That's What I'm Talking About...: Author Guest Post & Giveaway: Ruthie Knox

Friday, February 3, 2012

Author Guest Post & Giveaway: Ruthie Knox

Hello Readers! Today I bring you romance author Ruthie Knox. Ruthie 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.

Ruthie is here today to talk about adventure and romance. In addition, Ruthie and Random House are offering an e-copy of her book Ride With Me to a lucky commenter. Details for GIVEAWAY are below.

Please help me welcome Ruthie to That’s What I’m Talking About. Take it away Ruthie...

Riding 4,200 Miles Is Hard, but Falling in Love Is Harder

I was twelve years old when I went on my first really long bike ride. One humid August Sunday morning in rural Ohio, my brother and I tackled a “metric century”—that’s 100 kilometers, or 62 miles—as participants in an organized ride called the Chiquita BananaRama. (Yes. Really.) I can’t remember whose bright idea this was, but I’m going to guess it was my brother’s. I also can’t remember much of anything about the first two-thirds of the ride. The last twenty miles, on the other hand, are carved permanently into my memory. They were horrible. So, so horrible.

It was a ridiculously hot day. We didn’t eat or drink enough. Our legs got tired. Then they got sore. Then our muscles ate themselves, leaving behind nothing but battery acid and bare bones, and we became exhausted tweenage skeletons, pedaling along on our femurs and shinbones and feet.

The ride went on and on and on. My brother and I spoke of nothing but how tired we were.

And yet, when the sag wagon drove by—the van that would’ve picked us up and driven us back to the starting point—neither of us flagged it down. We didn’t even consider it. We understood that hailing the sag wagon would have constituted cheating, and by God, if we had to suffer through this ride, we were going to do it properly.

After we finally rolled over the finish line and earned our banana-festooned jerseys, I declared the Chiquita BananaRama an unmitigated disaster. In retrospect, though, I think it might have been my first really excellent adventure.

I survived, after all. And I learned two really important things from the experience. First, I discovered exactly how difficult it is to ride 62 miles in August in Ohio. It’s really effing difficult. More important, I learned that I could do it.

I remember going back to school in the fall and suffering through gym class, which I was never any good at. Half-paralyzed by that terrible pre-adolescent feeling of Awkwardness on Display, I looked around at all the other kids in my class, and I thought, I can bike 62 miles. How many of them can say that?

As an adult, I became a cyclist, a runner, a hiker, a camper, and through all my various mishaps in the course of pursuing these activities—and lo, the mishaps have been many—I’ve learned a small number of valuable lessons. I’ve learned that nobody likes a whiner. That there’s no such thing as a perfectly comfortable camping trip, and if there were, it wouldn’t be any fun. That a four-mile hike never, ever takes an hour, even if it really should. That all tents are easy to put together in the basement, but they mutate as soon as you remove them from the bag in the backcountry. And I’ve learned that what I’m capable of is always so much more than I expect.

In other words, adventure has changed me. It’s shaken me up, inconvenienced me, and made me a better person.

In my novel Ride with Me, which is set along the length of the 4,200-mile-long TransAmerica Trail, both the heroine, Lexie, and the hero, Tom, begin their cycling journey from Oregon to Arizona expecting to have an adventure. Their notions of what it means to have an adventure, however, are completely different. In one early scene, Tom says to Lexie, “All the best stories are humiliating, Marshall. If you’re not getting humiliated pretty regularly, it’s not an adventure.”

Lexie scoffs at this idea. She’s planned her cross-country trip out to the tiniest detail, and she believes that she’s completely prepared to have an important, life-changing experience. But of course, it doesn’t work that way. You can’t prepare for adventure any more than you can prepare for life. Adventures happen on their own timelines, and they set their own terms. Life-changing experiences sneak up and chomp us on the ass. They chomp hard. They are difficult and painful and inconvenient—completely discombobulating. They’re so irritating. And they are that way because that’s the only way we learn.

Love, too, offers unexpected, inconvenient opportunities for personal growth. The entire romance genre is built around this idea—that falling in love thrills us, but the experience is often challenging, confusing, even downright unpleasant. Love makes us vulnerable, and it forces us to change before we want to, before we’re ready. (We’re never ready.) In Ride with Me, the cross-country journey challenges Lexie and Tom, but it’s the act of falling in love that really puts them through the wringer.

Nothing bites harder than love. It’s the ultimate adventure.

More about Ride With Me

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?

GIVEAWAY: Thank you Ruthie for stopping by That’s What I’m Talking About. Ruthie and Random House are graciously giving away one (1) electronic copy of Ride With Me. To enter, leave a comment telling us what the most adventurous event you’ve participated in is. Please leave your comments for Ruthie by Tuesday February 7, 2012, at 9:00 PM EST to be eligible for the contest. One entry per person, the winner will be selected from eligible entries using random.org. Contest is open internationally; please leave your email address so the author can send you the book. Thank you to Ruthie and Random House for this fun giveaway!

You can find Ruthie online at:

WEBSITE

BLOG

TWITTER

FACEBOOK

Be sure to stop back later today to read Nima’s review of Ride With Me and learn about her own personal cycling adventures!

Labels: adventure, contest, cycling, giveaway, Random House, Ruthie Knox

11 comments:

JenM said...: Hi Ruthie - that's a great story and I've heard great things about your book. I don't at all consider myself an adventurous person, but I love to travel and I love the outdoors, so my most recent adventure was the four day hike on the Inca trail to Machu Picchu. The hardest part of the hike was Day 2 when we hiked almost 4,000 vertical feet up to Dead Woman Pass at an altitude of 13,700 ft, then had to hike back down almost 2,000 vertical feet on the other side of the pass to our camp for the night. At that altitude, you really can't think about much of anything other than putting one foot in front of the other, and not stopping until you get to the top, because if you stop, you are afraid you'll never start again. It was totally worth it though, and Machu Picchu is amazing. I'd like to hike to Everest Base camp, but that's at 15,000+ feet so I'm still thinking about it LOL.; February 3, 2012 7:35 AM
Sue said...: ow Jen - I'm totally impressed with your adventure - I feel like a slug -
Thanks for posting Ruthis & introducing your viewers to RIDE WITH ME -- Tom has been my avatar for quite some time now on TWITTER & he's been causing a commotion LOL

I think readers will love RWM hero & Lexie our heroine is what strong women should be.

Great story, romance & LOL fun!

Happy Romance!!; February 3, 2012 8:18 AM
erin said...: Congrats on the new release! It sounds fabulous!

Thanks for a fantastic post and giveaway!

I'd have to say that the most adventurous thing I've done (which hasn't been much, I'm boring) was when I was in high school and was an exchange student to Israel. It was 6 weeks of awesome and I'd love to go back :); February 3, 2012 10:25 AM
A Buckeye Girl Reads said...: This book sounds like soo much fun! One of the most adventurous things I've done is climb Mt. Olympus in Greece. I was in college, and we didn't know it, but it was in the off season, and when our Greek friends found out they yelled at us, b/c it was so dangerous.

I also camped out over night at the dunes in Morocco-I can't remember the namnes of the dunes, but it was near Erfoud and they were filming a Jean Claude Van Dam action movie there.; February 3, 2012 11:01 AM
Gail Nichols said...: Your book sounds great. I can't wait to read it. I am not very adventurous.The most adventurous thing I have tried is marriage and motherhood nicholsgail@rocketmail.com; February 3, 2012 12:37 PM
ebarrettwrites said...: Hi Ruthie! I loved this post. My best adventures haven't been as much of the physical kind as they've been of the mental kind. When I was still in college, I traveled extensively through Asia. Being taken out of my comfort zone was good for me, and I thrived. It also taught me a lot about who I was and who I wanted to be.

And for those of you who haven't yet read RIDE WITH ME, all I can say is that it is AWESOME.; February 3, 2012 12:55 PM
shgrider said...: Oh the most adventurous thing... I am usually not adventurous at all but love reading about other peoples adventures so I can go along with them.
Honestly the most adventurous thing I ever did was take off on my own at 20 to live in Paris and study at the Sorbonne. I met lots of cool classmates from all over the world - many of whom I still correspond with. I had never been out of the country before, had never traveled solo before (always had at least one companion with me), and had only made hotel plans for three nights when I knew I would be there for three months (I planned on renting a studio apartment). It was the best time of my life! I wouldn't change a thing (well maybe just to do it again and again!).; February 3, 2012 1:15 PM
Ruthie said...: You ladies have some fantastic adventure stories! And Gail, yours counts, too. Marriage and motherhood kick my ass on a daily basis. Thanks for stopping by. :-); February 3, 2012 2:05 PM
ClaudiaGC said...: The most adventurous thing I've ever done was going to another country without knowing anyone there.
Your book sounds great, Ruthie! I don't thing I've ever read a romance with the hero and heroine riding bikes. And I'm looking forward to your second book already. I adore London! :)

claudigc at msn dot com; February 3, 2012 2:37 PM
Marian said...: Ruthie Knox is my niece, and until I read this article, I had no idea she had gone on a 62 mile bike ride which was somehow related to a banana theme. This goes right along with Ruthie having an uncle known as BananaMan, who rides a trike in tandem with his wife, BMW (BananaMan's Wife) while both are wearing banana suits and their trikes are encased in a cloth banana peel. I have begun riding a trike, basically at BananaMan's urging, and managed to ride 50 miles one day on RAGBRAI in Iowa last year without injury or death. I was riding with BM and BMW and other assorted people and had a wonderful time. By the way, RAGBRAI stands for the Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa which lasts a week and has thousands of riders every year.; February 3, 2012 3:49 PM
Denise said...: Congrats on your new release - it sounds great! The most adventurous thing I've ever done is take a trip to Pompei by myself. I was terrified that I'd get lost, mugged, etc, but I didn't, and Pompei was amazing. Thanks for hosting this giveaway! dyreads [at] gmail [dot] com; February 4, 2012 4:17 PM

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