Riptide's 4th Anniversary Tour and FREE Books for a Year Giveaway!

Thank you for joining Riptide on our 4th Anniversary blog tour! We are excited to bring you new guest posts from our authors and a behind the scenes insights from Riptide. The full tour schedule can be found at Riptide's 4th Anniversary Celebration. Don't miss the limited time discounts and Free Books for a Year giveaway at the end of this post!

Please welcome Rachel Haimowitz to the tour.

It’s a strange and daunting thing to take over responsibility for one of the genre’s most popular series ever mid-swing. Humbling, of course, to realize that of all the houses and all the editors available, Riptide and I were the ones Abi (Abigail Roux) trusted. Terrifying, because this series is so beloved by its fans, and you don’t want to screw it up somehow. You want to honor the series’s history and readers and do right by them. And exciting, because you know you’re getting the chance to work with something awesome, something so much bigger than you, with a life and an energy and a fandom of its own that is frankly awe-inspiring.

But that’s all I’m going to say about that, except thank you—to Abi for trusting me, to the minions for embracing me and making me a part of this amazing family. And because I am so grateful for that, for being able to be a part of this wild ride (and because Abi was supposed to write this blog post and didn’t so now I’m going to torture her ;-p), I thought I’d share some random (and hopefully fun?) tidbits about the process of editing the Cut & Run and Sidewinder series for the past four years.

- I had never read the Cut & Run books before they came to Riptide. I know, *gasp*! God knows what I was waiting for; I am so in love with those assholes I don’t even know what to do with how in love I am.

- But Abi had a lot of bad habits to break: head hopping, too many dialog tags, adverb abuse, crutch words (she has an actual allocation for the number of times she is allowed to use “murmured,” “mumbled,” and “muttered” in each book).

- BUT, Abi is one of my editorial pride and joys, because with every manuscript she submits, there are fewer and fewer of these issues. In PART & PARCEL, there were almost none; I basically get to take a nap instead of line editing this book because Abi’s capacity to grow as a writer from edit to edit is stratospherically high—one of the best I’ve ever had the pleasure to see, in fact.

- Abi and I actually are friends; it’s not just an act for show. I lurve her. Also she bought me a stuffed Grumpy Cat. That said, this in no way affects her process at Riptide.

- Editing is kind of awesomely hilarious with her. I know her well enough to, for instance, leave gifs on her 27th use of the word “murmured.”

- And she knows me well enough to leave similar gifs on some of my comment requests. We actually get into gif wars sometimes, searching for the perfect response gif and exchanging them as much as 15 or 20 times. Usually these involve Supernatural for some reason.

- The current version of PART & PARCEL I’m editing is a file labeled “keeeeelmeeeeenowwww_V001.” Yes, I counted the e’s and w’s. The version before this one was labeled “What the Shit is This Shit_V001.”

- For those wondering, V001 = Version 001. This is standard Riptide labeling for edit files (although usually it’s [Book Name]_VXXX), and every time someone makes a round of changes, the version number ticks up by one. Typically, between developmental edits, line edits, and copyedits, most manuscripts crawl up to around version 15 to 25—which may sound like a lot, but keep in mind that even if an author is responding to only one single comment, that’ll raise the version number. Abi tends to go through fewer versions than most, but that may be in part because we’ve worked together for so long that we don’t need to discuss much to understand each other.

- Due to scheduling conflicts, I had to give ACCORDING TO HOYLE to another editor, and it nearly killed me. I spent so much time fretting and wanting to look over the other editor’s shoulder—not because I didn’t trust that editor, but because I missed that that finely choreographed dance that is editing with Abi so much.

- I have no idea where the “Evil Editor” nickname came from, but I love the fact that all of fandom seems to embrace it and that it’s said with love.

- For legal reasons I can’t read your fanfic, but I adore knowing that it exists.

- I can, however, browse the hell outta your fanart, and whoo boy do I. This fandom is so creative and passionate and talented, and I love it. So does Abi.

Okay, that’s all I’ve got for now. But if you have any specific questions aboutCut & Run, Sidewinder , Abi-the-writer, or myself-the-editor (but stay appropriate, please!), please leave them in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer!

Anniversary Sale

Riptide's Cut & Run collection is being sold in a special discounted bundle this week only. Check out the sale on this series and other bundles at Riptide Publishing Anniversary Sale.

GIVEAWAY

To celebrate our anniversary, Riptide Publishing is giving away free books for a year ! Your first comment at each blog stop on the Anniversary Tour will count as an entry and give you a chance to win this great prize. Giveaway ends at midnight, October 31, 2015, and is not restricted to US entries.

About Abigail Roux

Abigail Roux was born and raised in North Carolina. A past volleyball star who specializes in sarcasm and painful historical accuracy, she currently spends her time coaching high school volleyball and investigating the mysteries of single motherhood. Any spare time is spent living and dying with every Atlanta Braves and Carolina Panthers game of the year.

Abigail has a daughter, Little Roux, who is the light of her life, a boxer, four rescued cats who play an ongoing live-action variation of Call of Duty throughout the house, a certifiable extended family down the road, and a cast of thousands in her head.

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Tumblr | Goodreads

About Rachel Haimowitz

As an editor, Rachel has worked at Avalon Publishing, Pearson/NAF, and Upper Deck Entertainment. She began where most of us do (with copyediting and slush pile reading) and eventually advanced all the way through to acquisitions and editorial team management. When she left Manhattan publishing to freelance, she went on to developmental edit a number of projects, including two national bestsellers and a 2010 ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year winner. She’s also worked as a ghostwriter and a copyeditor, and launched and operated a retail store for seven successful years before selling to focus on the world of publishing.

You can find Rachel on Facebook, Tweeting as RachelHaimowitz, chatting in the Goodreads forums, and blogging when she can at rachelhaimowitz.tumblr.com. She loves to hear from folks, so feel free to drop her a line anytime at [email protected].

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Tumblr

About CUT & RUN

Special Agent Ty Grady is cocky, abrasive, and indisputably the best at what he does. But when he's paired with Special Agent Zane Garrett, it's hate at first sight. Garrett is the perfect image of an agent: serious, sober, and focused, which makes their partnership a classic cliché: total opposites, good cop-bad cop, the odd couple.

Over time, however, Ty and Zane share more than just a partnership at the FBI—they grow first to like each other, and then to love each other. But with all the baggage and secrets they each carry, making their relationship work may prove as difficult as the cases they're called in to solve.