Hi, everyone, thanks for having me on this tour for Gabriel’s City! Don’t forget to leave a comment at the end of this post to win a chance at the ZOMG Smells giveaway!  Must be 18 years of age or older to enter.

Spoiled young aristocrat Colin Harwood has always enjoyed flirting with danger, but he’s always been able to retreat to safety—until bad decisions and a chance encounter plunge him into a world far more savage than his own. Gabriel is an urban legend, famous in the underworld for his unpredictability and violence. He’s also a believer fairy tales, and quick to decide to the handsome stranger who came to his aid must be good luck. With few other options remaining, Colin will need to keep his wits about him to learn to survive in Gabriel’s City.

Gabriel’s City Blurb:

For spoiled young aristocrat Colin Harwood, the port city of Casmile is a buffet of easy pleasures. But when he steps into a pub brawl to help a dangerously outnumbered young man, he is drawn into the seedy underbelly of the city the young man calls home.

Gabriel is a cutpurse and a knife for hire, practically an urban legend. His vision of Casmile is touched by a strange combination of faith and madness, driven by fairytale logic and a capacity for love that he often must suppress to survive. He’s always worked alone, but when a dashing dragon who calls himself Colin saves him in a bar fight, he pulls Colin into his world.

Gabriel’s city is nothing like the refined, socialite existence that bored Colin senseless. Colin finds adventure and excitement there—and maybe even love. But with his layers of finery stripped away, nothing remains to protect him from poverty or danger—except Gabriel. So he must choose: go back to the civilized young man he once was, or fly free as Gabriel’s dragon.

Title: Gabriel’s City
Author: Laylah Hunter
Publisher: Riptide Publishing
Cover Artist: Imaliea
Genre/Sub-Genre: Historical, M/M Romance

About Laylah Hunter

Laylah Hunter is a third-gendered butch queer who writes true stories about imaginary people in worlds that never were. Most of hir work deals with queer characters, erotic themes, and the search for happy endings in unfavorable circumstances.
Hir mild-mannered alter ego lives in Seattle, at the mercy of the requisite cats and cultivating the requisite caffeine habit, and dreams of a day when telling stories will pay all the bills.

Connect with Laylah:

Website:  laylahhunter.com
Twitter:  @LaylahHunter
Goodreads:  goodreads.com/Laylah_Hunter

Laylah is Riptide’s Featured Author for November!

Giveaway! I have the good fortune to be friends with the charming people who run ZOMG Smells, who make, as their tagline says, “Fine nerdy scents for fine nerdy people.” They have created a set of perfume oil blends inspired by the characters of Gabriel’s City, and I’d like to give some away at the end of this tour! You’ll get seven 5-ml bottles, one of each of these scents, including a nice spectrum of masculine through feminine notes. Leave a comment that includes your email address to enter!

The Battle of Troll Bridge

There are a lot of stories embedded in the narrative of Gabriel’s City. Some of them are told in the book and others are only mentioned, because I’m pretty sure I can’t get away with pulling a Tolkein and interrupting the main story with folklore every few pages. But this one seemed like a good insight into the way Gabriel approaches the world, so here it is: his account of the Battle of Troll Bridge. It’s a bit gory. But only a bit.

“And if nothing more clever has come along, why, he must be living there still,” Colin finishes. It’s the way tales always end, nothing particularly interesting, but Gabriel sighs contentedly all the same. “Does that make it your turn?”

“Mmm. It does.” Gabriel leans back, looking up at the old stones of the bridge overhead, as if some cue is written there. “This was not so many years ago, maybe a handful, maybe less. It was a strange winter in Casmile that year—which means colder than this, but dry.”

Colin nods. He remembers the winter Gabriel’s talking about; there were barely any winter rains, and the next year’s harvest was poor.

“And there was a boy in the city who had the favor of the Lady, but not much else to speak of.”

How many people get to hear the tales of Gabriel’s exploits from his own mouth? “He must have had his wits about him,” Colin says.

Gabriel’s smile flickers knife-quick and disappears as if he’s pocketed it again. “Oh, always. The Lady wouldn’t love someone who couldn’t find his way back out of trouble.

“But times were hard, and the winter had been strange, so the boy had nothing to keep off the rain when one afternoon he was caught in it. He had no coin for taverns, but he was close by the river, so he darted down to take shelter beneath a bridge.”

He pauses there, and Colin thinks his arched brow might be prompting a response. “But the trouble with sheltering under a bridge is that you might run afoul of a troll.”

“It’s nearly guaranteed, in the winter,” Gabriel agrees. “The troll under this bridge was called Black Tom, and he was a nasty thing. Huge and hulking, snaggle-toothed and mean. This was his bridge, and he meant to share it with no-one.

“He said as much, in his booming growl, when the boy came tumbling down the bank to take shelter from the rain.

“It’s raining, the boy pointed out to him, and I don’t plan to stand out in it.”

“I bet he did.” Colin can imagine the way Gabriel would have sounded then, the petulant tone that means he’s only moments away from making someone bleed. “That can’t have pleased the troll.”

Gabriel shakes his head. “He wasn’t kind in the least, and nor was he clever.” His expression turns cold and guarded. “He said he couldn’t see why he’d want to let someone under his bridge who was too scrawny even to make a good meal.”

Colin feels a chill that has nothing to do with the stone at his back. He’d bet that wasn’t really the appetite Black Tom wanted to satisfy. The cold winter he remembers was four years ago; he was having his first polite fencing lessons that year, and Gabriel was already facing this. “What did you do?”

“The boy laughed at him. When your enemies are big and mean, it helps if they’re also angry, because then they forget whatever cleverness they had. Black Tom was easy to anger. He struck out at the boy, a vicious blow, but the boy was too quick for him, and dodged it. Again he tried, and again he missed. But as he reared back for a third strike, the boy slipped on a patch of wet moss and fell. The troll was on him in a moment, claws at his throat.”

Even though he knows how this story ended, Colin finds himself tense. “And then?”

“Then he’d made a terrible mistake.” The grim satisfaction in Gabriel’s tone makes Colin brace for the worst. “He’d forgotten to watch the boy’s hands, hadn’t he? And he had such a soft underbelly. So easy to cut up.”

“And then you pushed him into the river,” Colin says, hoping they can skip the rest of the killing.

“He lost his grip on the boy’s throat,” Gabriel goes on, undeterred. “And he tried to grab the knife, but he had always been too slow. It went up beneath his ribs, here, and then blood started running from his mouth, and even if you’re a troll, you’re done for then. The boy pushed him away as his strength failed, and then watched all the strength run out of him, until he was finally still.

“The boy had come there with the Lady’s favor, and he still had it. So he thanked her, and rolled Black Tom into the water, where She turned him to stone.”

“That’s—” But it would do no good to say that was impossible, would it? Colin bites his tongue.

“So the troll was defeated, and the boy had his shelter, and if nothing more wicked has come along, why,” Gabriel spreads his arms, taking in the scene, their place under the bridge, “perhaps he shelters there still.”