Going for Gold Ed EM Lynley

Title:Going for Gold
Author: various, Ed. EM Lynley
Cover Artist: Deanna Jamroz
Publisher: MLR Press
Genre: contemporary, sports
Length: 117k words


It's not hard to see the outward appeal of the Olympic Games: watching the fittest and most-accomplished athletes in the world compete—generally with fairly skimpy uniforms. Voyeurism aside, there's nothing sexier than a beautiful body running, jumping, swimming, rowing, and a couple dozen other activities. Who wouldn't take the chance to enjoy the spectacle?

But the Olympics are more than just a chance to watch athletes at the peak of physical perfection. Every competitor at the Games has a story behind why they run or jump or swim, and why they compete. How they got to the Games, and what they sacrificed along the way to make the cut. To spectators, they may perform superhuman feats, but each and every one is human in the same way we all are.

In this collection of stories, you'll find there's a lot more to competing at Olympic level than being the best in one's field. Expectations and pressures from family, friends, coaches and country add up, and sometimes it's only the love of the right man who can make the effort worth it. And sometimes, love is more important than going for gold.

Including:
Hot Shots by Michael P. Thomas
Into the Deep by Nico Jaye
The Quad by Kelly Rand
Lightning in a Bottle by Sarah Madison
Swimming the Distance by Annabeth Albert
Shoot for the Gold by Whitley Gray
An Olympic Goal by K-lee Klein
Tumbling Dreams by Kaje Harper

Review
I enjoyed this collection: I love the Olympics, I love stories with depth and development, I love stories where I might learn something, and of course, I love the hot guys. Every story delivered on most of those goals, though with some different strengths. Averaging around 15k per story, these are all longer than I typically find in anthologies, and with correspondingly more meat. The early stories had me thinking “okay” but after a brief warm-up, my socks were knocked completely off.


Hot Shots tackled shooting sports, and this offering from Michael P. Thomas, a new to me author, nearly put me off the whole collection—I wouldn’t have chosen it for the lead off position, because it had the one character I found horribly annoying, compounded by not finding out his name until a third of the way through. Bo, a self-confessed athlete groupie, is only interested in sports in order to cuddle up to the other sportsmen. Even in a piece intended as humor, his assumption that he can get good enough at any sport in six months to even stand next to athletes who have been perfecting their technique since before they started shaving didn’t set well. Bo does some learning, growing, and falling in real love, and the story did grow on me by the end.

Nico Jaye is another new to me author: Into the Deep pairs an American diver with a London local during the Olympics, and while the story was pleasant, it had a flavor of “The Virgin Gazillionaire’s Private Pool” about it. Heavy doses of coincidences and overly extreme characterizations detracted from bartender Blake’s very real doubts about getting involved with a foreigner, and the whole was sweet but trite.

I have met Kelly Rand’s evocative prose before and enjoyed it here again in The Quad, the only story set in the Winter Olympics. Her skater needs the confidence to land the quad jump in competition, and finds support from the most unlikely quarter. This story unrolled beautifully, playing with Kevin’s confidence in his skating and in his personal life, and the man who steps in to help him doesn’t promise more than he can deliver. As she has done before, Kelly Rand leaves the characters standing on the edge of dazzling possibilities. Very well done.

Sarah Madison’s thorough understanding of horses and equestrian competition shines brightly in Lighting in a Bottle, where she focuses more on the lead up to getting into the Olympics than on the big event. Her protagonists have a complex and not entirely happy history when they are thrown together again to prepare Jake and his horses for competition. I absolutely felt like I was in the barn and in the jumping ring with the competitors, and rooted hard for Jake and Rich to make a go of both their relationship and the competitions, and to untangle the complexities that plague them. I still have no idea what the name of their particular event is, involving both dressage and jumping, but the story is so good I almost don’t care.

Distance swimming and the perils of being out publicly are the focus of Annabeth Arden’s Swimming the Distance. Bohdan Petrov is torn between love for his partner, Kyle, and being open about it as Kyle would like. Bohdan’s performance in his 1500 meter race is at stake as he repeatedly denies being gay and/or in a relationship. The ups and downs of his performance and his relationship provided some satisfying reading, although I was a little distracted by formulating my own replies to nosy interviewers.

Back to shooting sports again with Whitley Gray’s Shoot for the Gold, where marksman Matt Justice beans himself on some scaffolding at the Olympic Village and has to deal with the residual effects of the injury. He’s severely limited in treatment options unless he cares to disqualify himself from competition, but sports doctor Levi Wolf, who’s carrying baggage of his own, has some non-pharmacologic treatments (not that, get your minds out of the gutter!!!) that can keep Matt competing honestly. Professional ethics, past history, and personal attraction conflict here, adding a nice dimension to the story. This is another new to me author, and I’ll be checking out the back list.

In An Olympic Goal, K-Lee Klein examines the conflicts between playing for a professional team in one country and a national team in another, and adds the complication of one’s lover playing for the other country. This sounds like a lose/lose proposition on a couple levels, but the Swiss and Spanish football (soccer) players turn it into a win for everyone somehow. Soccer is one of those “wake me up when it’s time to cheer” sports for me (yes, I am aware this is blasphemy in some quarters) but I remained interested in the conflicts and the lovers, if not the sport.

Tumbling Dreams was the story that had me sniffling and rereading immediately, and is an amazing finish to a great collection. Kaje Harper’s gymnast Tyler has a berth on the Olympic gymnastics team, a threatening injury, and a roommate whose heart breaks silently and repeatedly with every backflip and vault. Eli’s living in quiet desperation, both wanting Tyler to achieve his dreams and to back away from the sport, and for Tyler to want him as more than a friend but not if every morning brings a fresh chance to destroy himself while Eli has to watch. Densely layered and slightly tragic, this story doesn’t wrap everyone and everything in gold.

The book did have a couple of formatting issues that cut severely into the reading experience. While certainly not the authors’ fault, the construction of the MOBI file did not permit jumping to the table of contents. Come on, MLR, this is pretty basic. Also not the authors’ fault, and maybe not even the editor’s choice, it’s hard to say, but the trademark acknowledgements at the beginning of each story felt like a great big slap in the face. Yes, it’s legal jargon and has to be there, but no, I did not appreciate the big jolt out of the reading mood between stories. Stick it at the front where I can get it over with or at the end where I can admire the legal thoroughness instead of after each title where I get knocked out of the story before I even start.

Between a couple of just okay stories and some irritating publisher’s choices, I can’t say this is a gold medal read across the board, but there are certainly a lot of winning stories in this volume. Warmly recommended. 4.25 marbles

The Rebuilding Year by Kaje Harper

Title: The Rebuilding Year
Author: Kaje Harper
Cover Artist: Angela Waters
Publisher: Samhain
Genre: Contemporary
Length: 298 pages



Losing nearly everything leaves room for the one thing they can’t live without.

A few excruciating minutes pinned in a burning building cost Ryan Ward his job as a firefighter, the easy camaraderie of his coworkers, his girlfriend, and damn near cost him his left leg. Giving up, though, isn’t an option. Compared to the alternative, choosing a new profession, going back to school, and renting a room from the college groundskeeper are simple.

Until he realizes he’s falling in love with his housemate, and things take a turn for the complicated.

John Barrett knows about loss. After moving twice to stay in touch with his kids, he could only watch as his ex-wife whisked them away to California. Offering Ryan a room seems better than rattling around the empty house, but as casual friendship moves to something more, and a firestorm of emotions ignites, the big old house feels like tight quarters.

It’s nothing they can’t learn to navigate, though. But when dead bodies start turning up on campus—and one of the guys is a suspect—their first taste of real love could go up in smoke.

Product Warnings

Contains two hot men wrestling with a shift in their sexuality, as well as a few positions probably listed in the Gay Kama Sutra. But it’s not all about the hot and sweaty—especially when your previously straight life knocks on the door and comes back to visit.

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Given the astonishing amount of baggage the protagonists have to carry, Kaje Harper has done a superior job of presenting just the right amount of seriousness leavened with humor. Both Ryan and John are in the middle of redefining their lives when they meet, and manage to come together as part of it.


Ryan’s life has been totally disrupted by the fire that dropped a burning beam on him, trapping and nearly killing him. Missing big chunks out of his leg, and lucky to have what’s left, Ryan has gone back to his original dream, put on hold after a disaster changed his family and his focus. Instead of firefighting and rescues, he’s in medical school, having no trouble with the academics, although the social aspects are provoking, since he’s noticeably older and far more world-weary than his classmates. While he’s played with his share of shallow but willing women, he’s beyond that now and doesn’t want to listen to the nightly exploits of his roommate.

John has spent his entire adult life being a family man: married at eighteen to his pregnant girlfriend, he’s now trying to be a good father to his two children even after the divorce and his ex’s remarriage. It’s not easy either, when teenagers aren’t very talkative and the ex finds endless barriers to put between them.

It suits both men to have Ryan move in; they’ve become friends and expect to get along all right sharing a big house. Becoming lovers is absolutely not on the radar, although acting as each other’s wingman could be. It isn’t until a moment of shared pain leads to a kiss that they touch one another, and then I had to giggle as they sprang apart with EEEEEEH! We’re not gay! They have to find their way back to comfortable friendship, but do go on to become lovers in a thoughtful but not over-angsty way. This new facet of their sexualities doesn’t sit well with either of them at first, and they have to grope their way to understanding themselves.

While John and Ryan are learning to accept their desire for each other, John’s troubled teenaged son appears on the doorstep needing refuge. He’s a good kid but beaten down by his step-father’s assumptions and demands. Of course Marcus presents a major complication to them, though it never becomes a showdown for John to have to choose between his lover and his child.

There’s a mystery wending through the background. Some of the clues seem only marginally connected, but the author plays fair; it was all there to see once I took a second look. When Marcus gets caught in the grand finale, it does seem like an overreaction on the part of the villain, but it’s still heart-stopping for the reader.

Many things about this story are beautifully done: the organic development of John and Ryan’s relationship, touched but not soaked with introspection on both their parts, and the beginnings of the blending of a family. Ryan has a lovely relationship with John’s kids, part older brother and part second father, and you know he’s going to be an important part of their lives. The mystery wound through the novel, in places so subtly as to be nearly invisible, but still present. The climax of the story could not have unfolded without tragedy if Ryan had a different skill set or John trusted him less, so very well done.

The timeline seemed a bit awkward to me – while this was truly a rebuilding year for Ryan, whose life had been totally decimated in the fire, the actual time for healing, rehab, and getting into med school seemed truncated, but more doable if I didn’t think about it too hard. It also seemed very quick from “yes, I’m going to kiss him again” to “I love him” but given the friendship, that too is doable. John’s shotgun marriage as a teen seemed like a relic of another time, but I could believe he really loved her, too.

The secondary characters varied in their portrayals. Marcus was extremely vivid as a conflicted fifteen year old who had to cope with the revelation of his father’s new sexual identity on top of everything else. His sister Torey and the detective were also well developed given the size of their roles. The harpy ex and her overbearing new husband mouthed the expected lines and offered no surprises.

I enjoyed The Rebuilding Year greatly and read it at one sitting, going back later to collect details for reviewing. Kaje Harper tells a very smooth story, and I would recommend this book warmly. 4.5 marbles