Tag: self published

Review of Inertia (Impulse #1) by Amelia C. Gormley

Rating: 4 stars

Detroit handyman, Derrick Chance, has life just the way he wants it after recovering from period of excruciating loss and emotional turmoil brought on by the deaths of his grandparents and brother.  Safe, unexciting, normal. some would say routine even and they would be right.  Everything in its place, everything in order. and especially no unwelcome surprises lurking to throw up his hard won equanimity.  It has taken Derrick 10 years to get to this point in his life where he feels balanced and safe and he doesn’t want anything to change.  Just look at his home and furnishings.  The house is much the same as when his grandparents had lived there, nothing updated, even the appliances.  Heck, he didn’t even have texting on his phone.

Then Derrick gets a phone call from Gavin Hayes, an accountant who needs his home office outfitted with some shelves.  One look at Gavin, a quick handshake and all Derrick’s comfortable and predictable life is shaken up. Derrick gave up trying to date and all personal relationships when trying to recover from the loss of his family at a young age.  He just didn’t have anything left over to give so why bother? Now Derrick doesn’t know how to handle the emotions Gavin is bringing back to the surface after a long absence.

Gavin too is fighting the impulse to get to know his skittish handyman better.  Gavin has just removed himself from an abusive relationship and the thought of trusting another at this time leaves him uncertain and more than a little afraid, given a secret he is hiding.  It is going to take more than time and an attraction for Derrick and Gavin to decide to risk it all on a chance at love.

Inertia is the first book in the Impulse series that looks to follow the course of a relationship between two men, Derrick Chance and Gavin Hayes. The title of the book is an accurate description of the state of Derrick’s life.  Derrick has remained unchanged, and happily so since the trauma of his grandparents death. Then his brother died as well leaving him so emotionally empty that he was unable to do more than react as his life changed forever.  From that time on, Derrick froze himself into a lifestyle of emotional stasis that comes complete with a house full of relics from his grandparents time, a business based on fixing things from the past, and an isolation so complete that his only friends are his dog, his elderly neighbor and his friend, Devon.  When a work order leads to a meeting with Gavin Hayes, their mild flirting shakes him up, to the point of  Derrick reevaluating his choice of a solitary life.

Gormley does a really nice job of conveying Derrick’s uncertainty about the future and making changes to his life.  From Derrick’s perspective, the future has never held anything but heartache and pain causing him to withdraw from an active social life.  She paints the portrait of a man so hurt, so afraid of emotional pain that he does nothing to move himself forward for fear of being hurt once more.  Derrick has also frozen his sexuality as he has been abstinent for years, remaining a virgin into his thirties. This gives his character a certain innocence that plays off nicely against the character of Gavin Hayes.

The character of Gavin Hayes has also some interesting layers to him.  He is just come from an abusive relationship with a man whose ideas on HIV and AIDS are not only frighteningly self delusional but dangerous.  He too is full of fear for the future and hesitant to start a new relationship. So when the men find they are attracted to each other, each advances forward with all the hesitancy and indecisiveness of ants at a tap dance rehearsal.  For each uncertain foot forward, then is an almost immediate step back, sometimes several so that they find themselves back at the starting point.  But instead of this being a frustrating element, Gormley makes us understand these men and their actions.

Then there is the sex.  There are some very hot scenes here as Derrick discovers that his sexuality didn’t die along with his family but has just been dormant, awaiting a spark to come back to life.  Gavin is more than happy to be that spark.  But this is not a teacher/student relationship as Gavin’s former lover has left him with mental scars where their sex life was concerned.  There is a very realistic give and take here between the men as Derrick discovers he has a slight submissive kink and Gavin explores the idea of reciprocity in sex play.

There is no real angst here although from the sound of Gavin’s former lover, it might appear in the sequel Acceleration, Impulse #2. Inertia is simply the story of the beginnings of a relationship.  It may go on longer than necessary. In fact, the entire book could be tightened up with respect to editing errors and repetitive sections.  This is the second edition of this story after all. All of this might be due to the fact that Inertia is a self published book that could benefit from the efforts of a good editor.  That said, Gormley has done a wonderful job with her story and I look forward to the next installment in the relationship of Derrick and Gavin.

Cover:  Interesting cover by Kerry.  Compelling in its own way but also a little rustic in feel.

Review of After Anna by Theda Black

Rating: 2.5 stars

Will St. James and Tyler Neville are best friends and partners on the police force. And for Tyler, there’s more–he’s got feelings for Will, feelings he’s kept locked away. When Will’s girlfriend dies, Tyler supports him in every way he can, even when Will’s increasingly self-destructive behavior endangers them both on the job. And as Will withdraws further, a desperate Tyler can’t keep his feelings hidden anymore. But Will doesn’t turn his back on him. In fact, Will might have some feelings of his own he’s kept hidden. The trouble is, Tyler’s kept more than one secret. He knows something about Anna’s death–something that could end their relationship for good.

This story poses quite a few problems for a reviewer who would like to find something positive to say.  While the author shows flashes of potential as far as characters and plot structure are concerned, the choppy writing style, constantly changing pov, and lack of believable character backstory wash away the high points from the very beginning.  I liked the basic structure of the story.  It begins with the death of Will’s girl friend from a drug overdose, and then each chapter moves the story forward so many days, i.e., Chapter 3, 4 days later.  Not a bad idea but each time frame is a different amount of days, so that it is Will at 8 days of recovering or to 14 days later, not that much of a difference to divide it up into chapters.  Good idea poor execution.  I also had trouble with the dialog, most of the time I had to double check to see which character was speaking which line.  Chopping delivery combined with poor identification made following any scene tedious.    The story loses it’s momentum when the reader has to struggle with poorly framed dialog and story structure.

Will is mourning the loss of his girl friend but gosh darn it if he doesn’t keep kissing his partner at the drop of a hat.  His love for his girlfriend never seems the least bit based in reality and neither does his newly found lust for his partner. He gets drunk, runs off, comes back, exhibiting all the self control of a 12 year old, with my apologies to 12 year olds everywhere. Will St. James is an insubstantial outline of a main character.  Tyler Neville has a little more depth to him, but that is not saying much.

My biggest problem is that both characters are detectives and partners on the police force.  They are supposed to be seasoned officers yet time and again they rush into knowingly dangerous situations without backup, bust down doors into parties without identifying themselves, past drug-laden tables to beat down a target.  One partner is out of control due to his grief.  One covers for him. Still no matter the situation  both have an absolute lack of knowledge of police procedures between them.  Reading this is like watching an old Starskey and Hutch episode with Starsky and Hutch demonstrating superior police procedure than the two detectives within this story.

Finally, one of the most heatedly argued subject these days is the inclusion of m/f sexual content within the m/m genre.  So be warned. This story contains some explicit m/f sexual scenes that most readers of m/m fiction will find unnecessary and unwanted.  For me it was just another indication of how far off track the author went with her story.  Call this a tale of promise derailed.

Cover:  So so. Seems typical of self published authors with little graphic or design experience.  I mean really do either of these twinks look like seasoned police officers to you?

Available as a free read at Amazon.