Guest Post and Giveaway: The Deep of the Sound Blog Tour With Amy Lane

The Novel Approach welcomes Amy Lane today on her The Deep of the Sound blog tour. Enjoy Amy’s guest post, then be sure to check out the tour-wide giveaway information below.

Good luck!

Amy’s Adventures in the Pacific Northwest—Part 3

A Little Closer to Home ~ 

By Amy Lane 

My last two posts here and here talk about the Pacific Northwest, and I’ll get back there, but first I want to say a word or two about Cal’s fish.  If you look on the Riptide page with Deep of the Sound on it, you’ll see an excerpt that features Cal literally at war with nature.  Now, I don’t make any bones about being sort of an inside creature. I’m not great at gardening, and my husband laid down an edict that camping was going without cable so we don’t really do that either.  How in the world would I write a scene about the young man and the sea?

Well, in this case, it goes back to when I was a teenager, and my friend’s father used to take his daughter’s friends waterskiing.

Did I say I was awful at out of doors?  I was three times as bad waterskiing.  Oddly enough I was pretty good at swimming, and I didn’t mind being in lake or river.  But waterskiing? It was like trying to haul a wet sleeping bag out of the water and making it skip on the surface.  Except worse, because a wet sleeping bag didn’t expect to be fished out of the water six million times, right?

But oh, my friend’s father persevered.  He was a good guy—one of the best of men, actually—and he made it his mission one summer to see me actually skate on top of the water on skis.  One ski, two skis, hell, he would have tried six if he’d thought it would let me shout triumphantly from the back of the boat, but alas, nothing worked.

Until…

One summer, about two days before we supposed to go skiing on the Sacramento River, an article appeared in the Bee. A few miles downstream of where Ben was going to take us out, a fish had been caught. A 1000 lb. motherfucking sturgeon.

They showed a picture.

Have you ever seen a sturgeon?

Seriously. Would you look at that giant prehistoric fucking fish?

*shudder*

I am absolutely serious when I tell you I spent no more time in the Sacramento River that summer than absolutely necessary. I was up on the first try, within seconds. Oh my God, there was nothing so awful as the idea of one of those things chewing on my feet.  And although my friend and her parents were thrilled not to be dragging a sodden sleeping bag around again all summer, the fact is, I’ve had a sort problem with being in water so murky that I can’t see my feet ever since.  It’s weird—I’ll be swimming along, doing fine—I’m like a hu-man-atee, I swear—and suddenly?  MUAHAHAHAHAHA.  Holy fuck, there’s a hideous thing down there and it’s going to eat me!  I spazz out completely, and my family can only watch in horrified fascination as I go fainting starfish on their asses and calm myself out of drowning.

So when I was reading up on the area, and I saw that there were green sturgeons in Puget Sound, I looked those beasties up.

They were, if anything, less attractive than their larger brothers.

Oh, holy lord, those things are protected? They’ve got spiny ridges on their backs that can rip through oilskins, and they need protection from us?

Oh there’s some irony right there.

And yeah. I’m sort of a sucker for irony. So if you’re ever so bored, click the link above and read about Cal’s fight with the ginormous fish, because that right there? That’s Amy’s favorite phobia, coming out to play.

I hope it’s as fun for you as it was for me!

Blurb: Cal McCorkle has lived in Bluewater Bay his whole life. He works two jobs to support a brother with a laundry list of psychiatric diagnoses and a great-uncle with Alzheimer’s, and his personal life amounts to impersonal hookups with his boss. He’s got no time, no ambition, and no hope. All he has is family, and they’re killing him one responsibility at a time.

Avery Kennedy left Los Angeles, his family, and his sleazy boyfriend to attend a Wolf’s Landing convention, and he has no plans to return. But when he finds himself broke and car-less in Bluewater Bay, he’s worried he’ll have to slink home with his tail between his legs. Then Cal McCorkle rides to his rescue, and his urge to run away dies a quick death.

Avery may seem helpless at first, but he can charm Cal’s fractious brother, so Cal can pretty much forgive him anything. Even being adorkable. And giving him hope. But Cal can only promise Avery “until we can’t”—and the cost of changing that to “until forever” might be too high, however much they both want it.

About the Author: Amy Lane exists happily with her noisy family in a crumbling suburban crapmansion, and equally happily with the surprisingly demanding voices who live in her head.

She loves cats, movies, yarn, pretty colors, pretty men, shiny things, and Twu Wuv, and despises house cleaning, low fat granola bars, and vainglorious prickweenies.

She can be found at her computer, dodging housework, or simultaneously reading, watching television, and knitting, because she likes to freak people out by proving it can be done.

Connect with Amy: Website | Blog | Twitter: @amymaclane | Facebook group: Amy Lane Anonymous | Goodreads

Every comment on this blog tour enters you in a drawing for an eBook package of all of Amy Lane’s backlist titles with Riptide! (Excludes The Deep of the Sound and anthologies.) Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on June 20, 2015. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries. Don’t forget to add your email address to your comment so we know how to contact you if you win!