Me, Myself & Books : Review: Smoky Mountain Dreams by Leta Blake

“Smoky Mountain Dreams is a beautifully rendered love story, of family, heartbreak, love and finding a way to carry on even after the unthinkable happens. Jesse and Christopher are truly one of my favorite book couples and their story is going on my list of favorites. I can’t recommend this gorgeous book more. If you’re an M/M addict like me, than you definitely need to check this book out.”

via Me, Myself & Books : Review: Smoky Mountain Dreams by Leta Blake.

Sometimes holding on means letting go
Christopher Ryder and Jesse Birch are two men hanging on to the past. While Christopher has let go of his failure as a country singer in Nashville, he’s still trying to please his narrow-minded, non-accepting family. His beloved Gran loves him the way he is, but Christopher feels painfully invisible to everyone else. He’s happy enough performing at the Smoky Mountain Dreams theme park in Tennessee, but even when Christopher is center stage he aches for someone to see the real him.
There’s more than meets the eye when it comes to bisexual Jesse. He’s raising two kids and fighting with family after a tragic accident took his children’s mother. There’s no room in his life for dating, his kids are his priority, and he doesn’t want more than an occasional hook-up. He sure as hell doesn’t want to fall hard for his favorite local singer, but when Christopher walks into his jewelry studio, Jesse hears a new song in his heart.

Smoky Mountain Dreams is available now at:

AMAZON
B&N
SMASHWORDS
iTUNES
SCRIBD
OYSTER

And now at KOBO.

“Leta Blake is not afraid to take risks in her storytelling” Review: Smoky Mountain Dreams by Leta Blake – Im With Geek

“Leta Blake continues to be an author who both surprises and delights, and is not afraid to take risks in her storytelling. This book tackles controversial topics with ease, and this is what makes it stand out from others in the genre. Quite frankly, Smoky Mountain Dreams is a must-read for romance fans everywhere.”

Review: Smoky Mountain Dreams by Leta Blake – Im With Geek.

Sometimes holding on means letting go
Christopher Ryder and Jesse Birch are two men hanging on to the past. While Christopher has let go of his failure as a country singer in Nashville, he’s still trying to please his narrow-minded, non-accepting family. His beloved Gran loves him the way he is, but Christopher feels painfully invisible to everyone else. He’s happy enough performing at the Smoky Mountain Dreams theme park in Tennessee, but even when Christopher is center stage he aches for someone to see the real him.
There’s more than meets the eye when it comes to bisexual Jesse. He’s raising two kids and fighting with family after a tragic accident took his children’s mother. There’s no room in his life for dating, his kids are his priority, and he doesn’t want more than an occasional hook-up. He sure as hell doesn’t want to fall hard for his favorite local singer, but when Christopher walks into his jewelry studio, Jesse hears a new song in his heart.

Smoky Mountain Dreams is available now at:

AMAZON
B&N
SMASHWORDS
iTUNES
SCRIBD
OYSTER

And now at KOBO.

A Superior Slave – Snippet from an Upcoming Free Book by @Darrah_Glass #mmromance #historicalfantasy

So, basically, Darrah Glass has written an amazing book series, and recently, after some discussion, decided to write a short, free story to introduce the world of the series. This short book is called A Superior Slave and should be available very soon, definitely by the end of the month at the very latest. And, again, it will be FREE. But, in the meantime, Darrah has posted a small snippet that should give you some idea of what to expect. Gah, I love this series so much. You will too!

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This is from A SUPERIOR SLAVE, a prequel I wrote as an introduction to the universe of the GANYMEDE QUARTET. The prequel and the first book are to be released imminently. Anyway, this is 6 lines from page 24:

Martin thought the things his friends hoped for were very reasonable, very modest. He did not want to share his hopes because they were not reasonable at all. He wanted a handsome master, kind and affectionate, who’d touch him like a lover and treat him like a friend, and these wishes were desperately, unrealistically romantic. He’d been taught as much at Ganymede and it had been made very clear: his master would be an ordinary boy with an extraordinary bank account, and he would be under no obligation to think of his slave as a person.

SOURCE: Darrah’s Facebook

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I tried to find some nice, old, Victorian photos to go with this post, since Darrah’s books reflect a fantasy, sexy, slave-y alternate history at the dawn of the Gilded Age. These all came from mydaguerrotypeboyfriend.

Artist Heinrich Vogeler, circa 1895, age 23.

Winston Churchill was a hot little twink. Dayum. Age 21, in his officer’s uniform, looking like a delicious thing. Unf.

Émile Nelligan, age 20 in 1899. First published at 16, this French-Canadian poet suffered a mental breakdown the same year this photograph was taken. He never recovered.

 

Baby Goes To Eleven #picordidnthappen

Since this will likely never happen again, I needed some evidence. Almost in the top ten! Whooo!

ETA: 

\o/

Flipping Gender Changes Meaning — Examples

Photo by Michel Dierickx

A question I get a lot is “Why m/m? Why do you write so many books with gay main characters?” I’ve got a lot of reasons behind that, some of them incredibly deep and involved, based in feminism and gay rights and freeing the mind. But let’s leave all that behind for now, and focus on how things change meaning when you change the sex/gender of any particular person within a certain expected dynamic.

I feel like the easiest way to illustrate this is with music, so let’s start there.

Everyone knows Adele’s song “Someone Like You”. What happens to the meaning and to your understanding of the song when a man sings it without changing any lyrics.

Jay Brannan also did a cover of Lana Del Rey’s “Video Games”. When he performed it live, he said, “My favorite thing about this song is knowing that by singing it I make you all picture me in a sundress.” I practically jumped up and down when he said that because it told me that he gets it and isn’t just covering it because he likes it, but that he sees a wider implication in his choices.

Another example might be Tori Amos covering “I’m Not In Love”. As she said in an interview, people grew up in the 1970s and 80s slow-danced to this song, not really listening to the lyrics. She covered it to point out how the meaning of it changes when it’s sung by a woman. What opinions do we have about a woman who sings, “I’m not in love, so don’t forget it. It’s just a silly phase I’m going through, and just because I call you up, don’t get me wrong, don’t think you’ve got it made. I’m not in love, no no, it’s because…I like to see you, but then again, that doesn’t mean you mean that much to me.” How do we feel about her compared to how we might feel about a man singing the same thing.

And then there is the more obvious commentary of “Real Men”.

For me, aside from just wanting to tell good stories with characters that I like, I enjoy the challenging nature of writing away from expectations and exploring how changing the sex, gender, sexuality of characters changes the consequences of certain behaviors within relationships. As I said, this is only the tip of the iceberg, but it’s a nice fat tip. Enjoy it. (Heh. See what I did there? LOL!)

A Link Around to Thoughtful Things

That picture has nothing to do with anything in this post. It doesn’t need to, okay?

I’m not feeling so hot today. Upset stomach and all that nonsense. I was just going to skip posting today, but then I read a selection of interesting blogs and thought I’d share them here. So, in no particular order, blog posts I read today that might interest you, too.

1. Revisiting the pleasure of the serialized novel.  — “On Twitter, Jane asked whether readers would buy a serialized novel and there didn’t seem to be much support for the idea. I thought about this for a while and wondered why people aren’t interested in serials anymore. Some of the great 19th-century authors published novels in installments, and one of the great pleasures of reading the San Francisco Chronicle in the 1970s was waiting for the next installment of Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City. While we eagerly watch mini-series and season-long drama arcs on TV, romance readers seem less willing to make the transition to serialized novels. And I realized I was just as reluctant….”

Thoughts on serialized novels? I have a book I’ve been considering serializing, but it seems like a lot of folks react to that negatively and see it as a money grab. Thoughts on that perspective? What makes it okay to serialize things like comics, still, but not books? Just hit me with your comments on this one. I’m curious.

2.

A gorgeous short story by Lightning Droplets. Read that with some morning coffee. A bit of word porn (in the non-sex way).

3. Wonderful thoughts about the journey of reading, the relationship between the writer and reader, and more. — “With authors that are new to me, or ones with whom our past journey has been rocky, I’m apprehensive. I walk gingerly and I’ve been known to drop their hand and walk back to the entrance, not wanting to return.

Some authors have led me down paths that I bitterly regret. I regret the time spent with them. I regret that subsequent journeys ruined past joy I experienced with them. These are authors that I stay away from.

Some authors have taken me down a journey that I love so much that I run from the exit to the entrance to start it all over again. If I see readers standing around at the front, I’ll run over to them and direct them to this awesome journey. Sometimes I’ll even pay their entrance fee.”

This gif has nothing to do with anything except that’s a smokin’ hot kiss, so…you know.

4. Recipes even a klutz can cook? Okay, count me in.

5.
And, really, this is a pretty great piece on m/m fiction and the various issues around writing and reading it. Though, really, the most interesting aspect are the comments. I think in this case the comments > the post. — “The long explanation is that there are a lot of reasons I prefer m/m to m/f. One big one is the issue of gender politics — there’s a huge, rotten load of baggage that is dragged along behind any m/f relationship. You can’t escape it, it’s always there no matter what you do or how you try to structure your story, no matter whether you “believe” in it or want to deal with it or not. (This right here will lose a huge chunk of the population; they don’t want to hear about gender issues.)”