Release Blitz + Giveaway: Resolutions for an Arbitrary Holiday by Nell Iris

Author Nell Iris and Gay Book Promotions host a New Year's release blitz for New Year's romance, Resolutions for an Arbitrary Holiday! Find out more about the new release from JMS Books and enter in the giveaway where five people win their choice from the author's back list!

RELEASE BLITZ

Book Title: Resolutions for an Arbitrary Holiday

Author: Nell Iris

Publisher: JMS Books 

Cover Artist: Written Ink Designs 

Release Date: December 30, 2020

Genre/s: Contemporary, holiday M/M Romance

Trope/s: Meet cute

Themes: Being true to yourself, New Year’s Eve, holiday

Heat Rating:  1 flame

Length: 20 849  words

It is a standalone story.

  Add on Goodreads

Buy Links 

JMS Books  |  Amazon US  |  Amazon UK 

B&N  |  Kobo  |   Apple Books

 

Two strangers, a twisted ankle, an ancient stone ship, and a New Year’s Eve they’ll never forget

  

Blurb

Petter sneaks out of the New Year’s party he didn’t want to go to and treks to an old burial site he’s dying to see. Alone. Without telling anyone on a freezing December night. Without cell service…a huge problem when he twists his ankle.

Someone passes by Isak’s house on the path leasing to the stone ship. When the person never returns, Isak worries and sets off to investigate. What he finds is Petter, a pack of sparklers, and an instant connection.

Under a starry sky, they learn they have a lot in common. Will the attraction burn hot and fizzle out like the fireworks going off over their heads when they return to the real world? Or will it deepen, grow, and turn into something real? Something everlasting like the stone ship?



Excerpt

“Did you come here to ring in the new year?” He nods toward the bottle still positioned between my legs.

“Yeah. I’ve always wanted to visit this place and since I was dragged to the village, it seemed like a good idea at the time. I even brought sparklers.” I pull them out of my pocket, holding them up for him to see.

“Bubbly and sparklers by the stone ship. Sounds like the perfect New Year’s celebration to me.”

I stare at him. He sounds serious enough, not like he’s mocking me. And he doesn’t know me, so he won’t know what buttons to push to get me to agree to do shit I don’t want to, like my friend Jonas, who’s the sole reason for me being here. “You can’t be alone on New Year’s Eve, Petter. Only losers and people with no friends stay home alone on holidays. Besides, you don’t want Maja to think you’re not her friend, do you?” Bastard played me and used his girlfriend to get me to agree, knowing how much I like her. More than him, most days.

But this guy, this stranger, seems honest. “You really mean that?”

“I do.” He grabs the bottle and takes a swig, his face scrunching up in a grimace.

“Yeah, I know,” I snicker. “It’s vile. Serves me right for grabbing someone’s bubbly from the fridge before heading up here.”

“I’m not a wine expert, but that was…”

“…too sweet,” we say simultaneously.

He nods. “Exactly.”

I smile.

“Listen. What do you say we ring in the new year a bit early? New Year’s is just an arbitrary mark of the passage of time invented by humans anyway, so who says we can’t do it now? Light some sparklers, tell each other our resolutions. Try not to barf as we drink more of this.” He holds up the bottle. “Then I can help you down. Call a doctor if you need one. Or take you back to your friends if you prefer. I assume you’re at the Andersson house for the party?”

I raise an eyebrow. “How did you know?”

“It’s a teeny tiny village. Everyone knows what’s going on in their neighbors’ houses.”

“Really? That can’t be good?”

“It has its downsides, that’s for sure. But I’m mostly fine with it.”

“Okaaaay.” Because surely, he doesn’t mean the neighbors know everything? Not what other people have in their nightstands and stuff? Ew.

“So what do you say?” He nudges his knee against my leg.

“Sure. I approve of the plan.”

Isak removes his gloves and holds out his hand. “Let me light the sparklers. Did you bring a lighter?”

“Yeah, hang on.” I dig into my pocket without taking off my mittens—my fingers are pretty cold—until I find it. “Here you go.”

“Awesome. Are you the kind of person who makes resolutions?”

“Usually not.” I accept the lit sparkler he holds out to me. I’ve loved these things since I was a little kid, even more than fireworks, and up here, in the howling wind with a sky full of stars above my head, in the company of a kind stranger and huge ancient stones, they’re more beautiful than ever.

“But this year is different?”

“Yeah. I’m doing some…significant changes in my life this coming year, so I thought ‘why not?’ It can’t hurt, right? Even if I agree with you about the arbitrariness of this so-called holiday.”

“You do?”

“Sure. It’s not a thing we celebrate because of some natural phenomenon, like the solstice. It’s just to mark that the Earth has done another lap around the sun. I mean, that’s great and all, but why do we need to celebrate it?”

Isak’s face lights up in a wide grin. “Yes! This is what I always say when people complain because I refuse to embrace the spirit of the holiday.”

I return his smile. “Exactly!”

“I’ll drink to that.”

About the Author 

Nell Iris is a romantic at heart who believes everyone deserves a happy ending. She’s a bona fide bookworm (learned to read long before she started school), wouldn’t dream of going anywhere without something to read (not even the ladies room), loves music (and singing along at the top of her voice but she’s no Celine Dion), and is a real Star Trek nerd (Make it so). She loves words, bullet journals, poetry, wine, coffee-flavored kisses, and fika (a Swedish cultural thing involving coffee and pastry!)

Nell believes passionately in equality for all regardless of race, gender or sexuality, and wants to make the world a better, less hateful, place.

Nell is a bisexual Swedish woman married to the love of her life, a proud mama of a grown daughter, and is approaching 50 faster than she’d like. She lives in the south of Sweden where she spends her days thinking up stories about people falling in love. After dreaming about being a writer for most of her life, she finally was in a place where she could pursue her dream and released her first book in 2017.

Nell Iris writes gay romance, prefers sweet over angsty, short over long, and quirky characters over alpha males.

   

Author Links

Blog/Website  |  Facebook Author Page  |  Facebook Profile

Twitter: @nellirisauthor  |  Instagram: @nell_iris  |  Goodreads

QueeRomance Ink   |  BookBub

 

 

Giveaway 

Enter the Rafflecopter Giveaway for a chance to win

a choice of one of five ebook copies from Nell's backlist

a Rafflecopter giveaway

  

Hosted by Gay Book Promotions

 

Follow the tour and check out the other blog posts and reviews here

Release Day Review: Counting Down (Counting #2) by Kelly Jensen

It’s been a week since a Christmas Eve blizzard changed the course of Marcus Winnamore’s life. Plan A is now Plan B, and the first item on his new agenda is taking Henry Auttenberg on a date. They’ve been invited to a New Year’s Eve party, and Marc is counting down the hours until midnight… until he can kiss Henry in front of his colleagues and friends.

Things don’t quite work out to plan. Finding the elevator out of service, Marc and Henry check the stairs, only to choose the wrong door and become locked in the basement. Close quarters once again make for close conversation, and as they explore every avenue of escape, they also explore the deepening attraction between them. For Marc, this isn’t an experiment. Will he still feel that way when he has to admit to someone other than Henry that he’s gay?

Oh man, I missed these two.

I love where the author is taking this relationship and how the pacing is going. In Counting Fence Posts, Marc and Henry got trapped in a blizzard and confessions were made and the potential for something more began. It was right before Christmas then and Counting Down is set on New Year’s Eve, so they’ve only been ‘together’ for a week and while everything is still new, there is no doubt the two have a connection that’s headed to more than just a casual fling.

There’s more than just the getting-to-know-you thing going on though. Henry is out, he’s gay, no question, while Marc, on the other hand, has never been with a man before so he’s got a lot on his plate beyond getting to know a potential boyfriend and this is where the strength of this series lies. It actually works out well for them that they seem to keep getting trapped (first the car in the blizzard and now locked in the basement of an apartment building) because they are captive to communication and I don’t know that they’d have the heartfelt conversations they’ve been having without these scenarios.

Marc has been fascinated by Henry since day one, but it’s all new to him and he’s got a lot of new feels to sort out. Henry is very interested in more with Marc, but he’s also not going to just be his experiment and while they do talk about all their feelings (props to characters who communicate!) it’s still a new relationship and both of them are still feeling their way forward cautiously. Anything else would wreck the balance that’s been built up and I guess I would say that these two have the most guardedly optimistic HEA in the works ever.

I can’t wait for their next ‘date’.

For more info and to get your copy of Counting Down, head over to Dreamspinner Press.

**a copy of this story was provided for an honest review**

Review: 2 Days Later by C.M. Corett

Nate Beckett doesn’t expect much from life, and he definitely doesn’t believe in New Year’s celebrations or resolutions. A happy New Year? Not likely. As the manager of McGee’s bar, the best he can hope for is a drama-free night. One glance at the sexy young man on the dance floor and that hope is long gone. Once again, his young neighbor Justin is back to tempt and torment him. Despite the undeniable attraction, Nate knows he’s too old and jaded for someone like him, so the time has come to reject Justin. It’s for his own good!

Justin may be young and inexperienced, but he knows what he needs. His New Year’s resolution—to tempt and win Nate over. One lame seduction attempt later, and he’s on his way home in a cab. Alone. But later that night, Justin wakes up battered and bruised on Nate’s doorstep, and Nate insists that Justin stay with him. The big, beautiful man’s protective and caring instincts are definitely kicking in.

Maybe, just maybe, there’s a chance for a happy New Year after all!

I was looking forward to a good New Years book and this hit the spot pretty darn well.

Justin and Nate live in the same apartment complex and Justin has been shamelessly flirting with Nate for some time now. On New Year’s day Nate comes home from work to find Justin battered and beaten on his doorstep. Nate takes care of him, in more ways than one… This was a very simple story and essentially ends up being about the sexual tension and build-up to these two finally getting it on.

That was one thing this story did very well, sexual tension. It was sizzling and the resolution to it at the end was super hot.

This story takes place over two days, so obviously we didn’t get much depth to the characters or their background, but the simple story and characters worked well enough to make the story enjoyable. It had some nice comfort elements and Nate being all protective was lovely!

What really irked me though was there was no conclusion to anything. We have no idea what came of Justin’s abuser, despite that being a very big issue and we also never found out why Nate thought he was ‘unworthy’ of being with Justin. There was just too much left unsaid.

This was simple, but sometimes simple just works and it did here, despite a few flaws.

Find on Goodreads!

Happy New Year!!!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Can you believe it? 2016 is already here!

While you're wiping the 2015 dust off and welcoming the 2016 confetti all over...yo' body

We hope you had some a lot of this:

So that you spent the night partying like this:

while:

and doing a little:

 with:

Have a happy, healthy and prosperous, unicorn New Year!!!

From the U.M.

HAPPY NEW YEAR MY BITCHES!

Now, Let's HUG it out!

According to Urban Dictionary (which is where I get all my important reference and research materials) a Unicorn Hug is:

"Engaging in a friendly embrace whilst sporting an erection"

 

 

Is there any better way to start the new year? Anyone? Anyone?

 

Noooooo, there is not.

 

So, from our clubhouse to yours, HAPPY NEW YEAR!! And, thank you! Thank you for playing in our sandbox full of glitter with us. We hope you've had as much fun as we have in 2014 and we can't wait for new extra shiny shenanigans in 2015.

 

We have no formal plans as that is not how unicorns roll and goes against our carefully constructed business model of random. It's all about getting a wild hair and galloping away with it.

 

 



What we do know is that we have some wishes.

• We wish you Unicorn Hug boners full of love in the New Year
• We wish a ridiculous amount of cash and prizes rains on your pretty manes in the New Year
• We wish you access to an endless plethora of your kink of choice written by your fave author in the New Year
• We wish you the amazing discovery of new-to-you authors and we hope we can point a few your way in the New Year
• But most of all we wish you good health, happiness and laughter in the New Year, you're a unicorn, you deserve nothing less.