Hello everyone! Today I am so excited to welcome back the fabulous Marie Sexton to the blog!  Marie is here to talk to us about her newest release, Normal Enough. She has also brought a great tour wide giveaway you can enter through Rafflecopter. So please join me in giving Marie a big welcome!

 

I’m just going to get this out of the way: Normal Enough is about a man with a sexual fetish for classic muscle cars.

Yes, you read that right. He has a car fetish.

It’s an unusual choice, to be sure, and I have a feeling it might not be popular with readers. But the thing is, sometimes we write the stories we need to write at that particular moment, rather than the story everybody expects.

Let me back up a bit.

2013 wasn’t a great year for me. I feel like I’ve been saying that each year for a few years now, but it’s true. 2010 was a lot of fun, but after that, things got weird. 2011 was full of mishap and discovery and disillusionment. 2012 was a long and bitter battle with depression. I finally emerged from that terrible fog in early 2013, and my number one priority was not falling back into it. The first step was to fully and honestly admit to myself that I’d fallen out of love with writing. It was no longer fun, and I was tired of telling myself I should be doing it. I was tired of stressing myself out over something that started out a hobby and had become a chore. I was tired of a great many things. So I took the year off.

Now, I know a lot of people say writers aren’t supposed to do this. We’re supposed to write every day, whether the muse strikes us or not. We’re supposed to put ass to chair and fingers to the keys and just DO IT. But I didn’t care. I went to conventions. I had a great time hanging out with readers and friends, both old and new. I had four new releases (all books I’d written in 2012), and I was perfectly happy to not be writing.

It was time I needed in order to figure out where I wanted to go.

Then, sometime just after the middle of the year, I decided it might be time to get back in the game, and I ended up on the list to write a story for Amber Allure. It was this strange confluence of events – me suddenly asking for direction, and another author who was overbooked and asked me to take her spot – and before I knew it, I was committed to writing a story for Amber’s Grease Monkeys, Inc. Pax, with a deadline of December 1.

Great, I told myself. This is it. I’m going to write again.

Except I had no clue what to write.

I spent a few months agonizing over it. I debated trying to back out of the Pax, but knew I’d beat myself up for failing. In the end, I sat down one day with my BIL (who’s a mechanic) and asked him (over a couple of beers) what kind of juicy stories he could tell me.

From there, Normal Enough was born, and for the first time in almost a year, I was excited again about writing. Words flew onto the screen, and I didn’t bother to ask if they were too weird or too kinky. I just wrote, and it was liberating. As my character Kasey discovered that he was as normal as anybody else, I discovered that maybe I can learn to love writing again. I realized that I’m allowed to define the role writing takes in my life. I can say no. I can take days or weeks or even months off. I’m now (mostly) secure in the fact that I can write at my own pace, and it might mean fewer releases per year than I’ve had in the past, but at least I no longer feel the pressure of it like a noose around my neck. For the first time in a long time, I feel like I’m where I need to be.

So yes, Normal Enough may be a strange little novella, but in some ways, it changed my life. At that moment in time, it was the exactly the story I needed to write. I just have to cross my fingers and hope that for somebody out there, it’s exactly the story they’ve been waiting to read.


Blurb

normal enoughWhen Brandon Kenner shows up at Kasey Ralston’s garage with a 1970 Chevelle SS 454, Kasey is smitten by both the man and his car. Between what Kasey considers a shameful fetish and his long estrangement from his family, Kasey finds it easiest to be alone, even distancing himself from his coworkers. But Brandon doesn’t think Kasey’s fetish is weird. In fact, he likes it.

Kasey doesn’t know how to resist a man as charming as Brandon, and he’s more than willing to be seduced. But what are Brandon’s long-term intentions? Kasey is afraid of hoping for too much, but equally afraid that when all is said and done, Brandon will leave, and Kasey will be left alone once again.


Bio

marie sexton headshotMarie Sexton lives in Colorado.  She’s a fan of just about anything that involves muscular young men piling on top of each other.  In particular, she loves the Denver Broncos and enjoys going to the games with her husband.  Her imaginary friends often tag along.  Marie has one daughter, two cats, and one dog, all of whom seem bent on destroying what remains of her sanity.  She loves them anyway.


Giveaway

There is a giveaway that will be available throughout all blog tour stops.  The prize is an ebook copy of Normal Enough and a $50 ARe gift certificate for some of Marie Sexton’s backlist books.

To enter, follow the link to the Rafflecopter giveaway.

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