Category: LGBTQ Book Reviews

BLITZ for Diamond Heart (Cherrywood Grove #2) by M.A. Hinkle (excerpt and giveaway)

Title: Diamond Heart

Series: Cherrywood Grove, Book Two

Author: M.A. Hinkle

Publisher: NineStar Press

Release Date: February 4, 2019

Heat Level: 1 – No Sex

Pairing: Male/Male

Length: 60900

Genre: Contemporary YA, LGBT, contemporary, YA, high school, twins, arts/music/theater, gay, ace, panromantic, gender-bending, learning disability/social anxiety, family drama

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Synopsis

Gareth has a problem. He got expelled. Now he and his twin brother, Morgan, have to start over at an artsy new private school, and it’s all Gareth’s fault. Not to mention Morgan’s crippling social anxiety and Gareth’s resting jerk face aren’t making them any friends, and their father is furious with him. Gareth could live with this, but Morgan’s mad at him too, and Morgan is the only person alive who can make Gareth feel guilty.

Good thing Gareth has a plan. Cute, bubbly Felix, a student at their new school, has a crush on Morgan, and they both want to act in their school’s production of Midsummer Night’s Dream. Gareth figures it’s the perfect way to help Morgan come out of his shell and set him up with Felix. Then, maybe Morgan will forgive him, and Gareth can go back to not caring about anything or anyone.

But Gareth has another problem. He’s been cast as Oberon, and Felix is Titania. Oh, and Morgan doesn’t like Felix back. And maybe Gareth is enjoying the play and making new friends and having a good time at his new school. And maybe—just maybe—he’s got a crush on Felix. Can Gareth keep up his tough-guy act long enough to repair his relationship with Morgan, or will Felix get caught in the fallout of Gareth’s dumb schemes?

Excerpt

Diamond Heart
M.A. Hinkle © 2019
All Rights Reserved

Everything started when I punched a guy in the face, but I only realized this was more than a regular Tuesday once my twin brother Morgan got home from school looking like he’d been hit by a truck.

Not literally. Morgan resembled the guy on the cover of a romance novel—not Fabio, the Twilight knockoffs, where they were angsty instead of buff. Morgan’s hair was always windswept, except when he pulled it back as per the school dress code. While our school had a dress code, at least it was gender neutral, so anyone could wear whatever they wanted as long as their skirt hit below the knee and their hair was kept out of their face.

Morgan’s hair is always kept out of his face, is what I’m saying.

I was hoping word hadn’t gotten around school, but what a stupid hope. Morgan was ashen. I got to my feet. “Morgan—”

He shook his head without changing his expression.

Crap. I tried to stand still as Morgan went through his getting home ritual: shoes placed in a neat straight line next to the door, tie loosened but not taken off, laptop removed from bag, bag hung on the hook next to the empty one where mine belonged. I put my hands behind my back so he wouldn’t see me digging my fingernails into my palm.

Morgan finished and turned to me. I couldn’t read his expression. “So what happened this time?”

I tried to make my mouth work. But for one thing, I had a bad feeling Morgan already knew the answer. For another—

If he didn’t already know, explaining would be impossible. This went deeper than being dumb and teenage and angry. This was about Morgan and his nerves and me protecting him the only way I knew how. If I could explain it out loud, I wouldn’t have been in this mess. I could have talked things out with Warren Beauregard III (really, truly his name in the year of our Lord 2016) the way Sesame Street taught me, and we would sing a song, and everyone would have gone home happy after learning about the letter of the day.

But before I could figure out how to put it into words, my father came downstairs.

My father—excuse me, Dr. Trevor Lewis, PhD and some other fancy letters—was a professor of Welsh literature. He spent most of his time buried in books written in a language barely anyone spoke, writing papers seven other people would read. Whenever he tried to tell me about it, my soul left my body from sheer boredom.

I didn’t see him much. In order to focus on his research, Trevor taught night classes, which meant all the good people working full-time jobs and going through school snored their way through his English 101. Therefore, he was at home while I was in school, and I was at home while he was at school. It worked well. I didn’t have to see him and remember we looked alike and I hated it, and he didn’t have to see me and remember the family disappointment.

“Let’s sit in the parlor, boys.” His voice was cool.

The change of scenery wasn’t for anyone’s comfort; the furniture was so old it doubled as a torture device. Morgan and I took our usual spot on the couch, Trevor in the chair across from us. Morgan chewed on his lower lip. I wanted to do the same, but I also didn’t want Trevor to see he had me over a barrel.

“The principal decided to avail me of a number of things about you, Gareth,” said Trevor, after a long, long minute of staring at me. He still hadn’t raised his voice. “He said you are, in most respects, a brilliant student. A leader in class discussions, consistently high achieving on standardized tests, and well liked by your teachers. I was aware of all of this.”

I did not relax. Before everything else, Trevor was a rhetorician. He was not reassuring me; he was laying out background before he launched into his thesis. According to family legend, when he defended his dissertation, the evaluators only asked one question apiece because his argument about whatever he studied was so watertight.

“What I did not know is you have also been consistently on the verge of expulsion from the moment you started high school. I don’t see the point of going into detail of the reasons. I’m sure you’re aware—swearing, uniform violations, lashing out at other students.”

The expulsion part was news to me, which was not going to help my case.

Trevor waited, not to see if I wanted to respond. He was pausing for effect. “And it has only been by the grace of the aforementioned good qualities and my not inconsiderable donations to your school that you have not been run out for conduct unbecoming a member of their academy.”

I bit my tongue. Literally. It hurt. Sometimes, I appreciated Trevor’s frankness. Take when he talked about college. He always said, “I expect both of you to attend either the school where I teach or the University of Wisconsin, unless you get into an Ivy League college.” It might sound controlling, but I knew exactly where I stood with him—in the garbage.

“You’re getting kicked out?” Morgan asked, as though I should have led with it when he came in the door.

“I guess, but I just found out too.” I didn’t even know my school expelled people. Then again, I was the only kid ever written up for fighting on school grounds.

Morgan stiffened like we were going over the first drop on a roller coaster, only there was no track at the bottom to catch us. “I can’t stay there by myself.”

Now that was news to me. Among other things, Morgan was valedictorian, first chair violinist in orchestra, and student council secretary. (He’d be president, but then he’d have to talk.) All the teachers thought he was God’s gift to academia, and he’d been fielding college recruiters since we were in eighth grade. And everybody adored Morgan. Girls wanted to bang him, guys wanted to be him/possibly also bang him, nonbinary people high-fived him, et cetera. I wasn’t exactly an outcast, but I wasn’t anyone’s first choice for gym, either.

Trevor’s expression was unreadable. Behind his glasses, his eyes were the color of a freezing winter sky. My father had never been cuddly, but he used to talk to us more, before my mom killed herself four years ago. Suicide should have been the low point, but things only went downhill in our family from there. After the funeral ended and all the flowers were thrown away, we never talked about her again. I hadn’t bothered trying, but Morgan had, and Trevor dismissed him. Not in so many words, maybe, but we got the hint.

Anyway, as long as Morgan was calm and under control, he and Trevor had long and involved conversations about books and crap. But the second Morgan faced something more complicated than precalculus, Trevor was out the door faster than blinking, leaving Morgan alone with his deep-breathing exercises. And me. I always cleaned up the mess, whether or not I made it.

To be fair, I usually made it.

I got to my feet, one hand clenched in a fist. I wasn’t going to hit Trevor—no use. It wouldn’t get a rise out of him. But the pain helped me concentrate so my voice would come out calmly, the same way it did at fancy dinner parties when one of Trevor’s too-rich friends asked me a question that drove me up a wall. I knew Morgan hadn’t meant to say anything out loud, nor would he appreciate it if I answered him right now. So I put on my best Trevor face and pretended Morgan wasn’t hyperventilating beside me. “Well, this is all pretty shitty. When do I find out?”

Trevor’s expression hadn’t changed an inch; he might have been staring at one of the insipid paintings hung on the wall. “You’ve been suspended for the rest of the week while they decide. In the meantime, I suggest you research alternative options. I have enough work preparing for midterms.”

I bit the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste blood so I wouldn’t answer. Morgan was about ready to barf all over the fancy Persian rug, but he almost always was. I couldn’t tell if it was worse than usual.

“You wanna help me search?” I asked. If I didn’t give Morgan some kind of out, he would sit there until the end of time, caught in his own head.

Morgan stood, jerkily. He nodded at Trevor and followed me upstairs.

Purchase

NineStar Press | Amazon | Smashwords | Barnes & Noble | Kobo

Meet the Author

M.A. Hinkle swears a lot and makes jokes at inappropriate times, so she writes about characters who do the same thing. She’s also worked as an editor and proofreader for the last eight years, critiquing everything from graduate school applications to romance novels.

Website | Facebook | Twitter

Giveaway

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Love A Paranormal mystery romance? Check out Not Dead Yet (Not Dead Yet #1) by Jenn Burke (teasers and giveaway)

 

NOT DEAD YET by Jenn Burke

Series: Not Dead Yet #1

Publisher: Carina Press

Release Date: February 4, 2019 (ebook only)

Length: 91,000 words

Subgenre: Paranormal mystery romance

Warnings: Depression, talk of suicide, murders, paranormal violence

Links:

Harlequin | Amazon US | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Barnes & Noble | Apple Books

 

Synopsis:

Dying isn’t what it used to be.

Wes Cooper was dead. Then he wasn’t—though he’s not exactly alive, either. As an immortal not-ghost, he can transition between this world and the otherplane, which makes him the perfect thief for hire. For seventy years he’s made a “living” returning items to their rightful owners, seeing his fair share of the bizarre in the process. But he’s never witnessed murder. Until now.

His latest mission brings him more than he bargained for: a very-dead actor who is definitely going to stay that way. It’s just Wes’s luck that his ex-boyfriend, Detective Hudson Rojas, is assigned to the case. Hudson broke Wes’s heart years ago—and could again, given he’s rocking a hot silver-fox look that shouldn’t be legal.

As they work together to track down the murderer before anyone else gets hurt, it becomes clear Wes and Hudson have unfinished business. And when a secret Hudson’s been keeping threatens more than just their happiness, it might mean the end of their not-life together—permanently.

Release Blitz Teasers:

Teaser #1

When I woke up, I knew exactly where I was and exactly whose arms were around me. I’d gotten up a couple of times to use the bathroom, because I had the bladder of an elderly man even if the rest of me looked like a college student. Each time I crawled back into bed, enjoying the heat Hudson emitted—enough to keep me warm but not enough to make me overheat—he pulled me close and held me tight.

So waking up with my face mashed into his chest and our legs intertwined was not a surprise. The fact that I was rubbing my morning wood against his thigh? That was a little more shocking.

But damn, it felt good.

Okay, no. I had to stop. He was still asleep, and rubbing one out using his incredibly hard and muscular thigh with the perfect amount of rough texture—no. Bad Wes. Consent. Gotta have it. I forced myself to stop and pull away—

Only to have Hudson’s hand clap my butt and haul me back to where I’d been, my erection drilling into his leg.

“Hud?”

He grunted and pressed on my ass to get me humping again.

I was only so strong.

Teaser #2

“Fuck, yeah.” His entire body shuddered, and I smiled in triumph. I felt as though I’d cracked an uncrackable safe. Undoing Hudson might become my new favorite pastime.

Slowly we undressed. His shirt disappeared, followed by mine. There was no striptease, no titillation—it wasn’t needed tonight. I wanted him and he wanted me, but I think we both knew sex wasn’t happening before we fell asleep. I fucking loved sex with Hudson—when we’d been dating, we did it every way I knew how to do it. Fast and hard, slow and dirty, slow and loving, explosive, gentle…all of them were amazing rushes, because it was Hudson.

But I wanted to savor the steps here. Hudson had been out of my life—permanently, I thought. A regret I had never truly gotten over. I never dreamed we would reconnect. Now that we had—now that we had kinda-sorta discussed that we might maybe be a thing—I wanted to linger on every phase of our relationship.

And maybe this time, if we took it slow and talked—imagine that—maybe we could make this work.

Release Blitz Excerpt:

It seemed like I’d barely closed my eyes before something woke me. Thuds on my door. I thought for a second it might be Lexi again, but she never knocked on my door like that, all authoritative and belligerent. I flung the blankets away from my face long enough to yell, “You’ve got the wrong apartment!” before diving back into my fluff pile.

The bursts of heavy knocks slid into something more rhythmic, an indication that whoever was at my door had settled in for the long haul. I kicked the blankets off with severe prejudice. Who the fuck made that kind of noise at—I squinted at the clock—midnight? I scrambled out of bed and marched to the front door, bouncing off a doorjamb on my way. And banging my knee on the end table. And almost tripping over the edge of the throw rug.

I did not function well without sufficient sleep. I also did not think clearly, or else I might have checked the peephole in the door before flinging it open with a harried, “What?”

Hudson stood there in dark jeans and a black leather bomber jacket open over a plain gray T-shirt, revealing his badge on a chain. His gun sat on his hip, an unusual choice for him, and his hair was…not mussed, but definitely not as styled as when he wore a suit. Five o’clock shadow peppered his jaw, silver glinting among the darker shades.

“You’re not wearing a suit,” I observed. Call me Captain Obvious.

“Night off,” he said distractedly, his gaze traveling from my head down…down…down. The tip of his tongue emerged to wet his lips. “You’re not wearing clothes.”

I jerked my gaze away from him to look at myself and—yep, naked. “Christ,” I muttered, and darted back toward the bedroom.

About the author:

Jenn Burke has loved out-of-this-world romance since she first read about heroes and heroines kicking butt and falling in love as a preteen. Now that she’s an author, she couldn’t be happier to bring adventure, romance, and sexy times to her readers.

Jenn is the author of a number of paranormal and science fiction romance titles, including the critically acclaimed Chaos Station science fiction romance series (authored with Kelly Jensen) from Carina Press.

She’s been called a pocket-sized and puntastic Canadian on social media, and she’ll happily own that label. Jenn lives just outside of Ottawa, Ontario, with her husband and two kids, plus two dogs named after video game characters…because her geekiness knows no bounds.

 

Connect With Jenn:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/jeralibu

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/jeralibu/

Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/295814398039168/ (Jenn Burke’s Epic Adventurers)

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jeralibu/

Newsletter sign-up: http://bit.ly/jennburkenewsletter

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/9869819.Jenn_Burke

Tumblr: http://jeralibu.tumblr.com/

 

 

 

Giveaway:

2 prize packs:

    • One signed paperback copy of Not Dead Yet (exclusive; you can’t buy it in print!) with some Canadian swag – will ship internationally
    • $10 Amazon gift card

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A MelanieM Review: Gage (Trenton Security #3) by J.M. Dabney

Rating: 4.25 stars out of 5

The forbidden is the sweetest lure.

Trenton Security’s Public Relations go-to was Hayden Gage. He loved his job, and it kept him distracted from the demons haunting his nightmares. His past wasn’t up for discussion, and Hayden wouldn’t allow it to intrude on his future. Yet, that was easier said than done when his best friend came to him desperate for help, and it put him right on the path to his one weakness.

Young didn’t equal lost.

Derrick Thorpe lived in the shadow of his father’s mistakes. Although he was adopted by Linus Trenton, he wanted to prove that he wasn’t like his biological father. When he was asked to go undercover to help at Trenton Security, it put him in close quarters with Gage. Being Gage’s was only an act, but when lines blur, what happens when the operation ends?

I know going in what to expect from one of these interconnected stories.  Damaged men who don’t think they deserve love, perhaps someone who already loves them, a case that needs to be investigated and many of our couples from the series and stories that orbit each other, serving as friends and extended families. Yet within this framework, J.M. Dabney brings new characters or rather familiar characters to the front for a closer examination and revelations.  We get to see where their damage came from, their past histories revealed, and who, most often, has drawn their attention and maybe even love.

The author also folds into their stories important current international elements such as child trafficking and slavery that makes our headlines daily and puts a face to the horror in Cameron in the daughter that is missing,   Through Alex we feel his pain, panic , and outright despair at ever finding her, if not alive, then whole.

While the investigation is frantically intensifying for Cameron (and the author horrifIcally details why the searchers have such a short frame of time to accomplish their goals), Gage and Derrick are working through a minefield of emotions themselves about each other.

There is enough material here for Gage to be twice as long.  I wanted more to be frank.  More of the high wire act that was the investigation and suspenseful search for Cameron.  That has me in knots every step of the way.  And then, almost as a second story, the romance and dynamics that was playing out between Gage and Derrick.  That involves all the voilence and extreme angst of Gage’s background which he hadn’t quite worked through and still required, as he acknowledged, the needs of a therapist, to help him.

In that respect this is very much a HFN, which realistically all you could expect.

There is Daddy kink, bdsm, D/s.  and for people with  triggers… beating, domestic violence, self harm such as cutting, and mention of suicide.

J.M. Dabney’s books, especially in these series are dark, gritty, and  not for the faint hearted.  I prefer them that way.  They are true to these wounded men and the situations around them.

I have listed all the connected series below.  It helps to obtain a sense of community and who all the people and couples are that are mentioned here or appear in the scenes.

I recommend them all.

Cover art by Reese Dante.  I love that cover by Reese Dante, That is my idea of Gage.

Sales Links:  Amazon

Book Details:

184 pages
Published January 29th 2019 by Hostile Whispers Press, LLC
Edition Language English
Series Trenton Security #3

An Alisa Review: Omega Teacher’s Secret (Men of Meadowfall #5) by Anna Wineheart

Rating:  4 stars out of 5

Saddled with debt and a crippling self-esteem, Professor Ian McMillan has struggled for decades with his demons. But that isn’t his biggest secret–seven years ago, he spent his heat with an alpha he shouldn’t have… his student.

Nothing should’ve come out of it. Except Ian conceived, and his baby’s father… is also the department head’s son. Under the threat of losing his job, Ian made a choice: keep his child, and sever all contact with Brad.

With no inkling of the baby he left, Brad Saxon graduated from college and joined the Meadowfall fire department, making mistakes along the way. Lives have been lost at his hands, and the guilt he carries is suffocating. How can he protect an omega, when he’s failed others before?

But Brad can’t forget about the omega from years ago–Ian, with his soft smiles and yearning eyes. When Brad enrolls in a Master’s course hoping to see his professor again, he finds something he doesn’t expect: Ian’s in heat. This time, there’s a child with him… a little girl with Brad’s eyes.

When Brad reaches out and Ian conceives again, the embers between them kindle back to life. Brad makes the decision to stay. As the sparks between them grow, will Ian and Brad heal each other, or will their pasts come to tear them apart?

This was another great book in this series.  Ian has been running himself ragged keeping up with his job and taking care of his daughter and her health problems.  Brad has never moved on from the one older Omega from years earlier and when he finds him again he finds even more reasons to stay.

Both of these guys have crappy family lives.  Brad’s dad is a jerk and is the one who kept these two apart and pushes them apart again.  Ian’s mom essentially hated him while doting on his brothers, I just has trouble understanding how they and his dad allowed him to be treated that way though it doesn’t seem he has any relationship with any of them.

I felt for both of them and neither seemed to really have any support, a friend or two but nothing to keep them going.  I loved Gwen and how dedicated they are to her.  I loved watching Brad work hard to show Ian how wonderful he is.

I love the cover art, how well it works for the story and the visuals of the characters.

Sales Links: Amazon

Book Details:

ebook, 402 pages

Publication: October 30, 2018

Edition Language: English

Series: Men of Meadowfall #5

A Jeri Review: Rewind by Rowan Shaw

Rating: 3 Stars out of 5

I am always drawn to stories with a hearing impaired character. Although Enzo is deaf, he does have a cochlear implant- but he doesn’t wear that all of the time. And from the perspective of another hearing impaired person, a lot of it was spot on. But not all.
Enzo and Florian were boyfriends in high school until a hate crime led to Enzo losing his hearing and Florian losing his home when his parents found out he was dating a boy. By chance they meet again about 8 years later and are immediately drawn together.
I really liked a lot of this story, but while some things were lacking, others were really overdone. There were a lot of different things that the author was trying to make a point on. Being deaf, French sign language, being bisexual, being thrown out for being gay, hate crimes committed against them, etc, etc. There would have been more impact if only 2 or 3 of those were highlighted and explored more.
Enzo also went from hearing to deaf as an 18 year old. That is seriously traumatic and he acts like it is no big deal. He never laments what he has lost and how much has changed. He just shrugs it off. Lots of people talking at once and he can’t understand them. Oh well, he will just sit quietly. No, sorry. You’ll be upset that you can’t communicate, but you also don’t want to make a big deal of it.
I did enjoy the love story between Enzo and Florian. It was really sweet and loving and just so obvious how much they loved each other. How broken they both were by their “break up” which really wasn’t even their fault.
There were also some unanswered questions. And while one of those will be answered in the next book, there are at least 2 big ones that iare central to Enzo and Florian each that I don’t see getting answered in the next since they aren’t the main characters.
Generic cover. Would have been nice to see the model wearing a cochlear implant or have a scar on his face.
Sales Links:  Amazon

Book Details:

ebook, First, 350 pages
Expected publication: March 2019
Original Title Rewind
Edition Language English

Andrew Demcak on Writing, Characters, and his new release Darkfeather (The Elusive Spark #3) by Andrew Demcak (guest blog)

Darkfeather (The Elusive Spark #3) by Andrew Demcak

Harmony Ink Press
Cover Artist: Kanaxa
Sales Links:  Harmony Ink Press | Amazon

Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words is happy to have Andrew Demcak here today talking about his latest novel Darkfeather.  Welcome, Andrew.

✒︎

Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words Interview  with Andrew Demcak, Darkfeather (Harmony Ink Press, 2019.)

Q: If you write contemporary romance, is there such a thing as making a main character too “real”?  Do you think you can bring too many faults into a character that eventually it becomes too flawed to become a love interest?

A: I write GLBTQ YA paranormal and sci-fi, but romance always creeps in. Darkfeather has my most romantic storylines yet. My longest standing couple, James and Paul, are going to break up when James meets someone new, someone really different, someone who stepped right from the pages of Abominable Snowman Casebook. Kiera and Lumen are going to add a third person to their relationship and become a throuple. My gay aliens, EBE and UBE, were reunited in the previous volume of this series (The Elusive Spark), Alpha Wave, and it felt so good. I like bringing reality to these very fanciful characters, it helps make them believable. I don’t think a character could be so flawed as to be unlovable. That’s what make characters interesting, their flaws. It makes them more like us.

What traits do you find the most interesting in someone? Do you write them into your characters?

I love loyalty, even blind loyalty. I also love bumblers. I think it’s really sweet to see a bumbler finally do it right and get his guy.  That’s what I did in Darkfeather with my yeti prince, Falling Star.

Have you ever put a story away, thinking it just didn’t work?  Then years/months/whatever later inspiration struck and you loved it?  Is there a title we would recognize if that happened?

Yes – I wrote the beginning of my novel If There’s a Heaven Above (JMS Books) back in 1987, but didn’t look at it again until 2007. It’s a story about my 20-something years in the Los Angeles club/music scene. When I discovered the writing again, I was completely transported to that place and time. I had to write the story and I did.

What’s  the wildest scene you’ve imagined and did it make it into a story?

I wanted James and Falling Star’s first kiss to be special. It happens in a lake when they are chasing each other underwater. I think I’m the first person to write an underwater yeti kiss, but I hope I’m not the last.

With so much going on in the world today, do you write to explain?  To get away?  To move past?  To widen our knowledge?  Why do you write?

I write because none of these GLBTQ YA characters or stories existed when I was a teenager in the 1980s. I would have loved to have read them. I’m writing to my 17-year-old self, filling in the emotional blanks, and making up for all that lost time.

Blurb:
James, Keira, Lumen, and Paul—teens with special abilities granted by their alien DNA—bonded over hardship, becoming friends and sometimes more. But now they’re held in Fort Bragg and subjected to painful tests by the evil Dr. Albion, and those ties are coming loose just when they need them the most. Budding romances and family relationships are tested as each teen struggles to choose where to stand and who can be trusted. Reunions with lost family members and the possibility of love with new allies strain already tense relationships, and not every heart will survive unscathed. But the Star Children are the only ones who can command an alien spaceship needed to intercept the Nibiru object—an unidentified celestial mass plummeting toward the planet. If they can’t work together, an unimaginable catastrophe will strike the earth, and they’re the only ones who can stop it.

About the Author

 Andrew Demcak is an American poet and novelist, the author of five poetry collections and six Young Adult novels. His books have been featured by The American Library Association, Verse Daily, The Lambda Literary Foundation, The Best American Poetry, and Poets and Writers. He was a *FINALIST* for the prestigious Dorset Poetry Prize, the Gloria E. Anzaldúa Poetry Prize,  The Crazyhorse Poetry Award, and the Louise Bogan Award for Artistic Merit and Excellence in Poetry.

He has a new collection of flash fiction/prose poems coming out from Nomadic Press in 2019 titled Cryptopedia. His newest YA/Teen GLBTQ2-S novel is Darkfeather, The Elusive Spark series, Book 3, (Harmony Ink Press, 2019).  He recently released two other YA/Teen GLBTQ2-S novels, How Do You Deal with a Dead Girl? (Big 23 Press, 2018) which Kirkus Reviews called “An eerily amusing horror tale that will have readers rooting for the characters,” and Alpha Wave, The Elusive Spark series, Book 2, (Harmony Ink Press, 2018). About his Teen GLBTQ Sci-Fi Coming-Out novel, A Little Bit Langston, The Elusive Spark series, Book 1,  Kirkus Reviews raved “This book really … takes its place in the marginalized-will-lead-us genre, as popularized by The Matrix and the X-Men franchises.” His first Young Adult (YA) novel, Ghost Songs, was published March 13, 2014. His first literary novel, If There’s A Heaven Above, was published January 5, 2013 by JMS Books, and was nominated by The American Library Association as an “Outstanding” novel for older Teens (17+). His first play, The Inevitable Crunch Factor, won the Cal Arts’ New Playwrights Series and was cast and produced in a multi-week run. His fourth book of poetry, Night Chant, was published by Lethe Press. His other poetry books are: A Single Hurt Color, GOSS 183::Casa Menendez Press, 2010, Zero Summer, BlazeVOX [Books], NY, 2009 and his first poetry book, Catching Tigers in Red Weather, three candles press, 2007, which was selected by Joan Larkin to win the Three Candles Press Open Book Award.

To reach Andrew:

Author website:  www.andrewdemcak.org
Social media: Twitter: @andrewdemcak,
Facebook: Andrew Demcak, Vero: Andrew D

A Barb the Zany Old Lady Review: His First Family by Victoria Sue

Rating 5 stars out of 5

Lorne Austen was relieved of his duties as omega and nanny on the day the alpha’s youngest children, twins, turned 15. He wasn’t even allowed to say goodbye—just booted out and sent on his way with his meager belongings. An omega’s life isn’t wonderful in this world and Lorne, though a sweetheart, is now 32 and past his prime, so his only hope is to find another job and make it on his own. Caught in a snowstorm, he’s found by Johnathan Owens, a doctor who is on personal leave after breaking off with his fiancé and taking care of his grandmother.

The two ride out the storm in each other’s arms in bed, but Lorne disappears the next morning. His reasoning is that Johnathan is too sweet and he doesn’t want to possibly become attached. Imagine his surprise when six months later, he arrives at a medical clinic seeking nutrients to help him survive his unexpected pregnancy and he finds Dr. Owens—the father of his babies.

The story of their relationship is somewhat complex, with the monkey wrench primarily thrown at Lorne by Johnathan’s ex-fiancé who is also a doctor. Unmated omegas aren’t allowed to keep their babies in this world and though it seems a simple solution, Johnathan hesitates to contract with Lorne—for other reasons, but of course, Lorne misunderstands. There’s lots of angst here. But there’s more complexity, as well, as the author builds the world of these alphas and omegas—not shifters. It’s the same world as the story of His First Christmas, another warm and fuzzy feelings book I enjoyed by this author.

I needed this story today! It gave me the perfect escape when I decided to focus on something pleasant. The author always grabs me by the feels early in a story and develops characters I can love. I know there are a number of readers who don’t care for mpreg stories but this one was more about the worry a couple faces when it looks like their baby (or babies in this case) may not make it through pregnancy, and the fear faced after the birth when the premie is struggling for survival in the neonatal unit.

Eventually the five of them become a family but it sure is an angsty push and pull along the way. I definitely recommend it to lovers of MM romance with memorable characters.

Cover by Jay Aheer features two men about to kiss and in the lower part of the panel, three babies sitting with backs to the camera represent the babies in this story. The cover and blurb sold me on starting this story, and the author made it very satisfying.

Sales Link:  Amazon

Book Details:

Kindle Edition, 167 pages
Published January 21st 2019
ASINB07N16H845