Dev Bentham's Blog, page 13

Three days, three books, three fabulous authors

Hey all,

Clare London, Jordan Castillo Price and I are doing a little mini blog tour to celebrate art and artists. Early this week we’ll visit three blogs and each give away a book at each stop (3 days, 3 books, 9 chances to win).

Here’s the schedule:

7/22 Joyfully Jay

7/23 Book Reviews and More by Kathy

7/24 Armchair reader

Come join us! Here are the books we’re giving away

SYMPATHY by Jordan Castillo Price

Fear takes many forms. As a child, Anthony Potosi was afraid of the Hook House, not because of the cheesy stories his older brothers attempted to terrorize him with, but the startling presence of gravestones he stumbled across in the abandoned Victorian’s overgrown yard.

It’s been ages since Tony has thought about the old place. As an adult, he’s had to deal with more immediate fears. The fear that he’d never recover from the accident that killed his father and shattered his pelvis was at the top of the list. Now that he can walk again, though, the fear that his brothers are edging him out of the family landscaping business seems more pressing…until he’s called to make a drop-off at the Hook House.

While delivering the order, Tony finds ceramicist David Dean living there, along with several dozen eerily expressive clay figures he’s sculpted. David has converted the weedy lot to native prairie, and the dilapidated stone outbuilding to a pottery studio. While he hasn’t worked his alchemy on the family plot, it’s no longer quite as daunting as Tony remembers. It’s nowhere near as frightening as getting physical with someone for the first time since his accident, especially with a body he’d presumed was broken beyond repair, and especially with someone as captivating as David. Tony finds that learning to open up again to trust, desire—and maybe even love—is far scarier than The Hook.

 

 

BLINDED BY OUR EYES by Clare London

London art dealer Charles Garrett has devoted his life to appreciating beauty, both in art & in his companions. His fashionable life is rocked to the core when he discovers the body of a young artist, Paolo Valero, in a pool of blood in his gallery.

As Paolo’s mentor, Charles is haunted by the horror of his violent death. He investigates Paolo’s past & discovers a tangled web of motives & potential suspects, some closer to home than he ever imagined. He’s drawn to Antony Walker, an aggressive, handsome sculptor with unsavory ties to Paolo. Charles is unsettled by Antony’s forceful nature but irresistibly attracted to his passion. When the evidence points toward Antony’s guilt, Charles is thrown into emotional turmoil. Has he lost his heart to a killer?

 

PAINTING IN THE RAIN by Dev Bentham

Helping teenagers is tough. They face so many dangers – peer pressure, drugs, pregnancy, STDs. As a trained social worker, Mike knows all about it. He’s taken a temporary job on the Oregon coast working with at-risk kids. But when he meets Gabe, the father of one of his charges, he finds himself in another type of danger – that of falling in love and getting stuck in a small, conservative town, not to mention living with an angry teenager. And yet, he’s drawn to Gabe in a way he never imagined possible.

Gabe, whose own father left before he was born, stays in a town where he no longer feels welcome. He’s living the life of a lonely artist so that he can be a father to his son, a bond that’s been threatened by divorce and Gabe’s public coming out. When he meets Mike, Gabe is bowled over with a longing so deep that he finds himself willing to risk everything.

There are plenty of dangers in a small town. When a gay kid gets hurt and they refuse to leave him to his fate, Mike and Gabe may be risking more than their hearts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m up for Author of the month

At Mrs Condit and Friends. Check it out http://mrsconditreadsbooks.com/index.php

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Isn’t this cover gorgeous?

Jordan Castillo Price made this beautiful cover for my free LHNB short which went live today. I think it’s beautiful. Hope you like the story – it’s available through the M/M Romance Goodreads group.

Happy Fathers’ Day

I grew up in a pretty traditional family. My mom stayed home with the kids while my dad worked. There was a lake in our town and we learned to swim young. On summer days a group of mothers would take the kids to the lake in the afternoon, where we’d play in the water for hours. In the late afternoon the dads would arrive with gin and tonics for moms and ice cream for us. That sort of Father Knows Best life made for frustrated mothers and distant fathers, but it still permeates our culture as the ideal of how things ought to be. I have some great memories of those summer days, and some wonderful memories of hanging out with my father. But he was an unusual guy, more accessible than any of my friends’ fathers. He loves his work, but I think in his heart of hearts he would rather have been the one to stay home. I KNOW my mom would have preferred the office.

Photo by Elvert Barnes, flickr

All of which makes me crazy crazy when I hear foufra about how gays and lesbians shouldn’t be parents, or that gay adoption should be forbidden or that kids need both a father and a mother, not two of one or the other. I was a kid, I’ve worked with kids, I have my own weirdly blended family and all of that has taught me that what kids need is love and support. They need good parents, patient people who are willing to put time, energy and love into raising their children. Few of us splashing around in the water down at the city beach way back then had that kind of parents, even though they were all coupled in Noah’s arc pairs who’d sealed their bonds in big church weddings.

Here’s to all the warm, patient, loving fathers out there. Happy Fathers’ Day. And to all the kids who needed to make more than one present to mark this day I say lucky you.

I’ve got a book out this morning from Amber Allure. Painting in the Rain, tells the story of Gabe, a very good father with a difficult son and Mike, his kid’s social worker. It’s a sweet, contemporary love story. Hope you like it.

It’s a big release week for me.

I’m loving the responses so far to both Bread, Salt and Wine (the final Tarnished Souls book out from Loose Id 6/11) and Painting in the Rain which will be out on Sunday (6/16), just in time for Fathers’ Day. I’m proud of both books so I’m glad to know that so far readers are enjoying them, too.

The Big Gay Wedding blog tour is still on. I was on The Armchair Reader on Tuesday giving away a book – the giveaway doesn’t close until Saturday (6/15) so you might want to give that a try. If you haven’t checked out the Big Gay Wedding Tour there are still plenty of stops. The five of us with wedding releases from Loose Id this June have gotten together to talk about our stories and give away books.

The books:

Release Date: 6/4

Kate McMurray – Save the Date

J. A. Rock – The Brat-tastic Jayk Parker

6/11

Cassandra Gold - Always a Groomsman

Dev Bentham - Bread, Salt and Wine

6/18

Dominique Frost - The Bitter Rednesses of Love

The Tour:

Joyfully Jay: 6/4
Purple Rose Tea House: 6/5 and 6/12
Flirty Author Bitches: 6/7
Armchair Reader: 6/11 and 6/18
Tara Lain 6/14 and 6/15
Romance Lives Forever: 6/18
Kay Berrisford 6/19-6/21

It’s a big release week for me, so what am I doing to celebrate?

I’m loving the responses so far to both Bread, Salt and Wine (the final Tarnished Souls book out from Loose Id 6/11) and Painting in the Rain which will be out on Sunday (6/16), just in time for Fathers’ Day. I’m proud of both books so I’m glad to know that so far readers are enjoying them, too.

I could spend my days scouting the web for reviews, but instead I’ve been out in the garden, so I thought I’d share some of that with you. We have a community garden up here where we each have a little plot and we share responsibility for several plots grown for the local food pantry. I’ve taken over one food pantry plot where I’m growing food in straw bales. It took a long time to get the bales ready (and I live way up north so we always start gardening later than almost anywhere else). Tuesday, while Bread, Salt and Wine was releasing, we planted tomatoes, squash and peppers. Anyone else ever tried this straw bale gardening thing? We went big with 20 bales (34 tomatoes, 8 peppers and 6 squash plants). I’m thinking of planting strawberries or potatoes along the sides.

Anyway – the Big Gay Wedding blog tour is still on. I was on The Armchair Reader on Tuesday giving away a book – the giveaway doesn’t close until Saturday (6/15) so you might want to give that a try. If you haven’t checked out the Big Gay Wedding Tour there are still plenty of stops. The five of us with wedding releases from Loose Id this June have gotten together to talk about our stories and give away books.

The books:

Release Date: 6/4

Kate McMurray – Save the Date

J. A. Rock – The Brat-tastic Jayk Parker

6/11

Cassandra Gold - Always a Groomsman

Dev Bentham - Bread, Salt and Wine

6/18

Dominique Frost - The Bitter Rednesses of Love

The Tour:

Joyfully Jay: 6/4
Purple Rose Tea House: 6/5 and 6/12
Flirty Author Bitches: 6/7
Armchair Reader: 6/11 and 6/18
Tara Lain 6/14 and 6/15
Romance Lives Forever: 6/18
Kay Berrisford 6/19-6/21

June – all Dev, all the time

So the best advice about timing releases is to space them gently throughout the year.

Siout, Egypt by Sanford Robinson Gifford (NGA images) which I insert here because it has a winding road and to show how cultured I am and how cool it is that the National Gallery lets us do this for free.

 

And really, that’s what I had planned. But you know what they say about the best laid plans.

 

Speaking of well laid…..

I have a cluster of stories coming out this month.

 

As I noted earlier, on June 16th Amber Allure will release Painting in the Rain, a sweet story set on the Oregon Coast. It’s a perfect Father’s Day story, complete with an impossible teenage son. Scroll down to the previous post to see Trace Edward Zaber’s beautiful cover.

Lovely cover by Valerie Tibbs

On June 11th (which is coming right up) the final Tarnished Souls story will appear from Loose Id. Bread, Salt and Wine, Kenny and George’s story, has a passing relationship with Purim, the Jewish early spring holiday celebrating Queen Ester. This is also a wedding, wedding, wedding story. Watch for the My Big Gay Wedding blog tour to check out all the gay wedding stories coming from Loose Id this month (the tour starts on Joyfully Jay on 6/4).

And then finally, I have a free story, Breathing Snow, with the Goodreads M/M Romance group – don’t have a date for that yet, but sometime in June. Think hot Olympic cross-country skiers (in lycra). I can’t wait to show you the amazing cover created by the inimitable Jordan Castillo Price.

And after that, well, it might be a while but the WIP has guys with dogs.

 

Beautiful cover for my June Amber Allure release

I’m so excited about my Amber Allure cover. Painting in the Rain, wherein Mike and Gabe find love and danger on the Oregon coast, is scheduled for release June 16th (June is a big month for me – I have another book coming out from Loose Id on the 11th, stay tuned for more on that).

I love this cover. It’s very special to me because under my name that’s my photo of rocky tide pools, taken a few years ago at the Newport Oregon lighthouse.

The story is one of my favorites, too. Check it out:

Helping teenagers is tough. They face so many dangers – peer pressure, drugs, pregnancy, STDs. As a trained social worker, Mike knows all about it. He’s taken a temporary job on the Oregon coast working with at-risk kids. But when he meets Gabe, the father of one of his charges, he finds himself in another type of danger – that of falling in love and getting stuck in a small, conservative town, not to mention living with an angry teenager. And yet, he’s drawn to Gabe in a way he never imagined possible.

Gabe, whose own father left before he was born, stays in a town where he no longer feels welcome. He’s living the life of a lonely artist so that he can be a father to his son, a bond that’s been threatened by divorce and Gabe’s public coming out. When he meets Mike, Gabe is bowled over with a longing so deep that he finds himself willing to risk everything.

There are plenty of dangers in a small town. When a gay kid gets hurt and they refuse to leave him to his fate, Mike and Gabe may be risking more than their hearts.

April Showers?

This is the view outside my bedroom window today. It’s late April and spring seems a very long way away. Pretty, though, isn’t it?

Happy Passover, Happy Spring

Photo by uzumewinter on Flickr

The first Tarnished Souls story – Learning from Isaac – was published last Passover and since then I’ve had a great time writing Jewish holiday stories. What started as a coincidence, a story with a seder in it that happened to be coming out around the holiday, turned into a somewhat hectic year of holiday stories.

The last Tarnished Souls book will be released June 11. It’s a Purim story (I know, I know, Purim was in February but at that point I was still breathless from Hanukkah). This one belongs to Kenny and George. It’ll be part of Loose Id’s June wedding extravaganza. Yes, there’s a wedding. In fact there are ten.

In the meantime, enjoy the spring as the earth up here in the northern hemisphere wakes up. We still have two feet of snow, so I’m not planting flowers just yet – but I can feel the warm weather coming.

You doing anything fun this spring?