Don't forget to enter the giveaway for a chance to win a $10 Amazon gift card from the author. The contest closes on December 18th. The tour is sponsored by Pride Promotions.
Author Chat with Mia Kerick...
Today I’m very lucky to be interviewing Mia Kerick author of CLEAN
Hi Mia, thank you for agreeing to this interview. Tell us a little
about yourself, your background, and your current book.
Hello and thank you so
much for welcoming me to your blog today to promote the release of my new YA
EDGY LGBTQ Contemporary Romance, Clean.
Today I’m going to share
some pictures with you. These are pictures of my favorite place in the world to
be! My backyard!
I think I most like to be
in my backyard because of what it represents to me. First, it represents
relaxation and escape… kind of a mini-vacation, just off my back deck. There is
a beautiful pool and a mountain view
Secondly, my backyard
represents the best of family times. The Remick’s and their closest friends
have pool parties and cookouts topped off with s’mores-making. My husband and I
sit and talk on the colorful chairs, and even when we work on keeping the
backyard looking inviting it is a family affair!
I’ve very honestly been on
vacation where I long for my beautiful backyard!
Check out my wonderful
pictures of my favorite place to be. (I wrote a lot of my new release, Clean, lounging on this very pool deck!)
No let's check out Mia Kerick's Clean...
Publisher: Cool Dudes Publishing
Cover
Artist: Louis C. Harris
Release
Date: December 1, 2015
Goodreads
Link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26954465-clean
Blurb:
High school
senior Lanny Keating has it all. A three-sport athlete at Lauserville High
School looking at a college football scholarship, with a supportive family,
stellar grades, boy band good looks… until the fateful day when it all falls
apart.
Seventeen-year-old
Trevor Ladd has always been a publicly declared zero and the high school
bad-boy. Abandoned by his mother and sexually abused by his legal guardian,
Trevor sets his sights on mere survival.
Lanny seeks
out Trevor’s companionship to avoid his shattered home life. Unwilling to share
their personal experiences of pain, the boys explore ways to escape, leading
them into sexual experimentation, and the abuse of illegal drugs and alcohol.
Their mutual suffering creates a lasting bond of friendship and love.
When the
time finally comes to get clean and sober, or flunk out of high school, only
one of the boys will graduate, while the other spirals downward into addiction.
Will Lanny
and Trevor find the strength to battle their demons of mind-altering substances
as well as emotional vulnerability?
Clean takes
the reader on a gritty trip into the real and raw world of teenage substance
abuse.
Pages or Words: 289 pages
Categories: Contemporary, Gay Fiction, M/M
Romance, New Adult, Romance
Excerpt:
PROLOGUE
Lanny
Trevor
wouldn’t even look at me when I walked over to the gas station this morning to
say hi. And Jimmy’s Fuel Stop is like three
miles from my house so it took a major effort to walk there, especially
since I’ve been feeling like total crap lately. Another one of my shaky human
bonds bites the dust. I need to go out and get myself a cat.
“Can’t you
see I’m working, Keating?” That was all he said. But I’ve always been good at
reading between the lines. I could tell what he was thinking as he stood beside
the gas pumps, totally caught up in not looking at me. “Take a hike before you get me fired, loser. Some of us got goals in
life....” So I took off before he had a chance to make me feel like I
shouldn’t have ever made an appearance on the planet earth. But I still know it
would have been better had I never been born...maybe Joelle would still be
okay.
It’s
Saturday afternoon and nobody’s home. Mom and Dad are probably off at the park
with Joelle, sloshing through the wet snow together so she gets her daily
exercise. Or maybe they took her to the make- your-own-sundae-place to improve
her fine motor skills by sprinkling sweet toppings on big scoops of ice cream.
I’m in Mom and Dad’s bathroom, bent in half with my head stuck in the closet,
searching the cluttered shelves for anything that will get me high enough to
escape. And I mean anything.
That’s when
I see the cough syrup. The bottle in front is almost new, and there’s an older
bottle of a different brand right behind it, little more than halfway full.
Seeing these medicine bottles reminds me of something Chad suggested about a
week or two ago— that we should try robo-tripping.
He told me that if we drink enough cough syrup, the DXM in it would get us high
in a “super blissful, tingling-body-parts way,” which sounded pretty decent to
me then and still does now. Not completely surprised I remembered Chad’s exact
description of a DXM high, I thank God for this dextromethorphan stuff that
suppresses nasty coughs, because it looks like I’m going to find my much-needed
buzz after all.
Pleased that
I don’t have to resort to sniffing glue from the tube on my father’s basement
workbench or huffing my mother’s hairspray—and believe me I came close—I snatch
the bottles with a shaky hand. They’re both sticky with the syrup that dripped
down the side last time one of the Keating’s had a major head cold accompanied
by a hacking cough. Licking my fingers provides me with a hint of the cherry
flavor I’m probably going to be barfing up later tonight. But I don’t care. I
can’t get through a single day without some help, and by that I don’t mean help
from my human friends, seeing as I
have none left.
The walk to
the shed seems longer than ever. It’s an effort to so much as put one foot in
front of the other. I haven’t eaten anything for a full day; I’m sure that’s
why I feel like such crap. And it’s not like I want to think about this stuff, but I can’t stop myself. The
“stuff” I don’t want to think about is really people. The people I have hurt so much lately because of my bad
habits.
This list
starts with my little sister Joelle, who I told to “stuff a sock in it” when
she asked me to read that goddamned book about a kid going to school—for the
zillionth time! “School’s not all it’s cracked up to be, Jo. Stop being so
damned excited about it! Those kids are gonna tear you to pieces and won’t even
wait until you turn your back to do it!” It hurts too much to remember the
expression on her face right after I told her that, so instead I stare beyond
the leafless trees into the gray sky and think about my parents.
I’ve hurt
Mom and Dad a lot too, because they know I’m sick, they just don’t know exactly
what’s wrong with me. And I’m not sure how much they care. Their plates are too
full already with Joelle’s problems, I guess.
I glance
down at the two bottles of cough medicine dangling from between my fingers and
remember Chrissy and Robyn, who I use like toilet paper. They can do way better
than me in the study-buddy department.
I trip over
a root that crosses my path and fall to my knees, but just as quickly drag
myself back to my feet. A stray root isn’t enough to stop me from getting to
where I’m going.
I’m almost
at the shed now, and I can’t avoid thinking about him any longer. Trevor hates
me. He never calls anymore, never asks me to go to the shed to drink some beer
and fool around. He just looks at me in the hallway at school with angry
disgusted eyes, and tells me every chance he gets “you’re fucking up your life
and I’m not gonna let you fuck up mine.”
Trevor
Ladd...the ultimate untouchable. If I could’ve made somebody like him want to be with me, I would’ve surely been able to win my parents back.
Well, no such luck. I’m more of a zero to Trevor than I ever was...and Mom and
Dad still don’t care.
Blew my
entire life sky high. Which is where I’ll
be soon, if all goes according to plan. I lift each bottle of sticky sweet
cough medicine to my lips and kiss them, one by one.
Just the
sight of the tiny, beat-up brown shed fills me with an indescribable sense of
relief, probably like the feeling of coming home after years at sea. As soon as
I push open the door, I see that Trevor isn’t here and I’m illogically
disappointed. But Trevor can’t save me from myself. He did his duty; he tried
to get me clean, and he got clean in the process.
Way to go, Trevor.
Alone in a
frigid shed in the middle of the woods, I’m more than eager to suck down a
couple bottles of cough medicine so I can be somewhere else...someone else. A vision of Landon Keating
forms in my mind—not Lanny, the student, or Lanny, the athlete, or Lanny, the
son and brother—but the near-future version of me when I’m “simultaneously
mellow and stimulated,” if the online experiences I’ve read about taking DXM
are accurate. Sad truth is, I’ll take just plain disoriented. Any effect will
be fine if it whisks me away.
I drop down
to the cold floor and without ceremony open one of the small bottles. The cough
medicine goes down more easily than I thought.
Cherry-berry-sweet-thick-burning-soothing-
pleasure-pain. It doesn’t take too long.
Itchy as hell...belly’s on fire....
“Read to me, Lanny...read it again!
”Can’t feel my legs at all....
“Wishes don’t wash dishes, son.”
Can’t stop barfing.... So sick....
“Take a hike, Keating—you filthy,
no-good, loser boozer-druggie!”
Blew it with Trevor...blew it with
everybody.
Can’t breathe...need a breath....
Gonna die
here alone.
Buy the book:
Amazon US: http://amzn.to/1RGrzbl
Amazon UK: http://amzn.to/1ZBPUEg
Amazon CA: http://amzn.to/1VRKXCt
Amazon AU: http://bit.ly/1MyfIfm
Tour
Dates & Stops:
3-Dec: Lee
Brazil, Gay Media Reviews, Divine
Magazine
4-Dec: V's Reads, Posy Roberts, Nephy
Hart
8-Dec: Happily
Ever Chapter, BFD Book Blog
9-Dec: Kimi-Chan, Inked
Rainbow Reads
10-Dec:
Emotion
in Motion, Jessie G. Books
11-Dec: Havan
Fellows, TTC Books and More, My Fiction Nook
Meet the author:
Mia Kerick
is the mother of four exceptional children—all named after saints—and five
nonpedigreed cats—all named after the next best thing to saints, Boston Red Sox
players. Her husband of twenty years has been told by many that he has the
patience of Job, but don’t ask Mia about that, as it is a sensitive subject.
Mia focuses
her stories on the emotional growth of troubled young men and their
relationships, and she believes that sex has a place in a love story, but not
until it is firmly established as a love story. As a teen, Mia filled
spiral-bound notebooks with romantic tales of 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 for providing her with an
alternate place to stash her stories.
Mia is proud
of her involvement with the Human Rights Campaign and cheers for each and every
victory made in the name of marital equality. 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.
Where to find the author:
Website
(& Blog): www.miakerick.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MiaKerick
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mia.kerick
Clean
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/CleanbyMiaKerick
Mia Kerick
Author Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/Mia-KerickAuthor-231404220346244/
Newsletter
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1 comment:
Hi Dawn!! Thank you so much for having me on your blog today! I loved talking about my very favorite place to be.
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