Love Bytes says hello and welcome to author JL Merrow who is joining us today to talk about her Riptide release “Love at First Hate”, part of the populair Portkennack series.

Welcome JL 🙂

Hi, I’m JL Merrow, and I’m delighted to be here today as part of the blog tour to celebrate the release of Love at First Hate, the second of my contemporary MM romances in Riptide’s multi-author Porthkennack series.

Love at First Hate features a romance between a newcomer to Porthkennack and a character whom readers of my first two Porthkennack books, Wake Up Call  and One Under, will have already met: Bran Roscarrock. As you might imagine, Bran, who is an antagonist in the first two books, is on something of a redemption arc. But we’ll also get to see where he’s been coming from, and why he’s acted as he has.

Loving a Bad Boy

Today, I’d like to talk about a certain type of (anti?)hero.

What do Heathcliff, Rochester, Rhett Butler, Lestat, Loki, and Lucifer Morningstar have in common? They’re all male characters who are perennial favourites with readers despite (or perhaps because of) their moral shortcomings.

What exactly is it that we find so attractive about bad boys like them?

Well, they tend to have a number of other things in common as well as iffy morals. For a start, bad boys run heavily towards dark, brooding good looks. The devil is well known for getting all the best tunes; apparently he also has a monopoly on top-drawer genes of a saturnine cast.

A tragic backstory is another oft-seen feature. Lucifer was cast out of heaven by his dear old Dad; Loki was a spoil of war, lied to and taught to hate his own race. Lestat’s dead. And that’s just the Ls. They’ve suffered, and that makes a big difference. Nobody likes a rotter who’s lived a charmed life. A bad boy with something to really brood about, on the other hand, engages our sympathy.

Bad boys also tend to have—outwardly, at least—confidence bordering on arrogance. In an uncertain world, it’s attractive to find a guy who’s sure of himself and isn’t afraid of going after what he wants. Bad boys also don’t worry overmuch about society’s judgement, possibly because they already have a pretty good idea of how the moral majority sees them and have spent a lifetime thickening their skin against it.

For a bad boy to really touch our hearts, though, he has to have some redeeming qualities. Maybe he’s kind to animals, loves his mum and/or treats underlings well. Maybe he just has a sarcastic wit so searing you could use it to strip paint.

And for lasting bad boy appeal, our guy needs to have potential. Potential to be great, if not good. Potential for redemption. What’s more romantic than a bad boy redeemed by love?

Question: Bad boys—who’s your fave? Or would you rather leave them than love them?

About Love at First Hate

First impressions can doom second chances.

Bran Roscarrock has been living in the closet all his life. As heir to an expansive family legacy in the town of Porthkennack, old-fashioned ideals of respectability and duty were drummed into him since childhood, and he’s never dared to live—or love—openly.

Sam Ferreira, an old friend of Bran’s brother, Jory, is a disgraced academic desperate to leave his dead-end job. When Jory asks him to take over as curator of a planned exhibition on Edward of Woodstock, the fourteenth-century Black Prince, Sam leaps at the chance to do what he loves and make a fresh start.

But Bran’s funding the exhibition, and though sparks fly between the two men, they’re not all happy ones. Bran idolises Prince Edward as a hero, while Sam’s determined to present a balanced picture. With neither of them prepared to give ground, a hundred years of war seems all too possible. And if Bran finds out about Sam’s past, his future may not be bright, and their budding romance may be lost to history.

Amazon

About Porthkennack

Welcome to Porthkennack, a charming Cornish seaside town with a long and sometimes sinister history.

Legend says King Arthur’s Black Knight built the fort on the headland here, and it’s a certainty that the town was founded on the proceeds of smuggling, piracy on the high seas, and the deliberate wrecking of cargo ships on the rocky shore.

Nowadays it draws in the tourists with sunshine and surfing, but locals know that the ghosts of its Gothic past are never far below the surface.

This collaborative story world is brought to you by five award-winning, best-selling British LGBTQ romance authors. Follow Porthkennack and its inhabitants through the centuries and through the full rainbow spectrum.

The Porthkennack novels are standalone stories; release order and era are:

• A Gathering Storm by Joanna Chambers (historical)

• Wake Up Call by JL Merrow (contemporary)

• Broke Deep by Charlie Cochrane (contemporary)

• House of Cards by Garrett Leigh (contemporary)

• Foxglove Copse by Alex Beecroft (contemporary)

• Count the Shells by Charlie Cochrane (historical)

• Junkyard Heart by Garrett Leigh (contemporary)

• Tribute Act by Joanna Chambers (contemporary)

• One Under by JL Merrow (contemporary)

• Contraband Hearts by Alex Beecroft (historical)

• Love at First Hate by JL Merrow (contemporary)
  
  

About JL Merrow

JL Merrow is that rare beast, an English person who refuses to drink tea.  She read Natural Sciences at Cambridge, where she learned many things, chief amongst which was that she never wanted to see the inside of a lab ever again.

She writes (mostly) contemporary gay romance and mysteries, and is frequently accused of humour.  Two of her novels have won Rainbow Awards for Romantic Comedy (Slam!, 2013 and Spun!, 2017) and several of her books have been EPIC Awards finalists, including Muscling Through, Relief Valve (the Plumber’s Mate Mysteries) and To Love a Traitor.

JL Merrow is a member of the Romantic Novelists’ Association, Crime Writers Association, International Thriller Writers, Verulam Writers and the UK GLBTQ Fiction Meet organising team.

Connect with JL:

• Website: www.jlmerrow.com

• Twitter: @jlmerrow

• Facebook: facebook.com/jl.merrow

• Goodreads: goodreads.com/.J_L_Merrow
  
  

To celebrate the release of Love at First Hate, JL is giving away a $10 Amazon credit! Leave a comment with your contact info to enter the contest. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on September 8, 2018. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries. Thanks for following along, and don’t forget to leave your contact info!