Matchmaking
Have you ever been set up on a blind date? If you were and enjoyed yourself, chances are the matchmaker knew you and your date really well. Finding a new author to your liking is a bit like a blind date. You pick up their book and hold high hopes for an evening spent in a delightful company. Sometimes the hopes come true. Sometimes they don’t.
To avoid the latter in our case, let’s see without more ado, if I can entertain you with stories to your taste. If we find out that we’re a good match, I have two gifts for you, but all in the right time. Let’s do the reader-writer matchmaking part first.
I’m your kind of a writer:
• if you love gay historical fantasy and/ or gay romantic suspense
• if you know that in the name of love, a man can build or destroy, nurture or hurt, live or die, and sometimes all of that in the course of one story.
• if you know that one man can be both cruel and gentle, brutal and kind, fierce and fearful, open and restrained, good and evil, strong and vulnerable, as what face of his he lets you experience depends on his feelings for you and on his circumstances.
• if you love reading about immortals who have passions and fears just like mortal men.
• if you don’t avoid violent scenes in your reading.
• if you love stories full of intense sensual charge and vividly portrayed sizzling passion that goes beyond the boundaries of vanilla lovemaking.
• if you like reading about dominance and submission, and understand that in a historical fantasy setting modern BDSM as we know it today doesn’t exist.
• if you believe that love is stronger than death but rarely walks straight paths. In my stories, the men who are together in the beginning of the tale, may not be together at its end. They may find their true love much later in the course of a story than in a classical romance.
• if you believe in the power of forgiveness in true love, and don’t condemn a man for flaws he has or mistakes he has made.
Sounds good to you? If it does, I’m glad you’ve read your way through to this point. Let’s spend some delightful evenings together. We can start right away with Throne for the Idol, the Compulsion Reads-endorsed prequel to my gay historical fantasy series Guardian Demon. You’ll get it from me as a welcome gift if you sign up for my Circle of VIP Readers at: http://www.ciarandwynvil.com
Here’s the book blurb:
Let the tale carry you to the Lindisfarena Monastery to witness a dark romance between Brother Rikard and High Demon Semiazas, the First of the Fallen.
A chaste virgin and a devoted servant to Maker, Rikard leads a quiet life in the monastery until the days of his sexual awakening. Haunted by desires he can’t name yet, he finds a release for his suppressed longing in music.
The low, dark, tortured tones coaxed forth by his fingers fill Semiazas’ ears with an urgent, irresistible, red call. In different red than blood this call pulses, and Semiazas can’t resist the strange allure of a misalliance with a mortal man.
A single kiss, so unlike anything either of them has expected, sets events in turbulent motion. Rikard’s ultimate surrender to his dark idol is just a question of time. But there is only one punishment his order has for those who leave Maker’s path. Death.
Will Semiazas save Rikard? Find out in this story that interweaves dark fantasy and romance that will make your heart beat faster.
But wait, I’ve promised you two gifts. So, here’s the second one: everyone in my Circle of VIP Readers is going to get a free copy of Unalloyed Love, Part 1. This book is going to be released just a couple of days from now: on the 1st of May. That’s the date when I’ll e-mail my VIP Readers a free download code. If you have an itch for reading a nearly 110-thousand-word-long, super-sexy gay romantic suspense about love, death, and redemption for free, make sure you sign up for my Circle of VIP Readers here: http://www.ciarandwynvil.com/
The book blurb:
In a world where Light and Darkness gave birth to the Skies and the Void, to the Earth and the Waters; in a world where the first betrayal tore them apart and robbed them of their home, Darkness has been waging war on their blood children for four thousand years. When High Demon Belial embarks on the quest to understand an unalloyed power that may give his liege lord Darkness the final victory, Archangel Endingale will do anything to destroy the unknowing mortals who hold the first key to Belial’s enlightenment and true understanding of the powers of Love.
Master Viktor, a tortured murderer who has escaped justice, has built a new, respectable life for himself as the Reformer in a Reformatory for Young Gentlemen.
Wild and stubborn Amedee, Baron Drakeson’s grandson, acquiesces to a stay in Master Viktor’s institution only with reluctance, but his latest betrothal gone awry in a most unfortunate manner doesn’t give him any other option.
Haunted by concealed guilt, Master Viktor recognizes signs of torments that Amedee holds locked deep inside, and sets out to cleanse his new ward’s invisible festered wound.
As he takes control over his ward’s body and carnal urges, Amedee’s heart is touched too. When shy affection is born, Master Viktor at last cuts open the source of Amedee’s pain and guilt.
But can their feelings blossom into true love? Will they and their bond survive the destruction unleashed by Archangel Endingale?
And an excerpt:
Like strangers who have naught in common, they waited in silence, avoiding even each other’s eyes, until the door soundlessly opened again.
A white-gold-haired boy made a skittish step inside. “Madam?”
She advanced against him, and, from Viktor’s vantage point by the window, it looked as if a vampire was stalking to her victim. “Come in here, Lucien, darling,” she invited the boy.
Lucien took another hesitant step. With his shoulder-long hair still askew from sleep, clad just in a thin, creamy silk robe, the belt of which allowed for a very easy disrobing, and a topaz-crusted choker around his neck, he looked lonely and misplaced in Franziska’s bedchamber. Like a gaunt, stray pup. Silk and precious stones had no power to change the impression, although Viktor had no doubt that they had been forced on the lad for exactly this purpose. To suppress the impression of starving innocence.
“This is Master Viktor,” Franziska told Lucien, her finger pointing at Viktor underlining her words. Quite unnecessarily.
Is he a simpleton? Viktor felt his hands balling in fists. If the lad lacked wits and she had put him in bed with Lord Madoc–
Franziska reached for Lucien’s arm, and the sight broke Viktor’s thoughts. She was half-dragging the boy toward him, with no more than a blunt explanation: “You’ll work as a whipping boy for him.”
“I’ll work in your kitchens?” An incredulous smile lit up Lucien’s face. “I can whip egg whites. Real good.”
“It doesn’t mean what you think it means.” Franziska pulled him closer to Viktor still.
He doesn’t speak like a simpleton. He forms full ideas, and fast. There’s nothing wrong with his wits. He’s just arrived to an unexpected conclusion, is all, Viktor thought, beckoning Lucien to approach him. “A whipping boy is paired with a lordling,” he said. “If the lordling does any wrong, his whipping boy bears the punishment, in full or in part.”
Lucien’s eyes grew large. “Why does he do that if the lordling did the wrong?”
“That’s how the world works, darling.” Franziska shoved Lucien to stand mere two steps from Viktor.
The boy staggered, but caught his balance fast. Not a touch of anger or even hurt ran across his face. Just astonishment. “The world should change,” he said, to nobody in particular.
“Just get him out of my place,” Franziska groaned.
“Fore he says something else that you’ll want to forget,” Viktor muttered. What should he do with Lucien? With a boy mere nineteen winters old, no more. Just the right age for a good whipping boy for a young lordling, but the innocence in Lucien’s honey-colored eyes sent sharp twinges into Viktor’s lungs. Like woodland honey those eyes were, so dark and so sweet.
“Why would she want to forget?” Lucien asked. “I always speak the truth.”
“That’s the problem.” Franziska raised her hand to add a prod to her words.
Viktor caught her by the wrist. Faster than he should have.
She stared at him, taken unawares, but the wheels in her head were already turning. Fast too.
“Now, now,” he mumbled, and out of necessity he brushed his thumb across her palm. “It won’t be such a grave problem, I’m sure.” Only then he let go of her, hoping that his touch had made the fast wheels slow down. It wouldn’t serve him well if she ever learned too much about him. If he ever disrobed before her.
***
I think I’ve usurped Elin’s blog for long enough at this point. I’ll be delighted if you take me up on my offer, but now it’s time for me to handover this place back to her. After all, a guest is only welcome if he doesn’t stay too long.
Thank you, Elin, for having me and my books over today. It’s been a pleasure for me to come for a visit.
You’re welcome, Ciaran. Please feel free to drop by at any time.
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As promised, here for anyone who wants to download it, is our bit of mutual fanfic:
Welcome to a stop on the Midsummer Madness Flash Fiction Blog Hop, where M/M authors provide short original works to read between doing whatever people do on Independence Day. I’m British so my ideas of Independence Day activities are very much drawn from popular culture so, if you celebrate the holiday, please enjoy barbequeing stuff while wrapped in a flag and singing the Star Spangled Banner and shooting down alien star ships. If you don’t celebrate the holiday, enjoy your Saturday. 
Elin Gregory 