Category: Do You Want To Read It?

Wrap-Up Wednesday | January

~ Ofelia Gränd ~ Leave a comment

We’re nearing the end of the first month of the year, and I thought I’d do a post about what I’ve been reading. Not much. It seems I’m continuing my watching-series-on Netflix-with-hubby routine from last year.

It’s nice.

But what I have read is the following:

Human Omega: Discovered on the Slave Planet

Human Omega: Discovered on the Slave Planet (Pykh #1) by Eileen Glass – I was in the mood for some aliens LOL. Carter is an engineer who gets captured by aliens that look like giant insects. They’re not nice…at all.

He’s thrown into a cage together with two huge aliens of another species. Communication is a problem, but Pykh and Siel – the cage mates – do their best to include him in the work they have to do as well as in their love-making.

I’m not one to read a lot of menage stories, and a few pages in, I could guess where the story was going, but I enjoyed it. There are some really funny moments. And I do like an alien willing to kill someone to save them from a worse fate LOL.

books2read.com/HumanOmegaDiscoveredontheSlavePlanet

humanomegaHow does a bad day get worse, you ask? Well…

How about being squished between two huge, naked dudes with their meaty schlongs hanging out and everything?

It’s all a matter of opinion, but Carter’s day is going pretty badly. He’s an engineer captured by bug aliens, now depending on his large, muscled, naked cage mates for food and warmth. They seem sentient, so that’s good. But they’re also handsy. Which is… complicated.

The military isn’t looking for him. Slaves taken by the bug race never come back. Yet, Carter is very much alive, and if he wants to stay that way, he’ll need to trust Pykh and Siel, two affectionate aliens with claws, teeth, and size.

Rescuing The Princess

Rescuing The Princess by Pax Asteriae – This is really short, depending on where you draw your line for what’s flash fiction and what’s not, it’s either a flash or a short short story.

A knight is out to save a princess in a tower, and, yes, there’s an evil dragon guarding her.
When the knight gets there, he realises the princess isn’t a princess but a prince. And normally that make the knights go away, but this knight is determined to rescue the princess gone prince.

What’s a poor prince to do but call his dragon?

books2read.com/RescuingthePrincess

RescuingtheprincessIt has all the hallmarks of a great adventure:

A secluded tower in the woods, where rumour has it a beautiful princess lives, guarded by a dragon and pining daily for her freedom, her return to her parents, and the hand of the knight who rescues her…

Which knight would turn that down?

Assuming everything goes according to plan, that is — and how often does that happen?

The List

The List by Tanya Chris – this is cute. A short story about Blaine who always picks the wrong guys to go out with. Denny, his best friend and roommate, is always there to pick up the pieces after his failed relationships. He’s patient and wants what best for Blaine – he’s perfect. But Blaine is too blind to see it.

He makes a list of everything his partner should be and goes hunting! Poor Denny will just have to wait a bit longer for Blaine to see him.
I enjoyed this – quick and entertaining.

I can’t find any links to this, must’ve grabbed it in a giveaway or something, but here it is on Goodreads.

TheListBlaine has lousy luck with men, which is why henceforth all prospects will be vetted against The List. He’s on a mission to find the man who meets every criteria on it, and his best friend and roommate, Denny, is there to cheer him on, to guide and protect him on his important journey.

But where is his true love? If only Blaine could see what’s right in front of his eyes.

Metamorphosis

Metamorphosis by Pelaam – This story is part of the Legendary Loves Volum 1 anthology together with K.L. Noone’s The Pooka’s Share and my Pine Tree Mary, but I haven’t read it until now.

Ryker and his best friend Mitch is on holiday in Puerto Rico, but when they arrive at the resort, they’re warned not to go out after dark since there have been some strange animal attacks.

Ryker meets Alejandro who is working at the resort and is instantly drawn to him. They go on a hike together and the attraction grows. The more time Ry spends with Alejandro, the more he learns about the strange attacks and the monster lurking in the area. Soon he realises Alejandro isn’t who he thought he was.

Monster love? This is a fated mate, shapeshifter story, and I enjoyed it, but I would’ve wanted there to be a little less sex – yes, I’m boring that way LOL

books2read.com/MetamorphosisPelaam

MetamorphosisWhen Ryker arrives in Puerto Rico with his friend Mitch, all he’s anticipating are a few days of luxurious accommodation and an exciting place to discover. The last thing he expects is to find he has an immediate attraction to one of the hotel staff, the handsome and flirtatious Alejandro, who appears to be equally interested in him.

After spending a day with Alejandro hiking a difficult trail, Ryker finds his attraction deepening, though he knows it can’t be more than a holiday romance between them.

And he can’t help but feel Alejandro is hiding something.

Despite being warned not to leave the complex after dark, he follows Alejandro one night and discovers a world he never imagined existed. And the attraction between them becomes something much deeper.

But that’s the least of his worries when it becomes apparent something dark and deadly is stalking him.

The Perfect Gift

The Perfect Gift by Harley Grace – It was the cover! This story was part of the Winter Wonderland Giveaway at the beginning of the month, and it caught my attention, so I grabbed it.

Levi is with his friends at a Colorado spa, and the friends leave him without clothes in the unforgiving snow as a joke. Luckily for Levi, Jackson, a rugged, lumberjack kind of man finds him before he freezes to death and brings him home.

It’s short and it leaves a few questions unanswered, but I read it, sitting on the sofa with a glass of red, so I’m not complaining LOL

I couldn’t find this anywhere either, so here is the Goodreads link.

ThePerfectGiftWhen Levi lost his clothes, he finds a hot lumberjack to keep him warm.

When a practical joke leaves Levi dangling in the icy January wind at a Colorado spa, he’s in desperate need of a savior. Or a pair of pants. He finds both in a rugged mountain man who comes to light his fire.

Jackson, the town handyman, gets more than he bargained for when he drops a big load of wood off at the local spa. Levi’s there, buck naked and trembling, and Jackson has no choice to bring the hipster home before he freezes his balls off.

The trip was meant to be a present from his best friend, but in Jackson’s toasty bed, Levi finds the best present of all—the full attention of Colorado’s hottest lumberjack.

How to Catch a Bookworm

How to Catch a Bookworm (Chester Falls #0.5) by Ana Ashley – another shorty. It said bookworm in the title so what could possibly go wrong? I was laughing, not because it’s a particularly humorous read, but a little while ago I wrote about how I wrote Once in a Snowstorm ticking off tropes, well here we have a character named Tristan and one of the characters are ‘so responsive’ LOL.

There are no surprises in this one, but we have a bookstore owner and that’s always nice. It’s the first in a series full of How to Catch titles.

books2read.com/HowToCatchABookworm

How to catch a bookwormBen has two passions in life, books and Bookmarked, the bookstore he owns in the town of Chester Falls.
When he spots the guy across the bar, all broody, gorgeous and hard muscle, he can’t resist reaching out.

Tristan’s life could be worse, but moving into a new town and finding your boyfriend cheating on you with a random guy, all on the same day, is pretty up there on the scale of ‘how much worse can it get?’
Things start looking up the moment the sexy stranger with the nerdy glasses and deep brown eyes asks him the right question at the right time.

It was a one off.
It meant nothing.
Right?

When fate traps Ben and Tristan into a second meeting, will Ben finally listen to his best friend? And will Tristan put his past aside to catch his sexy bookworm?

Welcome to Chester Falls, where you can expect to meet sweet men, sexy situations, interfering friends and lots, lots of feels.
How To Catch A Bookwork is a 12k, MM romance short story set in the small town of Chester Falls.

Playing Chicken

Just a few days ago, A.L. Lester was here to talk about her new story Playing Chicken. Last weekend, I poured myself a cup of coffee and curled up with a blanket and read it.

It’s a cute, hurt-comfort, St Dwynwen’s Day story. Perfect for a Saturday afternoon!

books2read.com/playingchicken

Playing Chicken

Marc returns home from London to his isolated Welsh cottage for good, having found his ex boyfriend shagging someone else in their bed. Who’s the thin, freezing cold man with the bruised face he finds in his barn? Will the tenuous connection between them grow, or fade away?

A 9,000 word short story to mark the Welsh St Valentine’s Day, St Dwynwen’s Day, the 25th of January. With chickens.

Tommy’s Blind

And then I re-read Tommy’s Blind Date by Anne Brooke – I’ve written about it before here on the blog, but I enjoyed it this time too. I do love the opening scene when Tommy is on yet another terrible blind date.

It’s short, it’s fun, and while Jacob, Tommy’s best friend and date, isn’t my favourite character in the whole wide world, I like this one.

books2read.com/TommysBlindDate

Tommy's Blind DateThirty-two year old Tommy Godolphin has been on a series of blind dates, as he doesn’t want to be single any more. However, none of them really hits the spot and the latest one has proved a complete, if amusing, disaster.

When he recounts what happened to his best friend, Jacob, he expects Jacob to laugh with him as usual, but this time he doesn’t. Instead, Jacob challenges Tommy to go out on a blind date with him, to see what, if anything, he might be doing wrong. If Tommy accepts, how will their friendship survive?

That’s it! Happy reding 🙂

Guest Post | Playing Chicken

~ Ofelia Gränd ~ 1 Comment

Guest-Post

Today we have the lovely A.L. Lester here to talk about her surprise release, Playing Chicken. Make sure to read to the end so you don’t miss the giveaway!

Thank you so much for having me here to day to talk about my new short story, Playing Chicken! It’s a meet-cute bit of fluff that I accidentally wrote as a distraction from Real Life ™ over the last couple of weeks. I have recently joined the UK Romance Novelist’s Association’s Welsh chapter (Cariad Chapter—cariad means love in Welsh) and we are doing a Thing next week around St Dwynwen’s Day, the 25th January. Dwynwen is sometimes talked about as ‘The Welsh St Valentine’ and I have written all about her on my own blog, so I won’t repeat that here!

Playing Chicken is not my usual style at all. I usually write longer, historical-paranormal romances and recently non-binary characters have been making more of an appearance in my stories. At the moment as my main project, I’m writing a trilogy set in my Lost in Time paranormal universe, which is going to have a fair amount of angst and baddies.

It was pure relief to write something cosy and sweet and just…kind.

The setting for the story is actually a friend’s house. They have an old gamekeeper’s cottage isolated in the middle of a Welsh forest, and you have to drive half a mile down a muddy track to get to it. It’s wonderful. I’d love to live there! So impractical in my current situation, but for Marc and Mal and Anghared the deerhound, it’s perfect.

Chickens

My life is much less full of animals now than it was a decade ago. I used to run a market stall selling eggs at the farmer’s market locally, and I bred hens. At one point I had two hundred chickens. We still have a dozen to lay eggs for ourselves, but that’s it, these days. It was lovely to revisit my poultry-keeping past and write about not-Marc’s chickens. I envisage them as Buff Orpingtons, huge and fluffy. Poor Marc doesn’t quite know what to do about them, but they are very gentle-natured and I’m sure he’ll be fine!

Excerpt:

His first aid kit was rudimentary but covered the basics. Antiseptics, dressings, butterfly strips. It should do the job. He hauled it out from under the driver’s seat, eyeing the squeezed-in boxes disfavourably. That was going to be today’s job, he supposed.

He was so taken up with his mission that he forgot there should have been a chicken in the porch until he turned back toward the house. He blinked in disbelief. She had a friend. Two friends. They were sat in a row on the back of the garden bench underneath the parlour window. As he watched, they jumped down, one by one and stood in a line, as if waiting for him. The two new ones were very clearly the same breed as Chicken Number One. Big, fluffy, orange. One had more exciting headgear than the other two and was a bit bigger, so he guessed that was a boy-chicken. Cockerel. Cock. He sniggered quietly and then stopped himself as the first chicken…he could tell it was the original one because it had a bit of black in its tail and the others didn’t…looked at him disapprovingly.

Obviously cock jokes were out. The telepathic chicken didn’t like it.

“Sorry,” he said. “I was just getting the first aid kit for Mal. I’ll stop.”

He performed a shuffling dance around them to get back indoors. “You’re like the Midwich Cuckoos,” he told them. “You are not coming into my house. Stay outside. It’s bad enough having a porch full of chicken shit.”

Mal was on his feet looking at him in alarm when he stepped through the parlour door, and the dog was standing beside him, hackles up.

“Who were you talking to?” he asked in a panicked voice. “Is someone out there?”

Marc shook his head. “Chickens,” he said. “I seem to have chickens living in the porch. It’s fine. He narrowed his eyes. “What makes you think there might be someone out there? Who hurt you?”

Mal sat down on the edge of the chair and ran his hands over his cheeks, pulling a face. The dog sat beside him and put her chin on his knee, staring up at him, and he absently began to pet her ears. Marc knelt beside him and opened the first-aid box.

“My ex’s dad,” he said, quietly, after a moment or two. We’d split up anyway. Ages ago. But he saw me in Welshpool a couple of days ago and wanted to drive the point home.’ He shivered. “I’d only gone down into town to pick up some food and bits.” He winced as Marc turned his face toward the light and began to wipe the cut against his hairline with antiseptic. “I’d left Anghared up here, else he wouldn’t have got near me.”

The dog gave a small woof as she heard her name.

“Would he, girl? Stupid man.”

“So how did you end up in my barn?” Marc said, gently fixing butterfly strips over the cut. It had come open again and was bleeding a bit, but it looked like it would be fine. “Come on, let’s look at your ribs too, while I’m at it.”

“They’re fine, honestly. Only bruised.” Mal pulled away and Marc just looked at him. Mal sighed. “All right, all right.” He began to unzip the big hoodie he was swamped in and winced again. Marc raised an eyebrow, silently asking for permission and then reached out to help when Mal nodded. There were a lot of layers to get through and it took a while to gently extract him. The cold was still coming off him in waves and he was shivering badly as he said, “I’ve been staying up in the woods. But I felt too bad to get home. Anghared found me, didn’t you girl? And we needed somewhere out of the cold. I’m freezing, still.”

He was shuddering, which was probably a good thing in retrospect, Marc thought. He hadn’t been shivering at all when he’d first come inside. Incipient hypothermia. He had a quick look and a gentle feel of the ribs. They were badly bruised but he couldn’t feel anything shifting around, so he’d call that good. Mal’s skin was icy cold under Marc’s fingers.

“Bath?” he said. “Or body-heat?”

“Ugh,” he screwed his face up. “Do I have to?”

“Yes,” said Marc firmly. “I don’t want you to die on my first day home for two and a half years. If that’s all right.”

Playing Chicken

Marc returns home from London to his isolated Welsh cottage for good, having found his ex boyfriend shagging someone else in their bed. Who’s the thin, freezing cold man with the bruised face he finds in his barn? Will the tenuous connection between them grow, or fade away?

A 9,000 word short story to mark the Welsh St Valentine’s Day, St Dwynwen’s Day, the 25th of January. With chickens.

  • Tag line: A short contemporary gay romance to mark St Dwynwen’s Day – the Welsh St Valentine. With Chickens.
  • Genre: Gay, romance, contemporary, meet-cute, short story
  • Length: 9,000 words
  • Release Date: 18 Jan 2020
  • Buy: http://books2read.com/playingchicken

Giveaway

To celebrate the release of Playing Chicken, Ally is giving away a copy of her New York Times Book Review featured story, Taking Stock. Click here to join!

About A.L. Lester

Writer of queer, paranormal, historical, romantic suspense. Lives in the South West of England with Mr AL, two children, a badly behaved dachshund, a terrifying cat and some hens. Likes gardening but doesn’t really have time or energy. Not musical. Doesn’t much like telly. Non-binary. Chronically disabled. Has tedious fits.

Links

All my links are gathered here (this is by far the easiest!): https://lnk.bio/gjD5

Or pick and choose:

Webpage: https://allester.co.uk

Email: ally@allester.co.uk

Newsletter: https://www.subscribepage.com/allester

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CogentHippo

FB: https://www.facebook.com/ALLesterAuthor/

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

Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/a-l-lester

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SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/user-954808628

#PictaBook | The Empty Egg

~ Ofelia Gränd ~ 2 Comments

A picture says more than a thousand words. Recommend books using pictures and hashtags to tell us what you liked and didn’t like about it

Pictabook logo On February 20th, #PictaBook will be released. In #PictaBook we have Jules, my favourite librarian of all times, and Phoenix, and adorable carpenter who you sometimes want to hit with the books from the library LOL

No, Nix is very dear to me too.

In short, Nix thinks he’s in love with his colleague, but Kyle, the colleague, says that he is too stupid to date. To prove him wrong, Nix decides to read some books. The only problem is that he’s dyslexic and has never really read anything.

He discovers that Kyle is on an app called PictaBook, and creates an account.

That’s how he first makes contact with Jules.

I thought I’d share a few snippets of how it’s going for Nix on his quest to impress Kyle through books the coming weeks. The first book that catches his attention is The Empty Egg.

The Empty Egg

Excerpt:

Jules Rose took a sip of his red wine and scrolled through his PictaBook feed. There were several new books, and he made a note of checking if they’d be available to order for the library where he worked. Not all books were, especially not in niche genres.

The speech bubble in the right hand corner showed someone had commented or liked one of his reviews. It had turned to green. Jules’ heart sped up.

He liked PictaBook because it was simple, and it was about books, so what was not to like? But the main reason he liked it was because no one tried to interact with him. He had approved no one for personal messages, and he’d searched a long time for a way to remove people’s ability to comment on his reviews, but apparently there was no such option.

Staring at the green speech bubble, he blew out a breath and tapped on it. SexyDoornail69 has liked your review of The Empty Egg. Jules frowned. He couldn’t remember that book, and wanted to get back to the one he was reading.

Closing PictaBook, he opened his reading app, took another sip of wine, and popped a piece of chocolate into his mouth. He loved Friday nights—wine, chocolate, and a book were all he needed in life.

As he was about to open the book, another notification from PictaBook showed at the top. SexyDoornail69 commented on your review. It stayed there for a few seconds before it disappeared, leaving the screen free of interruptions. Damn.

For too long, Jules held his breath. He didn’t want anyone to comment on his reviews, but it would be rude not to reply, wouldn’t it?

He opened PictaBook again and clicked on the speech bubble. SexyDoornail69 had commented on The Empty Egg. Jules went to check. The picture he’d uploaded was of a lumberjack, and the hashtags he’d used were: #MMRomance #Contemporary #Lumbersexual #OppositesAttract #EstablishedCouple #Fetish #DualPOV #ShortAndSweet #BonerWorthy.

Ah, he remembered it now, but it had been years since he’d read it. A blush crawled up his cheeks as he read the comment, and he quickly took a sip of wine to calm down.

SexyDoornail69: Hi, ReadingInACorner! Love the hashtags. How boner worthy are we talking?

Jules took a long, deep breath, and hit the reply arrow.

ReadingInACorner: Read it and find out, though read the first book in the series first.

He closed the app and put away the phone as if it had burned his fingers. Standing, he righted his glasses and took more deep breaths to calm his racing heart. Booksy, his beloved, super lazy and slightly murderous cat, was resting in his usual spot on the windowsill in the bedroom, and Jules went to pick him up.

Pre-order in the JMS shop (20% off)

pictabook (small)Jules Rose leads a quiet life working as a librarian. He’s happy to spend his spare time reading books and talking to his homicidal cat. What more could he wish for? But when his cozy Friday night is shattered by a friend request on his book community app, politeness gives him little choice but to accept. Jules doesn’t want to talk to anyone, but he can’t be rude. Besides, if he had to talk about something, books is the topic he’d pick.

Phoenix Ford is dyslexic and avoids everything that has to do with the written word, but when the colleague he’s trying to impress calls him stupid, he decides to convince the other man, he’s mistaken. All he needs is the right book to make him look smart, a perfect balance between intelligent and short. And who better to ask for help than a guy who loves books so much, he labeled one boner-worthy on a book app?

When Jules finds out Phoenix never has read a book from start to finish, he’s on a mission. He will find the right book, the book that will make Phoenix fall in love — with reading. Phoenix’s plan might have been to listen to the book Jules picked for him to impress his colleague, but that was before he got to know him. Talking about books is a sure way to Jules’ heart, but is it enough for him to agree to go on a date?