Hello, all! Thanks for joining me on my blog tour for Black Dog, the first book in my new Bannon’s Gym series. (Hot mixed martial arts fighters – rawwrrr!) I’m giving away a brand new Kindle Paperwhite loaded with my entire back list. Follow along at all my stops on this tour – and leave comments on each. Every comment counts as another chance to win! I’ll announce the winner on my blog on Friday, August 30th.

First, I want to say thanks to Rhys for inviting me to blog here. Kind of ironic, since we have books out with similar titles – her Black Dog Blues vs. my Black Dog. The stories couldn’t be more different, though. Rhys’s is a gritty urban fantasy, whereas mine is a gritty contemporary about mixed martial arts fighters.

Well, okay – we’re both rocking the gritty thing. 😀

I’ve always loved books that tell a harder-edged, realistic story, and after seeing my first mixed martial arts bout on cable a few months ago, I knew that’s the approach I wanted to embrace for Black Dog. Tough guys with heaps of sexual tension and a complicated history. Grunting, grappling and rippling muscles. Rough, sweaty sex. Rawwrrr!

And the research was a killer, too. All those hours of watching (and re-watching!) Warrior and the Ultimate Fighter! I started rooting for talented young fighters like Adam Cella and Uriah Hall. I’d never been a big sports fan before, but the visceral excitement (not to mention the rampant homoeroticism) of MMA grabbed me by the throat and dragged me into the ring with it.

It can be a hard sport to watch, although it’s tamed down considerably from the ‘no holds barred’ days of the early nineties. There’s a real artistry and finesse to it that becomes apparent on further viewings. MMA fighters are some of the most versatile, well-trained athletes out there – not to mention some of the hottest. 😀

Black Dog is now available at Amazon, All Romance ebooks and Smashwords. Here’s a blurb to whet your appetites:

Danny Bannon and Eddie Roscoe have been fighting in and out of the ring for more than fifteen years, held together by mutual attraction and small-town ties, yet kept apart by a shared tragedy that continues to haunt them. Their steady on-again off-again is shaken up by the arrival of Tom Delaney, a teenage runaway trying to escape his tense home situation and his punch-happy dad.

In no time, the scrawny homeless kid has shown himself to be a boxing prodigy, and building him up brings Danny and Eddie closer than they’ve been in ages. It seems that the three of them, plus Eddie’s mother, Gloria, are forming a new family unit, much tighter than anything Tom experienced in his difficult past.
But Tom’s politically influential father isn’t the only person he left behind. When his mother shows up at Eddie and Gloria’s diner with a shiner and a haunted look in her eyes, Tom is hopeful for her future. But when that hope is snuffed out, Tom is ready to turn his new fighting skills to a deadly purpose: get revenge on his abusive father or die trying.
It’s up to his surrogate big brothers, Danny and Eddie, to put their differences and their painful history aside to prevent another tragic ending.

Cat Grant lives by the sea in beautiful Monterey, California, with one persnickety feline and way too many books and DVDs. When she’s not writing, you can usually find her watching movies or TV (Supernatural and The Vampire Diaries are among her favorite shows), singing along to whatever’s on her iPod, or fantasizing about kinky sex with Michael Fassbender.

Here’s Cat’s various hideouts on the Internet:
Website: http://catgrant.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/CatGrant2009
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cat.grant
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1912055.Cat_Grant
You can contact her directly at: cat@catgrant.com