Gay – Page 14 – A. L. Lester

#AmReading

This week, three gay romances with lots of suspense. Hard Line by Sidney Bell, Box 1663 by Alex Sorel and Hell and Gone by Tal Bauer.

Can I say first that I love all three books in this trilogy? This was the first one I read and it did stand alone; but obviously you’ll have more backstory if you start with Loose Cannon. This one is my favourite out of the three though. It’s about two misfits who are struggling to come to terms with themselves. Tobias is weighed down with his family obligations and has no head-space to work out what he really wants from life. Sullivan has shut down the part of his life that is open to relationships because he got burned really badly by someone who was frankly an arse to him about his kink. Combine the two likeable, well drawn characters with the realistic dom/sub relationship and a rollicking suspense plot and I couldn’t put the book down. The kink was really well done—on a par with Alexis Hall’s For Real. It’s a comfort re-read for me.

Box 1663 by Alex Sorel

This was rec’d me by a friend and I’m so pleased they did. It’s a WW2 gay romance set at Las Alamos, among the team building the nuclear bomb. A spy plot provides all the tension you could want. The romance is between an army photographer and a British scientist. The photographer, Nick, pursues Ian, the scientist. He’s lovely. He’s clearly head over heels in love with the man and Ian is carrying a whole load of angst and back-story that make it extremely hard for him to respond, even though he returns Nick’s feelings. I felt that the historical background was extremely well researched and I even went looking for photos of Oppenheimer and co so I could fill in the gaps in my internal narrative! I read the whole book in one sitting and I’ll definitely re-read.

Hell and Gone by Tal Bauer

Another reliably re-readable (is that too alliterative?) contemporary who-dunnit-with-romance from Tal Bauer. This time our hero is a stock detective—a career I didn’t know existed!—who is sent into the Crazy Mountains of Montana to track down the person rustling cattle and now, killing people. Everett is drawn to Lawrence, the ranch manager who has been pushing for an investigation. But there’s a thundercloud of questions hanging over Lawrence’s head—his past, his relationship with the dead man he found hanging on his property, and where he’s getting his extra money from. The tension is beautifully spun out both with the investigation and the development of the relationship. Definitely a re-read.

That’s the lot for this time!

Taking Flight: Branwen’s Grave

So, it’s release day for Taking Flight! Yay! I’ve been around and about visiting at various blogs over the last few days…Nell Iris (10^th), Holly Day (11^th), Addison Albright (today!) and I’ll be over at Ofelia Grand’s place on the 16^th.

Taking Flight by A. L. Lester. A short contemporary gay romance in the Celtic Myths collection.

Taking Flight is based on a tale from The Mabinogion, about Brânwen, sister of King Brân of Wales. Her brother marries her off to Matholwch, King of Ireland, but the marriage goes bad for complicated reasons to do with her step-brother mutilating her husband’s horses. Once Matholwch gets her home to Ireland, he banishes her to his kitchens. She tames a starling and sends it with a message to her brother for help. I’ve made the Brânwen character a trans man called Gwyn; and he extracts himself from his own difficulties with the help of Darren Starling rather than passively waiting to be rescued.

It’s a tiny, tiny bit of the whole legend. The tales in the Mabinogion tend to be very complicated and pretty dark and wouldn’t fit into a short story. They were handed down orally in Wales until they were written down in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

My background before I was a parent, a writer, a chicken-farmer, an audio-visual technician, an IT teacher and an IT professional was archaeology and history. I have always thought of myself as an Archaeologist and/or a Historian—I studied both at York for three years. However, I have never been on a dig! It’s a weird way to still self-identify thirty years after my time in that world ended; but I still do. I read a lot of history and of course I write historical stories. Even these Contemporary Celtic Myths are based in the past.

For some of the saints stories, there are obvious bits of physical evidence tied in with them. There’s a St Dwynwen’s Chapel on Anglesey—the one with the well full of fortune-telling eels I mention in Playing Chicken. St Kevin from As the Crows Fly has a hermit’s cave you can look at in a valley in Ireland. But the tales in the Maginogion go back far beyond the Christian era.

There’s no actual evidence for the Irish King Matholwch ever existing, I understand he only appears in the Mabinogion. It’s probable he was a minor leader, obviously near the coast because he had ships. The one thing that is possible evidence for the story being true is the Bronze Age burial mound known as Bedd Branwen on the Isle of Anglesey. This is such a good article, I do recommend it, there are links to the Mabinogion and photos of the site. In the tale, after lots of war and horrible things only eight people were left in Ireland and eight in Wales. The Welsh came home and

“…they came to land at Aber Alaw, in Talebolyon, and they sat down to rest. And Branwen looked towards Ireland and towards the Island of the Mighty, to see if she could descry them. “Alas,” said she, “woe is me that I was ever born; two islands have been destroyed because of me!” Then she uttered a loud groan, and there broke her heart. And they made her a four-sided grave, and buried her upon the banks of the Alaw.”

When Bedd Branwen was excavated in the 1960s by Frances Lynch, various Bronze Age burial urns and grave-goods were found and the site was dated to between 1650BC-1400BC.

So the original story had its seeds sown 3,500 years ago.

I find this absolutely fascinating. Oral history has handed that story down in one form or another with embellishments and omissions for all those years and in all those different languages. What we have in The Mabinogion is a faint echo of the past, resonating down the years from a small grave-mound by an insignificant river in a far corner of Europe.

Anyway. Here’s the blurb for Taking Flight. I do apologise for missing out the bit about the resurrection cauldron, but I just couldn’t get it in and keep the word-count low enough!

Taking Flight

Gwyn Mabler is on secondment at the Kings of Ireland Hotel at Tara. He and his brother Brân are in the process of buying the place and Gwyn is getting to grips with the everyday running by shadowing the current owner, Mal Reagan.

Gwyn’s an idiot, though. Mal made it clear from the start he’d like to get Gwyn in his bed and after a couple of weeks of pursuit, Gwyn gave in. Mal was hot and pushy and just the kind of dangerous to pique Gwyn’s interest. He honestly thought Mal knew he was trans.

Since that horrible night, Mal has had Gwyn ‘workshadowing’ Chef in the deeply unhappy kitchen. He doesn’t want to go home and cause a fuss that might make the sale fall through, but when a huge row breaks out over a flour delivery and Mal backhands Gwyn across the face, he finally decides enough is enough. With the help of Darren Starling, one of the line-cooks with whom he’s formed a tentative friendship, he leaves.

During the two-day journey from the middle of Ireland home to Wales they have plenty of time to exchange confidences. Could the delicate pull of attraction between them grow into something stronger? Is it safe for Gwyn to out himself to Darren? Will Darren want to go out with a trans guy? And how will his brother Brân take Gwyn’s arrival home with a stranger?

A 14,500-word short story in the Reworked Celtic Myths series.

Buy Taking Flight: Amazon US – Amazon UK – Everywhere Else!

Taking Flight banner. A short gay romance in the Celtic Myth collection.

Interview: Marie Sinclair

A big welcome to Marie Sinclair this week! Marie is here to talk about her new release and the aromantic main character!

Marie Sinclair interview: Nothing like forever

Greetings to Ally and her readers! I’m Marie Sinclair, a new author in the MM/gay romance genre. Thank you to Ally for letting me come talk about my upcoming release, Nothing Like Forever. It’s the second book in my Finding Forever series, and my fourth release this year.

I call Nothing Like Forever a soulmates to partners love story because it follows Jake and Micah over the course of the twenty years it takes them to figure out how to turn the instant connection they had when they met at eighteen into a sustainable relationship. On the surface, they’re a classic can’t-live-with-him/can’t-live-without-him couple whose attempts to be together lead to crash-and-burn disasters and silences that last years. Something always brings them back together, whether it’s a friend’s wedding or a chance encounter on airplane, and makes them keep trying to be together. It isn’t until they’re in their late-30s that they recognize and understand that Jake is aromantic and that, in order to build something together, they have to redefine their expectations of each other and what being in a relationship means.

This novel is all about learning what you can and can’t expect from your partner and what you can and can’t accept for yourself, what are lines you’re willing to cross, and where do you have to stay true to who you are no matter how you feel about the other person.

The idea for writing a romance with an aromantic character is based in a 30+ year friendship I have with a guy I met in college. We met, much like Jake and Micah do, when he came to visit his best friend, who lived on my dorm floor. It truly was an instant connection between us as soon as we saw each other. (And, yes, we have tried to turn that connection into something more a few times, but unlike Jake and Micah, we aren’t actually attracted to each other in that way – figuring that out took us years, and it was every bit as bumpy a road as Jake and Micah have, full of hurt feelings and a sense of betrayal that the universe would bring us together in a way that all the books and songs and movies say is meant to be, and yet…it wasn’t).

It wasn’t until a few years ago, when I was describing my relationship to this man to a new acquaintance, that I began to have an understanding of what was going on. As I described our relationship and the way in which I can often sense when he’s in distress or the time I called him after I came across puppy pictures of our dog who’d recently passed only to have him tell me he’d just (and I mean, just, he had it in his hands when I called) found a pamphlet his vet had given him after his dog passed away a few years before, this acquaintance said, “That’s so romantic! Like something out of a movie!”

Something in that moment made everything click, and I started to research aromanticism. The more I learned, the more I realized that my friend is aromantic, and the more I wanted to take on the challenge of writing a romance with a main character who does not experience romantic attraction.

Aromanticism is often linked with asexuality (aro/ace) in the queer community, but that’s a bit misleading. There are people who are both asexual (experiencing little or no sexual attraction) and aromantic, but they don’t necessarily go hand in hand. There are people who don’t experience romantic attraction but have a high sex drive. One of the challenges for aromantic individuals is that romantic attraction is so ubiquitous in most cultures that we don’t recognize there’s a difference between sexual and romantic attraction.

I did a lot of research as well as worked with an authenticity reader to make Jake’s experiences as true as I could. In the end, I settled on Jake being demi-aro, meaning that he can develop romantic feelings but only for someone he’s intensely connected to. While Jake intentionally comes off as a player at the beginning, I tried to be careful with the language I used in his POV chapters to highlight physical and sexual attraction to Micah. As the story progresses, that language begins to include more romantic attraction and then, as I hope you’ll see because I’ve enticed you to read the book, results in some epic fails for Jake as he tries to master what it means to be a boyfriend.

If you’re interested in more information about aromanticism, I highly recommend starting with the LGBTQ Wiki https://lgbta.wikia.org/wiki/LGBTA_Wiki. There are also some wonderful IG accounts such as aro.aro.ace and aromantic_support that can provide resources as well as information.

Nothing Like Forever

Fairy tales say that when you meet the love of your life, you know. Micah and Jake definitely knew they’d met someone special the instant they saw each other. Only Jake doesn’t believe in fairy tales, and Micah believes in them too much.

Nothing Like Forever is an insta-lust, soulmates-to-partners, can’t-live-with-him/can’t-live-without-him unconventional love story in which Jake and Micah learn that loving someone isn’t always enough for a happily ever after, and sometimes the journey is as important as the destination.

Now available for pre-order on Amazon and releases on KU on 10 August 2021.

Excerpt

Jake knew someone was in his house as soon as he opened the front door. It was something in the way the air moved, or the echoes sounded in rooms that should be empty, maybe the trace of a scent that was out of the ordinary. Whatever it was, it put Jake on alert that last night’s hookup had stayed longer than was either necessary or welcome.

He put his briefcase down on the table by the front door and toed off his shoes before shrugging out of his wool overcoat and taking off his leather gloves. An arctic blast had blown in from Alaska over the weekend and the temperature in the Bay Area was still in the low forties. Jake left his coat draped across the lime green chair that had been a gift from an interior decorator he’d slept with a few weeks ago.

He’d assured Jake it was fun and kitschy in a 1960’s Palm Springs pool party way, totally in keeping with his ocean front bungalow. Jake wasn’t sure he was a fun and kitschy type, but he was definitely not an interior decorator kind of guy. The more times he saw the chair, the more he hated it. Not to mention it reminded him of the less-than-stellar sex they’d had, and the way the guy had screamed dramatically as he came. Jake was not a fan of performative orgasms.

At the moment, though, Jake had more pressing issues than a walk down memory lane and deciding whether he wanted to hurl the chair out the door. There was a twink to send home as well. The guy had been a fun fuck, maybe he’d gift him the chair on his way out.

Jake had very specific and clear-cut rules for hook-ups and made sure potential partners understood them before he brought them home. No kissing. No overnights unless given an invitation. No sharing his bed: fucking happened in the guest room and that’s where hook-ups stayed. There were no repeats, and no exceptions.

He’d long ago accepted that he was interested in sex not relationships. Romantic gestures and sentimentality made his skin crawl, and finding Mr. Right had never been his goal, and, even though he’d tried relationships a couple of times, Jake was only ever looking for Mr. Right Now. He had little patience for anyone who thought they could change his mind or expected him to make an exception for them.

He climbed the stairs to the living room, and stepped through the archway on alert for anything that might have been moved. The room looked the same as he’d left it with its leather sofas and dark wood tables and blond hardwood floors. The big picture window looked out over Great Highway and towards the Pacific Ocean beyond, both sea and sky gray. He didn’t stop to admire the view, focused instead on finding the location in which his visitor was overstaying his welcome. When he saw the roller suitcase tucked into a corner, he realized he had a different issue to deal with entirely.

The bag was the generic black all flight attendants used, but he knew who this one belonged to without looking at the ID tag.

Micah.

What had it been? Six months since he’d left San Francisco? Maybe eight? A year? Fuck, could it have been that long since they’d seen each other? Since they’d last spoken?

Jake tried to remember when Micah stopped flying out of SFO and transferred to Seattle. It had been nearly a year since Micah’s part-time residence in his house had come to a devastating end when Micah crossed a line he knew was unforgiveable. They both had that night. Jake wasn’t enough of an asshole to blame it all on Micah, but they’d also both gone silent afterwards. No texts, no calls, nothing. That wasn’t surprising. In the history of their relationship, they’d done this before, but Micah usually got in touch after they both cooled down. When that hadn’t happened, Jake figured they were probably done for good this time and let the walls he’d erected harden into fortifications.

Now Micah was back, and Jake knew, no matter how hard he tried, he’d never be able to say no to Micah.

About Marie

Marie Sinclair is a queer writer living in San Francisco. Though she’s been a writer all her life, it wasn’t until she stumbled upon MM romance that she knew she’d found a home for herself and all the characters in her head.

Her focus is on contemporary romance, usually on the steamy side, and HEAs are guaranteed, though it might take some work for the couples to get there. As a member of the LGBTQ+ community, Marie believes in rooting her stories in the real world of queer culture and showing how love can survive even in challenging times.

Her first novel, A Kind of Forever, released in January of 2021, with a prequel novella, A Winter’s Dance, available on Prolific Works and Book Funnel. Jake and Micah’s prequel novella, Nothing Like a Summer’s Romance, which details the month they spent together when they were nineteen, is available on Amazon and KU.

Marie’s Sin Bin readers’ group on Facebook : IG: marie.sinbooks : Twitter @marie_sinbooks : Website and newsletter sign-up: www.sinbinbooks.com

On-the-job skills

So, Taking Flight is out next Tuesday! (It’s already on pre-order at a few places if that’s your thing). I thought I’d do one of those terribly insightful writer posts about how sometimes things work and sometimes things don’t work and sometimes you have no idea which is which until you start to get the words out on the page.

Three covers of Contemporary Celtic Myths

The Celtic Myth stories began almost as a joke. The Cariad Chapter of the Romance Novelists’ Association were talking about Welsh romances for St Dwynwen’s Day. St Dwynwen is known, rather inaccurately, as The Welsh St Valentine. I didn’t have anything to put forward to be promoted for her ‘day’ of 25^th January, so I sat down and wrote something. I took the elements of the Dwynwen myth and made a short, low-heat hurt-comfort story about two men who meet at a remote cottage in the depths of January. It also featured a large dog and some chickens.

I enjoyed writing it so much (and making the cover) that I thought I’d do another one. I have always been fascinated by crows and so St Kevin and the ornithological element to his legend was easy. I still really enjoyed the short-story exercise, so I just kept going and because the previous two stories were about birds, the story of Brânwen and the starling seemed like a natural progression.

It brewed around in my head all the time I was writing The Fog of War, with the starling as the main character. I was going to have him fly off with Brânwen’s message to her brother Brân and then fall for Brân and the two of them go back and rescue Brânwen. But when I came to write it, it really didn’t feel right.

This was partly because it’s such a huge story, I think, and I didn’t want to write a full-length novel. The Mabinogion is not for the faint-hearted. But it was also because as I went along, it felt like Brânwen was just a plot device in the story. And of course, she is, in the original. The poor woman has no self-realisation at all…she gets married off, she gets banished, she gets rescued, her son gets killed (by her half brother!), both Wales and Ireland get razed to the ground around her and the only decision she makes at all is at the end of the story, when she kills herself. It felt really weird trying to craft a low-key romance for two other people around that.

Nevertheless, I tried.

After a while, I realised I was writing rubbish, so I stopped and had a think. And my think led me to the conclusion that I didn’t want to write about Brân the Blessed at all. He’s Gwyn’s big brother in my story and I had great fun with him when I was able to cast him as overprotective sibling. As a main character though, he didn’t work at all.

Once I’d got that straight in my head, I was able to take the Brânwen character and make her/him the master of his own destiny. Gwyn gets himself out of his situation at The Kings of Ireland hotel with the help of Darren Starling. He has some help. But he manages his own life rather than being moved around like a chess piece.

It’s a much more satisfying story and was a salutary writing lesson for me.

I really hope you like it!

Preorder Taking Flight here

Taking Flight

A 14,500-word short story in the Reworked Celtic Myths series.

Preorder Taking Flight: Amazon – Everywhere Else!

Interview: Ana Night

This week we welcome Ana Night, who’s come to talk about her new release and answer some nosy questions! Welcome, Ana!

Thank you for having me! I’m here to talk about my newest release Avenging a Raider, book six in my Black Raiders series. This book is one I’ve wanted to write for quite a while, but it hasn’t been easy – anything that could get in the way would. So to finally have it done is just amazing and I’m so happy it’s out now!

So, on with the questions! What started you writing?

I think it was just one of those inevitable things. I’ve always loved stories, from having them read to me as a kid, to learning to read while listening to tapes of the book (I feel way older than I am writing that, by the way), to reading so fast and so much the local library couldn’t keep up. No matter what, if we were going on a drive, I had pen and paper with me and would be writing from the car started till it stopped. I started out writing fanfiction even though I had no idea that’s what it was, and I would rewrite the things I thought could be better and I guess that slowly led to me just wanting to write those stories from scratch. I have quite a few unfinished and/or unpublished books on my computer and I’m sure some of them date back to my early teens. It wasn’t until I was nineteen that I decided to give this whole being an author thing a try and I haven’t regretted that decision once. I absolutely love writing and sharing my stories with others!

Where do you write?

Usually at my desk or on the couch. If I’m feeling frisky, though, I’ll write on my balcony but only when it’s warm enough. That also puts me at risk of just working on my non-existent tan instead of writing, so not always a good idea. Yes, I know. I like to live my life dangerously! Or, really, just in danger of ending up looking like a lobster.

What do you like to read?

I only read MM and have for almost five years now. I mostly read romantic suspense, so it takes a lot for me to read things like fantasy and contemporary but if the writing style is a hit, then I’ll probably read anything by that author. I’m a lot more about the writing than the story these days if that makes sense? This is actually something that happened as I started to write. I became pickier with what I’d read, and I read a lot less now than I did just five years ago. Then again, I could read two to three books a day back then and I have no idea how I had that much time. I certainly don’t now! So I just really enjoy those few books that I do read.

What do you like to do when you’re not writing?

I have a horse, so I spend a good amount of time at the stables. Besides that, I probably watch too many tv shows. No regrets, though! I also have a cat, but he lives at my parents’, so I only get to love on him a few times a week. Other than that, I read when I find a good book or one of my favorite authors has a new one out. I’ve also started sewing again which turns out to be a lot harder than I remembered, but a few broken needles won’t stop me! At least, it won’t stop me from breaking more… I try, though, and I really like making skirts and dresses so hopefully I’ll get better with time.

I like how you put ‘Do you like to exercise?’ in your suggestions for this question because hell no. I’m the biggest couch potato to ever couch potato (I don’t know if you can actually say that but if you ask me, I’ll claim wholeheartedly that you can!). I’ve even stolen my parents’ car— don’t worry. They have two—because it takes forever to take the train to the stables. Lazy? Maybe. I’ll probably have to aspire to be the couchiest potato ever but I’m okay with that.

Tell me a little bit about your most recent release. What gave you the idea for it? How long did it take to write? What did you enjoy about writing it? What did you hate?

As I said before, I’ve wanted to write this book for a very long time. Probably since I started on the first book in the series which is—god, where did the time go?—five years ago now.

I always wanted to pair up these two. Things always change from when I get an idea to when I’m actually writing the story but for the most part, there weren’t a whole lot of changes with these guys. I’m not entirely sure what gave me the idea except that it just made sense the more I wrote and fleshed out the first few books in the series. The more I knew about Will and Colt, the more I liked them together.

What I hate about this book is how long it took me to finish it. I didn’t write for two months this year because shit happened and then it was just so hard to get back into it, but fortunately the boys started talking to me again (they had some abandonment issues we had to work through) and I managed to finish the book in June.

Avenging a Raider

Eleven years ago, Lieutenant William Stanton’s entire world went up in flames. He lost his brother. His family. He left his old life behind to hunt down the people responsible. Avenging his brother was all he’d thought about, all he’d done, for a decade. A sexy little assassin shouldn’t be able to distract him from that goal, but he never counted on the feelings Colt would spark in him.

Colt ‘Shadow’ Castillo has a job to do. A very important one that could stop a terrorist, but he had to go rogue from the CIA to do it. His handler sending someone to retrieve him isn’t surprising. He never expected it to be the missing lieutenant of the Black Raiders, though. Teaming up with the man certainly wasn’t on his to-do list, but the attraction he feels for Will isn’t exactly driving him away.

With people to save, a job to do, and a terrorist to stop, can Colt allow himself to trust Will and the feelings he has for him? Can Will convince Colt he’s worthy of his love?

Buy Avenging a Raider!

About Ana

Ana Night is a writer of suspenseful gay romance. She’s an avid reader who has loved the written word since she discovered it. When she was a kid, she never went anywhere without a notepad. She was always writing, be it in the backseat of the car, between classes in school, or by the pool on vacations. When she’s not writing, you can find her with her nose buried in a book, singing and dancing, or watching her favorite TV shows.

Ana lives in Denmark where she spends most of her time running from her ninja kitty–that one goes for the ankles–and getting lost in the woods with her horse.

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