Elin Gregory

I shouldn’t really be using this graphic because, yet again, I forgot to sign up for the hop – my brain is swiss cheese – but I thought I’d make my recommendations anyway. Click on the picture and you’ll find the list of other authors, all of whom post excerpts of their fiction.

Meanwhile, I’m going to talk about other people’s excellent fiction.

It’s a while since I’ve recommended a graphic novel so here is The Desert Peach by Donna Barr. Yes that is a Nazi uniform. Set during the Second World War, The Desert Peach follows the misadventures of Oberst Manfred Pfirsich Marie Rommel, the flamboyantly gay younger brother of Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox, packed off to Africa for safety’s sake, kept under Rommel’s watchful eye and placed in charge of the 469th Halftrack, Gravedigging and Support Unit of the Afrika Korps. Pfirisch [German for Peach] is more concerned with keeping his men alive and out of trouble than anything else, hindered along the way by a fabulous cast of characters that read like the Dirty Dozen on crack – his sexually omnivorous lover, ace fighter pilot Rosen Kavalier, his grubby barrack room lawyer orderly, Udo Schmidt, an apparently mute radio operator who is always seen cradling a tiny stuffed dinosaur and Dobermann, ‘one bang too many’ explosives expert who has a pet landmine called Fridl.
The art looks rough at first glance but is vigorous and enthusiastic, superb facial expressions, spot on perspective when the author feels like it and all the vehicles are recognisable, if you feel the need to look them up. Donna Barr also draws gorgeous horses, something where many comic book artists fall short. {Link may be NSFW due to nudity, human not horse}
Sadly most of the early issues are now only available on Kindle [or paper if you can track down one of the original issues] but later issues are posted on the Desert Peach website.

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Saturday again so time for my recommendation. This is part of the SSnS blog hop – click on the graphic to go the list of other participating authors and their exciting snippets.

Last week’s recommendation was for Finders Keepers, a contemporary romance with some archaeology, action and adventure from Chris Quinton – yummy! This week I’m heading way back into history when the things we dig up and cherish now were made and casually used as every day items.

Brothers of the Wild North Sea by Harper Fox

Set in the 8th century on the North Sea between Northumbria and Denmark it tells the tale of conflict between Saxons and the Danish vikingr, represented by Caius, son of a Romano-British warlord and a warrior in his own right but now a monk in the community of Fara on an island off the coast of Northumberland, and Fenris, son of Sigurd, leader of a viking clan desperate to discover a great treasure.

There is a delicious detail and lyricism in Harper Fox’s prose that brought the time and the landscape alive. That alone would have entertained me, but there’s also comedy – Caius has a lovely dry wit – a superb depiction of the difference in mind sets between the more reflective Caius and the death or glory Fenris, various alarms and excursions, very real danger, grief and passion. As usual, highly recommended.

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Saturday is here again and it’s time for the usual recommendation post as part of the Seductive Studs ‘n’ Sirens blogging thingy, which you can find here.

I can’t remember what I recced last time because it’s been a couple of weeks. Whatever it was I bet it was good!

This week I’m going to draw your attention to Finders Keepers by fellow Brit, Chris Quinton. 

Jeff is a tough undercover operative for an insurance company that recovers stolen art with extreme prejudice if necessary. Just back from a long and testing period as the boy toy of a Russian mobster, the last thing Jeff needs to to be ordered to seduce a very sweet English college lecturer as a means of getting to his parents who are suspected of  being involved in the theft of a priceless reliquary.

I found this an absolute joy to read because it had all my favourite things in it – a protagonist with a steel fist in a very velvety glove, secrets and deception that weren’t just for the sake of creating conflict, a genuinely sweet other protagonist, archaeology [grrr nighthawks, scum of the earth], agriculture and OMG field archery [sadly it wasn’t to be actually in the book which was a disappointment but I live in hope for a sequel] also some well written female characters who didn’t conform to M/M tropes. There are some sex scenes but they either add to the character development and are so well placed in the book that they suplemented the story arc. I enjoyed the story immensely.

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Sweet Saturday, and I had a bit of a lay in and a read instead of getting up early and making this post. Not actually a bad thing because I was reading something rather fine that I will talk about another time.

Last time my recommendation was for Artifice, a graphic novel by Alex Woolfson and Winona Nelson. This time I’m offering you another HUGE free read – the cycle of FBI stories called The Shadow of the Templar by M Chandler.

Click on the cover and it will take you to her Lulu store where you can buy PDFs for a few pence, but if you’re skint you can read the stories online at her website.

These books are self pubbed, pretty well edited for typos etc, though OMG they could do with a bit of editing for length, and the PDFs are nicely produced. The stories deal with the adventures of a team of FBI agents vastly complicated by the deeply unwilling relationship that their leader, Simon Drake, codename Templar, falls into with the snide and sarcastic English jewel thief and con-man, Jeremy Archer, aka The Shadow.

This series of books is PURE crack. Just think of every heist movie you’ve ever seen and double it. Add the kind of banter between a group of secondary characters worthy of NCIS. Then add a lead man who actively hates the man he has fallen in love with. It’s a fortnight’s worth of highly entertaining reading with many laugh out loud moments and others of genuine pathos. It’s not erotic – the few sex scenes are brief and there more to provide emotional fall out than a reader for the reader to get hot and sweaty – but it is very entertaining.

Highly recommended for people who are as interested in the shenanigans as the relationships.

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Time for another Seductive Studs and Sirens do – yes, I’ll be making my usual recommendation of something not particularly obvious in the LGBT line.

Last week it was Abigail Roux’s, and Madeline Urban’s, Cut and Run series – which appeals to me particularly for the humourous content, something not often found in M/M type fiction. This week I’m going right out on a limb and risk lots of eye rolling.

This week I want to recommend a graphic novel.

You see, way back in the depths of time when I was a girl and dinosaurs roamed the earth, I really fancied drawing comics for a living and drew these deliciously willowy long haired men with big eyes. Since manga was still unknown in the rural heart of England, people told me to pack it in and get a job in an office instead. But I’ve still got a very soft spot for ‘comics’ and am always on the look out for really good artwork online.

Which is how I found Artifice, written by Alex Woolfson with art by Winona Nelson.

Deacon is an ‘artificial’ human – physically perfect an trained to be the ultimate killing machine. He and his unit of super soldiers are sent on a search and destroy mission to wipe out a colony, root and branch. However the rest of the unit are killed by a booby trap and Deacon is left with depleted batteries and one somewhat fraught survivor. Jeff is terrified, aware that Deacon has only spared his life so he can operate the machinery to charge Deacon’ batteries, and knows that as soon as the rescue mission arrives he is crowbait, but he and Deacon still develop a relationship that gradually deepens into something very like love.

The drawing is astounding and perfectly complements the story. Some of it is a bit wordier than normal for a GN but then it is delving into definitions of what makes a human, the philosophy of love=/=lust and how far one person is prepared to go to protect another.

The paper copies of the work now available on Amazon were funded through a Kickstarter campaign [I put in my few dollars] and I am so delighted to have my copy!

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 Another week, another bunch of reading. But before I make my recommendation for this week, remember to click on the badge beside this text to get to the list of blogs participating in the mini hop. Unlike my posts, which are all unrepentantly MM, the other posters cover all the other quiltbag letters so you should be able to find someething to appeal.

Last week I recommended a short historical – the gorgeous Skybound by Aleksandr Voinov – this week I’m recommending another serial known as the Cut and Run books initially by Madelaine Urban and Abigail Roux from Dreamspinner and now  by Ms Roux on her own from Riptide . There are seven titles in the series, plus at least one spin off novel and some freebie shorts and flash fiction, and a large and very active fandom.

Now I’m not a natural fangirl but I can appreciate good story telling and interesting characters, both of which appear in these stories. Some of the early ones have been criticised for a wavering point of view, and yes, sometimes that can be a little distracting, but one soon gets ones eye in and by the end of the first book I found I was too caught up in the story to notice it.

The premise is quite familiar – mismatched FBI agents partnered to investigate a series of murders, including that of another agent. During their investigation they brave dangers while despising each other, bickering, coming to blows, then falling into an antagonistic sexual relationship before reaching a status of mutual respect. Obviously there’s more to it than that. There’s a robust joy in the depiction of these two flawed and initially quite unlikeable men. Both have very deep issues to overcome and in each book, as their relationship solidifies, a little piece of the puzzle is revealed and another problem is addressed and, if not solved, coped with. There is an excellent cast of supporting characters and the plots are lively, violent and exciting – exactly my preferred type of reading whether the two heroes spend much time in the sack or not. This pair do enjoy quite a lot of bedroom time but not so much to be deleterious to the plot or at completely unbelievable times and  places. Highly recommended romps – I am eagerly anticipating the next instalment in November.

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It’s Saturday, so time for the weekly SSS blog hop where authors showcase bits of their work to share with each other or, in my case since I don’t have anything appropriate to share, recommend excellent reads in LGBT fiction.

I missed last Saturday because I had to go to London *gulp* a very big thing for this country mouse. But I survived [duh]! and the good thing about the trip as that I was able to read all the way there and all the way back.

Last week I recommended the Falls Chance Ranch story cycle and am delighted to hear that at least one person has checked it out and found it as delightful as I do. Warning – approach this story with extreme caution because one reading is never enough and you’ll find all your writing plans and good intentions going right out of the window.

This week I’m going for another extreme – a jewel-like, sharply edited,  historical short story – Skybound by Aleksandr Voinov. Set in the last few days of World War 2, this unusual tale concerns the relationship that develops between Felix, one of the Schwartzmannen ground crew who help fuel and maintain the aircraft of the Luftwaffe, and Baldur a fighter plot exhausted from flying mission after mission as the Allied forces close in on their airfield. The language is precisely judged, not a word wasted, every phrase significant. It’s not a book to read while half asleep. Felix, a calm and efficient lad, wistful for the kind of loving brotherly relationship he admired so much in the Old Shatterhand books by Karl May that he devoured as a youth, is content to admire Baldur from a distance, showing his devotion in the care with which he fine tunes Baldur’s Messerschmidt. When Baldur shows how much he values that care, as the one bright light in the gathering darkness, Felix grabs for what they both know can only be a brief moment of happiness.

This may make it sound as though the book is very soft and lachrymose – and I admit to having a lump in my throat a time or two while reading it – but it isn’t. There are some very exciting action scenes, amusing dialogue, almost philosophical musings and a denouement that is both exciting and heart wrenching. Honestly you won’t regret reading this – it was one of my top reads of 2012.

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Another week, another bash at Seductive Studs and Sirens. Just click on the picture for the list of participants – authors with snippets of their work or bloggers with posts relevant to LGBT fiction or wider issues.

Last week I was reading Masked Riders by Parhelion, one of the most mysterious and secretive authors of LGBT fiction. [The end of the book was just as terrific as the beginning by the way]. This week I am reading a book by a very nice lady whom I have actually met in person who has one of the best known hats in LGBT fiction – Jordan Castillo Price. I have started reading her series of vampire novels, Channeling Morpheus, beginning with Payback.

These stories are a lot more erotic than I would normally go for. Again I want to repeat that I don’t disapprove of erotica, it just doesn’t hold my attention – much as someone desperate to read the next sex scene might allow their mind to wander during a clever description of field stripping an AK47, to which I would be glued making notes.
So vampire erotica – not normally my cup of tea but JCPs language, her flashes of humour, her superb descriptions keep me interested and focused, if not actually aroused. I thoroughly enjoyed this tale of vengeance that doesn’t go quite the way the protagonist expects it to and will follow the rest of the adventures of Michael and Wild Bill, with enthusiasm. Highly recommended especially if you like your fiction a bit on the scorchy side. 🙂 Click on the cover to be taken to the Channeling Morpheus website.

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