Dev Bentham's Blog, page 15

Writing myself away

One cloudy day a few years ago a few miles north of Newport Oregon

Urchin in a tide pool
- taken that same cloudy day.

It’s a windy, snowy day up here in Northern Wisconsin. There’s not enough snow to ski or ice to skate and the trails are too slippery for a nice long walk. In other words, it’s a good day to stay inside and write myself into another place and time. Right now I’m working on a piece set on the Oregon coast, an astonishingly beautiful place I lived many years ago. Writing about it now brings back the wonderful smell of cedar forests, the marine scent of the harbor and the relentless sound of the surf. Maybe one of the reasons setting is so important to me as a writer is this feeling of being transported away – this time to the land of craggy rocks and purple sea urchins. In the story that comes out this month (Sacred Hearts – from Loose Id on December 18) I went to Puerto Vallarta Mexico, which was much warmer than the Antarctica where I spent a few months in August Ice. I love globe trotting my kitchen table.

Series in Contemporary Romance

Genre writing is rife with series, and it’s easy to see why. Once we fall in love with a set of characters, it’s hard to let them go. This presents a problem for contemporary romance writers, since once the characters get together, the story’s usually complete. Romantic suspense writers can get around this by having the romance secondary to the main plot of each book, allowing the romantic arc to span an entire series. But if the romance IS the plot, then how does one make a series?

There are two methods I’ve seen writers use with success. The first is a simple sequel –despite some intractable issues, the couple gets together in the first book but those issues almost break them up in the second, until of course, they resolve their differences and rediscover their bliss. Perhaps it’s my own troubled romantic past, but I can never quite make this one work.

The other, and far more popular, method of writing contemporary romance in series, is to have secondary characters in one book get their own story in another. Think Suzanne Brockmann’s Troubleshooters, K.A. Mitchell’s Bad Company/Bad Boyfriend and – eh hem – Dev Bentham’s Tarnished Souls. The beauty of this kind of series for writers of contemporary romance is that each couple can have a happy ever after resolution, and readers can check back in later to find them still happy and relatively drama-free.

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Tarnished Souls is my Jewish Holiday m/m romance series. The men in these stories have made terrible choices. They’ve trusted the wrong people, traded sex for money or shelter or security, and now find they need to make hard decisions if they want real love. Books 1 and 2, Learning from Isaac  and Fields of Gold are available now and Book 3, Sacred Hearts will out sometime next month in time for Hanukkah.

The books were written to be read in any order. The characters appear in each other’s stories so, for example, you run into Isaac and Nathan from Learning from Isaac in Avi and Pete’s book, Fields of Gold. There aren’t any spoilers in later books (other than that the couple are still together, which isn’t really a spoiler since this is romance–of course they live happily ever after) and there’s nothing you need to know from the first or second book in order to understand the third and so on. So if you happen to pick up Fields of Gold first, you’ll find that reading Learning from Isaac feels like asking an established couple, “How’d you meet?”

As a reader, I always enjoy running into characters I’ve met in other books. How about you? And what’s your favorite contemporary romantic series? Or are you more drawn to stand alone books when it comes to contemporary?z

Happy New Year

Photo by Liz West

Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, starts a week from tonight. It marks the beginning of the High Holidays, when Jews all over the world reevaluate their lives and ask forgiveness of those they’ve wronged in the previous year. My new novel, Fields of Gold – the second in the Tarnished Souls series (Learning from Isaac was the first) – comes out on Tuesday. In it the main character, Avi Rosen, has been making bad choices for a long time. He’s an underemployed grad student who’s been supplementing his income by “caretaking” a closeted state politician. Avi’s fast approaching thirty, nearing the end of his schooling and feeling stuck in a morally bankrupt life. Too many compromises can paint you into a very dark corner. But a dazzling smile can change everything, as Avi finds out when his jaded world is rocked by an incredibly wholesome, handsome and very appealing organic farmer.

There’s love, sex, betrayal and the possibility of forgiveness. Life is messy. As the leaves turn and the season changes, Rosh Hashana offers Avi and the rest of us an opportunity to switch direction, say we’re sorry and start again.

Here’s wishing you all a sweet New Year.

A drop of honey, photo by Dino Giordano

 

Six sentences from Fields of Gold – coming in September

 

 

Pete looked down at me. Dazzling, that smile, almost enough to let me forget the pain.

I held his gaze. He held mine.

His smile widened. “No problem. Haven’t had a guy fall at my feet like that in quite some time.”

 

 

Fields of Gold

My new book comes out in September from Loose Id. Here’s the cover, created by Valerie Tibbs.

Doesn’t it make you think of brisk autumn days, waving wheat fields and soulful longing?

 

 

A cool story for a hot summer

August Ice, my latest release from Loose-id, takes place far from this scorching heat on the cold, cold continent of Antarctica. It’s a place where getting naked is a difficult thing to do. And yet….

Check out the blurb and excerpt and while away a few hours with a hot romance set in the icy chill.

Photo by John Lester

Sevens

Okay, I’m game. Here’s something from my WIP – 7th page, down 7 lines:

I spent two days wheedling and found part time jobs for everyone on staff. After that it took two weeks and a giant garage sale to sell everything I’d accumulated in five years, the restaurant equipment, apartment furniture, sound system, my car, my life shriveling until everything I owned fit into my two bags. The proceeds paid the outstanding restaurant bills, a week’s severance for the staff and the flat fee for Abe Klein. I broke two leases, one on the apartment, one on the restaurant, which pretty much guaranteed I wouldn’t be opening another place any time soon. Good thing Portland had such an excellent public transportation system since I was about to be job hunting in a saturated market. Two years of cooking school, ten years of experience, three years running my own trendy place and I’d be lucky to find a job as a greasy diner short order cook.

Next stop Antarctica

Photo by John Lester

Max Conway, a drunken diver and an ex-Navy SEAL, loves his winters working in Antarctica, even though it means climbing into the closet and putting his libido on hold. So when he wakes up in bed with Professor Andre Dubois with no memory of the night before, it threatens everything he’s built, from his job to his drinking. And it looks like it really will get darker before the dawn.

August Ice by Dev Bentham, coming from Loose id July 2012

A new release on my birthday!

Learning from Isaac comes out April 3rd – my birthday! To celebrate I’m giving away 3 copies on Twitter. To enter use the hashtag #LearningfromIsaac in a tweet (or RT) between 12:01am and midnight Central Standard Time on April 3rd. For those of you who don’t live in the North American Midwest, CST is GMT -5.

Learning from Isaac is the story of Nathan Kohn, a nice Jewish ecology professor, who falls in love with his student, Isaac Wolf. Isaac’s earning his tuition in the back room of a new club downtown. Even after he leaves the profession and graduates, is it possible for a staid professor and a former prostitute to make a life?

Click here for more about Learning from Isaac and an excerpt

Buy Learning from Isaac

Working your way through school the old fashioned way?

Melissa Petro needed money for school and she earned it the fastest, if not easiest, way possible. She’s been out of that profession for years, but now she’s lost her job as a teacher.

What on earth does that have to do with Dev Bentham?

Paying tuition through prostitution is exactly the choice one character makes in my new story, Learning from Isaac, coming soon from Loose Id. When you’re young and beautiful and broke, getting paid for it can seem the most logical way to ease a financial bind. Unfortunately, it’s a choice that can mark you for life.