BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR, support for good stories never felt easier or more fun

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
SALLY MALCOLM & JOANNA CHAMBERS Creative Types #3
Kindle edition (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$5.99 available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Lights, camera…attraction!

When Tag O’Rourke, struggling actor-slash-barista, meets Jay Warren, son of acting royalty, it’s loathing at first sight. Loathing…and lust. Tag’s dream is to act, but it’s a dream that’s crumbling beneath the weight of student debt and his family’s financial problems. If his career doesn’t take off soon, he’s going to have to get a real job. After all, feeding his family is more important than feeding his soul. Luckily, Tag’s about to get his big break…

Jay never had to dream about acting; he was always destined to follow in his famous mother’s footsteps. But fame has its price and a traumatic experience early in Jay’s career has left him with paralysing stage fright, which is why he sticks to the safety of TV work—and avoids relationships with co-stars at all costs. Unfortunately, Jay’s safe world is about to be rocked…

After an ill-judged yet mind-blowing night together, Jay and Tag part acrimoniously. So it’s a nasty shock when they discover that they’ve been cast in a two-man play that could launch Tag’s career and finally get Jay back onto the stage where he belongs. Sure, it’s not ideal, but how bad can working with your arch-nemesis be? All they have to do is survive six weeks rehearsing together and navigate a cast of smarmy festival directors, terrible landladies, and vengeful journalists. Oh, and try not to fall in love before the curtain rises… Break a leg!

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE AUTHORS. THANK YOU.

My Review: Well, whatever one expects from a romace novel, this book hands it over...enemies-to-lovers, second chance at love, soulmates discovering each other, all here. And all as much fun to read as fun gets.

Authors Sally and Jo don't exactly waste one's time with silly obfuscations. The story's pacing is neither rushed nor dilatory. The main duo are not in any danger of being relegated to juicy side characters...though Jay's mother could be a fun broad to follow around for a few hundred pages, hint hint...and the Others on the page still manage to make their presences felt. The playwright-cum-pal is another really good character I felt I knew enough about to get the story in gear, yet could also fill up her own book.

So there's absolutely every reason to go buy one. Go on! Go get a copy.

But you're only giving it four stars! I need a fifth one to autobuy!

Having heard this kind of statement on multiple occasions, I'll say this: The series is wonderful and fun, and funny, and endearingly honest about its characters' icky bits. All of those are good things. Tag irks me. He's a whiny little pisher whose chip is so big it needs both his shoulders to carry it so blocks his view straight ahead of him. Jay is quieter in his overplayed self-doubt but still manages not to hook me. Them together? I wanted to reach into the book and crack their heads tpgether, tell 'em to STFU and get back to having the kind of sex most of us don't dare believe exists because we ain't gettin' it.

So yeah. Four's where the star train stops.

It gets all those stars for the way I'm dragged into the story, the way my emotional investment is picked out of my readerly pocket. They mugged me in my own back alley, that pair of author/attackers! I encourage anyone with a taste for contemporary romances, for second-chance, artist-centered, and enemies-to-lovers romances, to get this entire three-book series.

HOME GROWN TALENT, second Creative Types series M/M rom-com

HOME GROWN TALENT
SALLY MALCOLM & JOANNA CHAMBERS (Creative Types #2)
Amazon Kindle (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$4.99 on Kindle, available now

Rating: 4 singed-by-profanity stars of five

The Publisher Says: Are you for real?

From the outside, it looks like model and influencer Mason Nash has it all—beauty, fame, and fortune. With his star rapidly rising, and a big contract up for grabs, Mason’s on the verge of hitting the big time.

When an opportunity arises to co-host a gardening slot on daytime TV with his ex’s brother, Owen Hunter, Mason is definitely on-board. And he intends to use every trick in the book to make the show a hit—including agreeing to his ruthless producer’s demand to fake a ‘will-they/won’t-they’ romance with his co-host…

Owen Hunter is a gardener with a huge heart and both feet planted firmly on the well-tilled ground. He’s proud of the life he’s built and has absolutely no desire to be on TV—yet somehow he finds himself agreeing to do the show.

It’s definitely not because he’s interested in Mason Nash. The guy might be beautiful—and yeah, his spoiled brat routine presses all Owen’s buttons in the bedroom—but Owen has no interest in a short-term fling with a fame-hungry model.

As the two men get closer, though, Owen starts to believe there’s more to Mason than his beautiful appearance and carefully-curated online persona—that beneath the glitz and glamour is a sweet, sensitive man longing to be loved.

A man Owen might be falling for. A man who might even feel the same.

But in a world of media spin and half-truths, Owen is dangerously out of his depth. And when a ridiculous scandal explodes online, with Owen at its heart, it starts to look as though everything he thought was real is built on lies—including his budding romance with Mason…

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHERS. THANK YOU.

My Review: Remember the story of Lewis and Aaron, the grumpy/sunshine boss/PA delight set in the TV world? It lost enough points for its SIX w-bombs not to get to five stars despite my deep affection for its story line and its delightful silliness. All that was wrapping a quite serious love story between two sad, lonely men whose lives are dedicated to a world that uses them for what it can get.

The authors? Nice people, one supposes, but severely addicted to carpet w-bombing the reader. Six was bad. TWELVE IN THIS STORY. Twelve! Using any word not a conjunction, pronoun, proper name, or toponym (and that one's iffy) twelve times in one's story is simply too damned many.

Anyway. The story, as expected from these two mavens of the genre, was a cracker. Owen raised his teenaged brother after their mother's death; as a barely fledged kid himself he...did a great job. He worked. He protected. He never left his brother in the lurch as he got left. His brother's grouchy personality, built to withstand misery and grief, was just more than he could handle. I think it's the most touching story I've ever read, and Owen's power as a character largely began from that base. When we meet him in this story, he's along for the ride at an awards show for Lewis's hit TV show, Leeches. One of the participants' plus-ones is young Mason Nash...Lewis's ex, met at the beginning of episode one, a model/Instagram influencer. Owen judged him harshly while Lewis was dating him. Mason rather curled his lip at Owen, too.

So guess what happens!

It's a rom-com. You know what you're getting, you know when you're going to get it, and this being 2022 we know we're in for some sex. The sex scenes add to the relationship drama, and the last one in particular was deeply, deeply relatable to anyone who's ever had a long-term relationship. So used well, written well, satisfyingly up to snuff on the heat-level scale...nothing tepid about these guys!...and exactly the proper amount of smexytimes for the story. (It doesn't hurt that I identify with Owen, either.)

One of the surprises in the story was the deeply sympathetic portrayal of "an influencer" or massively online person as a regular guy trying to make a living in a very cut-throat industry...two, really, as he was modeling as well as Instagramming his life. Or lifestyle, I suppose...like all the surface-gloss purveyors of Fantasy, there's a lot of effort behind the Glamour. Then there's Owen, simple son of the soil that he is, who runs a gardening business that doesn't require him to tart anything up for the cameras and likes it that way. But...key realization...Owen is a caretaker, with all the control and trust issues that implies. So, funnily enough, is Mason (real name it's not, but you'll find that out for yourself). Different angles, same path, and Owen'd been on it longer so has much, much more invested in the identity without really taking in his façade's effects on others. Mason's simply never, as a twentysomething, thought much about anyone he wasn't responsible for.

What draws the men together is what ultimately causes the only serious explosion neither is equipped to handle: Working together on something neither has any control over. It was a shock to me that Owen said yes, but thinking about myownself in my thirties, well...yeah, I see it. Mason's early-onset adulthood led him to reflect, "Responsibility, once assumed, was almost impossible to put down." This being an eternal verity known to most all of us who've taken it up as Owen had to do, as Mason must do, left me nodding along. Not for the first, or last, time, either. The authors are quite able to repackage Received Wisdom as new knowledge to their characters. It's one of the things that makes me enjoy these stories of younger people more than many, if not most, others.

The unfairness of Mason's life, as it leaks little by little into Owen's awareness, makes their estrangement that much more painful for them both. It was, TBH, about as blatantly signaled as can be. For a wonder, that actually worked to heighten its effect because of a choice I imagine was organic to the process of writing a series with two authors: Dual narrators. It's surprising to me how well the technique, mated to this story line, caused me to flip the pages past faster and faster. Kudos! By the end of the story, each knows the other's burdens, and it truly works as relationship binder. And the happily-ever-after that is part and parcel of the genre's promises to its readers arrived in a welcome, more grounded way than I thought it would...if at the expense of feeling a wee bit rushed.

Rein in the w-bombing, please, and bring on #3 soon!

TOTAL CREATIVE CONTROL, first in a new series of hilarious M/M rom-coms

TOTAL CREATIVE CONTROL
SALLY MALCOLM & JOANNA CHAMBERS (Creative Types #1)
Self-published (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$4.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.76* of five

The Publisher Says: Sunshine PA, meet Grumpy Boss ...

When fanfic writer Aaron Page landed a temp job with the creator of hit TV show, Leeches, it was only meant to last a week. Three years later, Aaron’s still there ...

It could be because he loves the creative challenge. It could be because he’s a huge Leeches fanboy. It’s definitely not because of Lewis Hunter, his extremely demanding, staggeringly rude ... and breathtakingly gorgeous boss.

Is it?

Lewis Hunter grew up the hard way and fought for everything he’s got. His priority is the show, and personal relationships come a distant second. Besides, who needs romance when you have a steady stream of hot men hopping in and out of your bed?

His only meaningful relationship is with Aaron, his chief confidante and indispensable assistant. And no matter how appealing he finds Aaron’s cute boy-next-door charms, Lewis would never risk their professional partnership just to scratch an itch.

But when Lewis finds himself trapped at a hilariously awful corporate retreat, Aaron is his only friend and ally. As the professional lines between them begin to blur, their simmering attraction starts to sizzle...

...And they’re both about to get burned.

I WAS OFFERED A DRC AND ACCEPTED WITH UNSEEMLY GLEE.

My Review: Hello! Are you new around here? I kind of doubt it, but one never can be certain...so let me offer a greeting and an invitation to poke around, look over the goods, see what interests you. One thing you'll notice fairly quickly is that I like the books that feature people like me, which is to say men who sex up men while loving every minute of it; older men who have the good fortune to find younger men who enjoy their company; and who (lucky fictional bastards!) get second chances at The One(s) Who Got Away.

Authors Joanna Chambers and Sally Malcolm have each appeared on the pages of the blog on previous occasions, their respective ouevres coming in for no little praise on their own merits. (Still slightly shocked that BBC Scotland hasn't made Enlightenment into a limited series, Author Chambers...get your People onto it! David Tennant ain't gettin' any younger!) I am, in short, inclined to look upon these creatives' creations without undue harshness, permaybehaps even a Vaseline-smeared lens of hazy happiness.

When I am not being assaulted by w-bombs. (Two were allowable; they deepened the...foulness...of a revolting character; four others, NO; net deduction = 24 stars.) (What do you mean, there aren't 24 stars? It's my blog and I'll...oh, very well you boring commonsensical internal voice.)

The fun of watching, that is reading, this story was evident from the get-go. The insta-luuuv between the characters being sublimated into a working relationship for ages was nicely explained away by Aaron's dirty little secret: He writes fanfic in Lewis's show's universe! Well, as a reason for him to stay shtumm about his feelings, that one does a lot. He can't give up his literal dream, or his literal dreamboat, now can he. Plus Lewis clearly senses Aaron's abilities as a writer, as a fellow creative story-teller, and no one who's ever had a whole business riding on their shoulders can ever resist a true Lieutenant Colonel showing up when you need 'em. (Not to mention the man's a fount of excellent story ideas, and can keep the fan-service pipeline flowing both ways.)

There's a lot of fun in reading these words, just as words. This is exactly as one would expect from the two authors involved in creating the story.

Charlie was one of those almost-but-not-quite-good-looking men. Everything about him was just a little average. A little medium. On the two or three occasions he'd come into the office to see Lewis, he'd always seemed to Aaron to be trying to make up for that somehow, with his overbearing manner and his ridiculously pretentious outfits.
–and–
...Lewis yelped, "Wave!" and they both stumbled backwards as the surf splashed up over their ankles, soaking the ends of their rolled-up jeans. Lewis lost his balance as he scrambled up the beach, Aaron grabbed him, and suddenly they were both clinging to each other, laughing.
And then, just as suddenly, they weren't laughing.
They were simply standing there in the moonlight, clutching each other's arms, gazing at each other. Lewis looked dishevelled and windblown, undone in a way that transformed him from idol into someone more real, more tangible, his dark hair blowing across his forehead, and his eyes the deep blue of the twilight sky. He swallowed visibly, lips parting, chest rising and falling. Breathing hard. His fingers tightened on Aaron's arms, drawing him closer.

And we'll leave that there...*evil chuckle*

What a pleasure, then, to have this as a week-ending read. I wasn't expecting it to be awful, or painful; I was expecting it to be somehow less than the sum of the authors' different powers, a watering-down of what I've come to expect. I just love being wrong! Their different ways of approaching a story came together beautifully, and made this a better story than I'd even let myself hope that it was going to be. I'm also pleased that the process of working together worked well for them so we're going to get a book two and even a book three! I predict book two will be about Owen. (That was, if y'all were wondering, a stonking great hint.)

The genuinely surprising thing in this read...and let's not front, there's next to nothing surprising in romances...is that it takes its milieu seriously. The world of Fandom is presented without an arched eyebrow or a barely concealed sneer. The existence of AO3 is very much part of what drives the plot. The kind of characters in the fannish con-world are spot on and mostly treated kindly. (I, like Lewis, am unable to endure long moments of speech emitted by up-talkers.) The end of the story is a fan-person's wet dream. It is a pleasure to see the sub- go Culture.

I am well and truly pleased, Authors each and both, and I thank you for making me the offer of a DRC for review.