Gay/Lesbian Fiction Excerpts

Pyromancer excerpt by Amanda Young

2009-11-09T07:00:00.000-05:00

One desperate night, a rent boy hot enough to scorch the motel sheets, and Christian is doomed to burn for love. Christian Ryder is rich and lonely. When the people around him keep dying, Christian forgoes personal attachments. The thought of his Pyromancy hurting anyone else, isn't something he's willing to risk. Tanner O'Bannon is broke and desperate. The recent loss of his father has thrown Tanner into a tailspin of debt he can't afford to pay. Working as a rent boy allows him to pay the mortgage and his college tuition, but it's eroding his soul in the process. Through the machinations of Male Companions - the escort agency for which Tanner works - the men are thrown together. Through a series of startling revelations and danger, Tanner and Christian both face changes. Smoldering embers of desire fan the flames of love, but will it be enough to make Christian overcome his fear of love, or to save Tanner from the fire? Only one thing is certain; both men will burn.

Pyromancy
Publisher: CreateSpace (September 26, 2009)
ISBN-10: 1449527795
ISBN-13: 978-1449527792

Excerpt:

Christian Ryder sat in the dark, slowly stroking his fist up and down the length of his swollen cock. His gaze was locked on the flickering television screen, where two men were in the final throes of orgasm. The brunet top -- his body heavily laden with muscle -- gripped his thick prick around the base and took aim, spraying cum all over the younger blond man’s upturned face. It was a hot scene, one that never failed to get him off.

Until tonight.

As the ending movie credits began to roll across the screen, Christian exhaled a disgusted huff and released his semihard shaft. He reached for the remote control lying next to him on the bed and hit stop on the DVD player. Turning off the TV, he plunged his bedroom into darkness. His frustration mounted as the hollow sound of his pulse pounded in his ears.

It’d been over six months since he’d gotten laid. The last time he’d taken a chance and risked being with someone else, it hadn’t gone so well -- a fucking disaster, really. The end result testing his rigid self-control almost past the limits of his endurance.

The guy he’d picked up and brought home had taken offense at being asked to leave right after they’d screwed, and had thrown a temper tantrum. Not something he’d expected from a six-feet-tall body builder who’d claimed he was only interested in a good time. By the time Christian forcibly removed the man from the property, his body temperature had been dangerously high and his head was spinning.

After that close call, he’d decided it was too dangerous to indulge in one night stands, which left him with little options other than his own left hand. Especially since he already had a self-imposed rule against developing anything long-term or risking the emotional attachment that came with it.

Mixing emotions and sex fucked with even the most normal person’s head. For the people around him, it could mean much more than a broken heart -- it could be deadly.

Security lights from outside filtered through the miniblinds covering his bedroom window in sporadic spurts of light, briefly illuminating his damp and sweaty body lying atop tangled, white cotton sheets. He kicked at them, unraveling himself.

Irritated, Christian sat up. He leaned back against the cool brass headboard and flipped on the bedside lamp. His gaze flittered down to the big, red numbers on his alarm clock. Almost midnight.

Restless and exasperated, he picked yesterday’s newspaper up off the side table and spread it out over his lap. Since jerking off wasn’t going to work for him, maybe he could bore himself to death by reading the paper. It was worth a shot. Losing sleep made control over his curse temperamental.

Page by page, Christian skimmed over the paper until he reached the personal ads. Those babies were like the funny pages to him. Why someone would put an ad in the newspaper, hoping for a good outcome, was beyond his comprehension. Only the ugly and desperate sunk to that level.

He read over a few ads, laughing, until a small square down on the bottom, right-hand corner caught his eye. It was an advert for an escort agency. One that claimed to cater to men of his persuasion: gay men looking for nothing more than a hot body to warm their lonely beds. The agency, Male Companions, promised anonymity and, more importantly, clean bills of health for all their available staff. He never fucked anyone without a rubber, so it was a bit of a moot point, but the words comforted him somehow.

Before Christian realized his intent, the cordless phone was in his hand, his fingers tapping out the number. A feminized male voice answered, saying, “Thank you for calling Male Companions. Nigel speaking. How may I help you?”

Christian opened his mouth to speak and froze. What the hell was he doing? He didn’t want to pay for sex; doing so went against every moral he had. He clicked the off button, hanging up.

He exhaled, relieved he’d come to his senses before doing something he knew he would later regret. His gaze wandered over his bedroom, hovering on the fifty-two--inch plasma TV, the only other thing in there besides his bed and nightstand. Not a single picture or piece of artwork marred the clean lines of the bare, white walls. Whereas the stark sterility of his room usually appeared simple and clean, it now felt barren and depressing, not unlike his personal life.

His hands shook as he picked up the phone and redialed the number.

* * * * *

Tanner O’Bannon sat slumped over his kitchen table, trying to balance his checkbook. Money was tight, his balance down to just above two bucks, but at least he wasn’t in the negative anymore. He couldn’t afford the outrageous overdraft fees the bank charged. The last two charges had forced him to eat ramen noodles for a month. If he never saw another pasta dish in his life, it would be too soon.

Tanner’s eyes blurred as he ran through the figures once last time before flipping the checkbook closed. He folded his arms and laid his head on the cool surface of the mahogany table. He was exhausted, but needed to stay awake for just a little longer. On call for work until three a.m., he couldn’t afford to fall asleep or miss a single phone call. He needed the money too badly to risk losing his job, even if it was one he was ashamed of. Necessity overruled pride.

With heavy-lidded eyes, Tanner jerked his head up and shook it, trying to force himself to stay alert. He rose to his feet, walked over to the sink, and splashed icy water on his cheeks. As he mopped his face with a clean dishtowel, the phone rang. Only one person would be calling this late. Work.

He didn’t know whether to be happy or sad. On the one hand, it meant money; on the other, degradation. His father would be rolling over in his grave if he knew what his only son was doing to pay the debts he’d left behind.

Tanner crossed the room and picked up the phone. He listened for a moment then set it back in the cradle before jogging up the stairs. Upstairs, he hopped into the shower and quickly scrubbed himself from head to toe with citrus-scented body wash. He stepped out and yanked a dry towel off the rack, briskly rubbing it over his hair and skin while he fumbled through a drawer under the sink for lube and a butt plug.

He squeezed a dollop of lube into his hand and ran it over the plug, liberally coating its short length. He reached behind to swipe the remaining moisture through the crease of his ass. The toy in his right hand, he leaned over the toilet and braced his left hand on the back of the commode. He spread his legs shoulder width apart and took a deep breath, trying to relax his muscles as he pressed the blunt rubber tip against his asshole. Due at the motel in thirty minutes, there was no time for finesse. He exhaled and shoved it home, wincing at the sharp burn of his anal ring stretching around the plug.

The things you have to do to make a buck, Tanner thought, as he grabbed the washcloth he’d used in the shower and wiped off the excess lube around the wide base of the plug. He dropped it in the sink and headed into his bedroom to dress.

It was time to go to work.

* * * * *

Waiting inside the modest motel room he’d rented for the night, Christian glanced at his watch for the umpteenth time. Perched on the end of the bed, his sock-clad toes tapped an unsteady rhythm on the cheaply carpeted floor, his body practically vibrating from anxious anticipation.

He was nervously trying to figure out what would happen once the escort showed up. Payment for the guy’s services had already been rendered over the phone -- apparently even hookers took American Express these days -- so at least he didn’t have to worry about having that conversation. Things would be awkward enough as it was.

More pertinent was how things would play out. Was he supposed to strip and get right down to business as soon as the guy got there, or make small talk first? Would he inadvertently break some kind of silent rule if he asked the man anything personal? Could they even exchange more than first names? How would they decide who did what to whom?

He wasn’t stupid enough to think the escort would turn down anything he asked for, but would it be possible for him to tell if the guy really wanted to do it or not? Was it just a job for him, a way to make a buck, or would he really enjoy it? The thought of fucking someone who just laid there and went through the motions repulsed him.

So many unanswered questions floated around in his head he was beginning to get a headache. Sweat beaded his brow, and his knees cantered up and down. Maybe it wasn’t too late to cancel. He could call. Whether they refunded him his money was of little concern. They could keep it; he had more than he’d ever be able to spend anyway.

He didn’t think he could go through with this after all. It seemed too cold, too impersonal. A little voice in the back of his mind screamed, “That’s the point, jackass. You need cold and impersonal. Do you want to be responsible for someone else’s death?”

That thought chilled him. Christian forcibly shut down his memories before they transported him back to a time he didn’t want to visit. He pushed away his reservations and tried to consider why he’d called Male Companions in the first place.

He was lonely. Though he didn’t like to admit it, even to himself, it was the truth. The acquaintances he’d made over the years, at work, on the rare occasions he deigned to go in and check up on things, and at the firehouse where he volunteered, only went so far. During the day, he was fine. It was at night, after a long day at work or returning from an emergency fire call, that the loneliness crept in and haunted him.

He realized that this wasn’t even about sex, not solely. Sure, he wanted to get off, but what he really needed most was simple human contact, companionship. Sadly, that was the one thing he could never allow himself to possess. Attachments meant caring about someone, making himself vulnerable. In essence, losing control of himself. That was something he could never allow.

Christian took several deep, calming breaths. He could do this. He had to. There weren’t any other options left for him. It was anonymous sex or nothing. Though he doubted it, all he could do was hope it would be enough to sustain him.

* * * * *

Tanner arrived at the motel with five minutes to spare. Town had been dead, not a car in sight on his way over. A good thing since old Bessie -- his ten-year-old Mazda -- had sputtered and died twice during the trip across town. It was only a matter of time before the old clunker finally gave out for good.

Part of him wished he’d hung onto his dad’s car instead of selling it when his father was killed six months prior, but at the time he’d needed the money even more desperately than he did now. The debts his father had left behind were astronomical. Even after he’d sold off everything of value besides the house itself, he still hadn’t brought in enough to cover half of what was owed. Hence, the reason for his shady new career.

For the last four months, he’d been working nights for Male Companions as an escort. Selling his body to the highest bidder wasn’t the most respectable line of work, but he hadn’t known what else to do. It wasn’t like he could make enough to cover his college tuition and pay the mortgage, along with making payments on all of the other debts his father had left on his shoulders. He supposed he could have sold drugs; he knew enough small-time dealers. He could have easily bought a little pot and divided it up for resale. Unfortunately, his conscience wouldn’t allow him to do that. Drugs killed people, and no matter how often his buddies tried to convince him marijuana never hurt anyone, he just couldn’t quite believe them. A drug was a drug, plain and simple. Having sex for money, degrading as it was, didn’t hurt anyone besides himself. Besides, it wasn’t like he hadn’t had his share of casual sex along the way, just like everyone else. The only difference was now that he got paid for doing it.

Or so he tried to convince himself as he hustled through the motel lobby toward the service desk.

Though he’d been told which motel to go to and given a name, he hadn’t been given a room number. Which meant he had to go to the desk and ask, something he dreaded every time he was forced to do it. He always imagined the clerk knew exactly who he was and why he was there. It was humiliating.

He rang the bell and waited, tapping his fingers on the hard surface of the beige counter. A bored looking blonde, somewhere around his own age of twenty, sauntered out the back room, long, blood red fingernails plastered over her widely yawning mouth. Her eyes lit up when she saw him. “Oh, hello.” She smiled. “Can I help you?”

Tanner groaned inwardly. He was used to being hit on by women, but that didn’t make him any more comfortable with it. “I’m supposed to meet a friend here.” Damn, what was the name he been told to ask for? Chris…or Christian? “His name is, um, Christian, Christian Smith.” God, he hoped that was right. The last name was easy. It was always Smith. People had no imagination.

The smile on the girl’s face dimmed a bit as she turned to the computer and began to type. Silently, he watched her, wondering how she could type at all with those god-awful nails in her way.

She nodded down at the computer screen and then glanced over at him. “I’ll have to call up and ask permission before I can give you any information.” She turned away from him and picked up the phone. From over her shoulder, she said, “It’ll be just a moment.”

“Sure,” he mumbled, his eyes scanning everywhere and nowhere. He just wanted to get to the room, do what he was being paid for, and go home. Afterward, he would be one day closer to financial solvency. One trick closer to owning the home he’d grown up in, free and clear.

He listened as she quietly spoke with someone, her side of the conversation consisting of mainly “yes, sir” and “uh-huh.” Finally, she hung up and faced him.

“Mr. Smith says to send you up. He’s in room 204.”

“Thank you,” he uttered, already striding away from the desk. There was an elevator, but he bypassed it, choosing the stairs instead. He jogged up them quickly, without breaking a sweat, and shoved through the entrance door onto the second-floor hallway.

The walls were adorned in hunter green wallpaper with a burgundy trim. The floor was carpeted in the same deep shade of green. The minute details were absorbed as he hustled to the end of the hall, glancing at room numbers along the way. Room 204 was on the right, near the end.

He stopped outside it and took a breath, giving himself a mental pep talk. You can do this. Just keep your eyes on the prize and get through it, same as always. It was no different than picking someone up at a club. No different at all.

He raised his clenched fist and knocked, his gaze dropping to his feet. Beginnings were strange. Some men wanted him to come in and bend over, take it up the ass like a good little whore and leave, while others wanted to make polite chitchat first. Out of the two, he wasn’t sure which he liked best. Probably the fuck-and-run guys -- at least those assignments were faster.

He was still wondering what tonight’s call would be like when the door swung inward. Tanner looked up, and higher still, craning his neck back to gaze into the eyes of his client for the night. The standard greeting he recited to each of his johns died in his throat.

Saliva pooled in Tanner’s mouth. Fuck. The man was easily six and a half feet of yummy muscle and lean, bottled sex, dwarfing his own five feet eight stature.

Tanner’s brain turned to mush as all the blood in his body drained south and squeezed into his cock, making his balls draw tight inside his Levi’s. His gaze cruised from the man’s tousled, short black hair to his socked feet and back up, absorbing all the details in between. Brooding eyes, square jaw, broad shoulders, and trim hips -- every inch sex incarnate and designed to entice a man like Tanner to his knees in supplication.

The man was exactly the sort of guy who got Tanner’s motor running in overdrive. The kind of hunk he would’ve tried to pick up in any one of the bars he used to frequent, back when he actually had a life. A man he would’ve happily fucked for free, under other circumstances.

Except this was business.

A sheet of ice fell over Tanner, cooling his ardor, easily putting him back in his place. He wasn’t here on a social call. He was here to fuck for money.

Tanner schooled his features into a smile he’d carefully rehearsed in front of the mirror at home. It was supposed to look seductive, but something about the tight feel of his skin stretching out over his cheekbones told him it fell flat tonight. Oh well, he thought ruefully, another night, another dollar.

He met the big man’s gaze and held it. “I’m Tanner. The agency sent me.”

To purchase the EBook, click here
To purchase in print, click here

copyPRINT: HTTP://WWW.AMAZON.COM/PYROMANCER-AMANDA-YOUNG/DP/1449527795/

All Lost Things excerpt by Josh Aterovis

2009-11-02T07:00:00.000-05:00

In All Lost Things,the third book of Josh Aterovis' award winning mystery series, Killian Kendall's life is changing faster than he can keep up. He's graduating from high school, breaking up with his boyfriend, and starting a new job with a private investigator. He's barely settled at his new desk when his ex-boyfriend calls with a desperate plea for help. He wants Killian to prove his new boyfriend is innocent in the shockingly violent murder of his abusive father. Killian reluctantly agrees to take the case, little knowing how complicated — and dangerous — things will become before it's over.

On the home front, Killian's surrogate parents decide to buy a historic mansion and turn it into a bed and breakfast. The house comes with a rich history...and maybe a ghost or two. Killian doesn't want to believe in such things, but he's quickly becoming convinced that something terrible happened to the home's original owners. The century-old mystery both terrifies and tantalizes Killian. In the end, he may be the only one who can uncover the truth.

All Lost Things
PD Publishing, Inc. (October 1, 2009)
ISBN: 978-1-933720-70-8

Excerpt:

I ran upstairs and opened my door to find Asher sitting on the edge of my bed, looking quite uncomfortable. Kane was sitting with his back to him, playing a game on the computer. I got the impression that they hadn’t said much to each other.

When I went in, Kane glanced up, then turned off the game. “I’ll let you guys talk,” he said on his way out.

I looked over at Asher questioningly. It was weird seeing him in my bedroom again. “So, uh, why are you here?”

“I’m sorry. I just didn’t know what else to do. They arrested Caleb.”

I shook my head in confusion. “Huh?”

“The police arrested Caleb. His picture has been all over the news. Someone on the boardwalk recognized him and called the cops.”

“Right...”

“Killian, they think he killed his dad. It’s horrible!”

“Look, no offense, but what does this have to do with me? Why are you here?”

Asher looked hurt, and, for a second, I felt bad. Then I remembered that he was the one who’d decided to go to another college without informing me, and my moment of sympathy passed.

“I told you, I didn’t know where else to go. I need help.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“You work for a private investigator. You have to prove that Caleb is innocent.”

“First off, I’m a secretary. It’s not like I’m running around with a magnifying glass looking for clues. Second, and more importantly, how do you know Caleb is innocent? He did run away, after all.”

“I know Caleb. He’d never hurt anyone, let alone kill them.”

“Not even his abusive father?”

“No!”

“So why did he run away?”

“Because he hated the group home? Because he was afraid? I don’t know. I haven’t talked to him since everything went wrong. Just...please, Killian, you have to help. You’ve solved murders before.”

“You know, a few weeks ago, you were mad at me for even wanting to become a private investigator, now you’re asking me to take on a potentially dangerous job. Don’t you find that the slightest bit hypocritical?”

“Call me names, make fun of me; I don’t care. You’re probably right. All I know is I need your help.”

I sighed and rubbed my face. “Legally, I can’t take a case. I’m not licensed.”

“What about your boss?” Asher’s voice had a hopeful tone. He knew he was wearing me down.

“I can’t imagine he’d agree to anything like this. How would you pay him? This is his occupation; it’s what he does for a living.”

“Caleb should be getting insurance money from his dad’s death and the house burning down. He can pay him.”

“You haven’t even talked to Caleb about this yet. How do you know he wants to hire anybody?”

“You think he wants to go to jail for murder?”

I had to concede that point. “Fine. I’ll talk to Novak, but I’m not promising anything.”

“Thank you! Thank you so much!”

“Don’t thank me yet. Novak could very well say no. In fact, he almost certainly will. Just in case, though, tell me everything you know.”

“He was arrested last night on the boardwalk. It was all over the news this morning, along with new information from the police.”

“What kind of information?”

“Now they’re saying he chopped his father up with an ax and set the house on fire to cover it up.”

A surge of dizziness swept over me like a tidal wave, and I fell heavily onto my desk chair. “W-what did you say?” Flashes of my dream came back to me, and I felt bile rise in the back of my throat.

...a blood-covered ax dripping in my hands...

“The news said the body was dismembered before the fire was set. That’s all I know.”

...the split second of fear in his eyes before the ax struck for the first time...

“Killian, are you alright?”

...the feeling of pure hatred coursing through my veins...

“Killian?”

I felt someone shaking my arm and that snapped me back to the present. Asher was leaning over me, a concerned expression on his face.

“Are you okay? For a minute there, you looked as if you were going to faint or something.”

“I...I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I’m fine.” I stood up. “I didn’t sleep well last night, that’s all.” I could tell Asher didn’t know whether or not to believe me, but thankfully he dropped it.

“So you’ll look into this? You’ll help me prove Caleb is innocent?”

I looked him in the eye. “Tell me one thing: why does this mean so much to you?”

His eyes shifted away. “He’s a friend.”

“Is that all he is?”

“Would it matter?”

I sighed. “I guess not. Not anymore.”

Asher risked a quick look in my direction. “I never cheated on you, I swear.”

“It doesn’t really matter one way or the other at this point.”

“Killian, I —”

“You know what? I’m really tired. I think I need a nap. I’ll talk to Novak on Monday and let you know what he says. Okay?”

Asher bit his lip and nodded. “Yeah. Okay. Thank you.”

I sat down on the bed and watched as Asher let himself out. What was I thinking? I’d agreed to get involved in the murder investigation of my ex’s new boyfriend. Well, technically, I’d only agreed to talk to my boss about it. I was pretty sure he’d say no, but still... I had to be crazy.

Then there were my dreams. Was it just a coincidence that I’d dreamed about an ax murder and Caleb was accused of killing his father with an ax? I didn’t really believe in coincidences, but the alternative — that I’d somehow foreseen the murder in my dreams — disturbed me even more.

I couldn’t forget my weird dream about Seth, either. He’d warned me something was about to happen that would affect me, and it would be connected to Asher. A chill ran down my spine as I recalled I’d had the dream of Seth the night Caleb’s father was killed.

What did it all mean? Did it mean anything? It was just a dream, right?

As hard as I tried to convince myself otherwise, I knew there were too many coincidences. My head was starting to pound, and I didn’t want to think about dreams anymore. I slipped into the bathroom and took several pain relievers, then went back to bed. It was only noon, but I figured I’d earned a nice long nap.

http://joshaterovis.com/
http://pdpublishing.com/aterovis.html
To purchase, click here

As You Are excerpt by Ethan Day

2009-10-26T07:00:00.001-04:00

In As You Are by Ethan Day, all bartender and recent college graduate Julian Hallowell has had on his mind the past year is Operation Danny. Julian may have no idea what he wants to do with his life, but he definitely knows he‘s in love with the boy next door: the next door down the hall to be exact, housing his roommate and used textbook store owner Danny Wallace.

While Julian has done his level best to make Danny fall for him, all his hard work has been in vain. Danny doesn’t seem to view Julian as anything other than a roommate and friend. So when new guy in town Andy Baker asks him out on a date, Julian can’t think of a good reason to say no.

Instead, he institutes a Reverse Operation Danny plan, which he’s positive will purge all thoughts of love and lust for his roomie out of his head. He’s ready to move on and start looking for his next Mr. Right, and Andy just might fit the bill. But has he given up too soon?

As You Are
Loose ID (September 29, 2009)
ISBN: 978-1-60737-440-4

Excerpt:

Feather duster in hand, I danced around the apartment shaking my groove thang. Annie Lennox was blaring from the speakers. I shimmied across the wood floors in my socks and yelled out over the music in my game-show-host voice, “With a CD titled Diva, this is the segment of the population to which Miss Lennox was trying to cater.” I shimmied back in the opposite direction. “Who are big nelly queers, Alex?”

Sliding across the wood floors like Tom Cruise in Risky Business, I stopped in front of the mirror, lifted the feather duster up to my face, and sang along with “Walking on Broken Glass.” I thrust my hips, doing my Elvis impersonation, and laughed at myself. My parents both loved Elvis. It wound up being one of the few things they had in common. I'd taught myself to do the wild hip-thrusting dance when I was about eight or nine. Not many things could put a smile on both of their faces simultaneously, but that was one of them.

I shook my hips and shoulders while admiring my ensemble as reflected back to me from the mirror. An old pair of cutoff jeans, an homage to the summer vacations spent at the lake as a kid. They was paired with one of the white wifebeaters I'd stolen from Danny. It had a spaghetti stain from the time Danny and I had waged a food war in the kitchen. Completing the picture: a red bandanna tied around my head like a biker boy.

I thrust my hands out into the air, letting my spirit fingers fly freely as I sang along with Annie about no longer caring for sugar.

“You need to lay off the sugar, anyway,” Danny said from behind me as he kicked the front door closed.

I jumped about a mile off the floor, placing the fisted feather duster over my rapidly beating heart. Danny burst out laughing and walked over to the kitchen counter to set down the canvas grocery bags.

“I'm such a heifer, I know.” I composed myself as I meandered over to the stereo and turning down the volume. “I had a double mochaccino and, like, twelve Hershey's Kisses for breakfast.”

“Great, candy is like crack to you. Now I'm going to have to survive another Julie sugar rush.”

“Don't knock it.” I pointed the feather duster at him. “My little fixes are what keep this apartment clean.” Danny was wearing an old pair of worn jeans that snuggly wrapped around his business, and an old Dave Matthews Band T-shirt.

“You just need another outlet to pour all that pent-up energy into.”

“Macramé…decoupage?”

“No…like fucking.”

Pointing the feather duster toward his delectably denim-wrapped crotch, I asked, “Is there any decision that you don't make with that thing?”

“Which deodorant to use?” he mused, unpacking the bags. “No, wait, I'm pretty sure it was the muscular arm holding the hammer that made me choose Arm and Hammer deodorant.”

“You're hopeless… I sure hope you never suffer from erectile dysfunction. Your whole world would fall apart.”

“Hey!” He spun around with a serious expression. “That's not funny. I suppose you'd consider that some sort of cosmic justice.”

“You reap what you sow,” I said with a big cheesy grin.

“Julie, sex isn't a bad thing. As long as you have two consenting adults and everyone has a good time, who are you hurting? Besides, I've never heard any complaints.”

“How could you? You have 'em out the door before the sweat has time to dry.”

“That's not true.” Danny laughed. “God, you exaggerate.” He sighed and went back to emptying the grocery bags. “Do you want to grab a bite to eat before the reading?”

“Sure,” I said, “or we could just fix something here.”

“I don't think so.” Danny looked at me briefly before sauntering up to me and lightly rubbing his finger over the stain on my shirt. “This is what happened the last time we tried that.”

Goose bumps ran amok over my entire body as he stroked my stain. We stood looking at one another and smiling. He pulled the feather duster out of my hand and set it on the counter behind him, then he picked up the roll of paper towels and Windex, and shoved one into each of my hands. Placing his massive man-hands on my shoulders, he twirled me around, swatted me on the butt, and said, “Get back to work before I have to take you over my knee.”

I stood there for a few minutes mulling over that mental picture. Feeling my cock spring to attention, I thought, Good Christ, I do need to get laid. I nodded my head as I ogled the roll of paper towels in my hand. I decided to clean the bathroom first: kill two birds with one stone.

http://www.ethandayonline.com/
To purchase, click here

The Golden Age of Gay Fiction edited by Drewey Wayne Gunn, excerpt by Victor J Banis

2009-10-19T07:00:00.008-04:00

This excerpt from The Gay Publishing Revolution by Victor J. Banis is included in The Golden Age of Gay Fiction, edited by Drewey Wayne Gunn.

The Golden Age of Gay Fiction
MLR Press (September 16, 2009)
ISBN-10: 1608200485
ISBN-13: 978-1608200481

Excerpt:

The rise of gay fiction in the aftermath of WWII coincided with the explosion in popularity of the paperback novel, and paperback books weren’t distributed or sold beside their hardcover cousins in the bookstores of the day. They were distributed along magazines, newspapers, and periodicals and sold mostly in bus terminals, train stations, drugstores, and five and dimes. The proprietors of drugstores, dime stores, et al., gave little thought to the high-mindedness of the literary and library mavens. If the garish covers with smoking guns, lascivious women, and from time to time, a half-naked man could sell books and boost profits, who cared what the critics thought? Cheap books, widely available in nontraditional outlets, made it easier to spread the word.

Contributing significantly to the availability of these choices was a new phenomenon that appeared in the early 1960s and is not often mentioned in the histories of the period, but which had great influence on what was to follow — the paperback bookstore, the very concept of which was revolutionary. By the early 1960s, paperbacks were no longer limited to the outlets to which they had previously been restricted. And it was the publishers on the fringe, the publishers of sex-oriented material, who were leading the charge. In the late 1950s and the early 1960s, a handful of publishers, most of them on the West Coast, had begun publishing and distributing sexy magazines and periodicals, and in time they added paperback novels to their wares. As these grew in popularity, bookstores devoted to them began to open in major cities like Los Angeles and New York. By 1962 most cities of any size had entire bookstores specializing in the enormously popular paperback books. At first, most of these publications were heterosexually oriented, but in time gay magazines and fiction found their way into the mix as well. It was in this different kind of bookstore where the new genre of gay paperback fiction would eventually be found. The gay male could walk into one of these stores and for the first time ever choose books of a kind never before available to him.

The Fall of Valor and The Divided Path were not, of course, the only works of gay fiction. There were others. Sometimes even so-called legitimate novels touched on homosexuality. James Jones’s From Here to Eternity (1951), for instance, had a homosexual subplot, a queer network hidden within the army, though that was whitewashed out of the movie. In Mickey Spillane’s Vengeance Is Mine (1950), tough guy Mike Hammer spends the novel lusting after femme fatale Juno before in the final pages ripping off her dress. Midst the fabric, bangles, and spangles dropping to the floor, it’s easy to miss the mention of foam rubber, but there’s no missing Spillane’s dramatic finale: “Juno was a man.” In all, we were mostly freaks or creeps, alcoholics or molesters.

And the truth is that it’s easy to list the books because there were, alas, so few of them. It especially seemed so at the time, perhaps because in those early days, before the paperback bookstore, they were so hard to find. Often, finding them was a matter of happenstance — as a teenager, for instance, I discovered a copy of The Divided Path on the paperback rack of Campbell’s drugstore in my little hometown of Eaton, Ohio. Ideally, you had a friend in a local bookstore who would let you know when something “of special interest” came available. Even when you found the books, however, it was often difficult to find the homosexuality in them. Sometimes it was so discreet as to be nearly undetectable.

There was a sad similarity to most of these books too. Michael Bronski describes this early gay fiction (in Writing Below the Belt, ed. Michael Rowe, 1997): “Young boy comes to New York, meets people in the theater, gets fucked over, and then commits suicide.” All of it wasn’t that bad — Lonnie Coleman’s Sam (1959) comes to mind as a notable exception — but the description certainly fitted a large portion of what was available.

While the publishing world did not have the sort of Hays Office moral code that the movies of the 1940s and 1950s had, neither did publishing exist in a vacuum. A publisher could do books on any number of sinful subjects: drug abuse, for instance, or rape — or homosexuality. But to do so was to take a certain risk. The essential point for the publisher was that he must not seem to espouse these behaviors nor condone them; to present these activities in a positive light was to invite criminal charges. It must be made clear that these were bad people, doing naughty things for which they must be punished by the end of the book. For gay protagonists, that mostly meant cure or kill. Here, then, is why the possibility of “happy ever after” simply did not exist in that early fiction. To have introduced that kind of choice for the characters would have been seen as approving of or espousing a homosexual lifestyle — a sure invitation to arrest and prosecution.

From the earliest days, writing and publishing gay fiction was dangerous. Editors and publishers were routinely arrested. The story is told that H. Lynn Womack, founder of Guild Press, worked for a time out of a mental institution where he was hiding from the police.

... by the late-1960s I was not only a writer myself, and a very busy and prolific one, but an editor, a writing instructor, an agent, and a publisher. With my partners, employees, students, and clients, I was supplying a very large portion of what was being published in gay fiction and nonfiction. Not until I looked back some years later was I able to fully appreciate the impact that we had on the publishing scene of that time. There was a joke in the industry then that the gay publishing revolution had mostly occurred at my kitchen table, and there was more than a grain of truth in that. It was a rare afternoon that did not see several of us consulting around that table. It was exciting, if a bit exhausting.

We were a motley crew. Jim Westlake’s exposé Prison Confidential (1969) had to be smuggled out of the Ohio State Penitentiary, where he was an inmate at the time. Since then there have been other writers writing from prison, but at the time this was sensational stuff.

Lance Lester (Cruising Horny Corners, 1967) was George Davies, a writer for the Disney people, who, as another sideline, did stories for a series of underground pornographic comic books of Mickey, Donald, et al. — gosh, didn’t the Disney folks want to find out who he was! George also wrote a hilarious spoof of the Loon books, Fruit of the Loon (1968), as Ricardo Armory.

What’s really important in all this, though, was not my success nor that of my writers, but that the genre of gay publishing had arrived — gay paperback publishing, at least; the hardcover publishers were slower to get on the bandwagon, though they got around to it in time. Suddenly, gay fiction went from being under the counter to occupying entire walls in bookstores — even entire bookstores and, eventually, entire publishing houses.

In the decade leading up to 1966, when my first gay books were published by Greenleaf, there were probably no more than two or three dozen genuinely gay novels published. In the decade following, there were thousands — probably no one can say with any certainty how many — some say as many as ten thousand, though the actual figure is almost certainly less than this; still, the very fact of that perception in itself says something about what happened. For the most part, these books were free from the burden of tragic endings or the limitations of genre. Perhaps the most dramatic change of all was that we were now free to write about gay people and the lives they really lived.

Not all these books, of course, were published by Greenleaf Classics, but many of them were. It was indisputably Greenleaf and its editor Earl Kemp who had led the way, who had opened the doors. So, yes, we had brought about a true revolution in gay publishing — and for the most part in that interim between 1965 (and more significantly, 1966) and 1969, which is to say, before the uprising at Stonewall. While historians treat gay political history as Before Stonewall and After Stonewall, in the publishing revolution it was mostly Before Greenleaf and After Greenleaf. Or more accurately, Before Earl Kemp and After Earl Kemp.

By writing at such length about the contributions of Earl Kemp and Greenleaf to gay publishing, I may be giving some false impressions which I should perhaps correct: Earl Kemp was and is heterosexual. Greenleaf was never exclusively, nor even primarily, a gay publishing house. For all the enormous numbers of gay books that they published, gay material nevertheless remained by far the lesser part of their total output.

Greenleaf was established by fantasy and sci-fi wunderkind William Hamling and New York literary agent Scott Meredith, though Meredith remained throughout a very silent partner.

Though the new publishing house justified its existence by printing paperback editions of classic novels, the intent from the beginning was to jump into the then-blossoming sexual revolution. Of course, they wanted to make some money by doing so, but there was also a conscious desire, certainly on the part of Earl, to contribute to what they saw as some fundamental and large-scale changes in American society.

Homosexual material was not a major goal for the newly established Greenleaf. Nevertheless when Earl Kemp bought The Why Not, he saw that novel as a way of advancing gay themes, a worthy frontier for their censorship battles.

The Guild Press and DSI were the first two publishing houses devoted exclusively to publishing gay works, but as victims of aggressive federal harassment both had suffered checkered histories, and by the early 1970s both were gone. In 1975, Winston Leyland launched the Gay Sunshine Press in San Francisco, and in 1977 in New York, Felice Picano launched Seahorse Press. What is significant in the efforts of Leyland and Picano is that they were able to venture into this realm with relative impunity without the fear of prosecution and possible imprisonment that haunted Lynn Womack, Earl Kemp, and the rest of us only a few years before. And that is due, of course, to those others, in particular Greenleaf Classics, who, regardless of their heterosexual primacy, had fought the battle to legitimize gay themes.

And it is due as well to all the many writers who made possible the kinds of books eventually offered by these newer publishers.

But that battle was still being fought in those years between 1966 and 1969, and we were just beginning to appreciate what was being won. It was a heady experience to come out from under the covers, to be able to go into a store and buy not one, but two, three, a dozen books of whatever sort we wanted. Funny books, scary books, cookbooks, westerns, mysteries — they were all there. And so were we. We held hands in these new books — and held hands eventually as we shopped. We walked together in the pages of those paperbacks and marched right out of the pages to walk — and eventually march — together in the streets. We shopped. And cruised. And chatted. And began to perceive that we were far less alone than we had heretofore thought.

And yes, I do believe that it was here, as much as anywhere — among the beefcake covers and the campy titles and the astonishing variety of stories and themes that were suddenly there for us to choose from — that the sense of community, of oneness, first took seed.

The paperback books of the 1960s weren’t just books to those of us writing and publishing them. They were our town hall meetings, where the newly emerging gay community first began to exchange ideas. They were our forum, our agora. They were statements as much as they were entertainment, a message to the rest of the gay world that new choices were there for them, in and out of our books. A message that a generation of gays and lesbians got and shared and that would soon lead to Stonewall and The Castro and the entire gay political revolution.

By the time Golden Sunshine Press and Seahorse Press were launched in the wake of Stonewall, gay publishing had already come of age. Our gay publishing revolution had already been accomplished.

http://www.mlrbooks.com/ShowBook.php?book=GOLDAGE1
To purchase, click here or click here

Man's Best Friends excerpt by P. A. Brown

2009-10-12T07:00:00.002-04:00

In Man's Best Friends by P. A. Brown, New Mexico, the land of enchantment, weaves a spell of love around Todd Richards and veterinarian Dr. Keith Anderson as they struggle to make their love work amid terrible loss, betrayal and rustlers and make their dream of a bed & breakfast in Santa Fe a reality.

Man's Best Friends by P.A. Brown
MLR Press
ISBN# 978-1-6082--074-0 (print)
ISBN#978-1-60820-075-7 (ebook)

Excerpt:

"Hold her head. Whatever you do, do not let her up."

I was practically sitting on Sally's head. Horses are funny animals. They can weigh in at over half a ton of nearly solid muscle, yet if you can immobilize their heads, you can prevent them from moving. That's what I was trying to do with Sally's Mark.

My lover, life partner, and best friend Dr. Keith Anderson lay stretched out on the stall floor. He had stripped off his shirt, and normally the sight of his beautifully sculptured bare chest would have had me thinking lascivious thoughts of how absolutely fuckable he was. But right now he was lying flat on his side, covered in straw, and blood, and other unimaginable filth, with one arm stuffed up a horse's ass. Definitely not the thing to inspire lustful thoughts.

I kept my eyes glued on the opposite, fly-specked wall. Normally I'm a pretty tough guy, but the sight of all that blood and writhing animal flesh was doing a real number on my stomach. I could hear a sickening squelching sound, and I wished I could redirect my ears as well as my eyes, but all I could do was to try to think of something else. Golf. Baseball stats. How about them Dodgers?

Keith grunted, and my eyes skated over him, instantly regretting the trip. His sinuous chest was sheathed in blood and straw, and his muscles stood out in stark relief as he strained to turn the breached foal inside our favorite mare. Keith caught my eye and frowned.

"Shit, Todd, you look green," he muttered. But if I was expecting sympathy, I was disappointed. All I got after that was, "Don't you dare throw up."

I ground my teeth together and looked away again.

"That's my baby," Keith said, and I smiled -- until I realized he was talking to the damned horse. "Come on, girl. We just have to get this little guy turned for you to do your job. But you gotta be ready, hon. That's a good girl."

I don't know if it worked on her, but it did a wonderful job of soothing me. Not that I wouldn't rather be anywhere else – grocery shopping, sleeping, enduring an audit of the books for the IRS – but any time I got to be with Keith was a plus in my ledger book. I'd loved the man passionately since I'd first met him a little over a year ago. It had been love at first sight for both of us when I took one of my dogs in to see the new vet. Love at first sight for the two humans, that is, though I like to think the dogs loved him too. It hadn't always been smooth sailing since then; we'd had our ups and downs. But now we ran this picturesque little bed and breakfast, just outside Santa Fe, that was doing very well, and added nicely to the income Keith brought in as a veterinarian, with a mixed small and large animal practice. It had sounded so glamorous when he told me he'd be looking after the equine trade, too. I hadn't realized at the time what that meant. If I'd known it meant middle-of-the-night sojourns up some pregnant mare's birth canal, I might have told him to reconsider -- at least, if he expected me to be part of the package.

Usually I'm not part of the deal. That was an honor that normally fell to our horse wrangler, Darrel, but he was with his own pregnant lady right now, our assistant manager, Mandy. She was having some kind of false labor pains, and Darrel refused to leave her side. So I was stuck with sitting on Sally's head while the love of my life swam in blood and guts and stuff I didn't want to think about. Talk about the end to a romantic evening.

We'd been invited to a posh gig at the home of one of Santa Fe's socialites, Mrs. Emanuel Henry Dominguez. Keith's parents had long been members of the Santa Fe community, and Keith had inherited their social standing. At first the socialites hadn't known what to make of this wealthy, good-looking, gay man, so they had tried to treat him like a bachelor. But Keith would have none of that. Invitations he received that didn't include my name were summarily rejected. The town socialites might have gone along with that, if Keith hadn't been such a big supporter of their favorite causes. As it was, they'd had to reconsider their priorities, and now the invitations to their soirees were routinely addressed to Dr. Keith Anderson and Todd Richards. The expediency of money.

This particular evening had been fun. We had attended the opening of a new art gallery featuring paintings I could actually understand, and a wine and cheese party that had edible food. I was in seventh heaven. After we arrived home, I entertained visions of tumbling Keith into bed for a late night romp when he decided to check up on Sally's Mark.

So there I was sitting on her head, trying not to watch the love of my life climb halfway up inside the mare in an attempt to save her foal.

"That's it. Now you're coming," Keith crooned encouragement. "Push now, girl. You're almost there."

I felt Sally's Mark heave under me, and her entire body went rigid. Then I heard more squelching sounds, and this time when I looked, I saw something wet and squirmy lying on the damp straw beside Sally. Under me, Sally gave a guttural sigh and lay still.

"Let her up, Todd." Keith was busy at the other end when I climbed to my feet and watched Sally heave herself up, shaking straw and lethargy away from her. She swung around to stare at the bloody heap on the floor between Keith's legs.

"Come on, girl. Get over here and have a look at him. How's my girl? Come have a look at your little stud."

Sally stuck her nose down and rumbled something in her broad chest. The little colt that Keith had done a fair job of cleaning up wiggled under his touch.

Keith and I backed away from the pair. It was up to Sally now. She had to bond with her new foal, and give him his all-important first feeding, or all Keith's efforts were going to come to nothing.

We held our breath as Sally snuffled at the newborn. Then she nuzzled it, and it jerked its knobby head up and made a minuscule sound that was barely audible in the big box stall. Sally reacted to it.

She snorted and began nosing the foal in earnest. She licked him vigorously. In turn the foal began to try to get its spindly legs up under it. When the foal actually tottered to its feet less than ten minutes later, I knew we had a winner on our hands.

"And look!" I whispered fiercely. "He's a paint. Look at the chest on that thing!"

The little red and white newborn stood beside its exhausted mother and windmilled its tiny stump of a tail in circles. Its nose was buried between mom's legs, searching for that all-important first drink. We left them to get acquainted, and walked back to the house arm in arm. I was no longer mindful of the crud all over Keith; I was too tired to care, and I felt too damned good over the new arrival. For his part, Keith was as depleted as the mare, and just as exhilarated.

http://www.pabrown.ca/
To purchase, click here

Like Coffee and Doughnuts excerpt by Elle Parker

2009-10-05T07:00:00.001-04:00

In Like Coffee and Doughnuts by Elle Parker, Dino Martini is an old-school P.I. in a modern age. Sure, he may do most of his work on a computer, but he carries a gun, drives a convertible, and lives on the beach. Best friend and mechanic Seth Donnelly will back him in a fight, and there's not a lot more Dino could ask from life.

Until his world is turned upside down.

A dangerous case and a new apartment are just the start. His friendship with Seth has turned into a romance, only Dino has never had a boyfriend before. Can he handle this sudden twist? Just as he begins to believe it's possible, he loses Seth in more ways than one...

Like Coffee and Doughnuts
Lyrical Press (May 18, 2009)
ISBN: 978-0-9824170-5-8

Excerpt:

When I went into Ed's Garage looking to get backup from my friend Seth, I knew immediately my job was going to be harder than I'd thought. Seth and his latest "date," a blonde with short spiky hair and pretty legs, were tangled up on top of a red Ford Torino necking like the world was coming to an end. Neither one of them had a shirt on, but she wore a black and pink polka dot bra. She also wore a pale green skirt under which Seth's hand had disappeared. My timing wasn't good, but I was glad I hadn't come any later.

She saw me first and gave me a pretty smile, apparently not too disturbed by a stranger walking in on her fun. Seth was doing something to her neck that might have been kissing, but reminded me of the way he ate.

She prodded him and said, "Hey, we've got company."

When Seth raised his head, he looked surprised, but that quickly changed to irritation when he saw who it was. He didn't need to say a word for me to know exactly what he was thinking.

I smiled. "I thought you had to have the hood up to do a tune up."

"Not when we start with me first," he said. "Don't you have someplace better to be?"

"I'm sorry, I had no choice. Believe me, I did not want to do this, but duty calls."

"Tell duty to call back in about an hour, Dino." He went back to what he'd been doing.

"You're Dino?" the girl asked, lighting up. "I've heard about you."

"Dino Martini, at your service," I said. "Nice...bra."

"Thanks." She grabbed a fistful of Seth's hair and pulled him up to look at her. 'Don't be rude to your friend. He's obviously here for something important."

"He's here because whatever job he's got going this evening involves a high likelihood of him getting his ass kicked." He turned to look at me. "Am I wrong?"

I shrugged. "Hard to say with a case like this, but I don't like to take chances."

"What now?" Seth looked defeated already, which was good, because it meant this wouldn't be nearly as difficult as I'd thought.

"Cheating wife," I said. "You know how those can be."

"Yeah, yeah, all right."

Seth Donnelly is about five foot seven, has an unruly mop of carrot colored hair, and although he's thirty-three, he often acts like he's twelve. He's my mechanic, but he's also been a good friend for a lot of years, and there's no one I'd rather have next to me in a fight.

He slid off the hood of the car and told the girl, "I guess I'm gonna have to catch you some other time."

"That's okay," she said, climbing down and pulling her shirt on. "I have to get to work anyway. Can you look at my car tomorrow?"

"Sure, bring it by after three."

She gave him a quick kiss, got in the Ford and drove out, turning left, toward the beach. I was willing to bet she worked in one of the tourist bars down in John's Pass.

"Sorry about that," I said, turning to Seth.

"No sweat. Buy me dinner and we're square. She's cute enough, but her brother's the one I'd really like to nail."

I shook my head. "You bring a whole new meaning to the word 'sleaze', you know that?"

"Oh, come on, it's not like that. She knows. She's just in it for the fun and the free service on that wreck she drives. Did she look especially brokenhearted to you?"

"No," I admitted. "I can't say that she did."

"So tell me about the case," he said, grabbing his shirt off the workbench.

"Not that much to tell. This guy's had me following his wife for a while, and I finally caught her cheating on him with a long haul trucker. Turns out she's been meeting up with all kinds of them off a website called The Hot Trucker's Hookup."

"No shit, are you serious?"

"Yep."

"Sweet deal for the truckers, man. They can line up something everywhere they stop."

"That's pretty much the idea," I said. "They've got quite the little community on there."

I had followed Amy Ware all the way out to Florida's Interstate 75 and wound up spending an afternoon playing "Peeping Tom" through the ground floor window of a cheap hotel. On my fifth pass, I nearly swallowed my cigarette. She had her guy trussed up in a horse's harness and reins with the thing in the mouth and the whole nine yards, and she was ridin' him for all he was worth. I took easily fifty shots of that.

I'm kind of a mix between the old school P.I. and the modern "private investigator," which means I do my fair share of computer searches and background checks on top of the more traditional tailing of cheaters and mystery solving. But I drive a Mustang convertible, I carry a gun, and I live on the beach.

Well, close to the beach.

You are what you drive, they say, and I am a 1966 model of stylish sophistication with a sporty rakishness and a lot of muscle. Instead of Vintage Burgundy, though, I'm your average Italian color, and I have maybe a moderate amount of muscle. When I was a little younger, I had the classic Italian greaser look going on. Now I don't have quite enough hair on top to pull it off, but I'm told I still look pretty damn good.

I named the car Matilda because of her white ragtop, which makes her look like an old lady. She is, without a doubt, my most prized possession. I bought her eight years ago, after an especially lucrative case, and while she was in pretty good condition to begin with, Seth and I restored her to the level of perfection she exists in most of the time these days.

Outside, Seth dropped into the front seat next to me. He looked in the side view mirror and scrubbed his fingers through his hair. That's what passes for styling for him. He plucked his sunglasses out of the collar of his shirt and slid them on. It never fails to impress me how he can make slovenly look good.

"You goin' in carrying on this one?" he asked.

"I don't think so," I told him. "This guy is money. If he gives me trouble, it's going to be of the fist swinging variety, which is why I wanted you along."

"Are we gonna run it the usual way, then?"

"If you expect to be fed."

Certain people do not take bad news well, and if they can't lash out at the object of their anger, they'll often take it out on the closest thing available. I generally happen to be sitting across from them at that point, and I've learned to take precautions.

http://www.elleparker.com/
http://www.lyricalpress.com/like_coffee_and_doughnuts

To purchase, click here

Look Away Silence excerpt by Edward C Patterson

2009-09-28T07:00:00.007-04:00

Martin Powers wanted an ironing board for Christmas. Instead, he got . . . Matthew Kieler, a non-returnable gift, but a gift that kept on giving. Chance encounters are sometimes the ones that most change our lives. He sold Matt a tie, but got more in the bargain - more than most people would want and more than anyone deserved. Although these lovers may not have had the pink American dream, they had it better than most, even as they faced a crisis that would change us all.

Look Away Silence by Edward C Patterson is a romance set in the time of AIDS, when ignorance could spell trouble and often did. It encompasses the author’s experiences in volunteer community service and personal friendships during a tragic period in American history. The novel is dedicated to the Hyacinth AIDS Foundation, the NAMES Project and to the author’s own fallen angels. "Mothers, do not shun your children, because you never know how long you have to revel in them."

Look Away Silence
Publisher: CreateSpace (July 17, 2009)
ISBN: 1448651929

Excerpt

Chapter One

Folding

1

I am a child of Christmas. Some people are Easter-kids. Others get fired up over the Fourth of July or wax poetic for Arbor Day. Not me. Christmas has always been the focus of my year, because everything that has been good in my life has come down from the sparkling Yule Fairy and wrapped up in bows and striped paper. As little children, we wish for many things at Christmas — trains, bikes, Legos, baseball gloves and some, like me, asked Santa for an ironing board. Now that would bode well and never shock, except my name is Martin and not Martina, and . . . it quite put my Grandpa off his Monday Night Football. My mother was cool with it, otherwise she would have bought me a GI Joe and insisted I dig trenches and drop fake bombs over the chenille. However, I wouldn’t have minded a GI Joe either, a fact my mother also sensed. So it was an ironing board for me. Vivian Powers’ sissy boy was devoted to Christmas from that day forward. I knew there was a Santa Claus and his linen closet was impeccably arranged.

Across the folds of time and through the tumble-downs of Christmases over the years, I found all my requests fulfilled. When I was old enough to find true love (or so I thought it true love . . . I mean, every time it was true love), it was at Christmas. That was the year I had drunk too much eggnog and awoke in a stranger’s bed — a stranger who unwrapped me like a party favor and gave me the most wonderful Christmas gift of all. In hindsight, the ironing board was better.

Despite the exciting sensation of joining with another soul, I learned fast that such passion was like the sea at ebb tide. I know about the sea. I live by the sea, here in Long Branch where the tide comes in and then sucks out a bit of the Jersey shore, a bit like my first passionate experience. Metaphors are not my forte. I should stick to laundry. I saw then true love for what it was — as false as Ru Paul’s D-cup. It didn’t last past New Years Day. And yes, my heart was broken. I cried and cried like a bride left at the altar. However, I was a lucky boy — still am. I have a mother like no other. She sat me down, dried my tears and said, “Marty,” (I hate being called Marty, but mothers can’t be corrected — at least not mine).

“Marty, he was a stranger. Didn’t know ya and didn’t want to know ya.”

Still, I loved what’s his name (funny how I forgot his name . . . Frank. Frank . . . that’s it. I remember his face, his hands and his hot breath in the night, but I still need to squeeze the corners of my mind for his name). My heart was shattered. No amount of Vivian Powers’ insightful advice could bring me around. However, my mother is a straightjacket case at times. Nothing controls her. The few words of advice that she has given throughout my life have stayed with me. So I remember exactly what she said, because it echoes every time I fall in and out of love, whenever Christmas turns into Easter.

“Marty, he was a stranger. Didn’t know ya and didn’t want to know ya. Just like ya father. None of them are worth the spit they splatter. But always get at least one thing from each of them, and you’ll have enough carfare for the Path line to the city, where you can find a better one. In your father’s case, I got you, Shithead.” (She’s so endearing that way, but I’d rather be called Shithead than Marty).

Of course, Viv (I never called her Mom or Mama or Mother dearest — her choice) was never a proper homemaker. She knew to buy me an ironing board, but only so I could do her ironing. My dad, the mysterious Mr. Powers, gave me my name, which I thought to change from Powers to Jones, because Jones fitted me better. He hadn’t stayed around to top the tree with the fairy angel, but I never cared. In fact, Viv told me she wasn’t sure who my father was as there were three candidates for the month. All the men in my life were defective, except one. They were all either druggies, old men, flaming queens, drunks, or just lumps on my pillow, except that one; and he . . . well, perhaps he was the most defective of all, because I’ve never really found my way out of Christmas with him, even though Good Friday has come and gone.

Perhaps I’m the defective one. Perhaps Viv was wrong and I’m the one not worth the splatter. I can’t help it. I have standards. Men have taken a gander at me (not bad looking . . . me, that is. Not an ounce of fat, and that without a gym bunny schedule), and picture me in some interlude — some Act One in their own play. Unfortunately, Act One is always followed by . . . well, you get the drift. Sometimes they hear me sing (and I’m a veritable Lorelei — first tenor and soloist with the Jersey Gay Sparrow Chorus). Whatever it is, they end by worshipping at my shrine — the well-pressed sheets from my sacred iron capped by perfectly fluffed pillows. Morning always brings a different light. At night, they are Tom Cruise. At dawn, they transform into the bell ringers of Notre Dame. The grand consolation is that every year brings another Christmas and another handy appliance — Vive la Viv, my manicurist mother, who brought home lovelier men than I have ever nabbed — and those without an iron board to entice them.

Despite my gifted voice and inclination for housework, I couldn’t live my life under my mother’s wing. She scarcely noticed me, her little shithead, who, as I got older, got under foot. I had to close my eyes more than once to her tumbling over the threshold with one or, dare I say, two male companions, who had likkered her up and thought they had her at a disadvantage. Little did they know. They may have had their frolic, but always get at least one thing from each of them, and you’ll have enough carfare for the Path line to the city, where you can find a better one. I supposed some day that I would have a little brother or sister and learn to change diapers, scrub bassinets, and all the other happy chores that motherhood brings. But no. Viv just managed a collection of diamonds, pearls and emeralds. They were gaudy things, not to my tastes or I’d have pinched a few. However, as time went on, and I graduated from Red Bank High School, there were more than a few hints from the maternal maw that I should get to college, or a job and, by all means, into my own hermitage, such as it is. The suggestions were subtle in the mornings over coffee and English Muffins. “How’s the job hunt coming, dear?” In the evenings — those hazy evenings a la Viv, the point was sharper. “You’re still here, Shithead?” In any case, college was out. Couldn’t afford it and no one that I ever knew got a degree in laundry. I could have pursued my vocal training, but that would preclude that I had vocal training to begin with, which I hadn’t. I was the youngest member of the Jersey Gay Sparrows, and while the Chicken Hawks often were on my tail, they were also jealous queens seeking to push me aside and away from the prime solos. So I did what any respectful young man that had more than a foot out of the closet would do. I went into retail.

2

Christmas and retail are friends, as close as Marley and Scrooge. In the sprawl of Eatontown Mall stood paradise — a Christmas chaos called Abraham & Straus. I bought me a suit and got me an interview to swim in the rarified air of departmental retail duties. I saw myself as the perfect go-to person in the linen department. I could live my life in thread count and percale — heaven on earth. There’s nothing like the aroma of fresh linen — clean and mountainy, with a promise to bless the chest, to caress the shoulders and snuggle the toes with its gentle static-free cling — an adoration well beyond that of the Magi. However, to my disappointment, the management of the store saw me more as a behind-the-counter type in the men’s department amidst a sea of ties and pants and shirts and sweaters. So instead of my Elysian Fields of Canon and Burlington Mills, I was lost to the Forest of Arden — Men’s wear.

Retail didn’t pay much, but within six months, my mother awoke to an empty kitchen and asked her question no more. I found an apartment — not very classy, but it had possibilities. It was a first floor back dealie with a rear entrance and a small courtyard. I couldn’t see the ocean from my window, but I could smell the clams when they ripened — not the most encouraging aroma, but it was my stink and it stunk just fine for me. It was private for when I had my little heartbreak evenings, when the stink was worse than rotting clams, but that too was my stink. I was also within walking distance of the nearest gay bar — The Cavern, which would be a blessing if I didn’t visit it so often, donating my meager income to the latest assortment of fruity refreshments of the adult kind. I was an adult now (barely), so what better way to exhibit that fact than to imbibe a bit, and more than a bit. After all, it was just a stagger across the street, through the alley, along the beach and into my courtyard palace.

So I thrived, after a fashion. Then came Arthur — Arturo, a stunning man, who wandered home with me one night and never left. Well, Christmas be damned, he did leave, but not fast enough. He stayed for six months, two of which were quite nice actually. He didn’t work, so I left my daily bed unmade; and he would be off spending my money at the Cavern by the time I arrived home. It was fine with me. I joined him, and then we’d laugh and play volleyball and run about naked on the beach (after dark, when neighbor eyes were dimmed to see us). However, Christmas came to a close after a sixty-day period, like an expired Library book that I forgot to return. Arturo had another little addiction other than Appletinis and beer. Meth. He was not a Methodist, would that he was, and I am not judgmental when it comes to another man’s predilections. However, when the cost is visited upon my bank account and the benefits of the bed fade, I usually become as mad as Queen Mab. My scant income could not compete with his habit. Therefore, he augmented his income with a better-heeled married man who made him his little lunchtime tidbit. Dinners went to a leather daddy who lived in Asbury Park and would pick Arturo up on the corner and redeposit him back there like clockwork. My evenings were spent listening to snores. So we argued.

Arturo turned out to be a mean son-of-a-bitch. He trashed my place one evening, and when I threw him out into the courtyard, he howled like a cat — my neighbors stirring to call the police, who showed up at my door wondering why a young swishy thing like me would even consider letting a bum like Arturo be my roommate. (We did the roommate thing on the police report). The next day, I took off from work and called my sister, Russ — a fellow ironing board surfer, who was also a Gay Sparrow and worked in retail. Together, we packed Arturo up and showed him the door. He was more docile in the mornings — pleading even, but Russ was born with a steel corset. He deposited Arturo on the sand without as much as a z-snap. I was glad to know this tough little baritone from the Tuxedo store — fiery charm in the declarative and a fine connoisseur of dust ruffles and dainty hand towels. I decided to live alone from that day forward. After all, I’m my mother’s son and had to do her proud. But then, Christmas came along and ...

http://www.dancaster.com/
To purchase, click here

Murder on Camac excerpt by Joseph R.G. DeMarco

2009-09-21T07:00:00.001-04:00

In Murder on Camac by Joseph R.G. DeMarco, author Helmut Brandt is gunned down in the street, his life ebbs away and puts a chain of events in motion placing P.I. Marco Fontana on a collision course with Church and community. Brandt’s research into the decades old death of Pope John Paul the First made him serious enemies within the Catholic Church. As Fontana digs into the case, he finds Brandt also had rivals in his work and in his love life. Rivals with motives for murder.

Dueling with the Catholic hierarchy and combing through seedy gay hangouts, Fontana encounters dangerous characters and powerful forces intent on stopping him. When Fontana himself is attacked, he knows he must find answers before any more lives are lost. The web of intrigue and deceit is intricate, tangled, and deadly.

Will the solution uncover a decades old plot to kill a pope or will Fontana find that jealous rage or academic rivalry caused Brandt’s death? The only thing Fontana can be certain of is that Brandt's enemies have killed once and won't hesitate to murder a private eye who gets too close to the truth.

Fontana deftly balances his work as a P.I. with his position as owner of StripGuyz, a troupe of male strippers; he must also negotiate the intricacies of love and relationships which he has been avoiding all too long. Along with Anton and Luke, Olga his secretary, a host of male strippers, and other denizens of his world, Fontana manages to navigate his way to a surprising conclusion.

Murder on Camac
Publisher: Lethe Press (August 22, 2009)
ISBN-10: 1590212134
ISBN-13: 978-1590212134

Excerpt:

“Fontana,” I said, fiddling with the file.

“Someone’s trying to kill me,” he said. No introduction, no nothing. My antennae went up.

“Who is this?”

“My name is Helmut Brandt.” I noticed a slight German accent. The name seemed vaguely familiar.

“I’m listening.”

“Someone… you must believe me, Mr. Fontana. This is no joke.”

“Believe what?”

“Someone wants me dead. For what I’m about to expose in a book I’m writing.”

“How about coming in to my office to talk?”

“Have you heard of Opus Dei, or P2, or the Roman Curia?”

I’d heard of two out of three. Not bad.

“These are the people trying to kill you?” If he thought so, I knew exactly which shrink to refer him to.

“Someone wants me out of the way. I’m in possession of documents which people would kill to keep secret.”

“Has there been an attempt on your life?”

“You’ve got a right to be skeptical, Mr. Fontana, but I assure you I’m telling the truth. Look me up on Amazon or Wikipedia, you’ll see why certain people want me buried. Maybe you’ll find that more convincing.” He paused and I heard him breathing. “I’ll come to your office tomorrow. Ten in the morning.”

He hung up. I didn’t really want to talk to him again, let alone take his case. I’d had my fill of paranoid nut cases. But he’d given me homework. Something about his voice and his name made me curious about why he’d have potentially lethal Christian organizations trying to skin him alive.

As I was about to type his name into Amazon’s search bar, the phone rang again. I wondered why Olga put yet another call through without asking, then I heard the voice.

“Marco, we’ve got a minor problem which you apparently caused.” Anton said.

When Anton used the word ‘minor’ I knew it meant trouble. What he considered minor was usually an eight point five on anyone else’s earthquake scale. His unflappable nature was why he helped manage StripGuyz my other source of income. StripGuyz, an ever-growing troupe of male strippers and go-go boys, was a business I’d started a few years back.

“Cal’s being a diva again? The baby spots are not the right color or what?” I felt happy to have something other than paranoid people to deal with.

“Cal and Bruno are sulking and it’s almost showtime. They both expect to be the Feature this weekend. Said you promised them. Did you promise both of them, Marco?”

“Me? Anton, you know I nev…”

“What I know is, that when a pretty boy bats his eyes at you, you kinda forget the promises you made to the pretty boy who came before.” Anton’s tone was world-weary and accusatory.

“And I thought you liked me. Just a little.”

“I keep hoping you’ll like me. Marco. But that’s another story.”

It certainly was another story. Anton was interested in a relationship. With me. And I was equally interested. All right, maybe not equally. But I was interested. The timing wasn’t right. There were too many unsettled things in my life. I also had to be sure. Trouble is with Anton it was all or nothing. We could date but he wouldn’t allow us to sleep together. Kissing, cuddling. Everything but rolling in the hay. He wouldn’t let that happen until I was ready to commit. It was actually sweet and one of the things I liked about the beautiful hunk.

Anton was far and away the favorite with the crowds when he danced, which was rare now. He was my first dancer and had become my right arm in the business. Even as my manager, Anton was still popular. How could he not be? His sultry, golden, Eastern European looks almost literally hypnotized men. He’d had his share of guys. But no one ever tempted him to settle down. Except me. And I just wasn’t ready.

“Anton, you know how I feel about you.”

“Anyway, Marco, I need you here.” A wistful note threaded its way through his words making me feel small and alone. “Both Cal and Bruno are threatening to go on strike. I’m not sure they know what the word means but they’re threatening. They might take others with them. If you don’t get down here and fix things, we’ll have an empty stage tonight.”

“I’m on my way, Anton.”

I hung up the phone, stashed the file, and found my cell phone hiding under some papers. On the way out I grabbed my jacket, October was colder than expected but I enjoyed a chill in the air. It woke me up, brought me to attention.

“You are going to stripping guys?” Olga kept her eyes glued to the computer monitor.
“Another emergency is arising and they need Daddy to handle?”

“I’m not old enough to be anybody’s daddy,” I said and opened the door. Unless thirty-two was daddy territory, I was still safe.

“You will be back?”

“Not tonight. It’s almost seven. I’ll deal with the boys at Bubbles then get something to eat. Why’re you here so late?”

“Is personal project,” she said.

I took the stairs to the street. The too small elevator was not quick enough. The peeling paint and cracked walls reminded me that I’d promised myself to look for a new office as soon as I cleared a few more cases.

It was chillier than I thought which made me glad that Bubbles, the bar where StripGuyz is based, wasn’t far. The suede jacket I wore was more fashionable than warm. I’d struck up a friendship with Stan, the owner, several years before. When I started the troupe, he was only too glad to let Bubbles become my base of operations. My guys brought in business. Lots of business. Like my office, the bar was smack in the middle of the gayborhood. With four floors of fun, a restaurant, lounges, and a small twenty-four hour café, Bubbles was as complete a setting as you can imagine.

My StripGuyz office occupied a small, microscopic was a better word, space at the rear of the second floor. There was also a large locker-dressing room with lots of accoutrements to keep the boys happy. The dressing room was near the back stairs which only my guys were allowed to use to move from floor to floor without being disturbed.

Ty, the afternoon bartender, was setting things up for the night shift when I walked through the first floor bar. Short and muscled, he had a face like a prize fighter who’d been at it a long time. The rough manly look made him wildly popular.

“Hey, Marco.” Ty turned to smile at me. “Situation upstairs?”

I always unconsciously touched my face when I saw his broken nose and this time was no different.

“Yeah, Ty. Too many divas and not enough stage. That’s why I want you to work for me.” I wasn’t joking. Ty was a natural. His innate grace along with his dark hair and olive complexion made his rough exterior even more appealing. I could see him pulling down a few hundred on weekend nights. No problem.

“I might just be another diva.” He winked and continued stacking glasses.

Nearing the locker room, I heard the buzz of angry voices. I entered without knocking. The glare of dressing room mirror lights was calculated and necessary. These boys needed to see their flaws so they could figure out how to fix or disguise them before going on stage. Some just loved seeing themselves. I squinted until my eyes adjusted.

“Marco!” Cal turned from his place at one of the mirrors. No shirt, smooth chest, low rise jeans revealing the flattest of stomachs, he had a fresh, innocent face. Cal was anything but. He was nice enough but was savvy, could be manipulative, and never let anyone best him. He threw an arm around my shoulder and seductively pulled me to him.

“You’re gonna clear this up, right, Marco?”

“Yeah, you will clear this up,” Bruno rumbled from a far corner. His dark Puerto Rican looks made him appear fierce and wildly sexy. At that moment he smoldered with anger. He was usually polite, courteous, and a willing worker. But anyone could see that beneath the civil exterior, there was more going on, a suppressed slow burn.

“Marco’s a great fixer.” Anton smirked.

I didn’t remember promising feature status to either guy, yet each had the impression I’d given him the nod. Being the feature meant more money. A bigger paycheck from me as well as a lot more in tips. Everyone wanted to be featured. I had a system for rotating them. Usually. Something went wrong this time. Boy, had it gone wrong.

I had to come up with something quick.

“Well, Marco?” Anton smoothed his hair and stared at me as if I had the magic answer. Sure enough it came to me. Maybe it was his stare, maybe I’m just used to talking my way out of things.

“Someone’s not remembering something,” I said.

“You got that right.” Bruno’s soft accent and lingering anger colored his words.

“Doesn’t anybody remember that tonight is Auditions? We never have a Feature on Audition night.” Which was true. I had five guys who’d applied to become dancers. I let applicants work for tips to see how they performed. Not everyone could hack it. Bruno made a ton of money when he’d auditioned.

“Oh, auditions! Right. How could I forget?” Anton fell in with me. Not to save my ass, I was sure. He wanted to keep the dancers happy and working without a lot of unproductive competition.

“Saturday and Sunday are Amateur Nights. We don’t do a Feature those nights either,” I said and heard Cal sniffle softly in the background. “But I’ll tell you what.”

“Yeah, boss man?” Bruno said.

“I’ll let you and Cal have top billing Saturday and Sunday. You can host the Amateur contests and dance between their sets. I’ll make sure Anton schedules each of you for your own feature-weekends later. How’s that?”

Bruno grunted; even his grunts were seductive. The man exuded a sexual power that drew the customers to him like few other dancers. Cal sniffled and hiccupped which I took for agreement.

I knew they were happy, they just had different was of displaying it – after a while you get to know your guys well. They’re great at hiding things from an audience – even though they bare it all for a living. But privately, when they get to know and trust you, there’s little they can hide or want to. With all my own trust issues, lots of people had no trouble trusting me and I never violated that confidence. Having people trust me was paramount. It ranked right up there with loyalty. In the stripper troupe, trust was all there was at times. The guys had to confide in someone and they knew they could count on me. I was something between a house mother and on-scene psychologist. They came to me with all their problems. It was nice being needed.

“Great,” Anton said. “In fact, Marco, you and I will work on that schedule now. Right?” Anton raised one eyebrow, a trick I’d never mastered.

“Yeah, sure. We can work it out right now.” I agreed. Anton hated handling diva moments. I knew my office was going to feel a lot smaller once he got started in on how I needed to manage the group better.

Anton moved to the door. Holding it open for me, he said, “After you, boss.” I didn’t like the way he emphasized the word ‘boss.’

He unlocked my office and held the door for me again. I was in for a lecture.

“Well,” he said, leaning on the door, leaving me no escape. “Quick thinking, Marco. Even I have to admire that. But you weren’t here when it all hit the fan. I was. I had to listen to Cal whine and Bruno rumble like an old car.”

“I’m sorry… really.” I moved closer to him, which wasn’t saying much since the office was like a sardine can made for two. “How can I make it up to you? Tell me what I can do.” I took him in my arms and was about to kiss him.

“Here’s what you can do,” Anton said, not pulling away, but not accepting the kiss, either. “Promote me to Manager.”

“Of the whole shebang?” I was taken aback. Anton was good but I wasn’t about to give up complete control of StripGuyz.

“No, tiger.” Anton said and stroked my cheek with one long finger. “Just of deciding schedules and features. That way, I won’t have to call you for every little thing. We won’t have to have auditions when we didn’t plan to. And you won’t be allowed to make promises you can’t keep. Sound fair?”

I had to admit it was fair. It would take a lot off my back. Anton liked keeping things orderly. Not that I ran a sloppy show. I just had a different management style, kinder and gentler, you might say. After working with some of the low life types I met in my investigative work, dealing with my strippers allowed me to indulge an entirely different side of my personality.

“Sure, it sounds fair. But I can’t promise I won’t interfere once in a while.” I laughed. Pulling him tighter to me I nuzzled his neck and savored the clean fragrance of his flesh.

“But…,” he moaned, a small guttural sound filled with longing. Then he caught himself and cleared his throat. “But not often. Promise?”

“Promise,” I said and made my smartest Boy Scout salute.

He pecked me on the cheek, pulled away, and opened the door.

“What? You’re going?”

“Why? Is there more to discuss?” He was all business.

“I thought maybe we could have dinner?”

“I’ve got a lot to do before the show tonight.” He was almost out the door when he turned. “Give me the list of the guys who want to audition. I’ll call them. Curtain’s up in three hours.”

“Sure. I told them we’d call when we were ready.”

I wanted Anton in my arms but he had his rules and even my saddest puppy-dog look wouldn’t have made a difference. We stood awkwardly outside my office, me wanting to hold him and cover him in kisses and me wanting to pull back and tell myself to slow down. It was tough being me.

Before I could move, Ty rushed up the stairs, his face drained of color.

“There’s been a shooting. On Camac. Some guy was killed…” Ty was breathing heavily and sat down on the top step. “This is crazy. That’s the way I go home every night. It coulda been me. Shot dead on the street.”

http://www.josephdemarco.com/index.php
http://www.lethepressbooks.com/
To purchase, click here

M4M excerpt by Rick R Reed

2009-09-14T07:00:00.002-04:00

M4M by Rick R Reed. Two great stories. One great love. Get between the covers with Ethan and Brian, the men whose hearts connected online and offline in the best-selling VGL Male Seeks Same. Follow them on their continuing journey in NEG UB2, where a shocking health diagnosis derails the couple’s blissful romance and teaches them both a lot about acceptance, forgiveness, and faith...especially when it comes to love.

Previously available only in electronic format, these twin novellas of gay erotic romance have now been combined for a paperback edition!

M4M
Publisher: Amber Allure (June 24, 2009)
ISBN: 978-1-60272-868-4

Excerpt:

Ethan was just finishing a victorious game of Spider Solitaire in his cubicle at LA Nicholes and Associates, the entertainment publicity firm where he toiled, when he overheard the office receptionist (a bleached blond waif of a boy no older than twenty) talking to the payroll clerk.

“Girl, if it worked for me, it can work for you!” The receptionist, even though he ostensibly possessed a penis and a supply of God-given testosterone had a voice that Ethan would swear was an octave above that of Miss Beverly Sills. “I have met, like, so many guys on this site. I have, like, a jillion dates lined up. I don’t know how I’m going to find time to come into work!”

The receptionist and the payroll clerk did what seemed to be a carefully choreographed twitter duet. Ethan stared at his screen, moving a queen onto a king, and listened as the receptionist waxed rhapsodic about an online dating site he had found. He had shrieked that it “wasn’t like all the others,” that it “was more than just for quick hook-ups, like so many of those sites, okay?” and that it was simply, “a lonely girl’s best friend.”

That was all Ethan needed to hear. Well, no, actually, that was not all. And even though Ethan could stand no more Spider Solitaire or Free Cell and was more than ready to call it an honest day’s work, he had to sit in his cubicles for twenty minutes more while “Bubbles” (as he secretly called the receptionist) prattled on about this wondrous—and apparently no-name—dating site. Finally, frustrated, and absolutely unable to endure one more hand of Hearts, Ethan stood and peered over the wall.

Almost immediately, the blond receptionist swiveled his head around to peer at Ethan. “Yes?” he hissed. The payroll clerk, a portly woman of Latina heritage, eyed him with suspicion. Together, they both seemed to be saying, “How dare you interrupt us?” with their eyes.

Ethan applied his most sheepish grin and began to stammer, “Sorry to interrupt but I couldn’t help but overhear what you were saying…you know, about that dating site. But I didn’t catch the name of it.”

The blond and the Latina exchanged knowing glances and Ethan, even though he would never claim psychic abilities, could read their minds quite well, thank you. They were telepathically saying:

“And who does Miss Mary over there think she is?” Bubbles asked.

Latina replied, “I don’t know, but if she thinks she’s going to have the same kind of success that you did just because she logs on, she better think again.”

Snap!

“Hello?” Bubbles was staring at Ethan, head quizzically cocked, and Ethan grinned, realizing he had let his imagination run away with him. He may have just missed his only chance to learn the name of the dating site in question, the one that apparently had men lining up for the affections of a nelly nineteen-year-old who probably didn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds sopping wet and whose dubious intellect most likely rivaled that of a Chihuahua.

“Sorry? I missed that.” Ethan felt heat rising from his neck to his face.

Bubbles closed his eyes and held them shut for a beat to indicate his distaste for, and impatience with, his coworker. Speaking slowly, as if he were talking to someone hearing-impaired, Bubbles enunciated carefully, “The name of the site is bootycall.com.”

The Latina held a hand over her mouth to artlessly—and unsuccessfully—hide her giggles. Ethan noticed her nails were shellacked a lurid red, topped with dragon designs, and so long they were curving back at the top. And this woman managed to handle the challenges of a computer keyboard?

“Oh, okay,” Ethan said, staring down once more at his monitor, which had gone to a screensaver of Barbara Stanwyck movie posters. Sorry, Wrong Number seemed like an apt title to be up at the moment. Ethan may have not been possessed of a dazzling intellect, but even he knew when his leg was being unkindly pulled. He had just sat back down and was powering off when Bubbles’ voice fluttered over the beige partition. “It’s wing people dot com.”

http://www.rickrreed.com/
http://www.amberquill.com/AmberAllure/M4M.html
To purchase, click here

Taming Groomzilla excerpt by E.N. Holland

2009-09-07T07:00:00.001-04:00

In Taming Groomzilla by E.N. Holland, Joel Harfner and Luke Townsend, lovers for two years, have just bought their first home together in Scarborough, Maine. In a moment of domestic impetuosity, Joel proposes to Luke, who says yes. Then, to Joel's surprise, Luke says he wants a wedding with "all the bells and whistles." Joel, who never expected to be married, suddenly finds himself in the midst of planning a full-scale destination event to be held in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Why Massachusetts? As Joel says, "We can't get married in Maine ~ yet ~ but we are ever hopeful." Taming Groomzilla tells the story of how Joel and Luke navigate the tribulations of the six months from "Will you marry me?" to "I do." And while they do seal their union, complete with a kiss, there is more than one twist and turn in store to complicate their journey and keep the reader hilariously entertained.

A portion of the proceeds from the sale of this book will go to Protect Maine Equality to help support their efforts to protect same-sex marriage in Maine.

Taming Groomzilla
Publisher: Bristlecone Pine Press
ISBN: 978-1-60722-010-7

Excerpt (from Chapter Four)

Marital plans were proceeding apace. In fact, I was amazed at just how quickly things were moving forward. I felt like I had gone from a laid-back, low-key sort of guy whose biggest decision every day was what sort of latte to have on my mid-morning coffee break, to a whirling dervish of planning and organization. And if I was a dervish, what was Luke? A Tasmanian devil? I think so. The description seems apt.

Once we had decided on the date, a whole chain of decisions suddenly presented themselves. Where to have the wedding? How elaborate? How many guests?

We started with location. Since same-sex marriage is not legal in Maine (yet—we are ever hopeful) we decided to get married in Massachusetts. We tossed around ideas such as Canada, Spain—even Iowa—but really, I don’t do cornfields well.

Massachusetts made sense: it is familiar and almost local so it wouldn’t be an onerous trip for friends and family.

Luke liked the idea of Provincetown, the gay mecca at the very tip of Cape Cod. While I love P-town, I wondered if it might be a little too “in your face” for some of our guests, especially his parents. But that was precisely why he wanted to force the issue. “I’ve been out for twelve years,” he said. “They need to realize this is not a ‘lifestyle choice’ or phase I am going through.”

I shrugged. Whatever. If he wanted to have a family showdown at his wedding, I wasn’t going to argue. I just hope they take the fisticuffs outside at the reception.

The next obstacle was finding a venue.

We discovered that planning a wedding on a six-month timeline is, at least in the eyes of event managers, akin to planning the invasion of Normandy in three days—in other words, were we nuts? I had a few memorable phone conversations, such as this one with the wedding coordinator at “The Dirty Gull” (name changed to protect the guilty!).

Wedding coordinator, in a faux British accent: “You are scheduling your event for October seventeenth, I assume that would be next year? Eighteen months from now?”

“No,” says I, “October of this year…in the fall.”

“Surely you jest,” says WC. “Don’t you realize that The Dirty Gull is booked at least two years in advance for all events of significance?”

“If I realized that, I wouldn’t be calling now, would I?”

WC sniffed. “Next time, sir, plan better. Propose sooner.”

“I am not planning on proposing again. This is one of those ‘for now and forever’ type deals.”

“Hmmphf,” he said. “I’ve heard that old saw before.”

I hung up on him.

“The Bitter End” seemed promising: they had availability on our selected date and they could accommodate our proposed number of guests. I felt my pulse speed up.

“What’s the process for making a reservation?” I asked.

“Easy,” said the bubbly, chirpy young woman on the other end of the line. “First, we confirm the date.” She whispered to herself as she did this and I could picture her writing the information in big loopy handwriting in a spiral bound notebook. I wondered if she used a purple pen and dotted her i’s with hearts. “Now, do you want a three-course or a five-course meal?”

“Actually, we want passed hors d’oeuvres and champagne.”

“Sorry, no can do!” she said brightly. “Luncheon or dinner only, three or five courses.”

I paused. “Well, let me discuss that with my fiancé. He might be open to the idea of a meal.”

“While we are on the topic of what you can and can’t do, let me outline the rest of our policies: you will use our chef, our baker, our florist, our tables, our chairs, our linens, our silverware, have our bartenders serve only our top-shelf liquor and the event must not go longer than four hours, otherwise we begin charging by the minute. No exceptions. We have a list of approved DJs that you can choose from who will ensure that the music is not played louder than one hundred decibels so that the neighbors aren’t disturbed.”

Quite a list, I thought. “Is that it?”

“Will you be having out-of-town guests?”

“Yes, of course. None of us live in Provincetown.”

“Well then, we require your guests to stay at The Bitter End.”

I looked at the phone like she was a lunatic. “How can you possibly enforce that?” I asked.

“We have our ways,” she said mysteriously.

I hung up on her, too.

I was beginning to despair of finding anything on the Cape and was starting to toy with the idea of Boston, when I made one last desperate call to The Blue Door — desperate, because I think it’s the nicest place in P-town and I never imagined that it would be available at this late date. But, nothing ventured, nothing gained as my mother always says so I called them up.

First, the date. “You’re in luck!” said the manager. “We were booked on the seventeenth but just had a cancellation. I can pencil you in.” Wow. Next question: fifty to seventy people? Oh, yes, we have the perfect size space for that number. Hors d’oeuvres? Absolutely. Bring our own cake? Of course! Our own florist? You even have to ask? Certainly!

I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. There had to be a hitch. Can we get married there? Bien sûr! Dancing? Champagne? Let the party go on into the wee hours of the morning if we want? Yes, yes, yes!

She laughed at my litany of questions. “You sound like you’ve had some bad experiences. The Blue Door tries to bend over backwards to accommodate our guests and make your special day be more than special…we want it to be sublime. All we ask is for a fifty percent deposit and final payment in full two weeks before the event.”

“Okay…this sounds really good. I need to confirm with my fiancé but I can get back to you before the end of the day. One last thing…you do realize we’re gay, right? That’s not an issue?”

“GAY!” she shrieked. “GAY!” So this was the hitch—until she laughed. “Honey, this is P-town. I would have been surprised if you weren’t gay.”

All right, she had a sense of humor. I could work with this woman.

http://www.bcpinepress.com/special_release.php

To purchase from All Romance eBooks (in HTML, PDF, epub, and Mobi (prc) formats): click here

Don Juan and Men anthology edited by Caro Soles

2009-08-31T07:00:00.002-04:00

The story of Don Juan is a popular one and has appeared in many guises throughout literary and musical history. The Spanish Don, with his single minded drive to seduce, conquer and desert those who fall under his spell, fascinates us all. He is a man of power, a man who goes against the rules, a cynic with devastating charm. But the stories in this anthology will explore a side of the Don that has not been examined before. What if Don Juan were gay?

Don Juan and Men: Tales of Lust and Seduction, an anthology edited by Caro Soles, contains stories that range from literary to in-your-face erotic, from fantasy to historical, to other-worldly and more. But they all have something to say about Don Juan and Men.

This excerpt is from the opening of the story “A Weekend in the Country” by Caro Soles, and takes place in new York City, 1916.

Don Juan and Men: Tales of Lust and Seduction
MLR Press (August, 2009)
ISBN-10: 1608200469
ISBN-13: 978-1608200467

Excerpt:

I can’t remember a time when I didn’t love him, hate him, sometimes want to thrust a stiletto into his black heart. He has ruined my life but I do not want to live in a world without my lord, Count Andrei Alexandrovitch Rubikov.

Even here in America, so far away from our Mother Russia, he is a magnet for all in society. He fits in here, I do not. They court him, flatter him outrageously, for his looks, his wealth, his title. Me they look at sideways, trying not to see what I am, what I long for, lest it contaminate them, make them see my lord in a darker light. I watch them trying to place me; not a servant, yet not quite an equal. There is no title before my name, yet I am at ease in society, know everyone he knows. And I know his secrets. Sometimes I think this shows in my eyes and it scares them.

As I stand near the half open door to the Streusser’s ballroom, I watch him through the potted palms, the curly ferns reaching out to tickle my cheek. I see Andrei swing his blushing partner expertly into the next waltz, watch his full lips moving as he tells her lies, watch his green eyes slide away to fasten on the figure of her lanky dark-eyed fiancé Paul, standing in a group of young men, laughing. I see their eyes meet, and watch the young man’s laughter fade away as his gaze is held captive by the hunter. I know that look. Even though it is not directed at me now, I can feel the force of it, as if my body is attached to Andrei in some way, as if an unseen web is vibrating between us. My heart lurches.

The music rolls on, spilling out the door of the ballroom into the garden of this huge country house on the Hudson where Andrei and I are guests for the weekend. And then the dance is over and he has brought her back to her seat on the other side of the palms. She is not an attractive girl, hardly even a girl any more, but her heavy face is flushed and her eyes sparkle. Bathed in the reflection of Andrei’s charm, she is almost pretty.

“Thank you, mademoiselle,” he says, bowing over her hand. The diamond pin of the order of St. Dimitri flashes on his chest. “You are a lucky man, monsieur,” he goes on, turning to the fiancé, Paul.

He blushes, though whether at the compliment or at the heat of those green eyes it is impossible to say. “I know that, sir. Sometimes I pinch myself to see if it is all a dream.”

“A lovely dream to be enjoyed while it lasts,” Andrei says.

“While it lasts?” Paul says, his shoulders straightening, his chin rising. He is not as tall as Andrei. He looks like an adolescent beside him.

"Of course, my dear sir. It will be over once you are married, no? She will not be your fiancée then, but your dear wife?”

The young man relaxes and laughs and glances at his young lady, who fusses with her dance card, crossing off a name, adding another as she chats with a young man who has come to claim his dance. The music changes to a fox trot, a dance made popular recently by the Castles.

“Do you enjoy a good cigar, by any chance?” Andrei asks Paul. “I am becoming quite the aficionado, with the help of your soon-to-be father-in-law.” He moves between Paul and the other young men, effectively cutting him away from his friends. Like a sheepdog, rounding up strays.

They stroll out into the garden and he sees me.

“Misha! Join us for a cigar.” His eyes are bright, with a light I recognize all too well. My presence will give Paul a false sense of security. My frustration will fuel Andrei’s desire for the other.

“‘When the wolf shows his teeth he isn’t laughing’,” I say in Russian.

He smiles wider, his sensual lips glistening in the wavering light of the one gas lamp at the side of the red brick path. “Misha and his Russian proverbs,” he says moving closer to Paul to show his allegiance is with him, the new friend, not me.

“What does it mean?” Paul accepts the cigar from Andrei, reaches for the cutter on
his watch chain.

“It means that he is sulking,” Andrei says. “It means he worries too much, mon cher.”

Paul does not seem to notice the endearment as he clips the end off his cigar and moves along the path beside Andrei.

“It is difficult bearing the hope of one’s family on one’s shoulders,” Andrei says softly.

Paul looks at him, but says nothing. I can’t read his expression in the shadows.

“In my country we have another proverb,” Andrei goes on. “‘Marry your son when you will, your daughter when you can.’ Misha taught me that one.” He smiles and looks at Paul. He leans closer. “I understand. I have a wife at home chosen by my father. She is not beautiful, but sweet, like your fiancée. And with a lot of money.”

The web of half-truths and outright lies he spins wraps around Paul, light as gossamer, strong as silk, and soon the young man is confessing his plight. And yes, the hope of his family does lie on his shoulders. His is an old name and pedigree here, but there is no longer any money left. He has three sisters who need dowries.

“I am very fond of Olive,” Paul says.

“Of course you are,” Andrei soothes.

The farther away we have come from the house, the closer Andrei has moved to him until they are now arm in arm. It appears a quite a natural progression, since I am also arm in arm on his other side, but I know they have forgotten about me already. Soon Andrei will slide out from my grasp and steer Paul away from me and out of sight in the rose garden.

“A life without passion,” Andrei murmurs, “is hardly worth living.”

Paul was leaning into Andrei now and I can almost feel him shiver as I withdrew into the shadows.

A woman’s voice shatters the perfumed air. “Paul? Are you out here?” It’s Olive, the fiancée.

I watch the two men pause, raise their heads, look at each other. Paul will be startled, pulled out of the dream he has walked into, guilt flooding over him at what he has confessed, what he has experienced.

I can almost feel Andrei’s annoyance as Paul slips from him, hurrying back to the warmth and light and security of the familiar. But he turns at the steps to the porch and says, “We’ll continue our talk later, sir.” He raises a hand. Even then he hesitates.

Andrei is barely visible in the shadows, and I feel him tremble with suppressed anger at the woman for her unfortunate timing. I move beside him and we watch until they finally disappear within.

http:// www.carosoles.com
http://www.bloodywords.com

To purchase, click here

Jacob's Pony excerpt by Jude Mason

2009-08-24T07:00:00.001-04:00

In a world where man power takes the place of machine power, pony boys are the norm. Can a wealthy land owner fall for his steed?

In Jude Mason's Jacob's Pony, society has finally decided that putting criminals in prison and forcing society to pay for their upkeep just isn't working. So a three-strikes-and-you're-out law is created. On the third strike, the convict is sentenced to lifelong slavery. He or she loses all rights and is sold to the highest bidder. The only rule for the buyer is he, or she, can't end the life of the slave.

Jacob Scott is a landowner and slaveholder. He's single, dashing, gay and very much into treating his slaves well. He's just bought a shipment of slaves and one of them, David, catches his eye. The attraction grows, and as the slave is put through his paces, their lust turns to a more tender affection. When David declares his innocence, Jacob wonders if he might be telling the truth.

How can a wealthy landowner trust a convicted felon? Can a slave truly find a way into his master’s heart?

Jacob’s Pony
Publisher: Total E-Bound
ISBN: 978 1 907010 38 4

Excerpt:

Jacob Scott stood looking through the tall, multi-paned window of his study, watching the many slaves bent forward, labouring in the fields. Hobbled in groups of six, the muscular men were forced to work as teams, eat only when their mates ate, sleep together, do everything together. Over time, the work slaves bonded, became more like brothers than the slaves they’d been sentenced as.

Criminals no longer filled the prisons. In the collapse of 2045, prison had been deemed an ineffectual way to deal with those who broke society’s laws. The resources no longer existed to pamper them, and their labour could be used much more productively. Slowly the prisons emptied as guards cleaned the men up and sent them to newly built auction houses where they were sold to the highest bidder. Farming, mining, and mundane jobs were no longer done by machine, but by slave power. The young and good-looking found themselves in a different kind of bondage. Trained as male whores, they became the lunchtime playthings and subservient toys of anyone who could pay the pittance their owners charged. Unable to refuse a client’s desires, the slaves became accustomed to being used and abused dozens of times a day.

Jacob thought about those early days, when the first few slaves appeared. A great many people had still thought of them as convicts and wanted revenge. Prices were high and the typical family couldn’t afford the luxury of slave ownership. The poor sods were abused terribly until the citizenry realised that slavery was punishment enough in most cases.

When more slaves became available, prices went down and the average household could afford at least one. It became commonplace to see naked, or nearly naked, men going about the business of their Masters or Mistresses.

It was easy to spot a slave. Upon being sold, they were branded and collared. The collar could be changed, but the brand was permanent and always visible. It was incredibly rare for a slave to be given his freedom.

A large, white delivery dray pulled into the drive and stopped outside the front door. The eight draft slaves who’d drawn the vehicle staggered and gasped for breath, their bodies slick with sweat from the hard climb to his home. Jacob’s attention shifted from the men in the field to the back of that cart. He waited patiently for the driver to get out and open the back. Jacob knew what the cargo would be. He’d done the purchasing himself and was eager to see the four new slaves climb out.

The first clambered out and stumbled, nearly falling to the grass. The only thing that kept him erect was the chain joining his collar to that of his neighbour. Each man’s hands were secured to their collar and each collar had a short length of chain joining him to another. All of them were nude and all of them were young, well-muscled male animals. In truth, that was exactly what each of them was. Their humanity had been stripped from them when the judge had declared them to be slaves.

“Master, you asked to be informed when the shipment arrived.”

Jacob turned towards the soft masculine voice. “Thank you, Imp. Get my shoes and have them at the door for me.”

The slave, Imp, bowed and rushed from the room. He’d been one of Jacob’s first acquisitions and still served him well, although he was long past his prime. At least thirty-five, his body was no longer as firm or as smooth as it had been, but his cock still rose on command and he could keep from coming for as long as Jacob wanted. Years of training had definitely paid off with Imp.

Jacob watched the play of the slave’s muscular arse and thighs as he hurried down the long, carpeted hall. Imp wasn’t quite naked, but the tiny strip of cloth hanging from a string around his waist did little to conceal his genitals. Another perk of owning slaves, Jacob thought and smiled thinking of how many new slaves balked at the indecency of their attire.

When Imp vanished around the corner at the end of the hall, Jacob returned his attention to the window and the slaves disembarking.

All four were dark-haired and deeply tanned. They could have been related, and that was what he’d aimed for when he’d searched the auction house. The slaves stood side by side, and he noticed that even their cocks were about the same size and shape. Shaved as they were, he could see their balls also appeared similar, hanging low against their thighs.

When he was sure they were lined up properly and ready for his inspection, he headed into the hallway. At the end, he turned left and trotted down the curved staircase. The lower floor was luxurious, beautifully decorated in pale mauve and gold, the drapes matching the brocade on the large couches and chaise lounges he’d chosen. Tile mixed with wood covered the floors, and mats covered them from the worst of the traffic. Large urns and flower arrangements were tucked away in corners or against the wall, strategically placed to better show off the beauty of the place. A small army of slaves kept it clean and the flowers fresh.

He strode to the large front door where Imp waited. The slave stood close to the wall, hands behind his head, his back arched, chest and groin thrust forward. The display was the typical ‘at rest’ pose most slaves were taught to use while waiting.

Jacob sat on the bench and lifted one foot. Imp dropped to his knees and quickly slid the soft leather boot on him. The second followed. A moment later, Jacob rose and stroked the kneeling man’s head. “Good boy. You’re still my Imp.”

“Thank you, Master. I hope to be your Imp for many more years.”

Jacob turned and waited while Imp opened the large wooden door before striding towards the waiting slave dray. The four new ones stood in the shade, lined up beside the side of the dray. They’d assumed the same pose as Imp had taken, and also spread their feet wide, completing the display position.

All of their bodies had been shaved and the brand was fresh on their left buttock. Jacob stopped in front of them and waited for the elderly, grey-haired delivery man to offer him the paperwork to sign. He checked it, making sure all four of the beasts were listed then scrawled his name. Handing the tablet back, he said, “Thanks. Do you need the collars back?”

“Nah, the boss said whenever you’re in town to drop them off,” the man replied cordially. He flipped Jacob a key that would no doubt open all of the collars, which he slid into his pocket.

For Jude Mason's website, click here
To purchase, click here
To join Jude Mason's mailing list, email: jude.mason@yahoo.ca

Mahu Vice excerpt by Neil S Plakcy

2009-08-17T07:00:00.001-04:00

Mahu Vice, by Neil S Plakcy, begins with the death of a young Chinese boy in an arson at a shopping center once owned by Kimo’s father—a place readers might recognize from the first books in the series. Kimo discovers, as he works once more with fire investigator Mike Riccardi, that there is unfinished business between them. In this excerpt, Kimo spends some time with Mike and realizes that the case may be tied to his past in more ways than just the location of the fire.

Mahu Vice
Alyson Books (August 1, 2009)
ISBN-10: 1593501110
ISBN-13: 978-1593501112

Excerpt:

On my way home, Mike called my cell. “I’ve got a lead,” he said. “You going to be home tonight?”

“I’m on my way there now,” I said, then regretted it. I was having enough trouble dealing with Mike on neutral ground, with others present. What was I doing inviting him over? And what was he doing asking?

It was just after five, the height of rush hour, and the sun was setting. The streets were alive with neon and with car stereos blasting hip hop, as the tropical night descended rapidly. The air was hot and humid, without a hint of a trade wind. The slow traffic and intermittent showers made me edgy, combined with the sense that our case wasn’t moving forward either. Or maybe it was just knowing that I was going to see Mike.

When I pulled into my parking space, he was sitting in his truck on the street, the same one with the flames painted on the side that he’d been driving when we dated. “I had an idea,” he said, getting out of the truck and walking toward me. “I cross-referenced a bunch of unsolved arsons, and I think I found a pattern.”

He showed me a list of ten arsons over the past two years, but the sun was setting and it was too dark to see clearly, so I led him upstairs to my apartment. Fortunately, I’d cleaned up on Sunday so most of the clothes and sports equipment were put away, and there were no crusty dishes in the sink or dirty underwear on the floor to embarrass me.

He sat down at my kitchen table, and I got us a pair of Longboard lagers from the fridge—only realizing as I popped the caps that if Mike was an alcoholic, based on that vodka in his water bottle, it was a bad idea to give him a beer.

He accepted the bottle gratefully, and took a deep swig. “Long day,” he said.

I sat across from him and looked at the list. The other fires had been at a massage parlor in Waikele, a quick mart in Kaneohe, a coffee shop near the airport, a Christian religious shop downtown, and a lingerie shop in Chinatown. “They were all places where the business closed down before the fire,” Mike said. “I want to see if there’s anything else that connects them. Business licenses, phone numbers, that kind of thing. You have any ideas?”

There was something familiar about that lingerie shop, and I struggled to make the connection. Then it hit me. “I know this shop.”

Mike looked at me, his eyebrows raised. “My old partner from Waikīkī, Akoni, and I went there when we were investigating Tommy Pang’s murder. Tommy owned the place. I wonder if any of these others were owned by tong guys.”

“Can you run them by your Organized Crime unit tomorrow?”

“I will.” Something was tickling around the edge of my brain. “The pharmacist’s wife told me that she thought the old Chinese woman at the clinic was named Norma. And at this lingerie shop, there was another old Chinese woman named Norma.” I reached over to the sofa, picked up my laptop and brought it to the table, where I turned it on. “If I can pull up the report online, maybe I can find her last name, and we’ll see if we can connect her to both places.”

Mike scooted his chair around next to me and looked on as I logged on to the department’s intranet and searched for the right files. Being so close to Mike unleashed a wave of pure longing, followed by sadness. I had loved him, and I’d been devastated to find out that he’d cheated on me, thinking at the time that it meant he hadn’t loved me the way I’d loved him. I’d over-reacted—but if we hadn’t broken up over that incident, something else would have happened to tear us apart.

Mike still wore the same lemon-scented cologne, and I wondered if he’d reapplied it in his truck while waiting for me to pull up. What did he want from me? Why couldn’t this meeting have waited until the next morning, and included Ray?

I multi-tasked-- talking to Mike, searching the files, and at the same time considering Mike’s motives. I’m no computer geek; I leave that to Harry Ho. It took me a lot of searching, because I wasn’t giving it my full attention, to pull up the reports from Tommy Pang’s murder.

It wasn’t an investigation I was happy to recall, since it was the one that had dragged me out of the closet two years before. But I found Norma Ching’s name in one of our reports. “You think this might be the same old woman?” Mike asked.

“Worth checking,” I said. A few minutes later, I’d run out of options. There was no listing for Norma in the phone book, or in Yahoo’s people search, and she had no criminal record.

Tommy Pang, who had owned the lingerie shop, was my Uncle Chin’s illegitimate son. Would his widow, my Aunt Mei-Mei, have known Norma? I looked at my watch. It was dinner time, and I knew if I showed up at her house she’d ply me with delicious food. Mike, too, if he was along for the ride.

“Want to take a trip up to St. Louis Heights with me?” I asked.

http://www.mahubooks.com/
To purchase, click here

Hard Candy excerpt by Amanda Young

2009-08-10T07:00:00.000-04:00

Amanda Young's Hard Candy brings you three novellas of torrid love between men. In this excerpt from one of these stories, Man Candy, Aaron Samuels has a secret. He's in love with his boss, Logan Remora. Logan is everything Aaron's ever wanted in a man, except he's straight... and married.

Hard Candy
Publisher: CreateSpace July 10, 2009)
ISBN-10: 1448614120
ISBN-13: 978-1448614127

Excerpt:

Aaron jerked back, his gaze flying from his feet up to the man -- Logan or Jake, though he couldn’t tell which -- who stood a couple of yards away. The sudden movement caused him to overbalance in the swing. The seat shot forward, while his torso went backward. His back hit the ground, startling him, but doing no real damage to anything other than his pride.

The man appeared above him, the wry twist to his sinfully shaped lips automatically identifying him as Jake. Logan was much too serious most of the time. “You okay?” He held out his hand.

“Yeah,” Aaron replied as he accepted Jake’s hand and allowed himself to be hauled to his feet. “Haven’t I already told you to quit sneaking up on me?” Aaron wiped bits of grass off his clothes as he glared at Jake.

“Uh, no.” Jake frowned. “And I didn’t mean to surprise you. It’s not like I was hiding in the bushes and jumped out yelling ‘Boo.’ Besides, you wouldn’t startle so easy if you would just relax a little. You’re too damn high-strung.”

“Fuck you,” Aaron responded defensively.

Jake chuckled, the deep, husky sound going right to Aaron’s balls, the fickle bastards that they were. “About time.”

“Huh?” Maybe he’d conked his head harder than he thought ’cause Aaron had no idea what Jake was talking about.

“I’ve been waiting for you to drop that proper little façade you wear around the office all day and be yourself. I just knew you’d be a spitfire as soon as you learned to let go a little.” Jake’s arm extended and his fingers brushed over the side of Aaron’s face. Aaron’s gaze widened at the touch. Jake shrugged. “You had a bit of grass on your cheek.”

Jake’s touch lingered, and Aaron had to bite down on the inside of his cheek to keep from moaning, or worse. When Jake’s thumb grazed the corner of his lips, a tremor ran down Aaron’s spine. Jake’s scent surrounded him, wrapped him in its musky essence, a light hint of spicy cologne teasing his nose. He wanted to close his eyes and lose himself in the moment, but couldn’t allow himself the pleasure. Showing his absorption in something as simple as a gentle touch would be way too telling about his feelings.

A voice in his head spoke up, warning him that it wasn’t Jake he was attracted to. He was only responding so strongly because of the resemblance to Logan. Wasn’t he?

“You’re so beautiful.”

Jake’s huskily whispered words yanked Aaron out of his musings. He shook his head, his cheeks heating because of the compliment. “No, I’m not. I’m --” There was nothing special about him. He was too short, too skinny, too everything.

He couldn’t do this. His dick throbbed angrily in response to his choice, but he ignored it and jerked away from Jake. Immediately, he missed the connection, but he forced himself to take an extra step back, needing more distance between them. The temptation to return the gentle touch, to see where it might lead, rode him hard. Jake’s allure was almost too strong to resist, but Aaron persevered. There was no other option.

Letting go of his tightly held restraint would be akin to playing with fire. And though he knew better, his body craved the heat Jake offered. Craved it worse than a nicotine addict does a smoke right after sex.

Aaron inwardly groaned. Sex. Visions of him and Jake, their limbs sweaty and flushed by a vigorous round of fucking, popped into his head. The image was so real, he could almost feel the damp heat, taste the salty tang of well-earned perspiration. He didn’t even need Jake to torment him; he was doing a good enough job of it himself.

Jake stepped forward and reached for him. Aaron hastily backpedaled away. His ass smacked into something hard and cylindrical. He felt around behind him, touched cool metal, and realized he’d run into one of the poles anchoring the swing set. He squeezed his eyes shut. Jesus, he was a klutz.

Strong hands bracketed his shoulders. “Look at me.”

Aaron shook his head in answer, refusing to open his eyes. He was being childish and he knew it, but it would be all too easy to lose himself in those dark, mesmerizing eyes. Casual sex was fine, not a thing wrong with it, but he couldn’t make love to Jake and not let his feelings for Logan get in the way. Jake clearly only wanted a plaything and would move on as soon as the thrill of the conquest was over. By then, it would be too late. Aaron would be head over heels and shit out of luck.

A finger caressed Aaron’s jaw, tilting his chin up. “Am I that unattractive to you, Aaron?”

Aaron could hear the smile in Jake’s voice, and it incensed him. The smug bastard knew full well that wasn’t the problem. He opened his eyes and glowered up at Jake, who towered over him, close to six inches taller than Aaron’s own five foot nine. “Stop it, Jake. Quit toying with me.”

A frown creased Jake’s forehead. “I’m not --” His voice cut off, and then with a little shake of his head he leaned down, bringing their eyes into alignment. The tip of his nose ran over Aaron’s in feathery Eskimo kisses.

Aaron pressed his hands into Jake’s chest and felt Jake’s heartbeat thundering against his palms. His fingers flexed over Jake’s pecs, unable to resist, and he wanted to moan in response to the wicked feel of them contracting against his touch.

“I don’t know what you want from me.”

Okay, so that wasn’t precisely the truth. It was clear enough what Jake wanted. The question resting heavy on Aaron’s mind was why. In all the time he’d worked for Remora Construction, Jake had never come on to him. Sure, they’d flirted back and forth a little bit, but that was it. Aaron couldn’t understand why Jake was hitting on him now. It made no sense.

Jake quirked a single brow. “Don’t you?”

http://www.amandayoung.org/
To purchase, click here

Time After Time excerpt by J.P. Bowie

2009-08-03T07:00:00.001-04:00

In Time After Time by J.P. Bowie, Michael Ballantyne, a young graphic artist living in Los Angeles, bewildered by a series of erotic dreams, is eager to uncover their meaning. When he is informed that he is the sole beneficiary in an unknown man's will and is now the owner of a large estate in Hertfordshire, England, Michael feels that somehow he has been given a key to unlock the dreams' mysteries. This feeling grows stronger when he comes face to face with Jonathan Robertson, a handsome Englishman, who more than just resembles the man in his dreams.

Together they attempt to solve the mystery that surrounds the disappearance and apparent murder of Jonathan Harcourt, the son of the previous owner of Bedford Park.

The mutual attraction they quickly feel for one another is hampered by the sudden arrival of Michael's jealous boyfriend, Steve Miller, and by Jack Trenton, a formidable and uninvited presence who has occupied the lodge by the estate gates.

When Michael, along with his now ex-boyfriend, Steve, is held hostage by Trenton, it becomes clear that Bedford Park holds many more secrets than anyone ever thought. Michael and Jonathan are soon to discover that the keepers of those secrets are dangerous men, willing to stop at nothing in order to make an ancient oath come to pass.

Time After Time
Publisher: MLR Press (June 21, 2009)
ISBN: 9781608201566

CHAPTER ONE

For the umpteenth time in twenty minutes Michael Ballantyne glanced toward the diner entrance to see if his brother Brad had yet deigned to arrive for their lunch date. “Where in hell is he?” he muttered to himself, sucking up half his iced tea in frustration. He caught the waiter’s eye and ordered a burger. No point in waiting any longer – looked like Brad was a no show.

He tried to shuck off the feeling of disappointment that his brother hadn’t even bothered to call him to say he couldn’t make it, but just as the waiter took his order, Michael saw a red-faced Brad dash into the diner and scan the crowded room. On seeing Michael wave at him, he hurried over to the booth.

“Shit, sorry,” he said sliding onto the seat opposite Michael. “Had a client who just wouldn’t get off the phone. What’re you having?”

“Cheeseburger…”

“I’ll have the same,” Brad told the waiter, “and a beer.”

“Drinking at lunch time?”

“I’m taking the afternoon off. I’ve been working way too hard lately.”
Michael chuckled. “Who told you that?”

“I told me that, my boy – and it’s the truth. Five closings in one month, two of ‘em utter bastards – I’m exhausted.” Brad slumped in his seat to emphasize his words.

“You should be pleased – everyone else I know in real estate is bitching about how slow it is.”

“That’s ‘cause they don’t know how to play a bad market.” Brad grinned at his brother. “So, how’re you doin’?”

“Okay.”

“Still seeing Steve?”

“I guess…”

“You guess?”

Michael gazed at his brother’s handsome face, his forehead now creased by a frown. “Well, he’s out of town right now on a business trip trying to find new clients. I haven’t seen very much of him lately. I think he’s losing interest.”

Brad raised an eyebrow. “What a clown. Losing interest in a good looking dude like you – if you weren’t my brother, I’d be putting the make on you myself.”

Michael laughed softly. “You’d have to turn gay too. I don’t think Miranda would approve, do you?”

“Probably not.” Brad touched Michael’s hand. “He’s not good enough for you, bro. Miranda and I both agree on that.”

Michael shrugged. “Steve’s all right. He’s just a businessman first.”

“Huh…” Brad fell silent as the waiter delivered their burgers and his beer. “So, you said you hadn’t been sleeping too well recently. What’s up with that?”

Michael hesitated. Did he really want to tell his brother about the strangely erotic dreams he’d been having? Dreams that would wake him in the middle of the night and keep him awake with the memory of how incredible they were – how incredible the man in the dreams was. He felt his face flush as he remembered.

“What’s wrong?” Brad was staring at him with concern.

“Nothing…it’s just that I’ve been having these strange dreams for the last three weeks or so. It’s a bit embarrassing…”

“How so?”

Michael shifted in his seat and couldn’t meet his brother’s eyes as he answered. “Um… they’re kind of erotic…” He cleared his throat. “You don’t want to hear this.”

“Try me.”

“Well. There’s this guy, and he’s making love to me.”

“And it’s not Steve, I take it,” Brad said through a mouthful of burger.

Michael shook his head. “No, it’s not anyone I know, or have ever known. I’d like to know him,” he added with a shaky laugh. “He’s English, and is quite, uh…incredible.”

“English, huh? So what’s the problem?”

“There’s no problem. I’m just a bit confused as to why I should have the same dream about the same guy, night after night.”

“Some kind of wish fulfillment maybe,” Brad suggested. “I mean, it sounds like your relationship with Steve isn’t going anywhere, so you’re compensating by dreaming of a guy who’ll love you unconditionally.”

Michael stared at his brother. “Okay, when did you become a budding Freud?”

Brad chuckled and picked up a napkin to wipe his mouth. “Nothing very complicated there, Michael. You’re horny, so getting off in your dreams works like a charm.”

“Brad!”

“Well, doesn’t it?”

“Trust you to take it to the lowest common denominator.”

“And trust you to make more of it than it is,” Brad said, grinning. “Every guy has a wet dream now and then, Michael – especially when they’re not getting any.”

Michael groaned and shook his head. “I knew I shouldn’t have told you about this. Now you’re going to give me shit about it every time we’re together. Don’t tell Miranda!”

“Are you kidding? She’ll love this. She’ll think it so romantic that her brother-in-law has a dream man in his life.”

“That’s the problem – he’s not in my life.”

“Nor is Steve by the sounds of things. You know what I think?”

“No, but I know you’re about to tell me.”

“I think you should tell Steve to go to hell. He keeps you dangling there for his own convenience. You know, Miranda and I have talked about this…”

“Oh great,” Michael moaned. “My brother and sister-in-law sit around talking about my love life.”

Brad chuckled. “Or lack of it. But seriously, I haven’t said this before, but Steve’s not the guy for you. He’s just way too self-centered…”

“Well, he’s got a lot on his mind. Running your own business is a full-time commitment…”

“Yeah, yeah,” Brad made a dismissive gesture. “But that night we all had dinner together I couldn’t get over the fact that every time the conversation strayed to something that didn’t directly concern him, his eyes sorta just glazed over, and he lost all interest in what we were saying. I mean what d’you guys talk about when you’re together? Is he remotely interested in what you do?”

“Of course he is.” Michael looked away from his brother’s searching gaze. “Well, I think he is…”

“Well, he should be. Graphic art is…is art for Chrissakes. You’re a talented guy. What does he do? Sells computer parts – no talent needed for that, is there?”

“Brad, you’re being very judgmental all of a sudden.”

Brad’s eyes narrowed as he stared at Michael. “I don’t want to see my little brother get hurt, that’s all. It doesn’t take an analyst to see you’re unhappy. Dreaming about getting laid instead of getting the real thing means you’re compensating for what’s lacking in your life.”

Michael sighed. “Okay I admit I’m a tad ticked off he doesn’t seem to want to spend more time with me, but I really don’t think the dreams have anything to do with Steve. They’ve just started recently…”

“Because you’re frustrated…” Brad gave him a mischievous smile. “Tell me, how d’you feel when you wake up from one of these dreams? Are you, uh…damp?”

“Brad.” Michael felt his face grow hot. “You really are too much.” He looked around the crowded diner praying no one could hear their conversation, but the noise level was reassuringly high.

Brad laughed at his brother’s embarrassment. “Michael, you and I have shared just about everything in our lives. There’s not much you and I don’t know about each other – we’ve slept in the same bed, shared the same tent on camping trips, skinny dipped together – and then there was that time when we…”

“Okay, now you’re really embarrassing me,” Michael hissed under his breath. But what Brad had said was true. Unlike a lot of siblings, he and Brad had always been close – a bond that had grown even stronger after the unexpected death of their parents. Now he gazed fondly at his brother’s smiling face, at the sparkle in his eyes, and knew he could tell him just about anything.

“All right, yes I’m…I’m…”

“Wet.”

Michael groaned. “Yes.”

“And the guy?”

“Incredible, like I said. He’s like a god come to life. Dark hair that falls in curls over his forehead, eyes so dark blue they’re almost cobalt, lips that…Jesus, why am I telling my straight brother all this?”

“Because you want to share, and we always share, remember? You listened to me when Miranda and I were having our problems and despite the fact that I’m straight, I love my gay baby brother, and I want to see you happy – and laid.”

Michael’s laugh was followed by a smile of real affection. “I love you too, big brother – and you’ll be the first to know when it happens.”

“Well, after you, hopefully,” his brother kidded him.

***************

Later, as he entered his apartment, Michael immediately noticed the flashing light on his answering machine. Steve? He could only hope. He hesitated before pressing the message button. What Brad had said about Steve still bothered him. Was he being blind to Steve’s faults simply because he didn’t want the relationship, such as it was, to fail?

“Oh, come on,” he muttered. “Get a grip.” He pressed the button and sighed with disappointment as a voice rasped in his ears. It wasn’t Steve…

“This message is for Mr. Michael Ballantyne. My name is Ronald Fortescue of Fortescue, Reynolds and Haversham, Solicitors. My office is located in London, England, and we represent the estate of Mr. Lionel Burroughs. Mr. Burroughs, I regret to say, passed away quite recently and has left a will that names you, Mr. Ballantyne, as his sole beneficiary.”

Michael stared at the answering machine in disbelief. “What the hell? Is this some kind of joke?”

“If you would care to phone my office as soon as possible, I will make arrangements to inform you of the exact details of Mr. Burroughs will – along with the conditions of your inheritance. Here is my number…”

Michael had to play the message twice more before his shaking fingers could write the number down. This had to be some kind of a hoax, like one of those emails he got now and then telling him he’d won a million dollars on a lottery he’d never entered. But the man had left a phone number… He glanced at his watch. Six o’clock. London was what…eight hours ahead? No point in calling right then. He’d do it first thing in the morning. Should he call Brad and tell him? No…he’d wait until he’d spoken to this Fortescue guy. Maybe the whole thing was one big mistake…they’d gotten the wrong Michael Ballantyne. Yeah, that was it…there had to be a hundred Michael Ballantynes in the Los Angeles phone book. They’d just picked the wrong one.

Quickly, he punched in Brad’s number. “Hi Brad, it’s Michael.”

“No kidding. I do have caller ID y’know.”

“Right. Listen, I just got a weird message on my answering machine.”

“Well, this is LA, Michael.”

“Be serious. Some guy from England is telling me I’ve been left an inheritance or something…”

“Sweet. How much?”

“I don’t know that – but Brad, I’ve never heard of this guy…a Lionel Burroughs. Have you?”

“Burroughs? Nope, can’t say I have.”

“You think he might have been a friend of Mom and Dad’s?”

“I have no idea, Michael. I don’t recall them ever mentioning a Lionel Burroughs. They were only in England that one time, remember?”

Michael remembered only too well. It was shortly after that trip that his parents had been killed in a deadly freeway accident involving multiple vehicles. The memory of that terrible time sent an involuntary shudder through Michael’s body.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “I remember… Anyway,” he continued after clearing his throat, “I have to call this solicitor guy in London tomorrow. I guess he’ll be able to tell me what the connection is.”

“Can’t wait to hear more, bro. Call me soon as you’ve talked to him.”

“Will do… I’ll talk to you later. Tell Miranda ‘hi’.”

With another glance at the phone number he’d written on the notepad he kept by the phone, Michael walked through his bedroom into the bathroom to undress. He had no plans for the evening and was looking forward to lounging in sweats in front of the television with a pizza and beer. He stood for a moment in front of the mirror as he removed his shirt and gazed at himself critically.

What was it about him that Steve found so easy to resist?

He wasn’t bad looking, even Brad said he was good looking. He kept himself in shape, and he always made sure he smelled nice… But it wasn’t enough obviously, he thought despondently. Sighing, he ran a hand through his chestnut brown hair and threw his shirt into the laundry basket. As he met his own green-eyed gaze in the mirror he wondered if Brad had been right about those dreams. Was he simply dreaming up this beautiful guy to replace the man he could tell was slipping away from him?

Wow, that’s really pathetic, he thought, grimacing at his reflection. Yet, those dreams seemed so real – the man felt real, warm and hard bodied under Michael’s hands, his skin so smooth, his lips so soft, his kiss a sweet hunger…

Jesus… Michael stepped back from the mirror. He was hard as a rock. “Pull yourself together,” he muttered. The phone’s strident ring brought him back to reality. He picked up in the bedroom.

“Michael Ballantyne.”

“Mikey, how are you?”

Steve. He was the only one who called him Mikey, and got away with it. Michael hated that particular abbreviation, but from Steve he’d grin and bear it.

“Hey, it’s good to hear your voice.” Michael sat down heavily on the bed. “Where are you?”

“Still in Vancouver, but I’ll be back in a couple of days. Wanna get together?”

“That’d be great…” He paused then said quietly. “I miss you.”

“Yeah…miss you too, Mikey.”

“What are you doing?”

“Right now I’m lying in bed watching Canadian television. It’s even worse than the dreck they serve up in the States. What are you doing?”

“I just got home. Going to kick back and watch some dreck on TV too.” Michael had a vision of Steve lying on the hotel bed, his muscled, quarter-back physique stretched out in all its glory, his blond hair rumpled by the pillow. He was hard again.

“Well, you have a good evening,” Steve was saying. “I’ll call you when I get back.”

No, don’t hang up yet. Talk to me some more… “Oh, okay Steve. Look forward to seeing you when you get back.”

“Right… Take it easy, see ya, Mikey.” And he was gone.

“Damn,” Michael muttered, putting the phone down. Why couldn’t he have thought of something to keep Steve talking on the phone longer? Why hadn’t he told him about the call from England? Surely that would have intrigued him. His hand strayed to his crotch, gripping the hard flesh through his slacks. He lay back on the bed, but the face that swam before his closed eyes, wasn’t Steve’s…it was the man in his dreams.

www.jpbowie.com
To purchase, click here or here

Aaron's Wait excerpt by Dorien Grey

2009-07-27T07:00:00.001-04:00

In Aaron's Wait by Dorien Grey, the second book in the Elliott Smith Mystery series, Aaron Stiles is dead. He’s been dead for four years but doesn’t seem to know it. He’s waiting for his partner Bill to come home, and until that happens, he’s not going anywhere. The trouble is, Bill Somers won’t be coming home—ever—because he’s dead, too. The official verdict was suicide, but...

The last thing Elliot Smith needs in his latest renovation project is a ghost, especially one who won’t let him sell the place until he solves the mystery of who killed Bill. He has John to help with the spectral side of things, but that just leaves him with the quandary of how to get information on the case. After all, he can hardly explain he’s investigating on behalf of one dead man with the assistance of another.

Aaron's Wait
Zumaya Publications, LLC (July 22, 2009)
ISBN-10: 1934841404
ISBN-13: 978-193484140

Excerpt

While he made it a policy to have as little contact as possible with a building’s tenants during the escrow period, he found himself for some reason compelled to talk personally with Mrs. Reinerio regarding her options. He didn’t have her phone number, so he called the Winters to ask for it, and to let them know of his intentions so they’d not think it strange to have him showing up at the building, and as he expected, they had no objections. Mrs. Winters reported that they had found a small condo in a new retirement complex and would be moving within a month of the closing of escrow. He then called Mrs. Reinerio, who said she would be happy to talk with him, and would be home all day.

He drove over after lunch, noting that the weather was definitely turning cooler. Escrow was to close on a Tuesday but, badly as he wanted to get to work immediately, he knew too well that last minute glitches often pushed the close back a day or so, so to be on the safe side he’d made arrangements for the sandblasters to come in the Monday following the official close date. He was fairly sure they could easily complete the work before the weather got too bad, but it was Chicago, and he didn’t want to take any chances.

He was curious, too, about street parking around the new property during the day and was relieved to see it wasn’t too difficult to find a space. He took his time walking up to the building, pausing again to look at its neighbors. He was pleased to confirm his earlier observation that the entire block appeared to be relatively well maintained.

Climbing the steps to the front door, he rang Mrs. Reinerio’s buzzer.

She had opened her door by the time he entered the hall.

“Come in, Mr. Smith,” she said, warmly.

“Elliott, please,” he replied, as he followed her into her apartment, then waited while she closed the door behind him.

“Please sit,” she said. “May I get you some coffee?”

“If you have some made,” he said, taking the indicated chair.

“Of course. I’ll only be a moment.”

As she left the room, Elliott looked around. He’d seen it during the inspection tour of the building, but now had a chance to concentrate on some of the individual items in the room. It was, he decided, definitely a grandmother’s apartment: comfortable, neat, clean, and heavy with an indefinable air of the past.

She returned a minute or so later with a tray on which were two coffee mugs (“I don’t hold much on ceremony,” she said), a creamer, sugar bowl, and small plate with several pieces of coffee cake, which she put on the coffee table in front of Elliott. Waiting until she had taken her own seat across from him, Elliott got right to the point of his visit.

He outlined what he perceived to be her options, emphasizing that he was renovating the building for resale, and that a rent increase under the new owners was almost inevitable.

She sighed. “I was afraid of that,” she said, looking into her coffee cup, then hastily added: “I know it’s not your fault, and that nothing is forever, but I’ve lived here for twenty-five years now, and…”

“I understand,” Elliott said, and he felt he truly did. He then went on to mention one of his own rental properties which had a vacancy at a comparable rent, and that he would be pleased to have her as a tenant. He assured her he would be happy to assist if she needed help with the move itself.

“That’s very kind of you, Elliott,” she said. “Can I have a little time to think it over?”

“Certainly,” Elliott said. “I just wanted…”

There was a knock at the door, which Mrs. Reinerio apparently did not hear, since she showed no reaction to it.

“I think there’s someone at the door,” he said after a moment.

She looked at him and smiled. “Oh, it’s nothing,” she said. “It’s just Aaron. I recognize the knock.”

A shiver ran from the top of his head to his toes.

“Aaron?” he asked. John had already told him, of course, but confirmation from someone with a pulse still startled him

Her smile never faded and there was no change in the casual tone of her voice as she said: “Aaron Stiles. He lives… lived…upstairs,” she said. “He died four years ago, poor dear.”

“So you’re saying…” Elliott finally managed to say.

She put her cup down and looked at him. “Yes,” she said pleasantly, “I’m afraid you’ve bought yourself a slightly haunted house.”

http://www.doriengrey.com/
To purchase, click here or here

Ignited excerpt by Bryl R Tyne

2009-07-20T07:00:00.000-04:00

In Ignited by Bryl R Tyne, Val & Kendra are back at it again, and as usual, they have few qualms about public sex... T-girls need love too. Sometimes, need outweighs time or place...

Fireworks in Orlando-the crowds, Val's attitude, the unbearable Florida humidity ... Can Kendra survive the heat? When public make-up sex inside the prop room of a local art studio turns into an excursion into mind-blowing group sex, Val shows Kendra fireworks like she's never experienced!

Ignited
Publisher: Noble Romance Publishing (July, 2009)
ISBN: 9781605920467

Excerpt:

What the f--?

Val poked his head around the door as it opened, grin plastered cheek to cheek. "Here you are."

No shit . . . . "Do you mind?"

Apparently not; he continued to smile and open the door. I'd never understand men. Specifically--him. "For chrissake, Val, close the--Ow!" I knew that dispenser was a safety hazard "Damnit, Val, just get out until I'm through!"

Never discount his relentlessness. I learned that months ago. His persistence is what brought us together in the first place.

"Kendra--"

"The door?"

"Kendra, listen . . . ."

What happened to the days when he would leave me to my fits, to sort things out on my own? Sometimes, I wondered.

"You're not wearing it?"

His surprise at my wearing stretch panties instead of a gaff was understandable. We'd argued about it for weeks. Taking chances in exposing any unwanted facets about myself wasn't something I was fond of. He was certain though, and downloading page after page from medical websites, had taken extremes to prove that gaffs were a risk to my well-being. Looking back, I realized today was not the best day to decide to heed his advice. "I don't want to talk about it."

Arms crossed, he leaned against the now-closed door, waiting for me to finish. He twisted to the wall opposite the sink, as I tucked myself between my legs, making sure all features were in place, and pulled up my panties. After flushing, I stopped in front of the mirror for one last makeup check.

Val embraced me from behind,wrapping me in those arms I might have welcomed earlier, but not now. Refusing me space, he hesitated on my hips as I pushed him away. I tried not to dwell on the stuffiness of the room, closed my eyes, and leaned on the sink.

"You're beautiful, Kendra."

"Don't we have a fireworks show to get to?"

My head nearly banged into the mirror as he leaned over me to plant kisses across the back of my neck. Why'd he have to come on so strong, feel so warm, so inviting -- and hard?" I'm sorry."

For what? Why couldn't I be moody without him coming uncorked? Taking it personal. His insecurities irked me. Or was it just dumb perseverance, like that of a faithful dog? Why he tried so hard to please me, I didn't think I'd ever understand. His presence served only to make the closet-sized room that much stuffier. After shrugging him off me, I motioned him to move so I could swing open the door. "Val, come on. Give it a rest."

Squished behind the halfway-open door, Val grumbled as I edged past him and out of the room. But before I cleared the doorway, he had me by the arm. I struggled, trying to get out of his grasp, only to have him tighten his hold. "Damn it, Val!"

"Kendra, stop it!"

I yanked. Cursing, he followed, hitting the sink hard, tripping over his feet, tumbling after me, and taking us both to the floor. A chair piled high with scarves teetered off-kilter by our fall, and we found ourselves smothered in a cushiony blanket of stage props.

As Val pushed to his knees, I flipped over onto my back, tossing scarves and stoles to the side. His clinginess today had me at my wit's end."What the fuck's wrong with you?"

"Me?"

Exposed and trapped, his hands on either side of my head, I fought to wriggle my skirt over my panties. With one hand, he swiped at the neon tangerine orange boa hanging lopsided from his neck. Highlighted by the bright color, his gaze, heavy and dark, pleading for peace. Expression tight, his pouting, bottom lip teased me. Even his faux sternness was cute. Intending to give him my best dirty look, I broke out laughing instead.

"This isn't funny, Kendra."

"Oh,Val." Wrapping a thin stole around his head, I drew him closer,nose to nose, our gazes locked. "I think baby blue is more your col--" His lips covered mine, stealing my words. My breath followed as he lowered himself onto me. He pressed with his tongue, and wanting nothing more at that moment than him inside me, I pulled on the blue silk draped around him. Jesus, I loved what his mouth did for me; those lips, soft but firm, his tongue sliding over then under mine, enticing me to explore him. Though his shadowed face scraped my chin and burned my lips, I remapped his mouth once again, sure I would never tire of ....

"Val."

http://bryltyne.com/
To purchase, click here

The Final Curtain excerpt by Victor J Banis in the anthology RED by various authors

2009-07-13T07:00:00.005-04:00

The Final Curtain by Victor J Banis first appeared in the Winter 2007-2008 issue of the ezine Mysterical-E (http://www.mystericale.com). The story is an exercise in Grand Guignol and is included in the anthology RED. The narrator, a touring actor, has been invited to supper with a local arts patron and her preternaturally beautiful young son, Gaylord.

The anthology RED is by multiple authors including 2009 Lambda Award Finalists Victor J Banis, William Maltese and JP Bowie. A gloriously erotic m/m romance, of any genre, any era. Add just a few little items: red, a drink of ice cold water, a cricket, a pebble, the scent of blood oranges. The result? An anthology as versatile and intriguing as it's authors. Red. Who isn't attracted by the color of passion? Due Out soon.

RED
MLR Press (TBA)

Excerpt:

"We ate, not in the immense and over-furnished dining room, but in what she rather pretentiously called 'the supper room,' just the three of us at a table only large enough to accommodate us and the excess of china and crystal, and covered with a fringed cloth that draped to the floor. One of those hideous electric chandeliers cast a dirty yellow light over everything and a steam radiator cracked arthritic joints. The air was crowded with the smell of the overcooked pork and boiled cabbage we ate.

"That she and I ate, in any case. Gaylord sipped champagne and nibbled daintily at the fruit of a blood orange, his lips growing redder with each tiny bite. From time to time, a stained tongue flicked out to wipe his lips clean. He wore a silk robe of the same red. I seemed to see him through a veil of red, a haze cast by my lust enflamed senses.

"I could not have been more enchanted. I had passed the time since our brief meeting in my dressing room thinking of nothing but that ethereal young man who now sat next to me, saying little, smiling occasionally with fruited lips and glancing at me from under lashes that any demoiselle might envy.

"I had never known such desire for anyone. I can't explain it. I, so long content with near celibacy, was possessed, devoured by my passion. It was all that I could do to keep my emotions under control and engage in polite conversation with his mother. Gaylord said little, and answered whatever was spoken directly to him in faint monosyllables. I dared not drink the wine the flowed so freely. I drank glass after glass of ice cold water, hoping to chill the fever that had seized me—to no avail.

"All of a sudden, I felt something graze my knee under the concealing cloth, and a moment later a hand, the mere fingertips, really, slid lightly up the inside of my thigh.

"I gasped aloud and looked involuntarily in his direction, but he was looking at neither of us, his expression distant, as if instead of that vulgar room he gazed upon jeweled isles. He sank his teeth into the littlest segment of fruit, rolled it about on his tongue, and swallowed visibly.

"'Is something wrong?' she asked me.

"'No, no,' I said hastily. 'Forgive me, I just recalled something I forgot to do. Please, go on—you were saying?'

"I let my own hand drop under the cloth, but no sooner had my fingers touched his than the intruders were withdrawn. After that, I could scarcely concentrate on keeping the conversation alive, and I have no memory of whether I tasted the food at all.

"Only one thing penetrated this stupor into which I had fallen. As the table was being cleared and coffee served by a thick, sullen woman who was apparently cook and housekeeper, my hostess said to me, 'But, really, that hotel is such an embarrassment. Why don't you come stay here with us for the duration of your visit? We have far more room than we need, and I am sure Gaylord would be glad for the company, wouldn't you, my darling?'"

"'Yes,' he said, in little more than a sigh. That single word pierced my heart. I was in love, smitten beyond reason. I could no more have refused the invitation than flown to the moon.

"When the time came to drive me back to my hotel, she said, 'I'll just get my purse,' and left us alone, for the first time that evening.

"This was the moment for which I had waited, and I leapt to my feet, convinced that I would have those carmine tinted lips pressed to mine, but even as I came about the table, he moved away from it and into the foyer. He took an enormous red peony from a bowl of them at the foot of the stairs, and buried his face in its exuberant petals.

"I hesitated, waiting for some signal from him, but it did not come, and after all too few moments, I heard his mother's footsteps descending the stairs.

"He glanced at me then, fleetingly, and smiled an impish, blood red smile. It only made me love him more.

http://www.vjbanis.com/
http://www.mystericale.com
http://www.mlrbooks.com/upcoming.php

GayLife.com excerpt by Neil Plakcy

2009-07-06T07:00:00.001-04:00

GayLife.com is a sexy comedy of manners the novel Jane Austen might have written—if she were a gay man living in Miami Beach at the turn of the millennium.

Brian Cohen is handsome, funny and smart, but he’s never been able to get all those good characteristics together enough to score a great job or a great boyfriend. He’s in his early thirties, living in the awesome gay candy store called South Beach, but he’s a man without a plan.

Then his best friend Stella, a gorgeous model, hooks him up with a job helping launch a new gay web site, GayLife.com. Brian immediately develops a crush on his handsome, desirable boss, Nick Petrangelis-- but Nick’s happily coupled with a supermodel of his own, Paavo, the Fabulous Finn.

Will the Internet finally connect Brian to the life he’s always dreamed of? Will Nick join the line of hunky men parading through Brian’s bedroom? GayLife.com is more than just a web site—it’s a fast, sexy romp on a narrow island of sand, Art Deco buildings and neon nights.

GayLife.com
Publisher: MLR Press (May 19, 2009)
ISBN-10: 1608200361
ISBN-13: 978-1608200368

Excerpt:

One late afternoon in September of 1999, I moped around the apartment I shared on South Beach, alternately considering graduate school, celibacy, or becoming one of those guys who stands around in the sun directing traffic around highway construction sites. I was unemployed, I’d been dumped by my latest boyfriend, and there was a huge zit about to pop on my forehead.

Then my best friend Stella, who is one of the top models on Miami Beach, called and told me that if I could get an 8 x 10 glossy down to her agent’s before five, she could get me a day’s work as an extra on a photo shoot.

She had talked me into making up the 8 x 10s a few months before, but I wasn’t fashion model material. My teeth are a bit crooked, my eyebrows have a tendency to grow out in points, like Fu Manchu’s mustache, and I don’t have the right cheekbones. Not to say I’m a dog or anything; I mean, I get my share of stares as I walk down Lincoln Road.

“You’ll be in the background,” Stella said. “I told my agent it was a favor he owed me. Now you’ll owe me one.”

“I owe you my life, Stella.” I’d been dumped by a guy a few weeks before, then I’d lost my job due to budget cuts. Right after that, I’d pinched a nerve in my back that kept me flat on my stomach for hours on end. Stella had been my sole support, bringing me chocolate babka and Dr. Brown’s sodas from the Epicure deli, cheering me with gossip from her photo shoots and commiserating with me about my problems.

At least I’d have some cash toward the rent, I figured. I ran the photo down to her agent’s and found out where I had to go. The next morning the zit had magically disappeared, and I reported for duty to Bobby Maduro Stadium, an ancient ballpark that had long ago been used for spring training. It was located in a slummy area of Miami, not too far from the causeway to South Beach, and by the time I showed up at eight, the prop guys had already been hard at work.

They had laid sod over about half the infield, erected a billboard in front of the old scoreboard, and decorated a quarter of the stadium with pennants and posters. I went to wardrobe, where I was fitted for an old-time baseball uniform, white with blue stripes, with blousy pants and a v-necked jersey. They gave me sneakers and a ball cap and sent me out on the field.

A dozen of us were positioned around the sod. One of the others was this guy Blue, a struggling actor who lives on the first floor of my building and waits tables at a café on Lincoln Road. For a while I watched him trying to make time with one of the photographer’s assistants. Then Stella came out in a white dress that looked like Mia Farrow might have worn it in that ill-advised movie version of The Great Gatsby. It was flouncy and ruffled, and she carried a white parasol. The photographer arranged her lounging in the middle of the field, halfway between second base and the pitcher’s mound.

“Fabulous,” he said, moving behind the camera. “Now give me attitude!”

I wasn’t sure what kind of attitude she was supposed to give him, pretending to be some kind of odalisque in the middle of an old-fashioned baseball game, but she seemed to know, and he clicked pictures with an ecstasy I reserve for the bedroom. Until I can get a photographer (or any other man, for that matter) to act like that, I doubt I will be much of a success at high fashion modeling.

The photographer took a bunch of shots of Stella alone, and then called, “Paavo! We are ready for you.”

He may have been ready, but I wasn’t. The man who strolled out of the dugout was the most handsome guy I’ve ever seen. At least 6’2”, with close-cropped blond hair and eyes I later saw were the same shade of blue as the deep water off Key Biscayne. He twirled his shirt over his shoulder with a single finger, and his biceps and abs rippled as he strolled across the verdant field. My jaw dropped open and my knees got weak.

The photographer met him where Stella was lying, and spent the next two hours arranging their bodies and shooting pictures. For my time, I got paid $150, which I was informed would be mailed to me. After turning in my costume to wardrobe and dressing in my own clothes again, I waited for Stella outside the line of big Winnebagos.

She came out a few minutes later, looking perfect as usual, as if she hadn’t spent the better part of the morning sweating in the middle of a baseball field under the hot sun. “Brian! I’m glad you stayed around. I want you to meet someone.”

Paavo emerged from the trailer behind her, and I thought I might pass out. He was even more gorgeous up close and personal than he had been from a distance. “Paavo’s boyfriend is starting a Website,” Stella said. “He needs some help. You need a job. I think it’s a perfect match, don’t you?”

“Hi,” Paavo said, sticking his hand out.

Dumbly, I reached out and shook it. “Nice to meet you,” I mumbled. “You were great out there.”

He frowned. “I take de clothes off and lie around on de ground,” he said. He still retained a slight accent from his native Finland, as if at any moment he might sprout bushy eyebrows and begin bopping around like the Swedish Chef on the Muppets. It didn’t matter; I was in love. Or lust, as Stella pointed out later.
“Here is de card for de Website,” Paavo said, handing me a business card for someone named Nick Petrangelis, whose title was listed as ‘Supreme Webmaster and Grand Pooh-Bah.’ “I call Nick, he vaits for you at de office.”

I didn’t move, so Stella said, “That means now, Brian. You get in your car and you go back across the causeway to the real world.”

“As if South Beach is the real world,” I said.

“It is for us, sweetie.”

≈ ≈ ≈

It was lunchtime by the time I reached Nick Petrangelis’s office. There was no one at the receptionist’s desk so I stood there and called out, “Hello?”

A twenty-something geek in a Pac-Man T-shirt with goofy, dark-rimmed glasses went past on his way to the copier.

“I’m looking for Nick Petrangelis?”

“Second office on the right,” he said, nodding down the hall. “The one that looks like FAO Schwartz exploded in it.”

I got to the second office and peeked around the door jamb. A blond guy, with broad shoulders and big hands, sat behind a cluttered desk, talking on the phone. His sandy blond hair hung down to the collar of his blue and white striped Brooks Brothers shirt.

Though he wasn’t quite as handsome as Paavo, I was smitten. I like my men tall, on the husky side, and there’s something about a button down collar that makes my heart flutter. I loved the sound of his voice, too, a British burr overlaid with New York directness. Though I was there for a job interview, not a date, I couldn’t help wondering how his lips would taste against mine, if he was as sexy naked as he was with his clothes on.

The walls were plastered with posters from every space movie and television show ever screened, from Lost In Space and Star Wars to Plan 9 From Outer Space and Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. One wall had been made into shelves that were packed with action figures and scale models, from the Enterprise to Obi Wan Kenobi, to a bunch of ships and aliens I didn’t recognize.

Nick saw me in the doorway and motioned me in.

“I’m Brian Cohen,” I said in a low voice. “Paavo gave me your card.”

“Sure, sit down,” he said. Into the phone he said, “No, I’m here. I’m listening.”
As soon as he hung up the desk phone, his cellular phone bleeped.

“GayLife.com,” he said. “This is Nick.” He looked at me and shrugged. “Sorry,” he said, after he hung up. “It’s kind of crazy around here. So, Paavo called and said you were looking for a job.”

The desk phone rang again. “Sorry, with the receptionist out sick I’ve got to get this. If I let the programmer or the artist pick up, God knows what’ll happen.”
A tall dyke with spiked purple hair stalked in carrying a bunch of pieces of paper. While Nick was talking, she laid them out on the desk in front of him. “I’m in the middle of three things,” he whispered to her.

“You’re always in the middle of three things,” she said. She looked at me. “If he’s not on the phone, he’s on the Internet or in a meeting or out of the office. How am I supposed to get this goddamned site designed if I don’t get any feedback?”

I didn’t know what to say, so I shrugged. I always find the very aggressive dykes a little scary. I mean, I know we’re supposed to be one big rainbow family, but what do we have in common after all? She likes pussy, I like dick. I have a lot more mutual interests with straight women like Stella. At least we can compare notes on the men we’ve slept with.

With his eyes, Nick motioned me to take a look at the samples. There were five different designs. “They’re for the background of the pages,” the dyke said to me. “I don’t suppose you know anything about the Internet.”

“I know how to find my way to the naked pictures.”

She glared at me. “He has to pick one so I can get on with the layout. I’ve got to know what kind of background I’m working with.”

“Which one’s your favorite?”

While she looked at them, I considered her. She wore an orange crop top that read “I Hate This Place and I’m Leaving Soon,” khaki shorts, and combat boots, and she had three silver hoops in each ear. “I like this one the best,” she said, pointing to a retro fifties design that could have been lifted from the Formica on my parents’ kitchen cabinets. “But it’s too aggressive. I guess we should go with one of these.” She pointed to a couple that I had to agree were kind of boring.

“What about this one?” I pointed to a pattern of stylized symbols. Two male symbols, two female symbols, in a repeating design.

“Don’t you think it’s too strong?” she asked. “I mean, it might detract from the other pictures.”

“Couldn’t you fade it out?” I asked. “I have this friend who knows Photoshop, and he’s always doing effects like that.”

She considered. “Yeah, that might work.” She looked at Nick. “You like that idea?”

He smiled and nodded.

“Good. Thank you. For Christ’s sake.” She gathered her samples and stalked to the door, where she stopped and turned. “I’m Leslie,” she said. “Leslie Shulewitz.”

“Shalom,” I said. “Brian Cohen.”

“I knew it would take getting another Yid in here to get things moving,” she said. “Welcome aboard the SS GayLife.com.”

Nick hung up, but barely had time to say, “Thanks,” before his cell bleated again. Then the desk phone rang. He looked at me and then at the phone.

What the hell, I thought, and picked it up. “GayLife.com.”

The voice on the other end was frantic. “I can’t do this. I can’t. It’s too much!”

“What’s the matter?”

“My computer crashed!” he wailed.

“Bummer, dude. Did you try restarting it?”

“Yes, I restarted it,” he mimicked back at me. “But I hadn’t saved my document and now it’s gone! I promised Leslie I’d have it this afternoon, and now she’ll cut my balls off and make them into a mobile to hang over her desk.”

I decided to avoid Leslie’s office based on that description. “What program were you using? Word?”

I established that he had been using Word, with Windows XP, and got him to open up Windows Explorer. “Do I have to shut down Word first?”

“Nope. Now go to the C:\windows\temp directory. Anything there?”

“A bunch of files that end in .tmp.”

“Good. Now go to View, Arrange Icons, by date. Anything that’s dated today?”

“Yeah, there’s this tilde wrl file.”

“Great! That’s your file. Double click on it, and you should jump to word.”

“It’s there! There’s some junk at the front but I can deal with that. Oh, you’re a genius! I love you! Can I bear your children?”

“Not right now, thanks. Remember to save your stuff as you’re working.”

He gave me a big smooch that I was sure Nick Petrangelis could hear through the phone and hung up. Nick hung up at the same time.

“It’s kind of a zoo around here,” he said.

“I can see.”

“You seem like you know how to handle yourself.”

I shrugged.

“No, you’re good,” he said. “You worked in an office before?”

We had a couple of minutes together before the phone rang again. I ran through my work experience, Nick nodding and asking the occasional question. “I need an office manager,” he said when I was finished. “Someone who can also be my executive assistant, who can pitch in and do whatever needs to be done. A kind of jack of all trades. You think you can do that?”

“I was an assistant stage manager, and a stage manager, in New York. It’s just the kind of thing I did there.”

The phone rang again. I stood up to go. “Listen, I can come back sometime when you’re not busy.”

“No, don’t go,” Nick said. He had a puppy dog look in his blue eyes that I fell for there and then. It was as if Paavo had never existed, nor had the idiot who had dumped me the month before. There was only Nick. A gorgeous man who was already taken.

“Get me a copy of your resume, will you? For the file. We’ll talk about salary and benefits when things calm down, like after five, OK? There’s a ton of stuff on the desk in the office next door,” he said. “See what you can figure out.” He picked up the phone. “GayLife.com, this is Nick.”

I had a job. I looked up at the poster from Lost In Space, and even though I could imagine that robot was waving his metallic claws and saying “Danger, Will Robinson!”, I went next door and got to work.

http://www.mahubooks.com/
http://www.mysterywriters.org/?q=user/1189
http://www.mlrbooks.com/ShowBook.php?book=GAYLIFE1

To purchase, click here or here

The Rest Of Our Lives: A Novel excerpt by Dan Stone

2009-06-29T07:00:00.004-04:00

The Rest of Our Lives by Dan Stone is a lighthearted romantic fantasy about the repeatedly reincarnating relationship between ice-blue-eyed, time-stopping, cold weather witch Colm McKenna and hyper-sexy, psychokinetic, hot weather witch Aidan Gallagher. According to Norse legend, the universe came forth from the collision of the energies of fire and frost. One can’t exist without the other, and all of creation is dependent upon the delicate balance between the two. Just as spontaneously combustible Aidan begins to rock frost-flinging Colm’s world with a magical big bang of a romance, the pair learns that they’ve been playing in each other’s back yards for at least a couple of millennia. Aidan becomes increasingly hot for clues about the lessons their karmic connection can teach them, while Colm feels increasingly like a snowball in hell, wondering if multiple incarnations where he’s repeatedly abandoned by his enchanting fireball of a boyfriend, may be one or two bites more than he’s able to chew.

The Rest of Our Lives
Lethe Press (May 25, 2009)
ISBN-10: 1590211472
ISBN-13: 978-1590211472

Excerpt:

The next morning the sun woke me early, a slice of warm, golden delicious light that slipped through our bedroom window. Aidan, usually up before God, was still sleeping. In that soft light, he seemed to literally glow. He looked more like an angel than a witch.

I took advantage of a rare opportunity to study him when he didn’t know I was watching. He was facing me, with one bare arm warming my waist. The crumpled top sheet was draped provocatively over the compelling curve of his bare behind. If I hadn’t known he was asleep I would’ve suspected that he’d arranged himself that way just for effect. But his wide mouth was slightly open, and I could hear the now faint, familiar half whistle/half snore that he made.

He was such a restless sleeper. He moved around constantly during the night and woke frequently. Usually it was me who awoke to find myself looking straight into his always-smiling eyes. But this morning, he was perfectly still. As peaceful looking as I had ever seen him.

I remembered Dr. Nike’s advice to me the day before Aidan and I were leaving, to check in regularly with myself during our time here together. “Just do a ‘PMC’ now and then,” she’d said. A Peace of Mind Check. She’d told me to remember three questions: How am I feeling? What thoughts are behind that feeling? What choice can I make right now that will bring peace of mind?

I looked at Aidan’s body beside me. His arm was lean and solid with surprisingly thick forearms and large hands. Our fingers were nearly the same length but I still felt small in his grasp. My eyes traced his fine lines . . . his faintly freckled shoulder . . . I could just barely feel the rise and fall of his firm belly at my side.

“What else would I need right now to have peace of mind?” I asked myself. As I leaned over to kiss him awake, I couldn’t think of a single thing.

When he realized how late he’d slept he insisted we skip breakfast with the other Tarot Inn guests and see more of the town.

“We’ll grab a couple of slices of breakfast pizza at Spiritus,” he said. “Then we’ll head over to the tower and then the beach for a while before the tea dance.”

But even as we were ascending the cardio workout of a stone stairwell up to the top of Pilgrim Monument, the cloud masses were starting to assemble. They didn’t look friendly.

“I don’t suppose you could blow them back out to sea for a while,” he said as we walked around to the top of the monument with a handful of other tourists casting nervous glances at the sky.

“Who am I, Zeus? What’s wrong with your windmill?”

“Hmm. This could actually be very cool, watching the storm blow in from up here,” he said.

“Cool as in deadly?”

“Cool as in watching the forces of nature flex their muscles and show us their power. Besides,” he said. “Thunderstorms get me hot.”

Less adventurous tourists were already making their way down the stairs. I started to follow but Aidan pulled me back.

“Stay here with me,” he said. “You can get some awesome pictures.”

“We’re going to get soaked and then fried. Streetlights will dim.”

Lightning was already zigzagging out from cast iron cumulonimbus, and a wet wind was spitting in our faces. The drama in the sky and the gray mist starting to shroud the bay were too striking to resist. I pulled my shirt up over my head to protect the camera and started shooting, first just the weather rising and swirling and growling all around us. Then I caught sight of Aidan through the lens. His dark hair was blown back from his face, and his eyes were on fire, wild and determined as a cougar on the prowl.

I shot him from every angle, protecting my camera as best I could as the rain started to pelt and the thunder cracked around us, close enough to raise goose bumps and the hair on the back of my neck. When I refocused on Aidan he was staring right at me. He looked . . . hungry.

“What?” I yelled, looking at him from around the camera, both of us now nearly soaked to the skin.

“Put it away,” he said.

“What for?”

“I don’t want you to drop it,” he said, moving closer.

“I’m not going to drop it,” I said, involuntarily taking a step back.

“You won’t be able to hold onto it,” again moving closer to me. He reached for my camera, gently took it from my hand and slipped it safely into the padded inner pocket of my backpack, which he also slipped off my wet shoulder.

“There’s no one else up here. You know what that means?”

“Death wishes are rarer than we suspected?” He was starting to spook me a little.

“It means we’re alone and two hundred fifty feet above the nearest spectator.” He took hold of the hem of his soaking wet t-shirt and peeled it up and over his head.

“You’re not serious.”

His response was a maniacal grin. He unbuttoned the khaki shorts clinging to his thighs, pushed them and his white Calvins to his feet, and stepped out of them, naked and gleaming wet and wild-eyed, and sporting his own powerfully erect thunderbolt.

There was no mistaking his intention.

“You’re crazy,” I said, as he reached for me.

“Crazed, maybe.” He yanked my own drenched shirt over my head. “There’s a difference.”

“And what would the difference be?” I felt his hands again at my waist, and then unzipping my shorts and rolling them like twin condoms down my legs.

“You,” he said, on his knees now. “The difference is you.”

I don’t know how to describe the rest of what happened up there. It was the first time I could remember feeling so nearly devoured by another person, the first time I had felt such extreme hunger and need coming at me, and from me . . . to the point where I couldn’t tell whose hunger or whose need was driving us . . . pinning us to the stone wall at the top of that tower . . . magnetizing and melting us together. I didn’t know that anything could at once be so violent and so achingly tender.

For every push or shove there was a caress, for every pinch or bite, a sweet kiss. It was a wrestling match and a dance. There were a couple of moments when I could’ve sworn both our feet left the floor, and I couldn’t tell which was the more powerful force—the lightning in the sky behind him or the lightning flashing in his eyes. I had no idea that another body could connect so completely and so perfectly to mine, or that it was possible for two people to arrive at the same awareness at the very same split second, like a single comet streaking across the sky, seen only by two pair of eyes, and to have those most seminal words form simultaneously and appear unmistakably in two minds, transforming everything like the proverbial thunderbolt hitting the tower:

“I love you.”

We finished just as the storm was starting to blow over and with just enough time to wring our soggy shirts and shorts and put them back on before anyone caught us.

“Hey at least we don’t need a shower,” he said as we started down the stairs.

“I still might, after a two hundred fifty-foot walk of shame.”

By the time we wound down the steps of the monument and trudged in sloshy sandals back to the inn, the skies had partially cleared, and we’d at least dried off enough not to drip all over Stuart’s antique rugs.

“Do we need to review the basic principle of coming in out of the rain?” Stuart said from the parlor as we tried to quietly let ourselves in and sneak up to our room.

“We got distracted,” Aidan said, grinning like a milkman who just got lucky.

“Uh huh. Thunderstorms have a way of breaking my concentration, too. You two better get out of those wet clothes. I’ll bring up some extra towels. By the way, tea dance is at four if you want to go with us. You have time for a nap.”

The memory of the scene on top of the tower was still vivid in my mind, and we both seemed a little shy with each other as we undressed in our room.

“Pretty intense, huh?” Aidan said as he quickly hung up his damp clothes and slipped naked under the sheets. He seemed to be studying me.

I took my own wet shirt and shorts into the bathroom and draped them over the shower. When I walked naked back toward the bed he was still looking at me. There seemed to be a question in his eyes, but he wasn’t transmitting. He pulled back the sheet and patted the bed beside him.

As I snuggled in with him I remembered that moment on the tower and the flash of lightning that seemed to drive him into me so deeply, penetrating me physically and emotionally . . . and the words that streaked across both our minds. I wondered what it meant. I had never heard or said or even thought those words with anyone else. I didn’t even know that I felt them until that moment. It certainly hadn’t occurred to me that he felt them. I wasn’t even sure I believed in those words. Were they real? It had only been a thought. A telepathic transmission, not an utterance. A revelation, but not a declaration. I wondered, does it still count if the words “I love you” aren’t said out loud?

Aidan moved beside me, shifted so that my head rested in the curve of his neck, close enough to feel his pulse. Bringing his arm around me he whispered in my ear, out loud, “It counts, Baby.”

www.firstadream.com
http://www.lethepressbooks.com/
http://www.giovannisroom.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp the gay & lesbian community bookstore in Philadelphia)
To purchase, click here

The Geography of Murder excerpt by P.A. Brown

2009-06-22T07:00:00.001-04:00

In The Geography of Murder by P.A. Brown, Jason Zachary wakes in bed with a dead man, George Blunt. Blunt was a person of interest to the Santa Barbara Police for allegedly abusing young girls. Now he's dead and young Jason, with his record for hustling and drug abuse is charged with his murder. But something is off for Detective Spider. Can he clear the man he finds himself attracted to? Because Spider has a darker secret than the fact he's gay in the macho police world of the SBPD. Can he keep his secret but still get his man?

Two strong willed men whose desires collide in the dark BDSM world of bondage and pain. One seeks to be controlled, one seeks control. Will they go too far?

(Book cover created by the always talented Deana C. Jamroz)

Geography of Murder
MLR Press (June, 2009)
Print ISBN #978-1-60820-054-2
Ebook ISBN #978-160820-055-9

Excerpt:

“Do I believe in the milk of human kindness? I'm lactose intolerant.” Detective Alexander Spider, SBPD

Jason

I threw my arms over my face to block out the brilliant light that flooded my eyes. I yelped at the sharp burst of pain it brought on and sat up in bed.

"What the fuck--?"

Under me the bed rocked and rolled. Outside I could hear the high-pitched wail of a gull scream and the gentle, slap of water against fiberglass hull. I was on a boat. Whose? I rolled over to escape the relentless light and bumped up against warm flesh. Oh shit,what had I done this time? Another black out? My last memory was leaving the Vault near midnight. I could have sworn I was alone. Wait -- hadn't some cute, hunky blond guy waylaid me in the parking lot?

The guy beside me was definitely not the blond from last night.

I blinked and stared into his slack face, searching for a clue as to who he was and why I was in bed with him.

I blinked again. I tried to place the face. He was old. At least sixty. Wrinkled face. White mat of chest hair over a flabby paunch, tiny shrunken cock. Faded tats up and down his skinny chest and arms.

A leather dog collar. Black leather harness strapped to his thin chest and nothing else. Not the type I usually slept with. Not the type I ever slept with. What would ever possess me to let a loser like this fuck me? I don't think anyone had that much money.

Then a flash of ice poured down my spine and lodged in my gut. The old man was dead.

I scrambled back, but didn't get very far before hands grabbed me under my armpits and hauled me off the bed. I squawked and tried to swing at my attacker who spun me around and threw me to the floor. One hand shoved my face into the teak deck, redolent of varnish and wood,the other one pinned my arms behind my back. Cold metal snicked around my wrists. What--? A knee landed on my kidney knocking the breath out of my lungs, stopping my protest.

Before I could refill my lungs I was jerked to my feet and found myself staring into a pair of cold gray eyes behind wire frame glasses. He had full lips and a lean, lightly freckled face below a harsh Marine cut. He was a redhead. The freckles didn't fit. They gave him a boyish quality that didn't go with his grimness. He was taller than me by several inches. He had a massive chest that would have split bricks.

"Who the fuck are you?"

"Detective Alexander Spider. SBPD. Who are you?"

I gaped at him. "What the hell kind of name is Spider?"

"My father's," he snapped.

I tugged at the handcuffs holding my arms behind my back. My shoulders ached from the unnatural position.

"Who is he?" Spider asked.

It took me about two seconds to realize he meant the body on the bed. I glanced over at the dead man but still didn't recognize him. Not enough to put a name to him. So how had I ended up in bed with him? And whose bed was it? Not mine. I lived in a dump on Los Cerrados Street. I worked at the harbor, at Channel Charters taking tourists out to the Channel Islands for bird-watching trips. I had snuck a trick onto one of the boats more than once. It always impressed the cute twinks and guaranteed a hard fuck, but I hadn't done anything like that last night. Had I?

Spider pushed me around, forcing me to look down at the corpse.

He looked over my shoulder, toward the galley. I caught movement there and realized a second cop was busy photographing everything in sight, including me.

"Who is he?" The detective's voice broke through my confusion. I jerked around to look at him, thinking frantically.

I searched my memory for something, anything that would tell me who the dead guy was and why I was with him. As distasteful as the thought was I even took minute stock of my own body trying to detect any signs I'd been fucked by the guy. Nothing. I couldn't see any signs of sexual activity. So whoever the blond guy I thought I had been with, we hadn't done anything either. No half empty drinks. No used condoms. Thank God there were no lines of coke anywhere or those little glassine packs I get my beans and Oxy in. I could just imagine how that would go over with this law jockey.

He jerked my arm up. Shards of pain shot up my shoulders. "Who is he?" he shouted.

Finally I found my voice. I tried to shake him off, but his grip was like a steel band. "Let me go. I haven't done anything--"

"You always sleep with corpses?" He leaned in so close I could see the dark rims of his irises behind his glasses. His nostrils flared and he showed the tip of his teeth in a feral grin. "Who is he? Why did you kill him?"

"Kill -- I didn't kill anyone. And I don't know who he is."

"What are you doing here? You meet him here or did he bring you? Where'd he find you? Hades? Wildcat? The Vault?"

If I'd been thinking straight I might have wondered how he knew so much about the local bondage scene, but I was too confused, and face it, scared. I was in the middle of something I didn't understand, being grilled by a man who, it was fast becoming clear, wanted to pin this mess on me.

I glared at him, trying to look tough. "Why would I kill somebody I don't know?"

"We'll get to that. What is your name, sir?"

That threw me a bit. I'm not used to being called sir by too many people. Under normal circumstances I might have looked behind me to see if he meant someone else. Instead I opened my mouth to tell him to fuck off. He pulled at my aching arms again, stopping the words in my throat.

"Don't bother," he said. "What's your name? Or do I need to pat you down and find your ID myself?" His gaze slid down my skintight, pocket-less pants and bare chest and his mouth twisted in a grimace. "Guess that would be a waste of time. One last time. Who are you? I want your name."

"Jason," I said. When that didn't satisfy him I added, "Jason Aaron Zachary."

Another cop entered the cabin. Female this time. She ignored me.

"ME's here," she told Spider. "You ready for him?"

"Sure," he said. "Let's get this mutt out of here."

"This mutt isn't going anywhere without a lawyer," I said, bracing my feet as though I thought I could keep the two of them from moving me. It didn't help that Spider looked amused and totally unthreatened.

"Oh, don't worry. You'll get your phone call. You can make two or three for all I care."

"Am I under arrest?"

Spider looked genuinely puzzled at my obtuseness. "Yes," he said, then read me my rights off a card he pulled from a leather folder. When he asked if I understood, I numbly nodded yes.

I vacillated between apathy and terror. I darted glances at the body of the old man on the narrow bunk. It lay on top of a dark navy sheet, which I belatedly realized had darker spots smeared on it. I looked down at my latex-clad legs. Striped Parade pants was about all I had on. What the hell? I only wore my fetish gear on hot dates when I was enticed by someone with deep pockets. My shirt, socks and brand new Captoe boots had vanished at some point. My gaze fell to my crotch and saw the same dark spots. It was the red smear on my stomach that tipped me over. I stared at it in horror. I was covered in still wet blood. His? Mine? Dizziness swept through me. I swayed on my feet, hyperventilating. My stomach threatened to empty itself. Spider grabbed my shoulder and shoved my head down.

http://www.pabrown.ca/
Video trailers: http://www.pabrown.ca/trailers.htm
To purchase, click here or here

Cruising for Bad Boys excerpts by Mykola Dementiuk & Amanda Young

2009-06-15T07:00:00.002-04:00

The Cruising for Bad Boys anthology edited by Mickey Erlach leaves the cozy confines of the bedroom to seek out sex in the riskiest of locales. Have you ever seen a man in a suit at a truck stop? A preppy frat boy in a public park after midnight? A nerdy man walking down the street in the wrong part of town? They aren't lost. They're looking for bad boys, and when they find them, the fun begins. The best part is when the suit and glasses come off, and the trick is no longer the wildest one in the room ... or in the park.

The first excerpt, from "My Father's Semen" by Mykola Dementiuk, is the disturbing story of a young man who seeks out his biological father only to be forced to survive the one way he knows how. This story will open your eyes to life on the streets of New York in the 1980s and will surprise you in the end.

The second excerpt is from the story "After Sunset" by Amanda Young.

Cruising for Bad Boys
Publisher: STARbooks Press (June 18, 2009)
ISBN-10: 1934187488

Excerpt from Mykola Dementiuk's "My Father's Semen"

My father lived in New York, ever since I was little, and I haven’t seen him six
or seven years. Every Christmas I’d get a card from him with a check for a
hundred dollars --which I immediately cashed-- I suppose it was his way of
saying, Don’t bother me until next Christmas! My mom I never heard from;
grandmother told me she was in San Francisco with her lesbian lover. Oh, I
said, and shrugged. Grandmother knew a lot more but didn’t say much.

The station was packed with people coming and going, but I had to take a
non-descript seat and keep out of trouble. Wasn’t too long ago --about year--
that I got picked up in the Greyhound men’s room, doing nothing, just standing there, but the cops hauled me in anyway.

Cincinnati has no claim to fame, besides Steve McQueen in Cincinnati Kid which took place in New Orleans, and Loni Anderson in WKRP in Cincinnati, a TV show meant more to show off Loni’s tits than her acting ability. And one time the city was know as Porkapolis, before they changed the name to Cincinnati, in honor to some local Indian chief lord, hell, do you think people like to call their home a sty? Fuck off, Cincinnati, or should I say, Oink! Oink!

I only knew three things about New York: it was big, my father lived there, and
whatever Joey told me about it. He had been there about a year ago; having spent a week there, also running away from the therapy clinic his parents put him in because he was gay. His parents were rich enough to send a bounty hunter after him and he nabbed Joey right in the back of the NYC bus station, on his knees, and sucking cock in between two cars. Getting caught in the act was bad enough, but before he nabbed Joey the bounty hunter snapped a Polaroid of Joey sucking cock and which he used to blackmail Joey into giving him blow jobs all the way back home to Cincinnati, or else he’d give the photo’s to Joey’s mom.

Which he did anyway; an envelope full of photos of Joey, kneeling before men, bending over to a standing man, sometimes sucking off one guy while jerking off two others…And of course Joey’s mom never asked why he hadn’t brought Joey home the first day he spotted him but took an entire week to amass twenty rolls of pornographic photos of her son or why there was a receipt among his bills for the Motel 6 outside of Cincinnati.

She paid him 25 thousand dollars to bring me home so he could fuck me right on her doorstep! Joey told me. No wonder he said it took him six weeks to track down Sheila (our friend) in Reno; he had her in a motel for a month, the bastard!

But my grandmother wasn’t as rich as Joey’s parents were so I knew no bounty hunter or parent would come looking for me; but Ralph? Who knew how the social worker would rat me off to his respectable pig friends? Who knew what kind of all-points-bulletin would be issued on me? Warning! Child Molester on the loose! Beware of dreamy-eyes loners writing poetry! That’s him, he’s the one! Smell the little girl all over him! So that’s why I was headed to New York, instead of Chicago, which I had tried three times before.

http://www.mykoladementiuk.com

Excerpt from "After Sunset" by Amanda Young

Toby sauntered into the park and headed for the wooded area toward the back. Nervous sweat matted a white tank top to his back and sides, making the thin material stick to his skin like a lover’s greedy hands. The full moon peeked from between gauzy clouds, staring down at him like a randy voyeur. It was going to be a damn good night. He could feel it in his bones.

Following along the paved trail, he ignored the deserted swing sets and slides and continued on, keeping an eye out for all the things that went bump in the night. He wasn’t above a little vicarious voyeurism himself.

Up ahead and a little to his right loomed a white cement building that housed the public restrooms; a picturesque reminder of all the fucks and sucks he’d swindled during days gone by. Although he knew he could score some easy ass within those four walls, a sloppy blow at the very least, he’d grown a little choosier about his partners these days.

“Psst. Hey, mister. Over here, mister.”

A grin spread across Toby’s face as he slowed to a stop and looked around. He knew that voice. It was the one he’d been waiting for. Anticipation sped his pulse and fed a steady supply of blood to the cock rapidly hardening against the inside of his fly. He sped up his pace as he reached down and adjust himself to keep his zipper from biting into his dick. Free-balling could be a pain when he was trapped inside the snug denim, but it saved crucial seconds when time was of the essence. There wasn’t time to dill-dally with underwear when you were fucking around in public.

Toby kept to the path, though it grew dimmer with every step. The voice had sounded like it was coming from up ahead, instead of off in the bordering trees. He rounded a bend in the walkway, traveling beyond the reach of the illumination behind him.

A hand shot out of the murky darkness. Rough fingers latched onto Toby’s forearm and clamped down around his flesh. He jumped, but quickly masked his surprise behind a casual mien of indifference, allowing himself be tugged off the path and into the wooded area beyond. With every step, adrenaline spiked his blood and made his heart race in both excitement and a touch of apprehension. The same rush of mixed emotions always bombarded him when he came out on night’s like this—which was probably why he kept doing it. There was nothing like those first few seconds of uncertain possibilities to get his dick hard and his pulse thundering. He fucking loved it.

A stray beam of moonlight revealed a quick peek at the man in front of him. Loose golden curls topped the head of a man several inches shorter than Toby’s own six feet, three inches. Although the guy appeared slim in the black T-shirt and jeans he wore, his forearms were corded with sinew and hinted at the muscle beneath the clothing. The brief glimpse of a bulge beneath the man’s fly made Toby’s mouth water for a taste. He wasn’t too proud to drop to his knees in the dirt and blow the man’s mind right out of the top of his head, if given the chance. It wasn’t as if it would be the first time.
http://www.amandayoung.org/

http://www.mykoladementiuk.com
http://www.AmandaYoung.org
To purchase, click here

The Dragon's Pool excerpt by Edward C Patterson

2009-06-08T07:00:00.002-04:00

In The Dragon's Pool by Edward C Patterson, the third book in the Jade Owl Legacy series, a shadow stalks the lanes and streets, from Gui-lin to San Francisco, from Florence to the Dragon’s Pool. In its wake, Rowden Gray and his China Hands follow a course to right the wrongs of time. The relic is hidden, but stirs in the soul and archaic rituals long since forgotten, but never lost. Some books are closed. Others are open, giving up their secrets. In the darkness, ancient terror awaits. A barren field yields up its magic and . . . the comets return to earth.

The Dragon’s Pool, the next installment of an adventure like none other, looms across the landscape giving even the stouthearted pause to reflect. The stalwart characters of The Jade Owl (excerpt posted on 11/17/08) and The Third Peregrination (excerpt Posted on 2/16/09) are back, and joined by new players and helper bees and . . . yes, villains. It is time for the Tien-xin Rite. It is time to close history’s fissure. It is time to complete the prophesy that dwells beneath Her Majesty’s hem. It is time to count the teeth that emerge from the Dragon’s Pool.

The Dragon's Pool
Publisher: CreateSpace (May 7, 2009)
ISBN-10: 1442170999

Excerpt:

Chapter One

Silky

1

The gay kid watched over his shoulder on this dark Castro night, knowing that the men followed him. Anxious, his panic increased along with his pace. No guessing. They were following him. His heart beat double time. His eyes scanned ahead for a safe haven. He hastened. An alleyway was coming up on his right. He could find shelter there, but it could also spell — dead-end. Still, something had to be done. No time for dumb indecision. In the dark alley, he could blend with the trashcans. Perhaps he could discover an unlocked door. Or a fence to leap. His pursuers were hulks — two of them. He, however, was sinewy and young — fifteen in his Nikes. He could outrun them . . . possibly. They were gaining on him, matching his pace. They would bash him . . . no doubt. So he pressed his Nikes to the grayment, and then sprinted into the alley, speed and chance his only hope now.

Darkness could be his friend, except it wasn’t as dark as he supposed. Light threads filtered through the iron slats of the escapement above. Clotheslines hung silhouettes like Spanish moss. Still, he hadn’t shaken the men — thugs grunting threats, probably pissed that their prey had bolted. Why didn’t he leave the club earlier? Too late to wonder now. He always had taken care to avoid the night shadows. This was the Castro, after all. Gay kids were supposed to be safe here, or so he imagined. But when he emerged from the club, he had sensed something amiss. He spied the men across from The Painted Lips . . . and they were waiting. Waiting for something — for someone. But this was the Castro, after all. A gay haven. So he shrugged them off as night revelers tagged up for a tryst. How stupid had he been? These were the night goblins, mongers seeking a gay punching bag. A kid was a perfect mark — young, alone, silky blonde, with a face as smooth as his black leather jacket. The bashers fished — two against one. Coward’s odds. The kid didn’t have a chance. So it was the alley and the filtered light and the cottony Spanish moss.

The kid strained for his night eyes. He assessed the short stretch between this spot and a chain-link fence. That fence would either be a ladder or fly paper. Beyond it was more darkness. However, his pursuers were close behind him. Audible grunts.

"He’s down here."

Now or never. The Nikes pushed toward the fence. Lurch, but then . . . snap. His pants caught on a metallic mass in the shadows — a bicycle. Under different circumstances, this contraption would have served him well, but it twisted his legs with pedals and wheels, spilling him headlong into broken glass and street screed. Dazed. Dizzy. He scarcely heard the grunts now, or the shuffle.

"There. There he is."

The kid inhaled the alley’s urine aroma just as the first blow fell. He couldn’t see his assailants. Blur. Dazed. Dizzy. A sharp knuckle across his cheek. The pain was reminiscent of other pain. He was not a stranger to the pain or to the hatred. However, the last time he had been assaulted, the knuckles were from familiars. Suddenly, boots replaced fists. Kick. Crack. His wind went. His gorge arose, spewing his last beer over his lips. Retch.

"Die, faggot!"

The kid rolled onto his back, meeting another kick.

I must get up, he thought. If he remained a wounded cub, he’d be a headline in the morning. He would beg for his life, but the words wouldn’t form. So he continued to roll, dodging the next kick. He scrambled, crawling like a tadpole. Somewhere in his young spleen, he found his crust, firing his legs out like springs. Pay dirt. The thug tunes changed from mere hatred to unadulterated anger. One of the night goblins doubled-over. Pay dirt.

Good shot, the kid thought. Haul ass, now. He bucked hard, aiming for the chain links. He touched the steel, his fingers laced through the cold strands. He scrambled up, but a clenched claw interrupted his flight. It pressed him into the links.

"That’s the last fucking time you’ll get a chance to shit free," growled the basher.

"Hold him Benny," said the other. "I think this’ll do it."

They pressed the kid’s cheeks against the fence, choking him. So this is how it shall end, he thought. He heard glass break. If he had been the Sunday school going kind, he would have muttered a prayer. If he could have better assessed his situation, he would have known that he was now beyond such things as prayer. The night goblin wielded a broken bottle — a Southern Comfort remnant, long shorn of efficacy.

Hateful slogans. Demonic laughter. The kid heard it and felt a swoon rising. Gasp. They denied him even the urine-bitter air. Suddenly, other sounds. Trembling. Panicky cursing. Hellish screams. Metal pounding — trashcans clashing. Startled, the kid felt air rushing back into his lungs. Dizzy, he slid from the fence, and then tried to whir about, but his legs surrendered. He fell, wondering what had happened to quell the attack.

The kid scanned down the alley.

"Holy shit," he muttered, the words painfully squeezed from his throat.
His pursuers no longer pursued. They had been pelted with a tornado of garbage cans and glass. Benny and his accomplice were sprawled against the graffiti laden wall like the cuss words scrawled illegibly across the bricks. Debris swirled unabated. Still, the kid was mesmerized. The thugs were entwined in bicycle wheels and handlebars. However, what stunned him was a silhouette that loomed over this human trash.

What was this thing? What had wiped the alley clean? What phantom?

The phantom turned, and then moved into the filtered light. It was just a bit taller than the kid, but it appeared to loom to greater heights. It wore a green flowing cape and ruby red tights; and upon its chest emblazoned the silver letter O. The kid knew. He sighed. He trembled.

"The Jade Owl," he whispered.

He had heard the rumors about the crusader of the Castro. Like every gay youngster, he had followed the Jade Owl’s adventures in The Chronicle’s comic section, but . . . here it was in the flesh. The kid raised his eyes to the escapement. Had it come from the fire escape? From the roof? Did it matter? Safety now. Haven true and keen.

The kid took a step toward this green, shadowy phantom, but a silk clad hand stayed him.

"No closer, please."

The kid saw that his hero (for he was his hero now) wore a feathered hood with two tufted ears. And goggles; no, not goggles. Brass spectacles that shimmered blue.

"Who are you?"

"It doesn’t matter." The voice was sweet. The voice was young. "Are you okay?"

The kid glanced at the pile of hate at the base of the wall. He was okay; better than okay.

"I guess so."

"You’re too young to be out this late."

This must be a dream, the kid thought. He shuddered. His savior stretched his hands aloft like a man about to swan dive. He pulled himself through the night air, his blue eyes forming a firefly shower. The kid observed this, his own eyes blinking timed to his heartbeat. He detected an emerald glow at the cape’s edge. Then it, and its owner, disappeared over the roof. The Jade Owl was gone.

"No, don’t go," the kid cried.

He tripped over the bicycle, landing near Benny’s buckled head. He pushed away from the sight, regaining his feet and his momentum. No, don’t leave me. He was saved. He was free, but he had nowhere to go. He wandered in the dark now until he clutched the chain links, and then climbed. At the crest, he tottered, almost losing his balance. He thought he could still see the emerald glow. No, don’t go. He felt the growing bruises on his ribs. They’d be purple by morning. His throat still pained or he would have shouted after the retreating cape. Dizzy. Sharp pain. It hitched him from the top, the ground coming up fast. He thumped over the fence onto the other side. Now his palms and knees would join his ribs competing for the worst color award. He was in another alley, one that opened onto Hartford Street. The kid pushed himself up, the fence a lifeline now. Glancing through it, two crushed thuggish forms confirmed that he had not been dreaming. It did happen. He gazed skyward again.

The kid ran along the thoroughfare, pain chasing him like a fox. He had hope now, but nowhere to go. Time held no consequences for him — or so he thought; the myopic blessing of youth. On Hartford Street, he hobbled, thinking he could still see the glowing cape. Whether it was his imagination or the side effects of the beating, he had convinced himself that he had met his hero. Now, the kid was the pursuer.

At 17th Street, he paused. He squinted at the rooftops. Yes. It was not his imagination. He saw the glow, bouncing like Tinkerbelle. By the time he crossed Noe Street, he knew. The cape had come to rest either on Pond Street or on Prosper. He thought, Prosper. The kid pursued . . . having nowhere to go.

To purchase , click here

http://www.dancaster.com/

NEG UB2 excerpt by Rick R. Reed

2009-06-01T07:00:00.003-04:00

In NEG UB2 by Rick R. Reed, the sequel to the best-seller VGL Male Seeks Same...(also published by Amber Allure - see excerpt 12/29/08), poor Ethan Schwartz has just had the most shocking news a gay man can get—he’s been diagnosed HIV positive. Up until today, he thought his life was on a perfect course. He had a job he loved and something else he thought he’d never have: Brian, a new man, one whom Ethan thought of as “the one.” The one who would complete him, who would take his life from a lonely existence to a place filled with laughter, hot sex, and romance.

But along with the fateful diagnosis comes another shock—who is this new love? Had Ethan ever really known Brian? And did Brian infect him? As Ethan says, his love history had been more of a haiku than an epic and Brian seems the likely culprit in his new found diagnosis.

The course of true love never runs smoothly, right? And for Ethan and Brian, their new love, once so bright and shining, now appears tinged with darkness and deceit. Can they face this hurdle together with honesty and forgiveness? Or will this revelation tear them apart?

Ethan turns to creating a blog, Off to See the Wizard of Poz, to help him deal with his diagnosis and love troubles, and what he finds there just may be more hope and support in the world than he once believed. And one of his blog readers just might have the key to Ethan’s happily ever after...

NEG UB2 by Rick R. Reed
ISBN: 978-1-60272-516-4 (ebook)
Publisher: Amber Allure (May 10, 2009)

Excerpt

The front door to Brian’s high-rise had never looked more foreboding. Oh, what are you doing, Ethan? Just go home and wait until tomorrow. Sleep on it. You’ll be more prepared come morning. You can think out in advance what you want to say. He hesitated in the shadows of the shrubbery at the front of Brian’s building, uncertain of whether or not he should listen to the voices that were telling him to go home, wait until tomorrow, procrastinate.

But he knew, deep down, these so-called sensible voices were not sensible at all. They were fearful. They were the voices that had Ethan back away in the past from promising relationships, finding fault with every Tom, Dick, and Harry. And Ethan realized now that he was afraid of getting too involved…no, make that he was afraid of being rejected. One way to avoid being rejected was to end things early yourself. You could always take comfort in the fact that you were not the dumpee, but the dumper.

Tell that to the cat you buy to keep you company some cold winter night.

And right now, he knew he was afraid to talk to Brian, to find out where things stood now that Ethan had ended their relationship, told him he was HIV positive, and been just plain mean to him. Maybe now that Ethan was willing to open the door to reconciliation (maybe), he would find that Brian had acquired the good sense to firmly shut it.

It would serve Ethan right.

Tomorrow would be one more night spent in limbo, lost and alone. Tomorrow he might not feel as passionately and may give himself permission to wait one more day and that day might follow another, then another, until Brian was nothing more than a sweet, but flawed, memory, something to think about as he cleaned out a litter box and opened a can of Fancy Feast.

And tomorrow, he would not have the fire that inspired him to leave his apartment, lights burning, computer online, the TV playing in the background. Had he even bothered to lock his door?

He needed the passion that caused him to rush over here to Brian’s.

Several months ago Brian had given him a key to his place. Now, from so many visits, even the doorman knew him by name and Ethan could easily waltz right in, just like any other resident, and go right on up to Brian’s apartment.

But that was before. Now, he didn’t feel right using the key, even if it was in his pocket. Now, he felt demoted to a caller, a guest, and needed to rely on the formality of ringing Brian’s buzzer outside and—hopefully—being let in.

Ethan closed his eyes and breathed in deeply, imagining himself an actor in the wings. He strode up to the intercom box and, without letting himself hesitate, punched in the code that would cause the phone in Brian’s apartment to ring.

“Hello?”

Ethan was surprised when he answered so quickly, his voice sounding slow and sleepy…and unbearably sexy. Memories of early mornings and late nights rushed into his brain and, for a moment, Ethan was speechless.

“Hello?” Brian said again. “Anybody there?”

“Hi. It’s me.”

There was a long pause and for a moment, Ethan was afraid Brian had simply hung up the phone. Wouldn’t that be just what he had deserved after how he had treated him? Ethan thought of a bouquet of beautiful purple irises flung to cold concrete, to wither and die among discarded can, papers, and cigarette butts. But then Brian spoke again, “What are you doing? You’re downstairs? Why didn’t you just use your key?”

A good sign! “I don’t know. I guess I didn’t know if that was appropriate…any more.”

He could hear Brian’s sigh come through the box. “Oh, for God’s sake. Do you have your key?”

“Yes.”

“Then just get up here.”

To purchase, click here
Author website: http://www.rickrreed.com

Dreaming of You excerpt by Ethan Day

2009-05-25T07:00:00.001-04:00

In Dreaming of You by Ethan Day, restaurateur Aden Ingle has been in love with the perfect man since his fourteenth birthday. Unfortunately, his perfect boyfriend only exists in his dreams. But Aden’s always believed it was his destiny to meet his dream man, and he's perfectly content to wait around for him to walk into his real life.

When he meets Logan Price at a Hotel/Restaurant Trade Show, he finds himself drawn to this man who shakes him out of his dream world. Pretty soon, the flesh and blood reality is becoming more appealing than the fantasy. The only problem is Logan lives half way across the country in California.

Aden's going to have to choose whether to give up everything he’s built for himself professionally and uproot his whole life for Logan, or wait for the man from his dreams to become a reality.

Dreaming of You
Publisher: Loose ID (2009)
ISBN: 978-1-59632-922-5

Excerpt:

After we were showered and all shiny and clean, Logan told me he’d already made lunch plans for us. When I asked him where we were going, he told me it was a surprise. We ran by his hotel so he could change clothes, then climbed in yet another cab, and I listened to him give an address to the cabdriver. I resisted the urge to whine until he told me where we were going, and instead, settled into the seat with him. I smiled when he put his arm around me.

“I could really get used to this,” I said teasingly.

He chuckled and pulled me closer to him. “Me too.”

After a twenty-minute ride, the cab pulled up in front of a large three-story house with two-story giant columns. The yard was impeccably manicured, and there were black door-length shutters and French doors along the first and second stories, which opened up onto a two-story porch.

“Um…where are we, Logan?”

“My mother’s house,” he said matter-of-factly, as if telling someone the weather.

“I thought we were going to lunch?” I asked, trying to keep myself from panicking.

“We are, silly boy; we’re having lunch with my mother.”

“Yeah, hi… I’m thinking no!” I started squirming in my seat. “I can’t meet your
mother… I mean… Jesus, Logan, I had your dick in my mouth a few hours ago!”

“Okay.” His eyes widened as he tossed some money over the seat for the driver. “How about we get out of the car and talk?” He grabbed my arm and pulled me out of the cab. I felt the inevitability of what was happening to me sink in. Shutting the cab door, he looked at me and smiled. “Aden, it’s going to be fine. My mother doesn’t know you had my dick in your mouth last night.”

“Last night, try this morning.” I watched the cab drive off, leaving me no escape. “Jesus, I know it. She’ll be able to tell. Mothers know things like this.”

“Aden”—Logan grabbed my already sweaty palm and led me up the driveway—“if it makes you feel any better, she asked me to bring you to lunch yesterday when I was talking about you. That was before we had sex.”

“Okay, you have a point.” I was walking next to him and said, lowering my voice, “An idiotic one, but a point just the same. Why didn’t you tell me about this beforehand?”

“Because you would have said no,” he said with a slightly ornery laugh.

“Um…yeah!” Shit, I’d met parents before, but never on the second day. “Sure…we’ll just waltz in and you can say…‘Hey Mom, here’s the ho I fucked last night.’”

He stopped walking and started laughing. “That would be funny.” He turned and placed his hands on my shoulders. “It’s going to be fine…you’ll love her.” He leaned in and started to kiss me.

“Are you nuts!” I twisted away from him. “I’m not gonna mack on you on her porch!”
The most adorable smile spread over his face. “Damn, if you aren’t the cutest thing I think I’ve ever seen. Come on,” he added, grabbing my hand, “and stop fidgeting.”

Easy for you to say, I thought as he opened the front door, allowing me to go first.

Lamb to the slaughter! Lamb to the slaughter!

To purchase, click here
http://www.ethandayonline.com/
Blog: http://blog.ethandayonline.com/