A Journey Like No Journey That’s Been Journeyed Before

Romance novel cover copy is fond of the travel metaphor. “An incredible journey…” “An emotional journey…” “A heart-tugging journey” — there’s a lot of journeying happening, which makes sense, I suppose, since heroes and heroines have to do something with all that baggage. <rimshot>

My debut novel, Ride with Me, takes the whole journey thing one step further by being about an actual journey. On bicycles. Rather than lock my hero and heroine in a room and shove the key down my pants — and believe me, I considered it — I decided to make them ride 4,200 miles together across the United States on the TransAmerica Trail. And also, they hate each other.

See, I didn’t want to make the going too easy on them. I wanted them to have an incredible, emotional, heart-tugging, passionate, sex-filled slog together, preferably complete with an appropriate orchestral score and mood-appropriate scenery.

Unfortunately, my publisher refused to even consider the possibility of publishing Ride with Me with its own embedded soundtrack. Something about “varying musical tastes” and possibly also a muttered insult about the Beastie Boys not being “appropriate” for our “target audience.” But the mood-appropriate scenery was left up to me, and I had a grand time with it.

Here are three of my favorite stops on the tour. Erm, sorry, I mean “journey.”

At Each Other’s Throats on the Pacific Coast

Ten miles out of Seaside on the Pacific Coast Scenic Highway, they rounded a curve at the end of a long climb to find an incredible view: inky blue sea, jagged rocks, tiny village nestled against the coastline, clear sky the color of a robin’s egg. Exactly what she’d come on this trip to see. And it wasn’t just the view—it was everything. The clean, brisk coastal air. The smooth asphalt of the shoulder, wide and spectacularly free of potholes. The familiar rightness of her gloved palms on the handlebars. She wanted to wrap it up, the whole glorious moment, so she could take it out again and appreciate it later.

She settled for gushing to Tom. “Wow. That’s spectacular.”

“I thought you said we didn’t have to talk,” he replied.

Cynical at Yellowstone National Park

He broke off and smiled then, that slow, sexy grin she liked so much, and said, “You sure you don’t want to hang around here a little longer this morning?”

“What, and go see Old Faithful?” she asked, pretending ignorance. “You know, I haven’t really taken in the sights yet.”

Tom’s lip curled, but his eyes remained playful. “Old Faithful’s not the sights. Old Faithful is a bunch of tourists trying to keep their brats happy with potato chips until the geyser goes off so they can take a picture with their phone and e-mail it to Grandma before they pile back into the minivan.”

“Only you could be so cynical about the nation’s most beloved park.”

“It’s not the park I hate, it’s the people. Yesterday, I saw a bunch of tourists who’d pulled over to the side of the road so they could stalk buffalo with cameras. One guy got within fifteen feet of a full-grown adult bison. He could have been trampled to death, and he was shouting to his kids to come closer, waving his arms around like a wanker.”

The Trouble with Kansas

“One more thing to dislike about Kansas,” he remarked finally. “There are no good places to have public sex.”

Lexie was forced to agree. There wasn’t a tree or a boulder in sight. Even the drainage ditch was too shallow to do them any good.

“It’s very inconsiderate,” she said. “There ought to be a law.”

Tom nodded seriously. “There should be little shacks by the side of the road every twenty miles or so.”

“Four walls, a lock on the door, a condom machine, and a flat surface,” she said, no longer able to keep from smiling.

“I see a real opportunity here.” He rubbed his stubbled jaw and grinned wickedly. “What do you think of the name ‘Tom’s Sex Shacks’?”

“You want your customers to think about you while they’re doing it?”

“Who said anything about customers? I’m going to build them for me and you.”

BOOK DESCRIPTION

Ride with Me, available from Loveswept on February 13, 2012!

In this fun, scorching-hot eBook original romance by Ruthie Knox, a cross-country bike adventure takes a detour into unexplored passion. As readers will discover, Ride with Me is not about the bike!

When Lexie Marshall places an ad for a cycling companion, she hopes to find someone friendly and fun to cross the TransAmerica Trail with. Instead, she gets Tom Geiger — a lean, sexy loner whose bad attitude threatens to spoil the adventure she’s spent years planning.

Roped into the cycling equivalent of a blind date by his sister, Tom doesn’t want to ride with a chatty, go-by-the-map kind of woman, and he certainly doesn’t want to want her. Too bad the sight of Lexie with a bike between her thighs really turns his crank.

Even Tom’s stubborn determination to keep Lexie at a distance can’t stop a kiss from leading to endless nights of hotter-than-hot sex. But when the wild ride ends, where will they go next?

BIO

Http://www.ruthieknox.com

Ruthie Knox figured out how to walk and read at the same time in the second grade, and she hasn’t looked up since. She spent her formative years hiding romance novels in her bedroom closet to avoid the merciless teasing of her brothers and imagining scenarios in which someone who looked remarkably like Daniel Day Lewis recognized her well-hidden sex appeal and rescued her from middle-class Midwestern obscurity. After graduating from Grinnell College with an English and history double major, she earned a Ph.D. in modern British history that she’s put to remarkably little use.

These days, she writes contemporary romance in which witty, down-to- earth characters find each other irresistible in their pajamas, though she freely admits this has yet to happen to her. Perhaps she needs more exciting pajamas. Ruthie abhors an epilogue and insists a decent romance requires at least three good sex scenes.

GIVEAWAY

One lucky commenter will be randomly chosen to win a digital copy of Ride with Me. Winners will pick up their copy through Net Galley. Good luck to all!