In Memory of Maysie Greig

MAYSIE COUCHER GREIG (b. 2 August 1901, Double Bay, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia - d. 10 June 1971, St Marylebone, London, England ), romantic novelist, daughter of Dr Robert Greig Smith, a bacteriologist from Edinburgh, and his English-born wife Mary, née Thomson. Educated at Presbyterian Ladies' College, Pymble, Maysie joined the staff of the Sun in 1919 before sailing for England in the following year.

At the parish church, Painswick, Gloucestershire, on 14 July 1923 Maysie Greig-Smith married Ernest Roscoe Baltzell, an American Rhodes scholar whom she accompanied to New York.  divorce in 1929. While living at Greenwich Village, New York, she married a writer Delano Ames; they, too, were to be divorced (1937). After spending four years travelling, especially to such 'strange and little known countries' as Yugoslavia and Albania, they settled in England, with a home in London and another, Yew Tree House, in the village of St Mary Bourne, Hampshire. On 3 May 1937 at the Municipal Building, Manhattan, New York, Maysie married Maxwell Alexander Murray (1900-1956), an Australian-born journalist; they returned to England where the birth of their child in 1940 did not interrupt Maysie's flow of novels. In 1948 the family settled in Sydney and Maysie added a house at Vaucluse to her other residences. On 22 June 1959 at the registrar general's office, Sydney, Maysie married Jan Sopoushek, a printer from Budapest and a widower. She sold her Vaucluse home in 1966 and thereafter lived in London. Survived by her husband and by the son of her third marriage, she died of an embolism on 10 June 1971 in a nursing home at St Marylebone.

By 1934 she was the most prolific woman novelist of the day. She published up to six books a year (mostly with Collins in England and Doubleday in New York), often set in the exotic places that she had visited; she also wrote thrillers as 'Jennifer Ames', and occasionally used 'Ann Barclay' and 'Mary Douglas Warren' as pseudonyms. She invariably gave her stories happy endings 'because I believe that happiness is the greatest virtue in the world and misery the greatest sin'.

To read more:

http://rosaromance.splinder.com/post/17418812/

In Memory of Maysie Greig

MAYSIE COUCHER GREIG (b. 2 August 1901, Double Bay, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia - d. 10 June 1971, St Marylebone, London, England ), romantic novelist, daughter of Dr Robert Greig Smith, a bacteriologist from Edinburgh, and his English-born wife Mary, née Thomson. Educated at Presbyterian Ladies' College, Pymble, Maysie joined the staff of the Sun in 1919 before sailing for England in the following year.

At the parish church, Painswick, Gloucestershire, on 14 July 1923 Maysie Greig-Smith married Ernest Roscoe Baltzell, an American Rhodes scholar whom she accompanied to New York.  divorce in 1929. While living at Greenwich Village, New York, she married a writer Delano Ames; they, too, were to be divorced (1937). After spending four years travelling, especially to such 'strange and little known countries' as Yugoslavia and Albania, they settled in England, with a home in London and another, Yew Tree House, in the village of St Mary Bourne, Hampshire. On 3 May 1937 at the Municipal Building, Manhattan, New York, Maysie married Maxwell Alexander Murray (1900-1956), an Australian-born journalist; they returned to England where the birth of their child in 1940 did not interrupt Maysie's flow of novels. In 1948 the family settled in Sydney and Maysie added a house at Vaucluse to her other residences. On 22 June 1959 at the registrar general's office, Sydney, Maysie married Jan Sopoushek, a printer from Budapest and a widower. She sold her Vaucluse home in 1966 and thereafter lived in London. Survived by her husband and by the son of her third marriage, she died of an embolism on 10 June 1971 in a nursing home at St Marylebone.

By 1934 she was the most prolific woman novelist of the day. She published up to six books a year (mostly with Collins in England and Doubleday in New York), often set in the exotic places that she had visited; she also wrote thrillers as 'Jennifer Ames', and occasionally used 'Ann Barclay' and 'Mary Douglas Warren' as pseudonyms. She invariably gave her stories happy endings 'because I believe that happiness is the greatest virtue in the world and misery the greatest sin'.

To read more:

http://rosaromance.splinder.com/post/17418812/

Through the Dark by Mychael Black & Shayne Carmichael

Setting at the end of the sixteen century, this is a pretty "classical" paranormal romance story with a bit of a kinky side.

Jeremy is a stranger in a small village in North Wales. He is here to free his cousin from the clutches of the Church which holds him imprisoned in a monastery. Along the path he meets Grey, a mourning man. Grey has just lost his lover, Rhys, the man with whom he chose to leave in an almost isolation in a estate atop a cliff. Now Grey is a very dangerous man with fits of uncontrollable rage that no one seems to be able to control, no one except Jeremy.

Jeremy is a noble, but also a werewolf, and this hidden ability allows him to see in Grey his mate, and to be able to soothe him and his rage. Grey needs Jeremy to control him, because without the man beside him, he is unbalanced.

Even if the story has an historical setting, there aren't many historical references. It's quite interesting how the story deals with the Church and the political matters, quite true the fact that Church think to have the right to persecute a man until it finds that he has "powerful" friends: if you are poor and without connections, you can be easily charge of witchcraft, but if you are an important man, witchcraft becomes only an oddity you are allowed to cultivate and homosexuality something that strangely no one notice.

The big appeal for me in this book is Jeremy's relationship with Grey, his ability to comprehend the man and to love him not for what he could be as a "healthy" man, but for what he is now, with all his supposed madness and his instability, but also with his great need of love. Grey could be a strong man in body, but he is like a child in a emotional level: he needs to grow and he needs that someone stronger, like Jeremy, takes him step by step during his journey, something that neither his family, or his former lover Rhys, understood.

A big warning to most sensible readers: this is a shapeshifter romance that push a bit the boundaries on the furry thing... there is a bit of sex in partial shifted form, means that one of the lovers is a man with... well, more fur than expected.

Reading the book I have the feeling that this is only a little part in a bigger series: there are a lot of references to other characters and situations, and hints of possible future stories. Romance, historical and paranormal are not elements easily found together in the M/M genre, and so, maybe it would be interesting to have more, and maybe, since it's also an historical romance, to have also more on the setting.

http://www.king-cart.com/Phaze/product=Through+the+Dark/exact_match=exact

Amazon Kindle: Through the Dark

Reading List:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bottom.php?tag=waiting reading list&view=elisa.rolle

Through the Dark by Mychael Black & Shayne Carmichael

Setting at the end of the sixteen century, this is a pretty "classical" paranormal romance story with a bit of a kinky side.

Jeremy is a stranger in a small village in North Wales. He is here to free his cousin from the clutches of the Church which holds him imprisoned in a monastery. Along the path he meets Grey, a mourning man. Grey has just lost his lover, Rhys, the man with whom he chose to leave in an almost isolation in a estate atop a cliff. Now Grey is a very dangerous man with fits of uncontrollable rage that no one seems to be able to control, no one except Jeremy.

Jeremy is a noble, but also a werewolf, and this hidden ability allows him to see in Grey his mate, and to be able to soothe him and his rage. Grey needs Jeremy to control him, because without the man beside him, he is unbalanced.

Even if the story has an historical setting, there aren't many historical references. It's quite interesting how the story deals with the Church and the political matters, quite true the fact that Church think to have the right to persecute a man until it finds that he has "powerful" friends: if you are poor and without connections, you can be easily charge of witchcraft, but if you are an important man, witchcraft becomes only an oddity you are allowed to cultivate and homosexuality something that strangely no one notice.

The big appeal for me in this book is Jeremy's relationship with Grey, his ability to comprehend the man and to love him not for what he could be as a "healthy" man, but for what he is now, with all his supposed madness and his instability, but also with his great need of love. Grey could be a strong man in body, but he is like a child in a emotional level: he needs to grow and he needs that someone stronger, like Jeremy, takes him step by step during his journey, something that neither his family, or his former lover Rhys, understood.

A big warning to most sensible readers: this is a shapeshifter romance that push a bit the boundaries on the furry thing... there is a bit of sex in partial shifted form, means that one of the lovers is a man with... well, more fur than expected.

Reading the book I have the feeling that this is only a little part in a bigger series: there are a lot of references to other characters and situations, and hints of possible future stories. Romance, historical and paranormal are not elements easily found together in the M/M genre, and so, maybe it would be interesting to have more, and maybe, since it's also an historical romance, to have also more on the setting.

http://www.king-cart.com/Phaze/product=Through+the+Dark/exact_match=exact

Amazon Kindle: Through the Dark

Reading List:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bottom.php?tag=waiting reading list&view=elisa.rolle

The Mash Game

gacked from bittermint

		I will marry Roberto.
		After a wild honeymoon, We will settle down in Ireland in our fabulous Apartment.
		We will have 39 kid(s) together.
		Our family will zoom around in a Pink Rover.
		I will spend my days as a Bookseller, and live happily ever after.

 Ehm, I have something to say about the 39 kids... NO WAY!!!

The Mash Game

gacked from bittermint

		I will marry Roberto.
		After a wild honeymoon, We will settle down in Ireland in our fabulous Apartment.
		We will have 39 kid(s) together.
		Our family will zoom around in a Pink Rover.
		I will spend my days as a Bookseller, and live happily ever after.

 Ehm, I have something to say about the 39 kids... NO WAY!!!

Nick of Time: A Romentics Novel by Scott & Scott

Nick is a thirty something very traditionalist gay man who lost his hopes for an happy future together with a man. After a bad break with his last lover, Nick is convinced that no gay man out there shares his idea on family and home. Nick is a steady and strong man, with a moral bigger than his big body. For work he build dry stone walls, and his work is just like him, old, precise and made to be eternal. To build something steady like his walls, Nick proposes to a single mother of three, a prim and proper woman, a good mother and probably a perfect wife, even if Nick doesn't desire her.

From the country Brent moved on the big city, New York, with great dreams of being a professional dancer, and now, 31 years old, his careers ended before time, and his last relationship as well, he is again at home to join in his sister's wedding celebrations. When he was young and still lived in the country, Brent was a little brat, always enamored of someone, a little imp who flirted with everyone, but he knew that, sooner or later he would meet Mr. Right and he would have the happily ever after like everyone else in the perfect country life picture of his youth. Now, fifteen years later, he is still convinced that, out there, Mr. Right is waiting for him, and when he meets Nick, he is so sure that he is the one. But Nick is in a denying phase and he is still hurting from the betrayal of his last boyfriend, a man too similar to Brent to not awake in him painful memories. And then Nick is a man of honor, and he can't be unfaithful to his fiancee and above all to her kids.

This is not the first book by Scott & Scott I read, but I'm a little surprise by this one. I don't know, it has a more romantic style; yes, it's true, also the other books were romance, but they were also "erotic" romance, and the sex was a great part of the book. This one instead is more centered in the feelings, in the game of push and pull between Nick and Brent, that you almost arrive to the end of the story without realizing that they have never done nothing more than kiss. In all the book there is only a "complete" sex scene (since a second one is an interrupted one) and a lot of teasing, a few kisses and a bit of petting. The teasing above all is the main event, since Brent is a mix between a brat and a slut, liking himself (a bit of Narcissus also) and his body, and liking to parade himself in front of Nick, to prove to the man that he is losing something marrying a woman.

Nick is a nice character, but, well, he has emotional handicaps. I think his mistrust in men is not only a consequence of his past bad relationships, but also of his general attitude toward life: he is a loner, he likes his works because it allows him to be alone, and he also likes to go hiking as hobbies, since it's something he can do alone. So it's real the other men that betrayed him, or it's him that didn't allow to no one to come near? His past relationships ended with all the guilty from only one side of the couple?

I think these two men didn't find Mr. Right before because they were not ready for him. And now that they are ready, they need to make some compromises, as I always say, the life is not right or wrong... 

http://www.loose-id.net/detail.aspx?ID=666

Amazon: Nick of Time: A Romentics Novel
Amazon Kindle: Nick of Time: A Romentics Novel
Paperback: 200 pages
Publisher: BookSurge Publishing (May 10, 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1594574251
ISBN-13: 978-1594574252

Reading List: http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bottom.php?tag=reading list&view=elisa.rolle


Cover Art by Michael Breyette

Nick of Time: A Romentics Novel by Scott & Scott

Nick is a thirty something very traditionalist gay man who lost his hopes for an happy future together with a man. After a bad break with his last lover, Nick is convinced that no gay man out there shares his idea on family and home. Nick is a steady and strong man, with a moral bigger than his big body. For work he build dry stone walls, and his work is just like him, old, precise and made to be eternal. To build something steady like his walls, Nick proposes to a single mother of three, a prim and proper woman, a good mother and probably a perfect wife, even if Nick doesn't desire her.

From the country Brent moved on the big city, New York, with great dreams of being a professional dancer, and now, 31 years old, his careers ended before time, and his last relationship as well, he is again at home to join in his sister's wedding celebrations. When he was young and still lived in the country, Brent was a little brat, always enamored of someone, a little imp who flirted with everyone, but he knew that, sooner or later he would meet Mr. Right and he would have the happily ever after like everyone else in the perfect country life picture of his youth. Now, fifteen years later, he is still convinced that, out there, Mr. Right is waiting for him, and when he meets Nick, he is so sure that he is the one. But Nick is in a denying phase and he is still hurting from the betrayal of his last boyfriend, a man too similar to Brent to not awake in him painful memories. And then Nick is a man of honor, and he can't be unfaithful to his fiancee and above all to her kids.

This is not the first book by Scott & Scott I read, but I'm a little surprise by this one. I don't know, it has a more romantic style; yes, it's true, also the other books were romance, but they were also "erotic" romance, and the sex was a great part of the book. This one instead is more centered in the feelings, in the game of push and pull between Nick and Brent, that you almost arrive to the end of the story without realizing that they have never done nothing more than kiss. In all the book there is only a "complete" sex scene (since a second one is an interrupted one) and a lot of teasing, a few kisses and a bit of petting. The teasing above all is the main event, since Brent is a mix between a brat and a slut, liking himself (a bit of Narcissus also) and his body, and liking to parade himself in front of Nick, to prove to the man that he is losing something marrying a woman.

Nick is a nice character, but, well, he has emotional handicaps. I think his mistrust in men is not only a consequence of his past bad relationships, but also of his general attitude toward life: he is a loner, he likes his works because it allows him to be alone, and he also likes to go hiking as hobbies, since it's something he can do alone. So it's real the other men that betrayed him, or it's him that didn't allow to no one to come near? His past relationships ended with all the guilty from only one side of the couple?

I think these two men didn't find Mr. Right before because they were not ready for him. And now that they are ready, they need to make some compromises, as I always say, the life is not right or wrong... 

http://www.loose-id.net/detail.aspx?ID=666

Amazon: Nick of Time: A Romentics Novel

Reading List:

http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bottom.php?tag=reading list&view=elisa.rolle


Cover Art by Michael Breyette