Saturday, May 31, 2014

While I Was Vacationing

Becca and cover model
 C. J. Hollenbach
at the RT Convention
I took the last week off and went to Pacific Grove, home of the wintering Monarch butterflies, next door to Monterey, California.  While there is a sandy beach where families and surfers play, what draws me is the rockier coastline, the small furry creatures, and the beautiful, endless waves.

Usually I try to do no work at all, but this time I had three review books to read--all for Booklist this time.  I've also decided to write a short story to submit for an upcoming Dreamspinner anthology, so I spent most of the time breathing in the sea breezes, reading, and writing.

In the meantime, here in cyberspace, my articles and reviews were being published.  Instead of writing blog pieces about them individually, I'm listing each of them here:

All About Romance ran both Surviving the Convention, my account of the Romantic Times convention in May and a blog piece, From the Review's Studio, about why I chose to review gay romances and how I choose the books to review.

Booklist also ran my account of the RT Convention in the Likely Stories book blog under the headline Gay Romance Comes Out at the Romantic Times ConventionAlso, my review of Jude Deveraux's From All Time ran in the July 2014 e-copy of the magazine.

The Romance Reviews ran my review of Missed Connections: I Swear to You.

So even though I wasn't at home, my week away was very busy online.

Grey Comes Home to Gentle Romance

I've been a reader of Andrew Grey's gay romances for a couple of years now and have no idea why it's taken me this long to review one of his books.  Here's an excerpt from Love Comes Home which was posted at All About Romance today:

A love story about a father and his son as much as one between two men, this is a superb example of Grey's command of the extraordinary in the everyday ordinary. For readers who wonder what gay romance is all about, this is an excellent place to start reading.

Single father and Pleasanton, Michigan, architect Greg Hampton is particularly proud of his 10-year-old son Davey who's excelling in Little League baseball, especially since a Greg played ball in college. Greg was even courted to become a pro, so seeing his son engaged in the sport is particularly enjoyable for him. But when Davey's batting is off and he seems to be having trouble on the field, Greg is heartbroken to learn that his son has a degenerative eye disease and will become blind soon.

As Greg and his supportive group of friends deal with Davey's situation, Greg starts dating wealthy Tom Spangler, who has a soft spot for the frustrated but plucky Davey. To help Greg, Tom, who runs a charitable organization for his family, researches sports for the blind, coming up with beep baseball.

As Greg and Davey start to adjust to Davey's blindness, Greg's former wife, who rejected Davey during the divorce, reenters the picture, demanding visitation rights. While Greg is at first suspicious that she is trying to get more money from him, he's appalled when she brings a holistic doctor with her when Greg agrees to her visit.

Greg is a wonderful father who is truly devastated by his son's condition. He runs the gamut of paternal emotions from anger that his son must deal with his blindness after having seen for ten years to over-helpfulness, wanting to wait on the boy hand and foot. Fortunately, Greg has a supportive group of friends and a caring new boyfriend who all want the best for Davey. The children of Greg's friends are particularly impressive because they continue to treat the boy as they did before his blindness set in.

Read the rest of the review at All About Romance.

Saturday, May 24, 2014

Hilarious Semester Abroad

From my review of Anne Tenino's Poster Boy that ran today at All About Romance:

The fifth in the Theta Alpha Gamma (TAG) fraternity series is a delicious romp with the frat boys in France, taking classes and causing hilarious concern as they forget the problems back home Calapooya College where their frat house burned down.

TAG member Tank's brother Jock, a gifted hockey player, was outed at his former college when a photo of him and another guy in a compromising position was sent to Jock's coach. Afterward the coach kicked Jock off the team, ostensibly for partying which broke school rules, but really for being gay.

Consequently, Tank convinced Jock to transfer to Calapooya and the fraternity which had adopted a gay-friendly membership policy. While the pro hockey teams that had been courting him and other groups want to make a poster boy of Jock, he adamantly refuses to do so, mainly because he's just recently admitted to himself and his family that he's gay. Straight Tank introduces his brother to Brad, who clues Jock into what it's like to be gay and have sex with another guy. Brad also introduces Jock to history grad student Toby, who's had a lot of lovers at the campus. Toby, however, is having problems with his master's thesis and is about to be kicked out of school, so while he's attracted to Jock and feels a special pull to him, Toby's trying to get himself together so he can graduate.

When Jock decides to go to the Provence campus for the end of the spring semester to get away from the media attention his outing has caused and Toby agrees to chaperone the TAG members in order to get some writing on his thesis done, the stage is set for frat boy fun while inexperienced Jock gets together with very experienced Toby.

This is the best of the Theta Alpha Gamma series, primarily because both Jock and Toby are such likeable characters and the problems they are wrestling with are so immediate and important.

Read the rest of the review at All About Romance.

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Racing TBR (To Be Read)

Challenge: More Than One (An author who has more than one book in your TBR--to be read--pile)

Title: Racing for the Sun
Author: Amy Lane
Grade: A

First off, I don't have one TBR pile.  In fact, my TBR pile has a bunch of TBR piles.  How does that work?  Well, I like to keep things semi-organized, so my TBR pile is divided by subgenre--review books, gay books, Westerns, contemporaries, and non-fiction.  I also have a miscellaneous TBR pile with bits and pieces which don't fit in the bigger piles.

I always enjoy reading Amy Lane's gay romances, mainly because her books feature such quirky and lovable-despite-themselves characters.  But she writes way faster than I can keep up, so Amy Lane novels seem to pile up quickly on my TBR list.

Racing for the Sun is another in a long line of her anti-heroes who turn out to be larger than life heroes.

Jasper "Ace" Atchison bonds almost instantly with Sonny Daye when Sonny joins Ace's Army unit.  Although Ace immediately knows that Sonny is hiding something, he also knows that short, frail-looking Sonny needs protection from those bigger and meaner than he is, and Ace is just the right man for the job.

Both of them love cars, and Sonny is a mechanic who can build the fastest race car around.  Leaving the service, they set up a garage together and start street racing, winning both with the adrenalin high and the betting money.

But as in all of Lane's angst novels, the past barrels down on Ace and Sonny, nearly wiping them out.  To say more is to spoil the book.

What makes this book special is its tone.  Written in the first person from Ace's point of view, the novel shrieks of rural America, the good-ole-boys standing around an open garage talking about the fish that got away or the car that could go 0-60 in half a second. 

Images of grease-stained coveralls and grimy, calloused hands underlie the tender emotions and electric link between Ace and Sonny.

Both Ace and Sonny are so vivid that even those of us who live in cities and rarely see mechanics working in garages will know them intimately.  Lane's stark prose breathes life into them and makes the unknown believable.

This is one of those books that lives on in the back of readers' minds and bubbles up when least expected.  It's made me move the rest of Lane's backlist to the forefront of my TBR pile.

Monday, May 19, 2014

Provincetown Romance Turns to Purple Prose

While I was at the Romantic Times convention, this review of Jacob Z. Flores' latest, When Love Comes to Town, ran at The Romance Reviews:

In the 4th Provincetown romance, Flores falls under the spell of purple prose and Family Week at the gay resort.

Brody O'Shea, last seen as Teddy's boyhood lover in When Love Gets Hairy, is the odd man out as family and friends gather for the marriage of Zach and Van whose romance was central in When Love Takes Over.

Brody is particular about who he will love, but not with whom he shares a night of sex. His parents left him with a skewed image of marriage, so as Brody has worked his way through the Provincetown offerings, he's kept a list of the things he wants and doesn't want in a partner. At the top of his list is a man without children.

Eric Vasquez, a cop who two years before lost his husband, is bringing his daughter Mattie to his cousin Van's wedding from a small town across the state of Massachusetts. When Eric gets there and sees how many of Van and Zach's friends are paired up, he misses his husband who died in an accident even more.

But as the odd men out, Brody and Eric are paired up more and more as the wedding plans come together. As they do, both come to change their minds about what they thought were important considerations: Brody finds he likes Mattie and has formed a bond with her, and Eric realizes that his husband would want him to go on living, not pining for the rest of his life.

Jacob Z. Flores' mix of humor and fond depictions of what initially seem shallow men who end up showing amazing depth is at the forefront of this novel as it has been in his others
.

Read the rest of the review at The Romance Reviews.

Saturday, May 3, 2014

A Rocky Return Home Turns into Love

I hadn't read any novels by Garrett Leigh before, but am now looking forward to reading more.  Here's an excerpt from my review of Only Love that was posted today at The Romance Reviews:

A mentally and physically scarred veteran reluctantly returns home after fourteen years only to find home is where his heart is.

At thirty-two, Jed Cooper knows his military life is at an end because of a chronic stomach disease and the debilitating wounds he received during his last deployment. When his younger brother Nick visits him in the hospital, Jed agrees to return to their small hometown of Ashton outside Portland.

Since Jed wants to get to know Nick's wife Kim and their two daughters, and because Jed has nowhere else to go, he at first accepts an invitation to stay with Nick's family. When Nick's townhouse begins to feel too crowded and Nick's drinking worsens, Jed agrees to move into the spare bedroom at the beachside home where Kim's adult brother Max lives.

Twenty-five year old Max, an epileptic, and his service dog Flo have carved out an idyllic life in their cabin by the lake. Max creates hand-hewn furniture to sell and lives an uncomplicated life, raising his own food. When he has seizures, Flo is trained to get help, so Max is fairly self-sufficient.

Jed and Max seem to rub on very well together, forging a friendship and then falling in love. In fact, for a while Max is even able to concoct meals that Jed's chronic stomach illness can tolerate.


Read the rest of the review at The Romance Reviews.

Thursday, May 1, 2014

Cover Contest -- Be Sure to Vote!

For the past few years (2005 - now) Cover Café has held a cover contest open to anyone who wants to vote on the covers the Café members have culled throughout the previous year.

I'm happy to be part of the Café crew and want to be sure readers of my blog have a chance to determine the best and worst of the covers the crew has uncovered.

Click here to vote from May 1 through May 21, then go to the Cover Café afterward to view the winners.

Oh, yes, there's also a category for Worst Covers of 2013, so be sure to vote in all categories.

A Hard Look at a Conspiracy Romance

Hard as It Gets, the first of the Hard Ink series finds the adult daughter of a Special Forces colonel who led his men into an ambush pairing up with the men who survived the set-up in order to find her abducted brother in this repetitious thriller.

Baltimore nurse Becca Merritt is alarmed when her brother Charlie goes missing, and when she visits his apartment, she finds his place ransacked.

Charlie has told her to get in touch with someone at the Hard Ink tattoo parlor should anything happen to him. There she meets tattoo artist Nick Rixey, who recently served under her father, and asks Nick to help her locate her brother. Although wounded veteran Nick despises Frank Merritt - who betrayed him and the rest of the men under his command - Nick grudgingly agrees to help Becca.

Things go from bad to worse as Becca's house is also ransacked and they discover after she reports the break-ins to the police that all official record of her reports about her brother's disappearance and the destruction of both their places has been erased. Then Becca is attacked at the hospital where she works and afterward Charlie's little finger is sent to her. Knowing that he needs help in rescuing Charlie, Nick calls the other surviving members of her father's team, and they work to unravel what Charlie knows and how to get him back.

Becca is an interesting combination of scared and brave, not really wanting to trust Nick and his wounded crew and not knowing that her father set them up. She's the superwoman to Nick's classic superman, the soldier who plans and fights extra competently on little sleep and even less food. It definitely helps that Becca is a nurse, especially when she needs to bandage up Nick and his crew or when Charlie's finger is sent to her, which, while scaring her, also incites her. It's also fortunate that she knows how to defend herself and use a gun. Even with all these attributes, however, she still needs Nick's help because - just like Charlie hinted - there is a conspiracy surrounding them.

Read the rest of my review at All About Books.