Virtual Book Tour + Giveaway: Counter Culture by JL Merrow

JL Merrow and Riptide Publishing spotlight new release, Counter Culture today. Discover more about the new romantic comedy and enter in the giveaway to win a $10 Riptide gift card! Good luck!

Hi, I’m JL Merrow, and I’m delighted to be here today to celebrate the release of my new rom-com, Counter Culture, which features a clash of cultures between a socially conscious steampunk and a stressed-out department store retail worker.

About Counter Culture

Customer service has never been this personal.

Robin Christopher, beleaguered retail worker, isn’t having an easy November. His boss is raising stress levels planning a Black Friday to end all Black Fridays, his family doesn’t understand him, and his best friend thinks his new crush is a hallucination brought on by watching too many episodes of Doctor Who.

Archie Levine dresses in Victorian style and divides his time between caring for his young son and creating weird and wacky steampunk gadgets from bits of old junk—when he’s not looking after his mum and trying to keep on good terms with his ex. The last thing he’s got time for is a relationship, but the flustered young man he met while disembowelling a fridge is proving very tempting.

When his mum’s social conscience is roused by a local store with a cavalier attitude to the homeless, former rough sleeper Archie shares her anger. Little does he know that Robin works for that same store. When Archie finds out he’s sleeping with the enemy, things could cut up very rough indeed.

Available now from Riptide Publishing!

About JL Merrow

JL Merrow is that rare beast, an English person who refuses to drink tea.  She read Natural Sciences at Cambridge, where she learned many things, chief amongst which was that she never wanted to see the inside of a lab ever again.

She writes (mostly) contemporary gay romance and mysteries, and is frequently accused of humour.  Two of her novels have won Rainbow Awards for Romantic Comedy (Slam!, 2013 and Spun!, 2017) and several of her books have been EPIC Awards finalists, including Muscling Through, Relief Valve (the Plumber’s Mate Mysteries) and To Love a Traitor.

JL Merrow is a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association, International Thriller Writers, Crime Writers Association, Verulam Writers and the UK GLBTQ Fiction Meet organising team.

Find JL Merrow online at: https://jlmerrow.com/, on Twitter as @jlmerrow, and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/jl.merrow

Giveaway

To celebrate this release, one lucky person will win a $10 gift card to Riptide. Leave a comment with your contact info to enter the contest. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on November 9, 2019. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries. Thanks for following along, and don’t forget to leave your contact info!

Giveaway + Blog Tour: Love at First Hate by JL Merrow

Welcome JL Merrow and Riptide Publishing who are here today promoting the latest in the Porthkennack series, Love at First Hate! Find out more about this contemporary romance and this series set in a seaside Cornish town and be sure to leave a comment to be entered in the giveaway of a $10 Amazon credit! Good luck!

Hi, I’m JL Merrow, and I’m delighted to be here today as part of the blog tour to celebrate the release of Love at First Hate, the second of my contemporary MM romances in Riptide’s multi-author Porthkennack series.

Love at First Hate features a romance between a newcomer to Porthkennack and a character whom readers of my first two Porthkennack books, Wake Up Call  and One Under, will have already met: Bran Roscarrock. As you might imagine, Bran, who is an antagonist in the first two books, is on something of a redemption arc. But we’ll also get to see where he’s been coming from, and why he’s acted as he has.

About Love at First Hate

First impressions can doom second chances.

Bran Roscarrock has been living in the closet all his life. As heir to an expansive family legacy in the town of Porthkennack, old-fashioned ideals of respectability and duty were drummed into him since childhood, and he’s never dared to live—or love—openly.

Sam Ferreira, an old friend of Bran’s brother, Jory, is a disgraced academic desperate to leave his dead-end job. When Jory asks him to take over as curator of a planned exhibition on Edward of Woodstock, the fourteenth-century Black Prince, Sam leaps at the chance to do what he loves and make a fresh start.

But Bran’s funding the exhibition, and though sparks fly between the two men, they’re not all happy ones. Bran idolises Prince Edward as a hero, while Sam’s determined to present a balanced picture. With neither of them prepared to give ground, a hundred years of war seems all too possible. And if Bran finds out about Sam’s past, his future may not be bright, and their budding romance may be lost to history.

About Porthkennack

Welcome to Porthkennack, a charming Cornish seaside town with a long and sometimes sinister history.

Legend says King Arthur's Black Knight built the fort on the headland here, and it’s a certainty that the town was founded on the proceeds of smuggling, piracy on the high seas, and the deliberate wrecking of cargo ships on the rocky shore.

Nowadays it draws in the tourists with sunshine and surfing, but locals know that the ghosts of its Gothic past are never far below the surface.

This collaborative story world is brought to you by five award-winning, best-selling British LGBTQ romance authors. Follow Porthkennack and its inhabitants through the centuries and through the full rainbow spectrum.

 The Porthkennack novels are standalone stories; release order and era are:

●      A Gathering Storm by Joanna Chambers (historical)

●      Wake Up Call by JL Merrow (contemporary)

●      Broke Deep by Charlie Cochrane (contemporary)

●      House of Cards by Garrett Leigh (contemporary)

●      Foxglove Copse by Alex Beecroft (contemporary)

●      Count the Shells by Charlie Cochrane (historical)

●      Junkyard Heart by Garrett Leigh (contemporary)

●      Tribute Act by Joanna Chambers (contemporary)

●      One Under by JL Merrow (contemporary)

●      Contraband Hearts by Alex Beecroft (historical)

●      Love at First Hate by JL Merrow (contemporary)

About JL Merrow

JL Merrow is that rare beast, an English person who refuses to drink tea.  She read Natural Sciences at Cambridge, where she learned many things, chief amongst which was that she never wanted to see the inside of a lab ever again.

 She writes (mostly) contemporary gay romance and mysteries, and is frequently accused of humour.  Two of her novels have won Rainbow Awards for Romantic Comedy (Slam!, 2013 and Spun!, 2017) and several of her books have been EPIC Awards finalists, including Muscling Through, Relief Valve (the Plumber’s Mate Mysteries) and To Love a Traitor.

JL Merrow is a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association, Crime Writers Association, International Thriller Writers, Verulam Writers and the UK GLBTQ Fiction Meet organising team.

Connect with JL:

●      Website: www.jlmerrow.com

●      Twitter: @jlmerrow

●      Facebook: facebook.com/jl.merrow

●      Goodreads: goodreads.com/.J_L_Merrow

To celebrate the release of Love at First Hate, JL is giving away a $10 Amazon credit! Leave a comment with your contact info to enter the contest. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on September 8, 2018. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries. Thanks for following along, and don’t forget to leave your contact info!

Review: Wight Mischief by J.L. Merrow

A ghost of a chance at love.

Personal trainer Will Golding has been looking forward to a getaway with his best friend, Baz, a journalist researching a book on ghosts. But on the first day of their camping trip on the Isle of Wight, Will takes a walk on a secluded beach and spies a beautiful young man skinny-dipping by moonlight. Ethereally pale, he’s too perfect to be real—or is he?

Lonely author Marcus Devereux is just as entranced by the tall athlete he encounters on the beach, but he’s spent the years since his parents’ violent death building a wall around his heart, and the thought of letting Will scale it is terrifying. Marcus’s albinism gives him his otherworldly appearance and leaves him reluctant to go out in daylight, his reclusiveness encouraged by his guardian—who warns him to stay away from Will and Baz.

The attraction between Will and Marcus can’t be denied—but neither can the danger of the secrets haunting Marcus’s past, as one “accident” after another strikes Will and Baz. If they don’t watch their step, they could end up added to the island’s ghostly population.

I read Wight Mischief for the first time in 2013 and while I didn’t remember a lot of details, the imagery still was with me when the book came through the blog for its re-release. I really wanted to visit the Isle of Wight again through J.L. Merrow’s words and I enjoyed it just as much the second time around.

Wight Mischief plays to J.L. Merrow’s strengths with vivid atmospheric imagery and characters who come to life on the pages. I had a real soft spot for Will throughout. Every reader knows the warm fuzzy feeling of connecting and rooting for a character with all their literary loving heart. Will was my dude. He was everything I love wrapped in a big, beautiful humble package. His unwavering loyalty and one sided crush on Baz frustrated me to no end, but I also understood it given their age and history.

Myself, I love a mystery and one with a paranormal bent is even better. The ghost hunting angle that came with Baz’s research set the scene for the tension that flows from start to finish. The research leads them to Marcus’s doorstep and the connection between Marcus and Will was obvious, but also not easy. Marcus is a successful author with a mysterious past and an overbearing caretaker who adds some delicious tension and a character I could love to hate. The story needed a clear villain and Leif delivered.

The mystery evolves along with Marcus and Will’s relationship. I liked reading about Will’s change of affection from Baz to Marcus. It was refreshing and I was happy reading about Will’s happiness. Their relationship wasn’t without its angst but the angst wasn’t overdone considering everything else going on.

And there was a lot going on. Honestly if you are looking for full blown romance, you are going to be a little disappointed. Will and Marcus don’t have a ton of page time together, but the time they do have is intense and they do spend a lot of time pining for one another. That did make the end that much sweeter for me as their HEA was well earned.

Wight Mischief has characters to love, to hate and ones you want to throttle. There’s the mystery, the ghost stories and the Isle of Wight itself which is a character all on its own. I quite enjoy reading a story with all manner of elements and a mystery needs a lot of movement to keep the reader, well, mystified and engaged. Because there were the other elements in the story as well; the romance between Will and Marcus, the changing dynamics between Will and Baz, the new friendships made, etc., the mystery didn’t have to be overly complex and I’m glad it wasn’t. I wanted to read about it, but I didn’t want it to outshine Will and Marcus. In the end the balance worked for me as a mystery lover with bonus romance.

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

Giveaway + Blog Tour: Wight Mischief by J.L. Merrow

Welcome JL Merrow who's stopped by the clubhouse today to talk about her romantic suspense novel Wight Mischief that's been re-released by Dreamspinner Press and she's talking Isle of Wight! Be sure to leave a comment to be entered in the giveaway below. Good luck!

A New Atlantis?

Hi, I’m JL Merrow, and I’m delighted to be here today as part of the blog tour to celebrate the release of Wight Mischief, a romantic suspense novel set on the island I grew up on, the Isle of Wight.

Living on the edge of a cliff, with an uninterrupted view over the wide ocean—what could be better than that?

Until, that is, you wake up the morning after a storm and find out the bottom of your garden is now resting in pieces several hundred feet below.

Cliff erosion is a real problem in coastal areas of the UK. In Wight Mischief, Will and Marcus visit a former holiday camp that’s slowly falling into the sea. This is based on an actual derelict holiday camp I visited when I was researching for the book, although I’ve taken some liberties with its exact location. I was able to look directly into holiday chalets whose front wall had taken the plunge, while tattered curtains in 1970s designs fluttered forlornly in the sea breeze. Just yards away, campers got on with their holidays, oblivious to this poignant memento mori.

Theme park Blackgang Chine, another real location in Wight Mischief, has suffered from a good deal of erosion since it opened in 1843. The chine (or ravine) that gave the park its name has long since disappeared, and the attraction itself has repeatedly had to move inland to avoid falling beneath the waves.

Most cliff erosion takes place gradually, over the years, but storms or tidal surges can have a dramatic effect, sometimes literally overnight. The island isn’t the only area at risk. In 2013, three Norfolk homes were completely washed into the sea in one night, and four others in the same road seriously undermined as their residents scrambled to save what they could.

While erosion has always been a fact of life, rising sea levels due to climate change have upped the pace significantly. The Environment Agency estimates that 7,000 UK homes will be lost to the sea in the next century.

On the Isle of Wight, erosion rates have been measured at up to 5 feet a year. So is the island about to vanish, Atlantis-like, beneath the waves?  Well, hopefully not—major studies have been undertaken into the pattern of erosion, and sea defences are being strengthened. And to put that erosion rate into perspective, as the Island has a north/south diameter of just over 13 miles, I calculate it’d take around 7,000 years to disappear—and that’s if erosion rates were the same on all sides, which they aren’t.

But if you’re planning an island holiday, perhaps take it sooner rather than later. ;)

Wight Mischief

A ghost of a chance at love.

Personal trainer Will Golding has been looking forward to a getaway with his best friend, Baz, a journalist researching a book on ghosts. But on the first day of their camping trip on the Isle of Wight, Will takes a walk on a secluded beach and spies a beautiful young man skinny-dipping by moonlight.  Ethereally pale, he’s too perfect to be real—or is he?

Lonely author Marcus Devereux is just as entranced by the tall athlete he encounters on the beach, but he’s spent the years since his parents’ violent death building a wall around his heart, and the thought of letting Will scale it is terrifying. Marcus’s albinism gives him his otherworldly appearance and leaves him reluctant to go out in daylight, his reclusiveness encouraged by his guardian—who warns him to stay away from Will and Baz.

The attraction between Will and Marcus can’t be denied—but neither can the danger of the secrets haunting Marcus’s past, as one “accident” after another strikes Will and Baz. If they don’t watch their step, they could end up added to the island’s ghostly population.

Available in ebook and paperback from Dreamspinner Press

Wight Mischief was previously published by Samhain, but has been completely re-edited and given a lovely new cover for this second edition by Dreamspinner Press.

Author Bio:

JL Merrow is that rare beast, an English person who refuses to drink tea.  She read Natural Sciences at Cambridge, where she learned many things, chief amongst which was that she never wanted to see the inside of a lab ever again. 

She writes (mostly) contemporary gay romance and mysteries, and is frequently accused of humour.  Two of her novels have won Rainbow Awards for Romantic Comedy (Slam!, 2013 and Spun!, 2017) and several of her books have been EPIC Awards finalists, including Muscling Through, Relief Valve (the Plumber’s Mate Mysteries) and To Love a Traitor.

JL Merrow is a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association, International Thriller Writers, Verulam Writers and the UK GLBTQ Fiction Meet organising team.

Find JL Merrow online at: https://jlmerrow.com/, on Twitter as @jlmerrow, and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/jl.merrow

Question: Would you live on the edge of a cliff? If not, where’s your ideal home?

Giveaway: I’m offering a prize of a $10 Dreamspinner Press gift certificate to one lucky commenter on the tour, who will be randomly chosen on Friday 15^th June. Good luck!

Giveaway + Blog Tour: Spun! (The Shamwell Tales, #4) by JL Merrow

JL Merrow is here today talking CAMP to promote Spun!, her latest Shamwell Tale!

Be sure to enter to win a $20 Riptide credit below. Good Luck!

Hi, I’m JL Merrow, and I’m delighted to be here today as part of the blog tour to celebrate the release of Spun!, the fourth of my contemporary MM romantic comedies in the Shamwell Tales series.

The Man from CAMP**

To mangle a phrase: Some men are born camp; some achieve camp; and some have camp thrust upon them. (Whether or not they enjoy the last is presumably a matter of personal taste).

Camp is the sort of thing that’s hard to define, but easier to recognise. Think of Liberace, or Elton John. Remember the original 1960s Batman series starring the late, lamented Adam West, or the movie Hairspray?

Camp: ostentatious, exaggerated, affected, theatrical; effeminate or homosexual; pertaining to, characteristic of, homosexuals - The Oxford English Dictionary 

Camp is often seen as synonymous with gay, but that can be very misleading. Many gay men are about as far from camp as you can get, and one of the campest men I’ve ever met turned out to be married with thirteen children (the jury is out over whether he was over-compensating).

In Victorian times, to be camp was to be seen as less than masculine, which (it went without saying) was A Bad Thing: a threat to society’s rigid gender roles and by extension, to society itself. For example, in Oscar Wilde’s scandalous trial for homosexuality, much was made of his “effeminate” mannerisms, such as covering his mouth when he spoke (in fact he was simply embarrassed by the poor state of his teeth).

Conversely, however, in certain spheres camp became an acceptable face of homosexuality: gay entertainers, or actors playing gay characters, would (and some, reportedly, still do: Gok Wan, I’m looking at you) “camp it up” for predominantly straight audiences. Camp, safely contained on the stage or within a radio or television show, was something to be laughed at, rather than feared for its subversive nature. It’s no coincidence that the Oxford English Dictionary definition of the word includes the term “theatrical”.

Even among gay men, camp has an ambiguous status: celebrated by and in some, such as drag queens and other gay icons, the quality of camp is rejected by others who prefer the “straight-acting” gay man, with his more traditional presentation of masculinity. It is, if you like, the Marmite of the queer community. British comedian Alan Carr has said that he’s faced more homophobia from gay men than from straight people: as a camp gay man, he’s accused of perpetuating stereotypes of the effeminate gay. It’s a complex problem, at the root of which is the fact that we still live in a deeply patriarchal society.

Gay is easy. Being camp is difficult – Graham Norton, British comedian/TV host

Is David in Spun! camp? As he’d put it, does a hobby horse like spotted dick? David, with his constant flirting, his penchant for exaggeration and his habit of scattering French words into the conversation is completely, gloriously camp—even down to both first and last names.*

And he’s proud.

Readers, do you have a favourite camp celebrity/icon? Tell us about them!

*David, for Camp David, the country retreat of the US president, and Greenlake, for the facility in Louis Sachar’s Holes. But you knew that, anyway. ;)

**The title of this post is, of course, in homage to the books by pioneering gay pulp fictioneer Victor J Banis: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5213541-the-man-from-c-a-m-p

About Spun!

With friends like these . . .

An ill-advised encounter at the office party leaves David Greenlake jobless and homeless in one heady weekend. But he quickly begs work from his ex-boss and takes a room in Shamwell with easygoing postman Rory Deamer. David doesn’t mean to flirt with the recently divorced Rory—just like he doesn’t consciously decide to breathe. After all, Rory’s far too nice for him. And far too straight.

Rory finds his new lodger surprisingly fun to be with, and what’s more, David is a hit with Rory’s troubled children. But while Rory’s world may have turned upside down in the last few years, there’s one thing he’s sure of: he’s straight as a die. So he can’t be falling for David . . . can he?

Their friends and family think they know all the answers, and David’s office party hookup has his own plans for romance. Rory and David need to make up their minds and take a stand for what they really want—or their love could be over before it’s even begun.

Spun! is now available from Riptide Publishing.

About the Shamwell Tales

Welcome to Shamwell! A sleepy rural village in Hertfordshire, England, it’s the perfect place to move to for a little peace and quiet—or at least, you’d think so. But as a succession of newcomers to the village find, there’s more going on in these idyllic surroundings than cricket matches on the common and pints of ale in the local pubs.

As a place where everyone’s connected to everyone else, Shamwell’s rife with mishaps, mayhem, and misunderstandings—and the path of true love is no smoother than the ancient stone walls of the parish church.

Each contemporary romantic comedy in this series stands alone, but all feature a cast of characters drawn from Shamwell and its surroundings.

Check out the Shamwell Tales, available from Riptide Publishing!

About JL Merrow

JL Merrow is that rare beast, an English person who refuses to drink tea.  She read Natural Sciences at Cambridge, where she learned many things, chief amongst which was that she never wanted to see the inside of a lab ever again.

She writes (mostly) contemporary gay romance and mysteries, and is frequently accused of humour.  Her novel Slam! won the 2013 Rainbow Award for Best LGBT Romantic Comedy, and several of her books have been EPIC Awards finalists, including Muscling Through, Relief Valve (the Plumber’s Mate Mysteries) and To Love a Traitor.

JL Merrow is a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association, International Thriller Writers, Verulam Writers and the UK GLBTQ Fiction Meet organising team.

Connect with JL:

●     Website: www.jlmerrow.com

●     Twitter: @jlmerrow

●     Facebook: facebook.com/jl.merrow

●     Goodreads: goodreads.com/.J_L_Merrow

To celebrate the release of Spun!, one lucky winner will receive a $20 Riptide credit! Leave a comment with your contact info to enter the contest. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on July 8, 2017. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries. Thanks for following the tour, and don’t forget to leave your contact info!