Outside The Lines by Anna Zabo - Blog Tour with Guest Post and Giveaway

About Outside the Lines

Miniature artist Ian Meyers has one week to rebuild his damaged set. Needing help, he goes to End o’ Earth, the local comic and gaming shop. Owner Simon Derry pushes all of Ian’s buttons, and he also has steady hands and the skills Ian needs.

Before they can even grab a beer, Ian meets Lydia Derry, Simon’s wife. If Ian had any interest in women, he’d suggest a threesome, but then Simon explains that he and Lydia are polyamorous, and if Ian wants Simon, neither of them will complain. If anything, Lydia encourages the relationship.

Ian’s all in, and it’s fantastic working with Simon to piece together his set and then take each other apart at night. His friendship with Lydia grows too. The only problem is, the more time he spends with Simon, the more he wants everything Simon already has with Lydia: A house. A cat. A commitment. So Ian runs, and shatters the trust he has with them both—right when they need him the most. Piecing their relationships back together might prove harder than a smashed set.

Available now from Riptide Publishing!

About Bluewater Bay

Welcome to Bluewater Bay! This quiet little logging town on Washington state’s Olympic Peninsula has been stagnating for decades, on the verge of ghost town status. Until a television crew moves in to film Wolf’s Landing, a soon-to-be cult hit based on the wildly successful shifter novels penned by local author Hunter Easton.

Wolf’s Landing’s success spawns everything from merchandise to movie talks, and Bluewater Bay explodes into a mecca for fans and tourists alike. The locals still aren’t quite sure what to make of all this—the town is rejuvenated, but at what cost? And the Hollywood-based production crew is out of their element in this small, mossy seaside locale. Needless to say, sparks fly.

This collaborative story world is brought to you by eleven award-winning, best-selling LGBTQ romance authors: L.A. Witt, L.B. Gregg, Z.A. Maxfield,  Heidi Belleau, Rachel Haimowitz, Anne Tenino, Amy Lane, SE Jakes, G.B. Gordon, Jaime Samms and Ally Blue. Each contemporary novel stands alone, but all are built around the town and the people of Bluewater Bay and the Wolf’s Landing media empire.

Check it out at Riptide Publishing!

Anna’s Five Favorite Comic Books From Back in the Day

A great deal of Outside the Lines takes place in a comic and games shop, a place I used to dwell in quite frequently.

Back in high school and college, I used to collect comics, though I don’t so much now. I’d collect now, but given that I barely have time to read my massive TBR pile of books, I’m not sure if I’d actually read the comics I bought. However, hope springs eternal!

So, like a few of Simon and Lydia’s customers did at End o’ Earth, I’m gonna give you a list of what I read way back when that I LOVED and maybe people can recommend some new things to read?

The Sandman

So, you have to understand, I read this as it came out, not in graphic novel format. I don’t have all the issues (and sadly, I don’t have issue #1-I have #2 though!) but I have nearly the whole run.

I waited for a month between issues to find out what happened next and we ruminated and speculated. The whole story too several years to unfold, and there was nothing like it at the time, really. I was so taken by Morpheus’s tale and the Endless. Plus Desire made me itch because I wanted to be like them. There are some problematic things, yes, but overall, it was a damn good comic.

Hellblazer

Another one I have so many early issues of. There was just something so compelling about John Constantine as both an anti-hero and a hero, and the supernatural darker magic elements were right up my alley. Which is strange, because I generally don’t like horror, but this comic was my jam.

(And as I write this, I think I figured out why Jordan Castillo Price’s Psycop series hooked me so deeply. Not the same, but similar in terms of the kind of magical paranormal horror I can handle.)

Excalibur

My absolute favorite of all the X-Men books. It had all my favorite X-Men, like Kitty Pryde and Nightcrawler and Rachel Summers—I loved the Rachel Summers incarnation of the Phoniex.  Also, Kitty had a pet dragon named Lockheed. I also liked the dynamic of it being set in Britain and the addition of Captain Britain and Meggan, who were interesting characters on their own.

The Adventures of Luther Arkwright

This comic. Dude...this comic. I don’t even know how to begin to describe this comic. It’s...well, it reminds me a lot of Michael Moorcock’s books in some respects but it’s certainly not a copy (and I am also not nearly the first to remark on that). It’s both historic and futuristic and magical and full of science fiction. It’s political and metaphysical.

Also Bryan Talbot is a glorious artist. There’s even an audio version with David Tennant playing the titular character.

Usagi Yojimbo

This is a series that revolves around a ronin swordsman mostly set in Edo era Japan. Except all the people are replaced with anthropomorphic animals.  That description doesn’t do the series justice at all. Yes, Miyamoto Usagi is a rabbit, but the series is just wonderful and pays a great deal of homage to Japanese Cinema. (The creator and nearly sole illustrator is Stan Sakai, a Japanese-American comic artist, in case you’re worried about inappropriate Western ideas of Japan. Usagi might be a rabbit, but his story isn’t whitewashed.)

So there’s five comics I really enjoyed. Got any suggestions for me to check out?

About Anna Zabo

Anna Zabo writes contemporary and paranormal romance for all colors of the rainbow. They live and work in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which isn’t nearly as boring as most people think.

Anna grew up in the wilds of suburban Philadelphia before returning to their ancestral homelands in Western Pennsylvania. As a child they were heartily disappointed to discover that they couldn’t grow up to be what they wanted (a boy, a cat, a dragon), so they settled on being themself whenever possible, which may be a combination of a boy, a cat, and a dragon. Or perhaps a girl, a knight, and a writer. Depends on whom you ask. They do have a penchant for colorful ties and may be hording a small collection of cufflinks.They can be easily plied with coffee.

Anna has an MFA in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University, where they fell in with a roving band of romance writers and never looked back. They also have a BA in Creative Writing from Carnegie Mellon University.

Twitter: @amergina

Giveaway

To celebrate the release of Outside the Lines, one lucky winner will receive a $25 Riptide credit! Leave a comment with your contact info to enter the contest. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on December 23, 2017. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries. Thanks for following the tour, and don’t forget to leave your contact info!