully Jay for hosting today. If you’re following along, you might find this handy dandy schedule of use, and you might be interested in keeping up with me each day, because I’ve got a couple goodies to give away. In celebration of Nick and Kelly’s coming out, so to speak, I’ve got three of their Heart and Clover T-shirts for three lucky commenters. And I’ve got five sets of trading cards with original artwork and character work-ups, something I intend to add new cards to every year, which makes this first year’s cards pretty important if you’re an obsessive collector like I am.

Saving Kelly

The last two blog stops I’ve casually mentioned, during my explanations of how Nick and Kelly became a couple, that both men were supposed to die in my original plans. Kelly, in fact, wasn’t supposed to make it out of New Orleans alive in Touch & Geaux. So what happened? What changed my plans? Why isn’t Kelly dead?

It wasn’t Nick, I can tell you that. No, Kelly’s still alive because he’s Kelly. As I developed his character, I began to fall a little in love with him. I started dreading the scene where I would have to kill him. Every time I wrote his name it was painful, knowing what I had planned for him.

I would whine to my friends about it, and they would beg me not to kill him. Everyone loved him, and that was why I kept telling myself he needed to die. There had to be some real weight to the actions, some consequences. Right? But the more I thought of it, the harder it got. Around the same time, a dear friend of mine was struggling with quitting smoking, and that was when inspiration struck.

I took the decision out of my hands, a completely selfish move to alleviate the guilt I was feeling for the murder I had planned. I told her that if she didn’t touch a cigarette for the weeks before my deadline, I would let Kelly live. Just one slip, one bounce off the wagon, and Kelly died. Now it was on her head, not mine! (That’s the downfall of having writers for friends, we’ll torture you whether we love you or not.)

To make the deal a little more official, I announced on my Tumblr what I’d done. That if a certain character wound up dead in Touch & Geaux, it was all her fault! Well, needless to say, it benefited both of us. She gave up smoking, and I was able to keep Kelly’s death scene on the cutting room floor. I did share it, later on, because it kind of breaks my heart and that kind of pain should be spread! So if you’d like to read that later on, you can find it here. It’s unfortunately too long to post here. (And yeah, even after writing that scene I still didn’t see Nick and Kelly until people started talking about them.)

The fact that my friend essentially saved Kelly isn’t a well-kept secret. So I’ll share another with you. During the writing of the book, my beta readers did indeed have a Sidewinder ship, one they were after me to write for fun and I kept refusing because it made me laugh too hard to think of it. The name of their ship? Kegger.

That’s right. Kelly and Digger. That was the secret Sidewinder ship while I was writing Touch & Geaux. In fact, some of the scenes where Nick and Kelly interact and readers say they’re made for each other, I wrote with the sole goal of making Kelly and Digger not look like boyfriends.

Sometimes when you’re looking so hard at one thing and trying to keep it from happening, I guess it’s like playing whack-a-mole in the end.

If you care to follow me more closely, you can find me on Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr.


Blurb

shock & aweAfter barely surviving a shootout in New Orleans, Sidewinder medic Kelly Abbott has to suffer through a month of recovery before he can return home to Colorado. He’s not surprised when fellow Sidewinder Nick O’Flaherty stays with him in New Orleans. Nor is he surprised when Nick travels home with him to help him get back on his feet—after all, years on the same Marine Force Recon team bonded the men in ways that only bleeding for a brother can. He’s very surprised, though, when Nick humors his moment of curiosity and kisses him.

Nick knows all of Kelly’s quirks and caprices, so the kiss was a low-risk move on his part . . . or so he thought. But what should’ve been a simple moment unleashes a flood of confusing emotions and urges that neither man is prepared to address.

Now, Kelly and Nick must figure out what they mean to each other—friends and brothers in arms, or something even deeper?—before the past can come back to ruin their tenuous future.

You can read an excerpt and purchase Shock & Awe today from Riptide!


Giveaway

Abi is giving away some great goodies along the tour, including three of their Heart and Clover T-shirts for three lucky commenters and five sets of trading cards with original artwork and character work-ups. Just leave a comment at any of the stops along the tour to enter.  The contest closes on November 25th.

  • By entering the giveaway, you’re confirming that you are at least 18 years old.
  • Winners will be selected by random number. No purchase necessary to win.  The number of eligible entries received determines the odds of winning.
  • If you win, you must respond to my email within 48 hours or another winner may be chosen. Please make sure that your spam filter allows email from Joyfully Jay.
  • Winners may be announced on the blog following the contest. By entering the contest you are agreeing to allow your name to be posted and promoted as the contest winner by Joyfully Jay.
  • Prizes will be distributed following the giveaway either by Joyfully Jay or the person/organization donating the prize.
  • By entering you are agreeing to hold Joyfully Jay harmless if the prize or giveaway in some way negatively impacts the winner.
  • Readers may only enter once for each contest.  Duplicate entries for the same giveaway will be ignored. In the event of technical problems with the blog during the contest, every effort will be made to extend the contest deadline to allow for additional entries.
  • Void where prohibited by law.
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