Blog Tour: Seven Tears at High Tide, by C.B. Lee (Excerpt, Interview, and Giveaway!!)

Cover Artist: C.B. Lee / Cover Design by C.B. Messer

Seven Tears at High Tide, by C.B. Lee
Publisher: Interlude Press (October 15, 2015)
Page Count: 234 pages
Genre: Gay (M/M) Romance; Fantasy; Young Adult

Welcome to the blog tour stop for C.B. Lee’s first novel, Seven Tears at High Tide! I’m really excited to be hosting the tour here today. Seven Tears is a young adult fantasy with a very sweet romance, and would appeal to anyone looking for a story about magic and love.

Keep reading for an excerpt from the novel, an interview with C.B. Lee, and your chance to win some great prizes!

Summary:
Kevin Luong walks to the ocean’s edge with a broken heart. Remembering a legend his mother told him, he lets seven tears fall into the sea. “I just want one summer—one summer to be happy and in love.” Instead, he finds himself saving a mysterious boy from the Pacific—a boy who later shows up on his doorstep professing his love. What he doesn’t know is that Morgan is a selkie, drawn to answer Kevin’s wish. As they grow close, Morgan is caught between the dangers of the human world and his legacy in the selkie community to which he must return at summer’s end.

Excerpt:

They wander into the house, wipe their wet feet on the welcome mat, climb up the stairs and giggle as they pass Ann’s bedroom. She’s dancing with her headphones on, oblivious to the open door, swaying to the beat.

In Kevin’s bedroom, he quickly scrounges up some clean shirts and shorts. “Here, you can wear this,” he says, handing an outfit to Morgan and then ducking into his bathroom to change. He peels off the wetsuit and hangs it up in his shower, then leans his surfboard carefully against the wall, eyeing the crack. He’ll have to fix it tomorrow.

When he returns, Morgan is holding onto the wet board shorts, wearing the outfit Kevin gave him. He looks curiously at the rock collection prominently displayed on Kevin’s bookshelf. “These are beautiful,” he says.

“Here, I’ll take that,” Kevin says, holding out his hand for the bedraggled board shorts to hang in his shower. He’s certain now that they’re the ones from the lifeguard’s lost and found. Kevin’s starting to worry that Morgan doesn’t have any other clothes, but he doesn’t know how to bring it up. Money can be a touchy subject.

Morgan holds Kevin’s favorite specimen, a piece of green olivine on basalt. Kevin once almost convinced Ann it was an avocado roll—it certainly looks like one, bright green speckled with sesame seeds, wrapped in dark seaweed.

“That’s from Mexico. My family went on vacation to Baja last year, and I got that out of an old volcano.” He tries his best to describe the sweltering heat and the excitement of finding geodes and cracking them open with a hammer. Morgan listens in rapt silence as Kevin talks about the find and tilts the olivine so it catches the light. He sets it back in its spot behind its label, slowly so as not to disturb the other specimens, and Kevin is quietly pleased with Morgan’s careful appreciation.

“I changed my mind,” Kevin blurts out.

“About what?”

“I do want this to be a date. For us, to do that,” he says, blushing. “I like you. A lot.”

Morgan’s face breaks into a bright, happy smile.

“And what do we do differently, for this to be a date?”

Kevin can feel the heat on his cheeks. “We can hold hands, if you like. Um, or kiss, if you want to. But we don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. I’m fine just hanging out and watching a movie with you.”

Morgan tilts his head and steps closer. “I want to,” he says, not specifying what, but Kevin knows immediately.

It’s just the quickest brush of lips, but Kevin feels it all the way to his toes. A warm curl of excitement blooms throughout his body, and Morgan’s mouth is warm and wet against his. It’s not like any kiss he’s had, chaste and sweet and over in a second, and yet his heart is still pounding after Morgan leans back. He’s close enough for Kevin to be able to count the eyelashes dark against his cheek.

Morgan ducks his head and asks, “Was that okay?”

Kevin’s a little dazed, but he finds his voice. “Yeah. Yeah, that was great.”

Where to Buy the Book:
Interlude Press / Amazon / Book Depository
Indiebound / Kobo / All Romance eBooks

Book Trailer:

Today I’m very lucky to be interviewing C.B. Lee, author of Seven Tears at High Tide.

Hi C.B., thank you for agreeing to this interview. Tell us a little about yourself, your background, and your current book.

Hello there! Thank you for having me on your blog today. I’m C. B., I’m a bisexual woman from California. My parents are Chinese immigrants who instilled the value of a hard work ethic in me at a young age; I love stories and the act of telling them, and I hope that my passion is clear in my writing. My first novel is Seven Tears at High Tide, a story set on a sleepy seaside tourist town where a boy makes a desperate wish for a summer love and then has to deal with the consequences of the supernatural limits of his wish.

How do you feel about e-books vs print books?

I think there’s a false dichotomy in a lot of current dialogue where authors seem to have to fall on a side of preferring one over the other. They’re two different mediums for sharing stories, and while I love the feel of a physical book in my hands as I read, I also love how technology has allowed us to archive and made accessible a huge volume of titles to readers through e-books, to read and store in a small amount of space. I don’t think there’s a “versus” at all, and that people who think e-books are trying to drive print books out of market are in the same boat who think that technology ruins everything. An e-book and a printed book are both books, and they’re both amazing.

What process did you go through to get your first book published?

Seven Tears at High Tide was first imagined as a short story first for the Summer Love Anthology that recently was published by Duet Books. I had a larger story in mind, but I tried to keep in mind the limitations of a short story in terms of content and story length, so I simplified my vision and submitted it as a short story. I was honored to hear that the publishing team really enjoyed the story and wanted to publish it as part of the anthology. In the editing process, I was talking with one of the amazing editors at Duet, who loved the story and also had an interesting question— if there was no word count limitation, what was the story I would have written? And then began the discussion about developing Seven Tears into a novel and the rest is history.

How do you find or make time to write?

Egg timers are a marvelous invention. Something about the ticking noise is really motivating, like I have to write a certain amount before imminent doom. I try my best to carve time into every day where I write, at least twenty minutes, whether it’s a paragraph or more, just get into the flow of a story or a short piece. I like the twenty minute interval because it’s easy to fit around other tasks, and helpful for keeping motivation up.

Name one person who you feel supported you outside of your family members?

Just one? Oh, that’s terribly difficult. I’m lucky enough to have a wonderful group of friends, who are also all writers, and we’re constantly in communication, supporting one another, lifting each other’s spirits, reading each other’s work, brainstorming together, doing writing sprints.

Tell us about a book you’re reading now.

I’m currently reading Lodestones by Naomi McKenzie, a wonderful story that takes many different converging storylines of these interconnected people at this one bonfire party by the lake. The whole story unfolds over the course of one night. I just really love how all these plotlines are coming together so far, and each of the characters is like a breath of fresh air. It’s coming of age and romance and sweet summer nights; I just adore it so far.

About the Author:

C. B. Lee is a bisexual writer, rock climber and pinniped enthusiast based in California. Lee enjoys reading, hiking and other outdoor pursuits. Seven Tears At High Tide is a first novel.

Where to Find the Author:
Facebook / Twitter: @author_cblee / Goodreads 

Rafflecopter Prize: Click the image below for your chance to win a $25 Interlude Press Gift Card (grand prize) plus copies of the Seven Tears at High Tide multi-format eBook (five winners)!!

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