Authors: JL Merrow & Josephine Myles
Release Date: June 14 2016
Length: 15,000 words
Price: $0.99/£0.99/€0.99
Cover Art: Lou Harper
Other Titles In
The Series: Mad About The Boys Boys Who Go Bump In The Night
Anthology Blurb:
Love - the most
intense connection.
The challenge
of finding love in the world today can take many forms, but at its heart love
is the same: it’s all about forging a connection with another person.
Experience romance at its most relatable in these four contemporary stories of
male-male love with a British flavour from award-winning authors Josephine
Myles and JL Merrow.
In these
stories you’ll find out how to communicate without words, be teased by a memory
that’s just out of reach, flash back to young love and emerging sexuality, and
discover how opposites can attract when you meet a stranger in a strange land.
These stories
have all been previously published, but are now available exclusively in this
anthology.
Anthology introduction by JL Merrow (taken
from the ebook):
Contemporary
gay romance. While both Jo and I love to experiment with different genres, this
is the one we both come back to most often. Why? For me, I think it’s because
even though with sci fi, paranormals or threesomes we’re playing in a different
sandbox, at the end of the day the game’s always the same: getting two (or
more) people together and forging a connection between them that we hope will
last. Contemporary romance is, as often as not, romance stripped to the bare
essentials.
And it’s
probably true to say that a contemporary romance between two people is in many
ways the most accessible form of romance to the average reader. It can be hard
to really identify with a protagonist from a different world, or a different
era. Weaving a story is all about making a fictional world seem real to the
reader who comes for a visit, and not everyone enjoys suspending disbelief
about ghosts, shifters or space ships. If you’re not poly yourself, it can be
hard to relate to a relationship between more than two people. Things that
happened decades or even centuries ago can, to those more interested in the
here and now, seem far off and irrelevant. (As writers, we’re often told not to
distance the reader from the story, which is while I always smile when I see
the familiar words, “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…”)
Contemporary
romance is immediate, dealing with the world the reader knows well—or could
come to know, simply by stepping onto an aeroplane. Yes, in these stories we
may still explore different realities to our own: for example one of Jo’s
stories features a deaf main character, and one of mine, a blind man. Another
is set in a city I’ve never visited—but they’re all firmly rooted in the world
we live in today. You can imagine yourself walking down the street and seeing
any of the characters in these stories. Perhaps even being a fly on a handy
wall as they fall in love.
And that’s what
the stories really have in common, of course: love. In the end, aren’t we all
here because we believe in love?
Thanks for
reading—and if you enjoy the stories, please consider leaving a review where
you purchased them. Feed the authors! ;)
All the best
Jamie x
JL Merrow, May 2016
Individual story blurbs:
Epiphany by JL
Merrow
When security
guard Vinnie spots a young British guy, Gray, looking lost on a New York
street, he thinks he’s never seen anyone so beautiful. The feeling’s mutual:
concert pianist Gray loves everything about the huge muscle man who’s offering
to walk him back to his hotel. When they stop off at Vinnie’s apartment, sparks
fly—but when they finally get back to Gray’s hotel, things seem to fall apart.
Is one afternoon all they’ll ever have?
Halfway up the
Stairs by Josephine Myles
When Charlie
wakes up alone after arguing with his boyfriend the night before, it seems like
nothing will resolve the situation. Josh wants them to move, but Charlie is too
attached to the house. It’s not just all the work he’s put into it, though,
it’s all the memories. One memory in particular, of standing hidden halfway up
the stairs, watching and wanting…
Sense Memory by
JL Merrow
Blinded by a
drunk driver, Colin is haunted by a sense memory—the smell of wood chippings.
When he meets up with Alban, who he's been chatting with online, he finally
finds out why.
Without Words
by Josephine Myles
Is that
gorgeous redheaded hunk on the building site really checking him out? Nick
thinks it’s worth the risk of getting his head kicked in to find out. Only
trouble is, Nick tends to end up spoiling things with his nervous babbling.
This time he’s going to have to keep his mouth shut. It’s either that or he’ll
have to find some other way to occupy it…
Author bios
JL Merrow is that rare beast, an English person who refuses to drink tea. She
read Natural Sciences at Cambridge, where she learned many things, chief
amongst which was that she never wanted to see the inside of a lab ever again.
Her one regret is that she never mastered the ability of punting one-handed
whilst holding a glass of champagne.
She writes
across genres, with a preference for contemporary gay romance and mysteries,
and is frequently accused of humour. Her novel Slam! won the 2013 Rainbow Award
for Best LGBT Romantic Comedy, and her novella Muscling Through and novel Relief
Valve were both EPIC Awards finalists.
JL Merrow is a
member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association, International Thriller Writers,
Verulam Writers’ Circle and the UK GLBTQ
Fiction Meet organising
team.
Find JL Merrow
online at: www.jlmerrow.com, on Twitter as @jlmerrow, and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/jl.merrow
****
English through
and through, Josephine Myles is addicted to tea and busy
cultivating a reputation for eccentricity. She writes gay erotica and romance,
but finds the erotica keeps cuddling up to the romance, and the romance keeps
corrupting the erotica. Jo blames her rebellious muse but he never listens to
her anyway, no matter how much she threatens him with a big stick. She’s
beginning to suspect he enjoys it.
Jo publishes
regularly with Samhain, and now has over ten novels and novellas under her
belt. Her novel Stuff won the 2014 Rainbow Award for Best Bisexual Romance, and
her novella Merry Gentlemen won the 2014 Rainbow Award for Best Gay Romantic
Comedy. She has also been known to edit anthologies and self-publish on
occasion, although she prefers to leave the “boring bits” of the ebook creation
process to someone else. She loves to be busy, and is currently having fun
trying to work out how she is going to fit in her love of writing, dressmaking
and attending cabaret shows in fabulous clothing around the demands of a
preteen with special needs and a soon-to- be toddler.
Twitter: @JosephineMyles
Excerpt from “Without Words” by Josephine
Myles
I walked along
the perimeter fence, sweat prickling my palms, trying to maintain a casual
amble to give the impression that I was the kind of guy who did this sort of
thing all the time. The site looked deserted until I passed the foreman's
cabin, where the workers sat outside on piles of breeze blocks, chatting idly
under the punishing sun as they swigged down cold drinks and munched on
sandwiches. He wasn't with them. That was good. I picked up my pace, determined
to find him before he decided to join the lunch crowd.
He wasn't a
sociable guy and I'd never seen him chatting - he just got on with his job -
taciturn and focused. It gave me hope that here would be someone who could
understand me; who could forgive my lack of social graces and ignore my nervous
babbling to see the man underneath; the man with intelligent things to say if
only he could pluck up the courage. The man who'd never done anything like this
before, but was now carefully dressed in tight jeans and close fitted red
t-shirt, intent on risking humiliation just to have a chance. It was now or
never, as I was due back in London tomorrow and I knew that my work wouldn't
bring me back to Sheffield for at least another couple of months.
As I rounded
the corner of the large, half-finished building, a solitary figure came into
view. There was no mistaking the supple grace of his movements as he hopped up
onto the scaffolding, measuring tape in hand. My breath hitched when I saw that
he was bare-chested under the reflective tabard, the previously covered skin
glowing pink where the sun caught it, and spattered with ginger freckles. His
body was stocky, heavily muscled; the type you knew would run quickly to fat if
deprived of regular manual labour. Yet despite being built like so many of
these sturdy Northern men, he moved with a fluidity that belied his size. The
strands of hair that escaped his hat glowed in the harsh light like burnished
bronze. He was a work of art. I wanted to study him, learn him. Explore him
thoroughly.
I cleared my
throat, but he didn't hear me. I waited, paralysed by indecision, clinging on
to the wires of the fence panel with white knuckles. Willing him to look down
and see me there; to give me that look again that I was sure I'd seen
yesterday. That deliberate once over, followed by a slow smile that made my
heart lurch and my cock stir.
And then he
turned. The moisture leached out of my mouth and I was incapable of forming any
words. He must have thought I was a prize idiot, standing there open-mouthed
with lust burning in my eyes. I wondered if he even recognised me without the
suit. But then that gaze that swept up and down my body, lingering a little
longer than necessary, followed by that lazy curve of his lips that seemed to
promise so much. He raised an eyebrow, grinned, and pointed to the gate,
swinging down from the platform and strolling over with a loose-limbed grace. I
followed, stumbling in my haste to get there. We stared at each other through the
gate, and I had to look away from the intensity in those green eyes. I watched
his grimy hands as they deftly turned the wheels on the padlock, the dust
trapped in the creases of his knuckles. His hands were strong and broad,
freckled, the hairs glowing like copper filaments in the sunlight, but
surprisingly nimble for a builder. I swallowed audibly as I imagined what those
hands could do to me. Those thick yet skilful fingers...
The gate swung
open and I slipped through, brushing against his arm as he pushed it closed
again. The touch raised goosebumps on my arm despite the heat. This close I
could smell him; the tang of fresh sweat mingled with something spicy. My mouth
started to water as I wondered how he would taste, picturing myself licking at
his stubbly neck, then tasting other parts of him. My jeans began to feel
uncomfortable as my cock swelled and I fought to get a grip on myself. It
wasn't like we could do anything about it here at the gate, in full view of
passing traffic.
“I’m Nick,” I
blurted out, but clamped my mouth shut before I ruined things by telling him my
middle names, date of birth or any other nonsense.
He walked off,
turning to beckon after a few yards, so I trailed behind him; absurd fears
fighting with my rampant lust as we moved further into the hush of the deserted
site. I didn’t even know his name, and the lack of any dialogue was starting to
freak me out, but it was also pretty kinky. Besides, the less we talked the
less chance I had to show myself up. I concentrated on the way his muscular
buttocks moved under their denim cladding. Anything to distract myself from the
possibility of humiliation, or worse. He disappeared behind a sheet of plastic
hanging in a doorway. I followed. What else could I do?
My thoughts:
Oh my. ‘Truly,
Madly, Boys’ is a delightful little read. Four stories, featuring two
men, each of them unique and yet all four united in the way they touch the
reader. Amazingly for stories this short, every one of these felt like a
complete tale. While I probably wouldn’t have complained if I’d been able to
spend more time with any of these four couples, I didn’t resent not being able
to do so. The moments we’re given in this book are sexy, funny, touching and original,
and there really isn’t a whole lot more you can ask for as a reader.
There’s not a
whole lot more about these stories I can say. All you need to know before
reading them is in the blurbs, and almost anything I could add might spoil the
stories or reveal the surprises contained in them. What I can say is that I had
a smile on my face while reading this book. The stories are original and draw
you in from the first sentence. By the end of each of these shorts I felt I
knew the two characters and had fallen for them. Truly, Madly, Boys was a
wonderful and totally satisfying surprise. Short stories don’t come much better
than this.
Here is what I am willing and able to say about the
four stories in this book:
Epiphany gives us what may or may not be a one-off encounter between two men who
appear to have absolutely nothing in common and yet may well be made for each
other. Looks can be deceiving and sometimes he who appears to be ‘weaker’ may
well have the strength necessary to push things forward.
Halfway Up the
Stairs is as naughty
as it is touching. It conveys that memories should be cherished and protected because
the special moments in our lives can be all too fleeting unless we are willing
to protect them.
Sense Memory made my heart smile. It tells the story of a wonderful moment when past
and present come together, solving a mystery and possibly laying the groundwork
for a beautiful and fated happy ending.
Without Words, finally, was as funny as it was endearing. Sometimes you find exactly
what you need without even knowing you were looking for or at it.
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