A warm welcome to author J. Carter Swift visiting Love Bytes today to talk about his books .

J. Kindly answered some questions for us , shares an excerpt and brought along a Fantastic Giveaway!!

Welcome J. Carter  🙂

Blurb:

On a rainy night at Café Blue, Ayden Munro meets Nikolai Bortzov, a young Russian caught in a nightmare.

Both lives will never be the same. Ayden, a writer, is pulled into the dark world of human trafficking, where teenage boys are bought and sold.

Café Blue brings together a cast of saints and demons, and the story these characters interact to tell is a story of love and obsession, a story of perversion and murder.

Inventive and intense, the reader is given no quarter as the narrative weaves in and out of heartbreakingly sweet moments, and moments of heart-pounding suspense.

Goodreads Link

There are also video’s on the Goodreads page about this book

check them out !

Video 1

Video 2

1) Where did the idea come from for Café Blue?
A face on the internet inspired the book. In the late 90s I came across an investigative report done by a journalist that exposed human trafficking out of Eastern Europe. Pictures of several victims accompanied the article, and while there was the imprint of tragedy on each face, one face in particular haunted me: a young man’s face. I remember staring at his picture thinking how much better off he’d have been if he’d been born ordinary, and not one of the most beautiful people I’d ever seen. In my book, Rupert Rhodes, a character of pure evil, delivers this bit of dialogue: “Beauty will take the boy to his doom.” And for the young man whose face I’ve never forgotten, this was certainly the case.

2) Art has a place in both your books reviewed by Dan here at lovebytesreviews. Tell us about that.
It’s so easy to become lost In the white noise of today’s busy world, but art gives me a point of reference, and that point of reference always leads me back to a blank sheet of paper. On that blank sheet of paper, I tell the world that I haven’t forgotten how to love, how to hate, I tell the world of my sorrows and desires…I tell the world that I haven’t forgotten how to be human.

3) What’s the most important ingredient to good writing?
Imagery. And writing good imagery takes dedication. For me, the only way to accomplish such is to take “time” out as a factor in the writing process. I won’t allow time to bully me into working in the yard or go shop for a new shirt. I’ve learned that to be more creative, only takes more time. If it takes all day to describe for the reader what a character looks like, it takes all day.

4) What writers do you especially admire? Why?
John Steinbeck for his imagery. William Faulkner for his ability to create time and place. Gabriel Marquez for his insights into the human heart. Carson McCullers for her characterization. Truman Capote for writing with a rhythm so fine his prose reads like poetry. Harper Lee for writing with her conscience. William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens for their epic themes Virginia Woolf for her beautiful sentences. I should add here that I don’t particularly like       any of Woolf’s stories; none ever struck a chord in me. But back to why I mention her:       she wrote such beautiful sentences.
5) What advice would you give an aspiring gay novelist?
The same advice I’d give any aspiring writer: if all you have at the end of hours of writing is that which summons the unwanted image of poison ivy, just keep writing. It takes practice to make a rose out of words.

On a rainy night at Cafe Blue, Nikolai has a brief encounter with Ayden.  After two such other encounters, Nikolai believes that his chance meetings with Ayden are no accident, that Ayden is “the one,” the one who will rescue him from the nightmare his life has become…

4. Niko

At four A.M., Niko stepped out of the bathroom of his suite at the Royal Ambassador Hotel, into the darkness of his bedroom. He’d taken a long shower, and this after a bubble bath, all to be satisfied the touch of Tristan McBride had been washed off. After Bin Ali sent him away, the ever-ready McBride had seen to it that the evening was still a profitable one for Ivanov. Niko looked through the dark at the light from the living room that came in under the locked bedroom door. When the thin slice of light was interrupted, he knew Philippe was still there. Sore from the scrub brush, Niko lay down on his bed carefully. He lay there wrapped in his robe a moment, relieved to be away from groping hands, then reached into the bedstand to take out the museum catalogue he’d bought from the Art Institute of Chicago. The catalogue was printed to accompany the upcoming Lucien Auguste Moreau exhibition, and he was excited about looking at it for the first time. The hardbound book was titled Heart & Soul in Oil. Niko adjusted the lamp beside the bed, propped himself up on fluffy pillows, and began to read how the great Picasso had reacted to the yet unknown Moreau’s entry in the ’71 Salon competition in Paris. When Picasso came to Moreau’s small portrait of a hauntingly young and beautiful prostitute titled Boy from Marseilles, he stood gazing at the painting for so long that a great stir in the exhibition was caused and a crowd gathered. Suddenly, Picasso stunned and thrilled the crowd by shouting at the boy in the portrait, “Speak!” From that day forward, Lucien Auguste Moreau, the man who could bring life to canvas, was known to the art world as God the Father. Niko thumbed through the catalogue, awed by Moreau’s work. His portraits went beyond the beauty of line and form to catch the very essence of the heart and soul of his subject. Niko stopped turning pages when he came to the famous portrait. The boy’s lips were red and moist, his tattered shirt revealed a bare shoulder and part of his chest. An invitation was in the boy’s eyes, and it took no imagination to know that his invitation was for sex, and that it was being offered for a price. Given the name Le Petit Sauvage by Moreau’s critics, critics who condemned the portrait as child pornography, Dr. Helmut VonRichter of the Berlin Museum of Art dismissed such claims in the catalogue’s preface. VonRichter explained that Moreau’s purpose in painting the portrait was to invite the viewer to join him in grieving for innocence lost. The truth in this portrait was like a blade plunged into Niko’s heart. “Did you survive?” Niko said to the boy in the painting. Then, barely above a whisper said, “Will I?” The light in Niko’s eyes began to fade, violets withering and darkening to deep indigo. He sat up, and with the catalogue in his lap, began to rock back and forth. A part of him had been stolen and was gone forever, and the vacancy had been filled by guilt and shame. Here in these rooms he suffered the touch of strangers, here he lived as a child afraid of the dark. Memories flashed through his mind: a fatal car accident, a man swinging from a rope, an old woman screaming and falling to the floor. Those he loved were dead. Sorrow beyond sorrow. Emotions came, collided with other emotions, and the memories kept coming only to disappear and appear again in a whirl of disorder. He began to shake all over. He felt as if he was about to start screaming and would never be able to stop. And that’s when the miracle happened. The catalogue fell from his lap and lay on the bed opened to the last painting, and he looked down at a full-length portrait of a boy on the verge of manhood. The boy was so handsome Niko couldn’t seem to look at him and think at the same time, and when he looked into the boy’s green eyes, he saw in them the colors of the sea. Niko felt the sensation of tiny shocks go through his body, and the violets bloomed in his eyes once again. “Ayden,” Niko said.

Dan Reviewed Cafe Blue for Love Bytes Check out his review HERE!

J. Carter Swift is the pen name for Stan D. Jensen. Mr. Jensen received his bachelor’s degree in history and his master’s degree in education from the University of Northern Iowa. Café Blue is his third novel. His first novel, Ethan’s Peach Tree, is based on the American Civil War. His second book, Stories of The Boy with the Yellow Socks, tells of a boy growing up gay in Iowa. His short stories have been published in the magazine The Backstretch.

Especially for the Love Bytes readers Stan offered to send a free copy of Cafe Blue through Amazon, to who replies below this post and leaves their amazon email so he can send it !!