Blog Tour: Bobby Green (Johnnies #5) by Amy Lane

Amy Lane is here today to talk about Bobby Green, the latest in her popular Johnnies series.

Bobby Green Blog Tour Post 9

The Flop House

By Amy Lane

So, as some people have noticed (and some love it, some hate it) the Johnnies stories tend to take place on top of each other. Chase’s story starts first, Dex and Kane’s next, Ethan’s, John’s, then Bobby’s. But some of the events are concurrent, and I did this for a reason.

One of the most important lessons in empathy I ever learned was that everybody has their own shit to sort.

It’s a tough one—but it’s important. When I was a kid, my dog got hit by a car—and it devastated me—the entire family, actually. But one of the hardest parts was how it happened. A woman with her own dog who’d been hit by a car was racing to the vet’s office, and she pulled around the car that stopped for our dog—and hit Blue going full bore.

The irony was cruel and painful—and instructive.

My pain is real—but it’s not more important than someone else’s. Everybody is living their own story while I’m the hero in mine.

From my very first story—Vulnerable—I’ve tried to show this layering of a community’s drama in action, and it’s given me some glorious characters. The hurt prick in Donny’s story in Super Sock Man was Chase. The nice guy who introduced Chase to Johnnies in Chase in Shadow was Dex, and the psycho goofball who hung out with Dex was Kane. The touch-hungry sweetheart who hung with Dex and Kane in Dex in Blue got his own story in Ethan in Gold—and so on, down to Bobby and Reg, who got casual mention in all four of the stories and had to be woven into the tapestry with precision, and, I hope, grace.

So those guys all had their stories told by the time I was done with Bobby—but they were peripheral characters to the originals, and I realized that they had their own peripheral characters to deal with—and that’s where the flop house comes into play.

Bobby is practically homeless when he meets Dex and shoots his first scene—and Dex, ever helpful, gives him the contact info on a bunch of guys who room together to help make ends meet.

A bunch of porn models, most of whom are unattached, rooming together.

Oh my God, it sounds like the premise of a porn movie.

And some of it was—I won’t lie. Rick and Skyler have noisy sex everywhere in the house with as many people they can talk into it, right up until Bobby points out a very obvious, embarrassing truth. Lance the doctor in training only sleeps with friends—but he has a lot of friends, and the loneliest heart of anybody Bobby’s ever known. Trey is working his way through school, and he loves his Johnnies guys—but he’s got a chip on his shoulder that gets in his way. Billy is straight—but he’s a good friend, and he likes the guys so what’s to do?

So it was a little like writing mini-episodes of an X-rated Big Brother—and that was delicious. But it also begged the question—would these guys get their own stories?

Short answer? Yeah.

I mean, Rick and Skyler have their story pretty much written as periphery characters—they might get a short on the blog eventually. (For those of you who don’t know about my blog and shorts, look under the label of “ficlets” and choose your poison.) But Lance? Trey? Anybody who wanders in to take Bobby’s place?

Yeah.

I think there’s a lot of guys who have stories in the flop house—and now that the timeline has moved completely (Bobby Green ends a full year after Chase’s melt down) it’s time for new blood.

With new twists and new stories, and new pain.

Oh, the places we’ll go, the boys we will know, and the delicious angst we can feast on—it’s like the flop house is a whole new buffet.

Blurb

Johnnies: Book Five 

Vern Roberts couldn’t wait to turn eighteen and get the hell out of Dogpatch, California. But city living is expensive, and he’s damned desperate when Dex from Johnnies spots him bussing tables.

As “Bobby,” he’s a natural at gay porn. Soon he’s surrounded by hot guys and sex for the taking, but it’s not just his girlfriend back in Dogpatch—or her blackmailing brother—that keeps him from taking it. It’s the sweet guy who held the lights for his first solo scene, who showed him decency, kindness, and a smile.

Reg Williams likes to think he’s too stupid to realize what a shitty hand life dealt him, but Bobby knows better. What Reg lacks in family, opportunity, education, and money, he makes up for in heart. One fumbling step at a time, they connect, not just in their hearts but in their bodies, where sex that’s not on camera, casual, or meaningless, becomes the most important thing in the world.

But Reg is hampered by an inescapable family burden, and he and Bobby will never fly unless he can find a way to manage it. Can he break the painful link to his unrealized childhood and grow into the love Bobby wants to give?

Book Links:

Amazon

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Author Bio

Amy Lane is a mother of two grown kids, two half-grown kids, two small dogs, and half-a-clowder of cats. A compulsive knitter who writes because she can't silence the voices in her head, she adores fur-babies, knitting socks, and hawt menz, and she dislikes moths, cat boxes, and knuckleheaded macspazzmatrons. She is rarely found cooking, cleaning, or doing domestic chores, but she has been known to knit up an emergency hat/blanket/pair of socks for any occasion whatsoever or sometimes for no reason at all. Her award-winning writing has three flavors: twisty-purple alternative universe, angsty-orange contemporary, and sunshine-yellow happy. By necessity, she has learned to type like the wind. She's been married for twenty-five-plus years to her beloved Mate and still believes in Twu Wuv, with a capital Twu and a capital Wuv, and she doesn't see any reason at all for that to change.