There is a lot going on this month, I have two releases (yay!), but before we focus on them, I’d like to look back half a year or so. Back in December, Turning Wood was released. I didn’t have any great plans for it, just wanted to write a Christmas story, and I’d written several paranormal stories in a row so I longed for some contemporary.
Turning Wood takes place in Snowmelt, which is situated a little bit from Northfield. Now, there are a few Northfields around the world, but my Northfield doesn’t exist…and yet it’s existed for years. The first time anyone went to Northfield in one of my stories was back in early 2016.
Nortown, my series of lumberjacks, is close to Northfield so it’s been mentioned in several of those books. I love Nortown, it’s like a second home to me, but I wanted to write a series where not everyone was a lumberjack LOL.
So Up North came to be.
Up North is just that – up north. You know, that very specific area around Nortown, Northfield, Snowmelt, Whiteport and thereabout. And I have a couple of Up North stories coming out this summer so I wanted to re-introduce the characters in Turning Wood before we move on Crazy Joe and When Skies are Gray.
I want to make it clear that all these stories are standalone. The only thing linking them is that they take place in my make-believe small towns of the north. The characters don’t know each other, they don’t live in the same towns, and they don’t work with the same thing.
So, to refresh your memory. In Turning Wood, we meet Otho and Mason. Mason has just broken up with his boyfriend and gets drunk in a bar at a winter resort. After one too many whiskeys, he thinks going for a walk might be a good idea. But, it’s not. Mason walks out on the ice of the river and falls through.
It’s Otho’s day off, and he’s out turning wood outside his house when he sees a man walk out on the ice. He tries to get his attention, but the ice opens up and swallows the man whole. Otho rushes to the rescue, and then there is a lot of icy cold mixed with Christmas warmth.
Turning Wood is a 14k, contemporary, Christmas gay romance story.
For Otho Newcomer, the small village of Snowmelt is a haven from his old life. If he’s not exactly a changed man, he at least hopes to keep his distance from all those easy romances, and the inevitable heartache and disappointment that have always followed.
Mason Dager is an idiot. His ex has cleared out his bank account, sold his car and gotten him thrown out of his apartment. And he has no one to blame but himself. But what better way to celebrate a new chapter in his life—one that includes homelessness and the humiliation of telling his family they were right all along—than to spend Christmas at a swanky winter resort like River Cove? It’s already paid for after all.
When a very drunk Mason makes yet another dumb decision, Otho comes to the rescue, throwing the two men together during the most magical time of the year.
What should be the wrong choice for both of them, might be exactly what they need. They’ll just have to survive a nosy best friend, an asshole of an ex, and the scars of their pasts.
Ofelia Grand 