Andrew Q. Gordon

Writing affords me the chance to meet many new people. Some I really meet in person, some I really meet on line. Raine O’Tierney falls into the ‘I’ve really met her, just not in person – yet’ category. Raine and I both belong to the Wednesday Briefs Flash Fiction group – sorry Raine, I needed to do a shout out – and we’ve have the chance to get to know one another over the last year or so. But, oh the things you learn when you ask. 😛

Please don’t forget to enter the Sweet Giordan, Please Remember giveaway at the end of the interview.

Welcome, why don’t you start by telling everyone a bit about yourself?

Hello, my name is Raine O’Tierney and I’m obsessed with dachshunds. I don’t know why I thought that was a good way to introduce myself, but I just really, really love dachshunds! I’m genuinely enthusiastic about life, I adore being a cheerleader for people in their creative pursuits, and if I could be eating chicken wings right now, I would.

First, as a fellow hat aficionado—I own over 50 hats, most are baseball teams but I have a collection of soccer/football hats from around the world—where did your love of hats come from?

Every day I learn something new and awesome about you, Andy!

My love of hats really hit a peak a couple of years ago when I made a tiny hat for the St. Patrick’s Day parade. I got so many compliments on it and I realized, I love glitter and glitz and danglies and gems on my head. I’ve upgraded to fascinators. Love fascinators.

Your newest release, Sweet Giordan, Please Remember, is out—we’ll get to that in a moment, but first talk about what you’ve written before this? 

I’ve published one little short called Under the Table and Into His Heart with DSP before this, but I’ve been writing for-ev-er. (Or twenty odd years.) I have two M/M novels and a M/M novella I co-wrote with my hubs out for consideration right now as well. (Crossing fingers!)

Sweet Giordan is your first novel. Talk about the difference between writing a novel and a short story?

I actually enjoy both novel and short fiction writing. I like to take my time with the characters in long form fiction—especially explore how they interact with other, non-love interest characters. But I like the flash! Bam! Colors! Whew! experience of a short. For funsies, I write shorts all December long and never share them. Just for the heck of it.

Where did the inspiration for this story come from?

These charas have been in the works for a long time. (Shane is over ten years old, Giordan is more recent…) and I always imagined they would face challenges that would really test the limits of their love. From that, the concept of the coma and Shane’s search for Giordan were born.

Your MM pairing is an interracial couple. There is very little of that in the MM Romance area that I’ve seen—unless you count paranormal shifter pairings. What prompted you to write about such a pairing?

I always start with characters before I really get into plot—I’ll lay in bed and think about how people and their hearts fit together. (Like some sort of mental character generator.) And, of course, Shane was developed years before Giordan—he wasn’t even supposed to have his own story. Shane himself comes from a mixed family. His father is white, his mother is black. When I developed Giordan to fit with Shane, I didn’t really think, “I’m going to write an interracial couple…” I just imagined this thin, pale, blonde artist that would steal Shane’s heart.

You’re a married straight woman writing about MM romance. What got you interested in writing MM fiction?

What sparked my interest originally in the genre was yaoi—I fully admit that. But why I decided to write my own M/M fiction… I’ve been asked before and I usually just sort of blink and say, “I like it?” but that doesn’t speak to the heart of it and the heart of it is…hearts. I write M/M because I believe in hearts that find other hearts. I like to write LOVE stories about people that find each other, and sometimes those people are M/F and sometimes F/F and most often M/M. My husband writes M/M with me for the same reason. Hearts and love.

There’s a rumor going round that the main point of view is neither Giordan nor his love interest Shane—is that true?

It is actually from Giordan’s PoV (though I do have my good friend JC Wallace to thank for spreading the rumor that it’s not! He was thinking about Under the Table which features a female PoV…) Sweet Giordan does take place entirely from Gio’s perspective, though his ‘Maman’ Chloe Devereaux is a prominent character in his life.

Tell us something(s) interesting that is not in the blurb? 

I do a shout-out to Neil Gaiman’s Stardust in this book, which was a double-secret shout-out to my dear friend, Lisa, who aspires to molest Neil Gaiman someday.

Have you ever based characters on anyone you know?

To tell the truth, I love basing characters on friends! I am constantly inspired by my friends and the things they do and the things they do for me. When I’m writing a story and someone influences or encourages me, I get excited and I just want to show my appreciation! This translates into a lot of random characters that I know in real life.

What’s your favorite part of the writing process?

Blurb-writing.

*Falls off the bed laughing*

Sorry, what was the question?

That’s totally cheating. You never answered the question lol.

What’s your least favorite?

BLURB WRITING.

Since there is always another story to tell, what are you working on now?

I’m going crazy with ideas right now! I have maybe a few too many ongoing stories. I’m writing for Love’s Landscapes for the GR M/M Romance group, plus a novel-length’d sequel to  Under the Table and Into His Heart, and I have a new series I really want to get to soon!

What have you read lately that most people haven’t read but should?

JC Wallace’s Curiosity Killed Shaney—though by the time this has posted, I bet everyone will have read it! It is sexy and fascinating and detailed and so damned good. And one that has oft been read but deserves MORE reads is the third and final installment of the Hope Cove Series by Cate Ashwood called Ironhearted. It’s hands-down the best of the series and you should read it. Both Wallace and Ashwood are incredibly talented writers.

If you could meet any writer, alive or dead, who would it be and why?

Sylvia Cassedy who did NOT write M/M or even romance. She wrote JFIC books in the eighties, her most notable being Behind the Attic Wall. When I read the devestatingly few books Cassedy put out before her death, my brain EXPLODES with colors. No one in the world captures creativity and loneliness in young female characters the way Sylvia Cassedy did. She’s my writing hero.

What’s a fun—non-writing—day for you?

I…don’t understand the question? I live to write. Okay, fine… A really good non-writing day involves playing videogames with Siôn. We’re huge gamer nerds.

Besides reading and writing, what else do you enjoy?

Videogames, anime, dachshunds, hats, drawing, Psychology, sushi…

Last question is all yours – feel free to talk about anything you want your readers to know about you, your book, anything at all.

My motto is the Sweetness, so if you like sweet stories about first times and forever-endings and stuff like that, you probably might maybe sorta like my work. J

Thanks for being my guest, now it’s time to plug your work.

Blurb:

Sweet Giordan, Please Remember by Raine O’Tierney

Giordan Stone is lucky, all things considered. Sure, he spent five years in a coma only to wake with a right leg that’s practically useless and no memories other than his name. But now he’s under the care of sassy southern surrogate mother, Chloe Devereaux, spending his days painting and healing. Giordan wants for nothing at all… until he looks out the window one morning and sees Chloe’s gorgeous son, Shane, standing there. Something very familiar stirs in Giordan.

When he sketches, Giordan is able to go into an “art trance” where pieces of disjointed memory come back to him without time or place. More and more of these flashes are of Shane Devereaux and the intense, intimate experiences they shared together. Even though Shane keeps his distance now, Giordan is convinced his flashes are real. But he doesn’t have the whole story. Giordan is determined to fill in his memory blanks and convince Shane his feelings are genuine.

Excerpt:

CHLOE DEVEREAUX’S hands were gentle as she helped Giordan step into the bath.

The first time she’d stripped him naked in that no-nonsense way of hers, he’d flushed from head to toe and tried to cover himself with his hands. Chloe clucked her tongue and let him know that being a wife, mother, and new grandmother—though how can someone so young possibly have a grandbaby?—she had seen her share of dangles. Surprisingly, this frank admission helped, and he let her run the soapy sponge over his naked back. Besides, it was quickly evident that with his stiff right side, Giordan needed her help.

This particular morning, Giordan shakily sank into the steaming bubbles, neither ashamed nor protesting as Chloe helped him adjust his position. His left knee bent fully while his right moved barely an inch. His hip, too, didn’t work properly on that side. The ugly pink scars that zigzagged from his waist down his hip and leg almost all the way to the ankle served as outward warning: He was broken.

Chloe, her sleeves rolled up past her elbows, hummed as she dipped the rag into the bath. Lifting it, she let the water rain down over his shoulders. It felt familiar in the way everything did. An almost-memory or a dream. He tried not to overthink these moments, or he’d end up crushing the familiarity right out of the situation. Too many frustrated days had taught him this lesson.

There were only two things he remembered with the concrete certainty of ever having existed at all: His name was Giordan Stone and he was an artist. The rest of it was covered by a mental veil too thick to see through. In that, he supposed he had a third concrete truth. Giordan had amnesia.

“Dr. P’s comin’ by today,” Chloe told him, breaking in to her sweet song. She helped him lean back into the water so she could wash his hair. “I told her that we had things in hand, but I guess we don’t pay her the big bucks for nothin’.”

Giordan had learned quickly he wasn’t supposed to argue with Chloe. His first day out of the hospital, the day he insisted on helping out, she favored him with a look so displeased it still made him shudder when he thought about it. Chloe was firmly in charge, and what she said, went.

She told him then and there, in that sweet southern accent of hers, that she had been expecting a pliant patient who would let her mother and coddle him. “After raising two of the most stubborn children God has seen fit to bless a woman with,” Chloe had said, eyes flashing, “and makin’ a home for a husband with his head so far up his ass he might as well do his own colonoscopy”—she tapped him lightly on the nose—“I am lookin’ forward to no questions, no back talk, and no lip, Giordan Stone. Now, there is no way in the sulfur-stinkin’ fires of hell that you are settin’ a foot outta this bed, lest you mean to use the toilet or take a bath, and until I say so, you’re doin’ both under my watchful eye.” She wagged one stern finger at him, her wooden bangles clacking at her wrist.

“All right,” he agreed meekly.

“Once you tip the scales at one thirty-five, then we’ll talk about chores. Don’t worry,” she chuffed, “I’m savin’ ‘em up for you. In the meantime, your job is to eat.” 

Buy links:

DSP: http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/index.php?cPath=55_1024

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Sweet-Giordan-Please-Remember-OTierney-ebook/dp/B00J3JJTFQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1395358570&sr=8-1&keywords=Sweet+Giordan

ARe: https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-sweetgiordanpleaseremember-1453078-149.html

B&N: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/sweet-giordan-please-remember-raine-otierney/1118935103?ean=2940149452255

Bio:

Raine O’Tierney is an always-writing, boundlessly enthusiastic, exclamation point addict! (!!!) She is known for declaring every day “the best day EVER!” and every thing her “all-time FAVORITE!” Despite this (obnoxious?) exuberance, she still somehow manages to have a wonderfully encouraging husband and writing partner, Siôn, and an amazing group of friends and colleagues who continue to support (read: put up with) her. Raine spends her days working as a library lady, fighting the good fight for intellectual freedom.

Website and social media links:

Website: http://raineotierney.com/

E-mail: Raineotierney@gmail.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RaineOTierneyAuthor

The Hat Party (LGBT Author Interviews) http://raineotierneyhatparty.blogspot.com/

Twitter: @RaineOTierney

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/RaineOTierney

Blog Tour and Prizes!:

Sweet Giordan, Please Remember Blog Tour

March 17th–March 29th

Prizes:

*** Set of Sweet Giordan, Please Remember and Under the Table and Into His Heart ebooks

*** I Believe in the Sweetness Notebook

*** I Believe in the Sweetness Tote

*** 2x I Believe in the Sweetness Bumper Stickers

*** 2x Sweetness! Bumper Stickers

Please visit Home of the Sweetness to enter:

http://raineotierney.blogspot.com/2014/03/sweet-giordan-please-remember-blog-tour.html