Today, we have the lovely Ellie Thomas back on the blog to talk about her story, One Summer Night, which is released today 🥳 Welcome, Ellie!

Thank you so much, lovely Ofelia, for having me as your guest again today. I’m Ellie Thomas, I write MM Historical romance, and today I’m going to be chatting about One Summer Night, my August release for JMS Books’ Day or Night story submission call.

I seem to be going through a Regency phase in my stories currently! I have managed to sneak in Elizabethan, Restoration and 20th-century stories during the first part of the year, but for the second half, most of the rest are lurking around the late 18th/early 19th century.

There is a reason why this era is so popular amongst readers and writers as it seems to lend itself perfectly to romance stories. The resorts and leisure activities available (at least for the rich!) are fertile ground for the spark of a love affair or continuing assignations between lovers.

One such London venue, Vauxhall Gardens on the South Bank of the River Thames, was hugely popular as a place for summer outdoor entertainment for all walks of life, and it remains a favourite setting in stories. For example, the wonderful Georgette Heyer has at least one heroine who finds herself out of her depth at a slightly too racy Vauxhall masquerade ball!

I’ve been itching to write about Vauxhall Gardens, and because of the London setting, this seemed the perfect story where I could add a romantic scene in the gardens on a balmy summer’s evening.

My characters, Martin and Will following a passionate first encounter are at odds with one another and arrange to meet at Vauxhall where they can talk privately. After meeting outside the busy Rotunda after a concert, it felt so natural to have them walk through the Pillared Saloon, avoiding the busy Supper Rooms. That way, they could wander deeper into the gardens in the dusk, strolling along the lamp-lit paths. There they begin to open up to one another and reach the beginnings of a mutual understanding.

One Summer Night

In 1801, Martin Dunne spends his days as a hardworking clerk at the War Office in London’s Whitehall. One summer evening, after a drink in a Fleet Street tavern, he has an unexpected passionate encounter with a seducer who haunts his dreams.

But when they accidentally meet at a society function, the alluring stranger not only turns out to be the son of one of Martin’s superiors but also betrothed to a trusting young lady.

Martin’s hopes are dashed as he imagines the Hon. William Grant is a cynical rake of the worst kind. But has he misunderstood the situation? And might he allow Will to explain and give their fleeting connection a chance to develop into a fully-fledged romance?

Extract:

Feeling hot and tired by the end of the working day, Martin trudged home along Whitehall. Not having the luxury of a valet, once washed and shaved, he struggled into his evening clothes and combed down his thick dark hair. Then he practiced a smile in the spotted mirror, softening his serious expression, before setting forth on foot along the busy Strand towards Charing Cross. As he walked past his fellow citizens, the sticky evening made him uncomfortable in his constrictive evening clothes. At least it’s not raining, he thought, and he wouldn’t disgrace his superiors by arriving at a prestigious destination looking like a drowned rat.
Once at the palatial and newly renovated mansion, where no expense or extravagance had been spared, there was the usual endless queue on the stairs before the formality of announcements and resultant herding of guests into an already crowded reception room. Martin made small talk with some vaguely familiar faces from Whitehall who wouldn’t normally have deigned to notice him. He was anticipating when he might be able to escape when Sir Hervey was before him, smiling in gracious condescension.
“Enjoying yourself, Dunne?” He asked, and Martin replied with suitably muted enthusiasm.
“Met many people as yet?” The great man inquired, and as Martin demurred and started to say that he had been conversing with mutual acquaintances, his host turned to call someone forwards.
Martin felt a dull sense of obligation as Sir Hervey introduced a young lady in her early twenties, fragile and sweetly pretty in a simple white gown, the fashion for narrow skirts flattering her petite form.
“Miss Imogen Ashley,” Sir Hervey intoned, as the young lady curtseyed, her eyes demurely downcast, “affianced to my son. I don’t think you’ve met my youngest, William, have you?”
Without waiting for an answer, he moved to one side to tap a young man on the shoulder. Martin’s first thought was that he was almost as fair and delicate as his intended, and then, as those all-too-familiar eyes met his, he realised with a jolt that this perfectly turned out pink of the ton, furnished with a dauntingly influential father and a winsome bride to be was the seductive stranger from the alleyway who filled his tumultuous dreams.
During the blur of introductions, that sultry gaze, so full of unspoken desire the night before, was blank, betraying no emotion after a flash of alarmed recognition. In such a crush, since neither of them reacted, no one noticed the sudden tension between them. Despite this, Miss Imogen moved a little closer to her betrothed, taking his arm as if sensitive to a change in his mood.
For the remainder of the reception, Martin could not have said who he spoke to or what he said, and as soon as he was able, he slipped away from the party unnoticed. On his way home, when he stopped off at a tavern for a tot of rum, all he could see in his mind’s eye was the shock in those speedwell-blue orbs.

Book links:

JMS Books :: Amazon :: Books2Read

Bio:

Ellie Thomas lives by the sea. She comes from a teaching background and goes for long seaside walks where she daydreams about history. She is a voracious reader especially about anything historical. She mainly writes historical gay romance.

Ellie also writes historical erotic romance as L. E. Thomas.

Website: https://elliethomasromance.wordpress.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/elliethomasauthor/

Twitter: @e_thomas_author

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/19835510.Ellie_Thomas

Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/ellie-thomas

Today, we have Amy Spector on a visit!!! She’s here to share her release day with us 🥳 Welcome, Amy!

Hello, everyone! And thank you to Ofelia for letting me stop by to share my new book. 

Today is release day for The Twelve Coffins of Dr. Coffin! Written to celebrate the twelfth anniversary of JMS Books, it’s about making a terrible movie on a tiny budget, while trying not to fall for the same man you made the mistake of falling for once before.

Second chance really does seem to be my trope of choice.

Director and film snob Leo Wayland has been hired to head the new horror unit of Maiden studios and given an impossible task. Three weeks to film, a tiny budget, and a scandal-laden leading man in Everett Reid. A leading man that has not only been linked to nearly every leading lady he’s worked with, but also a man Leo fell for at twenty-one while working for another studio. 

Fun! Fun! LOL

Because my parents are big horror fans, I grew up on the stuff. But they liked to show my siblings and me the old stuff, the not scary stuff, the stuff where you’re more likely to get bricked into a wall than held prisoner by a weirdo with a scalpel fetish. And The Twelve Coffins of Dr. Coffin is about those kinds of movies. Set in 1959, it steals a little from the life of Val Lewton, a little Victor Buono, with some Ed Wood thrown in for good measure.

And, for those who have read them, it includes Lee Hellstrom, the old horror actor from my Cold Fingers series. (http://www.amyspectorauthor.com/cold-fingers-series/) Oh, and I must admit; the title delights me to no end. LOL 

The Twelve Coffins of Dr. Coffin

Blurb

When Leo Wayland accepts a job as head of the new horror unit at Maiden Studios, he knows what is expected. Make cheap movies that earn their money back fast. It doesn’t matter that he dislikes horror. He just needs to escape his assistant director’s position at a rival studio.

But he didn’t expect to be assigned a terrible title and a leading man, all before he even had a script, or that his leading man would be Everett Reid, the actor who rejected a very young Leo’s advances, only to disappear from movies altogether a few years later in a cloud of scandal.

Everett Reid will do anything for a chance to get back the career he lost and away from teaching at a theater camp for children. And if it means working with Leo Wayland again, he can do that too. Especially now that Leo is all grown up and not so untouchable.

With only three weeks, a flamboyant stage actor, twelve scantily clad women, and a sound stage full of coffins may not seem like the makings of something great. But really, that all depends on what you are hoping for.

 

Buy Link

1950’s Period, Romance – 13133 words

JMS Books :: Amazon :: books2read.com/dr-coffin

Excerpt

Everett let himself into the house and tossed the mail on the entry table already cluttered with bills. They’d been piling up the last few weeks since the money had finally run out.
Besides his ‘55 Corvette, the small bungalow nestled at the base of the hills was all that was left of nearly twenty years of work. It was enough to crush him if he let it.
He stared at the decanter left on the table from the night before when he and Taylor had toasted his contract with Maiden. But his brother had always been more of a drinker than he had. He didn’t want a drink. He wanted to fall into bed for a night of dreamless sleep.
He flipped the switch to the back patio light and pressed his head against the glass, watching the first drops of rain disturb the mirror-like surface of the pool.
It didn’t rain much in LA, but whenever it did, it reminded him of the years growing up down south with his mother and Taylor.
He unlatched the door, slid it open, and kicked out of his loafers as he pulled his shirt over his head. By the time he stood at the edge of the pool, he’d stripped completely, and dove in without hesitation.
It had yet to cool down much from the exceedingly hot day, but as Everett swam laps, the rain pelted him, hard and cold.
He swam back and forth, gliding almost soundlessly through the water, letting go of the day and clearing his mind. He ignored the tug at his thoughts of Leo Wayland and the memories they tried to conjure up. Ignored the chirp of crickets, and the distant hint of laughter from the houses on either side of his. He ignored everything until streaks of lightning across the sky forced him to drag himself out of the water again and go searching for a towel.
He left a trail of wet footprints back into the house, like the ghost of a murdered fisherman, through the living room and finally into his bedroom and the attached bath, where he grabbed one the of the white fluffy towels Steven had picked out when they had first moved in together. Before Steven had broken up with him the first time, the second time, and the third. Before Steven had come back that last time, needing a friend and someone to care for him as he worked through whatever he had to work through.
Everett had never understood what that was. Not at the time, and no better now, all these years later. It was enough to know that Steven had been unhappy, that Everett couldn’t make him happy, no matter how hard he had tried, continued to try, even when all he wanted was to move on and find his own happiness.
Once he was dry, he pulled on a pair of briefs and studied his reflection in the mirror. There’d be no more wrangling children at theater camp, or being flirted with by their mothers. Not this summer anyway. This summer he’d be back in front of the camera, doing what he loved.
Everett Reid had done his penance and now he was going to grab some happiness for himself.

Bio

Amy Spector grew up in the United States surviving on a steady diet of old horror movies, television reruns and mystery novels.

After years of blogging about comic books, vintage Gothic romance book cover illustrations, and a shameful amount about herself, she decided to try her hand at writing stories. She found it more than a little like talking about herself in third person, and that suited her just fine.

She blames Universal for her love of horror, Edward Gorey for her love of British drama and writing for awakening the romantic that was probably there all along.

Amy lives in the Midwest with her husband and children, and her cats Poe, Goji and Nekō. 

Links

Website http://www.amyspectorauthor.com/

Blog http://www.amyspectorauthor.com/blog

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/amy.spector.12/

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

Goodreads https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8366028.Amy_Spector

As always, it’s a pleasure to announce that we have Ellie Thomas on a visit today. Welcome, Ellie!

Thank you so much, lovely Ofelia, for having me as your guest again today! I’m Ellie Thomas, I write Gay Historical Romance, and I’m here to chat about my new release, Twelve Letters, written for JMS Books.

When a submission call was announced to celebrate the Twelfth Anniversary of JMS Books, I was intrigued by the suggested concept. Given the celebration, participating authors were requested to write their stories to include the number 12 as an essential part of the plot – naturally enough! It’s always exciting to discover how inventive authors can be with such a prompt. I’m looking forward to reading a wide variety of stories, including Ofelia’s Keep It Down, featuring twelve post-it notes, which looks terrific!

However, although I was interested, my first reaction to this submission call was to hesitate. As I was in the middle of planning a few other stories with deadlines looming, I checked my schedule and thought I might be pushed for time to fit another new story. So although I was tempted, I sensibly decided to draw back from this opportunity.

Inevitably, I woke up the next morning with a fully-fledged story in my head, to the point where I could picture my main character Jo Everett, dashing down the steps of his London lodgings, brow furrowed, determined to stop his best friend Ben from fighting a duel. Muses can be so fickle!

I imagined this story to be set in the rarified West End of Regency London, as most, if not all my ensemble of characters, are gentlemen rather than ordinary working people. I found a fabulous online map of London from 1806 (since my story is set in 1814, that was remarkably close), and I spent far too long poring over it, working out where each of my characters lived, depending on their status and income. And crucially, how all those various twelve letters wended their way across town to intended and accidental recipients.

This is the world of gentlemen’s clubs, coffee houses, taverns and exclusive Bond Street shops that I first read about in Georgette Heyer’s books as a teenager. It was such fun to place my fictional characters in real historical locations, some of which, like the Golden Lion pub in St. James’, are still open for business!

The story might contain a comedy of errors but Twelve Letters is essentially a romance, so I relished pulling all the strands of miscommunication together for a romantic happy ever after, aptly finishing the story with the twelfth and final letter.

Blurb:

In Regency London, Jolyon Everett is determined to dissuade his irascible friend, Captain Ben Harding, from fighting a duel. However, before commencing on the pressing business of defusing Ben’s misplaced anger, Jo writes two letters, one to Percy Havilland, his very demanding paramour and the other to his tailor, Daniel Walters. With those trifles out of the way, he can concentrate on persuading Ben to reprieve young Edward Stephens, a newly qualified doctor, who Jo suspects has a serious crush on Ben.

But the best-laid plans can go awry, as do the letters and, as well as a furious Ben, Jo finds himself at the mercy of an outraged Percy and an amorous tailor. Can he convince Ben not to shoot Edward after all? Will he soothe Percy’s ruffled feathers? And might Jo realise that true love can be found under the most unexpected conditions?

Extract:

Jolyon arrived at the Piccadilly quarters of one of his closest friends, Captain Ben Harding. Despite the early hour, he was unsurprised to see that gentleman ready for the day, his long trousers and gleaming Hessians hiding his missing foot, the result of an injury at Badajoz, and wearing a ferocious expression. With his smouldering dark eyes and wayward curls, he could be compared to the notorious poet, Lord Byron, but Jolyon knew better than to voice that opinion to avoid being skewered by the poker within reach on the hearth.
“I know why you’re here, Jo,” Ben said to him, waving him into the other armchair at the side of the fireplace while he poured coffee for them both, “and you won’t coax me to soften my resolve.”
“I think this has all been a misunderstanding,” Jo replied patiently, as though he hadn’t spent hours of the previous evening, or rather early morning, trying to persuade an irascible Ben to pardon the unfortunate young man who had caused him such dire offence.
“That damned stripling belittled me,” Ben said, with a glare as hot and black as the scalding coffee.
“On the contrary, I don’t think that was his intention,” Jo corrected him gently. “The lad is quite new to town ways and was deeply in his cups. We’ve all been there,” he shrugged forgivingly.
Ben merely snorted his disagreement, and Jo wouldn’t have been surprised to see steam emanating from his nose. He had the mental image of Ben as a bull, a ring through his nose, pawing the ground in rage, raising a cloud of dust. He quickly stifled a smile.
“And anyway,” he continued stoically, “as you have appointed me as your second, I don’t need to point out how serious the consequences could be. Frankly, for a man of your military experience, this is no less than a deliberate execution.”
At that, Ben harrumphed but did not yell at him, which Jo felt was progress. Even hampered by his artificial foot, Ben was a dead shot and could still competently hold a sword. The poor young doctor was no match for him. The problem is, thought Jolyon, Ben’s spoiling for a fight, and this feckless young fellow simply blundered into his sights.
Since the siege at Badajoz, Ben’s attitude had become increasingly sour. Jo couldn’t be more sympathetic at his friend’s long months of recuperation, slowly learning to walk again, coming to terms with the fact he was no longer physically whole. Ben was fiercely proud, and only a few of his intimates knew what a harsh struggle this had been.
The other loss, that of his Lieutenant, his love, his faithful companion who had perished during the siege, was even more unbearable. After two years of grieving, rather than coming to terms with his bereavement, Ben seemed increasingly embittered and permanently angry. As he sipped his coffee, Jo reflected that although he loved Ben like a brother, even the most commonplace remark could set him off in a rage these days.
“It will take more than your blandishments to change my mind,” Ben said. Jo reckoned this was a retreat from thirsting for blood and spitting fire. He prepared to press his advantage when they were interrupted by Ben’s serving-man, Cribbins, another veteran of the Peninsula Wars.
“Excuse me, Captain. A letter has arrived for you by hand. I was told it was urgent,” he said, passing over the note to Ben before picking up the empty coffee pot.
As Cribbins left the room, Ben unfolded the letter, scanned it briefly then handed it over to Jo. “Is this your doing?” he asked suspiciously.
The note was written in crabbed handwriting eminently suitable for an aspiring doctor, but once deciphered, Jo saw with some relief that the meaning in the short paragraph was genuine enough.
If I have to face the consequences of my actions, I will do so as a gentleman, even if it causes my demise. I am writing not to abjure myself from bodily harm, but I bitterly regret offending someone who deserves only the greatest admiration and respect and so, whatever may happen, I apologise unreservedly.
“Nothing to do with me,” Jo said blandly as Ben stared into the fire, mulling over the letter, looking more than ever like a brooding Romantic poet. Jo observed Ben’s countenance with a glimmer of optimism. With those simple, heartfelt words, the lad had inadvertently appealed to Ben’s strong sense of fair play. Couldn’t have put it better myself, Jo thought with some satisfaction.

Book links: 

https://books2read.com/u/4AjyzA 

https://www.jms-books.com/ellie-thomas-c-224_420/twelve-letters-p-4391.html 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B5NYBM6Z/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i12 

Bio: 

Ellie Thomas lives by the sea. She comes from a teaching background and goes for long seaside walks where she daydreams about history. She is a voracious reader especially about anything historical. She mainly writes historical gay romance.  

Ellie also writes historical erotic romance as L. E. Thomas. 

Website: https://elliethomasromance.wordpress.com/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/elliethomasauthor/ 

Twitter: @e_thomas_author 

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/19835510.Ellie_Thomas 

Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/ellie-thomas