New Release: The Naked Gardening Day Box Set!

The Naked Gardening Day Box Set is out on 5th November!

Remember the five gay romance stories we released back in May to celebrate World Naked Gardening Day? Well we have gathered them together in a box set. We had a bit of to-and-fro-ing about what to use for the cover, but eventually we all agreed this was a superb image–radishes and forearms! What more could you want!

They are all MM romance novellas featuring being naked in a garden somehow, somewhere, to mark World Naked Gardening Day on 7th May 2022.

You can read a bit more about each story here or buy it here!.

Back when they came out, we did some visiting of each other’s blogs to chat about our stories. You can find everyone’s guest posts here on the blog with a little bit about each story and an excerpt.

I love these stories and it was a such a fun project to do. We are currently discussing what to do next year!

World Naked Gardening Day: Perfect Rows by Holly Day

Chickens!!! Erm… I mean hello, and thank you, Ally, for allowing me to drop by today. I’m here to talk about my new story, Perfect Rows, which was released yesterday. It’s part of our World Naked Gardening collaboration – World Naked Gardening Day was also yesterday. If you missed it but still want to give it a go, watch out for the nettles 😉

My excitement about chickens is that I have baby chicks, and this spring I’ve had one broody hen who’s been sitting on eggs. I know very little about broody hens other than that they’ll try to kill you if you get too close. We have two rows of nesting boxes, and she of course decided to have her babies on the second floor. Sigh. So we’ve had a couple of fun nightly adventures where we’ve gone out in the pitch dark to move her and her eggs. She’s been gracious about it – not! But after two tries we managed to get her settled in her own space where the nesting boxes are on ground level so no chicks will fall to their death.

In case you didn’t know, I’m slightly obsessed with chickens. This is a rather new thing for me. I’ve only kept hens for about three years, so I’m essentially a newbie. I often pester Ally, who’s an expert on the matter, with questions.

Sometimes when you write a story, you add little things for your own amusement. In Perfect Rows, Grayson wants to have chickens. He’s all about food security and sees the benefits of having chickens. He can feed his food scraps to his hens and get eggs for him and manure for the garden in return.

He has big plans.

Camden has big plans too. He wants a beautiful garden with lots of flowers. He pictures plants growing in perfect lines where nothing is out of place. He wants sweet fragrances and buzzing bees. And he most definitely doesn’t want any chickens. No crowing roosters are gonna interrupt his mornings.

The problem?

Camden and Grayson share the garden. They’re living in two cottage-style houses facing each other that once belonged to Grayson’s grandmother and her sister. Between the houses is an old kitchen garden with large raised beds, a greenhouse, and a barbeque area.

Grayson’s grandmother and her sister didn’t have any problems sharing the space. Grayson and Camden… there are some problems. The chicken issue is just one of them.

I had so much fun writing this one, and in case you didn’t realise, I’m on team Grayson. It’s not that I dislike Camden; it’s just that he’s wrong. Everyone should have chickens LOL

Perfect Rows

Everything would’ve been perfect if Grayson Dawe hadn’t been forced to share his garden with Camden Hensley. Grayson has everything he needs in life – a job, friends, a house he loves, and a garden. He wants to grow enough vegetables to cover his needs over the summer, and he has a plan for how to achieve it.

 Camden Hensley loves his garden. He loves beautiful flowers in perfect rows, sweet scents and buzzing bees, but his neighbor, Grayson, messes everything up. He mixes vegetables with flowers in the growing beds and is incapable of placing plants in straight lines. And when Cam pulls out the plants growing in the wrong place, Grayson snarls at him.

 Grayson doesn’t want to fight with Camden, but he’s completely unreasonable. Cam only wants Grayson to stop creating chaos and to grow flowers instead of vegetables. Neither of them is willing to back down, and days in the garden usually end in shouting matches, at least until Grayson realizes he can shut Cam up by kissing him. But will they ever be able to agree about what plants should grow where?

JMS Books :: Amazon :: books2read.com/PerfectRows

Read an Excerpt

Camden Hensley watched Grayson stalk off and blew out a breath. That was one fine ass; too bad it was attached to an ass. The garden could be lovely, it was lovely, but it could be truly beautiful if Grayson could only find it in himself to be a little more organized. Everything was higgledy-piggledy with Grayson. Everything. The way he dressed, the mess in his car—he mixed black T-shirts with white when he washed, for fuck’s sake. Though, Cam guessed he should be glad he washed at all.
A painter.
Who wanted to paint walls all day? And this obsession with chickens... He shook his head. It had started as soon as Grayson had moved in. He hadn’t been there more than a day or two before he’d approached Cam about wanting to build a chicken coop.
They would not have chickens running around, roosters crowing at dawn—no, thank you.
Cam loved his home, loved the garden, and the peace that came with living outside the city. But everything had been so much better when Frances had been alive. She’d been an adorable little lady and instead of criticizing everything Camden did in the garden, she’d been pleased.
He couldn’t believe Grayson was her grandson. They were nothing alike—not in appearance, not in manner, and Frances had never snarled at him. She baked cookies and used them as bribes to get him to sit with her in the garden and chat for a bit. She was easygoing, satisfied with life, and it was a welcome break from the ugliness of the world.
The garden had been his oasis until Grayson had moved in. Loud, demanding Grayson. He towered over Camden as if he believed his size would intimidate him. It did, but he’d never admit it.
Cam remembered Grayson from school, though he doubted Grayson remembered him. He’d been the rail-thin kid in the corner with unwashed clothes whose mother forgot to pack lunch on field day. She forgot to serve dinner too, but it wasn’t as obvious as the lack of lunch on field day.
Grayson had been wild. Not mean, but loud, though Camden had been terrified of him. He’d spent more time roaming the corridors than he had attending lessons, and then one day he’d been gone. Cam didn’t know what had happened, but someone had said he was working at his uncle’s painting firm, and since he was a painter now, Camden assumed the rumor had been true. He’d been fifteen then, so Grayson had been sixteen.
Camden looked at the house Grayson had stormed off to. Twenty-one years of painting walls, no wonder he was growling all the time. Cam would’ve died of boredom. Perhaps he should give in on the chickens simply to give Grayson something new in his life—no. No chickens. No noise. No mess. If Grayson wanted more excitement in his life, he could go back to school and get himself a better job.
He glanced at the house again. Had Grayson put on clothes?

JMS Books :: Amazon :: books2read.com/PerfectRows

About Holly Day

According to Holly Day, no day should go by uncelebrated and all of them deserve a story. If she’ll have the time to write them remains to be seen. She lives in rural Sweden with a husband, four children, more pets than most, and wouldn’t last a day without coffee.

Holly gets up at the crack of dawn most days of the week to write gay romance stories. She believes in equality in fiction and in real life. Diversity matters. Representation matters. Visibility matters. We can change the world one story at the time.

Connect with Holly on social media:

Website :: Facebook :: Twitter :: Pinterest :: BookBub :: Goodreads :: Newsletter

The World Naked Gardening Day novellas

The Naked Gardening Day stories are a collaboration between Holly Day, Nell Iris, A. L. Lester, K. L. Noone and Amy Spector. They comprise five MM romance novellas featuring being naked in a garden somehow, somewhere, to mark World Naked Gardening Day on 7th May 2022.

All the World Naked Gardening Day stories

Read more about them!