Tag: gay for you

Review of Unconventional at Best Anthology

Rating: 3.5 stars

Unconventional at Best is an anthology from six authors of stories featuring romance in and around conventions.  GayRomLit convention last  year provided the inspiration for this selection of stories by Carol Lynne, TA Chase, Amber Kell, Jambrea Jo Jones, Stephani Hecht, and Devon Rhodes. The stories run the gamut of lovers reunited, best friends to lovers, alien love, geek love, confectionary love and love among tops and it all occurs at a convention.

I found this anthology to be a fifty fifty proposition.  Out of 6 stories,only three kept me completely entertained, staying with me once I was done with the anthology.  The others remained just nice stories, forgotten as soon as I put them down.

Here are the ones that stayed with me. I think they are just wonderful stories.

‘Ninja Cupcakes’ by T.A. Chase

Ethan Gallagher is a baker of very special talents.  His cupcakes are not only delicious confections but when certain ingredients are added, downright magical.  When Ethan and his business partner agree to supply the desserts for his brother’s sci-fi convention, it presents the perfect opportunity for Ethan’s floury confections to work their particular magic on certain participants, including an astrophysicist Ethan has been corresponding with for four years. With just the right timing and the special ingredients, Ethan bakes cupcakes that insure that love is in the air or desserts.  Or perhaps we should say Ethan insures that  everyone gets their just desserts!

This is a delicious little story.  I have always found that cooking, or in this case baking, and magic were natural combinations. T.A. Chase does a terrific job of doing just that in Ninja Cupcakes.  From that great title to Chase’s wonderful characters, I just loved this story and wished to see them all again once I was done. This is fun, frothy and still is grounded in realistic characters that capture your hearts. Ethan and Callum were an especially endearing couple.  I wish I had their story, complete with how they first met, and what happening to each of them during their four year correspondence.T.A Chase, this would make a wonderful story.  Just saying.

‘Operation: Get Spencer’ by Jambrea Jo Jones:

“Even if superpowers were real, Benjamin still might not get his man.”  Good friends Benjamin and Spencer are spending the day at Comic-Con, something Spencer has always wanted to do.  Benjamin has a surprise for Spencer to go with their day at Comic-Con.  Benjamin intends to tell his friend that he is in love with him and decides the convention is the perfect time to reveal it.  The problem?  Spencer believes Benjamin is straight and with good reason as Benjamin has told everyone he is straight over and over again.  But Ben hopes that a convention where everything is possible is the perfect place to make Spencer believe in his love.

Friends to lovers and gay for you, both happen here in this story about sexuality, perceptions and fear of change.  Jones takes two completely recognizable characters and brings them together at Comic-Con for her story of friends and lovers.  Ben has been so busy denying that he is gay that everyone believes Ben is straight even if Ben no longer believes it himself.  His best friend Spencer is gay and they have always done everything together. But recently Ben has discovered that his feelings for Spencer go beyond friendship and into romantic love, but how to tell his best friend?

Jambrea Jo Jones makes us laugh and sympathize with Ben and Spencer throughout it all.  From Ben’s mishaps, missteps and outright screwing up his announcement, we are still on his side and hope he gets his man.  Spencer is authentically confused about Ben’s change of heart regarding his sexuality, we understand his point of view as well.  He doesn’t want to mess up his relationship with his best friend, his confidant, and we get that too. Somehow it all comes together in a satisfying end back where they started it all – Comic-con.

‘Fan-Tastic’ by Stephani Hecht

“Everybody knows the best lovers are geeks.” The setting this time is the annual Comic Book and Horror Convention.  Here Deke Masters, a well-known actor in a zombie TV show is ordered to appear on a panel for his show.  Also in attendance is Blake Tallision.  Blake is trying to sell his comic book Star Cats and other items that he has been working on so hard.  Blake also has a crush on Deke going back to their school days.  Even then Deke was a star and Blake the nerd hiding in the shadows of the stage.  To Blake’s amazement, Deke is a fan of Star Cats.  The convention turns out to be the perfect stage for a romance neither saw coming.

This was my favorite story of the anthology. In Deke Masters and Blake Tallision author Hecht gives us characters worth cheering for.  Blake is an especially memorable one.  In pursuit of his art, he has starved himself, living in the basement of his abusive mother’s home, almost despairing of making it.  Blake was so real I could see his skeletal frame and intense features. His vulnerability drew me in and kept me there. Deke also came across a fully realized human being, a guy who has worked to get where he is now but misses being wanted for just himself.  While Blake wants nothing more than to be noticed by Deke, when that happens, Blake is believably wary and insecure, not seeing himself as others do. Deke is perfect for him, the normal guy who just happens to be a tv star, he understands Blake’s struggle because he was once at that stage himself. Everything about this story from the dialog to the characters just cried out for a larger version, especially to delve further into the relationship between Blake and his mother who had a secret she was hiding from him.  Great job.

Review of The Man Trap by Lee Brazil

Rating 4.25 stars

Simon Harris has been watching the same guy come into his bookstore each week, buy a book and leave.  Not an unusual occurance in a bookstore but Simon recognizes him.  It’s Alexis Manetas, a former high school classmate Simon had been attracted to before graduation. Simon has always loudly proclaimed his bisexuality but never actually dated a man, just woman.  Now Alexis reappears and all those old feelings come back as well.

Alexis Manetas had a huge crush on Simon in high school, something Simon never really acknowledged.  After graduating from high school, both men moved on but Alexis never forgot his first love.  When his personal circumstances changed, Alexis searched for Simon, hoping to reconnect and finally start a relationship he had always hoped for.  With a little manipulation from Simon’s sister in law, Jeannie, the men are brought together.  As they become reacquainted, Alexis and Simon find their past attraction flaring into passion and their feelings for each other deepen.  But Simon has never had a relationship last past 6 months and Alexis has a  huge surprise in store for Simon in the shape of a small boy, Alexis’ son, Gregory.

Lee Brazil’s The Man Trap is a lovely warm hearted tale of love given a second chance with some very interesting nontypical twists. Brazil’s characters have that patina of realism that I appreciate in a story that we have seen told before.  Simon Harris is one of the more interesting characters here.  He is in his thirties and while he has been adamant about identifying as bisexual, he really hasn’t demonstrated that in real life, serial dating one woman after another.  None of his relationships has lasted longer than 6 months and he readily admits to being self centered and somewhat set in his ways.  This is not your warm and cuddly character pining over a lost love.  I appreciate Simon’s curmudgeonly ways.  It made his struggle towards a real relationship with Alexis seem even more authentic.  Alexis Manetas is a strongly appealing character too.  Brave enough to take a chance on reconnecting with Simon while never losing sight of his priorities.  I really  liked Alexis and found him every bit as charming as Simon.

The other way Brazil has strayed from the typical child inclusive plotline is that Simon doesn’t really care for children.  He doesn’t know how to behave around them,doesn’t relate to them and  never really wanted any of his own.  Getting involved with a man who has a child is not on his agenda, even if that man is Alexis.  This really strays from most of the books I have read lately where all the men involved want children and jump at the chance to have one in their lives.  It’s nice to have an author show the flip side of the coin so to speak.  I will let you read the story for yourself to see if Alexis and Gregory can sway Simon to their side but kudos for a nontypical character.

You also have a story involving two bisexual characters.  Some may see Simon as more of a “gay for you” persona as he has not really acted on his attractions to men but this is also not a strictly gay male romance but two men strongly attracted to, maybe even in love with each other since high school.  Whatever your take on this,bisexual or gay for you, Brazil makes it clear that each man has held the other close in their memories.  They are hot for each other and always have been.

Lee Brazil’s descriptions, whether they are of a balloon ride over the countryside (which I can attest the author got exactly right), to the wonderful romantic whisperings of love, “I’ve saved up a thousand kisses, thousands of experiences, I only want to share with you, Alexi” , will sweep you into the story and the lives of Simon and Alexis.  There is really no depths of angst or high drama, so if you are expecting any, you will be let down. But if you want a sweet tale of two men given a second chance at love, then this is the story for you.

Cover: I love the cover.  Cover artist is Victoria Miller.  The picture of the hot air balloon is especially nice.

Review of Salad On The Side (Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat #1) by Karenna Colcraft

Rating: 3.5 stars

Kyle Slidell’s company offered him a promotion.  Taking it cost him his boyfriend but offered him a fresh start in a new town with a lot more money. Once Kyle gets situated in his new apartment, his life consists of work, home to sleep and more work, making his life very dull and his days repetitive until he looks out his window into the apartment complex communal garden and spies his gorgeous neighbor naked under the full moon.  He has seen Tobias around the building but has never worked up the courage to speak to him or hardly any of his neighbors really.

Tobias Rogan has watched the new tenant with more than usual interest.  Tobias is drawn to Kyle, and because of the attraction he feels along with his past history, he has intentionally stayed away from him. But on a full moon, standing in the garden, Tobias knows that Kyle is watching him,  wants him  and he decides to act on his emotions. Tobias “accidentally” runs into Kyle in the hallway and invites Kyle over the next day under the cover of meeting all the neighbors in the building.  The pot luck will accomplish several things, first to introduce Kyle around while indicating to those at the party that Kyle is under his protection, and the other is to simply get to know Kyle better.

Kyle finds the party awkward, his new neighbors a little on the strange side, and the actions of one new acquaintance hostile until Tobias intervenes in a manner even stranger.  Kyle realizes that there are secrets being kept from him and he  doesn’t like it.  But after being attacked by a wolf in the garden, Kyle wakes up a werewolf and finds out that he managed to move into a werewolf apartment complex and Tobias is the pack alpha.  What is a vegan to do?

Karenna Colcroft had me at vegan werewolf.  I thought that was an hysterical premise and an original one at that.  This story really shines when Colcroft is letting her imagination run quirky little circles around the typical shifter tale. Colcroft’s description of the pack trying to find vegan foodstuffs for Kyle to eat after he shifts for the first time is great.  Flashes of that offbeat take on werewolves throughout the story had me waiting in anticipation as I turned page after page.  Unfortunately, sometimes it appeared and other times it was submerged under too many words, too many repetitive passages and characterizations that felt a little incomplete.

The story is told from Kyle’s POV and while I appreciated his snarky, intelligent nerdlike outlook, I also found parts of his personality hard to believe in.   This includes his reaction to the fact that Tobias and his pack have just ruined his life, which would have been more believable if it had contained more anger and less passive acceptance, especially coming from a man who hours earlier had told Tobias he wasn’t going to have a relationship with someone who was closeted and obviously hiding something from him.  That man, pre werewolf Kyle, I believed in and understood.  I cannot really say the same about werewolf Kyle.  Tobias, pack Alpha, was another problematic persona. Tobias shifted from one type of character to another so fast that I thought he might have some schizophrenic tendencies.  In one scene, he is the mind controlling Alpha, in the next he is tender lover.  Yes, you can have both  in the same character if you make a good case for the changes in attitude, but the author never really did that with Tobias’ character.  To give the author credit, some of that did smooth out towards the end of the book, but it took far to long for Tobias to get there.  In this particular case, it would have benefitted the story to have told part of it from Tobias’ POV to give the reader  greater insight into the character.

Apart from some issues with characterization, I found the wordiness a little excessive, especially towards the middle of the story.  I appreciate that Colcroft is setting the stage for future stories but the constant dialog about pack politics, rules, etc bogged down the narrative.  Other authors have  woven such details into their stories without hitting you over the head with them, and I wish this author had found a way to do that here.  I hope that now which such backstory out of the way, the next book in the series will move forward at a more sprightly pace.  I would like to see more consistency in the characters as well, so their actions match our expectations given what the author has told us about them.  My last quibble? More of the wonderful humor Karenna Colcroft is capable of.  It’s here, from the great premise to scenes found throughout the story.  It is the reason I will come back for more and read the second and third installments of Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat series.  The good here far outweighs my quibbles and make this book worth your while.

Great cover by Winterheart Designs.

Other books in the series available in eBook from MLR Press, Fictionwise, All Romance:

Salad On The Side (Real Werewolves Eat Meat #1)

Tofurkey and Yam (MLR Holiday Release)

Veggie Burgers To Go (Real Werewolves Eat Meat #3)

Review of In The Name Of The Law by Sue Holston

Rating: 3.75 stars

Mitchell Dawson and Ivan Stanislav are detectives with the Baltimore Police Department where they have been partners and best friends for years. Ivan is engaged and soon to be married. And Mitchell is miserable. Mitchell fell in love with the oh so straight Ivan the moment he met him and now wonders how he will continue on watching Ivan with his wife.  The night of the engagement party Ivan’s fiance’ dumps him after a argument.  A night of drunken consolation leads Mitchell and Ivan to the bedroom and uninhibited sex.

Morning comes and neither  man acknowledges the events of the night before.  It takes Ivan being shot for Mitchell to realize that second chances don’t come around very often and its past time for him to speak up and confess his love for Ivan.

Sue Holston has crafted a very nice short story with a “gay for you” theme with In The Name Of The Law.  Her character of Mitchell Dawson is beautifully realized, with more layers and depth than I would expect from a story of this length.  Ivan Stanislav is a less complete character study. A Baltimore Police Detective and renown horndog he is completely heterosexual until the night his fiance (who is of course a bitch) dumps him.  One drunken night of sex with his partner flips his sexuality switch over to gay, a happenstance that always causes me to shake my head.  It takes a much longer story to make your case for this change in sexuality believable and 46 pages is just not long enough.  With Ivan a less substantial character, Mitchell’s love and longing for him never feels completely real. It is this disconnect that lead to a lower rating for the story.

One more quibble here towards something that happened in the epilogue. Both men tell their Captain that their partnership is both domestic as well as work related and he agrees to  keep their secret.  Realistically that would not happen.  Rules and regulations prohibit that and it is doubtful a Captain would risk his or hers retirement to keep their secret. Nor would they have wanted to put their Captain in such a bad position. It would have been far more believable if the author had them continue to work together and keep the change in relationship secret until either got  promoted out of the partnership.  That would have given Sue Holston’s story an additional touch of authenticity it needed.

With Baltimore as her setting, Sue Holston’s attention to detail and geographic atmosphere is terrific.  Baltimore is about 30 minutes away from me and I can tell you she has done her homework with this great city.  Nothing beats eating our Chesapeake Bay crabs and having a Clipper City Gold Ale from a rooftop deck overlooking the Inner Harbor. I look forward to reading more stories from this author in just such a setting.

Cover: Cover art by Posh Gosh.  Very nice cover.  Loved the harbor in the background.

Available from Total E Bound Press.

Chances to win this, $20  gift certificate and other books visit the following blogs for the rest of the Raise Your Glasses Tour:

Saturday, May 12th: A.J. Llewellyn hosts H.L. Holston
Sunday, May 13th: H.L. Holston hosts Scarlet Blackwell

Review of The Gift of Air by L.T. Ville

Rating: 4.25 stars

Paul Sinclair met Mark Conwell in the science lab in high school.  It  was Paul’s first day in a new school.  At lunch time,Paul seeks out his new acquaintance again only to have Mark calmly announce that he’s gay and that Paul might not want to sit there. Paul just grins,throws a french fry into his mouth and asks if he plays any instruments. And so begins a remarkable friendship that continues into their senior year in high school, the two of them inseparable inside school and out, they even make plans to attend the same college. Then Mark starts having pains in his side their senior year.  While he tells Paul about them, he doesn’t go to the doctor until he collapses on the driveway during a pickup basketball game.

The prognosis? Advanced cancer.  Shattered, Paul helps Mark deal with his terminal illness and finally admits to them both what he has known all along.  He loves Mark and has for several years.  It turns out that Mark feels the same way, but was afraid to say so.  Neither boy was willing to risk losing their friendship before now.  Mark’s condition deteriorates until he falls into a coma.  Grief stricken, Paul puts his life on hold to visit with Mark each day, unable to deal with his impending death.  Ronnie is a volunteer at the hospital who reads to the terminally ill.  When Ronnie goes to read to Mark, he sees himself in Paul’s pain and immobility to move forward.  Can both men find the strength to deal with their  grief and loss?  Or will the death of their loved ones freeze them forever in the past?

The Gift of Air is a wonderful story of firsts.  The first love, the acceptance of one’s sexuality and coming out, and the first loss of a major love. L. T. Ville eases us into the beginnings of Paul and Mark’s relationship with the deftness of someone familiar with teenage boys and the high school social obstacles they have to navigate.  I was immediately drawn to Mark’s vulnerability and courage in outing himself to Paul at lunch time.  He acknowledges that he is both gay and social outcast to give Paul an “out” of their conversation and potential friendship.  Then the scene turns heartbreaking as Paul realizes that Mark has changed shirts since he last saw him in lab that morning. Mark stoically tells Paul he had a run in with some jocks “who didn’t like him too much”.  Nothing more is said, letting the change in shirt speak for itself about the encounter.  Paul nods, says he thinks Mark is pretty cool, and changes the subject.  Perfect and so typical of that age.

Paul is a wonderful character so easy to empathize with and relate t0.  His family life is nice but not perfect.  The last child in a large  smart and athletic family, he is just a little off of his family’s norm, the different drummer as it were.  In so many ways he is a typical teenage boy who becomes remarkable upon meeting Mark, his best friend and first love.  I love watching the dynamics of their relationship change when Mark’s illness is diagnosed and they admit their love for each other.  At times the pain makes them so mature and at other times in laughter and tears they are so very young.  I think the author strikes the perfect balance here.

The final main character is Ronnie, a young man whose partner and love had died three  years earlier.  Ronnie has not moved on, continuing to volunteer at the hospital where his lover died as a way to stay close to him.  When Ronnie sees Paul becoming as immobilized emotionally as he is, he decides to help Paul accept Mark’s death and go forward as Mark would have wanted him to. Both men start a fragile friendship over shared loss and have difficulty accepting that it might become more.  Again, L.T. Ville realistically handles the new relationship between Paul and Ronnie, acknowledging the guilt each feels over moving on and the pressures that come from their families view of their new relationship. All families have their flaws as well as their strengths and both are represented here in The Gift of Air.

I know there are some that will criticize the author saying this story glosses over the horror and pain that comes with terminal illness, such as a quick mention that Mark has lost all his hair and is wheelchair bound at graduation without going into detail. But that is not the focus of this story in my opinion.  It is how you deal with impending loss of such a magnitude, no matter your age, that is the subject here. Loss, grief and acceptance. As you might expect from a book with those themes, there are quite a few tears to be shed when reading this story.  Don’t let the threat of those tears make you stay away from this book. For with the tears, also comes the joy of remembrance and the happiness you can find in someone new.Paul says at the beginning that Mark “taught him how to love without fear”.   Goren Persson said “Do not be afraid that joy will make the pain worse; it is needed like the air we breathe.”  With this wonderful gentle story L.T. Ville has given both Paul and the reader The Gift of Air.

Cover:  Simple, perhaps too much so.  It doesn’t pull one in and induce any curiosity about the story within.  Could have been so much better.

Available from Amazon as a free read, and Lustyville Press.

Review of The Rebuilding Year by Kaje Harper

Rating 4.5 stars

Ryan Ward was a firefighter for years before a steel beam pinned him in a burning building, ending his career and nearly his life.  Now Ryan is starting over as a med student in a new town and state.  His new life brings new adjustments, from being an older student on campus to learning to walk again.  A fall on the steps brings him literally into contact with  John Barrett, the head groundskeeper, a man undergoing his own life changes.

John Barrett once had a life as a successful landscape architect, a wife he loved, and two kids he adored.  He was happy, she was not.  A divorced father, he has followed his ex-wife and her new husband to this town hoping to stay in his children’s lives only to watch them move to California.  Now he finds himself starting over and all alone in a big house he bought for himself and his kids.

A few meetings turn into friendship and John offers to rent Ryan a room in his house.  Initially this looks like a great solution to both their problems.  John needs the extra income for child support and Ryan needs an escape from the hard partying roommate in his current apartment.  But then the friendship turns into attraction, something neither of them saw coming.  Like fuel added to fire, a student is murdered and John becomes a suspect.  Now they must solve a mystery while struggling with their new relationship.  Can they survive or will all go up in smoke?

At first, I thought this was another “Gay For You” story.  But that is far too restrictive a tag to hang on this wonderful book.  Here you have two men unwillingly shoved into making serious life changes.  When Ryan was forced to give up his life as a firefighter due to a career ending injury, he lost not only a job he loved, but friends, a lifestyle and even his family when they couldn’t deal with the accident.  A messy divorce and it’s repercussions (she remarried, moved away and started keeping his kids from visiting him) shattered John’s life.   His new job comes with a lower salary and job title,  the new house he purchased is too large for just one man and he’s lonely.  And starting to drink too much.

Kaje Harper captures, in every piece of dialog, in each character description, the trauma  of starting over at an older age. It’s all there from the obstacles, uncertainties, the anger and the fear.   I empathized greatly with each man as they struggled with the changes in their lives.   Each character is so beautifully developed that I really felt I knew them by the end of the book.  And when John’s teenage son returns home just as Ryan and John are coming to terms with their new relationship, a father’s responsibilities are made priority, just as it would in real life.  There is no aspect of Ryan and John’s relationship that seems forced or unreal.

In addition to accepting a new sexual awareness, a students suicide and murder complicate matters further.  At first, I thought the student Alice’s suicide might be a red herring but the author skillfully weaves the mystery into the plot to give the reader a extra layer to enjoy.  The mystery builds slowly as the relationship deepens between the men. To me this is similar to adding spices, dimension as it were, to a recipe. The  layering if done correctly, lets you savor the flavors long after you have finished the meal.  That is the excellent job Kaje Harper has done here.  I will savor the excellent flavor of this story for some time to come.  While this was my first book from Kaje Harper it definitely won’t be my last. My thanks for a wonderful story!

Cover: I liked this cover.  From the models to the graphics  of the woods below, it is perfect for the story inside. The fonts are large, simple and easy to read.  Great design, great job.

 

Available from Samhain Publishing, Amazon and ARE.