Guest Post & Giveaway with Abigail Roux

*SQUEE* The Book Pushers would like to welcome Abigail Roux and Riptide publishing here for the 4th stop of the Stars & Stripes blog tour. This morning we will have a guest post by Abigail herself, and this afternoon a review of Stars & Stripes. Abigail, take it away!

Welcome to the Stars & Stripes virtual book tour! Thank you for helping me celebrate the release of the 6^th book in the Cut & Run series. . I’ll be giving away tons of prizes. For every stop I have a digital copy of the first book, Cut & Run, a personalized autograph, and either a Team Ty/Team Zane T-shirts or an autographed trinket! To enter to win one of the prizes, just leave a comment here at the Book Pushers, and make sure you include your e-mail address! To win the grand prize, one complete electronic set of the first 5 books, you’ll need to finish a treasure hunt, which you’ll find on my blog on the last day of the tour! Many thanks to the Book Pushers for hosting me on my very first Riptide Publishing virtual book tour!

On Being a Writer

One of the great things about being a writer is the lengths to which you can go for research. Sometimes all you can do is look it up on Google and hope you’ve got it right, but for the most part I do what I can to make it authentic. I’ve managed to combine two of the greatest loves of my life, telling stories and traveling, and make them part of the job.

While writing Armed & Dangerous, I flew to Chicago and drove from there to Washington, DC. It was harrowing, to say the least. A lot of the problems the characters ran into during the course of the book were things that happened to me, or almost happened to me. And that’s where I earn my tax write-off.

To write something with the taste of authenticity, you have to live it. If Ty and Zane go to visit a Big Cat preserve, then I need to do it. I need to see and smell it and trip over the misplaced flag stones. In preparation for Stars & Stripes, I flew to Texas. I flew there twice, because I didn’t do everything I needed to do the first time. I walked down the Riverwalk in San Antonio and visited the Alamo. I drove all the way into the Hill Country, then took a wrong turn on purpose to let my GPS show me things I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. I bought a hat.

Not only do these things help me write a good story, but they’re so much fun. I get to sink into that fantasy world of being a write just a little more. Because writing is a fantasy world. It’s sitting at home in your sweat pants and wondering when the time you took a shower was. It’s leftover pizza. It’s walking outside in the sun to get the mail and screaming, “MY EYES!”

But on those brief occasions when I need to see or feel or hear something for real, I get to go to Texas, or DC, or Baltimore, or Boston, and I get to be awesome. I go alone, and I sit at a table in a fancy restaurant alone, writing in a notebook. Alone with my characters. And when I get strange looks from people, all I have to do is smile and say ‘I’m a writer,’ and suddenly I’m not strange anymore.

I like to get things right, and I like to do whatever it takes. That way, when people read these books and connect with Ty and Zane and their surroundings, I get to sit here in my pajamas and say to my cat, “That’s because I’m a writer!” And that’s the biggest perk of all.

Stars & Stripes

Special Agents Ty Grady and Zane Garrett have managed the impossible: a few months of peace and quiet. After nearly a year of personal and professional turmoil, they’re living together conflict-free, work is going smoothly, and they’re both happy, healthy, and home every night before dark. But anyone who knows them knows that can’t possibly last.

When an emergency call from home upsets the balance of their carefully arranged world, Ty and Zane must juggle family drama with a perplexing crime to save a helpless victim before time runs out.

From the mountains of West Virginia to a remote Texas horse ranch harboring more than just livestock and childhood memories, Ty and Zane must face their fears—and their families—to overcome an unlikely enemy and bring peace back into their newly shared world.

You can read the first chapter and purchase Stars & Stripes here.

Abigail Roux was born and raised in North Carolina. A past volleyball star who specializes in sarcasm and painful historical accuracy, she currently spends her time coaching high school volleyball and investigating the mysteries of single motherhood. Any spare time is spent living and dying with every Atlanta Braves and Carolina Panthers game of the year. Abigail has a daughter, Little Roux, who is the light of her life, a boxer, four rescued cats who play an ongoing live-action variation of Call of Duty throughout the house, a certifiable extended family down the road, and a cast of thousands in her head. You can stalk Abi in various places, including her website, Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook.

Don’t forget to leave your comment for a chance to be entered to win a digital copy of Cut & Run, a personalized autograph from Abi, and either a Team Ty/Team Zane T-shirts or an autographed trinket! BE SURE TO LEAVE YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS WITH YOUR COMMENT, as Abi will be picking and contacting the winner. Open Internationally, good luck!

Be sure to follow the rest of the tour, or go back and read up on what you missed!