Lover At Last: A Novel of the Black Dagger Brotherhood by J.R. Ward

I stopped reading het romance more or less in 2006, but Sherrilyn Kenyon and J.R. Ward were among the last authors I read in that genre, and I remember I liked them. I especially liked the paranormal genre (while oddly I now prefer the contemporary ones) probably for their alpha male hero, always so strong, always so protective, always so bound to being honorable and right. That is not how Qhuinn and Blay are, or at least not totally; they are not really Alpha males, they are more enoforcerers, and till now they gravitated on the edge of the series, favorites to many readers but never having their own story. On the forums there was speculation they were gays, but the author never really gave them the definitive push, not until the book before this one: from what I gathered (since I haven’t read that one), Blay finally came out, but not to be with Qhuinn, but instead with Qhuinn’s cousin, Saxton; and to make things even more complicated, Qhuinn decides to have a child with a female, even if he didn’t mate with her.

So this is the situation we are when this book starts, and I was not sure I liked it. For Qhuinn and Blay to be together it meant Blay had to betray Saxton, and for what I could say, Saxton was a good man. And Layla, Qhuinn’s Chosen and the mother of his still unborn child? Was it right for her what was happening? And again, she was apparently a good and comprehensive woman, someone who deserved a lover of her own. So yes, I’m not sure why and if there was a reason, but J.R. Ward didn’t pave the path for these two to be together in an easy way, a lot of hurt had to be done and it seemed there was not solution for everyone to be happy.

The plot was running in two parallel but separate ways: one was the center piece story about Qhuinn and Blay, a plot that was introduced in the previous book and that was to find an end in this one; the other was about the ongoing fight of the Brotherhood and the personal target of Wrath to make a better kingdom for everyone to live in. Not having read the previous books (and I strongly suggest to read the summary of all previous books to have an idea of the characters and of what happened before), I have to be sincere, I didn’t care much for the second plot; I mostly focused on Qhuinn and Blay, with some spare interest on Layla, Saxton and John Matthew (actually I was hoping for more on this last supporting character). This story was good, pretty much as I remembered this author was, and the sex scenes were hot, and this statement arrives from someone that usually doesn’t care much for them. In my previous experience with an het romance author trying her hand to a gay romance, the feeling was that she didn’t dare too much in the sex department, but here J.R. Ward was not shy at all. Now don’t get me wrong, she neither went into almost analytical details, and maybe that is a bonus, she cannot go wrong in that way, but for sure she gave these two guys enough time and space to enjoy also the physical side of their relationship.

Amazon: Lover At Last: A Novel of the Black Dagger Brotherhood
Amazon Kindle: Lover At Last: A Novel of the Black Dagger Brotherhood
Hardcover: 608 pages
Publisher: NAL Hardcover; 1 edition (March 26, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0451239350
ISBN-13: 978-0451239358

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

Heinz Heger (1917 - March 1994)

Heinz Heger was the pen name used by Josef Kohout (1917 - March 1994), an Austrian Nazi concentration camp survivor. Kohout had been imprisoned for his homosexuality, which the German penal code's Paragraph 175 made criminal. He is known best as the author, under the Heger pseudonym, of the 1972 book Die Männer mit dem rosa Winkel (The Men With the Pink Triangle), one of very few autobiographical accounts of the treatment of homosexuals in Nazi imprisonment. The book has been translated into several languages, and a second edition produced in 1994. It was the first testimony from a homosexual survivor of the concentration camps to be translated into English and is regarded as the best known. Its publication helped to illuminate not just the suffering gay prisoners of the Nazi regime had experienced, but the lack of recognition and compensation they received after the war's end.

Kohout's book inspired the 1979 play Bent, by Martin Sherman, which was filmed as the 1997 movie Bent, directed by Sean Mathias.

Kohout was born and grew up in Vienna. His mother, Amalia, and father, Josef senior, were wealthy Catholics, and his father had a high-ranking job in the civil service. Kohout was arrested in March 1939, at age 22, when a Christmas card he had sent to his male lover, Fred, was intercepted. His lover Fred, whose father was a high-ranking Nazi official, was deemed "mentally disturbed" and escaped punishment.

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Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinz_Heger

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Bella Abzug (July 24, 1920 – March 31, 1998)

Bella Savitsky Abzug (July 24, 1920 – March 31, 1998) was an American lawyer, Congresswoman, social activist and a leader of the Women's Movement. In 1971, Abzug joined other leading feminists such as Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan to found the National Women's Political Caucus. She notably declared "This woman’s place is in the House—the House of Representatives" in her successful 1970 campaign to join that body. She was later appointed to chair the National Commission on the Observance of International Women's Year and to plan the 1977 National Women's Conference by President Gerald Ford and led President Jimmy Carter's commission on women. Abzug was also the first Jewish woman elected to the House of Representatives.

Bella Savitsky was born on July 24, 1920, in New York City. Both of her parents were Russian-Jewish immigrants. Her mother, Esther, was a homemaker and her father, Emanuel ran the Live and Let Live Meat Market.

When her father died, Abzug, then 13, was disallowed to say the Mourner's Kaddish for her father in synagogue, where that privilege was reserved for sons of the deceased. However, she did so as one of her first feminist actions because her father had no son.

Abzug graduated from Walton High School in New York City, where she was class president, and went on to Hunter College of the City University of New York, later earning a law degree from Columbia University in 1947. She then went on to do further post-graduate work at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.

Abzug was admitted to the New York Bar in 1947, and started practicing in New York City at the firm of Pressman, Witt & Cammer, particularly in matters of labor law. She became an attorney in the 1940s, a time when very few women practiced law. During this time, she began wearing wide-brimmed hats to work to ensure that she wasn't mistaken for a secretary. The hats became her trademark.

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Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bella_Abzug

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Prabal Gurung (born March 31, 1974)

Prabal Gurung is a Nepalese American fashion designer.

Prabal Gurung launched his first collection under his own name during New York Fashion Week in February 2009 at the FLAG Art Foundation in Chelsea. For Fall 2010, he staged his first runway show in the Tents at Bryant Park. Gurung's designs have been worn by Zoe Saldana, Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lawrence, Demi Moore, Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, and Catherine, The Duchess of Cambridge. Gurung resides in New York City.

Gurung was born in Singapore to Nepalese parents and raised in Kathmandu, Nepal. He went to St. Xavier's School, a reputed Catholic Jesuit school in Kathmandu, where he finished his high school education. Prabal began his designing career in New Delhi, India. While studying at New Delhi’s National Institute of Fashion Technology, he apprenticed at several local production and fashion houses and designed with Manish Arora. In Melbourne and London Gurung assisted stylists for fashion shows and international publications. In 1999 Gurung moved to New York City, where he interned for Donna Karan while attending Parsons School of Design. In his first year he was awarded the “Best Designer” title at the annual Parsons/FIT design competition.

After Parsons, Gurung spent two years with Cynthia Rowley’s design team. Soon after, he became the design director at Bill Blass. Following five successful years at Blass, Gurung launched his own collection, PRABAL GURUNG. In 2010 he was the recipient of the Ecco Domani Fashion Fund Award and received a nomination for the 2010 CFDA Swarovski Womenswear Award. He was also chosen by prominent fashion editors, retailers, designers and business people for the {CFDA Fashion Incubator} for 2010-2012. In November 2010, Prabal was awarded runner up for the 2010 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund.

He most recently worked with the artist Rye Rye, who showcased his collection in the video for her single "New Thing."



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Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prabal_Gurung

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More Fashion Designers at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, My Ramblings/Art

Martin Rabbett & Richard Chamberlain

George Richard Chamberlain (born March 31, 1934) is an American stage and screen actor and singer, who became a teen idol in the title role of the television show Dr. Kildare (1961–1966). Chamberlain was outed by the French women's magazine Nous Deux in December 1989 at the age of 55, but it was not until 2003 that he officially came out as gay in his autobiography, Shattered Love (ISBN 0060087439).

Chamberlain was romantically involved with television actor Wesley Eure in the early 1970s. He resided in Hawaii with his partner, actor-writer-producer Martin Rabbett, from 1976 to 2010. Rabbett and Chamberlain starred together, among others, in Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold, in which they played brothers Allan and Robeson Quatermain. In the spring of 2010 Chamberlain moved from Maui to Los Angeles because of work possibilities, leaving Rabbett in Hawaii, at least temporarily.

In a interview for the Advocate Chamberlain said: "Q: It was widely reported in April that you had split from Martin Rabbett, your partner of more than 30 years, and had moved to Los Angeles from your shared home in Hawaii. How are you doing? A: Well, we haven’t really split. In other words, we’re still very, very close. The essence of our relationship has remained the same; we just don’t happen to be living together. I went home for Thanksgiving and had the most wonderful time, and we’ll be spending Christmas together with friends in New York. So we’re not split, really. I just moved to L.A. because I wanted to work more. Martin, unfortunately, doesn’t like L.A. at all, but he’s thinking of moving to San Francisco. Q: Wow. I thought you were newly single and looking. A: At 76? You’ve got to be kidding." (Picture: Martin Rabbett)

In another recent interview, Chamberlain said: “I wanted a little more action in my life, in the sense that not much happens in Maui, except it’s so incredibly beautiful. I wanted to work and be with my friends here and be a part of the city,” says Chamberlain, adding that he and Rabbett, 20 years younger, are “closer and better friends now than we ever were. It took time and growing up,” Chamberlain says. “I needed to have my own place and own work. I’ve done that and now we’re very close again.”

Read more here: http://miamiherald.typepad.com/gaysouthflorida/2012/05/richard-chamberlain-its-perfectly-ok-to-be-gay.html#storylink=cpy

Richard Chamberlain is an American actor, who became a teen idol in the title role of the television show Dr. Kildare. Chamberlain was outed in December 1989, but it was not until 2003 that he officially came out as gay in his autobiography, Shattered Love. Chamberlain esided in Hawaii with his partner, actor-writer-producer Martin Rabbett, from 1976 to 2010. Even if they live apart, Charmberlain says: "I needed to have my own place and own work. I've done that and now we're very close again."

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Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Chamberlain

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More Real Life Romances at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, My Ramblings/Real Life Romance

Excerpt: Just a Little Unwell by Iyana Jenna

Just a Little Unwell by Iyana Jenna
Publisher: Silver Publishing (March 23, 2013) (https://spsilverpublishing.com/blog/2013/03/16/just-a-little-unwell-by-iyana-jenna/)
Amazon Kindle: Just a Little Unwell

Patrick Trafford is pleased with the simple life he has, spending his time tending a tiny garden accompanied by his best friend, Chad, a cockroach. Nevertheless, he can't hide the excitement bubbling in him as a man suddenly appears in the garden.

Damien Abner politely welcomes, albeit somewhat at a loss, Patrick's warm offer to spend time with him. To have a coffee, watch some movie, and dance along with the characters in it.

They begin to date and Patrick has never been happier, though he barely knows who Damien is--not that it matters to him. For him, being clueless does mean bliss.

( Excerpt )

2013 Rainbow Awards Submission: Tinnean - Two Lips, Indifferent Red

Two Lips, Indifferent Red by Tinnean
Paperback: 326 pages
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press (March 8, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1623804027
ISBN-13: 978-1623804022
Amazon: Two Lips, Indifferent Red
Amazon Kindle: Two Lips, Indifferent Red

Kipp Llewellyn would rather follow his dreams than toe the family line, so instead of the support of his wealthy family, he has estrangement and a part-time job with Hunter, an in-demand interior designer. Hunter opens a new world for Kipp to explore—and not just for his career. It’s through Hunter that Kipp meets and begins what he thinks is a one-sided flirtation with Ham, one of Hunter’s customers.

To Kipp’s astonishment, Ham asks him for a date. Unfortunately for Kipp, a mysterious phone call summons him home, where his father gives him an ultimatum: save the family company by marrying billionaire Hyde Wyndham, in which case all will be overlooked, or never set foot in his home again. But meeting Hyde leaves Kipp stunned and betrayed, because Hyde is actually Ham.

A guarantee of marriage is no excuse for making Kipp feel foolish, and Kipp had enough of the gilded cage in the first twenty-one years of his life. He turns Hyde down, stating that marriage should be about love rather than convenience. If Hyde wants him, he’ll have to court him the old-fashioned way.

2013 Rainbow Awards Submission: A.B. Gayle - Leather+Lace

Leather+Lace (Opposites Attract) by A.B. Gayle
Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press (March 22, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1623804183
ISBN-13: 978-1623804183
Amazon: Leather+Lace
Amazon Kindle: Leather+Lace

An Opposites Attract novel

Swathed in chiffon and lace, Steven Stanhope owns the stage as Stevie Tricks, lip-synching the songs of the famous gypsy queen. But after he escapes an abusive Master/slave relationship, the only collar he'll allow around his neck is black velvet.

After a four-year absence, Steve is ready to reclaim his life and the property he left behind. But is it safe? Definitely not if his ex is still into leather. To find out, Steve appears at a charity night for the local BDSM community, using the anonymity of his stage persona to mask his identity.

Instead of his ex-Master, Julius, Steve finds a tangled mess centered around another Master of Leather, Donato Rossi. In order to unravel their ties to the past, Steve and Don must find common ground and work together. In the process, they learn that when it comes to love, sometimes you have to make your own rules.