Guest Post and Giveaway: Scarred by Mia Kerick

We’re so pleased to have Mia Kerick joining us today on the blog tour for her latest release, Scarred. Enjoy this fun little post and then be sure to check out the great giveaway below.

Welcome, Mia!

Thank you so much for welcoming me to your blog today to celebrate the release of Scarred, by Mia Kerick, an adult LGBTQ contemporary romance. Scarred, as you can probably tell from the title, is quite intense, and yes, it is full of angst, largely thanks to Matt’s childhood abduction. As you read it, you will smile at some of Vedie’s antics, but you will spend more time wringing your hands than laughing. Let me tell you, these two young men earn every second of their HEA.  So here is a lighthearted blog post to offer contrast (relief).

I don’t cook.

Well, I did cook once. It was actually one of the things I looked forward to when I first got married: cooking my man his dinner. Unfortunately, he wasn’t too enthralled by the two meals I knew how to make:

1. Chicken/cream of mushroom soup/frozen broccoli/minute rice casserole
2. Tuna/ cream of mushroom soup/ frozen peas/pasta casserole

The look of hungry dissatisfaction on Mr. Mia’s newlywed face remains branded on my mind almost twenty-five years later.

Sigh.

Things got a little bit better when Mr. Mia grew a garden. I figured out how to make a fresh zucchini/onion/tomato stir fry, which I served over rice or pasta (and, for the record, it wasn’t a casserole) that my husband actually liked. I made it every day for three weeks.

And then he didn’t like it anymore.

Sigh.

This cooking dilemma compounded with the birth of my extremely finicky first daughter, Ali. She nursed for a long time—I couldn’t go wrong with that. But when the time came for her to eat solid food—well, it just wasn’t happening. I tried all of the typical “kid foods”: chicken nuggets and grilled cheese sandwiches and buttered noodles and pizza. NOPE, NOT HAPPENING. So, I shifted into “chocolate milk shakes for all three meals mode”, in which I would slip some fruit or yogurt.

“No banana, Mommy! No yogie! Just milk and ice cream!” (And way too much chocolate syrup.)

About a year later, I asked the pediatrician, “Can a child survive on milk shakes, Wheat Thins, and Kudos bars?” The doctor looked at me strangely. And for the record, at this point I wasn’t too worried about what Mr. Mia ate for dinner.

Child number two… less picky. Yay.

Child number three… WAY MORE PICKY. Ugh.

Child number four eats anything… and everything. Cool.

And then dinnertime got CRAZY. Swim team, dance class, art lessons, baseball, after school program, soccer, soccer for someone else… you name it, my kids did it.  Sitting down at the dinner table became a thing of the past.

I was not overly disappointed, as dinnertime had become rather stressful, thanks to the fact I had to make four separate meals each night.

We got out of the “sitting down to dinner” habit. For years, I put together one meal for two kids at five, and Mr. Mia put together a semblance of dinner for another kid at seven, and I picked up fast food for more family members at ten, on the way home from dance. What Mr. Mia ate each night… I have no clue.

Sigh.

All I can say is I’m reasonably confident that nobody was starving.

I called myself “The Lone Arranger” when it came to coming up with dinner for the kids. (I actually thought everybody called me this catchy nickname, but I have recently been informed—rather rudely—that this is not the case.) In any case, I didn’t cook it—I simply arranged for each family member to have access to something edible each night.

The situation has become even more challenging lately, although it’s not often that the entire family is home to eat dinner seeing as one child is in law school, two are in college, and my only child who is living at home is heavily involved in sports.

Ali is a vegetarian—a super “foodie” vegetarian.

Demi is gluten and dairy free.

Sisi eats about five foods in the entire world, but this number is slowly growing.

Chris isn’t so much into vegetables.

Mr. Mia refuses to eat fast food and those easy heat-up frozen meals.

I tried to be a “hunter-gatherer” for a period of time for health reasons, but finally gave up and I just eat what I can arrange.

We cook a Green Chef meal a few times a week and hire the lady across the street to occasionally cook us comfort food. Mr. Mia grills every now and then. Momma Mia makes that chicken/mushroom soup/broccoli casserole once in a while. Sometimes we eat big bowls of cereal.

Sometime we just drink wine (excluding my son who eats leftovers from the above list).

I don’t cook—never really have, and probably I never will.

But we’re getting by.

Sigh.

About the Book

Title: Scarred
Author: Mia Kerick
Release Date: March 1st 2017
Genre: Adult, Gay Romance, LGBT
BLURB: From bestselling author Mia Kerick comes a New Adult Gay Romance that will keep you up reading all night!

Matthew North waited ten years to heal from the devastating wounds inflicted by the man who abducted and abused him as a child. Living reclusively on a tropical island—with no company but his four cats—he merely avoids the lingering pain.

Wearing twisted ropes of mutilated skin on his back, Matt struggles with a profound hindrance—the scars that deaden his soul. However, on the night he meets lively Vedie Wilson, a local restaurant busboy who expresses his gender by wearing lipgloss and eyeliner along with his three-day beard, things change.

Gradually, Vedie and Mateo unite in friendship. Through a series of awkward encounters, the pair learns each other’s secrets. Vedie learns that an angelic face can front for a scarred soul. Matthew learns that the line between one’s masculine and feminine sides is blurred. Can they embrace the painful stories behind each other’s scars if they’re to find everlasting love? Or will surrendered love come to be yet another blemish on their souls?

Purchase: Amazon US | Amazon UK | Cool Dudes Publishing

Find Scarred on Goodreads

About the Author

Mia Kerick is the mother of four exceptional children—one in law school, another in dance school, a third in school at Mia’s alma mater, Boston College, and her lone son still in high school. (Mia is a major fan of the learning process!) She writes LGBTQ romance when not editing National Honor Society essays, offering opinions on college and law school applications, helping to create dance bios, and reviewing English papers. Her husband of twenty-three years has been told by many that he has the patience of Job, but don’t ask Mia about this, as it is a sensitive subject.

Mia focuses her stories on the emotional growth of troubled young people and their relationships. She has a great affinity for the tortured hero. There is, at minimum, one of these in each book. As a teen, Mia filled spiral-bound notebooks with tales of said tortured heroes (most of whom happened to strongly resemble lead vocalists of 1980s big-hair bands) and stuffed them under her mattress for safekeeping. She is thankful to CoolDudes Publishing, Dreamspinner Press, Harmony Ink Press, and Evernight Publishing for providing her with alternate places to stash her stories.

A social liberal, Mia cheers for each and every victory made in the name of human rights. Her only major regret: never having taken typing or computer class in school, destining her to a life consumed with two-fingered pecking and constant prayer to the Gods of Technology.

Links: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Amazon | Goodreads

The Giveaway

a Rafflecopter giveaway
https://widget-prime.rafflecopter.com/launch.js