A warm welcome back to author A.F Henley visiting our blog today 🙂
A.F talks about new release Baby’s on Fire, shares and excerpt and there is a giveaway to participate in!
Welcome A.F 🙂

 

A huge welcome back to the Baby’s on Fire blog tour and giveaway for my returning friends, and a very happy hello to any newcomers! Throughout the tour I’ve been doing a bit of investigation on some the rumors, gossip, and events that took place in the late sixties and early seventies music world. But I would be remiss if I didn’t mention something about the late, great Freddie Mercury. Although the majority of Freddie’s success came at the end of the seventies and continued through the eighties, he was definitely one of the kings of glam rock, and held on that reign even when the genre itself began to slip away.

 

Keep in mind that Freddie Mercury was developing his talent during the dawning of this new rock age. While young people were shoving off the weight of proper society and following the worn and battered heels of the peace and love generation, Freddie was honing a technique that almost everyone in the industry considered “astonishing.” By the time he started performing, rock culture had embraced the concept of sexuality without recourse, and life without consequence. They didn’t need too deep a cause to celebrate. Or to copulate. While the early sixties were about opening one’s mind, the glitter/glam rock scene was about opening up to new experiences and then quickly moving on to the next one.

 

Once again I’m going to take a quick moment to remind everyone that rumors and gossip are never truth. Even those founded in truthful moments seem to come away as something more than what they were and continued to flower from there. I found as I researched that some of the most believed legends were, according to those in attendance, pure bullshit or complete misrepresentations. Please keep in mind that both media and fans alike love a good story.

 

** Please note that none of these posts are indicative of the main characters or the instances in my novel Baby’s on Fire. They do, however, give a very clear indication of what the MCs would have been experiencing both time-wise and with the reactions/mindset of the people around them.

 

Freddie Mercury – “Excess is a part of my nature”

 

If there’s one thing that can be said about Freddie Mercury (and has been said, and will continue to be said for some time), it’s that the man knew how to throw an excessive party. From topless waitresses with magnums of champagne operating under instructions to make sure no glass was allowed to run dry, to little people balancing trays of cocaine on their heads for guests to partake in, almost every hedonistic venture was allowed. And encouraged. Men in drag were displayed and performed with no less glamour than the ballerinas alongside them, and by no means did the dawn ever signal the end of one of Freddie’s parties. In a Hollywood reporter article, Elton John himself has been quoted as saying that, “Freddie Mercury could out-party me, which is saying something … We’d be up for nights, sitting there at 11 in the morning, still flying high.”

 

Onstage and off-stage Freddie was larger than life, openly bisexual, and he made a point of ensuring that everyone around him knew it. “Excess is a part of my nature,” Freddie is reported to have said. “To me, dullness is a disease. I need danger and excitement. Straight people bore me stiff. I love freaky people.” He referred to his sex drive as “enormous” and adds “I sleep with men, women, cats — you name it. I’ll go to bed with anything!” The cat thing isn’t nearly as freaky as one might think. Freddie adored his cats, so much in fact, that his close friend (and former girlfriend) Mary Austin says he used to call home to talk to them. She’d just hold the cats up the phone and let them listen to his voice.

 

He hired rent boys by the dozens, calling on an associate to pick them out and bring them back, and one of them shared the following in an interview: “We’d shed our clothes and enter Freddie’s room, where he would greet us, wearing just his dressing gown … Freddie engaged in sexual activity with each in turn, in front of the others.”

 

What a life. Except, was it really? The interviewee ends his statement with the following recollection, “He did not even seem to be enjoying himself. Just going through the motions.”

 

Freddie Mercury was a man who loved his cats, despised his birth name, secretly considered himself to be a mediocre pianist, and had relationships that frequently dissolved into emotional shouting matches over alleged infidelities (surprisingly enough, not Freddie’s). He strove for perfection, was furious if things didn’t turn out perfectly, and stressed constantly over the idea that people weren’t going to see him the same off the stage as on it.

 

In a Daily Mail article, a long-time friend of Freddie’s, David Wigg is quoted as saying, “I found him entirely different in private. The showmanship was replaced by someone who was shy, suspicious and guarded his privacy with an obsessive tenacity.”

 

It’s almost hard to imagine that man as the same person who lined up rent boys for sexual encounters. It even makes one wonder if the idea for the title of his solo album, The Great Pretender, wasn’t in fact, the real truth behind his character.

 

Regardless, whether it was acting or truth, Freddie’s excess caught up with him. On November 24, 1991, he died of bronchopneumonia brought on by AIDS – one day after publicly admitting he had the disease.

 

Here’s hoping the parties are just as lavish, but maybe a little less lonely wherever he might have gone.

 

My huge thanks to Love Bytes for having me today, and a special thanks to you, my friends, for joining me. 😀

Until next time!

AF Henley <3

Baby’s on Fire

 

In 1974 Gerry Faun gets the break of his life—an opportunity to meet gorgeous, openly bisexual, glam-rock idol Mark Devon. Mark’s world is new, exciting, and Gerry finally gets to explore the side of his sexuality that he’s kept hidden. But the press is everywhere, and when Gerry’s father gets wind of what’s going on behind his back, Gerry ends up on the street. Mark offers to let Gerry come along with the tour and Gerry jumps at the chance. The tour is a never-ending party—and the start of what seems to be a perfect relationship for him and Mark. Until Mark’s manager decides Gerry isn’t worth the trouble he’s stirring up.

 

In 1994 Gerry is finally coming out of some tough times—he has a job that pays the bills, a car that hasn’t quite broken down, and a small rental in Jersey City. After a decade of barely getting by, if life was as good as it was going to get, Gerry figures he’ll manage just fine. It would be easier if he wasn’t still haunted by the man the media won’t let him forget, the man who stole his heart and then broke it… the man that’s shown up pleading for a second chance.

Gay Contemporary Romance

Copyright © 2015 by A.F. Henley

Published by Less Than Three Press

Please note: Novel contains explicit sexual content.

 

Buy Links:

Less Than Three Press

Amazon

For what seemed like the hundredth time, the traffic in front of Gerry Faun came to a slow-rolling halt. It was the rain doing the most damage, though the end of the workday was always ugly on the streets of New York City. Not that there were many pretty things on the street, regardless. Giuliani was trying, but the way Gerry had it figured, it was going to take more than a smile and a stand on graffiti and marijuana to clean up their kind of dirt. So while the rest of the city offered the mayor awe-induced stares of appreciation over recollections of Mafia Commission and Boesky trials, Gerry mostly sat back and speculated. When government officials got clever enough to stop assholes from blowing up pregnant secretaries and hard-working fathers, then they might actually get his attention. Until then, Gerry wasn’t putting any more trust in them than he would anybody else. He’d learned a long time ago that not all that glitters is worthy.

 

He was lost in thought enough not to acknowledge the tunnel. He was, in fact, well into it before he remembered to take off his sunglasses. He forgave himself the digression. It had been a long week. Though Gerry worked in the financial district, he was no more than a glorified yes-man for his boss, a real estate broker that had made a fuck-ton of money in the eighties, and was merely coasting until the inevitable retirement. He ran errands and answered phones. He took messages, and booked flights that he was more than sure did not drop Mr. David Manon in places of business. He made reservations in exclusive restaurants, paid Mr. Manon’s membership fees for a gym the man never went to, and bought Manon’s anniversary and birthday gifts for the wife-of-the-moment. Gerry had a flair for it, or so his boss would tell him whenever the requirement came up, and Gerry was cocky enough to verbally agree with Manon every time. Damn right he was good at it.

 

Tail lights suddenly flared in front of him and Gerry cursed and slammed his brake pedal down. His eyes flicked between windshield and rearview, assessing space and distance, and he blew a sigh of relief when he confirmed that the guy behind him had been paying more attention than he’d been. Maybe it really was time to give up the car.

 

He’d heard it a thousand times from friends, family, and casual observers: public transport would not only save him money, but they swore up and down it would save him time. God knew gasoline was getting more expensive by the day, and parking costs in the district were insane. Gerry considered it pretty much every time the numbers went up on the billboards beside the gas stations. One day he would, he’d tell himself. One day for sure. When he could convince himself that walking the six blocks from the bus stop in Jersey’s bitter January winds wouldn’t be as appealing as slitting his own throat with barbed wire. When he got over his control issues.

 

The side road whereby Gerry’s rental home waited for his return was already jammed with cars, so instead of parking on the street, Gerry carefully worked his 1984 Buick into the tiny concrete pad that served as his driveway. He nudged the car as close to the house as it would go, wincing when the fender butted against the foundation and the ancient bow window above him shook with disapproval. While some of the properties on the street had given up parking for an attempt at a front lawn, Gerry couldn’t see the point of bothering to maintain a six-by-eight square of greenery and have to fight for a place to park every day. Besides, what was the point? In the summer everything got so damn hot that his neighbors’ plants and grass got their lives choked out of them. In the winter, anything that had managed to get a hold on the Earth was quickly destroyed by the cold and the snow.

 

Looking, he was sure, about as sexy as a maggot trying to escape from a nostril, Gerry inched out from between his car and the base of the entranceway steps. His suit wasn’t worth that much, but it was worth too much to go rubbing it up against rain-mucked concrete or the wet door of a car that hadn’t seen an auto-wash in months. His breath puffed out from between his lips, the rain making October that much colder, and Gerry lifted his eyes to the sky. Dark, ominous clouds roiled in the gray heavens, and Gerry had serious doubts that the light rainfall was all the skies had in store for them.

 

In the second it took for Gerry to muse, a deep rumble of thunder broke, a distant sheet of lightning answered the call with a flare of brilliance, and the drizzle became a downpour. Without bothering to spit out the curse on his tongue, Gerry ran for the front door. The porch roof did nothing to protect him as the rain whipped against his back and legs, and he had to seat the key twice before it finally dug in and allowed him to open the door.

 

Dripping, mumbling, Gerry slammed the door behind him with a definitive clunk and flicked the deadbolt. He kicked off his shoes, sighing as small rivers of water raced across the lopsided flooring of the hallway, and he began to peel off of his wet clothes right where he stood. He might as well only drown one part of the house, and at least that particular location was vinyl tile. Most of the house had decades-old carpeting that, when wet, released all kinds of odors. None of them good.

 

With his wet clothes piled in his arms, Gerry stepped gingerly down the narrow hallway, and ducked into the bathroom. He dumped the armload into the tub, and grabbed a towel off the rack.

 

He didn’t pause to look in the mirror and fix his hair. The cut was short, short enough in fact that he barely had to brush it, and that always seemed to make his sister chuckle when she saw him. There was a time when God himself wouldn’t have been able to get him to cut his hair—when the arguments with his parents would grow to screaming matches over the bangs in his face and the uneven lengths that fell past his collar. But everybody grew up. Eventually.

 

On behalf of the tour, please join the giveaway by taking part in the Rafflecopter below. The prize consists of a set of ‘Crystal and Silver’ Glitter Ball Earrings, a $20 Gift Certificate to the Less Than Three Press book market (free books!), and a signed, print copy of Baby’s on Fire. Click through for terms and conditions, further details, and your chance to win! See all the details here:

 

https://afhenley.wordpress.com/2015/04/13/the-babys-on-fire-all-that-glitters-blog-tour/

 

** Please note that this giveaway is being offered tour-wide and there will be one winner awarded for the entire event.

 

ENTER RAFFLECOPTER GIVEAWAY HERE:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

 

 

Henley was born with a full-blown passion for run-on sentences, a zealous indulgence in all words descriptive, and the endearing tendency to overuse punctuation. Since the early years Henley has been an enthusiastic writer, from the first few I-love-my-dog stories to the current leap into erotica.

 

A self-professed Google genius, Henley lives for the hours spent digging through the Internet for ‘research purposes’ which, more often than not, lead seven thousand miles away from first intentions but bring Henley to new discoveries and ideas that, once seeded, tend to flourish.

 

Henley has been proudly working with LT3 since 2012, and has been writing like mad ever since—an indentured servant to the belief that romance and true love can mend the most broken soul. Even when presented in prose.

 

Find more here:

Website: http://afhenley.com/

Amazon Page: http://www.amazon.com/A.-F.-Henley/e/B00FIODWSK/

Publisher’s Page: http://www.lessthanthreepress.com/author-a-f-henley/

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/AFHenley

Twitter: http://twitter.com/AFHenley