Release Blitz + Giveaway: Fair Youth by M. Dalto and Laynie Bynum

Don't miss authors M. Dalto and Laynie Bynum, along with IndiGo Marketing as they host today's blitz for Fair Youth! Find out more and enter in the $10 NineStar Press giveaway!

Title: Fair Youth

Author: M. Dalto and Laynie Bynum

Publisher: NineStar Press

Release Date: 06/07/2021

Heat Level: 3 - Some Sex

Pairing: Female/Female

Length: 76700

Genre: Contemporary, LGBTQIA+, lesbian, trans, writer, Hollywood, wealthy, retelling

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Description

Billie tried to make a small town life as a doctor’s fiancée work for her, but the dream of trading in Kentucky for the glitz and glamor of LA and selling her screenplays was too strong to fight. Unfortunately, the devil hides behind every corner in the City of Angels and she finds nothing but cockroach infested hotel rooms and broken dreams. 

Everything changes when she meets an enigmatic and illustrious fellow writer named Kit. Struck with attraction and intrigue, Billie begins to question not only her dedication to her past life, but also her own sexuality. Kit comes with amazing connections and Billie’s work is getting more recognition than ever, until a powerful studio executive sets his sights on more than just her screenplays. His infatuation could cost Billie her career and, maybe, one of them their lives.

Excerpt

Andy’s shaggy brown hair was still unbrushed and fell into his eyes as he loaded my suitcases in the trunk of his hatchback. “I just don’t understand why you can’t do your writing thing here. People work remotely all the time.”

He slammed the top down with more force than necessary and slid into the driver’s seat, leaning across the center console to close the visor mirror in front of me where I was trying to fix my makeup. It was a constant point of contention between the two of us, but despite the early flight, I didn’t want to arrive in Los Angeles looking like a zombie. Slightly annoyed and overly defiant, I reached in my purse and pulled out a little compact mirror.

“We’ve talked about this, Andy. I need to be where the people are. I need to make connections.” I tried to make my voice as nonconfrontational as possible, but the moment it left my lips, I knew he would take it as condescension.

He started the car and pulled out onto the main road where corn fields flanked us on either side. Tapping his fingers on the steering wheel to an imaginary beat to keep himself calm, he spoke evenly. “Billie, the wedding was supposed to be in a month. What am I supposed to tell everyone?”

I pinched the bridge of my nose and stifled a sigh. “The wedding isn’t off. It’s just delayed until I get back.”

This was the same conversation we had daily for the past month, going over and over the same answers he was fishing for now.

No, it’s not you.

Yes, I will come home.

It’s only for work.

Doing a crappy thing to someone you love was hard, especially when you were well aware how crappy the thing is. Having to postpone the wedding sucked, but staying in that small town, getting married and being tied down to a life of domestic bliss—always wondering about the what-ifs—I couldn’t do it until I at least tried to make my own dreams come true.

Marriage was a fine idea back when we were seventeen and thought forever meant anything past graduation.

It was a great idea when we were eighteen and all of our friends were breaking up with their own high school sweethearts while we were still going strong.

It was the perfect idea last year when, due to a pregnancy scare, we finally decided it was time.

My gut reaction was initially overwhelming happiness at the thought of starting a family, but with each florist appointment, each cake tasting, each dress alteration—I started wondering if I was ready. You didn’t see many struggling screenwriters with babies on their hips, much less ones without any formal education.

I finished my mascara and closed the compact mirror. “I have to do this, Andy.”

“At the cost of leaving behind everyone who loves you, apparently.” His voice was barely a whisper under his breath, but it was still clear over the hum of the car engine and the wind coming through his open window.

Even though he was right, the words cut to the bone. I couldn’t stay any longer. I couldn’t deal with the small-minded people of Avon, Kentucky or their even smaller dreams for one more moment. There were words inside me, and they were clawing to get out into the world. The universes in my mind begged to be put to paper and then to screen. I wanted to be where the action was. The city of angels was going to change my life, or at least that’s what I told myself as he walked me into the airport.

“This is as far as I can go, Bill,” he said as he set my bags down right outside of the first security checkpoint.

I looked up at him, all six-foot-four of him, with an apology in my eyes I could only pray he understood. Pride stopped me from saying all of the things I should have.

I love you.

I’ll miss you.

Please don’t grow to hate me while I’m gone.

Instead, I cracked a smile before wrapping him in a tight embrace. “I’ll call as soon as I land,” I promised into the fabric of his plaid shirt.

He smoothed my wavy hair with one hand while the other pulled me closer into him. “I’ll miss you every moment.”

I broke away. If I stayed, I knew I’d cry, and I was not the kind of person to cry in an airport.

As I grabbed my bags and headed through security, I turned around to look at him one last time. He stood still amongst the crowd of bustling, busy people moving around him, his eyes locked on me.

I blew him a kiss, and through the roar of the background noise, he yelled, “Break a leg, Wilhelmina Shakespeare.”

After hours on the stuffy, cramped flight, the sprawling, massive LAX airport felt like a city unto itself. Shops and restaurants peppered the walls, and it took nearly an hour just to walk out of the exit.

Before I left home, Andy told me to use Uber until I learned how to get around because traffic was hell. I pulled up the app, still unsure how it all worked, and requested a car.

Which I probably should have done earlier, since the wait for the car to arrive left me sitting outside of the airport on top of my drug-store-quality suitcase and staring at the people passing in and out. Bright neon lights started to come on, thanks to the four-hour delay we experienced at my layover in Chicago. Palm trees swayed back and forth among the divided pavement in front of me.

I expected Los Angeles to smell like sea breeze and big dreams, but in reality, it was mostly gas fumes and vapor clouds from a nearby smoking area under the concrete awning.

A red Subaru pulled up in front of me, and the driver rolled down the window. She looked at the phone in her hand and then looked at me. “You don’t look like a Billie.”

I stood up and grabbed my bags. “Well, it’s Wilhelmina on my birth certificate, but most people try to call me Willa when I tell them that.”

She motioned to the back door, and I opened it, sliding in with my bags beside me.

“Strange. Would have thought they would try to call you Willy,” she said as she looked at me in the rearview mirror.

I screwed up my face. “Maybe Willa isn’t that bad after all.”

“So, we’re heading to Pepper Place Hotel?” She turned around in the seat, her eyes looking me up and down, judging me with every cell in her body. “You sure?”

“What’s wrong with Pepper Place? It looked pretty nice online.”

“Oh, sweetie,” she said as she turned around and put the car into drive. “Welcome to Los Angeles. Where the pictures are fake and the people are plastic.”

Purchase

NineStar Press | Books2Read

Meet the Author

M. and Laynie have written both separately and together, and have hit Amazon bestseller rank both ways. M.’s work includes The Empire Series (Two Thousand Years, Mark of the Empress, and the accompanying novellas) published by Parliament House Press, and Cut to the Bone, set to be published by Filles Vertes Publishing in 2021. Laynie’s debut novel, Adeline’s Aria, was published in January with Fire and Ice YA. Together they have published Faust University, included in the Academy of Magic box set by Enchanted Quill Press and Escaping the Grey in the Prison of Supernatural Magic box set. When writing together they combine their strengths to create unique queer characters with sass and backbone in both the contemporary romance and romantic fantasy genres.

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Blog Tour: Silent Sin by E.J. Russell

Join author E.J. Russell & Vibrant Promotions on the Silent Sin blog tour. Find out more about this historical romance & read an excerpt too!

Silent Sin

E.J. Russell

M/M Historical (1920s America; silent-era Hollywood)

Release Date: 03.03.20

Blurb

When tailor Marvin Gottschalk abandoned New York City for the brash boomtown of silent-film-era Hollywood, he never imagined he’d end up on screen as Martin Brentwood, one of the fledgling film industry’s most popular actors. Five years later a cynical Martin despairs of finding anything genuine in a town where truth is defined by studio politics and publicity. Then he meets Robbie Goodman.

Robbie fled Idaho after a run-in with the law. A chance encounter leads him to the film studio where he lands a job as a chauffeur. But one look at Martin and he’s convinced he’s likely to run afoul of those same laws—laws that brand his desires indecent, deviant… sinful.

Martin and Robbie embark on a cautious relationship, cocooned in Hollywood’s clandestine gay fraternity, careful to hide from the studio boss, a rival actor, and press on the lookout for a juicy story. But when a prominent director is murdered, Hollywood becomes the focus of a morality-based witch hunt, and the studio is willing to sacrifice even the greatest careers to avoid additional scandal.

Universal Buy Link: https://books2read.com/SilentSin

Excerpt

Dottie shook her head, grabbed Robbie by the elbow, and towed him, unresisting, out of the room. She didn’t say anything to him until they were settled at a table in the corner of the commissary.

Dottie unwrapped her ham sandwich. “What did you get?”

Robbie looked down at the table in front of him. “I—I’m not sure.” He lifted one corner of the wax paper. “I think it’s a pickle.” He peered into his cup. “And tomato soup?”

She set her sandwich down. “Rob, did Antoine knock you that far off your pins?”

“I just—What—How did he—” He gave up and took a bite of his pickle, and as the sourness hit the glands at the back of his tongue, he remembered that he hated pickles. He dropped it onto its wax paper.

She sighed. “I think we need to talk about a few things.”

He nodded and then took a sip of his soup. And I hate tomato soup too. “I think that’s probably a good idea.”

Propping her elbows on the table, she leaned toward him. “The thing is, Rob, some men like men.”

“Of course they do. Everyone has friends.”

“I don’t mean that kind of like. Not as in friendship. As in love. As in sex.”

Robbie gaped at her for what might be forever. Dottie waited patiently until he’d gotten his head around the fact she was speaking about that. Nobody spoke about it. Even Frank had whispered things in bits and pieces, never giving Robbie the whole picture—never naming it—until they were hunkered down in that basement hallway, waiting for their turn in there.

But Dottie acted like she was talking about whether to order lemonade or iced tea with her sandwich.

“I—I know that.”

“You do? Then that makes this easier. In Hollywood, there’s regular work—” She held out one hand, palm up. “—and there’s queer work.” She held up the other hand.

“Queer. Is that what they call them? Men who… who like men? Do they make them all stay together? Where the queer work is?”

Dottie chuckled. “They don’t make them, but there are definitely certain places where producers think it’s okay for queers to work. The costume shop is one place. Set design and decoration is another.”

“Not acting?”

Her expression darkened. “Not openly, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t queer actors. See, for all the power the studio heads have, they’re working stiffs under the skin. The artistic types, the sophisticates they call ’em, have class. So the producers depend on fellows like Antoine or George Hopkins, over at Famous Players-Lasky.”

Robbie nodded jerkily. “I’ve met George.”

“Honey, everyone’s met George. He’s been here since he was seventeen and started designing for Theda Bara. But George and Antoine…. Well, the producers defer to them because they make the studio’s pictures look good.” She shrugged. “And if the pictures look good, audiences pay to see ’em. Which makes the producers happy.”

“Okay. That makes sense, I guess.”

“But the thing is, those same producers—and all the ‘regular’ folks—don’t want queers to show up anywhere else. Directors? Stuntmen?” She pointed to a table nearby where the sausage-slinging actors were eating hot dogs. “Actors? Nope. They’ve got to be he-men. Because what they do isn’t ‘queer work.’” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder toward the corridor leading to the costume shop. “In there, it’s safe for Antoine to be who he is, because he’s where he belongs. But to be queer on the set? Behind the camera?” She shrugged. “You’ve got to have thick skin, a convincing cover story, and the courage of a whole pride of lions. You also need someone to stand by you, or you’ll get kidded by every bull-necked yahoo on the lot.” She took a huge bite of her sandwich.

“Does that happen? The… the kidding?”

She swallowed, then took a swig of her lemonade. “It can. If a director thinks an actor isn’t he-man enough for him, he’ll let a scene go on a little too long before calling ‘cut’—not long enough for any real injury, but long enough for discomfort and fear. That happened to Jack Kerrigan all the time.”

“Somebody should have stood up for him.” Robbie’s throat was tight. I didn’t stand up for Frank.

“Rob. God, your face.” She reached across the table and grabbed his hands. “It doesn’t happen all the time. Look at George. He and Bill Taylor are pretty much untouchable because they work together, so they’ve always got each other as backup. Although when Bill was in London last year, George could have had a little trouble if it weren’t for the fact that his mother has almost as such influence as he does.”

Robbie’s stomach dropped. “Bill Taylor? As in Mr. Taylor, the director?”

“Yep. William Desmond Taylor.”

Robbie tried to speak but could only manage a croak. He took a gulp of his cold soup. “You mean they’re… they’re….”

“Together. Yes. Like that.” She let go of him, although she still watched him as if she were afraid he was about to burst into flames. She’s not wrong. “Not that they make a production out of it in public. What Hollywood tolerates here in town, in our own circles, is different from what the ladies in the temperance unions or the preachers in the revival tents can handle.”

Robbie clutched his knees, his head whirling. If someone like Mr. Taylor could do that, be that, and have his… his lover by his side….

“But Mr. Taylor is such a gentleman. He makes all those speeches to the ladies’ temperance clubs and all. Even the censorship groups listen to him.”

Dottie gave him a pitying look. “Rob, just because a man likes men more than girls, it doesn’t make him a monster.”

About the Author

Multi-Rainbow Award winner E.J. Russell—grace, mother of three, recovering actor—holds a BA and an MFA in theater, so naturally she’s spent the last three decades as a financial manager, database designer, and business intelligence consultant (as one does). She’s recently abandoned data wrangling, however, and spends her days wrestling words.

E.J. is married to Curmudgeonly Husband, a man who cares even less about sports than she does. Luckily, CH loves to cook, or all three of their children (Lovely Daughter and Darling Sons A and B) would have survived on nothing but Cheerios, beef jerky, and satsuma mandarins (the extent of E.J.’s culinary skill set).

E.J. lives in rural Oregon, enjoys visits from her wonderful adult children, and indulges in good books, red wine, and the occasional hyperbole.

Connect with E.J.:

Newsletter: https://ejrussell.com/newsletter

Facebook group (Reality Optional): https://www.facebook.com/groups/reality.optional

Website: https://ejrussell.com

Follow E.J. on:

Bookbub: @EJ_Russell

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/author/ej_russell

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Facebook author page: https://facebook.com/E.J.Russell.author

Twitter: @EJ_Russell

Review: Second Act by Kaje Harper

Sometimes you have to go home again.

When Bryce Edwards left Minnesota for the bright lights of Hollywood ten years ago, he was determined not to look back. He's built a solid acting career through his own hard work and talent. But when he finds himself unemployed right before Christmas, the memories he's been ignoring start to rise up and annoy him.

Maybe it's time to take a different approach; maybe it's time to confront his past and not just use it as motivation for his next angsty scene. If he can make peace with what happened back then— the small-town bigots who drove him away, and his first boyfriend who refused to leave with him— maybe he'll be free to move on to something better. He's not sure what “something better” will look like, but he's finally ready to get on a plane, go home, and find out. 

Kaje Harper is one of my favourite authors - one of my auto-buy authors, you know, the kind where the blurb isn't even read because you know you'll love it whatever - and so when the chance to review Second Act came up I was flattening unicorns to get to the front of the line. (I jest, I just told them there were cocky boys warming up outside the clubhouse and that place was as empty as bottle of red on a Friday night). Anywho, as I was saying I was really pleased to get the chance to read this book - even though it was about an actor.

Everyone has those books that don't quite work for them. If it features famous people (actors, celebrities or singers), the very wealthy or cowboys, then often I find them boring. It's a me thing. Doesn't mean I never read them, but they are never usually near the top of my TBR pile and often when I do read them I'm left with an unsatisfied feeling, like the book didn't quite hit the spot. I can honestly say this was not the case with this book.

Kaje writes as beautifully as ever about characters that I care about. Bryce Edwards ( the actor in question) had me on side from the start. I wanted - oh how I wanted -  for things to work out for him. In fact, I was sure things were going to go his way, so sure, that when things took a turn I hadn't anticipated - well I was left feeling hugely sad. Like that burn at the back of the throat sad, don't talk to me now or I might cry sad. Luckily, it didn't last too long. This is not an angsty-angst fest book. But it was a surprise.

Firstly, I'm not easily fooled by books (or author and their wily ways), I'm pretty much always sure I know which direction the story is going in and am proved wrong on very few occasions. Kaje managed it though. And secondly, not only did she manage it, but she did it without me spending half the book furious that things weren't going the way I'd expected. (What can I say, I'm a possessive reader and assume that every book has been written JUST FOR ME - nobody else can surely love the characters, the story, the book as much as I do!)

In fact, it was a nice surprise (I hate surprises) and I was so invested in the story and Bryce's journey to love.  And that is the talent of this author. She makes me love what i would have sworn blind I wouldn't. Actors and unanticipated directions all wrapped up in the super comfy blanket that is a Kaje Harper story. Thoroughly enjoyable.

A copy of this book was provided in exchange for an honest review.