shaeconnorwrites

Today my guest is Suki Fleet, with a discussion of guilt and responsibility as themes in her new book, Skeleton. There’s an excerpt, too! 🙂

Many thanks for having me on your blog today, Shae. My new release Skeleton came out on the 1^st Oct.

Although Skeleton is what I’d consider a light sweet read it does tackle the subject of personal responsibility, and how hurting someone affects you even if you try to deny it—if you have a heart anyway 😉

This is one of the main themes of the story—how everyone does things they feel guilty about, like hurting someone or treating them badly (it’s human nature, we mess up) but ultimately it’s how we deal with our mistakes that is the important thing. Whether we bury them and struggle with our guilt or whether we are strong enough and have a big enough heart to do the right thing. And sometimes, of course, we need a shove in the right direction 😛

I hope readers can sympathize with Jan’s character. While he does have a skeleton in his closet (not literally), he also has a big heart.

Here is a short excerpt:

“Oh, I don’t know, I’m not sure it is,” Jan says, though he knows without a doubt Henry is right. He picks up their pace, leaving the figure behind them.

“If he’s still standing there, can we invite him home for a hot chocolate? Everyone likes hot chocolate,” Henry says as they walk slowly back home from the shop.

Please be gone, please be gone, Jan mutters to himself, though he’s not sure his heart is in it.

They turn into their street and see the figure is still standing on the corner, head bowed against the now freezing onslaught of rain.

Henry takes off at a run, and Jan doesn’t stop him. His chest feels tight. He’s nervous, and sure Matthew is going to think he’s a creep, even though he can’t think of a concrete reason why.

Matthew staggers as Henry launches himself at him, but then sinks down, kneeling in the dirt and wet of the pavement to hug the small boy.

As he gets closer, Jan can see Matthew’s shoulders trembling as though he’s crying. Jan’s not sure what to do. When he reaches the corner, he tentatively holds the umbrella over them, trying to find the right words to ask Matthew if he wants to come home with them to get dry. But before he can say anything, Henry takes Matthew’s hand, tugs him up, and leads him to their house.

Jan’s hands are shaking as he tries to fit the key in the lock. They are, all three of them, cold and wet. Matthew’s hair is plastered to his head, but even soaked and upset, Jan thinks he still looks heart-stoppingly beautiful.

Leaving them in the kitchen, Jan brings down all the warm towels he has from the airing cupboard. He throws one over Henry’s head and hands two to Matthew, who is slumped in a chair.

“Thank you,” Matthew says softly, balling the towels in his lap. His clothes are so drenched, they’re leaving puddles on the kitchen floor.

Jan goes back upstairs and searches through his wardrobe for a T-shirt and some sweatpants. Everything he has is huge, much too large for Matthew. He stands there for ages staring at his clothes. In the end he grabs a soft grey jersey and some grey sweatpants, if only because he thinks the color will suit the faint blush of Matthew’s skin.

“Here.” He holds his clothes out. Jan is fully aware he comes across as cold and standoffish when he’s nervous. “I’ll put your clothes in the tumble dryer. You can get changed in the bathroom at the top of the stairs… if you want…,” he continues hesitantly, sure Matthew probably doesn’t want to.

But Matthew takes them, his expression still slightly tearful, and makes his way upstairs.

“Henry, can you get me the hot chocolate and the milk please?” Jan asks, pulling a pan down from the rack.

The process of cooking anything is distracting, which is exactly what he needs right now.

Then with a groan he remembers the cake.

“How about I make some pancakes for tea?” he asks, knowing this suggestion is not going to go down well and inwardly wincing.

Even though he loves pancakes, Henry is not so easily duped. “You said we could make a cake for Matthew,” he says accusingly.

Jan sighs. Suddenly he feels very tired. Putting the pan on the cooker, he sinks down in front of Henry so they’re at the same level and rests his hands gently on Henry’s small shoulders. “I know I did. But as Matthew is here, and he’s a bit upset, I think it might make him feel a little uncomfortable. Do you understand?”

They look at each other a long while. Henry bites his lip. “Can I put sparkles on his pancake then? And a candle?”

“Well, if he wants a pancake, and you ask him first, then yes, you can put sparkles on it, but no candle, Henry, okay?”

Blurb

Jan has given up on love, at least the romantic kind. He loves his five-year-old son Henry more than anything. 

But when Henry starts school, Jan is introduced to Matthew, a very sweet but shy young man who helps out in Henry’s class. Although he tries desperately to ignore his attraction, Jan finds himself falling for Matthew—he’s everything Jan needs. 

But amid creepy silent phone calls and possible break-ins, things start to fall slowly apart for Jan. Matthew wants to trust Jan, but the skeleton Jan has been trying to keep buried in his closet and the guilt he feels threatens to destroy everything good in his life.

Buy Links

Dreamspinner Press
Amazon
All Romance

My guest today is Louise Lyons, here to talk about her car-themed inspiration for her new story, Conflicted. There’s a giveaway, too, so be sure to check it out!

My Inspiration for Conflicted

My story is based around the world of cars, for example drag racing, exhibiting cars at events and so on. This is a big love of mine, and I regularly attend drag racing events. I’m also a member of an owners’ club for my little sporty Mitsubishi, and I enjoy putting it on a display stand along with several others, for members of the public to look at and photograph. This is what gave me the idea to write Conflicted.

I pictured my main character, Paul Appleton, in a similar position to me – struggling to get a great car and make it nice, with not very much money. Of course, I don’t have Paul’s temperament, thankfully!  He’s a troubled young man, who has lost several people he cared deeply for, and I’m happy that I didn’t write that part of the story from experience.  But the basics came from my own, rather tomboyish love of cars and fixing them up.

Inspiration in general

I started writing short stories when I was very young – about 8 years old – but it was only in my late teens that I got into M/M romance.  It was prompted by a school friend inviting me to watch a video at her house when I was 15 or 16. The movie was My Beautiful Launderette starring Daniel Day Lewis, and it featured both racism, and homophobic attacks, but it also had some sweet moments between the two main male characters. I started writing M/M romances for my own entertainment, featuring favourite rock stars, more often than not. Years later, I jumped into Fan Fiction, and eventually, after developing a large following and growing in confidence, I decided to try to publish something. And here I am!

My Writing Process

I don’t have a set plan for the way I write a story. I will get the idea for a basic outline of a plot and make notes and gradually it begins to fill out in my head. I make a list of important scenes or events in the order I want them to happen and then think about how I want to start. As I do this, my main characters begin to come to life in my head. I write a biography for them at that point, including appearance, family, background and anything else significant about them. Once that’s done, I get started and simply write. The story or its characters often tell me the way they want things to go and I use my notes on the main events to guide me. That works best for me. I don’t have a rigid plan to stick to, which for me, would make things more difficult. I like to go with the flow.

Two competing gangs of car and drag racing enthusiasts with a shared history of pain and rivalry leading to outright hatred. Two men from opposite sides of the tracks, yet more in common than they’d like to admit.

Paul Appleton is a troubled man who has never been in a relationship, having lost everyone he cared for in his life. His mother died when he was very young and subsequently, he lost his brother and his best friend. Now Paul is convinced love will always end in tears. 

Greg was living on the streets after his parents died and was stabbed by a junkie, ending up in hospital. The Buchanans took Greg under their wing while doing charity work, and Greg joined their loving family when he was adopted. He and his siblings are also car enthusiasts with much more money and therefore better cars than Paul Appleton’s gang.

When they eventually find a connection, Paul fights his feelings and tries to convince himself his lover is only a temporary bit of fun, but Greg has other ideas.

BUY LINKS: Ebook || Paperback

Giveaway: $10 Amazon voucher

Louise Lyons comes from a family of writers. Her mother has a number of poems published in poetry anthologies, her aunt wrote poems for the church, and her grandmother sparked her inspiration with tales of fantasy. Louise first ventured into writing short stories at the grand old age of eight, mostly about little girls and ponies. She branched into romance in her teens, and MM romance a few years later, but none of her work saw the light of day until she discovered FanFiction in her late twenties.

Posting stories based on some of her favorite movies, provoked a surprisingly positive response from readers. This gave Louise the confidence to submit some of her work to publishers, and made her take her writing “hobby” more seriously.

Louise lives in the UK, about an hour north of London, with a mad Dobermann, and a collection of tropical fish and tarantulas. She works in the insurance industry by day, and spends every spare minute writing. She is a keen horse-rider, and loves to run long-distance. Some of her best writing inspiration comes to her, when her feet are pounding the open road. She often races into the house afterward, and grabs pen and paper to make notes.

Louise has always been a bit of a tomboy, and one of her other great loves is cars and motorcycles. Her car and bike are her pride and joy, and she loves to exhibit the car at shows, and take off for long days out on the bike, with no one for company but herself.

Blog:  http://louiselyonsauthor.wordpress.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/louiselyonsauthor
Twitter: www.twitter.com/louiselyons013
Email: louiselyons013@gmail.com

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My guest today is Ashley Ladd, talking about how having family around affects her writing process and the journeys of her main characters in her new novel, Business or Pleasure.

It’s Hard To Live With Family

It’s wonderful, but often tough, to live with family. Don’t misunderstand—I love my family to pieces, but they certainly make it difficult to write.

Earlier this evening for instance, I was hot and heavy in the middle of promotion, surfing from blog to blog to Facebook page to Triberr to Twitter, in a total frenzy, when dear daughter number three bee bopped into my office wanting me to drive her to the gym to work out. Her exercise bike broke last week and she’s in the middle of losing weight and she doesn’t want to lose her momentum. She usually gets her sister to drive her to the gym, but her sister was sleeping. So she set her eyes on me.

Oh oh!

Although I desperately need to unplant my butt from the chair and give my body a work out, I wasn’t in any mood to interrupt my momentum. I was hot on the trail of several blogs that offered authors guest features! With one book that just released and four more books coming out in the near future, I’m in heavy-duty promotion mode.

Even though I didn’t want to, I finished the promotion request I was working on and shut down. Then we headed to the gym. After all, at the end of my life, what will I look back on with more love and joy? How many book tours I set up or the happy times I spent with my family?

In Business or Pleasure, both heroes, Guy and Tommy, experience the same kinds of problems with their families. They love them too. But they can be a pain.

Guy is an avid vegetarian and animal activist. He can’t stand it when his father cooks meat in the house and he gets absolutely livid when his dad uses his good pans to fix meat. He gets so furious he throws his pan in the garbage! Just as bad, his dad doesn’t understand Guy’s sexual orientation and yells about it in the middle of the yard so all the neighbors can here.

Tommy’s father doesn’t understand his sexual orientation either and also gives him a hard time. At least he doesn’t scream it out loud to the neighbors. He drives Tommy crazy when he insists that Tommy quit his real estate career to run the family’s new barbecue restaurant. He doesn’t respect Tommy’s wishes and desires.

Unfortunately, although our families love us and we love them, we don’t always get along well. Still, we are family and in the end, we should overlook the little things like special pans and a couple hours worth of book promotion and focus on the bigger picture. If we practice mutual love and respect we’ll all wind up winners in the end.

Guy Rogers is extremely attracted to his new realtor, Tom Beaudreaux. As a passionate vegetarian and animal activist, he’s ecstatic that Tom is a kindred soul. He could never be with a carnivore. Unfortunately, Tommy isn’t really a vegetarian or animal activist. He never said he was either, he just didn’t eat meat when he was with Guy. And maybe he emptied his house of all meat and dairy products before inviting Guy over. In fact, Tommy’s family owns the most popular barbecue restaurant in town and if his family has their way, he’ll manage the new location.

When Guy finds out that Tommy eats meat and his family owns a restaurant that is a monument to eating meat, he’s livid and doesn’t know if he wants anything else to do with Tommy.

But then Guy’s life gets crazy—his dad’s paranoia blossoms into violent dementia, he gets arrested for picketing a doggy mill, and then he winds up in even more legal trouble. When Tommy sticks by him through all his trouble and does everything he can to help him, Guy wonders if he’s been too militant and narrow-minded. Perhaps he can learn to live with people who have opposite views.

Excerpt

Guy’s dad, Glen, bailed him out of jail with a furrowed brow and a crinkled nose. As he stuffed his wallet into his pants’ pocket, he sniffed. “If your poor mother was alive, she’d be bawling her eyes out at this shame. Why can’t you learn to live and let live? If people want to follow the Good Book’s teachings and eat the food God gave us, you shouldn’t go around sticking your nose in their business.”

Guy rubbed his aching wrists the handcuffs had made raw. Then he swallowed a deep breath that hurt his lungs as he followed his father to his beat-up van. “Look who’s talking about live and let live.”

“It ain’t natural for men to love men, to sleep with men. He intended for you to meet up with a good woman and give me some grandchildren before I die. Now don’t be waiting too long. I want to be in good enough shape to enjoy them.”

Not this again! Guy twisted his hands together to keep from wringing his dad’s neck and winding up back in the pokey. “Your God is a forgiving, forgetting god, or did you forget? He’s the only one supposed to judge.”

“My god? He’s your god, too. You’d best start paying attention to His word, then you mightn’t be so darned pissed off all the time and marching around with that band of lunatics.”

By now he should know that the best way to win this argument was not to get involved, so he shut up. He had to put some distance between himself and his old man soon! Like yesterday.

“Calm down, Dad, before you give yourself another heart attack.”

“You should’ve thought of that before you went picketing that farm. At least you didn’t show up on TV and shame me in front of all my church friends. Don’t you be blabbing about what you’ve been up to. No one wants to hear it. And I don’t want that old coot next door or any of his followers to hear.”

Guy couldn’t help but retort, “The old guy next door is harmless. His daughter says he never leaves the house, that he can barely walk. He’s almost ninety.”

Glen peered at him as if he was crazy. “That’s why he gets his followers to do his dirty work. He’s been jealous of me for years.”

As much as his dad annoyed him, he loved him with his whole heart and didn’t want him to get sick. At seventy-one, he was frailer than most men his age. And he was obsessed with the neighbor, Mr Cary, to the point of being paranoid. Soon, he might have to go into an assisted living environment, but he was fighting it. If he tried to put his dad there now, he’d have the biggest battle on his hands in their history.

“Let’s drop it. I’m tired and hungry.”

Glen shook his finger at Guy. “You’ll be sorry when I’m proven right. I fixed some dinner, but of course, you won’t be wanting any of it seeing as it’s animal flesh and potatoes.”

Guy convulsed and almost threw up. “No. I don’t want that.”

When they got home, bile rose in Guy’s throat. Not only were the leftovers raw, bloody and mutilated, they were in his best pan!

Disgusted and angrier than he’d ever been in his life, he flung the pan in the garbage. The thing was no good to him anymore. He wasn’t going to put his food in a casket!

It was time to move out.

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Ashley Ladd lives in South Florida with her husband, five children, and beloved pets. She loves the water, animals (especially cats), and playing on the computer.

She’s been told she has a wicked sense of humor and often incorporates humor and adventure into her books. She also adores very spicy romance, which she weaves into her stories.

How you can contact Ashley:
chinara@aol.com
http://www.ashleyladd.blogspot.com
https://www.facebook.com/ashleyladdauthor

https://www.goodreads.com/AshleyLadd
http://www.shelfari.com/search/books?Keywords=Ashley%20Ladd
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=ashley%20ladd&sprefix=ashle%2Caps&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Aashley%20ladd

Jamie Fessenden is here today to talk about a cool mountain-climbing railway for the release of his new book, Murder on the Mountain.

Day Three of the Murder on the Mountain Blog Tour!

The Mount Washington Cog Railway always fascinated me as a child, but at about $65 a ticket (now—I don’t recall what it was at the time) it was out of my family’s price range. Alas, I still have yet to experience riding on the Cog. When my husband and I visited the area last December to research Murder on the Mountain, we stopped at the railway station, but the train wasn’t running.

First conceived of in 1852 by Sylvester Marsh, it took him six years to get permission to build the railway, largely putting up his own funds. But the Civil War intervened, and construction didn’t begin until 1866. By 1868, paying customers were riding the train, though it was still incomplete. It finally reached the summit in 1869.

It is the world’s first mountain-climbing cog railway, and the second steepest in the world, with a maximum grade of 37.41%. In order to deal with the steep grade of the tracks, it uses a cog (pinion) in the center of the engine, fit into a rack that runs the length of the track. It originally had boilers which were vertical, mounted on trunnions to keep them upright as the grade changed. Those have since been replaced by horizontal boilers, but as you can see in the photo, they’re positioned an angle so they remain relatively flat during the climb.

At one time, workers on the mountain used to ride “devil’s shingles” down the tracks to make the trip quickly. These were just flat sleds attached to the tracks, big enough for just one person. They plummeted down the mountain at about 60mph, reaching the bottom in about 15 minutes. The record was two minutes and forty-five seconds! Devil’s shingles were eventually banned, when someone accidentally killed himself on one.

For the next four weeks, Murder on the Mountain will be touring the blogs of several MM Romance authors. If you leave an email address in the comments or email me at jamesfessenden@hotmail.com, you’ll be entered into a drawing for either a free copy of Murder on the Mountain or a $40 gift certificate to Dreamspinner Press!

When Jesse Morales, a recent college grad who aspires to be a mystery writer, volunteers to work on the summit of Mt. Washington for a week, he expects to work hard. What he doesn’t expect is to find a corpse in the fog, lying among the rocks, his head crushed. The dead man turns out to be a young tourist named Stuart Warren, who strayed from his friends while visiting the mountain.

Kyle Dubois, a widowed state police detective, is called to the scene in the middle of the night, along with his partner, Wesley Roberts. Kyle and Jesse are instantly drawn to one another, except Jesse’s fascination with murder mysteries makes it difficult for Kyle to take the young man seriously. But Jesse finds a way to make himself invaluable to the detective by checking into the hotel where the victim’s friends and family are staying and infiltrating their circle. Soon, he is learning things that could very well solve the case—or get him killed.

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