Rainbow Snippets: Drumbeat is here!

My latest novel, Drumbeat, is one week old today, so that’s what I’m sharing from. You can read all the details below the snippet, including my wonderful interviewed for the WROTE podcast. We had a great conversation about writing bisexual characters, non-binary representation, and invisible disability.

I’ve been just blown away by how well this book was received. I wondered if people would have issues with the polyamory or the on-page “het sex” (I’ve been scolded for that in the past) or the fact that I (a hearing person) wrote D/deaf characters or the way I wrote Jamie’s eating disorder or the fact that I have a former adult film actor babysitting a small child. So far, none of those things have been challenged at all. Heck, I only had one person say it didn’t read to them as fully a stand-alone (and that’s fair, as well as it being the best “negative” review I’ve ever gotten). If any of that appeals to you, maybe you’ll like Drumbeat too.

This snippet is in Cian’s POV and introduces us to Jamie.

It was too bad Jamie was so standoffish. He was a thousand shades of adorable, and no amount of pseudo-bad-boy-rockstar play-acting could hide it. While making his way to the table after performing, Cian had taken a few minutes to admire him. Jamie was tiny, probably barely five foot five. His brown hair was short and spiked. He had piercings all over, enough in visible areas that Cian wondered if he had some in less public places too. He didn’t recall him having any in his videos, not that he wanted to admit how much of Jamie’s body he’d seen. And those eyes—dark and sparkling, black-lined to give him a hint of being trouble.

Rainbow Snippets is a safe and welcoming space for LGBTQIA+ authors, readers, and bloggers to share 6 sentences each week from a work of fiction—published or in-progress—or a book recommendation. Feel free to join in!

Book Info

Listen to my WROTE interview here or follow this link.

You can also read Jayne’s review on the website and my guest post on Jeanne G’Fellers’ blog.

Title: Drumbeat

Series: Notes from Boston (#3)

Date: September 1, 2018

Length: 231 pages

eBook ISBN: 978-1-944591-78-6

print ISBN: 978-1-944591-51-9

Category: LGBTQ Literature, Gay Romance

Goodreads

Purchase Links

Synopsis

Jamie Cosgrove is doing his best to recover from a break-up after years with an abusive boyfriend. All his usual coping strategies have failed, and he’s fallen back on things that make him feel safe: drumming, food, and his friend Trevor. The trouble is, two of those are still secrets, even from those closest to him.

Cian Toomey has it all. He has loving relationships with his partners and a fulfilling, creative career. The one thing he’s missing is someone to go home to at night. When sudden changes occur at one of his jobs, he’s faced with a choice to find something new or move in with his partners in a different city.

Well-meaning but pushy friends seem to think Cian and Jamie are the answers to each other’s prayers. They couldn’t disagree more. A series of random events thrusts them into each other’s lives, and they find they have more in common than they thought. But when all of Jamie’s carefully constructed walls crumble at once, both of them will have to depend on the support of their friends and family to strengthen their fragile bond.