Tag: Romance

In Our Spotlight: Evasive Maneuvers by Lynn Michaels (author interview, excerpt and giveaway)

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AboutTheBook

Evasive_Maneuvers_Michaels_FSTITLE: Evasive Maneuvers

AUTHOR: Lynn Michaels

COVER ARTIST: Jay Aheer

LENGTH: 58,500 words

RELEASE DATE: July 16, 2016

Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words is  happy to have Lynn Michaels here today to talk about the characters and writing Evasive Maneuvers.  Welcome, Lynn.

  • How difficult is it to get into the mind of a teenager?

That’s a tough one. We remember when we were teens, but the world has changed so much. Some things never change. The same emotional and human conflict of growing up, having one foot in childhood and one in adulthood is never easy.  My kids are in their 20’s now, but it wasn’t all that long ago that I watched them struggle with the same issues. Technology has changed and the world sometimes feels like an angrier place, but we still have to work through love and acceptance, being part of a group, and taking on new responsibilities in life. Those are universal things. That’s what I try to tap into, no matter what age, race, or sex the characters are.

  • Are you into sports?  And  if not, does getting into the mindset of a high school quarterback become that much more challenging?

Great question. I’ve played my share of sports. Particularly softball. But, in this case, for Evasive Maneuvers, my quarterback is out of school and trying to find his way in the world, and that’s where I made the connection. The old things that were important before are not as important. He has to take care of himself, look out for his future. He has to decide what parts to leave behind and what to take with him. He can lead, keep people together, work as a team, but he also has to understand that the game has changed. 

  • How do you decide where your next themes come from?

Themes develop along side the plot for me. As my characters move through life, they deal with consequences of their decisions and mistakes. Themes develop from that. I think in that respect, the fiction imitates life. We deal with themes in our own lives as they come up, as we learn and grow, and as we deal with the results of our own decisions. I think this happens in the planning or plotting phases of a story, and as the themes develop, I can choose where to focus and what to develop. I think good fiction poses questions around themes, but leaves readers to make a lot of their own decisions. I hope whatever themes I deal with, that they pose questions for my readers to grapple with.

  • Is contemporary fiction your favorite genre to write in?

No.  I like paranormal, fantasy, and urban fantasy better. I like to be able to take ordinary things and make them extraordinary. I like to see how magic can twist things and shape things. How would things be different if just one thing were magical or you had one special ability that no one else has. I like to think about things like that. I like to twist genres and write across the lines. Even in my contemporary work, you won’t see too many of my stories that stay strict to a particular trope. I think life is messier than that and that’s what I reflect in my writing, even the paranormal stuff – I hope.

  • How was your high school experience compared to your MCs?

Completely different than both my main characters. In Evasive Maneuvers, Campbell went to a private school and Stone went to a small town school.  I was a military brat and went to high school overseas. All three of these situations are extremely different, but as I said back in the first question, we all had to deal with a lot of common themes, regardless of our background.

  • Favorite book to read in HS?

The Stand by Stephen King was hands down the favorite book I read in High School. Well, any Stephen King really.  I love the way he tells a story. His characters become real, they come off the pages. They face strange things and deal with them in very human ways.

  • What advice would you give your teenage self now looking back on those years?

Write. Write more. Write often. Don’t stop. Focus more on that than anything else. I think I got sidetracked in my life many times and it took a long time to get back to the writing and to telling stories I want to tell.

  •   What’s next for Lynn Michaels?

I have a lot more stories to tell. I think you’ll see more paranormal type stories in the future. I like to write about interesting and different circumstances and twist things around, so who knows what might end up on the page. In the near term, Holeshot 2 will be the next big release after the first of the year. The Supercross world has a lot of amazing young people doing amazing things. It’s exciting and I love that world.  I also will have a novella out this Christmas that has a paranormal twist to it.  Hopefully, overall, I will continue to put out fun stories that people will enjoy reading as much as I enjoy writing them.

Thanks, Lynn, this was outstanding.  I appreciate your sharing.  Now for more about Evasive Maneuvers…

BLURB:

Campbell Fain has been rebelling against his father, refusing to grow up for so long, he’s not sure what his life really means anymore. When he meets the man that makes his heart melt, he lies to impress him. Unfortunately, facing the truth may turn out to be the least of his problems when he’s forced to come face to face with the sins of his father.

He was the quarterback in high school, all American sweetheart and solid guy, but Stone Medlock is just figuring out his life. When he meets Campbell Fain, it turns his world around and he just might be falling hard for the rebellious punk, but will he still be able to support and trust Campbell when the lies come out?

Will Campbell’s lies tear them apart before they even begin? Will they find the love behind the lies?
Excerpt

Stone pulled his jeans all the way off, dropping them to the floor along with his sexy briefs. I couldn’t help notice how manly they were; everything about Stone was manly. If I hadn’t met him at a gay club, I never would have thought he batted for my team, but every bit of me was so happy he did. It never hurt to have out jocks on the team! He smelled masculine too. Some of that could have been his products that I could smell on myself too, but some of it was just his own natural, earthy scent that I couldn’t get enough of.

As I stared at him, waiting for more, his face shifted to something a little less sexy. His brows pressed down, making him appear unhappy or concerned.

“What?”

“Campbell. Listen. I need to know what else you lied about.”

I chuckled, nervously. “What?” Why the hell did he bring this shit up now, especially when I thought we’d gotten past it?

BuyLinks

Amazon US

Amazon UK

All Romance eBooks

Smashwords

Kobo Store

Barnes & Noble

Apple iBooks

AuthorBio

Lynn Michaels lives and writes in Tampa, Florida where the sun is hot and the Sangria is cold. Lynn is the newest addition to Rubicon Fiction, and she loves reading and writing about hot men in love.  She writes paranormal and contemporary MM Romance

:: Website :: Facebook Page :: Amazon Page ::

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Winner’s Prize: Signed Paperback of the book & an E-copy of the book!

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TourSchedule

July 18: Love Bytes Reviews :: Drops of Ink

July 19: Bayou Book Junkie :: Wicked Faeries Tales & Reviews

July 20: Scattered Thoughts & Rogue Words :: Rick R. Reed :: Nessa’s Book Reviews

July 21: The Purple Rose Tea House :: Alpha Book Club

July 22: BFD Book Blog :: Open Skye Book Reviews :: MM Book Escape

 

In the Spotlight: Top to Bottom (Escape Book 3) by Delphine Dryden Blog Tour and Giveaway

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Top to Bottom (Escape Book 3) by Delphine Dryden
Riptide Publishing
Cover Artist: L.C. Chase

Read An Excerpt/Buy It Here

 

About Top to Bottom

Drusilla Stasevich wants to leave the past behind and start the next chapter of her life. Returning to her hometown to open her dream kink club, Escape, seems like the perfect solution. But it can be tricky making dreams come true—especially when the person you want to share them with isn’t around anymore.

Amie Templeton is no stranger to tough times. She’s learned to make it on her own, and doesn’t do relationships outside the kink world. When her ex Dru moves back to town, old feelings surface. But that’s fine, right, since Dru has just opened the hottest new kink club in town?

Dru and Amie want to get the distracting spark between them out of their systems. Instead, their intense play sessions fan that spark into a flame. As if Dru didn’t have enough on her plate, an anonymous saboteur threatens to push her new club out of business. It will take the help of everybody at Escape to set things right again, and a lot of trust for Dru and Amie to start working toward a new life together.

About Del Dryden

Delphine Dryden  probably should have gone ahead and  become an English professor like she planned. Instead, she took a detour through law school, another detour through the wonderful world of working in special education, and took an extra fifteen years to end up where she belonged: writing kinky romances.

Del’s writing has earned an Award of Excellence and Reviewers’ Choice Award from Romantic Times Book Reviews, an EPIC Award, and a Colorado Romance Writers’ Award of Excellence.  When not writing or editing, she can be found binge-watching television shows with her girlfriend, playing tabletop games, and tweeting to excess.

Connect with Delphine:

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Giveaway

To celebrate the release of Top to Bottom, one lucky person will win an ebook package of Dom Around the Corner and The Unicorn, plus a $5 Amazon gift certificate. Leave a comment with your contact info to enter the contest. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on July 23, 2016. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries. Thanks for following the tour, and don’t forget to leave your contact info.

For the duration of the tour, Del is also giving away paperback copies of her steampunk books Scarlet Devices and Gilded Lily. Contact her via her website’s contact page, put your favorite mythical beast in the subject line and your name and address in the body. Limit to 20 people total, or until the tour ends.

This title is part of the Escape universe.

In the Spotlight: Into the Blue by Pene Hanson (excerpt and giveaway)

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Into the Blue by Pene Henson
 Release Date: July 7, 2016

Goodreads Link
Publisher: Interlude Press
Cover Artist: Colleen M. Good

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Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words is happy to be interviewing Pene Henson author of Into the Blue today. Hi Pene, thank you for agreeing to this interview. Tell us a little about yourself, your background, and your current book.

  • What’s the easiest thing about writing?

The easiest part for me is knowing these characters’ hearts and thinking through how they would respond to the world and the things that happen around them. But generally there’s no bad side. 

I love the act of writing enough that my extremely early mornings don’t feel difficult. Not that the work of writing is always easy, but it’s always a joy.

  • Name one author (living or dead) you’d like to write with?

My friend Jo and I wrote a large number of stories together and I’d love to see what we will do if we commit to a novel. She’s a powerful and heart-breaking writer who knows all the odd little quirks of humanity, all the ways people fail others and come good anyway, and I suspect our joint novel will be more complicated than anything I could write alone. 

But she has no idea about tenses and point of view. So I’d be in charge of that.

  • Tell us about your cover and how it came about.

I could talk about this cover forever. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. When our art director, CB Messer, met with me about the cover she had read the book. She’s lived in Hawaii and so connected with the imagery and the subject matter. We instantly agreed on the visuals of that early morning light, the pale golds and shifting blues of surf at dawn. CB suggested we could focus the front cover on the power of the surf and the surfing competition or on the relationship between the characters and the sea. Honestly, either would have been gorgeous but I felt relationships are critical to the book. It’s a gentle book despite their sporting prowess. 

When she sent this drawing through, I loved it even more than I anticipated. I love the light in the sky and reflecting from the water. And the boys, waiting for the next wave, Ollie’s profile and Tai’s strong back visible and recognizably them. It’s the moment before a wave comes in, that waiting time before everything changes.

And then the back. With the warm sunlit deck of the Blue House and the five boards leaning together, one for each of the people living there.

CB is an exceptional artist and really captured the book.

  • Is this book part of a series? Do you have ideas that could make it into a series? If it is a series, tell us a little about it.

No, no it’s not and it was never intended to be. However (is there always a forever) I do have a story to tell about Hannah, who lives with Tai and Ollie. She’s a joy to me. Broad-shouldered and laid back. She’s in love with her best friend but I don’t know that’s going anywhere. I think she could have a whirlwind of a girlfriend who knocks her off her steady perch. And then Tai and Ollie and Sunny would be in the background.

  • Word association. Tell us the first thing that comes to mind when you read these words.

Ketchup – We still call it tomato sauce.

Flakes – Goldfish food

Elastic – Heart ❤

Timer – How to get kids to do anything faster ☺

Google – where all my documents live

Now more about

Into the Blue by Pene Henson

Blurb

Tai Talagi and Ollie Birkstrom have been inseparable since they met as kids surfing the North Shore. Now they live with their best friends in a pulled-together family, sharing life and the saltwater in their veins. Tai’s spent years setting aside his feelings for Ollie, but when Ollie’s pro surfing aspirations come to fruition, their steady world shifts. Is the relationship worth risking everything for a chance at something terrifying and beautiful and altogether new?

 

Pages or Words: 236 pages, 72,600 words
 Categories: Contemporary, Gay Fiction, M/M Romance, New Adult, Romance

Excerpt

Across from them, one of the Brazilians plays guitar. Ollie doesn’t recognize the song even when a couple of others sing along. The beach is wider and the sand finer than on the North Shore, but every beach is a little like home. Ollie misses the Blue House; he misses the surf and the palms and the shoreline he knows so well. He misses Jaime and Sunny and Hannah. Still, though he’s as far from home as he’s ever been, Ollie’s comfortable. These are his people, too. He leans back on his arms and looks up into the dark.

He’s watched the night sky since he was a little kid, but down here in the Southern Hemisphere he doesn’t recognize the hundreds upon hundreds of stars. The Southern Cross is up there. Ollie tries to orient himself.

Tai shifts toward him, then looks up and follows Ollie’s gaze. The warmth of Tai’s body settles into Ollie’s heart, grounds him. Ollie leans into him a little, and their arms brush to the elbow. The contact simmers in the air between them.

Unexpectedly, Ollie knows what he wants. “Come back to the hotel,” he says quietly to Tai. He pitches his voice low. It hums across the tiny space between them. No one else can hear him over the pounding surf and the sound of the music. It’s easy to be bold in the dark of a beach where Ollie’s never been before. He’s shocked by that same boldness.

Buy the book

 

 

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Meet the Author

Pene Henson has gone from British boarding schools to New York City law firms. She now lives in Sydney, Australia, where she is an intellectual property lawyer and published poet who is deeply immersed in the city’s LGBTQIA community. She spends her spare time enjoying the outdoors and gazing at the ocean with her gorgeous wife and two unexpectedly exceptional sons. Into the Blue is her first novel.

Where to find the author:


Tour Dates & Stops:

7-Jul: Havan Fellows, Louise Lyons, Parker Williams

8-Jul: Outrageous Heroes, Unquietly Me, Dawn’s Reading Nook

11-Jul: Love Bytes, Kirsty Loves Books, Bayou Book Junkie

12-Jul: Wicked Faerie’s Tales and Reviews, MM Good Book Reviews, Butterfly-O-Meter

13-Jul: Oh My Shelves, Boys on the Brink Reviews

14-Jul: Molly Lolly, Happily Ever Chapter

15-Jul: Scattered Thoughts & Rogue Words, Sinfully Addicted to All Male Romance, Prism Book Alliance

18-Jul: MM Book Escape, Making It Happen, Velvet Panic, BFD Book Blog

19-Jul: Book Lovers 4Ever, My Fiction Nook, V’s Reads

20-Jul: A.M. Leibowitz, Alpha Book Club

Final (1)

Giveaway

 

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Its All About the Wedding with Daniel & Erik’s Super Fab Ultimate Wedding Checklist’ by K.E. Belledonne (author interview, excerpt and givewaway)

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Daniel & Erik’s Super Fab Ultimate Wedding Checklist by K.E. Belledonne
Release Date: June 23, 2016

Goodreads Link
Publisher: Interlude Press
Cover Artist: C.B. Messer

Today Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words is happy to be interviewing K.E. Belledonne, author of Daniel & Erik’s Super Fab Ultimate Wedding Checklist. Hi Kat, thank you for agreeing to this interview. Tell us a little about yourself, your background, and your current book.

Q. What genre is your book and what drew you to this genre?

This book’s genre would technically be “romance”, but it’s not a traditional romance. There’s no bodice ripping or long luxurious love scenes. It’s a M/M romantic comedy. It’s light, it’s fun, it’s breezy and at times a bit silly. It’s a good time read.

I adore romantic comedy, it’s one of my favorite genres to read, and to watch. I love that we all know the basic structure of the plot, but how that plot is achieved can vary greatly. It’s like writing a sonnet – there are rules that govern it, but the content can vary greatly.

Q How many days a week do you write?

I try to sit down at my computer to write at least three days a week. Some weeks, I manage to get 5 days, and some weeks, I don’t get any at all. I always carry a notebook with me almost everywhere I go, so I can scribble down ideas, or write chunks of scenes when I have some downtime.

Q On average, how long does it take to write a book?

I’d say I’m averaging about a book a year. I like to do a lot of research, and I need to build in a lot of time for shifting things around. I also write more than one book at a time; while this book was with my editor, I started writing the next, and doing research for another.

Q Do you have a trailer for your book? If yes, give us the link. If not, do you think you’d like to have one done at some point?

I don’t have a trailer for this book, simply because I lack the skills to make one! I would absolutely love to have one done. Books always play like movies in my head, even the ones I’m writing. I tend to write in a very cinematic style, so I think a book trailer would really be a great addition to the book!

Q If I could be a character in a book, I would be _______?

I would absolutely love to be Eloise Kelly from Lauren Willig’s The Secret History of the Pink Carnation. I adore those books. They are such fun to read, such

wonderful romances and they make me laugh out loud. I’m always in a better mood after I read one, and that’s exactly what I want out of a book. Eloise is smart, and strong, and yet still goofy and nerdy. I love her.

Thanks, Kat, for the wonderful interview.  Now more about Daniel & Erik’s Super Fab Ultimate Wedding Checklist by K.E. Belledonne!

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Blurb

When Daniel gets caught up in the demands of a cheeky wedding planning app, his fiancé Erik grows frustrated with his preoccupation with adhering to heterosexual traditions. Will Daniel’s groomzilla ways give them the wedding of their dreams, or ultimately lead to their relationship’s demise?

 

Pages or Words: 53,000 words, 188 pages
 Categories: Contemporary, Gay Fiction, Humor, M/M Romance, Romance, Rom Com

Excerpt

“I think Aurora is disappointed in me.”

“What?” Erik rubbed at his eye. It wasn’t even early morning, judging by the weak light coming through the blinds from the streetlights. “Who?”

“Aurora. The wedding planning app.” Daniel lay on his back, wide awake and staring up at the ceiling.

“The wedding planning app is not a sentient being. It has no feelings or opinions.”

“I feel like she’s judging me. I’m sorry if I woke you up.”

“Oh my god, go to sleep.”

“I can’t. I’m never going to sleep ever again.” Daniel tugged the blanket higher up his chest, folding his arms over it and exhaling heavily.

“You’re being dramatic.”

“I’ve got too many things buzzing in my head. There’s too many things I’m going to forget to do.”

“I thought that’s why you had that damn app, so you don’t have to remember anything; it’s all right there saved on your tablet.”

“Yes, but I have to remember to put everything in it.″ Daniel rolled over. ″She doesn’t just know everything—”

“A: She is not a she. It is an it. B: What are we doing tomorrow?”

“Oh my god, what is the point of sharing the app calendar if you’re never going to look at it?” Daniel wailed.

“I look at it. It’s just crammed so full of everything that I have no idea what’s going on when.”

Daniel blew out his breath. ”Look, I know you don’t like the calendar. We’ve been over that, but I don’t know how else to keep track of all of these appointments and deadlines.”

“I told you, we could color-code them, or something,” Erik rolled to his side and punched at his pillow.

“Aurora doesn’t give you that option.”

“Well, it should.”

“I agree, but there’s nothing I can do about that.” Daniel bunched his pillow up under his head. “Tomorrow, we have four appointments to meet with caterers: two in the morning, two in the afternoon.”

“Why so many in one day?”

“It’s the only day we both have available this week, and I am not going to make any decisions about the food at our reception without you there to discuss it.”

“Seriously, you could just make a choice, and I’ll live with it.” Erik rolled over.

“I don’t want you to just ‘live with it,’ Erik.″ Daniel tried to keep his voice neutral, but failed. ″This is our wedding. I don’t want you to just ‘live with it.’”

“Why are you getting so worked up about it?”

“We only get one chance at this. Everything needs to be perfect.”

“You’re going to drive us both crazy, you know that, right?” Erik tugged the blankets back up over his shoulder.

“Well, then, we’ll both be crazy.” Daniel squinted up at the ceiling. He was so tired of making these decisions. Why were there so many options? Why were there so many decisions? The planning was getting on Erik’s nerves; he was getting on Erik’s nerves. Erik was getting on his nerves. They were both just a pile of irritated nerves because the to-do list didn’t seem to be getting any smaller.

Daniel’s phone chimed with another notification from Aurora.

New Private Message from: MommyMargie.

His mother probably had another ludicrous suggestion for the reception, or a passive-aggressive reminder of the hymn that she and his father had had played at their wedding, that their grandparents had had played at their wedding and that she expected to hear at his wedding. Or maybe his parents had decided to paint the living room green. Who knew?

 

 

Buy the book

 

 

 

Meet the Author

 

K. E. Belledonne is a writer, editor and translator. A native New Englander, Kat spends her spare time listening to Glenn Miller records, reading history books and cheering on her beloved Red Sox. Her first novel, Right Here Waiting, was published by Interlude Press in 2015.

 

Where to find the author:

 


Tour Dates & Stops:

23-Jun

Prism Book Alliance, Unquietly Me, Book Lovers 4Ever, Man2ManTastic, Three Books Over The Rainbow,

BFD Book Blog

24-Jun

Bonkers About Books, Scattered Thoughts & Rogue Words

27-Jun

Oh My Shelves, Wicked Faerie’s Tales and Reviews

28-Jun

Havan Fellows, V’s Reads, My Fiction Nook, Open Skye Book Reviews

29-Jun

Up All Night, Read All Day, Velvet Panic, MM Good Book Reviews

30-Jun

Molly Lolly, Full Moon Dreaming

1-Jul

Attention Is Arbitrary, Alpha Book Club

4-Jul

Happily Ever Chapter, The Novel Approach, Love Bytes

5-Jul

Nephy Hart, Bayou Book Junkie, Divine Magazine

6-Jul

A.M. Leibowitz, Two Chicks Obsessed With Books and Eye Candy, 3 Chicks After Dark

 

Final

Giveaway

Enter to win a Rafflecopter Prize: Grand Prize: $25 Interlude Press gift card, 5 first prizes of an e-copy of Daniel & Erik’s Super Fab Ultimate Wedding Checklist.  Must be 18 years of age or older to enter.

 

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Love Can Show You that There’s ‘Always Another Side’ by Annabelle Jacobs (excerpt and giveaway)

 

 

Author: Annabelle Jacobs

 

 

 

Release Date: June 3 2016

 

 

 

Length: 60,000 words

 

Buy Link: myBook.to/Always_Another_Side

 

Price:  3.99

 

Blurb

 

Starting over at forty is hard work for landscape architect Jack Bowman. His long-term partner hurt him badly. With his self-esteem dented by the break up, trusting a new lover is going to take time.

Tyler Freeman is equally unlucky when it comes to love. Now that he’s over thirty-five, he’s tired of getting played. All he wants is someone special. How hard can it be to meet a man who’s honest, with no hidden surprises?

Being set up on a blind date might be a classic cliché, but it’s a stroke of good luck for Jack and Tyler. They have a lot in common, including previous relationships steeped in deceit, but it’s worth navigating their trust issues if it means laying those ghosts to rest.

Making it work finally seems possible—until an accidental discovery threatens their newfound happiness.

 

Excerpt

 

Everyone said their goodbyes, and Jack tried not to notice the blatant, knowing looks being passed around. He had no doubt he’d be getting some nosy texts later. On the plus side, at least he wouldn’t be the only one.

 

Now it was only the two of them, they wandered into the bar area and snagged a small table by the fireplace. It wasn’t lit—the late-April weather had been far too mild to warrant an open fire. The Saturday-night crowd from earlier had clearly moved on to somewhere else, and the room had quietened considerably.

 

“Thanks for offering me a lift.” Tyler smiled and took a sip of his drink. “I wasn’t ready to leave yet.”

 

“Me neither.” Jack had bought another Coke, and he ran his finger down through the condensation on the outside of the glass. “I have to admit I was a bit—a lot sceptical about whether or not this was a good idea.”

 

Tyler glanced up and met his gaze. “Meeting me?”

 

Jack’s smile was wry. “I was talking about the whole blind date thing, but yeah… I guess it was meeting you in general.” He cringed as he said it, perhaps not the best thing to say to someone whom you were hoping to go out with again. And despite Jack’s misgivings and preconceptions, he liked Tyler.

 

Tyler cocked his head to one side and frowned, as though he wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

 

Jack had probably offended him, because no one liked to hear that sort of thing. But then, he’d offered to drive Tyler home so they could spend more time together—alone—so Tyler must realise Jack wanted to get to know him better. Or maybe not. If Jack had learned one thing from his breakup with Simon, it was that communication was key. Never assume someone knew what you meant or what you were thinking.

 

“I know that sounds bad, and it’s nothing personal. Christ, I’m pulling out all the clichés tonight, but it really was a case of it being me and not you.” Jack laughed and scrubbed a hand over his face. “Shit. Just when it was going so well. I’ve managed to fuck it up, haven’t I?”

 

Author Bio

 

Annabelle Jacobs lives in the South West of England with three rowdy children, and two cats.

 

An avid reader of fantasy herself for many years, Annabelle now spends her days writing her own stories. They’re usually either fantasy or paranormal fiction, because she loves building worlds filled with magical creatures, and creating stories full of action and adventure. Her characters may have a tough time of it—fighting enemies and adversity—but they always find love in the end.

Author Links

A BJ Audiobook Review: Where Nerves End (Tucker Springs #1) by L.A. Witt ~ Narrated by Iggy Toma

 

Rating:     3.5 out of 5 stars

Where Nerves End audiobookJason Davis can handle a breakup. And an overwhelming mortgage. And a struggling business. And the excruciating pain that keeps him up at night thanks to a shoulder injury. But all of it at once? Not so much. When his shoulder finally pushes him to a breaking point, Jason takes a friend’s advice and gives acupuncture a try.

Acupuncturist Michael Whitman is a single dad struggling to make ends meet. When a mutual friend refers Jason as a patient, and Jason suggests a roommate arrangement to alleviate their respective financial strains, Michael jumps at the opportunity.

But Jason soon finds himself regretting it—he’s too damn attracted to Michael, and living with him is harder than he thought it’d be. In fact, the temptation to act on his feelings would almost be too much if not for the fact that Michael is straight. Or at least, that’s what their mutual friend claims.

This book began well for me. I liked Jason, felt for him and what he was going through, and was very eager to see him find the help he needed to get his life on track. When he met Michael and not only was he able to help him with his pain, but with his financial problems, that was working for me. I enjoyed Michael and his son for the healthy lifestyle and his caring. I felt the chemistry of Jason’s immediate attraction and his frustration at Michael being straight.  I also enjoyed all the stuff on the eastern medicine, acupuncture, cupping, etc. Very interesting.

Midway through I begin to not enjoy it quite as much. First the characters have a talk and Michael has the perfect opportunity to say something to Jason that he chooses not to reveal. The next thing we know, the whole story changed for me. I’m not a fan of misunderstandings, miscommunications, and of MC having sex with other people in my books. In this book, we get all three, I’m sad to say. And nope, I didn’t enjoy that part at all. Why did that have to happen? It left me pouting. Later, after he pursues Jason and they have an interlude, Michael does explain his reasoning, and it actually made sense a bit until the next thing he turns around and does is deny the whole thing and suddenly it makes no sense at all. Michael’s complete denial to everyone, even though he admitted he’d knew for years and years and even thought he’d grown up with a close gay friend who he never confided in bugged me as well.

So while I enjoyed how the story ultimately ended, the storyline itself lost its glow for me after that. However, Iggy Toma is a wonderful narrator and did a great job of keeping me engaged. He brought the characters to life and gave them dimension. I enjoyed the distinct voices he used, and the emotion he put into each scene. I’d give the narrator 4 stars and the story 3 stars for an average of 3.5.

The cover  by L.C. Chase ties in with the rest of the series and does an adequate job of representing the guys and the town although I didn’t find it sexy or particularly appealing.

Sales Links:  Riptide Publishing | Audible | Amazon | iTunes


Book Details:

Audible Audio, 7 pages, 6 hrs 55 mins
Published December 20th 2015 by Riptide Publishing (first published June 3rd 2012)
ASINB019NHFKC8
Edition LanguageEnglish
SeriesTucker Springs #1 settingTucker Springs, Colorado (United States