Spokes by P.D. Singer

Title: Spokes
Author: P.D. Singer
Purchase at Rocky Ridge Books
Purchase at All Romance eBooks
Cover Artist: LC Chase
Genre: contemporary, sports
Length: 242 pages
Formats: epub, mobi, pdf, print

Pro cyclist Luca Biondi lives for the race. For the star of Team Antano-Clark, victory lies within his grasp—if he can outdistance 200 other hopefuls, avoid suspicion from race officials, and keep his lieutenant more friend than foe. Luca also has secrets, and eyes for amateur cyclist and journalist Christopher Nye.

Christopher understands Luca’s need to keep their relationship under wraps, but chafes at hiding in the shadows of his lover’s career. He’s ready to cheer Luca’s victories, but he knows too well how triumph can turn to tears. While Christopher’s heart sees Luca the man, his inner journalist—and his editor—sees the cycling world’s biggest scoop.

From the jagged curves of the Colorado Rockies to the viciously steep Belgian hills, Luca can ride out any bumps—except rumors about his loyalty.

A few words in the wrong ear could crash everything. With miles between them, hints of scandal, and Luca’s fierce need to guard his reputation, a journalist might have to let go of the biggest story of his career or risk forcing his lover to abandon the race. Christopher and Luca face a path more treacherous than any road to the summit in the Italian Alps.


~*~*~*~*

This week the last stage of the USA Pro Cycling Challenge is hauling ass practically through my neighborhood, making this the perfect timing to review a cycling novel. Damn but I love this book.


With her trademark in-depth but not overwhelming immersion into her subject, P.D. Singer shows us the backstage of races like the Tour de France and the Pro Cycling Challenge. Her pro cycling MC is being groomed to win the Giro d’Italia, another of the top tier stage races, and he just might make it, unless….

Poor Luca, afraid to be exposed as gay before he’s established himself as a cycling star and a force to be reckoned with. Uncertain how his own team will take the news and wearily convinced how the competition will view him, his attraction to Christopher Nye is something he wants to pursue and still keep under wraps. Christopher is our POV character through this entire piece, which covers an amazing amount of territory. An aspiring journalist and a good amateur rider, Christopher is tormented by Luca’s back away closer reactions, but falls more and more in love with the restless, nervous cyclist.

In a breath of fresh plot air, it isn’t the issue of coming out that creates the biggest problems for the couple. Rather, a mismatch of understandings over questions asked and answered over the snippets Luca lets drop at the gym or over dinner or halfway through a pity ride. Christopher weaves the bits into articles for a cycling magazine, making his reputation and hurting Luca’s. “I asked, every time,” Christopher protests, and he did, but did he ask the right question and did Luca understand the implications? Questionable, and leading straight to heartache. Only the magazine’s confidence in Christopher, built ironically on the very things Luca resented, gets them onto the same continent and in range for a conversation.

Secondary characters like Christopher's riding partner Stu, Luca’s lieutenant on the team, Rolf, and his valet Paolo create frictions, raise questions, and in a way, bring the men both farther apart and bring them together. Some of their scenes made me snort, like Stu’s cheerfully clueless acceptance, or exclaim Ooh burn! at Rolf’s sly digs at Christopher's cycling skills. Others made me cry, and warning, this book needed the tissues. More than once. For a lot of reasons.

Both men had a lot of learning and growing to do, and managed to prod each other into doing so. What were weaknesses become strengths, what was betrayal becomes support, and what could have torn them apart forever becomes what cements them as a couple. These two guys seem destined to be together, even if they have to break each other’s hearts first. Told in some vivid prose, the story brings the Colorado back roads, the cold winds off the North Sea and the brutally steep Hellingen of Belgium, and the carnival atmosphere and horrible roads of Italy’s primo stage race into scenes the reader becomes part of.

A personal communication with the author revealed that a few of the major incidents are based on real events, and that the races are accurate, even if their records don’t reveal Luca’s accomplishments. Bike racing is a lot more than “get on bike, pedal fast” and not only did I laugh, cry, and sigh with Christopher and Luca, I learned something about a sport that I used to only appreciate for the fit guys in tight clothes. Not that a fit guy in colorful spandex is a bad thing. ;)

Christopher and Luca have a road to each other that has as many hard climbs as the race stages through the Alps, and I enjoyed every up and down and the eventual triumph.5 marbles

A picture is worth...

What's he celebrating? What put that smile on his face?

If you have 100 to 1000 words for this or any other of my Thursday pics, send it along and I'll post it, and send your news along too. See How Thousand Word Thursday Works for details.  

Tech idiot strikes again

As some of you know only too well, technology and I don't get along so well. If Pam didn't bail me out of my issues now and then, I'd be off the web completely. For those of you who wondered what the heck happened this last week and a half, I went to a wedding and had some vacation days, secure in the idea that I'd set everything up to run smoothly in my absence.

I came back to find I broke Blogger.

Well, no. Blogger broke me, while I was running back and forth and back and forth trying to figure out what happened to ALL THOSE POSTS. THEY ARE RIGHT THERE! WHY AREN'T THEY POSTED!

Ms. Webmistress takes one look and says, "They're set to draft. Reschedule, all is good." Or words to that effect. I'm pretty sure she didn't use the word dodo-egg. Did you? Even if I am? I am.

So, back to my regularly scheduled stuff. For the remainder of this week, we shall have a Thursday pic of extra yumminess to make up for missing a week, and then the long awaited review of Spokes. Awaited by me, at any rate, since I've been trying to time it for a big cycling race. How I missed a race three weeks long is a mystery, right up there with my untechiness, but the USA Pro Cycling Challenge just went through Colorado, and US rider Tejay Van Garderen of BMC Racing won. Go, Tejay!

A Picture is Worth...

Lunch Atop A Skyscraper 1932
Here's a place you'll never find me, I kinda want to barf just looking. But will it inspire someone? If you have 100 to 1000 words for this or any other of my Thursday pics, send it along and I'll post it, and send your news along too. See How Thousand Word Thursday Works for details.  

Second Helpings by Charlie Cochrane

Title: Second Helpings
Author: Charlie Cochrane
Purchase at Riptide
Purchase at All Romance eBooks
Cover Artist: Amber Shah
Genre: Contemporary
Length: 38k words
Formats: epub, mobi, pdf

Stuart Collins’s life might as well have ended a year ago when his partner died in a car crash. Even Stuart’s widowed father has found new love with an old friend, Isabel Franklin, so why can’t Stuart be bothered to try?

Then he gets a phone call from Isabel’s son, Paul, who wants to check out whether or not Mr. Collins is good enough for his mother. During dinner together, though, they end up checking out each other. Trouble is, Paul’s got a boyfriend—or maybe he doesn’t, since the boyfriend’s supposedly giving Paul the push by ignoring him. Or maybe Paul just wants to have his cake and eat it too.

Honesty with each other is the only way to move forward. But maybe honesty with themselves is what they really need.

~*~*~*~*

This story gives us a low key look at Stuart, who is grieving the loss of his husband, and Paul, whose long distance relationship has crumbled and how the two of them get past the pain enough to have a second chance.


Given the grieving aspects both characters have, expecting fireworks isn’t on, but the key here is so low that it’s nearly undetectable. Even when the men push each other’s pain buttons, which they manage to do several times, it’s still very muted. The resolutions are “I’m sorry” and done, which we do expect from adults. There just isn’t a lot going on to explain why Stuart and Paul have any particular attraction to each other besides proximity. As baby steps past the worst of the grieving, this works, as fodder for anything longer term than next week, not really.

Paul has a couple unlikeable elements going, unfortunately. If a parental figure he knows and likes has been deathly ill, isn’t the kind thing to do to call and inquire, express some joy that things are looking up? Or send a card or some flowers? Is nurturing a bit of doubt of the lie worth abandoning human consideration? Of course, then he’d know for sure if Ben was lying, although his BS detector should have pinned the meter. I wanted Paul to grow a pair, though when he finally did, we only hear about it afterwards, we aren’t witness to it. My irritation with him only grew when he pulled a couple of low blows on Stuart, that frankly came out of nowhere.

Both of them needed to get out of their stagnant phases and were able to move each other beyond that, but the real joy of love blooming was with Stuart’s father and Paul’s mother, who were exploring their own possibilities together. The story probably shouldn’t be read with the expectation of romance. 3.5 marbles

Coming this week

The Breakfall blog tour will continue through August 15

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Find at Amazon,  Barnes&Noble,  KOBO, and Dreamspinner Press: 

This has been a Breakfall kind of week, with an excerpt and a review for the book, as well as a review of Dead Man and the Army of Frogs by Lou ribbit Harper.

And for our regularly scheduled adventures, we'll have reviews for Charlie Cochrane's Second Helpings, and for a book inspired by the Tour de France, namely Spokes by P.D. Singer.

Breakfall by Kate Pavelle

Title: Breakfall
Author: Kate Pavelle
Purchase at Dreamspinner
Purchase at All Romance eBooks
Cover Artist: Marla Fanning
Genre: contemporary
Length: 270 pages, 84k
Formats: epub, mobi, pdf, print

Sexual assault doesn't discriminate. Aikido instructor Sean Gallaway learns that when he falls prey to a violent stalker. Asbjorn Lund, a karate sensei on campus and a Navy vet, yearns to teach Sean how to survive. How to overcome. How to recover. Sean feels hunted and alone as the stalker escalates, testing his boundaries. With the entire dojo at his back, Sean resolves to play bait. He will catch the predator stalking him and reclaim his sense of self if it's the last thing he does. Yet Sean's hunger for justice clashes with Asbjorn's protective streak, and their budding romance might not survive their war of wills.


*~*~*~*

I admit starting this book with some trepidation, because of the sexual assault that is central to the plot of recovering trust in oneself, one's skills, and in others. I’ve read other work from this author and trusted her to carry me through difficult territory.

I am glad I read this book.


The two MCs are masters of different martial arts, and the differences in the forms’ philosophies are central to the conflict between the men, and the difficulties they have with each other and with events. Aikido, Sean’s discipline, promotes calm and defense, where Asbjorn’s karate and military background make the attack equally important. As he points out to Sean, you can’t expect the opponent to stay within your preferred style.

And unfortunately, the opponent doesn’t. Sean’s skills become the equivalent of bringing a knife to a gunfight: it doesn’t matter how good he is at what he does. Here’s where I have to admit to skimming, because I could not read the assault scene all the way through, for my own peace of mind, but I stayed with the story and with Sean and his aftermath. He’s got severe struggles with doubt over his skills and the rightness of his philosophy, and it’s as if he’s having a religious crisis of faith. He’s followed all the rules, lived correctly, done the right things, learned the skills perfectly, and still this terrible thing happened. His constant rehash of what his sensei would think, what he would approve of or disapprove of, was like endless pacing of the tiger in the cage, no way out within the structure of the cage of discipline. If the tiger grew wings, the tiger could escape into the sky. Sean has to find his “wings”, the flexibility to learn skills not found in aikido, and the mental wherewithal to use them. I got the distinct feeling the sensei had never been confronted with a real enemy.

Asbjorn has, and doesn’t mind using any trick or tool in his more aggressive repertory to defend, and if needed, to attack. He’s a 4th dan black belt and still considers that sometimes the right move is calling in air support or dialing 911. He’s a rock for Sean, who isn’t at all used to being supported, and Asbjorn’s oddly virginal for someone this comfortable with his sexuality, though the reality of being in the military encouraged him to keep a lid on his activities. This sense of inexperience led to my raised eyebrow at an event toward the end of the book, even though it was a reasonable thing to try.

Sean’s planning to date sensei’s sister, giving the feeling that he’s interested in sensei but at one remove. After the attack, Sean feels safer in being with a partner who doesn’t need to be protected (though Sister would probably demonstrate a few swift kicks at that thought).That's my thought, not something the author said, but Sean's never had a male lover until now.

Sean and Asbjorn do a delicate dance of respecting autonomy, finding confidence, and catching the perp, complicated by idiotic remarks from third parties. Sean’s on the wrong end of a lot of cultural assumptions about what happened to him (including inside his own head), and he deals with it by finding his strength in various places, including in bed with Asbjorn, who respects his boundaries there. I found this perfectly believable. Asbjorn’s torn between wanting to protect, defend, support, and not smother, and if he doesn’t always do it well, he’s trying. It’s rugged going, and when it seems like he can’t make it work with Sean even on the level of basic courtesy, it’s a very dark moment.

The author gives us a very rich and detailed world, letting us feel the gym mats rubbed with the sweat from a thousand falls, the tang of the air over the Charles River in the early morning, and the rasp of body hair under a lover’s hands. The detail of the martial arts is probably at the level of oxygen to practitioners, although it’s more strong perfume to those of us who think the aikido trousers are really palazzo pants. The style is fluid enough to drag me through the forest of unfamiliar terms.

The ending has hope, sweetness, and the promise of another Sean and Asbjorn book that comes like a blow to the face. I can’t wait. 4 marbles

Keep looking down the blog post list, because our Thousand Word Thursday prompt has aikido masters sparring, and Kate's gifted us with an excerpt of her writing. If you didn't sign up for her giveaway there, here's another opportunity.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

A picture is worth...

We have an aikido picture today, in honor of Kate Pavelle's book Breakfall. I was so interested in the martial arts that play such a big part of the story that I went looking. Don't forget to check the next post down for a brief excerpt from the book, and a rafflecopter link.

Breakfall by Kate Pavelle, excerpt and giveaway

Thanks for swinging by today: we're playing with Kate Pavelle, who sent us a snippet of her new novel, Breakfall. I've finished it and will be posting a review Saturday, and let me tell you, I had to keep turning the pages.

Read, enjoy, sign up on the Rafflecopter: you may win a copy, and if you don't, you'll still want one of your own. 

Sean and Asbjorn fight two different styles, have lived two different lives, and are brought together by some big orange gym mats. Of course, what's between them doesn't stay in the dojo. Here's a taste of them figuring each other out.


~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~


Sean didn’t know. He never tried it. Burrows-sensei disapproved of contamination by other martial arts.

“Contaminating aikido by other arts would make it too easy to resort to violence,” he said, repeating the word he heard so many times. “If you are defending yourself, and if your timing is right and you keep the principles in mind, all you have to do is trust the technique to work.”

The response to his rehearsed words was action. Strong arms on his biceps and hips against his hip.

Asbjorn pushed him roughly against the brick wall of the building next to them.

“Do something, Sean.” Asbjorn’s voice was calm.

Sean was pinned.

He curled his wrists in and attempted to raise his arms, but with his hips immobilized, it was impossible to use his whole body. He could not simply curl a man like Asbjorn. Frustrated, he stomped on Asbjorn’s foot.

Asbjorn smiled. “Sometimes, your style will be incompatible with the style of somebody else. You can also be smaller or physically weaker.”

The stubborn set of Sean’s jaw told Asbjorn he tried to resist the impending feeling of humiliation and defeat. Sean said, “You’re saying there’s nothing I can do.”

“No. I’m saying you have to learn a few dirty tricks.”

“I can’t use my hands.”

“You can use your head, though. I’m close enough for a head-butt. If you hit my nose with your forehead, I’ll let go right quick.”

Asbjorn loosened his grip on Sean’s arms and slid his large hands onto the rough surface by Sean’s head. He kept his hips pressed forward, his face buried in Sean’s hair, and seemed disinclined to move.

“Sean.” Asbjorn’s voice was but a whisper.

“What are you doing?”

There was a pause before Asbjorn broke the silence. “I’m wondering that myself.”


~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Fall Trilogy: Book One

Sexual assault doesn't discriminate. Aikido instructor Sean Gallaway learns that when he falls prey to a violent stalker. Asbjorn Lund, a karate sensei on campus and a Navy vet, yearns to teach Sean how to survive. How to overcome. How to recover. Sean feels hunted and alone as the stalker escalates, testing his boundaries. With the entire dojo at his back, Sean resolves to play bait. He will catch the animal stalking him and reclaim his sense of self if it's the last thing he does. Yet Sean's hunger for justice clashes with Asbjorn's protective streak, and their budding romance might not survive their war of wills.


Get your copy at your favorite online book store:

Amazon, 

Barnes&Noble, 

KOBO, 
 

All Romance eBooks

Dreamspinner Press: 

That's a sure thing!  Try your luck here:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Just about everything Kate Pavelle writes is colored by her life experiences, whether the book in your hand is romance, mystery, or adventure. Kate grew up under a totalitarian regime behind the Iron Curtain. In her life, she has been a hungry refugee and a hopeful immigrant, a crime victim and a force of lawful vengeance, a humble employee and a business owner, an unemployed free-lancer and a corporate executive, a scientist and an artist, a storyteller volunteering for her local storytelling guild, a martial artist, and a triathlete. Kate’s frequent travels imbue her stories with local color from places both exotic and mundane.

Kate Pavelle is encouraged in her writing by her husband, children and pets, and tries not to kill her extensive garden in her free time. Out of the five and a half languages she speaks, English is her favorite comfort zone.
~*~*~*~

Thank you, Kate, and visitors, you'll get my full opinion on the book a little later this week on my regular review day. Hint:  I enjoyed it.

Dead Man and the Army of Frogs by Lou Harper

Title: Dead Man and the Army of Frogs
Author: Lou Harper
Purchase at Amazon
Purchase at All Romance eBooks
Cover Artist: Lou Harper
Genre: paranormal
Length: 40k est
Formats: epub, mobi, pdf

All Denton wanted was a few minions. He got frogs instead.

Web developer by day and necromancer by night, Denton Mills is used to seeing things nobody else can. When he starts hallucinating frogs, he simply assumes they have something to do with his boyfriend Bran's obsession.

Bran Maurell is a witch, who in a youthful outburst, accidentally turned his then-lover, Peter, into a croaker. Bran has been trying ever since to reverse the spell. A fresh amphibian encounter only spurs him to double his efforts.

As if Peter's ghost coming between them weren't enough, Denton and Bran are forced to deal with several errant spirits stalking the citizens of Chicago. Between a French chef who refuses to admit he's dead, and malevolent creatures bent on causing mayhem, jealousy may be the least of Denton's problems.

~*~*~*~*

Oh what fun, “Dead Man” Denton (who sees death traces and has other interactions with the deceased and/or paranormal) and his witch/herbalist boyfriend Bran are back for another round of stories. We first meet Denton as a bit player in the excellent “Sanguine” books, and he’s been given the star turn in his own series.

Denton’s sweetly exuberant and ready for adventure, which he and more pessimistic Bran find both in the course of daily life and in Bran’s line of work. Their skills complement each other as we’ve seen in “Dead Man and the Restless Spirits” and “Dead Man and the Lustful Spirit”, and here too it takes both of them to accomplish their goals. Told in the now familiar format of linked short stories with an overarching theme, this is a great continuation of this couple's story.

I started giggling when I saw the title; the frogs hop through the stories and also through Bran’s past in a tragicomic way. Meanwhile, Denton’s a little creeped out by the bulgy-eyed specters. We learn a lot more about Bran in this book, from his family life to his homeschooling with an unusual curriculum to his magical abilities and past love. He’s a prickly guy, but he has reasons, and he’s evolving into someone less dour under the sunshine of Denton’s love. It’s not an easy transformation, and certainly not a linear one. “Men,” says Joy, Denton’s BFF and business partner. “Can’t live with them, can’t bury them under the porch.”

The paranormal adventures are a mix of the humorous here, from a haunted Dutch oven to the seriousness of murder, spiced up with Joy, other characters from previous stories, and Bran’s parents. Gabe from the Sanguine stories appears again. Heh.

The series should be read in order for maximum enjoyment, although if you wandered in at this point you wouldn’t be totally lost. Still, don’t give up the pleasure of watching Denton and Bran grow into their love and their power. Much fun. 4.5 marbles

Coming this week

 

Thanks for swinging by! This week we have something a little different coming up. Kate Pavelle will be hanging out for a bit, with some of her lovely work to share. Be sure to sign up once that rafflecopter widget goes live. In addition to her ebooks and a print copy of her latest, which I am currently reading, she's offering a paperback of Wild Horses, which is also in my TBR pile.  Join us for the Breakfall blog tour! Or else!

(Kate wouldn't really go Kai-ya! on you. But her pen is as mighty as her sword. Be here.)

Also this week, we have a review of Lou Harper's Dead Man and the Army of Frogs, a perfectly nommy prompt pic, and uh, there just might be a rant.

Last week, we had a review of Lloyd Meeker's excellent The Companion and Vanessa North's equally excellent if very different Double Up. I hit the jackpot for good stuff these last few weeks. And what's coming up is also great! Mmmm, bicyclists in spandex....

The Companion by Lloyd A. Meeker

Title: The Companion
Author: Lloyd A. Meeker
Purchase at Dreamspinner
Purchase at All Romance eBooks
Cover Artist: DWS Photography
Genre: contemporary, mystery
Length: 220 pages, 70k words
Formats: epub, mobi, pdf, print

Shepherd Bucknam hasn’t had a lover in more than a decade and doesn’t need one. As a Daka, he coaches men in the sacred art and mystery of sexual ecstasy all the time, and he loves his work. It’s his calling. In fact, he’s perfectly content—except for the terrors of his recurring nightmare and the ominous blood-red birthmarks on his neck. He’s convinced that together they foretell his early and violent death.

When Shepherd’s young protégé is murdered, LAPD Detective Marco Fidanza gets the case. The two men are worlds apart: Marco has fought hard for everything he’s accomplished, in sharp contrast to the apparent ease of Shepherd’s inherited wealth—but their mutual attraction is too hot for either of them to ignore.

Shepherd swears he’ll help find his protégé’s killer, but Marco warns him to stay out of it. When an influential politician is implicated, the police investigation grinds to a halt. Shepherd hires his own investigator. Marco calls it dangerous meddling. As their volatile relationship deepens, Shepherd discovers his nightmares might not relate to the future, but to the deadly legacy of a past life—a life he may have to revisit before he can fully live and love in this one.

~*~*~*~*

There’s so much packed into this novel that I wasn’t at all sure the author could tie everything together, but I shouldn’t have worried. Lloyd Meeker did a great job of solving mysteries, concluding investigations, and finding hope and a future for two men who aren’t always on the same page.


Shepherd’s job is a tough one for a cop to make peace with, especially since the more spiritual aspects of the tantric practices elude Marco. Whoring he understands, the functions of a Daka, not so much. It’s just one issue they have to work around to make a future. More immediate is Shepherd’s insistence on being involved in the investigation of his friend and protégé’s murder. The cops have hit a stone wall, and a civilian isn’t supposed to intervene, especially when powerful special interests are hovering in the background. Family is a deep and strong presence in Marco’s daily life, but Shepherd’s history is more grim, lonely, and full of betrayals. Sisters getting protective is completely out of his experience. After one particularly lively phone call, I imagined him clutching his crotch and eyeing the door lest an avenging fury burst through to make good on her promise.

We get the story in Shepherd’s voice only, first person, and he’s strong enough to carry the whole story. Marco comes through loud and clear too, where he agrees with Shepherd, explores him, and can’t cope with him. Both men have to grow in order to be together, and Marco has no trouble showing us where he’s changed.

We get to be inside Shepherd’s head for some serious spiritual growth, which I can’t exactly identify with on a personal level, but do applaud. Finding his peace with his pasts, all of them, is no easy thing. Being in his head for the last couple of chapters is an interesting (in the good sense) experience.

The book has some warnings at ARe, but the incest warning is for something in the past and off screen, thank goodness. It’s necessary to understand why everything afterwards rolled out as it did, but is not a lot of screen time. A plot point related to this had a bit of deus ex machina flavor, but okay. I found the dreamed/recalled violence much harder to stomach, but it too explains what Shepherd needs to understand in the present.

The writing is very fluid, with vivid passages showing how Shepherd moves through his world and what’s holding him back from being truly happy, and how he can get past it. I enjoyed this book even while occasionally wanting to shake the Kindle and everyone in it. 4.5 marbles