mmromance – Page 10 – A. L. Lester

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

Interview: Ana Ashley

I’m delighted to welcome Ana Ashley today to talk about her new release, How to Catch a Vet! Her story fits in very well with my ‘slightly crazed smallholding’ vibe… Welcome, Ana!

Hi everyone! I’m really pleased to be here today to talk about my new book, How to Catch a Vet. This is the sixth book in the Chester Falls series, which is a small-town romance with all the feels. Don’t take it from me, check out the reviews and you’ll want to move into Chester Falls in no time!

Now for the questions. What started you writing? How did you fall into this writing gig?

I’ve always had this hidden desire to be an author but it wasn’t something I thought about too much until I voiced it in a coaching session. Once those words were out I decided to see where it led me. Four years on and I’m now doing this gig full time.

Where do you write?

I have a makeshift office but it’s not where I tend to write. I prefer to move around. Sometimes I sit outside on the various seating areas we have around the house, or the pool, if it’s not too hot. I like the dining table too because it allows me to spread. My favorite place of all is coffee shops, but sadly it’s been over a year since I’ve been able to do that.

What do you like to read?

I read mostly gay romance. It’s partly research but mostly pleasure because I absolutely love the genre I write in. I also read some craft books about writing and publishing but I need to be in the right mood for those. I’m a romance girl all the way.

What are the three books you’d take to a desert island? Why would you choose them?

Oh my goodness, what a question to ask a reader! I really don’t know. I always think that even my favorite books, if read over and over, would become old news if I couldn’t access other books. I love to reread books and I always find new things I hadn’t noticed before, but I normally have a break between rereads. Can this island have power so I can take three ereaders full of books?

Writing is an intrinsically solo occupation. Do you belong to any groups or associations, either online or in the ‘real’ world? How does that work for you?

My writing goes through stages. Sometimes I need total silence, and other times I need someone around to talk things through. I have a close author friend and we usually skype and write together. We have the option to talk or just be silent but we’re there for each other regardless. I’m in quite a few author groups and have had the pleasure to meet some of my author friends personally at conferences. I love making that personal connection with people.

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

I love baking so when I’m not writing I’m usually thinking of something to bake. We also have a really big garden so I’m learning how to grow things and look after the various fruit trees that came with the house when we bought it. I find it’s good exercise and it helps clear my mind and thinking about my writing, or if I’m stuck in a particular plot point.

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?

How to Catch a Vet is partly the plot bunny from a reader. She messaged me after How to Catch a Boss released last Christmas saying that Santi, the brother of one of the MCs needed a dedicated and off-the-charts sweet vet that would help him with the great dane he adopted.

In total the book took me 2 weeks to write but many more weeks of research and gathering information. Santi, one of the main characters has an eye condition called retinitis pigmentosa, which is the reason he had to leave the military. At the same time his Dog, Duchess Olive McPickles, also ends up needing a procedure which is quite common with great danes. These two things alone made it the most challenging book I’ve written research-wise. It was also super fun because alongside this we have a menagerie of animals that steal the show at every chance they have.

After five novels and two shorter stories, writing in this world is like coming home and I always love to include recurring characters. It’s something my readers love as well since they get to see their favorite characters come back. There’s also plenty of shenanigans, so there’s that, too.

How to Catch a Vet

The first thing I learned at Vet school was to always expect the unexpected.
Well, I sure never saw Santiago Torres or his adorable Great Dane coming.

Santi is everything I’m not. Tall, confident, overbearing, and if I’m to believe his advances, he’s also very experienced in…well, you know what.

I always play safe, but it’s time to ditch the v-card. We couldn’t be more different, but that doesn’t matter because this is just a one time thing.

I’m not going to want more, right?
I’m not going to fall for him, right?

How to Catch a Vet is the sixth book in the Chester Falls series and features an opposites attract story between a virgin and a player, a Great Dane with a tendency to rescue- read kidnap- other people’s pets, and a small town like no other.

Buy How to Catch a Vet!

Find Ana!

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Admitting I'd been bullied at school was one thing. Admitting I was still a virgin at almost thirty was another altogether.
Despite the hotter-than-the-earth's core kiss, Santi didn't want to start anything. He was dealing with his stuff, and I understood that.
We could still be friends, couldn't we? I could make sure my grownign feelings for him didn't get any bigger, couldn't I?
Ana Ashley, How to Catch a Vet. Out now!

Fiona Glass: The Strange Case of the Superfluous Sword

Fiona Glass is here today with a post about archaeology and her new release Trench Warfare. It’s a subject particularly close to my heart because in a previous incarnation I was an archaeologist. And I also remember doing work-experience with a County Archaeologist called Steve; and Mick Aston from the Time-Team was very kind to me when I was writing my dissertation. Take it away, Fiona!

Thanks so much to Ally for letting me waffle on about my latest book. I’ll start by saying that one of my favourite TV shows of all time has to be the Channel 4 archaeology series Time Team, which ran for the best part of 20 years from 1994 to 2014. Each episode featured a new site for the team to investigate, and they were always given “just three days” to answer a series of questions, typically ‛how old is it?’, ‛how big was it?’ and ‛is there anything unusual about it?’. The sites ranged from Prehistoric caves to Victorian industrial sites, and pretty much everything in between, and almost all the programmes were both informative and absolutely fascinating.

One episode stood out amongst all the rest for being unique, and even a little odd. I can’t remember every detail now, but I do remember that there was a magnificent discovery (which may well have been the sword referred to in this post’s title). The only trouble was, the team’s experts were thoroughly unconvinced the discovery was genuine: it was the wrong artefact in the wrong stratigraphy at the wrong time. They couldn’t openly say so, though, without accusing the land owners of fraud, so it was left very open-ended – and very intriguing.

Straight away this suggested all sorts of plot bunnies, and I used one of them to write a short story called ‛Trench Warfare’- but substituting a gold cross for the sword. The story also featured a sweet m/m romance between an archaeologist and his assistant, and was published in the gay romance magazine Forbidden Fruit. And then I sort of forgot about it.

Recently I re-discovered it lurking in a file, dug it out, dusted it off, and realised it would work just as well as a book. I’ve added a lot of extra material, including a whole sub-plot about a ghost and lots more back-story about the characters, including County Archaeologist Steve, right-hand-man Jon, and devious businessman Paul. It fought back every inch of the way (I swear I’m never using the word ‛warfare’ in a book title again!) but I finally finished it to my own satisfaction, and published it at the end of May.

The result is an ultra-sweet, no-sex, plot-heavy romance involving a rescue dig to find a town’s missing priory before the local developers build a swanky apartment block. There’s also a set of mysterious stairs, something nasty lurking in the undercroft, and of course, that out-of-place gold cross. You’ll have to read the book to see just how that contributes to the overall story – but I’m hoping you’ll have a riotous time finding out!

Buy Trench Warfare, £2.99 / KU

An Excerpt from Trench Warfare

‛This one?’ Jon tapped it with his trowel.
Before I could reply the stone tapped back. Or at least, that’s what it sounded like. Three more taps, fainter and more muffled, coming from underground. I looked at Jon and Jon looked at me; a kind of unspoken question-and-answer passed between us and with a lift of his eyebrow he tapped again.
One-two-three.
A pause.
Then fainter, more muffled, one-two-three.
‛An echo?’ Jon’s voice was rough; what I could see of his face under all the hair was pale.
‛Must be. It could be a well-shaft. They’d have needed water, and we haven’t found one yet.’
‛True, although there’s the stream…’ He didn’t even finish the sentence. The tapping had sounded again. This time Jon hadn’t tapped first. And there were more than three.
Tap-tap-tap; tap-tap-tap. Tap.
It sounded, weirdly, like Morse code. But that was ridiculous. There could hardly be a transmitter down there, let alone anyone to operate it. It must be the well. We’d probably disturbed some smaller stones, and they were falling down the shaft and echoing. That was all. Except that it wasn’t all. Not by a long way. The tapping started again, and this time it wasn’t Morse, or any kind of code, but a frenzied jag of sound like someone beating, pounding, to be let out. And then the stone began to move.
‛What the fuck?’ Jon leaped back as though someone had poured scalding water on his legs.
I wasn’t far behind. We stared at each other; my heart was pounding and I could feel sweat prickling on my brow. Fight or flight, they call it, and I’d have given a lot to fly right out of that trench. Or to grab Jon and hang on. But my feet seemed locked to the ground. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t get out. I couldn’t get out, and the stone was working itself loose. And whatever was underneath it would overwhelm me and drag me back down to—
‛Steve? Steve! Come quickly!’
Concrete feet or not, I jumped at that. But this was no ghostly presence; it was coming from the other side of site. And it sounded hoarse.
Jon took my elbow and hoisted me out of the trench, and then I reached a hand down and hauled him out. We stood for a moment, eyeing each other. I still wanted that hug, but couldn’t ask. It wouldn’t be fair on him when he wasn’t that way inclined. I laughed nervously instead, trying to work out if what I’d seen was a normal, natural force or something else.
‛Steve!’ Ben, the shorter of the Flowerpots, appeared round the corner of the site hut, panting as though he’d been running and waving his arms around. ‛Are you there? You have to come.’
Whatever was under that moving stone would have to wait. My first thought was that there’d been yet another disaster. We’d had burglary, fire, stones that moved by themselves and threats; what was next? And was this what Paul had meant by accidents? I dropped my trowel and ran, aware of Jon at my heels.
Ben had already turned back. By the time I caught up he was standing near the garderobe trench, staring at a heap of soil. Next to him stood Bill, a spade still in one hand. He too was looking down. My heart rate hitched up a notch again. Please God, don’t be a dead body. That would be the worst. The delays, the police involved, the paperwork, even for something that was hundreds of years old. But then I saw Ben’s face. His eyes gleamed with excitement, but it was happy excitement, not dread. I breathed again. ‛What’s with all the shouting? What’s going on?’
‛Oh, you know, just your average chance discovery.’ Bill indicated with one corner of his spade. ‛And it’s only fucking gold.’

You can find ‛Trench Warfare’ on Kindle for only £2.99 (or whatever your local equivalent is) or free on Kindle Unlimited, and I hope you have as much fun reading it as I did writing it. And if you fancy catching up with Time Team, there are various classic episodes available on YouTube, and some new, online-only programmes on the same platform.

Find Fiona

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Time Team TV programme... Tony Robinson and Professor Mick Aston.

Deleted scene #3: Taking Stock

Laurie is stuck in the hospital and desperately wants to go home.

No time like the present, Laurie thought to himself. There wasn’t anyone here to stop him.

He hauled himself up using the right-hand bed-rail and swung his legs over the left-hand side of the bed. There. He was sitting upright. On his own.

He drew in a deep breath and let it out. His feet were flat on the tiled floor, reassuringly solid and cold beneath them. He wiggled his toes and watched all ten of them respond with detached interest. Well they seemed to be working all right. That was a relief. It was all coming back gradually, like they said it would.

It had been three weeks now. He was sick of being hovered over. He was done with it. He was going to prove to them that he could manage on his own and then he was going to get Sally to take him home.

He reached for the stick that the nurse had left beside the bed. A walking frame was no good, because his hand wasn’t working well enough yet. Carefully, he put his weight on his legs and leaning on the stick in his right hand, he pushed himself to his feet.

Jesus, that was an effort.

He balanced himself on his good leg and the stick, tentatively lifting his left leg. It went up all right, but it was a struggle. He concentrated really hard, dragging the foot forward. One step. One step at a time, that’s all he needed to think about.

Buy Taking Stock