Fat Ladies and Swans Sing

My life as a book reviewer at All About Romance, Booklist, and The Romance Reviews has come to an end. 

I pulled the plug a couple of weeks ago when it suddenly occurred to me that if I was going to fulfill my lifelong dream of becoming a published author, I needed to stop reading so much and start writing.

I'm sure to most people this sounds like common sense, but obviously I had to come to this astounding conclusion the long, painful way.

Truth be known, Dreamspinner Press can take a little credit for my decision.  I signed a contract with them for my novella, "What's in a Name?," to be published right after the first of the year.  It seemed like a conflict of interest that I was reviewing some of their books after signing the contract.

So after kicking the review habit and vowing to work on my fiction writing career, I also contacted my former colleague and friend Shawn Hansen and will be getting together with her in the near future to see what she has to offer as far as promotion is concerned, not only for the novella, but also for the first book in the Vampire's Food Chain series.

But what about the Swan Song, you ask.

A core collection list of gay and lesbian romance novels has gone public in the September 15, 2014, issue of Booklist.  I suggested running a list of "must have" books to editor Donna Seaman earlier this year, and she took my list of 15 proposed titles, whittled it down, added lesbian romances, and voila! a list was born.

Another Guards of Folsom from Peterson

Since I live so close to Folsom, SJD Peterson's Guards of Folsom series has always intrigued me, especially since the Guards in her books is located in New York City even though one of the books took place in Florida.

This time around, the fourth Guards book starts out in California, closer to what I think of as the Guards of Folsom.  Here's an excerpt from my review of Roped, her latest, that was posted today at The Romance Reviews:

From California to New York City, two scions of a powerful motorcycle gang realize they are outcasts because of their love for one another.

This fourth book in the Guards of Folsom series begins in the small town of Chatom, California, where Gunner Cain, son of the leader of the Crimson 8 motorcycle gang, gets a TEK-9 as a birthday gift from his best friend Jamie Ryan for his eighteenth birthday and changes his name to Tek.

Since they've been together nearly since birth, Tek and Jamie share gang experiences as other children share playground antics. Although the Crimson 8 don't traffic in drugs any longer, they still defend their territory and are hard, violent men backed up by strong, sassy women.

But once Tek and Jamie kiss, they realize they are different from everyone in the gang because they are gay, and gays are definitely not tolerated in the group. As they ponder their options, they get more and more involved in gang activities, including murder.

Unable to reconcile their love for each other and the disdain of the group members towards gays, they steal some of the Crimson 8 funds and head to New York and a new, free life. There Tek gets a job as bouncer at the Guards of Folsom, a BDSM club, and the two from gangland California get an education about some of the possibilities in an alternative lifestyle.
Read the rest of the review at The Romance Reviews.

Unburying the Buried Treasures

 Today All About Romance is running one of my favorite yearly columns, the AAR reviewers' picks for Buried Treasures, those books published during the year that didn't get as much publicity as we think they should have.

My picks are three gay romances (go figure!):

* Sex and Sourdough by A. J. Thomas:  I'm not much of a hiker, or walker for that matter, but this book made me want to lace up my hiking shoes and get out on the trail.  In addition, Thomas is the kind of quirky storyteller that I enjoy.  I'd read her A Casual Weekend Thing and was blown away by how different it was in a sea of gay romances that are beginning to look cloned.  Both books are unique, each with its own style, so I can't wait to read Thomas' next one and have been telling my friends about her.

* Beyond Duty by SJD Peterson:  Peterson's not an easy author for readers who like their books with little or no sex, but the themes she grapples with are important and worthy of discussion.  In Beyond Duty two career soldiers are retiring and still in prime condition.  They've been lovers for years, meeting up between deployments, and have even bought a house together.  But now they're at a crossroads that will determine what could possibly be the majority of their lives.  The questions aren't easy, and the answers even harder to decide.  Since the troops are coming home and our fighting forces are being cut, this is a book that applies both for hetero and homosexuals.

* Something Like Autumn by Jay Bell:  Our older daughter lives in Italy with her husband, twins, and dogs, and we were going to visit for the first time since they moved there.  I knew the flight from California to Italy would be long, so I saved the third in Bell's Something Like series for the long trip.  What better way to wallow in a favorite author's work?  But sometimes I'm so stupid that I despair.  I knew what happened to the main character before I started the book since he was a character in the previous book.  I knew.  And I read it anyway, over the entire flight.  It's my favorite book, and I will never forgive Jay Bell for not changing the story.  Read it and you'll know what I mean.

Mixing Series Is a Mixed Bag

I've really enjoyed both the Whispering Pines and Guards of Folsom series by SJD Peterson, so much so that I was really to read the latest one in the Guards series, Pony.

This time around the psychologist, who helped Bobby and Rig in Tag Team and who is a Dom in their New York City BDSM club, finds love where he least expects it.  Along the way, he gets to put the brother of Lorcan (from Whispering Pines) through an in-depth tutorial about the D/s lifestyle.

All of this sounds really promising, yes?  Unfortunately not because neither man is particularly unique or three dimensional.  As a tutorial on what the lifestyle should be and the benefits for people who fit the profile and adhere to the rules, then it's a great book.

As a gay romance novel, a tutorial, however, just doesn't work.

Does this mean I've given up on Peterson as a writer?  No!  What this means is that Peterson has proven herself just as human as the rest of us who play with keyboards for a living.  Sometimes the results are wonderful (which has been the case in every book she's written so far) while sometimes the results are not so much.

This is Peterson's "not so much" novel.  I'm waiting for her next books, which I'm confident will be back to her usual excellent standards.

During Our Alaska Vacation

While we were away visiting Anchorage, Vadez, Fairbanks, and Denali, three of my reviews ran on AAR with another one running today.  Here's a recap:

 Kade Boehme's Don't Trust the Cut is one of those strange stories that seems as if the author is stretching the opposites attract theme, but in the end works well thanks to a good writer.  Who would think that a former Marine (hence one of the cuts of the title in the service haircut) and an insecure young man (who resorts to self-mutilation, the other cut of the title, when his stress levels go over the top) could actually get together?  Boehme made me believe it's possible.

Carter Quinn's Out of the Blackness gives a step-by-step look at how a group of close friends can bolster and guide a young man from merely existing into a full life and happiness.  Although Quinn says he's not a psychologist and the book is fiction, his argument that love and gentle handling can make a difference in a person's life is compelling and totally believable.

SJD Peterson proves what an excellent writer she is in her latest, Beyond Duty, about a gay Marine couple about to retire at age 42 on the eve of the repeal of don't-ask-don't-tell.  Not only do they not know what they are going to do in their retirement since the military has been their lives up to this point, but they can't decide whether to come out to their families and friends.  Peterson gives a compelling look at a loving couple who must rebuild their lives.

Another loving couple, but on the other end of the sexual spectrum is the one at the core of Marta Perry's Lydia's Hope.  Happily married with two sons, Amish Lydia accidentally discovers she has two living sisters, one Amish and one not.  In the traffic accident that killed their parents, the girls were split up, but not told about one another.  Now Lydia is making it her life goal to be reunited with her siblings.





And that's what was happening with me while I was on vacation looking for moose and bears.

When the Flame Meets the Tinder

SJD Peterson's Whispering Pines Ranch series is gritty, down-to-earth, sometimes horribly brutal, and always enjoyable.  The men involved are older and battling their friends' and neighbors' prejudices in a small ranching community.  I've followed each installment since the beginning, often appalled at what I was reading and sometimes wishing I could smack one of the characters upside the head for his stubborn silliness.

So when I saw that Peterson had a new non-Whispering Pines Ranch novel out, I quickly latched onto it.  Plan B, reviewed today at AAR, connects two guys from the opposite ends of the gay continuum, one a football player, the other a flamboyant drama major.

Peterson uses her writing magic to engross readers in a small slice of life that, while written by other gay fiction writers, carries her own special stamp of reality.  This is a small story done really, really well, which grabbed a Dessert Isle Keeper review from me--and very well will earn one from other readers too.