Hello everyone! I’m glad to be back to visit the lovely Ofelia again, it’s been a while since the last time. Today, I’m here to talk about my brand new release, Flowers Under My Pillow, a contemporary story infused with some of the Midsummer magic of the olden days.

The idea for the story came from old Swedish folklore that says if you pick seven kinds of flowers on Midsummer’s Eve and put them underneath your pillow, you’ll dream of the man you’ll marry. I tried this more than once when I was a kid, but it wasn’t as romantic as it sounds. First of all, I didn’t wanna pick something that was visibly crawling with bugs because who wants to sleep on top of a gazillion icky creepy-crawlies, amirite? Secondly, my mom wasn’t a huge fan of the idea of putting flowers on my bed and staining the sheets, and she was extra grumpy if I’d picked a dandelion. And thirdly, I rarely had the patience to find seven different kinds of flowers and I’m pretty sure I picked one pink and one blue lupin and decided they counted as different species more than once.

So maybe that’s why I never dreamed of my husband any of the times slept on a bouquet of flowers? Because I cheated? 😁

Frode in Flowers Under My Pillow has better luck than I had, though, and after thirty years of dreaming of the same man with dandelions in his beard, he finally gets to meet him… 😍

Excerpt:

When I look around to take in my surroundings, I realize my feet have carried me to the cottage without me noticing, and something catches my attention on the lawn on the other side of the fence.

A closer look reveals a tripod with a big, professional-looking camera attached on top. And underneath it, a man lies on his back, surrounded by a starry sky of tiny white flowers growing low in the grass. I don’t want to disturb him and I’m just about to sneak away when he turns his head toward me.

Warm brown eyes, with crow’s feet radiating out from the corners, meet mine. But it’s his full beard, scattered with dandelions, that makes my heart tumble over itself in my chest.

Smiling eyes. A full beard. Dandelions.

Dandelions.

My hand flies to my chest as I forget how to breathe.

It’s him.

****

The man’s eyes widen, then he springs to his feet, banging his knee into the tripod almost making it topple over, but his arm shoots out, his big hand landing on the camera, stopping it from crashing down onto the grass.

“It’s you,” he says, his voice a deep rumble emanating from the pit of his stomach, vibrating its way to me, settling in my core.

It’s you.

What does he mean? Does he recognize me, too?

“It’s you,” he says again as he takes a few hesitant steps in my direction. His eyes never leave my face.

“It’s you,” I echo, brows furrowed.

The improbability of it all, of my recurring dream materializing and standing in front of me, makes me take a step backward. He leaps forward, dislodging a couple of the dandelions from his beard by the sudden movement, and I watch them sail to the ground.

When I look up at him again, it’s as though I’m zooming out of my body and look at the two of us from a distance. Two men, separated by a white picket fence, staring at each other as though they’ve seen a ghost, as though they both think they must be hallucinating. His features are so familiar; I know every line radiating from the corner of his eyes, every strand of his beard. I know all the nuances of brown in his dark eyes; as though someone swirled chocolate into a deep well of coffee and then sprinkled some gold into the mix to make it irresistible. I know the sensitive setting of his mouth. I know the intense gaze.

It makes me dizzy, and I stumble but manage to keep myself upright. I take another wobbly step backward.

“Don’t go,” he says. “Please.” He stops but holds out his hand as though he wants to touch me to make sure I’m real.

The feeling is mutual. How is this even possible? How can the man I’ve dreamed about every Midsummer these last thirty years be right here a few steps from me? As though I’ve dreamed him into existence.

I drag my gaze away from his face and take in the rest of him. He’s tall and broad-shouldered, his biceps are straining the short sleeves of his button-down shirt. He’s got a rounded belly and meaty thighs filling out his faded jeans, and his big wide feet are bare in the grass.

Heat stirs between my hips. God, he’s not only the literal man of my dreams, but he’s hot as sin, too. When I force myself to look away from his body, our gazes meet.

“You recognize me, too,” he says, eyes pleading. “I can tell from your reaction.”

I dip my chin once. “I do.”

My heart flutters in my chest like the wings of a colibri. Another dandelion falls from his beard and my gaze follows it down as it lands softly on the ground.

My mind spins with questions and it’s making me dizzy again. How can the man from my dreams stand before me in the flesh? A living, breathing human being? A living breathing human being who recognizes me too?

When our eyes meet again, I read the same confusion in him.

Blurb:

Smiling brown eyes. A dark beard. Dandelions. Sunny, happy dandelions.

For thirty years, Frode’s had the same dream. Every Midsummer’s Eve since he was a kid accompanying his sister to pick flowers to put under his pillow, he’s dreamed of the same man. A dream he never shares with anyone, that makes him wish for impossible things…like true love.

“It’s you.”

Then one Midsummer’s Eve, the man of Frode’s dreams stands before him in the flesh. Both men recognize each other despite never having met in real life. Both men are instantly drawn to each other and want to know more.

“Who are you, Viljar? Are you even real?”

Their questions are many but do the whys and the hows matter? Or should they allow the Midsummer magic that brought them together to lead the way into each other’s arms? Into each other’s hearts?

Traditional Swedish folklore tells you that if you pick seven kinds of flowers in silence and put them under your pillow on Midsummer’s Eve, you’ll dream of the man you’ll marry.

M/M Contemporary / 17 477 words

Buy links:

JMS Books :: Amazon :: Books2Read

About Nell

Nell Iris is a romantic at heart who believes everyone deserves a happy ending. She’s a bonafide bookworm (learned to read long before she started school), wouldn’t dream of going anywhere without something to read (not even the ladies room), loves music (and singing along at the top of her voice but she’s no Celine Dion), and is a real Star Trek nerd (Make it so). She loves words, bullet journals, poetry, wine, coffee-flavored kisses, and fika (a Swedish cultural thing involving coffee and pastry!)

Nell believes passionately in equality for all regardless of race, gender or sexuality, and wants to make the world a better, less hateful, place.

Nell is a bisexual Swedish woman married to the love of her life, a proud mama of a grown daughter, and is approaching 50 faster than she’d like. She lives in the south of Sweden where she spends her days thinking up stories about people falling in love. After dreaming about being a writer for most of her life, she finally was in a place where she could pursue her dream and released her first book in 2017.

Nell Iris writes gay romance, prefers sweet over angsty, short over long, and quirky characters over alpha males.

Find Nell on social media:

Newsletter :: Webpage/blog :: Twitter :: Instagram :: Facebook Page :: Facebook Profile :: Goodreads :: Bookbub :: Pinterest :: Ko-Fi

Today, my dear friend A.L. Lester is here to talk about Celtic myths. Welcome, Ally ❤

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Firstly a big thank you to Ofelia, for inviting me visit today! I thought I’d talk a bit about the inspiration for my Reworked Celtic Myth short stories.

I live in the UK and although I’m Somerset born-and-bred (that’s a county in the south-west of England and traditionally we are all expected to wear farming smocks, hobnail boots, chew straw and talk with a very rural accent) I have spent quite a bit of time living in more Celtic-rooted Wales, another of the countries that make up the United Kingdom.

Wales is a small, hilly country with a beautiful language, that is full of lovely people, wonderful countryside and lots and lots of fantastic myths. Many of them are to do with the Christian church, many of them are to do with ancient Welsh history. Welsh, Cornish and Brittany in north-western France all have Brittonic languages that are broadly similar. They’re all forms of the Celtic Languages. The areas also share traces of a Celtic Christianity that is separate from the Roman Church that was brought to Britain by St Augustine in the sixth century AD. So there are lots of minor saints that might originally have been pre-Christian deities. In addition, many secular ancient oral tales were written down in The Mabinogion in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries after being handed down for centuries from person to person.

In addition, Scots, Irish and Manx (spoken on the Isle of Man) all share forms of Gaelic and likewise have a deep seam of ancient myths.

For writers looking for inspiration, the stories are rich and plentiful.

But they’ve been there all the time I’ve been alive. Why did I suddenly decide to start writing about them now?

Well. A little while ago during lockdown I started trying to make more professional links online; and so I joined the UK Romantic Novelists’ Association. There are various chapters. The Welsh one is called Cariad, the Welsh for love. And because of my connection to Wales, I was allowed to join their online meetings.

In January, we talked about celebrating St Dwynwen’s Day on the 25^th of the month with relevant stories. St Dwynwen is a Welsh saint who over the last few decades has become known as the Welsh St Valentine. I read up on her and found I had a story to tell. Playing Chicken is the first in the series and I had great fun playing with a retelling in a contemporary setting. St Dwynwen’s story is actually a bit random and not in the least romantic—a chap hits on her and she freezes him into a statue before unfreezing him and forgiving him and ends up with a chapel in north Wales with a magical well full of eels. It’s all a bit confusing, so I picked out the interesting bits and wove a story from them.

Before I began writing with Ofelia and Nell Iris in the Online Office in the mornings (horrifically early for me, because 6am Swedish time is 5am UK time), I didn’t really think I had a handle on short stories. But with their encouragement I was confident enough to try and the story came in at just under ten thousand words. Because I had such fun, I thought I’d have another go and this time I picked St Kevin, patron saint of crows. He’s Irish rather than Welsh, but I transplanted him (sorry, Kevin) and gave him a lonely cottage on the Welsh coast instead of a damp cave in the Irish hills. Again St Kevin’s legend is a bit gruesome—he nearly drowns a woman who tries to seduce him, and when he doesn’t, quite, she’s so grateful, or likes him so much, or is into rejection…or who knows?…that she becomes a nun. Again I took the bits I liked out of the legend…the crows!…and made a story, As the Crows Fly.

Then I had to take a couple of months and write an actual full length novel I’d set a date for at the beginning of the year and had been looking forward to for ages (The Fog of War, coming on the 10^th of July from JMS Books!). Once I turned that in a couple of weeks ago, though, I began to think about the next myth.

This time I’m going with a tale from The Mabinogion about Brânwen, sister of King Brân of Wales. Her brother marries her off to Matholwch, King of Ireland, but the marriage goes bad for complicated reasons to do with horses, and he banishes her to the kitchens. She tames a starling and sends it with a message to her brother and there are battles and a resurrection cauldron and warriors hiding in flour bags and all sorts. I knew I wanted to write about the starling, but to begin with I was trying to hitch him up with Brân. And then I realise that it would be a better story if it centred the Brânwen character, who is very much an object to be moved around in the original story and is very much not so in my own version.

I’ve also cut out the battles and the resurrection cauldron. Sorry.

Anyway. I don’t have a name for it yet, but if you’re interested in the other two, you can find a bit about them on my website. I’ll be posting buy-links to the starling story there as soon as I have a cover sorted. I’m really enjoying having a contemporary side-line to my usual historical stories and I can see myself adding to them as and when I have the time!

About A. L. Lester

Ally Lester writes queer, paranormal, historical, romantic suspense and lives in the South West of England with Mr AL, two children, Morris the badly behaved dachshund, a terrifying cat, three guineapigs, some hens and the duckettes.

She likes permaculture gardening but doesn’t really have time or energy these days. Not musical, doesn’t much like telly, likes to read. Non-binary. Chronically disabled. Has fibromyalgia and tedious fits.

Join my newsletter, for a free copy of the novella An Irregular Arrangement or find me on social media via my link-tree.

Hello everyone! Holly here 😀 I’m here today to tell you about a story of mine that’s released tomorrow. As some of you might know, I write stories to celebrate certain days – all days should be celebrated. We’ll see if I ever get to write 365 (or 366 I guess so leap day is included too). I’ll try. 

On Tuesday, 8th of June, it’s Best Friend Day, so I’m having a friends to lovers theme over at my blog this month, and Just to Breathe that’s released tomorrow is of course a friends to lovers story. 

This all started with a song. I was walking to work early one morning and I’d put on one of those Discover Weekly lists on Spotify. On came You Say with Dori Freeman. Some lines in that song stuck with me, and I spent the entire workday thinking up a story. It’s nothing like the song, but there are little snippets that fit pretty well. 

So we have Nico and Matt who have been best friends since kindergarten. Nico has been in love with Matt for years, but he can’t picture his life without him and has therefore promised himself he’ll never let Matt know in case it would ruin what they have as friends.  

On his way to meet up with Matt, he’s knocked on the head and thrown in a trunk of a car. He’s then roughed up some by a group of guys who tell him he has twenty-four hours to get them the item they want. The problem is that Nico has no idea what it is they want.  

As soon as he can, he calls Matt who is a cop. To keep Nico safe, Matt takes him to a cabin where the two of them spend the night while trying to figure out what to do next. 

It’s a fast-paced slightly insane story. I had a great time writing it LOL. 

Excerpt:

“What are you doing?”

Nico jumped as Matt appeared inside the front door.

“I told you to lock the door.”

“Like a locked door would have stopped anyone.” He should have locked the door, though. He’d been too busy pacing to remember.

Matt was balancing a small cake on the palm of his hand and held a grocery bag in the other. “Happy birthday.” He offered the cake to Nico.

Nico smiled. He’d forgotten it was his birthday. “We’re having cake?”

“Not the dinner we’d planned but better than nothing, right?” Matt grimaced. “David called while I was in the car.”

“They’ve found them?” Hope spread in Nico’s chest.

“No. Someone broke into your apartment.”

Ice filled Nico’s veins. “What?”

“I’m sorry, Nico. It’s trashed. David said it looks like they were searching for something.”

“Searching? I don’t have anything.”

Matt dropped the bag and walked up to him. He plucked the cake from his hands and put it on the kitchen island before wrapping his arms around him. Nico couldn’t relax into the embrace. Someone had been in his apartment. He couldn’t go back there.

“We’ll figure it out.”

“What did they expect? That I had The Mona Lisa hanging on my wall? It’s a shitty apartment, Matt!” He took a step back, so he could gesture with his hands. He needed to gesture.

“I know. And I don’t think they were looking for The Mona Lisa. I haven’t heard anything about it being stolen.”

“What then? My dildo collection? They’re not made of gold.”

The corner of Matt’s mouth quirked. “I didn’t know you were a collector.”

“Oh God, has David seen it? He already hates me.”

Matt crossed his arms over his chest, looking a lot like David as he did. “He doesn’t hate you.”

“He does!” Nico threw his hands in the air. “He’s always growling when I’m around, always acting as if I’m… something.”

“You are something.”

Nico glared. “He’s acting as if I’m… subpar.”

Matt shook his head. “He’s not. It’s…” He shrugged.

“What?”

“He doesn’t like the way we are.”

Nico blinked. “He’s a homophobe? Typical cops.”

Matt grinned and shook his head. “No, he’s not a homophobe. He thinks I, or you, should do something about this situation.” He pointed between them.

What situation?

“Do you want me to go check your apartment? See how bad it is?”

Nico sighed. He didn’t want Matt to leave again. Being alone in the cabin drove him out of his mind. “Yeah. Could you hide my sex toys?”

Matt laughed. “Sure. Where do you keep them?”

“Bedside drawer, where else?”

“Considering both the burglars and Amber and David have been there, I doubt it’ll do any good, but I wouldn’t mind a peek at your collection.” He winked, grabbed the bag of groceries, and moved closer to the fridge.

Nico groaned and sank down on the ratty two-seat sofa. It wasn’t a big collection, but… “I’m gonna blush next time I see David.”

Matt barked a laugh. “I doubt it’s any worse than what he already had pictured.”

Once Matt had put away the groceries, he grabbed the car keys. “I’ll be back in a few hours then. Anything you want from your apartment?”

“Clothes? I don’t know. How long are we staying here?”

Matt shrugged. “Since they’ve raided your place, they know it isn’t there. I fear they’ll come for you next.”

Blurb:

Nico Allegretti has been best friends with Matt Barnes since kindergarten. There is no one more important to Nico than Matt, and while he’s known for years Matt is the one for him, he’ll never tell him. He won’t risk ruining their friendship.

On his way to meet Matt at the restaurant, a case of mistaken identity ends with Nico in the trunk of a car. When he’s released, his kidnappers give him twenty-four hours to give them what they want. The problem is, Nico has no idea what that could be.

Not knowing what else to do, he turns to Matt, who is a cop. Together they go into hiding while looking for clues. Being kidnapped doesn’t change Nico’s resolve to not let Matt know how he feels, but hiding in a small cabin together makes it hard to ignore. Matt’s small touches and compliments must mean nothing. Had Matt felt the same, he’d let him know by now … right?

Buy links:

Contemporary Gay Romance: 15,392 words

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