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Saturday, July 5, 2014

Interview with Author Robin York and Giveaway

Meet Robin York, author of Harder.

Robin York grew up at a college, went to college, signed on for some more college, and then married a university professor. She still isn’t sure why it didn’t occur to her to write New Adult sooner. Writing as Ruthie Knox, she is a USA TODAY bestselling author of contemporary romance, including RITA-finalists About Last Night and Room at the Inn. She moonlights as a mother, makes killer salted caramels, and sorts out thorny plot problems while running, hiking, or riding her bike.

Find Robin at:
| Site | Facebook | Twitter |

First off, can you tell us a bit about you?
I’m thirty-six, I live in Green Bay, I don’t watch football, I write and read a lot, and I like to hike, bike, run, and do yoga. I have a five-year-old son. I like thinking about people and how they behave.

A la Twitter style, please describe your book (or series) in 140 characters or less.
Two college students fall in love while facing their worst fears and learning not just to survive, but to thrive and pursue their dreams.

What types of scenes are your most favorite to write?
I don’t know if I have a favorite “type,” though I guess it’s fun to write into the emotional crux of a character -- scenes where characters are standing up for themselves, or facing their worst fears, or learning something really gutting and important that they have to understand in order to grow.

What are the things that influence you the most as a writer?
I learn a lot from other writers and from feedback that I get from them. My critique partner on this book, Mary Ann Rivers, helped me enormously to understand the character of West and what he needed to learn in order to reach his happy ending.

What are some of your favorite characteristics to find in a hero?
I like heroes who are people, not paragons. Just ordinary people who mess up and love and joke and work and learn, like all of us do.

Tell me, is there anything that we would be surprised to learn about you?
I’m not sure! People who meet me after reading my books or following me online usually tell me that I’m a lot like they expected me to be. It’s the people who knew me before I started writing romance who have been surprised.

If you could live inside any book, which one would you choose and why?
There is an intense, quietly weird Robert C. O’Brien book called The Silver Crown that I loved very much as a girl, and I always felt that I did live inside it when I was reading it -- that the heroine, Ellen, was obviously me, and she behaved as I would behave. So, that one, I guess.

If you could spend the day in the shoes of any of your characters, who would you choose and why?
I don’t think I’d like to spend the day in the shoes of any of my characters. They’re mostly having a tough time, or falling in love, or having sex a lot with people who are for them, not for me. They have very compressed and complicated experiences, and I find those kinds of experiences a lot more fun to have through the pages of a book than in real life.

If you were stranded on a desert island and could bring only three items, what would you bring and why?
Depends on where the island is, but I guess I’d bring some kind of water filtration system, antibiotics, and sun protection (a shade?) of some sort. So I could survive to be rescued and write more books.

Last question, are you working on anything right now?
I’m not, actually. But I do have a few more books in the pipeline -- Truly is coming in August, and sometime around September I’ve got a novella that I cowrote with Mary Ann Rivers releasing from our new venture, Brain Mill Press. It’s called The Dark Space. Both of those books were written by my Ruthie Knox persona.


Do you like having turbulent and complicated emotional experiences, or do you prefer to keep that kind of intensity between the pages of the books you read?



In Robin York’s provocative new novel, two young ex-lovers find themselves together again in the shadow of tragedy—and an intense, undeniable attraction.

Caroline still dreams about West. His warm skin, his taut muscles, his hand sliding down her stomach. Then she wakes up and she’s back to reality: West is gone. And before he left, he broke her heart.

Then, out of the blue, West calls in crisis. A tragedy has hit his family—a family that’s already a fractured mess. Caroline knows what she has to do. Without discussion, without stopping to think, she’s on a plane, flying to his side to support him in any way he needs.

They’re together again, but things are totally different. West looks edgy, angry at the world. Caroline doesn’t fit in. She should be back in Iowa, finalizing her civil suit against the ex-boyfriend who posted their explicit pictures on a revenge porn website. But here she is. Deeply into West, wrapped up in him, in love with him. Still.

They fought the odds once. Losing each other was hard. But finding their way back to each other couldn’t be harder.

Purchase: | Amazon | Kindle | B&N |



Check out what's up for grabs.

Up For Grabs:
  • 3 signed copy of Harder - US edition
  • 2 signed copy of Harder - UK edition
  • 1 $25 Gift Card (Amazon or Barnes & Noble)

To Enter: 
  • Please answer Robin's question: Do you like having turbulent and complicated emotional experiences, or do you prefer to keep that kind of intensity between the pages of the books you read?
  • Please fill out the Rafflecopter form.

Good Luck! 

Special thanks to Robin York & Inkslinger PR sponsoring this tour-wide giveaway.
a Rafflecopter giveaway

11 comments :

  1. Unfortunately yes. And it is a kinda sad story. Will share part of it. He ws in and out with his gf, he asked me if I loved him, that he would live her, I was young and foolish, denied… and now he is dead. =/ If timing were different…

    Ana Death Duarte

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  2. I haven't but a good friend was and it was hard to watch the struggle. After 2 years apart they found each other again and seem to have found their hea

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  3. I've seen it happen and it's not pretty to watch!

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  4. I like it to stay in the books! :)

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  5. Congratulations on the book. I prefer the turbulence to be in the pages of a book.

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  6. I don't "enjoy" turbulence in my real life relationship, but as someone that suffers from bipolar disorder, it's sometimes part of the way my life works. Luckily, my husband is very patient.

    As for being in the right place at the wrong time, I worried about it a lot in the early years of my relationship. It worked itself out though, and we've been together almost 17 years.

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  7. I like to keep it in the pages of a book.

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  8. I prefer to keep that kind of intensity between the pages of the books, although I do sometimes complain that my life is too boring.

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  9. No, I have always been very lucky. The universe always gave me what I needed at just the right time.

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  10. Oh yes! It took 15 years to get my head right to leave..

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  11. I like to keep it in the pages of a book.

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