Hello everyone, Holly Day here. Today my story The Hunger Gap is released.  

Do you know what the hunger gap is?  

In Sweden, where I live, we can’t grow things all year. Our winters are too dark and too cold. Some crops can survive in the garden beds, kale for example, but they don’t grow. So everything we want to eat during the year we have to plant during spring and summer, and then we need to preserve it. Or had to, is more correct since we now have fresh fruit and veg all the time in the shops – not from Sweden, though. 

Potatoes and salted herring were pretty much all there was to be had during the winter months before we had the overflowing grocery shops we have today. 

When covid hit, I wasn’t particularly scared of getting sick (don’t get me wrong, the virus is scary) but I worried more about what would happen if borders closed completely. We wouldn’t survive up here and the thought of starving scared the crap out of me. 

For how long would you survive if you didn’t have a shop or a marketplace to go to? 

If you live in California (just as an example) you can grow things all twelve months of the year. It’s possible. If you have a piece of land, you could grow stuff. Here? Not so much. 

The Hunger Gap takes place in a dystopic future where every district has to produce their own food. I gave the people about the same climatic conditions as I have where I’m at. This means that now in May, things are slowly starting to get green. We’re still at risk of getting nights below freezing, so lettuce, radishes, brassica, and a few other crops are about what you can grow at this point. Though I moved my tomato plants to the greenhouse a few days ago. I’ll likely have to carry them inside again, we’ll see. 

So, The Hunger Gap, no fresh veggies, and everyone living outside the city limits have to grow enough food to not only feed themselves but the entire city. To make sure no one gets more than the other (unless they’re rich and powerful, of course) they have controllers – government-employed workers in charge of bringing the food into the city market every Friday. 

George is a homesteader, and Axel is a starving controller with a daughter. It’s pretty much as grim as it sounds LOL 

Excerpt:

Axel hadn’t been in a barn in about thirty years. He’d spent the summers with his grandmother as a child, and she’d had a small farm similar to this. But that had been before the economy collapsed, before people were starving. Axel hadn’t paid much attention, there had been food in abundance, and no weekly controls or food tolls.

“I keep them here.” Mr. Vega gestured at a small stall with a couple of laying boxes in the corner and a roosting bar on the opposite wall. Axel didn’t know much about keeping hens, but it looked a bit too clean compared to the vague memories he had of his grandmother’s chicken coop. “See, there is one now.” He gestured at a bird coming in through the door. Axel frowned. He knew nothing about hens, but the one strutting around by the barn door looked more like a rooster than a hen.

Mr. Vega took a few hasty steps in its direction, and it hurried off. “Oh, she ran off.”

Of course, it did. Mr. Vega had intentionally scared it off. Axel frowned at him. A crow cut through the air. “That’s a rooster.”

“What?”

“The crowing. I might not know a lot about homesteading, Mr. Vega, but that sound, it’s a rooster.”

“It’s June’s rooster. She’s allowed one.”

For a second, Axel wanted to argue. He couldn’t appear weak. Before he accused Mr. Vega of anything, he glanced down at his paper. June Stone, George Vega’s next-door neighbor, was granted three hens and one rooster. She was a single mother of three and was allowed to keep fourteen eggs a week—seven eggs, as every adult was allowed, then two per child, and one extra because she was a homesteader. He assumed she was allowed the extra hen so she would cover her own consumption. He still didn’t understand the rules. Many seemed as if they’d been made on a whim and then never changed.

Mr. Vega, for example, could keep eight eggs for himself, not a single more, but on Friday when he got in line for his food package at the town square, he could be given seven eggs, and then he’d have the right to them. If Axel dropped by on a control and found fifteen eggs, Mr. Vega would be punished. It made no sense.

Axel took a deep breath as a wave of dizziness hit him. “Ms. Stone lives on the other side of the hill.” He tried to focus on the conversation, and not on Mr. Vega or the rules.

Mr. Vega nodded. “Yes, but birds roam, and our properties border each other. We have a fence between them, but we’ll hear the rooster. And sometimes they fly over the fence.”

Axel wasn’t sure he believed him, but he let it go for now. He straightened his back and met Mr. Vega’s gaze. “I’ll be back on Thursday, Mr. Vega. I expect you to have everything ready for me when I come.”

They walked out of the barn and toward the car where the guard was waiting. What was the point of having him if he stayed by the car when Axel inspected the property?

“It’ll be eggs.”

“What?” Axel blinked, having lost himself in his head again. For a second, he thought Mr. Vega would smile, but then he scowled instead.

“My payment this week. It’ll be eggs.”

“Oh, no vegetables?” He looked around the garden bed closest to the car. What he wouldn’t give for something fresh. He hadn’t had anything green in months.

“We’re in the hunger gap, Mr.…”

“Rowe, Axel Rowe.” Damn, should he have introduced himself when he arrived? Probably.

“There won’t be any vegetables for weeks. The government hasn’t decided yet how many seeds we’re allowed this year.”

They hadn’t? But it was already April. From what Axel could remember, his grandmother had the windowsills packed with seedlings in April. Maybe he remembered wrong.

“What’s this then?” He gestured at the plants taking over the garden bed.

“Chicken weed.”

“Chicken…”

“It doesn’t count as chicken food.”

Axel nodded. “And that?” He pointed at some leaves coming up through the soil.

“Bishop weed.”

There it was again, a flicker of something too quickly concealed for Axel to know if it was there or if he imagined it.

“Is it edible?”

“It’s not poisonous. Can’t have poisonous plants growing where the hens peck around. I wouldn’t survive if they died.”

Axel assumed he was telling the truth. The hens would help a good deal to keep Mr. Vega fed. A quick glance at the record before he’d exited the car had told him, Mr. Vega most often paid his toll in eggs.

Mr. Vega turned toward the house, effectively preventing Axel from asking more questions. “See you on Thursday, Mr. Rowe.”

Axel nodded and climbed into the car.

Blurb:

After years of the government taking everything he grows, homesteader George Vega has had enough. Food is scarce and people are starving. To provide for himself, he’ll need to break the law. Together with his next-door neighbor June, he sets up a system to hide food from the controller during his weekly collecting visits.

Axel Rowe won’t survive much longer. Every scrap of food he can get his hands on, he gives to his six-year-old daughter, but it isn’t nearly enough. Luck is on his side when he secures a job as a controller. He realizes taking the job will make people dislike him, but he has to eat.

George understands the danger he’s in when his old, lazy controller is replaced with a new, more observant one. Axel suspects there is something George is withholding, but when George takes care of him after nearly collapsing from hunger, Axel is more curious about how he’s able to keep food for himself than he’s interested in reporting him. George knows the risk, but after having looked into Axel’s desperate eyes, he’s compelled to take care of him. But can an outlaw homesteader have a relationship with the man who’s supposed to make sure he follows the law?

Buy links:

Dystopian M/M Romance: 23,976 words

JMS Books :: Amazon :: books2read.com/TheHungerGap

 

 

About Holly:

According to Holly Day, no day should go by uncelebrated and all of them deserve a story. If she’ll have the time to write them remains to be seen. She lives in rural Sweden with a husband, four children, more pets than most, and wouldn’t last a day without coffee. 

Holly gets up at the crack of dawn most days of the week to write gay romance stories. She believes in equality in fiction and in real life. Diversity matters. Representation matters. Visibility matters. We can change the world one story at the time. 

Connect with Holly @ https://lnk.bio/xpae or visit her website @ hollydaywrites.wordpress.com 

Today, we have fellow JMS Books writer, Anne Russo, here for an interview. Welcome, Anne!

Tell me about your latest book/series?  

Well, it’s my first novel (published, that is) and the first in a planned six-book series. The story centers on the star-crossed romance between Ian and Adam, who fall in love amid a violent and chaotic world. It’s a legacy story of carrying our parents’ sins and how that shapes our own lives and future relationships.  

Ian, an assassin, and Adam, a heart surgeon, meet in a twist of fate when Adam walks in on Ian in the middle of a hit. But, before Ian can decide to kill him, he discovers that he and Adam share a far deeper connection than mere attraction, setting off a chain of events that changes both men’s lives forever.  

Equal parts action/adventure and thriller/suspense, the series also features deeper, heavier themes dealing with sacrifice, grief, trauma, and loss. There are plenty of pulse-pounding action scenes, a steamy slow-burn, and at its heart a study of two very different men who are forever changed by the other. 

Ian and Adam aren’t perfect people, both flawed, complex, and broken. Still, together they forge an unexpected but no less intense love that will weather many storms on their way to their happily ever after, which there will be, but not until after six or so books full of a lot of pain, and heartache, and strife. The love they share and will experience together will come with a very steep price to pay.  

I’m making it sound bleaker than it is! But, the series also has a lot of heart, humor, and fantastic side characters who are also complicated and diverse in their own unique ways. Plus, Katherine is the sort of villain you’ll love to hate! 

For how long have you been writing? 

I think, like many writers, I can safely say that I’ve always been a writer. Since I could pick up a pen, I filled up notebooks with my poems and stories (albeit not great ones). I wrote my first novel in a series of spiral notebooks as a teenager (again, not a great one, lol), but I have loved books and adored the art of storytelling from a young age. Yet, also like many writers, I suffered from crippling bouts of insecurity and anxiety about my writing and rarely let anyone read my work.  

In my twenties, I began to come out of my shell some and began dabbling in fan fiction which was a great and wonderful experience. I met many amazing people (some of whom I consider good friends to this day), and I also received invaluable feedback and support, and encouragement for my writing. Plus, I learned tons about characterization, story structure, pacing. All of these fantastic lessons, I still use and integrate into my work to this day. And, I’m enormously grateful!  

But it wasn’t until some years later that I began to gather the self-confidence I needed to work on my original fiction again. Dead Generations came about during a period in my life where I finally concluded I wouldn’t be happy unless I went after my life-long dream of publishing a novel. It was a terrifying decision but one I’m so glad I made. To my delight, the reactions and encouragement I have received have been more than I could ever hope or dream of, and I couldn’t be happier or more fulfilled creatively. I love what I write and what I do! 

How much research do you do? 

I do a ton of research. For someone writing a book about assassins, I tell you, my search history has gotten a little sketchy, and I’m expecting the FBI any day now! I’ve researched everything from guns and weapons to how long it takes a person to bury a body. The types of medications one would use for sedation. Methods of torture, restraints, how bruises discolor, what places on the body are better than others for taking a bullet, etc.  

And since the book takes place in and around NYC, a city that though I have been too many times in my life (I’m right over the border in CT), I still did a ton of research on locations and tried to be as accurate as I could with my descriptions of the city itself. Case in point, did you know that the East River is not, in fact, a river but considered part of Long Island Sound? So, therefore, it’s technically an ocean.  

It’s funny, but I found myself fact-checking a lot of those little details. Research for me can be as fun as it is daunting, but getting my facts right and depicting the world and setting of my characters’ lives is crucial. I firmly believe in-depth research should be an essential part of any writer’s process. It’s the little details, in my opinion, that makes a world and a place, not to mention characters come across as solid, and honest, and believable.  

Also, speaking of research, I think it’s important to mention that while it may not seem like it on the surface, Dead Generations is a study of trauma, especially childhood trauma. I did tons of research on emotional abuse, grooming behaviors, and toxic narcissism to depict Ian’s relationship with his step-mother, Katherine, as accurately as possible. Also, other aspects of trauma, particularly sexual trauma, are an integral part of the story. Through my research and my sensitivity to such subject matter, I hope to continue exploring such topics responsibly and truthfully, which are very important to me personally.  

What do you think makes a good story?  

Characters, first and foremost. Love them or hate them. The biggest draw of any story for me is the characters. I love flawed characters: the more flaws, the better. 

I relate strongly as both a reader and a writer to imperfect people who, at heart, want to do better, be better. There is something very human in that sentiment that at the center of most of our dysfunction is the need to reach out for connection, to feel understood, and heard.  

Characters who make me feel for them, and immerse me in their story, make me root for them, for their struggles are the best. I love characters who make you want to be right there at their side, for the good and the bad, while they navigate the craziness of living a human life.  

What are your ambitions or your writing career?  

I just want to tell great stories! I have no ambitions other than that (okay, and a beach house somewhere far from civilization!) But, honestly, I want to entertain people and give them a good story full of great characters they can root for and get lost in.  

If my stories make people think and feel, good or bad, even better. I love the idea of invoking intense emotions in my readers, and as long as I can do that, I will feel successful as a writer.  

To have one person, even one, tell me a story of mine got under their skin and stayed with them for days after, then there is no greater compliment or reward as a writer. That’s as good as it gets for me! And I can only hope to have a career where I can surprise, excite, and encourage others to dream big and live bigger.  

Excerpt:

Assignment completed, Ian glanced down at his coat, noticing a few questionable stains even black couldn’t hide. Sighing, he stepped into the adjacent bathroom for a quick wash. He was cleaning off the excess blood splatter when he heard the door open. He stopped and listened as a curious voice called out, “Hello?” 
 
Ian reached for his handgun, quiet as he slid it into his hand. He edged forward, waiting for his visitor to discover Mr. Mallory was no longer among the living. Ian didn’t have long to wait. 
 
“Jesus Christ,” the visitor swore, taking several steps backward where Ian waited in the shadows. Once he was close enough, Ian pressed the gun’s muzzle into the back of his head, stopping him in his tracks. 
 
“Don’t move,” he ordered. Even in the darkened room, Ian knew he looked familiar. “Turn around.” 
 
Slowly, the man turned toward him, shaking. Ian didn’t miss the shock of recognition when he saw who held him at gunpoint. 
 
“Yeah, I remember you too. This is unfortunate,” Ian remarked and meant it. He didn’t relish putting a bullet right between those pretty eyes, but he’d seen his face. Not once. But twice now. And, unfortunately, he’d have to die for it. 
 
“Wait,” the young doctor urged his hands in the air. “You don’t have to shoot me.” 
 
No crying. No begging. A statement. The doctor even met Ian’s eye when he said it. Ian couldn’t help but admire this guy’s guts. A shame he had to kill him, but he didn’t have a choice. His finger twitched on the trigger. 
 
“I’m afraid I do,” Ian answered, glancing at his name tag. “Dr. Adam Morrow,” he whispered under his breath, the name hitting like a sucker punch to the gut. “Your name is Adam Morrow?” 
 
“Yeah, that’s my — why?” 
 
Ian wasn’t listening, rendered speechless as he studied the man. Pieces were clicking together in a hail of memories, memories he fought for years to keep hidden. Now they came rising to the surface one by one, swifter than he could recall them. All tied to the image of a child’s face. A child whose cheerful grin and name, Adam Morrow, had haunted him for the last fourteen years. 
 
Ian snapped into the present. He charged forth, seizing him by the arm. Adam tried to shake him off as he propelled him toward the windows. Meager light from outside street lamps was enough to spy the lingering traces of that boy. One whose existence itself had been a terrible mystery he’d never wanted to delve too deep into, terrified of the answer awaiting him on the other side. 
 
“Look at me!” he ordered, pressing the muzzle under Adam’s chin. 
 
Adam hesitated but didn’t have much say so with a gun buried in his throat. One glance and the truth slammed into Ian like a bolt of lightning. A sweeping recognition. His eyes told him the entire story in an instant. They were remarkable, dark green, and flecked with gold, memorable — her eyes. There was no way he’d be able to kill him. Not now. The implications of his discovery growing as they sized up the other, each of them unsure what to do next. 
 
“Who the hell are you?” Adam asked, low and shaky. 
 
“Who the hell are you?” Ian countered. 

Blurb:

While young doctor Adam Morrow resigns himself to an uninformed existence, world-weary assassin Ian Abbott struggles with a life he never asked for. When the two strangers meet by chance, the attraction is immediate. And deadly, as Adam walks in on Ian in the middle of a hit.

The situation spirals out of control once Ian discovers he and Adam share a connection far more profound than either imagined. Shocked by the discovery, Ian makes the hasty decision to kidnap him.

Overnight Adam is torn from his promising career and a family who believes him dead. Things go from bad to worse when he finds himself reunited with a mother he never knew who is now head of a covert and shadowy group of killers for hire. Forced into joining their ranks, with Ian as his reluctant trainer and handler, Adam is given a series of impossible tasks to complete.

To survive, he must fight with everything he has to keep his life, his sanity, and his very soul from being swept up in a violent and chaotic world even as he battles his unwanted and complicated feelings for Ian.

For his part, Ian, a man with dark secrets of his own, has a past he isn’t ready to share with Adam even as the other man worms into his life in more ways than one. The two grow closer and lines blur — between good and evil, friend or foe, enemy or lover. But something, or someone, plots against them, determined to do everything in their power to keep them apart. Even if it means destroying them both.

Trigger Warning: This story contains a brief scene of sexual assault.

About Anne:

Anne makes her home in Connecticut with her wonderful and ever-so-patient partner.

A lifelong reader, writer, and curious student, Anne hopes to create exciting multi-dimensional characters and worlds but with a queer sensibility. The Dead Don’t Lie is the first book in the Dead Generations series and her first novel.

When not dreaming of and writing suspenseful gay romances, Anne can be found reading an ungodly amount of biographies (the bigger, the better!) and spending time in nature. Anne also enjoys bubble baths, podcasts, coffee, all kinds of music, and in the days before covid, hanging out at museums, book stores, and flea markets.

If you’re interested in learning more, please follow her on her website and Twitter for updates and news on Book 2 and future projects.

Purchase Links:

Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08Y7KM44Z/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_JZQVK71FPR2D3E2PFBN1

JMS Books: https://www.jms-books.com/anne-russo-c-224_497/the-dead-dont-lie-p-3721.html

Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-dead-dont-lie-anne-russo/1138928314?ean=9781646567126

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-dead-don-t-lie-4

Apple: https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-dead-dont-lie/id1556461269

Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1074624

Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Anne_Russo_The_Dead_Don_t_Lie?id=-CAhEAAAQBAJ

Social Media Links:

Website: https://www.annerusso.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AnneRussoBooks

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/annerussobooks