2009-02-04

In Memory of Marcine Smith

Marcine Collette Smith was born Jan. 23, 1936, in Akron, the daughter of Philip, Jr. and Stella (Olson) Beaubien. She attended school in Westfield and graduated from Westfield High School. She attended Wayne State College in Nebraska and received her teaching certificate. She also took graduate courses at the University of South Dakota. She was united in marriage to Daryl Smith on Dec. 27, 1955. She taught grade school at Liberty Consolidated, rural Plymouth County, Westfield, Akron and Sioux City.

She enjoyed her family very much, attending almost everything her children and grandchildren participated in until her health prevented her from doing so. She was very proud of them all. She loved watching her granddaughter show sheep and watching the Akron-Westfield softball team. She dearly loved her cats and dog. She was an avid reader. She wrote and published several books for Silhouette Romances and short stories in Red Book and several other magazines.

To read more:

http://rosaromance.splinder.com/post/19756285/

In Memory of Marcine Smith

Behind the Cover: Chris Moore

Chris Moore (born 1947) is a British illustrator, particularly noted for his book covers, especially in the field of science fiction.

He has created cover images for works by many of the most famous authors in science fiction, including since 1998 the majority of book covers for Orion Publishing's SF Masterworks series.

Burning Chrome, Medium: Acrylic, Size: 24 x 28 cm

( more pics )

Non SF authors whose work he has provided covers for include Jeffrey Archer, Frederick Forsyth, Jackie Collins, Claire Francis, Stephen Leather, Wilbur Smith, Terence Strong, Alastair Reynolds, and Colin Forbes.

In the 1970s he also created a number of album covers, for recording artists including Rod Stewart (The Vintage Years), the group Magnum, Journey, Fleetwood Mac (Penguin), The Allman Brothers Band, Lindisfarne (Magic in The Air and The News), Status Quo (Just Supposin' and 12 Gold Bars), and Pentangle (Pentangling).

http://www.chrismooreillustration.co.uk/

Behind the Cover: Chris Moore

Since I love beautiful cover art...

Since I love beautiful cover art...

Top 100 Gay Novel: Faith & Fidelity by Tere Michaels

2 place winner as Best Characters in the 2009 Rainbow Awards

I think that the moral of this story is that love has not sex... and don't get me wrong since now I will explain why.

Evan is a NYPD Vice detective. He is the perfect good boy, a wife, four children, a suburban house. His life is perfect till the day his wife is killed in a car accident. After that Evan is lost: Sherri was his highschool sweetheart, they met when they were 14 years old and there was no other woman in his life; they grew together and Evan was perfectly happy, really. He never regretted to marry at 18 years old and to have soon after his first child. And now at 34 years old he is still young, but he seems to not have any reason to live if not his children.

Matt is a former NYPD Homicide detective. He trod on the toes of the wrong people and he was reassigned to patrol car service in Staten Island. Not suffering to fake his policeman role, he resigned and now he works in a security firm. But he is alone; the police department was his home, he has no family, and he seems to have no any purpose to go on.

Matt and Evan meet in a pub with a beer between them. They recognize the mutual loneliness and they make an unusual alliance; whenever Evan can have a night free from the kids, they meet at the same pub. They talk of work, sport, and whatever else two men can talk, but not of feelings or of the real reason they are together, that they are both alone. When Matt starts to realize that he has feelings for his friend, he is stunned: he has never had the same reaction to another man, he has always gone along well with women.

This is a love story, but I believe that this is also the tale of a deeply friendship. Both men have their reason to seek a gay relationship, even if maybe they don't realize it. Evan was so in love with his wife, that the thought of a new relationship with another woman is impossible, it would be a betrayal, like losing his wife again; loving a man is different, Matt is completely different from his wife, pun intended, and also the feelings and the sex is different. Evan can have both Matt and his wife memory at the same time, without having the feeling to betray one of them.

Matt sees in Evan the family he never had. Since he has always considered the Police Department his family, the fact that Evan is a detective is even better, it's something more that links them. And then Evan has a real family just ready to be picked and loved. Loving Evan in a physical way is easy since with him arrives an heavy luggage that Matt is eager to share. And loving Evan is also a way to re-enter the Police Department family he lost.

There is sex in this romance? Yes there is, but it's the sex you would expect from two apparently straight men who get together: clumsy, tentative, tender and sweet. It's always strange when you read about two men that should know nothing about gay sex, and that from the first time seems that they are playing in a porn; instead Matt and Evan don't know nothing and have also some fears, and you read and understand it. But they try and trying they are so sweet.

It's the first book I read by Tere Michaels, and it's also a very long book, 330 pages, but I hope not the last.

http://www.loose-id.com/Faith-and-Fidelity.aspx

Amazon: Faith & Fidelity

Tere Michaels's In the Spotlight post: http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/1210683.html

Reading List:

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

Top 100 Gay Novel: Faith & Fidelity by Tere Michaels

2 place winner as Best Characters in the 2009 Rainbow Awards

Altered Heart by Kate Steele

Kate Steele is specialized in Alpha male werewolves dealing with Omega puppy. In this new book Mick is a special agent of the Werewolf interstate security agency; he is asked to intervene in a very delicate situation, an Alpha male pack leader who has gone over the legal limit: he killed a newly made werewolf, a barely seventeen guy, and now he has another boy in his clutches. Rio was a runaway boy and an hustler; eighteen years old, small and cute he is totally unable to oppose to the big werewolf and there is also another problem: he was turned, but the psycho Alpha male interrupted his first changing, causing him a lot of pain and to fear his new wolf side.

Remove from the story the pervert is not a big deal for Mick, but dealing with the newborn werewolf is not so simple. There are a lot of issue that are against an involvement with Rio: first Mick is way older than the kid, 47 years to 18 years, and second the kid is passed through a lot of very bad experience, always connected to sexuality, and so Mick is not so sure that it's a good thing for Rio to be mated with an Alpha male werewolf. "Imposing" a sexual relationship to a traumatized boy is the last thing Mick desires. But let the boy go and find a more suitable companion is not an option for the wolf inside Mick.

The story deals mostly with Mick and Rio's relationship, and even if starts with a quite angst prologue (a underage gay hustler), it's not angst at all. True Rio has a bit of problem regarding sex and his sexuality, but he manages them pretty well and they are soon overcome. Also the age issue is not so emphasized, since both Mick than Rio, as werewolves, have another concept of aging: Mick at 47 years old is not a man in his middle age, but it's still a quite young wolf. Actually he is older than Rio's father, who is 39 years old, but this fact is not at all highlighted, and James, Rio's father, in comparison to Mick, has the role of the "old man", save an unpredictable turn of event at the end of the story (I really would like for Kate Steele to write also James' story).

There is a lot of sex, but it's easy and funny, like often is in Kate Steele's works. This is a pretty "classic" werewolf story, with the strong Alpha and the cute Omega, and there aren't switch on the classical path: never once Rio doubts what is his role in the relationship, and never once Mick falters in his firm belief that he need to dominate but also to direct Rio on the right path.

https://www.loose-id.net/detail.aspx?ID=809

Amazon: Altered Heart

Reading List:

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

Altered Heart by Kate Steele

I won 3 Gold Medals and 1 Bronze Medal...

and I haven't even competed at the Olympic Games! Today I discovered that Library Thing has a rewarding system (it's all symbolic, but still...) for people who help to build the database and yours truly Elisa won:

(Gold Medal) Helper for contributions to any area of LibraryThing
(Gold Medal) Common Knowledge for contributions to Common Knowledge
(Gold Medal) Work Combination for help maintaining LibraryThing's work system
(Bronze Medal) Author Combination for help combining author names together

I'm happy like it was a real game :-)))

http://www.librarything.com/profile/elisa.rolle/stats/badges

I won 3 Gold Medals and 1 Bronze Medal...

Sex, Lies and Wedding Bells by E.M. Lynley

First of all a big warning: this is not a menages! Last week I discovered this new publisher, Ravenous Romance and its Panamour line (same-sex romance); they have already some titles available, but at first I bough only the two by Ryan Field, since I knew the author (not personally, I read two short stories before) and reading the blurb and looking the covers, I was sure they were not menages. Sex, Lies and Wedding Bells by E.M. Lynley I almost skipped since it didn't pass my three steps test: 1) tagged M/M: OK, 2) no female in the blurb: KO, 3) no female on the cover: KO (in the ebook version). Two on three and I didn't buy it. Then someone told me it was not a menage, it was a real male on male romance, and so stepped back (see, I can change my mind!).

Reading this book I can almost make a sure bet that the author likes the romantic comedy movie. Apart the obvious reference to The Runaway Bride, she even named the movie from the first pages, I find also a resemblance with In&Out: an handsome, and very tall, reporter that arrives in little country village and fall in love with the principal of the local high school? (all right Kevin Kline was not the principal, but still...). There is even a scene that reminds me Sleepless in Seattle... Anyway the story is all it promised, a good and full male on male romance, that covers all the salient points: before, during and after, you will have the full package!

Kieran is an handsome New Yorker reporter for a fashion and entertainment magazine. His main qualification as reporter is to be snarky, and as man to be practically a slut: more nights than not he ends in bed with an unknown body, and sometime he even knows the name. In one thing Kieran is open and clear: he is gay and he likes sex. But lately this seems to be not enough: very pregnant the sentence in which Kieran thought that "he would much rather have woken up in someone’s arms than someone’s mouth" (since in the very first scene Kieran is receiving a blow job from one of those unnamed bodies above). And even in his works he is starting to loose biting, he is not enough evil according to his editor. And so Kieran decides to do a piece on a Runaway Bride, exactly like in the movie, who is marrying for the fourth time (and the previous three she dumped the groom at the altar).

Problem is that, instead of the bride, like in the movie, Kiernan falls in love for the groom. Jaxon is really a good guy, friendly and sincere, and exactly the perfect man Kieran would want in his life and bed, but Jaxon is not gay. At first I thought that the direction of the book was for Kieran to find out that Jaxon was gay and that his marriage with Danetta was a fake one, and instead I was wrong (and I will not say what is really the story ;-) ). The author is very good in not letting go the story and manage to maintain her little mystery for almost half the book: she unveils her secret only when she decides it's time, and only since she needs the other half of the book for something else (and for me better).

It's all about romance in this book, maybe sometime even a bit too much: Jaxon is a bit too perfect, sometime he is almost like a starstruck teen (above all regarding sex); all right Kiernan at first thought of him not nice things, but he is not so far from the reality... Jaxon is really too open and naivee! But well, I like him like that, it's strange, he has this "childish" behavior, this way to approach almost with pliers, he seems always ready to say please and thanks, but all in all I don't find him a weak character, he is only an old fashioned man (but yes, probably he would be not him to wear the trousers at home, even if he married a woman!).

http://www.ravenousromance.com/panamour/sex-lies-and-wedding-bells.php

Amazon Kindle: Sex, Lies and Wedding Bells

Amazon: Sex, Lies & Wedding Bells

Reading List:

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