Thank you very much for hosting me, Lane. Today I begin a blog tour for my novel Avalanche. I will start with a short blurb to introduce my book and then I will move on to today’s topic.
Blurb for Avalanche
This is a novel about friendship, maybe in its unusual, extreme form. The two main characters, Mike and Nick, meet in the Alps on a scientific expedition. They become very close, but struggle to place their relationship in the context of their lives. They fear that the bond between them will not survive outside their research hut, and that the outside world will present challenges impossible to overcome. But then a tragic accident changes their lives forever… This story is an investigation into the nature of ties between people, the limits of loyalty and the power of conventions.
Passion vs. Sex
I have always believed that the true human passion is not species of sex. They can be married and go side by side. They can divorce and go their separate ways. It is from these musings that the idea of Avalanche first came to me. In this book I sought to divorce passion from sex, and look into the nature of pure passion, not affected by the carnal side of things.
The story takes off in the French Alps. We follow five characters – all members of a research expedition – who are making their way through blizzard to their research hut, which is perched high up in the mountains over the Chamonix valley. In these conditions, in a relative isolation, the relationship between the two main characters – Nick and Mike – starts to develop.
The main protagonist is Mike and at first he doesn’t make much of this relationship, apart from acknowledging the fact that he certainly enjoys Nick’s company. He believes their relationship will come to an end when they go back to civilisation. However, when they have an argument, he realises that he’s taking it far too close to heart, which he’s unable to explain at this stage. When they reconcile they become absolutely inseparable and Mike is prepared to accept that they may have a future together, even though he struggles to define it.
An unforeseen set of circumstances spells disaster for them, which brings them even closer together and finally seals the bond between them… or so they believe. It is exactly at the time they come out of the box (not the closet!) and give their relationship a chance that it starts to develop cracks and fall apart. Letting go seems to be the best option. It looks like Mike was right all along and their return to the real world will kill what felt to be larger than life…
Have you ever been emotionally attached to someone you thought you couldn’t hold on to? Have you given up on a relationship because you thought it couldn’t work? Have someone given up on you for these reasons?
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Avalanche is available on Amazon US at $2.90 – http://www.amazon.com/Avalanche-Xena-Semikina-ebook/dp/B00J2XS6FC; and on Amazon UK at £1.81 http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00J2XS6FC. ePub is available at the Apple store and Kobo at £1.99 and the equivalent in $ (sorry, don’t know the exact price as I have never caught a glimpse of the US respective stores).
Blog tour stops for Avalanche
1) 20 November 2014 Lane Hayes https://lane-hayes.com/blog/
2) 22 November 2014 Kim Fielding http://www.kfieldingwrites.com/category/blog/
3) 24 November 2014 Anne Barwell http://annebarwell.wordpress.com/
4) 26 November 2014 Sophie Bonaste http://sophiebonaste.blogspot.co.uk/
5) 28 November 2014 Shae Connor http://shaeconnorwrites.com
About Xena Semikina
Xena is a novelist and a lawyer in criminal practice, with a distant background in computer science. Writing has always been her passion, which she has been pursuing actively for well over a decade. She has written four novels and has published one, entitled Avalanche. She lives in London with occasional trips to the South of France and the North of Russia.
Xena can be found on Twitter at Xena5000 and Facebook as Xena Semikina. Her blog can be found here: http://xenasemikina.wordpress.com/