Welcome LA Witt/Blog Tour Stop/Contest

Welcome to the Riptide Publishing/L. A. Witt blog tour for The Left Hand of Calvus, part of the Warriors of Rome collection and available November 5^th. The entire collection is available here for pre-order as a group or individually, and all pre-orders enter you in a drawing for a Nook.

Every comment on this blog tour enters you in a drawing for a choice of two eBooks off my backlist (excluding The Left Hand of Calvus) and a $10 Riptide Publishing store credit. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on November 12^th, and winners will be announced on November 13^th.  Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries.

Ten MORE Things You Didn’t Know

You Wanted to Know About L. A. Witt

Last year, I regaled you with ten things you didn’t want to know about L. A. Witt during the A Chip In His Shoulder blog tour.  Now, with The Left Hand of Calvus coming up on the horizon, here’s ten more things you didn’t know you wanted to know about me:

1.      I may have accidentally stumbled across a method of preventing carpal tunnel syndrome. When I was a kid, I taught myself to type. Well, okay, so I was doing hunt-and-peck, and got really good at it. Good enough that by the time the public school system got around to trying to teach me, I was already typing fast enough to justify not paying attention. To this day, my method is a very animated dance involving my left middle finger and my right thumb, index, middle, and pinky fingers (the pinky being reserved for “enter” and various punctuation while my thumb’s sole purpose is to increase the growing dent in the space bar). I think those are the fingers I use. It’s hard to work it out because when I concentrate on which fingers I’m using, I screw up. But that’s my best guesstimate. Anyway, while it sounds ridiculous and looks even more so, the end result is that I’m typing approximately 100 WPM, usually a minimum of 5,000 words a day (plus blogging, tweeting, e-mailing, and chatting)…and I don’t have carpal tunnel. CHECKMATE, KEYBOARDING TEACHER.

2.      I am one of the last people on earth who has not surrendered to the siren’s call of Angry Birds. I did, however, get sucked into Bubble Mania, so I suppose it all evens out in the end.

3.      I have seriously considered deliberately getting tased in the name of research. Pretty much says it all.

4.      There’s a squirrel living in the tree outside my office window. Do you have any idea how distracting that is? I mean, seriously. A squirrel. A fat, fluffy squirrel who sometimes tries to drag limbs up the tree, and then does backflips when he gets frustrated. Plus he teases my cat. How am I supposed to work in these conditions???

5.      I am constitutionally incapable of writing anything in sequence. Not just books. Blog posts, e-mails…anything. Right down to individual paragraphs. I’ll write the last sentence, then the middle of the paragraph, then an opening sentence, then something between the middle/end, etc. This could be a challenge now that I’m co-writing a few things, but at least when I’m writing on my own, everything is written completely out of order.

6.      I would be a terrible parent. I’m lucky I can keep myself alive when my husband is deployed.  That, and I would probably mold my children into unholy terrors. It really is best that I stick to cats. Speaking of which…

7.      …I am such a sucker for cute animals. Show me a photo of a baby otter, or a kitten, or a bat, or a frog, and I will melt into a puddle of “OMGSOCUTEICANNOTSTANDIT.” I’ll even make undignified noises as a result of being overcome by the cuteness of a creature. Someone once sent me a gif of a bat playing with children’s toys, and I nearly passed out. So that’s my deep dark dirty secret: On the outside, I’m crass and snide, but my Kryptonite is cute critters.

8.      The night before a new book is released, I still get queasy and can’t sleep. I know, I know, it’s pathetic, but there it is. I think it’s an author’s equivalent to stage fright, and if I still get it the night before book #40 releases, it probably isn’t going away. But I’ll take it, because it means I’m not emotionally detached from my books. Every single one of them gives me the same fluttery nervous feeling that the first one did. I’ll take that over apathy any day.

9.      There was a time when I considered going into politics. I majored in political science, and thought very seriously about a political career.  Then I got a job at a porn company, and I’m pretty sure my chances at getting elected to any office are on par with the survival odds of a snowball in hell.

10.  I know I’ve said this before, but it’s worth repeating: I cannot sing. If I ever tried out for American Idol, I’d be one of the “oh my God, look how bad this contestant is” people. If I sing in the shower, the water turns cold. I have the voice of an angel…if that angel has a four pack-a-day habit, a bad case of strep throat, and a mouth full of gummy bears. I. Cannot. Sing.

There you have it. Ten things you didn’t know you wanted to know about me.

L.A. Witt is an abnormal M/M romance writer who, after three years in Okinawa, Japan, has recently relocated to Omaha, Nebraska, with her husband, two cats, and a three-headed clairvoyant parakeet named Fred. There is some speculation that this move was not actually because of her husband's military orders, but to help L. A. close in on her arch nemesis, erotica author Lauren Gallagher, who has also recently transferred to Omaha. So, don't anyone tell Lauren. She's not getting away this time...

L. A.’s backlist is available on her website, and updates (as well as random thoughts and the odd snarky comment) can be found on her blog or on Twitter (@GallagherWitt).

THE LEFT HAND OF CALVUS Blurb:

Former gladiator Saevius is certain fortune’s smiling on him when a Pompeiian politician buys him to be his bodyguard. But then his new master, Laurea Calvus, orders Saevius to discover the gladiator with whom his wife is having an affair. In order to do that, Saevius must return to the arena, training alongside the very men on whom he’s spying. Worse, he’s now under the command of Drusus, a notoriously cruel—and yet strangely intriguing—lanista.

But Saevius’s ruse is the least of his worries. There’s more to the affair than a wife humiliating her prominent husband, and now Saevius is part of a dangerous game between dangerous men. He isn’t the only gladiator out to expose the Lady Verina’s transgressions, and her husband wants more than just the guilty man’s name.

When Saevius learns the truth about the affair, he’s left with no choice but to betray one of his masters: one he’s come to fear, one he’s come to respect, and both of whom could have him killed without repercussion. For the first time in his life, the most dangerous place for this gladiator isn’t the arena.

You can pre-order The Left Hand of Calvus here, and read an excerpt here.