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Yuletide Eve Scene and a wish from us for you #Love #Peace #Hope

December 25, 2023 by Adriana Kraft

Both of us who write under this pen name honor all who celebrate turning towards the light, in whatever tradition has come to be meaningful for you. At the center of this turning is warmth, love, peace, light, and hope. This is what we wish for all of you, not just in this season, but year-round.

Sometimes our characters experience this as well. Here is Christmas Eve from A Reluctant Santa

Set Up: Cliff spent the middle of the day playing Santa to needy kids, hosted by a local golf course lodge, with Carol assisting him as his elf. Now it’s late evening.

Carol snuggled into Cliff with his arm around her waist as they leaned against the lodge balcony railing, both of them in awe of the star-studded sky forming a canopy overhead. “This is so spectacular. The stars seem so close. And so many more are visible up here than in the city.”

“For sure. Sometimes I feel like time stands still while the night sky does its nightly dance. You should be here sometime when the Northern Lights put on a show. Dazzling. It can be like sheets of color fading in and out, daring you to ignore them. The night sky up here is so vast, almost overwhelming.”

“The stars are so brilliant. Santa won’t have any trouble navigating his way tonight.”

Cliff squeezed her tighter. “Especially if his favorite elf serves as his navigator.”

“Thanks again for taking me to the Christmas Eve service. It was so special.”

“Sarah thought you would like it.”

“It was just right. I gave up long time ago trying to deal with Christmas intellectually. I’m not into debating whether this happened or that didn’t. It’s the feeling of Christmas that moves me. And those kids certainly did that tonight. I nearly lost it when they marched down the aisle to The Little Drummer Boy with coffee cans hanging around their necks, pounding those cans like they were the most sophisticated drums ever made.”

“They were happy and proud, from the oldest to the youngest.”

“That says a lot about the adults, including children in the service like that. Wonderful. The Christmas spirit was palpable.” Carol suddenly pointed toward the sky. “Did you see that?”

“A shooting star. I hoped if we stood out here long enough we’d see some. That was a long, bright one. Don’t see many of those.”

“So fitting for the night. For Santa.” Carol hesitated. “For Santa and his elf.”

 

 

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Filed Under: Blog, Erotic Romance, Excerpts Tagged With: Christmas, Holiday, hope, light, love, peace, Solstice, warmth, Yule

Blog Tour: A Case of Madness by Yvonne Knop @yvonne_ponk #ContemporaryGayRomance @gaybookpromo

April 18, 2023 by Adriana Kraft

BLOG TOUR

Book Title: A Case of Madness (Or the Curious Appearance of Holmes in the Nighttime)

Author: Yvonne Knop

Publisher: Improbable Press

Cover Artist: Ksenia Spizhevaya

Release Date: March 20, 2023

Genres: Adult Contemporary M/M Rom-Com

Tropes: Opposites attract, Emotional scars, Grumpy/sunshine

Themes: Coming out, friendship, mental illness, love

Heat Rating: 2 flames

Length: 82 000 words/272 pages

It is a standalone book and does not end on a cliffhanger.

Goodreads

 

Buy Links

Publisher | Amazon US | Amazon UK

 

A world-weary Sherlock Holmes scholar loses his job and his sanity when the great detective materializes in his flat to help solve a mystery that involves a handsome male stranger. What ensues is a thrilling adventure in literature, London, and love.

 

Blurb

Andrew Thomas just got sacked. He’s permanently drunk. He’s got cancer. Is inescapably gay. Was hit by a bus. And he’s fallen in love with a stranger whose life he saved.

As a newly-unemployed Sherlock Holmes scholar, Andrew knows only Holmes can help him untangle the madness his life has become, but Holmes isn’t real. Except he absolutely appeared in Andrew’s house, told him he’s in love with a man he just met…and then in a fit of pique Andrew sent him away.

Sure Holmes is probably a hallucination or a specter or a ghost, but now Andrew desperately needs his help. So to find the answer to his case and the man of his dreams, Andrew takes to chasing a fictional character through London with his very own Watson.

Excerpt

While strolling amid the students and scholars rushing into the University of London, I ignored the urge to check my pocket watch.

If there was ever a day to dawdle, it was today. The first day of summer that actually felt like the season it claimed to be. And the day of my personal disaster.

It wasn’t a ‘this train will split at the next station and you just sat down with your meal deal’ disaster, but it was equally inconvenient. After decades of laboring in academia, I was about to become involuntarily unemployed. Apart from that – and this might be even more important – I was also going to die.

To delay the confrontation a bit longer, I looked for a shaded place to smoke and then took long, luxurious drags on my cigarette. A cough struggled to tear itself free from my chest, but I suppressed it. Not now. Focus.

Few people knew my name or my publications. But some such people existed – people who were as fascinated by a very specific man as I was, and who seemed to value my works more than I did. The man I wrote about lived in Baker Street, and he was partly to blame for my situation. Though I liked to think of myself as a charmingly anachronistic gentleman, I increasingly felt I was just a dafter in a fine suit who lurked around public buildings. Instead of engaging in modern life, I was immersed in the world of Sherlock Holmes and all things Victorian, with the natural effect of many acquaintances leaving or going extinct. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the company of others; it was that I struggled in the company of others. And they struggled in the company of me.

You see, the fact that I knew my dearest detective had appeared on-screen in over two hundred and twenty adaptations did not give me much hope I would find out what people did for fun. But what of fun? What about achievement? Holmes is the most filmed novel character of all time – among humans, at least; Dracula has been filmed even more often. This connection filled me with joy, and I believed it could be combined in a curious way. Dracula Holmes: he investigates at night because he’s not just a detective, no – he’s also a vampire. Greedy for blood and knowledge.

I finished my cigarette and stepped from the shadows only to immediately collide with a young man in the most colorful trainers I’d ever seen. In a split-second knockout victory, he fell to the ground covered in the flyers he had been holding in his hand just seconds before.

I bent down immediately to help him. “I’m so sorry,” I said, quickly picking up his flyers from the pavement. At least those which hadn’t fallen into the grey puddle right next to us.

“It’s okay,” he said, and he looked at me. His blue eyes seemed friendly though his gaze was intense.

I quickly looked down again. To my surprise, the flyers weren’t gig announcements or takeaway adverts. In fact, they were promoting something very dear to my heart. “I like theater,” I said, handing him back a few of the flyers. “I thought theater was dead for young people.”

He smiled. “Most young people get run over by perfect strangers.

That’s why so few make it to the stage. Anyway…I’m still alive.”

That he was. Alive, handsome, and holding a slim stack of remaining flyers. Slightly crumpled.

“I’m far from perfect,” I remarked, thinking of the trouble I had caused him.

 

About the Author

Yvonne is a bi and nonbinary writer who dedicates their free time to extending the secret Gay Agenda – in part through their debut novel A Case of Madness.

Although born and raised in the north of Germany, Yvonne’s passion for Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Who, their sassy humor, and aversion to talking on public transport made them suspiciously British from early on.

As a natural matter of cause and effect, Yvonne moved to London in 2014 and started to write (a novel for the drawer). No word was written until 2017 when the sudden question of ‘What if I could talk to Sherlock Holmes?’ came up to them.

Conducting PhD research in the world’s most extensive Sherlock Holmes collection, located in Minneapolis, USA, was a great help for answering that question. The result was not a PhD, but their debut novel A Case of Madness, originally written in German and in a bold move translated by the author themselves when nobody in Germany understood a word they were saying.

 

 

Author Links

Blog/Website | Instagram | Twitter

Hosted by Gay Book Promotions



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Filed Under: Blog, Excerpts, Guest Bloggers, LGBT Tagged With: Adult Contemporary M/M Rom-Com, Coming out, Emotional scars, friendship, Grumpy/sunshine, love, mental illness, opposites attract

Her breathing quickened…Seducing Cat #MFRWHooks #EroticRomance #LBGTQ+

February 8, 2023 by Adriana Kraft

What could college English Professor Caitlin Shanahan ever have in common with the brash carpenter Kurt Davis?
The sexy sprite Meghan Keenan, that’s what.

Welcome to MFRW Hooks, where the authors of Marketing for Romance Writers share snippets from their stories to entice you into wanting more. Be sure to click on the links at the end to travel!

Remember the Greek Goddess Aphrodite? As a child, I didn’t learn much about Greek Mythology, but I do remember in my late teens hearing an off-color limerick from my dad with the following middle lines:

“He carved Aphrodite
Without any Nightie…

Here’s the full limerick:

There once was a sculptor named Phidias
Whose manners in art were invidious:
He carved Aphrodite
Without any nightie,
Which startled the ultra-fastidious.

Hopefully if you’re reading this blog, you would never count yourself among the “ultra fastidious.” In case you do, this book probably isn’t for you!

My husband and I like to think we invented Meghan Keenan, a modern-day Aphrodite (who probably never wears a nightie), but sometimes we wonder. She’s the star of our six-book F/F/M Ménage series Meghan’s Platyhouse, and we’ll be featuring Book One, Seducing Cat, for the next several Book Hooks.

Meghan is only twenty when the series opens, but she loves both women and men, and loves even more bringing them together, up close and personal.

Here are the opening sentences:

Chapter One

Peering through the lace curtains of her upstairs home office window onto the sundeck and manicured lawn below, Caitlin Shanahan felt her breathing quicken. Her nipples pebbled.

Her renter’s petite nude body glistened under the rays of the late morning sun. Only recently had Caitlin realized how appealing the feminine form could be. She stood behind the curtains, careful not to be seen by the sunbather. Initially, she’d been shocked by Meg Keenan’s penchant for tanning in the nude. What if the neighbors saw her?

But they wouldn’t. The eight-foot privacy fence offered adequate protection from prying eyes—other than those looking out her upstairs window.

BLURB

Levelheaded English Professor Caitlin Shanahan has finally earned tenure and purchased the century-old two-story house of her dreams in the college town of Burntside, Wisconsin—at thirty-four, she’d better face facts: her future is teaching college and writing plays, not falling in love. So why is she so drawn to foxy little hometown actress Meghan Keenan, who’s rented her upstairs apartment, or worse, to the girl’s gorgeous hunk of a lover Kurt Davis, a carpenter who’s never even been to college?

Twenty-year-old Meg has a plan. First she’ll seduce the reluctant professor, then she’ll share her sexual delights with both Cat and her brawny carpenter, and when she’s successfully brought them together, she can make her escape and explore what’s beyond the only town she’s ever lived in.

Kurt can’t stand the up-tight professor who’s hired him to build a gazebo and refurbish her old house—the house he wanted for himself. Even if Meg’s scheme succeeds, he knows Caitlin would never look at him twice. No need to go there in his fantasies…

BUY LINKS

Universal Buy LInk

https://books2read.com/u/mgPjn6

Click on the links to travel to the rest of today’s hooks:

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Filed Under: Blog, Erotic Romance, Excerpts, LGBT Tagged With: Bi, bisexual, erotic romance, f/f, f/f/m, LGBTQIA+, love, love is love is love, love wins, Menage a Trois, pride, queer romance, Threesome

Yuletide Eve Scenes and a wish from us for you #Love #Peace #Hope

December 25, 2022 by Adriana Kraft

Both of us who write under this pen name honor all who celebrate turning towards the light, in whatever tradition has come to be meaningful for you. At the center of this turning is warmth, love, peace, light, and hope. This is what we wish for all of you, not just in this season, but year round.

Sometimes our characters experience this as well. Here is Christmas Eve from two of our books:

From A Reluctant Santa

Set Up: Cliff spent the middle of the day playing Santa to needy kids, hosted by a local golf course lodge, with Carol assisting him as his elf. Now it’s late evening.

Carol snuggled into Cliff with his arm around her waist as they leaned against the lodge balcony railing, both of them in awe of the star-studded sky forming a canopy overhead. “This is so spectacular. The stars seem so close. And so many more are visible up here than in the city.”

“For sure. Sometimes I feel like time stands still while the night sky does its nightly dance. You should be here sometime when the Northern Lights put on a show. Dazzling. It can be like sheets of color fading in and out, daring you to ignore them. The night sky up here is so vast, almost overwhelming.”

“The stars are so brilliant. Santa won’t have any trouble navigating his way tonight.”

Cliff squeezed her tighter. “Especially if his favorite elf serves as his navigator.”

“Thanks again for taking me to the Christmas Eve service. It was so special.”

“Sarah thought you would like it.”

“It was just right. I gave up long time ago trying to deal with Christmas intellectually. I’m not into debating whether this happened or that didn’t. It’s the feeling of Christmas that moves me. And those kids certainly did that tonight. I nearly lost it when they marched down the aisle to The Little Drummer Boy with coffee cans hanging around their necks, pounding those cans like they were the most sophisticated drums ever made.”

“They were happy and proud, from the oldest to the youngest.”

“That says a lot about the adults, including children in the service like that. Wonderful. The Christmas spirit was palpable.” Carol suddenly pointed toward the sky. “Did you see that?”

“A shooting star. I hoped if we stood out here long enough we’d see some. That was a long, bright one. Don’t see many of those.”

“So fitting for the night. For Santa.” Carol hesitated. “For Santa and his elf.”

 

From The Unmasking

Set up: Nancy and Matt are dating but unsure whether it may be just a fling. She’s invited him to Christmas with her family in their North Woods cabin, and it’s now Christmas Eve:

The evening meal was a buffet of cold cuts, cheeses, breads, veggies, nuts, and eggnog. Much of the evening was spent calming the children down or revving them up about Santa. Most of the adults and even the children, with the exception of the youngest, shared stories of special Christmas memories.

Matt enjoyed listening to the stories. He laughed when Nancy’s mother said that as a child, she once thought Santa was just leaving her coal when she mistook the delivery man – dressed in a red coat, no less – for Santa. Matt’s eyes misted when Nancy shared a story of her father bouncing her on one knee while reciting from memory “Twas the Night Before Christmas.”

He became anxious when he realized there were only three others remaining who had not yet shared a story. Nancy’s family was a fun family to observe, but he didn’t fit in with them. What could he offer for a story? He knew they’d expect one.

When it was his turn, the words came of their own volition. “One of my best gifts was a book called The Flight of Dragons. I was eight years old. It was a rich and wonderful book and had lots of detail about exactly how dragons fly – using the same gases that they use to breathe fire. It sure was high adventure for me – we hardly ever went to movies, and we had no TV.”

“No TV!” Michael said, aghast.

Matt smiled at the boy and continued, “That book was probably the seed that began my quest for more knowledge about ancient cultures and myths.”

“Without that book, you wouldn’t be sitting here with us tonight.” Nancy’s voice was unusually quiet, and he couldn’t read the soft expression on her face.

“I suppose you’re right. Every little step along the way shapes us in one way or another. But,” he turned to speak to the children, “I want you to know this was a fun book. I couldn’t stop reading, and I finished it by bedtime on Christmas night. Of course, I started rereading it the next morning.”

The children applauded and were joined by the adults. “I want to get that book, professor,” Michael said, coming to stand before Matt. “It sounds exciting. I especially like books about the Knights of the Round Table.”

“Me too,” Matt replied, absently brushing back a lock of hair from the boy’s forehead. “I expect in my library I have just about every book written on the subject that’s available to the public.”

“Really!” The boy’s eyes grew huge. “I’d sure like to see that library.”

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Filed Under: Blog, Erotic Romance, Excerpts Tagged With: Christmas, Holiday, hope, light, love, peace, Solstice, warmth, Yule

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REVIEWS


Erotic Romance “Seducing Cat is a Must Read…Hot in all the right places!”


Love Bites and Silk Ties
Romantic Suspense: Mystery and Romance are woven well in The Painter is a Lady.


Romantic Suspense: “The Unmasking is a fascinating tale…some emotionally trying scenes.”


Erotic Romance FFM Menage: “Edgy characters, inclusive sexuality…The Reunion is not for the faint of heart.”


Erotic Romance FFM Menage: “The intimacy is genuine and breathtaking”

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