Leta Blake

author. human. working hard to become stellar at life.

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“Perfect to curl up with for the holiday season!” Review of Smoky Mountain Dreams by @LetaBlake #gay #amreading #1click

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“As always with Leta’s work, this book doesn’t shy away from delving into messy emotions. The characters make mistakes, and I love them all the more for it. They’re flawed humans, and not cardboard cutouts. And as always with a Leta Blake novel, there’s a healthy serving of heat! Christopher and Jesse are smokin’ hot together.

This story is perfect to curl up with as we head into the holiday season! I’m already bugging Leta for a sequel. :D”

via Goodreads | Keira Andrews Toronto, ON, Canada’s review of Smoky Mountain Dreams.

“Fall In Love Like I Did!” – 5 Stars for Smoky Mountain Dreams #amreading #gay

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“I absolutely love Leta Blake’s work and this was no exception. I loved how beautifully Jesse and Chris fell in love. It was just heart felt, real, and very intense. Everything I could want in a romance. Please read this book and fall in love like I did.”

via Amazon.com: Amazon Customer’s review of Smoky Mountain Dreams.

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Smoky Mountain Dreams is available now at:

AMAZON
B&N
SMASHWORDS
iTUNES
SCRIBD
OYSTER

And now at KOBO.

Waking Up to #2! (And It’s Not Poo!) #thankyou #gayromance

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I’d stopped checking the charts on Smoky Mountain Dreams when it fell to #15 over the weekend. I figured the book had played out and I was okay with that, pretty pleased actually with how it had been received.

I woke up this morning to a text from a friend alerting me to this:

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I think my reply was, “Holy shit!!!” LOL. But guys, really, this is so unexpected! Thank you to all the readers who have taken a chance on me this year. Between Training Season, The River Leith, and now Smoky Mountain Dreams, I feel like readers have gone on a huge journey of trust with me and I’m honored and thrilled to find that so many believe the books won’t let them down. That’s something I treasure and feel so much gratitude for. <3 THANK YOU!

In important news, Ferguson is happening, protests are happening, and my book is small, small potatoes in the face of it. Still, I needed to say thanks. A book is nothing without readers–you let the characters live in you. <3

An emotional masterpiece! 5 stars! Smoky Mountain Dreams by Leta Blake #gay #amreading

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“Love this long, angst filled, sexy-as-heck tale. I love Blake’s books, especially Training Season and River Leith, so this was an auto-buy for me. It’s a slow build to a great emotional arc as friendship turns to flirtation turns to sexy times turns to a deep and meaningful connection. Get your tissues ready! One of the most emotional books I’ve read this year. LOVED.”

Amazon.com: Annabeth Albert’s review of Smoky Mountain Dreams.

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Smoky Mountain Dreams is available now at:

AMAZON
B&N
SMASHWORDS
iTUNES
SCRIBD
OYSTER

And now at KOBO.

“I can HIGHLY RECOMMEND Smoky Mountain Dreams to read by your Christmas tree.” 5 stars for Smoky Mountain Dreams! #1click

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“Yay! Always fun to have new Leta Blake to read! And her newest M/M romance Smoky Mountain Dreams has more angst than you can shake a stick at, just as we have come to expect from Ms. Blake.

Spoilers abound in this one, so I will be purposely vague. Failed making-it-to-the-big-time country crooner Christopher Ryder meets and starts a relationship with failed-being-a-gay-man Jesse Birch, who owns and operates his own jewelry design studio. There are so many things in the path to their happily-ever-after that it is almost comical. I mean, poor guys! You really will root for these boys from the word, “Go.”

Give yourself some time, because this is a longer book coming in at just over 400 pages. Don’t start it and then have a test coming up or a paper due! You’ll hate yourself because this is hard to put down.

This is a great book folks! It ends in the holiday season and is chalk full of warm ‘n fuzzy holiday cheer. I can HIGHLY RECOMMEND Smoky Mountain Dreams to read by your Christmas tree.

OMG, I forgot to mention the sex! *head/desk* Where is my brain? These two were outstanding in the sex department. And after reading this, you’ll never look at your or your mother’s or grandmother’s or anyone’s string of pearls the same again. *clears throat*”

via Amazon.com: Jen’s review of Smoky Mountain Dreams.

Click on through to purchase on Amazon. Also available at B&N, Scribd, Kobo, iTunes, and Smashwords.

Sometimes holding on means letting go

After giving up on his career as a country singer in Nashville, Christopher Ryder is happy enough performing at the Smoky Mountain Dreams theme park in Tennessee. But while his beloved Gran loves him the way he is, Christopher feels painfully invisible to everyone else. Even when he’s center stage he aches for someone to see the real him.

Bisexual Jesse Birch has no room in his life for dating. Raising two kids and fighting with family after a tragic accident took his children’s mother, he doesn’t want more than an occasional hook-up. He sure as hell doesn’t want to fall hard for his favorite local singer, but when Christopher walks into his jewelry studio, Jesse hears a new song in his heart.

Smoky Mountain Dreams at EIGHT on Amazon’s Gay Romance Charts! Wow! #amreading #gay

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So wowed to wake up and see this! Unreal! Thank you, Readers, for loving the book!

Reader reviews are coming in:

“Oh my gosh. I loved, loved, loved this book. I stayed up until 3:30 am finishing it because I could just NOT put it down. There are so many different scenes I could reference- scenes that took my breath away.”

“I have been reading M/M romances for several years now and I didn’t think I could be surprised anymore. This book surprised me in the best way possible.”

“So, so so well done. Leta Blake is one of my fave romance authors. THE RIVER LEITH is still one of my top 2014 reads and this is right up there with that.”

“This is a great book folks! It ends in the holiday season and is chalk full of warm ‘n fuzzy holiday cheer. I can HIGHLY RECOMMEND Smoky Mountain Dreams to read by your Christmas tree.”

Read more reviews and buy the book at AMAZON today!

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BUY AT AMAZON!

The Dream of the 90s Is Alive in THIS CHARMING MAN by AJAX BELL #seattle #GenX #gayfiction @flickerjax

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This Charming Man (A Queen City Boys Book)This Charming Man by Ajax Bell

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This charming book is chock full of interesting, lovable, and, at times, hate-able characters. First is Steven, the narrator and main protag, who has come to adulthood but hasn’t really found his footing as an adult. For the past five years he’s been happily lost in that place familiar to most readers–somewhere between dependant adolescence and independent adulthood. Sure, he’s not living at home with his parents, but he’s holding a retail job during the day and clubbing the night away with his fascinating-but-cruel best friend, Adrian, most nights. He’s a typical Gen-Xer in that way, delaying adulthood and responsibilities, and prolonging the time between. Which, huh, speaking of Gen-Xers, he is one, since this this story is set in 1991. And that realization has given me a whole new spin/outlook on Steven. Basically, if you’re familiar with that Portlandia song “The Dream of the 90’s is alive in Portland”? Well, that’s the dream of the Gen-Xers, man, and Steven’s living the dream. [reference: http://youtu.be/TZt-pOc3moc]

But somewhere beneath his shiny, glittering night club life, he’s tiring of it all and he’s growing up, wanting to find something meaningful in his life, something beyond coffee shops, bumps of coke, and his retail job at a fashionable clothing shop. He’s wanting a career, a life, a true love, a home. And yet his current situation keeps sucking him back. It’s easy to stay the same and hard to change–especially when his best friend, whom Steven is half in love with, seems very invested in keeping him stunted.

Speaking of Adrian, he is a scene-stealer in the best way. He’s horrible and yet so compelling. If any reader has made it to adulthood without knowing (and being compelled by) someone like Adrian then you’re a lucky dog. I’ve certainly known enough Adrians in my time to feel both drawn to his flame and an intense world-weary disgust with him. It’s easy to see how he’s manipulated Steven into being his emotional prop through the last five years, and how Steven has been his eager toy.

Enter Steven’s motivation to change. One John Pieters, a charming older man (think Baby Boomer to Steven’s Gen-X) who has life experience and drive. He’s suffered through the 1980s horror of AIDS and clings with tight loyalty to his friends, demonstrating the kind of connection with his self-made family that Steven yearns for and doesn’t get with Adrian. He’s an adult in a way that Steven finds inspiring, arousing, and intimidating. Steven knows that a charming, handsome, older man must look at him and just see a wasteful club kid with nothing going for him.

While Steven does keep John in his mind as a motivator for the life changes he makes in the wake of meeting the man, it’s clear that Steven’s metamorphosis, his true coming-of-age, comes from within. John is the carrot that drives him, like a fantasy or a dream, but something so unattainable at first that it’s only as Steven begins the process of changing the he realizes that maybe it’s not so unattainable after all. At first his metamorphosis is about wanting to be the kind of man John would notice, but it isn’t long before the satisfaction of change motivates him on its own.

I don’t want to spoil too much, and a lot of the wonderfulness of this story is in the details and the way that Steven’s character (and every character of the book) is so relatable and yet so identifiable as being tied to the time (1990s) and place (Seattle). You’ll love Steven and want better for him, like a mother hen ghost, silently following him as a reader and rooting for him to make better choices and then cheering when he finally does.

Speaking of Seattle, the city during the 1990s is beautifully captured here and comes alive in the reader’s mind. While I was not in Seattle in the 1990s, myself, I’ve been given to understand from other readers that the scenes and places discussed are real and recognizable to people who were there.

This Charming Man is a charming, lovely read. There are no difficult hoops to jump through to get into the book. The writing itself is sharp and straightforward. I’ve read it twice and loved it both times, and both times found a deeper connection to the story and the characters.

I think Gen-Xers will especially identify with this story but it’s a great read for all lovers of gay fiction.

View all my reviews

Jake Bass Phase? Colby Keller Phase? What? Boy Meets Boy #free #gay

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I’m over at Boy Meets Boy to help them celebrate their anniversary with a free giveaway from my back catalog and discussions of porn stars! LOL!

“To enter to win an ebook copy of your choice from Leta Blake’s backlist, please leave a comment on this blog post and let us know 1 your name and a means of contacting you e.g., email, Twitter handle, link to Goodreads account, etc. and 2 What are your Desert Island Keepers?The giveaway is open until 10:00PM Pacific time on November 9th. Shortly thereafter, we will contact a winner whom we will select using a highly scientific “names in a hat” method or, you know, an internet randomizer. Please respond to the winning notification within 48 hours or we will choose another winner.”

via Boy Meets Boy Reviews: Anniversary Shenanigans: Author Visit and Giveaway: Leta Blake.

She’s read it six times! Wow! “The River Leith” by Leta Blake | Beth Brock

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“I don’t reread books often, and because I am such a voracious reader, I mostly purchase e-books so I don’t clog up my bookshelf. I’ll sometimes obtain a hard copy when I’ve read a book at least three times. I have a copy of “The River Leith” sitting on my bookshelf right now, but I haven’t read it three times. More like six.”

via “The River Leith” by Leta Blake | Beth Brock.

I’m always chuffed when a reader loves a book, but to read it six times just blows me away! Thank you, Beth, for enjoying this book so much! Truly makes me unbearably happy!

 

This Book Is Brilliant. Calling Pomegranate. #amreading #bdsm #romance

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I think about this book a lot. I think about Sean and how I grew to love and care about him. I thought about his utter maleness. I admit I think a lot less about Cary, but Sean was…he was something else. I literally went from thinking he was a POS to thinking he’s great and missing him a lot. I definitely recommend this book for those curious. I still think it could have used some editing…but I still don’t know what I would have cut.

The Grrrl of Limberlost: Rain City Comedy of Manners by @AnniePearsonOK #Mystery #Thriller #Suspense #FREE

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It’s Annie’s birthday and her book is FREE right now on Kindle! Check it out!


The Grrrl of Limberlost Rain City Comedy of Manners Book 1 – Kindle edition by Annie Pearson. Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com..

A murder in a Seattle coffee house. A murder on a decaying boat dock on Puget Sound. Samsara Byron, the security expert, insists this has nothing to do with her. She’s heroically fending off an attack on the world’s cyber infrastructure—if she could only get a cell signal. 

After escaping exurban life on Limberlost Island a decade earlier, Sam became a rockstar among anti-hacker security programmers: appearing at BlackHat conferences in vintage t-shirts and combat boots; investigating international security conspiracies with the FBI and NSA. 

Now Sam is dragged sideways by chaos back on Limberlost Island: her brother accidentally embroiled her flakey father with gun runners; the boy next door came home as prodigal son, hiding from Eastern European gangsters; a porn farmer thinks he’s in love. 

Meanwhile, the local weather guru promises that the large cold air mass headed for the Puget Sound Conversion Zone will dump record snow. Seattle is always paralyzed when it snows. 

The Grrrl of Limberlost follows three self-absorbed voices through the frenzy and terror in their daily lives, mired in family losses and betrayals, while weaponized malware threatens to ruin Christmas. The key mystery: which voice is the unreliable narrator? 

This light comedic suspense novel tries to include romance, but hardly anyone has time for it. It does contain inexplicit sex scenes and the sort of language you’d expect from gangsters, porn-farmers, and retro Riot Grrrls. 

Annie Pearson’s Rain City Comedy of Manners series explores misadventures in contemporary Seattle among people whose work drives their hearts’ desires, often in conflict with other love affairs. When bad things happen to quirky people, can they survive the wretched comedy of romance under grey skies? 

Rain City Comedy of Manners Series: 
#1 The Grrrl of Limberlost (Sam and Matt: cyber-thriller on Puget Sound) 
#2 Artemis in the Desert (Eliot and Sean: adventure on two wheels) 
#3 Nine Volt Heart (Jason and Susi: musical ride through Seattle’s backstreets) 

Each book can be read as a standalone story, with no cliffhangers. 
Later books do not reveal the stories of earlier books. 

Reviewers say: 

“Annie Pearson’s characters and story line in The Grrrl of Limberlost are contemporary to the mystery novel just as Dashiell Hammett’s Nick and Nora Charles were in his day. Pearson captures the ethos of people caught in the electric speed and electronic maneuvering of our times where a murder is just a click away and every double cross comes with a backup. Don’t miss this one—it’s your new world and it’s shifting under your feet as we speak.” 
— Don McQuinn, The Moondark Saga

Kids come to school sick because we can’t stay home from work – by Darlena Cunha #sickdays #murica

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Really liked this write up by Darlena Cunha. I’m lucky enough to be in a situation where I can stay home when I’m sick or stay with my child when she’s sick, but my husband is not in such a position. Despite having a backlog of unused sick days from his fifteen years at his job, he was written up last year for “excessive absences” after missing more than the allowed four days in a row with a really bad flu. This despite having literally a month or more of unused sick days available to him.

“As we come into flu season, and are all scared out of our minds about Ebola and enterovirus 68 and other infectious diseases hitting closer and closer to home, maybe we should take some responsibility for how we spread these viruses.Our social infrastructure needs to change as well. People cannot continue to have to choose between their job security, their school success and their health. People shouldn’t have to be scared to be sick.”

via Kids come to school sick because we can’t stay home from work – The Washington Post.