Ann Gallagher

On the heels of a painful and long overdue breakup, what Victor Nelson needs is time to lick his wounds. What he doesn’t need is everyone in his family trying to play matchmaker so he can find someone new… which is exactly what they’ll do at the three stupid weddings he has to attend this summer.

Fortunately, it’s Dominic Lowe to the rescue. Dom is more than willing to come along to all the weddings as his best friend’s “boyfriend”… even if he’d much rather be there as Vic’s real boyfriend.

Convincing people they’re a couple is easy. The charade is miserable for Dom, though, after years of being madly in love with Vic. But maybe those three weddings are a rehearsal for the relationship he knows they could have for real.

This asexual M/M romance is approximately 38,000 words long.

Trigger warnings: eating disorder, discussions of verbal/emotional abuse

Amazon – Kindle Unlimited

Thank you to Ann Gallagher, AKA L.A. Witt, for stopping by and answering my Friday 5-ish questions. Her answers are just AMAZE-BALLS!!!!

You seem to have plot bunnies, that make more plot bunnies. They seem to replicate like real bunnies! 🙂 Tell us about your inspiration for Three Stupid Weddings.

They really do replicate like real bunnies. I literally have rainbow plot bunnies tattooed on my arm because, well, plot bunnies are my world. I am constantly sending emails to myself with story ideas, jotting notes in my phone’s notepad or on scraps of paper–there are bunnies everywhere, and they always find me.

Three Stupid Weddings came from seeing some tweets from readers who enjoy the “fake boyfriend” trope, and I realized it was one I’d never written before. I’d also been wanting to write another asexual romance, so I started playing with the idea of an ace fake boyfriend. The story pretty much fell together after that.

You have several pen names. You chose Ann Gallagher as the pen name for Three Stupid Weddings, even as it is M/M. What makes you choose one pen name over another? Is there a method to this madness?

LOL Oh yeah the pen name madness. It’s…well, madness is a good word. There is a method to the madness, though if I had my career to do over again, I might have done things differently. I didn’t foresee writing so many genres, or that I would branch out into pairings beyond M/M and M/F. Initially it was L.A. Witt for M/M and Lauren Gallagher for M/F, and then I write an M/M/F and realized it wasn’t that simple anymore. So when a book blurs the line between two names, I have to make a decision. In the case of Three Stupid Weddings, it was actually easy: Ann Gallagher writes sweet romances. Since Three Stupid Weddings has no on-page sex (none off-page either), it was clearly an Ann Gallagher book. Where it gets tricky is when I’m writing a sweeter — but not 100% sweet — romance, and it feels more L.A. Witt than Ann Gallagher. Because heaven forbid I make things easy for myself.

Following you on twitter (Peeps! If you don’t you should!) I know you have been doing research on incel, as well as terrible bosses. What can you share about your current WIPs?

The terrible bosses research is for a non-fiction book that I’m hopefully not botching too terribly, and as for the incel research…Oh Lord, I am so glad to be done researching that “community”. That was SUCH a toxic experience. In the end, though, I’m pleased with the resulting suspense novel, INCEL, which will be out later this fall. It’ll be under my fourth pen name, Lori A. Witt, because of course it will. That name used to be exclusively for more mainstream SFF, but I decided to expand to mainstream suspense too; INCEL has a romance subplot, but it’s not really the focus of the book. That and by its very nature, the subject matter meant delving into some hardcore misogyny and rape culture, and I decided the book (and the other books in the series) should be under the name that focuses less on romance.

Anyway, that book is in edits right now. I’m currently working on a historical novella to go with a Christmas-themed multi-author series later in the year, as well as the final book in my Cruising trilogy (a fluffy M/M trans vacation romance). My main WIP, however, is a M/M contemporary that will also be playing with the fake boyfriend trope, and I’ve assembled A DREAM TEAM OMG of narrators for the audio version, so I’m basically writing it with their voices in my head. No details on that one yet. 😉

Is there a plot bunny that you’ve had that you were afraid/concerned to write, or maybe felt you couldn’t do justice to it, if you did write it? Why?

Oh, there have been a few. Once Burned involved a character who’s an undocumented immigrant at risk of deportation. When I wrote Static waaaaaaay back in like 2012 I was terrified I’d screwed up the genderfluidity, trans characters, etc. I literally had nine trans* beta readers for that one. Lead Me Not, a Christian M/M romance, was definitely a risk for me because I had no idea how anyone — the Christian community, my readers, my Christian readers, etc — would take it.

So yeah, sometimes it’s scary diving into a book, but I’ll usually write it anyway, and just make sure I have someone else read it.

Always the fun questions! What cartoon character best represents your personal philosophy?

I’m probably some very weird mix of Sterling Archer and Stewie Griffin…

Ah-stinkin-dorable!

This was short, but oh so sweet. The fake boyfriend trope will just never grow old with me. And because these guys are asexual, there was no drunken sex that they felt guilty about after even though they both wanted it.

Instead it was like a slow romance. Building with each wedding they went to. Best friends who slowly acknowledge that they really are in a relationship and love each other.

The book was separated by wedding, which was fun. Besides the beginning of the story establishing character, the rest of it takes place at each of the three weddings.

There is a little bit of angst with Vic dealing with the repercussions of a caustic relationship he is newly out of, but nothing that bogged down or turned the story serious.

This was the perfect, fluffy, sweet, romantic book that is short enough to be a nice fast read, but in depth enough to make you care about the characters.

4 Pieces of Candy

Three cheating girlfriends in a row have given skateboarder Brennan Cross the same excuse: he wasn’t meeting their needs. Desperate and humiliated, he goes to the professionals at the local sex shop for advice.

Zafir Hamady, a sales clerk at Red Hot Bluewater, has an unusual theory: he doesn’t think Brennan is a bad lover. In fact, he doesn’t think Brennan is heterosexual. Or sexual at all, for that matter. He also can’t stop thinking about Brennan. But even if he’s right and Brennan really is asexual, that doesn’t mean Zafir has a chance. Brennan’s never dated a man, and Zafir’s never met anyone who’s game for a Muslim single father with a smart mouth and a GED.

Brennan’s always thought of himself as straight. But when sex is explicitly out of the mix, he finds himself drawn to Zafir for the qualities and interests they share. And Zafir can’t help enjoying Brennan’s company and the growing bond between Brennan and his son. They work well together, but with so many issues between them, doubts creep in, and Brennan’s struggle with his identity could push away the one person he didn’t know he could love.

Welcome to the Riptide Publishing/Ann Gallagher blog tour for All The Wrong Places!

Every comment on this blog tour enters you in a drawing for a choice of two eBooks off my backlist (excluding All The Wrong Places, but including books written as L.A. Witt or Lauren Gallagher) and a $10 Riptide Publishing store credit. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on June 20^th, and winners will be announced on June 21^st. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries.

Learning About & Writing About Asexuality

All The Wrong Places was very much my first foray into writing asexual characters. Well, as the main characters anyway – Richie in Running With Scissors is asexual, but has only been a secondary character so far (his book is coming!). I really wanted to do it right, so I spent a lot of time reading about asexuality. In particular, I looked for as many stories as I could get my hands on about people realizing they were asexual and how it affected their lives.

Once I had a handle on that, I approached the book the same way I approached my very first M/M book, Rules of Engagement. The main character in that book was, like in All The Wrong Places, figuring out that maybe he wasn’t so sure about his sexuality after all. Dustin in Rules of Engagement is realizing he’s bisexual. Brennan in All The Wrong Places is realizing he’s asexual. I’ve been in Dustin’s shoes before, realizing I was bi in my early twenties, so it didn’t take much to empathize with his thought processes, his internal struggles, etc.

When it came time to write All The Wrong Places, I applied that same empathy to Brennan. How does it feel to rethink your sexuality? How much pressure does it add or remove to suddenly have this newfound understanding of yourself? What if people find out? What if you need to come out to people who might not understand, or have always thought you were straight? What if they react negatively?

I also think, in a way, I wrote both Dustin and Brennan out of a smidgen of envy. They both had something I would have sold my soul for – someone who shared their sexuality, had already been through the process, and could help them work through things until they figured out which way was up. In my case I didn’t need/want a partner like that – I was and still am perfectly happily married – but having someone to ask questions, commiserate, etc., while figuring things out would have been a lifesaver. So, I gave someone like that to Dustin and to Brennan. And then stomped on their hearts because I’m an author and I’m mean.

Ann Gallagher is the slightly more civilized alter ego of L.A. Witt, Lauren Gallagher, and Lori A. Witt. So she tells herself, anyway. When she isn’t wreaking havoc on Spain with her husband and trusty two-headed Brahma bull, she writes romances just like her wilder counterparts, but without all the heat. She is also far too mature to get involved in the petty battle between L.A. and Lauren, but she’s seriously going to get even with Lori for a certain incident that shall not be discussed publicly.