Road Trip Tour Stop!

A Giveaway and Blog Tour for my newest release… Road Trip

Homeward Bound

The final leg of a journey—the homeward bound stretch—is kind of a melancholy moment. As grateful as one can be to return to their own blankets, pillows, bed and towels, it's still disappointing to know that the trip is over. Sure, your loved ones and your dog (cat, guinea pig, rabbit, or pet rock) are going to be so grateful that you're home that they're going to shower you with unbounded love in whatever form they can manage it, but the nights of doing whatever you do for fun until the wee hours of the morning are done. Familiar places, schedules, and people are comforting, but familiarity also breeds contempt. It's an odd feeling to look forward to returning, while at the same time wishing you were just leaving.

I have to imagine that Boyd, the main character in Road Trip feels that sense of wistfulness pretty damn hard on his own return home. One of the hardest things about realizing a dream is the understanding that now you've got to come up with a new one to strive towards.

What is it about the return trip that it always seems to take longer than the outgoing one did? Blame it on the fact that you're already thinking about work and laundry and all the crap that might have gone wrong with the plumbing, the security, or the pets that were left behind, or just a simple case of not having the energy and excitement you did when you first left. The clock might tell you that an hour (or four, or ten, or twelve) is an hour, but your brain will tell you that it's taking twice as long to get home.

I've also noticed that if nothing has gone wrong on your adventure as yet, this is probably the time it will happen. With my own personal road trip, I woke up the morning of my departure to find out that my GPS had decided to die. No warning, no reason, no recovery – just a half-hearted attempt to boot up followed by the dreaded blue screen of death.

The friend I was with at the time, in an effort to keep me from completely losing my mind, got the GPS (that I didn't know I had) up and working on my phone. Grateful, I started the trip back to Canada both wonderstruck and thrilled over the advances made my technology. My gratitude dissolved around the halfway mark when I realized my car couldn't charge the battery of my phone as quickly as my phone could drain it.

Ah well, I said, back to paper. The only problem with paper is that you need to be able to read it. This gets complicated as the daylight begins to fade, but, hey, the car has those awesome little road maps in it and they're only mildly distracting. You know what is a major distraction, though? Rain.

I got an hour and a half away from border (approximately an hour and half away from home) and the storm clouds started to roll in. Within ten minutes those clouds burst open and it rained as though Zeus himself had a personal vendetta with me. It poured so hard that the wipers couldn't keep up with the deluge. Swiveling my neck to take my line of sight from windshield to map, map to windshield, and back again, as I tried to find my way to the border was positively terrifying. Surely, I told myself, rain of that force can't stay in one place long. It probably didn't. But neither did I. Apparently both the storm and I were on the same path that night.

I did, however, make it home in one piece. And I was greeted by an extremely happy and relieved Chihuahua, who made it seem like she thought I'd been returned from the dead. My couch really was as comfortable as I remembered it, my mattress, too. But the thing I recall most about that night was that, in my head, I was already planning the next trip.

They say that one you catch the traveling bug, it's hard to knock it out of your system. And to that I say... why would you want to?

Thanks for traveling with me and the boys on the blog tour!

Here's one last YouTube link to take with you. :)

http://youtu.be/7z9wd9bS1FM

Blurb & Cover

For as long as Boyd can remember, he's been pushing pins into a map. Carson City, Las Vegas, Albuquerque—all places he wants to see, for a dozen different reasons that wouldn't mean a thing to anyone else. When he finally gets a chance to purchase the '69 Road Runner of his dreams, at a price that even he can manage, Boyd jumps at the opportunity.

Oliver seems like just another kid with a broken dream when their paths cross in Vegas. Against Boyd's better judgment, he offers to let Oliver hitch along for the ride when Oliver confides the need to get out and get gone.

But it's not long before Boyd realizes Oliver's reasons for running are more complicated—and more dangerous—than Oliver let on. But Boyd doesn't like people who play hardball, and he definitely doesn't like people messing with a man who's managed to light a fuse that Boyd forgot he had.

Gay Contemporary Romance

Copyright © 2015 by A.F. Henley

Published by Less Than Three Press

Please note: Novel contains some explicit content.

Purchase Links:

Less Than Three Press

Amazon

Excerpt

It was just another day—just another twenty-four hour period between all the rest of them. Sure, thirty-five years prior, Boyd's mother had been forcing out a nine-pound, some-odd-ounces mound of entirely unimpressed infant from the depths of her lady parts, but Boyd figured that was an event that should win her more kudos than it should him. As far as celebrating his birthday went, Boyd's big plan was the acquisition of a bottle of Jim Beam, followed by the slow-but-steady process of sipping himself into an alcohol-induced stupor.

It hadn't taken long for thirty-five to catch up to him, and it was one of those birthdays where three and a half decades hit like seven. His back ached from sprawling on cold concrete for too many hours. His finger joints burned from years of gripping air tools and turning wrenches. He was bitter and disillusioned, tired and worn out, and doing his best not to lament over the possibility that life truly was as good as it was going to get.

Until he saw the email.

The auto trader website had promised the best deals in the country delivered directly to one's inbox, free of charge. Simply enter some personal info, vehicle preferences, and wait. Boyd had been a member for almost four years, but it had got to the point where most of the 'awesome' notifications were marked and deleted before they were even read. This one had pictures, though, and even if it would take his ancient computer several minutes to chug them into existence, opening it would mean Boyd could live vicariously with somebody else's chromed baby for a few moments.

The car was a beauty. The body was mint, the engine supposedly ran like a clock, and it was drive-away ready. So when he saw the price, Boyd almost ignored it. A typo, he assumed. Someone forgot a one. An asking price of six-point-two was unheard of. He even went so far as to close and delete the email, to shut down his computer, locate his keys, and head for the front door before he reconsidered. Because, what if...?

What if finally...?

The Giveaway

On behalf of the tour, please join the giveaway by taking part in the Rafflecopter below. The prize consists of a Vintage 'Chrome' and Leather Road Runner Key Fob (can you say awesome Father's Day Gift?), a $20 gift certificate to the Less Than Three Press book market (free books!), and a signed, print copy of Road Trip (when available). Click through for terms and conditions, further details, and your chance to win! See all the details here: https://afhenley.wordpress.com/2015/01/24/road-trip-blog-tour-and-giveaway/

** Please note that this giveaway is being offered tour-wide and there will be one winner awarded for the entire event.

ENTER RAFFLECOPTER GIVEAWAY HERE:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Bio & Avatar & Links

Henley was born with a full-blown passion for run-on sentences, a zealous indulgence in all words descriptive, and the endearing tendency to overuse punctuation. Since the early years Henley has been an enthusiastic writer, from the first few I-love-my-dog stories to the current leap into erotica.

A self-professed Google genius, Henley lives for the hours spent digging through the Internet for 'research purposes’ which, more often than not, lead seven thousand miles away from first intentions but bring Henley to new discoveries and ideas that, once seeded, tend to flourish.

Henley has been proudly working with LT3 since 2012, and has been writing like mad ever since—an indentured servant to the belief that romance and true love can mend the most broken soul. Even when presented in prose.

Find more here:

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