Up North | Turning Wood

June 4, 2020June 2, 2020 ~ Ofelia Gränd ~ Leave a comment

Winter Up north 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.

books2read.com/TurningWood

Turning Wood at JMS-Books

turning wood

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.

Summer Books | Ofelia Gränd

June 1, 2020 ~ Ofelia Gränd ~ 1 Comment

Summer is here!!!

Sunflowers

…if you’re in the northern hemisphere like I am.

Back in the spring, I wrote a post about the books I’ve written that takes place during the spring, so I figured I’d do the same now that we’re entering the summer months.

I was afraid I wouldn’t have any LOL. While I love being in the garden, sowing and planting things, summer is probably the season I like the least. I don’t like the heat, and I definitely don’t like the bugs. That being said, all seasons have their charm.

I tend to write less during the summer than I do the other seasons, autumn probably is the season when I’m most productive. I love autumn! If we’re talking about favourite seasons, that’s it! And it shows in my books. When I went through my stories now, I have eleven autumn stories and only five that take place during summer, two of them written fairly recently. While writing Nine Stones, I realised just how few summer books I’ve written, so I wrote Cup o’ Sugar while I was at it.

And I’m almost done with another summer story, yay! See, I’m working on it LOL.

OK, so my summer stories are:

Silent Woods – This is the first story I write that wasn’t part of the DRitC event. It’s a tale about a married couple with two kids going camping. When the wood goes silent, strange things happen. If you like Scandinavian folklore, you should have a look at this one (and Pine Tree Mary).

Dazzle Me – This story is part of the Summer Bigger Than Others Anthology and it’s about Tom and Santino’s one year anniversary. Tom has planned to propose, but things don’t go as he’d thought they would. It’s a sparkly little tale that had me laughing while writing.

Happy Endings (Nortown 3.5) – A short little Tristan and Aiden story with lost of massage oils and slippery fun.

Nine Stones – Next month is the one year anniversary for this book. JMS-Books turned nine (Which means we have a ten year anniversary this summer!) and, to celebrate, those who wanted wrote a story that had something to do with the number nine. In my case, that was nine gravestones in Felix’s garden. Poor Felix LOL

Cup o’ Sugar – last and shortest is Cup o’ Sugar! JMS has a series called Hot Flashes where all stories have one of four covers and all are under 5k long. Cup o’ Sugar is about 4.3k and it’s about Roarak Halfhide a werewolf who hates coffee but finds his mate in a coffee shop.

If you click the title link you’ll get to a page about the story in question where you’ll find blurbs, excerpts, and links.

Have a lovely summer!

A – Z |Set Up

May 29, 2020May 7, 2020 ~ Ofelia Gränd ~ 11 Comments

For my S, I read Set Up (On Call) by P.D. Singer that I picked up for free through Smashwords Authors Give Back sale.

It’s short and sweet and just right for what my poor brain can handle right now – cute and funny. It’s about cars and a dentist LOL. I know absolutely nothing about cars. I don’t have a drivers license and I can at the most tell you what colour our car is, and maybe the colour of the cars of some of the people closest to me, but far from all. And I’d rather go to the gynaecologist than the dentist if I had to pick one right now.

But despite cars and dentists, I enjoyed this is a sweet romcom, and if that’s what you’re in the mood for, you should check it out. It’s only 31 pages long, but Terry manages to embarrass himself quite a few times during that short time and still get the guy. Cute!

Watch out for coleslaw and tinfoil, though.

books2read.com/SetUp

Set Up

“Say hi to Doug at the car show.” Just because Keith is a good pal, has good intentions and has great taste in men doesn’t mean Terry wants his own personal matchmaker. With his luck and past experience, he and the man Keith set him up with would hate each other on sight. Besides, Terry can’t look for the elusive Doug: he’s too busy ogling a certain gorgeous 1949 MG TC.

The sleek roadster stands out even among a field of classic beauties, and so does the driver. Is it too much to ask that the guy forget about Terry making a fool of himself over the right hand drive and sexy red fenders? Not likely he’ll forget Terry accidentally flinging a bowl of coleslaw at his chest.

If terminal embarrassment isn’t bad enough, now Terry’s had a dental disaster, leaving him with two choices: stay in agony for days, or see the new man in the practice.

Terry’s at the office by one thirty sharp. And he’s parked next to a red MG.