Elin Gregory

Title:
Passing Through

Author:
Jay Northcote

Genre:
contemporary m/m romance

Length:
43,000 words approx

Release date:
Friday 20th Feb 2015

Publisher:
Jay Northcote

Buy links:

Blurb:

Don’t waste a chance at happiness…

Leo is a lonely workaholic with no time for romance in his life. His job in London takes all his energy and commitment. When he goes to Cornwall to stay with his terminally ill uncle, Edwin, love is the last thing Leo expects to find.

Tris lives in a cottage on Edwin’s land. Gay, but still half in the closet, he and Leo bond over their affection for Edwin, and the pull of attraction between them proves too strong to ignore. In Tris’s arms, in the wilds of Cornwall, Leo finds a peace he’d forgotten existed.

On his return to London, Leo finds himself grieving for more than just the loss of his uncle. When some unexpected news gives Leo the chance to return to Cornwall, he’s afraid it will be too late to rekindle things with Tris. But having learned much from his stay with his uncle, Leo doesn’t want to look back and wish he’d done things differently.

It’s time to seize the day—if it’s not already too late.

~~~

I asked Jay a question: Have you ever had to seize the day? And did it work?

I’m a big believer in the whole ‘carpe diem’ philosophy. We only get to live once and I think it’s important to take the opportunities that life gives us, and grab them with both hands. In Passing Through, Leo has to make some big life changes if he wants to be able to be with the man he loves. But seizing the day isn’t always about romance and relationships.

In my own life there have been many turning points where I’ve had to make a scary leap out of my comfort zone in order to move forward. One of the biggest in recent years was writing my first book. I definitely had that ‘now or never’ feeling about it. I could spend the next ten years of my life thinking about drafting that novel, or I could just do it…. So, I signed up for Nanowrimo in 2012 and got the words written. It was hard, exhausting, scary, and then trying to find a publisher for it was another rollercoaster ride. But it worked out and I’ll never regret taking that first step into the unknown.

Excerpt:

On the beach they crunched along the shingle to the edge of the rocks, then turned to look out over the sea. It was almost completely dark now, and the moon was rising, casting streaks of bright silver on the oil-black water.

They stood in silence, watching and listening to the crash of the waves. Leo’s heart felt suddenly too large for his chest. He was overwhelmed by the beauty of the place, a place that had barely changed since his childhood. The sea came and went with the tides, the sands shifted, but the rocks were constant. Yet here Leo was, an adult now rather than a boy, and his uncle reduced to an echo of the man Leo remembered—physically, at least. Unexpected tears prickled the backs of Leo’s eyes as a rush of emotion so strong that it made him draw in a sharp breath assaulted him. He swallowed hard, forcing the feelings back down.

Out of his peripheral vision, he saw Tris turn towards him, but Leo carried on gazing out at the gentle, rolling movement of the sea. Tris shifted his feet in the sand, bringing him closer. The warm skin of his arm brushed Leo’s, and Leo ached for more contact. He needed human warmth and touch to chase away the cold emptiness in his heart.

Author Bio:

Jay lives just outside Bristol in the West of England, with her husband, two children, and two cats.

She comes from a family of writers, but she always used to believe that the gene for fiction writing had passed her by. She spent years only ever writing emails, articles, or website content. One day, she decided to try and write a short story–just to see if she could–and found it rather addictive. She hasn’t stopped writing since.

You can keep up with Jay at the following links:

www.jaynorthcote.com

Twitter

Facebook profile

Facebook Author Page

Jay’s books