Contract Signed for Sequel to What's in a Name? Yea!

What Fredi would wear:
 A Tom Ford outfit
 as shown in Esquire

I signed a contract with Dreamspinner Press for the sequel to What's in a Name?  The novella, Redesigning Max, follows Fredi Zimmer, the flamboyant architect and interior designer friend of Jimmy Patterson in What's in a Name?, as Fredi redesigns a mountain cabin for outdoorsman Max Greene.

Here's the short synopsis I wrote about it:

Renowned interior designer Fredi Zimmer is surprised when outdoorsman Max Greene, owner of Greene's Hunting and Fishing, hires him to remodel his rustic cabin in the Sierra Nevada foothills.  Fredi is an out and proud Metro male whose contact with the outdoors is from his car to the doorway of the million-dollar homes' he remodels, and Max is just too hunky gorgeous for words.

When Max starts coming on to Fredi, the designer can't imagine why.  But he's game to put a little spice into Max's life, even if it's just in the colors and fixtures he'll use to turn Max's dilapidated rustic cabin into a showplace.  Who can blame a guy for adding a little sensual pleasure as he retools Max's life visually?

Max, for his part, is grateful when Fredi takes him in hand, both metaphorically and literally.  Coming out, he finds, is the most exciting and wonderful time of his life, despite the conservative former friends who want to stop his slide into hell.

More about Jed and Max

From my review of Awake and Alive by Garrett Leigh posted today at The Romance Reviews:

This very short sequel to Only Love cements the relationship between Jed Cooper and Max O'Dair and gives a tiny glimpse into their future life.

In the previous book, Jed returned home to live with his brother, sister-in-law, and nieces only to find that he needed much more peace and quiet than their chaotic household provided. Consequently, Jed moved to the countryside with his sister-in-law's brother Max, an epileptic whose service dog Flo rules the roost.

At the end of the book, Jed's stomach condition, a result of his military service, became critical and he underwent successful surgery to cure it.

This novella opens with Jed recuperating after the surgery and wondering what he is going to do with the rest of his life, the civilian years he hasn't planned. Fortunately, Jed has accumulated marketable skills during his military career, the most practical being his fluency in foreign languages.
Read the rest of the review at The Romance Reviews.

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.

Reed's Sequel to Hungry for Love

I absolutely love the passion that leaps off the pages of Rick R. Reed's books.  His Legally Wed isn't as gritty as his Raining Men or as sappy as Hungry for Love, but it shows how completely vested he is in his story just as the others also demonstrate that trait.


Having been married to a gay man for a year and having left the marriage bitter and resentful because he wasn't up front about the fact that he was gay, I empathized with Marilyn in Legally Wed a little more than I think Reed did.  But then how could he know some of the thoughts that go through the heads of the Marilyns of the world?


This is one of the few times I've wished I could have been in on a writer's creative process and possibly helped the writer turn a really good book into a great one.  Between what I know as the wife of a gay man and what Reed knows as a gay man, I think we could have turned out a terrific romance.  (LOL)


As it was, Reed was on his own, writing an interesting and impassioned novel.  Thanks for another good read, Mr. Reed!