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8 Dec 2017

Friday Favourites with Tamsen Parker

I'm happy to have the lovely Tamsen Parker over today sharing her Friday Favourites and talking a bit about her latest book, Love on the Tracks,which was released earlier this week. It a mf romance between a female luger and a boy band lead singer. This is the first in a crossover series of 5 winter sports romances to come this winter.




1. Favourite place
I’m a New Englander at heart, I can’t really imagine living anyplace else for any length of time. That being said, I love to travel. New Orleans and Montreal are two of my favorite cities to visit. When I want to pretend reality’s not a thing, a long weekend in Las Vegas is nice—I don’t even gamble, I just like all the food, shows, spas…the whole place is a giant spectacle. Kauai is lovely, and I like going to Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania at any time of year. Probably my favorite small place is a little church courtyard in Stockholm. There’s a tiny little statue called Järnpojke and I loved going to visit him, especially when I was having a bad day. He’s so tiny, and yet he brings people so much joy—reminds me that even when we feel small and helpless sometimes we can actually have a bigger impact than we think.    

2. Favourite food and drink
My favorite drinks are sweet Rieslings, gin cocktails, and pretty much anything with elderflower liquor in it. Food is so much harder! My favorite junk foods are Kit Kats (they disappear RAPIDLY from my desk, Idek where because I swear I didn’t eat that many) and Bugles (which I only get at airports to limit my consumption). I also really enjoy a good steak—which, if one more wait-person tries to give Mr. Parker my steak and pass his fish off on me? I’m going to start flipping tables. And after a childhood of loathing Brussel sprouts, they’re now one of my favorites. Also Kane’s doughnuts, pot roast, empanadas from this little place in Chicago that I get when I go see Amy Jo Cousins. Um, it’s possible I should’ve waited until after lunch to answer this question…

3. Favourite music/genre/artist/song
I tend to listen to my book playlists while I’m writing, so what I’m listening to shifts based on what I’m writing. But right now, I’m listening to a lot of stuff by The Head and The Heart, Lord Huron, Michael Kiwanuka, Alpha Rev, Leon Bridges, and Anderson East.

4. Favourite movie/TV series
Right now I’m watching mostly things I’ve seen before because I’m multitasking, and I watch a lot of kids movies because I have a six year old. Moana, The Avengers movies (especially Captain America), Star Wars, Wonder Woman are all on regular rotation. I love Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, BBC adaptations of Jane Austen novels, and I just watched Alias Grace which was really good but also profoundly disturbing. We’re also devotees of John Oliver, so Last Week Tonight is one of the few current shows I watch.

5. Favourite hobby besides writing, if you consider writing a hobby
I’m a planner addict! Which means I have truly excessive amounts of washi tape and stickers in my office. I also collect Funko Pops, but only badass women figures. I like watching movies, and we have season tickets to the Boston Pride which is a women’s pro hockey team. When my friends and I aren’t just going out for dinner, we like to do artsy things like clay classes, paint nights, hand-lettering workshops, and our next adventure is a crash course in glass-blowing. And of course, I love to read.

6. Favourite books (feel free to list as many as you want; all-time favourites or newly released ones; grouped by sub/genre or other criteria)
Oh, this is a terrible/wonderful question to ask an author!

My auto-buy authors are KJ Charles, Rose Lerner, and Alyssa Cole, so pretty much everything by them makes the list.

The Subs Club series by JA Rock
Old School Discipline and Working Out the Kinks by Misha Horne
Off Campus (and pretty much everything else) by Amy Jo Cousins
Comfort Object by Annabel Joseph
The Comte by Edie Harris
The Fly Me to the Moon series by Emma Barry and Genevieve Turner (with bonus points to Earth Bound, which just killed me)
Reawakening by Charlotte Stein
Wanderlust by Skye Warren
A Lady Awakened by Cecilia Grant
A Gentleman in the Street by Alisha Rai

This is in no way exhaustive! I could keep going all day, but I should probably go take care of edits on the fifth SIG book…

7. Please introduce your latest/upcoming release (what inspired you to write, what can the readers expect from it, etc.)
Love on the Tracks is Book 1 in my new Snow and Ice Games series. I got the idea for the series when I was speaking to my editor at SMP Swerve, and she mentioned that she and her team had been talking about Michael Phelps (it was right after the summer Olympics). He’s been the dominant men’s swimmer in the world for a while now, but he got beat—and beat by Joseph Schooling, who’d met Michael Phelps when he was just a kid. Which, HI, does that not scream m/m romance? I thought it did. So I came up with a five book series and here we are.

Love on the Tracks is inspired by the super cute relationship between Simone Biles and Zac Efron. Theirs was platonic, but Love on the Tracks is basically about what might happen if it didn’t stay that way, and with a luger heroine and a boy band singer hero.

The Snow and Ice Games books are all coming out around the Winter Olympics so you won’t have to wait long for them (Love on the Tracks: 12/5, Seduction on the Slopes: 1/16, On the Edge of Scandal AND Fire on the Ice: 2/6, On the Brink of Passion: 3/6). They are category-length (~55k words) so they’re fast reads with the pulse pounding excitement people love about sports romance but with sports that don’t tend to get a lot of play—luge, slalom skiing, women’s hockey, figure skating, speed skating, and pairs figure skating. Also, you should know that Fire on the Ice is so dirty my editor had to stop reading it on the subway because it made her blush so hard.

I’m so excited to welcome everyone to the SIG snowglobe, thanks so much for reading! xoxo

Blurb

Welcome to the Snow and Ice Games where the competition is fierce and the romance is HOT.

Rowan Andrews is the unexpected darling of the Denver Snow and Ice Games. Luge has never captured the American public’s imagination as much as figure skating or even hockey, but her outsized personality and dare-devil ways have got everyone’s eyes glued to the track. Including a certain chart-topping heartthrob.

Zane Rivera is the lead singer of License to Game, the hottest band in the country. When Zane finds out Rowan Andrews has had some complimentary things to say about him, he arranges to meet her while he’s in Denver enjoying the games. And when a photo of him kissing Rowan on the cheek goes viral, they both see the advantages of faking a relationship for the publicity.

After Rowan’s injured in her final race, their relationship starts to feel all too real to Zane. But is this rock star ready to fall in love?

Purchase links: Amazon / B&N / Google Play / iBooks / Kobo




Author Bio and Links

Tamsen Parker is a stay-at-home mom by day, USA Today bestselling erotic romance writer by naptime. Her novella CRAVING FLIGHT was named to the Best of 2015 lists of Heroes and Heartbreakers, Smexy Books, Romance Novel News, and Dear Author. Heroes and Heartbreakers called her Compass series “bewitching, humorous, erotically intense and emotional.”

She lives with her family outside of Boston, where she tweets too much, sleeps too little and is always in the middle of a book. Aside from good food, sweet rieslings and gin cocktails, she has a fondness for monograms and subway maps. She should really start drinking coffee.

Social Media Links: Facebook / Reader Group / Twitter 



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