Title: Kelpie Blue

Series: Out of Underhill, Book One

Author: Mell Eight

Publisher: NineStar Press

Release Date: 01/04/2021

Heat Level: 2 – Fade to Black Sex

Pairing: Male/Male

Length: 49500

Genre: Paranormal, LGBTQIA+, disability, fairies/faes, magic users, shape-shifter, fantasy, romance

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Description

When a beautiful blue horse asks Rin to go for a swim, Rin doesn’t realize how much his life is about to change. Blue is unlike anyone else Rin has ever met, and the magic of the fae, and of this particular kelpie, is wondrous, but deadly. Rin learns too late he might be in for a swim he won’t survive.

Excerpt

Kelpie Blue Mell Eight © 2020 All Rights Reserved Mama was a cowboy. Okay, technically she was a cowgirl, but that’s beside the point. She grew up in the South, with a capital S. Her childhood was full of Bible-thumping, cattle, and hay. There wasn’t much room for school, especially since she was a girl. Her job was to help around the farmhouse, milk the cows, get married, and have a brood of kids who would grow up to work the farm too. But, like I said, Mama was a cowboy. She wore pants and rode horses. She skipped church to nurse a sick calf. She could milk the damned cows, cook, and clean, but she didn’t have to like it. Her parents tried to set her straight, but Mama would sneak out to play with the colts in the paddock instead of sewing with her girlfriends. She would go out to the movies or even drive to a club in the neighboring city with friends who had never heard that girls only ever wore full skirts. There were girls like Mama who cropped up in farm families from time to time, and the general consensus was she’d grow out of it soon. It was childhood rebellion, and it would fade. Then I appeared. No, not like magic—poof, suddenly there was a baby in Mama’s arms. At first, her Sunday dresses were a bit too tight, and then her jeans wouldn’t button. Babies were fine in the South, so long as there was a husband to go along with them. Mama didn’t even have a man offering to court her, let alone a boyfriend or a fiancé. She had met a drifter, someone who came with the cows from Texas and was gone a few days later. There were men who thought Mama was beautiful despite her prickly personality and the baby growing inside, and they offered for her hand, thinking she couldn’t say no. Her parents were relieved—they could cover up the baby mistake with a quick wedding—but Mama always said no. Her parents turned her out. Mama said she thought they were planning to set up a wedding anyway, so when she crawled back to them in desperation, they could tuck her firmly under their thumbs and end her rebellion forever. Instead, Mama hopped on the first train heading north and never looked back. She worked as a waitress, saving every dime, until labor pains made her supervisor call an ambulance. Her tips were huge that day, enough that when she got out of the hospital, she could finally afford to buy an old farm left unoccupied for the last decade. The forest on part of the land was haunted, the locals told her, and people kept disappearing. No one would buy it; the bank practically gave it away to Mama for free. I was a quiet baby, so her supervisor let her keep me behind the counter when she returned to work. Her money mostly went to diapers, but every once in a while she’d call in a contractor. The barn got fixed up first. The fences around the massive home paddock were next. She put a new roof on the farmhouse and replaced some rotting wood around the foundation. Eventually, she bought two retired racehorses. The horses themselves weren’t anything special. They hadn’t won stakes races, and their thoroughbred pedigree wasn’t anything to laud, but they were good-looking horses all the same. Mama knew horses, and when she got some foals out of them, she taught the babies how to run. Mama’s horses won stakes races. She cut her hours at the restaurant to spend more time training her colts and fillies. She bought more pedigree horses and built a second paddock so the stud stallions wouldn’t fight over their mares. She was eventually able to build a third paddock solely for training. I was ten years old at that point, and Mama had an amazing reputation as a trainer and breeder. Owners would bring their thoroughbreds to her for training. She quit her job at the restaurant and built a second barn with an indoor training ring. The barn was so large she could run the horses inside in bad weather. I was glad because it meant I didn’t have to clear the snow from the paddocks in the winter. I was almost fourteen when it all ended. We were driving home from the racetrack with two horses in the trailer behind our truck. Mama never saw the drunk driver who hit us. He came whipping around a curve in the road, well over the double yellow line. When I woke up, I was in the hospital. Mama was in the bed next to me. The weight of the horses in the trailer had saved our lives. We hadn’t gone over the ridge, and our car hadn’t flipped because the trailer had prevented it. Mama had broken ribs and a broken hip. I had severe compound fractures in my legs. The drunk driver was dead. I turned fourteen in the hospital. Mama traveled between the farm and the hospital for weeks after she was released. It was almost a year before she could properly sit a horse, but she never had the strength in her legs to control a bucking yearling like she used to. Me, I was lucky I could even stand. I had braces for my legs and crutches for my arms. I couldn’t carry hay or oats to a horse, let alone ride them. Mama had been teaching me everything she knew, but now it was all she could do to take care of her own horses and me. The trainers and their thoroughbreds went away as did the money from Mama’s colts and fillies winning stakes races every racing season. Mama got rehired at the restaurant, so we could keep the few horses she still owned. I was home with my schoolwork and nothing else to do with my time. I was way behind in school, so Mama was trying to homeschool me and catch me up with my grade. She hadn’t finished high school, but she insisted I would. I was bored as anything and very depressed about my life. I was relearning to walk with the pins in my legs and with the crutches. My only escape during the day was struggling through a walk down one of the flat riding paths. Back when I could ride a horse down those paths, I wasn’t allowed to go into the woods or near the lake. Those were Mama’s rules, and I was supposed to follow them or she’d ground me. But the lake was so serene as I limped toward it, and I needed a break anyway. That was when I met Blue, the crazy horse reading over my shoulder who doesn’t know how to respect a private diary. Of course, he tried to kill me then. I think now might be my turn to return the favor.

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Meet the Author

When Mell Eight was in high school, she discovered dragons. Beautiful, wondrous creatures that took her on epic adventures both to faraway lands and on journeys of the heart. Mell wanted to create dragons of her own, so she put pen to paper. Mell Eight is now known for her own soaring dragons, as well as for other wonderful characters dancing across the pages of her books. While she mostly writes paranormal or fantasy stories, she has been seen exploring the real world once or twice.

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Title: Settling the Score

Series: CalPac Crew, Book Four

Author: C. Koehler

Publisher: NineStar Press

Release Date: 12/28/2020

Heat Level: 3 – Some Sex

Pairing: Male/Male

Length: 103900

Genre: Contemporary, LGBTQIA+, Contemporary, romance, family-drama, gay, bisexual, medical student, property developer, corporate intrigue, instant family

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Description

Stuart Cochrane and Philip Sundstrom are very busy men. Stuart, freshly graduated from California Pacific, works as much as he can to save money for medical school. Philip, now in charge of the family home-construction company, works long hours to save the company from his father’s blunders and back-stabbing cronies. A chance encounter brings them together and the attraction is fierce and instant. While neither has time for a relationship, they can’t keep away from each other. When the National Team recruits Stuart to cox, only Philip understands that Stuart’s sick of rowing and wants nothing more than to start medical school. When Philip’s board of directors plots to remove him from his own company, Stuart helps him scheme and strategize. Despite their emotional and sexual chemistry, Stuart’s hang-ups about money and rich people doom their fledgling relationship. But after a personal tragedy, Stuart must overcome his prejudices and accept Philip’s help. Can Philip set aside his broken heart to help Stuart in his hour of greatest need and, dare he hope, a family?

Excerpt

Settling the Score C. Koehler © 2020 All Rights Reserved The waiter held Philip’s eye a moment too long. Philip knew what that meant and flushed from the starched collar of his shirt all the way up to the gelled magnificence of his golden bangs. Left to its own devices, his hair flopped down to cover his eyes, and right then, Philip kind of wished it could. Instead, he’d styled his hair like he always did, parting it on the left and then the bulk of the bangs were up up and away! in a truly stupendous flight of fancy that was probably on the wrong side of metrosexual for a corporate CEO. When he was by himself, he played the game, but c’mon, dude. He was here with his girlfriend. What kind of trash did he think Philip was? It meant he had to cut the waiter. The cut direct wasn’t his style, but Philip felt like he didn’t have a choice. Angie was his priority. “The waiter’s certainly attentive this evening,” Angie commented. Philip cocked one eyebrow. “Sweetheart, did you get a good look at yourself? You’re stunning.” “You think so?” she said, smiling sweetly. “Thank you, Philip. It’s always nice to be noticed.” “I always notice you,” he said, smiling back. He raised his wine glass in a salute. “Notice and appreciate.” Angie touched her glass to his in an almost-silent toast. “Charmer. Half the time I feel upstaged by you. Is that a new suit? You look amazing.” Then she glanced at the waiter. “I get the feeling I’m not the only one who thinks your tailor is a god among men.” “Boy, you buy one new sport suit—” “A week,” Angie interrupted, her eyes merry. She was enjoying herself. “—one new suit, and people accuse you of being a dandy.” Philip sighed theatrically. “Memo to self: return the ascot and waistcoat ASAP,” he said in a stage whisper. They shared a quiet laugh. Philip reached across the table to caress her cheek, and Angie leaned into his touch. Her beauty struck him once again, and that evening, she’d gone all out, every bit his match in an ivory satin gown with the back down to here and her auburn hair done with seed pearls as it cascaded down her back. She even wore a simple cameo around her neck, an antique Wedgwood piece he’d given her for Valentine’s Day the year before. Then he noticed she’d mounted it on a mauve ribbon that clashed horribly with her auburn hair. What on earth had she been thinking? He’d given it to her on a cream ribbon for a reason— Dinner arrived and Philip dropped his hand. He tried to ignore the argument going in his mind about the colors, but it was hard. He’d always had an overdeveloped sense of aesthetics, and at times growing up with Brad and Randall had been nothing but torment. Builders’ houses were always one of two types: ramshackle and about to fall over, or palatial monuments to every architectural innovation and new concept to show up in the design rags. The Sundstrom home was one of the latter type, if poorly decorated, and no sooner had he shoved Randall off stage and into the hands of the police than he called in the cavalry to remove the worst of his father’s excesses and atrocities. Gone were the putti pissing into fountains and faux-antique tapestries and superfluous televisions, and there were no more—Philip jerked his thoughts back to the here and now. He sat across the table from a beautiful woman at a posh restaurant. His aesthetic hang-ups could wait. Philip genuinely enjoyed Angie’s company. They might not live together—yet—but they certainly spent a lot of time in each other’s company, mostly at her condo. She found his house “creepy, like a funeral home,” even with Randall out of there and every room but his mother’s old sitting room and her library redone. Not that he blamed her—it was large and foreboding, and maybe it was time to sell it. When he’d called to invite her out to dinner earlier in the week, she’d been overjoyed, even more so than usual. It made him wonder if he weren’t missing something, but a thorough search of his day planner by both himself and Suresh revealed nothing. After gnawing his guts out for a while, he’d finally given up, and when it came time to pick her up, he gave in and let himself enjoy the evening. “Are you ready to go home?” “Yes, I think so,” Angie said. Was that a tightening around her eyes? Philip signaled the waiter, who promptly brought him the check. When Philip put a black Amex card down, the man’s eyes widened. It would have been comical, but Philip found it hard to believe no one at this restaurant had ever seen American Express’s Centurion Card before. “Here you are, Mr. Sundstrom,” the waiter said when he returned, placing the receipt before Philip and then departing. Philip signed it, including a generous tip. Philip held Angie’s chair for her and then waited patiently while she wrapped her shawl around her shoulders. As they walked out of the restaurant, Philip smiled at their waiter. “Thank you. We had a lovely evening.” But it was only as they waited for his car to be brought around that he noticed the waiter had written a number—presumably his—on the back of the credit card slip, but lightly and in pencil so it didn’t show from the front. Classy. Philip crumpled it up and threw it in the trash. “They’re staring at you out here too,” Angie whispered. Philip blushed. “I think you mean they’re looking at you.” “Some of them, maybe.” She laughed. “A few, the straight ones.” But they weren’t all straight, he could tell that right off the bat. Sorry, boys. He played, but never when he was in a committed relationship. “Remind me not to come back here. This is very embarrassing.” She hooked her arm on his. “I think it’s hilarious, and you blush very prettily.” “Great.” He rolled his eyes. It made him uncomfortable, that regard, even if he understood it. Thanks to the last year at SunHo, he knew how to project an air of authority, and a lot of people found that attractive. It wasn’t quite a matter of “do the opposite of Randall.” After all, his father had run SunHo with an air of power, but in Philip’s estimation, that power was based on fear. Employees in SunHo’s corporate offices had feared for their jobs, at least when Randall stomped and blustered. But authority? That was something different. Philip knew when he spoke, he would be listened to. He might be young for a CEO, but by and large, he was respected. He wasn’t sure Randall could’ve said that, or even appreciated the difference. In his early thirties, Philip was young, fit, and, based on the evidence at dinner, handsome; he was very well situated financially, and the waiter and valets could tell that from the credit card and his car. He loved his Merc, a sleek sports car, the six-figure kind with the spoiler to prevent it from taking flight. At least he assumed that’s why they stared. Or maybe he had spinach stuck between his teeth, he thought ruefully, the perils of being a vegetarian there to keep him humble. They drove back to Angie’s condo in silence, insulated from the sounds of the city by the Merc, but what, Philip wondered, isolated them from each other? He bore responsibility for that, the lion’s share, at least. He felt bad for neglecting Angie in favor of SunHo. It wasn’t that he preferred SunHo per se, but it seemed so much more immediate to him. More…real, he realized guiltily, but that’s not how he wanted his life to be. Angie always understood—or acted as if she did. She got that he’d taken over the family business, even if she didn’t know the particulars of how that had come about. As far as he was concerned, she didn’t need to either. But simply because Philip had chosen this life, it didn’t stand to reason that Angie was happy with it. He knew she’d prefer to be living the high life, preferably in San Francisco. Angie cared for him, so no gold digger, she, but he didn’t fool himself on that score either. She enjoyed the life his money afforded them. Buying Brad out a few years ago might’ve set him back, but SunHo grew and expanded, despite the recession and building slowdown. Philip was loaded, and Angie knew it. He glanced over at Angie as he drove, her face turned away from him, inscrutable in the passing lights. He knew what he wanted from the next step in life, but was it what Angie wanted? Unable to decipher his uncharacteristically enigmatic girlfriend, Philip retreated into his thoughts, pretending he was in the cockpit of a spaceship instead of a luxury car, because damn, the onboard computer was almost that complicated. He liked Mercedes for the same reason he liked Macs. They both embodied high performance and elegant design and didn’t bother him with a lot of irritating details. Sure, BMW made amazing cars, but they always seemed to want his input on some matter or other, and he got enough of that at work. As for PCs, Philip was sure there was an elegant and highly functional one somewhere, he’d just never heard of it. But really, they’d gone from a charming dinner together full of conversation and laughter to him retreating into his imagination. Again. He’d been doing that more and more lately. If he were to be honest with himself, it couldn’t be a good sign, but they looked good together, and she was someone to hold on cold, dark nights. Angie was someone to cling to when he’d spent too much time reading the Existentialists and felt too alone in an uncaring universe. But was that really a reason to stay in a relationship with someone? On the whole, Philip reasoned, there were worse ones, but it would only be fair if she felt the same way, and he knew for a fact she had no patience for what she called his “navel-gazing.” This raised the question of why on Earth he was with someone who so easily dismissed his interests and the things he valued. On the other hand, he didn’t remember his parents sharing that many interests. So many puzzles. The keypad at the entrance to the parking lot under Angie’s condo tower saved Philip from further omphaloskepsis. After he parked in her designated guest space and opened the door for her, Angie again laughed and flirted in the elevator. “Dinner was great, but tomorrow night I want to go clubbing in the city,” she said, moving in close, breathing in his ear, hand roaming south of his belt. “What’re you doing?” Philip gasped at the sudden assault. “What does it feel like I’m doing?” He looked down at her, amazed at her audacity. “Groping me. What if someone comes in?” “Then I stop.”

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Meet the Author

Christopher Koehler always wanted to write, but it wasn’t until his grad school years that he realized writing was how he wanted to spend his life. Long something of a hothouse flower, he’s been lucky to be surrounded by people who encouraged that, especially his long-suffering husband of twenty-nine years and counting. He loves many genres of fiction and nonfiction, but he’s especially fond of romances, because it’s in them that human emotions and relations, at least most of the ones fit to be discussed publicly, are laid bare. While writing is his passion and his life, when he’s not doing that, he’s a househusband, at-home dad, and oarsman with a slightly disturbing interest in manners and the other ways people behave badly. Christopher is approaching the tenth anniversary of publication and has been fortunate to be recognized for his writing, including by the American Library Association, which named Poz a 2016 Recommended Title, and an Honorable Mention for “Transformation,” in Innovation, Volume 6 of Queer Sci Fi’s Flash Fiction Anthology.

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Release Blitz, Excerpt & Giveaway: Fake Friends by Saxon James

A Never Just Friends Novel, Book 2

ROWAN Five years ago, I did something horrible and ran. I ruined the best thing I had in my life, and now, I’m finally back to make things right. I need Circus’s forgiveness, and then maybe I can finally move on. I’ll leave Sunbury for good this time and never look back. I can escape disapproving family members and hiding who I am. I’ll be able to live my truth. But earning his forgiveness isn’t as simple as I hoped it was going to be. He’s going to make me fight for it, and I don’t blame him at all.

CIRCUS Rowan Harvey coming back into my life is something I never thought would happen. But now he’s here, begging for forgiveness, and I’m tempted to give it to him just so he’ll disappear again. We make a deal. I’ll forgive him if he helps me with a social media campaign I’ve landed. I need an extra model for a swimwear shoot, and none of my friends are available or fit the brief. In exchange, he promises to leave again as soon as it’s over. I don’t need or want him back in Sunbury. His request of anonymity during the shoot proves he’s still living in his dark closet, and I’m not going to make the same mistakes I did when I was a teenager. I won’t let myself fall for him again. I won’t.

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Release Blitz Excerpt:

This. Is. Bad. I flick through photo after photo of perfection. And I hate to say it, but Rowan makes me look good. The tats, the unruly hair, the confidence in how he holds himself. He’s come a long way since high school. Back then he was guarded and scared, and the only place he looked like he owned his skin was on the football field. Still, he always caught my eye. Always drew out that curious side of me that was attracted to what I didn’t know. The first time I went to his house after school, I remember overhearing his dad asking who the little pretty boy was. And I knew by his tone what he was really asking. First: is that kid gay? Second: what the fuck is he doing with my son? I was never a favorite around his place, especially when his grandparents were there, so we spent as much time at my house, or wandering Crown Trails, as we could. And as I pause over the photo of Rowan kissing my nose, an irrational surge of anger passes through me. I was there, for years, in the secret, stolen moments of his life. I was the only one who knew his secret, and the only one who didn’t push for him to figure himself out. All I did was wait. Show him it was okay. And that night, five years ago, when he finally kissed me and we gave into a year of sexual tension, I kissed him like we meant forever. I had no idea forever would last all of five minutes.

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About Saxon:

Saxon James is an author from Australia who’s obsessed with writing queer characters. She has a range of books from YA to adult and they all have one thing in common: swoony, sweet love.

When not writing, Saxon exists on a diet of coffee and chocolate while putting her KU subscription to the test.

Connect with Saxon: Facebook page: www.facebook.com/pg/thesaxonjames/ Facebook group: www.facebook.com/groups/saxonssweethearts/ Bookbub: www.bookbub.com/profile/saxon-james Amazon: www.amazon.com/Saxon-James/e/B082TP7BR7 Goodreads: www.goodreads.com/author/show/19404191.Saxon_James Instagram: www.instagram.com/saxonjameswrites/

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