RELEASE BLITZ
Reading/Reviewing/Promoting #mmbooks #lgbtqbooks #loveislove Contact: readingutrainbow@gmail.com
Wednesday, January 29, 2020
Saturday, January 25, 2020
Saturday, January 18, 2020
Wednesday, January 15, 2020
~ Hold Me Up ~ COVER REVEAL
COVER REVEAL
Book Title: Hold Me Up (Chasing Gold Book 1)
Author: Colette Davison
Publisher: Independently Published
Cover Artist: Colette Davison
Release Date: January 29, 2020
Genre/s: Contemporary M/M Romance
Trope/s: Second chance, sports, slow burn, hurt/comfort
Themes: Forgiveness, trusting others, dedication, self-care
Heat Rating: 2 - 3 flames
Length: 68 500 words
It is a standalone story.
Blurb
Can second chance love survive past trauma?
Reece has one goal: to compete in the Olympic Games. With the gymnastics World Championships looming, his dream is one step closer to becoming a reality.
When his childhood sweetheart, Alex, walks back into his life unexpectedly, Reece’s world is turned upside down. Alex was the boy who inexplicably pushed him away and broke his heart; the boy he still loves.
When the truth behind their break-up is revealed, Reece wants to hold Alex up and give him the strength to heal.
But can Reece be Alex’s rock, and remain focused on his training, or will his Olympic dreams suffer in the process?
Hold Me Up is a MM second chance romance, with a slow-burn relationship and lots of hurt/comfort. It’s the first in a series of books that follows male artistic gymnasts as they chase gold.
Trigger warnings: Hold Me Up features a character who suffers from anxiety and panic attacks due to a past event that is briefly described.
Excerpt
“What the fuck are you doing here, Alex?” Reece demanded, not even trying to hide the anger in his tone. He couldn’t miss the fact that Alex flinched, and he felt a pinch of guilt.
“Writing an article.” Alex’s eyes were wide and imploring, in a ‘can we just get this over with?’ kind of way.
Reece sat down at one of the tables. “Go on then, ask your questions.”
Alex grimaced as he sat down at the next table along. “How have you been?”
Reece rolled his eyes. “You’re not here to chit chat.” God he was being an arse and he knew it, but he wasn’t sure what else Alex expected from him.
“Sorry.” Alex stared down at the table for several seconds, his fierce stare reminding Reece of the night Alex had ended not only their relationship, but their friendship, too.
After a while, Alex opened the small rucksack he’d brought with him and pulled out an electronic recorder, a notepad and pen.
“Do you mind if I record our conversation?”
“Go for it.”
Alex touched his finger to the on button, but didn’t press it. His mouth quivered, as though he wanted to say something, but either couldn’t find the words or the courage. An urge to bundle him up into his arms struck Reece, and it was all he could do not to stand up and do exactly that. He had no right to embrace Alex, and doubted the guy would appreciate it if he did.
“Are you going to ask me questions, or what?” he asked instead, painfully aware of the gruffness in his voice.
“I’m sorry for surprising you,” Alex said at last.
Reece stiffened. What he’d really wanted to hear was an apology for the way Alex had treated him four years ago, but obviously that was far too much to ask. “Just get on with it,” he growled.
Alex glanced around the room. “This place hasn’t changed.”
“It’s had a lick of paint.”
Alex nodded. “There’s some new equipment in the gym.”
“It’s been four years, Alex, the equipment needed updating.”
Alex’s jaw flexed.
“I’m really not interested in small talk,” Reece said. “You made it quite clear four years ago that you wanted nothing more to do with me, so stop sitting there pretending to be nice.”
“I—” Alex clamped his mouth shut and looked at the floor. He grasped the pen and began to tap it against the closed notepad, the fast sound was incessant and loud in the empty room. With his other hand, he turned the recorder on and pushed it across the table, closer to Reece, before flipping the pad open. “How did it feel to be selected to compete in the World Championships?”
Reece narrowed his eyes. He’d heard that frosty, not-quite-neutral tone before and it made his skin crawl. “Like a dream come true,” he muttered. “But it’s just one step towards my real goal.”
For the first time, Alex lifted his gaze to meet Reece’s stare. “Your real goal?” he echoed.
Reece resisted the temptation to snap out a sarcastic comment about how Alex must have known what that was. “The Olympics.”
About the Author
Colette’s personal love story began at university, where she met her future husband. An evening of flirting, in the shadow of Lancaster castle, eventually led to a fairytale wedding. She’s enjoying her own ‘happy ever after’ in the north of England with her husband, two beautiful children and her writing.
Author Links
Giveaway
Enter the Rafflecopter Giveaway for a chance to win
a $10 Amazon gift card.
~ His Fake Prison Daddy ~
RELEASE BLITZ
Book Title: His Fake Prison Daddy
Author: Thursday Euclid and Clancy Nacht
Publisher: Eine Kleine Press
Cover Artist: Clancy Nacht
Release Date: January 15, 2020
Genre/s: Contemporary M/M Romance
Trope/s: Forced Intimacy/prison
Themes: Opposites attract
Heat Rating: 4 flames
Length: 62 000 words/ 249 pages
It is a standalone story.
Buy Links - Available in Kindle Unlimited
Beauty and the Beast, but with more daddy issues and violence.
Blurb
When eighteen-year-old hacker Elias Stuyvesant ends up in a maximum security state prison, he's woefully unprepared despite his time in juvie. On day one, he's thrown in with a man known as the Santa Fe Slayer, Ambrose Hughes.
Hughes is quiet, disfigured, and weirdly urbane. Elias was so young when Hughes committed his crimes that he has only the faintest idea what Hughes is in for. However, Hughes makes clear that Elias is his ideal victim type...and there's no one to protect Elias from the much larger man with his prison-jacked body and that hard gleam in his dark eyes.
Whoever paired them has it in for Elias; that much is obvious.
Elias is terrified of Hughes, but he soon realizes the other prisoners are worse. If Elias is going to survive, he'll have to choose the lesser of the evils: To preserve himself, he'll need Hughes for his Daddy. And given Hughes's skewed morality, they'll have to fake it till they make it.
Excerpt
Then the guard exhaled and stopped outside a heavily reinforced door set in a wall of solid concrete. It looked nothing like the cell blocks they’d passed earlier, with their steel bars or Plexiglas, open to the guards’ gazes and Elias’s curiosity.
“This is…” Elias searched the guard’s face for clues, unable to finish articulating his question.
“Yeah, this is it. You’re in with—” The guard licked his lips with what looked like legit nervousness. “Ambrose Hughes.”
Elias blinked at him, not grasping the gravity invested in that name. Who the hell was that?
The guard looked at Elias with visible pity. “The Santa Fe Slayer.”
Shit.
No.
Shit shit shit.
The Santa Fe Slayer was fucking crazy. Not that Elias knew precisely what Hughes had done beyond killing people, but if he’d been active in most other states, he’d be on Death Row. But motherfucking New Mexico abolished the death penalty, so Hughes was just waiting to die in prison, no hope of parole.
Which meant, Elias quickly grasped, that he really had nothing motivating him to behave. What was one more murder to him?
He was already serving like twelve consecutive life sentences. Was he one of those who ate people?
Elias didn’t have time to collect his wits or steel his bladder before the guard knocked politely at the door and then unlocked it, pushing it open to reveal a windowless room thick with shadow. It was somehow even smaller than Elias had expected, with nothing to look at but a sink, a toilet, a little shelf built into the wall currently stocked with what looked like battered novels, and a bunk against the far wall, its bottom bed stripped bare, waiting for the bedding Elias carried. It took him a moment to realize the big shadow up by the ceiling was his cellmate.
Hughes stretched languidly and started to slide off the top bunk with the predatory air of a panther. “Garcia, sweet man, who have you brought to visit me?”
“New cellmate.” The guard—Garcia?—stepped back through the door and quickly removed Elias’s cuffs before shoving him forward toward the Santa Fe Slayer’s approach.
Elias looked desperately back at the guard as the thick steel door clicked shut. It beeped as it locked. A small, barred hole at eye level revealed that Garcia had already turned away.
“Hughes,” the man said, his voice pleasantly deep and drawling but edged with something unpredictable. Excitable. “Welcome to Hell.”
Elias clutched the bedding to his chest as if it might ward off attack, or maybe just because he needed to hold something.
This was why Edward Snowden ran. The government clearly sent Elias here to be murderated. Well, if he was lucky, he’d be murdered before this dude started to eat him.
Though he wasn’t even conscious of moving backwards, his heels hit the closed door behind him, leaving him nowhere to run.
In some ways, it reminded Elias of his first day in juvie, when he’d been so terrified, but at least then he was of comparable size and flexible enough sexuality to avoid becoming a target.
Taking a deep breath, Elias tried to collect himself, put on a brave face, and lifted his chin proudly. “Do you prefer being called Hughes? I mean, if it was me, I’d want to be called Slayer. Or Hannibal or something. Not that you probably need a badass nickname, I guess.”
Rambling. Fuck.
Awkward since the man just kept watching him, Elias gathered his bedding in his left arm and offered his hand to shake. “I’m Elias or Stuyvesant, or, you know… whatever.”
Hughes stared at him, dark eyes glinting dangerously in the low light. Something was wrong with his face, though it was hard to tell with how dim it was, but the texture was wrong, too reflective, scarred. He cocked his head to the side and said, “Maybe I’ll call you Bitch. Do you answer to that?”
He didn’t take Elias’s hand. He just stood there, looming, radiating amused malice.
“Um, well, I guess I could, but… um…” Great. So they were already going there. He was being fed to this Freddy Krueger motherfucker and there wasn’t a lot he could do about it. “I mean, this is prison. Won’t there already be a lot of people responding to that name? Wouldn’t want to step on any toes or cause confusion.”
What am I saying?
On the bright side, if he pissed this guy off, he might die quick.
In the silence, Elias was aware of Hughes’s shoulders shaking as his breathing turned choppy. Then, with mingled relief and horror, he realized Hughes was laughing at him.
With him?
At him.
“Stuyvesant then. No one else will carry that moniker surely.”
My review:
This was the second chance I gave this author duo, but I think it was the last. They're simply just isn't for me. I couldn't like the story, the characters are empty and the whole prison thing was just boring.
If I've wrote this review a few days ago, I'd say something different about this 'love in the prison' plot, but I did read another book in this theme and that was SUPER GOOD - so now I have a really other point of view about this.
Love can happen in prison, and it can be really good - if the author is awesome and write a good story about it. His Fake Prison Daddy wasn't this category. As I said both character were empty, and the thing that Hughes was a slayer but Elias wasn't afraid of him and put his life in this one's hand... I didn't know who was stupidest, the characters or I, who kept reading this story in the hope of something good.
The mistery around Elias's staying at prison was soooo boring and so dumb. And the ending... really. I have my answer; everyone at the prison was stupid and blind, because that ending - if I read a fairy tale and not a prison romance.
The book has some cute moments, some good erotica, but mostly it was just boring. I'm sad because I wanted to love this book.
About the Authors
Thursday Euclid
Thursday Euclid (he/him) is the m/m romance pen name of Rainbow Award winning author Will Craig, a thirtysomething disabled, fat, white, queer trans man from Houston, TX. For those who care, he is an Aquarius, and if you’ve met him, you probably can’t imagine him being anything else.
Proud da to two incredible queer, nonbinary kids aged 16 and 18 and honorary da to a 17-year-old black trans girl, Thursday spends a lot of time cooking vegetarian food in his Instant Pot while listening to Radiohead and dishing out advice and hugs to the younglings. Many of those scorching sex scenes were written or edited while obnoxiously loud teenagers danced to BTS in the living room.
When he’s not playing World of Warcraft with his handsome trans boyfriend, he’s probably watching horror movies or talking to his best friend and frequent collaborator Clancy Nacht.
Author Links
Clancy Nacht
Clancy Nacht is a bisexual genderqueer person who lives in Austin. Clancy has published several bestselling romances. Many of her books have been honored with Rainbow Awards; Le Jazz Hot won for Best Bisexual/Transgender Romance & Erotic Romance. In 2013, Black Gold: Double Black was a runner-up for a Rainbow Award. In 2015, Gemini won an Honorable Mention for Gay Erotic Romance and in 2016, Strange Times won an Honorable Mention for Science Fiction. Wyatt’s Recipes for Wooing Rock Stars was a finalist in the highly competitive William Neale Award for Best Gay Contemporary Romance. The Phisher King won second place in the Rainbow Award for Romantic Suspense, 16th for Gay Book of the Year.
Author Links
Tuesday, January 14, 2020
Saturday, January 11, 2020
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)