A warm welcome to author Heloise West joining us today here @Love Bytes on her blog tour for If I Were Fire.
Welcome, Heloise!
Author Name: Heloise West
Book Name: If I Were Fire
Release Date: September 16, 2015
Pages or Words: 19,000 words
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Cover Artist: LC Chase
Blurb:
In 18th century Siena, Count Salvesto Masello has returned home to find the family villa and his father’s estate steeped deeply in debt. In order to save it, he has been selling off valuable family heirlooms, but he is running out of silverware. Somewhere in the villa his deceased father had hidden the art treasures that will pay the debt, but Salvesto can’t find them anywhere.
Amadeo Neruccio has been on the run from the vicious pimp, thief, and pawnbroker Guelfetto, but his toughs finally catch him and bring him to the cellar where Count Masello is selling off his silver. When the count learns what fate Guelfetto has in store for Amadeo, he intervenes and trades the last of his mother’s dowry for the young man’s freedom.
Salvesto had left home over ten years ago to live the life of adventure he craved. He had also hoped to leave his broken heart behind. When he rescues young Amadeo, he did not expect to find love again, or that his adventures had yet to end.
Categories: Fiction, Gay Fiction, Historical, M/M Romance
Today I’m very happy to be interviewing Heloise West author of If I Were Fire. Hi Heloise, thank you for agreeing to this interview.
Describe your book to us.
The story is a bit of a rescue, knight in shining armor (though men are knights by the 18th century in name only). The main characters are from two different tiers of society, though both have experienced the other side of life in some form. The count has been a sailor and a soldier, and the jockey has kept company with Sienese aristocrats. Both fall into the bad graces of the local bandit, while struggling not to fall for each other.
Have you ever read something that made you think differently about your genre? Can you tell us what it was?
Andrea Speed’s “Infected” series. My usual go-to genres are history and mystery, and never shifters, not since I burned out on Laurell K. Hamilton back in the 90s. I think I picked up the first, Prey, on a freebie and it had me, right after Christmas last year. With storytelling and craft and that elusive X factor that makes a good story superb. So I realized that M/M Romance is taking me back to the types of stories I loved when I was younger, paranormal, fantasy, some science fiction, and, of course, romance. That’s a good thing because I’m inspired by what I read. So now there’s a shifter story on the burner and a steampunk. If you write Romance, you aren’t necessarily stuck in one subgenre.
Tell us about your character’s family life?
Conte Salvesto Masello left his family about ten years before the story starts, presumably in disgrace, as he and a fellow monk were caught together. His lover stayed and repented, but Salvesto was forced to leave because he didn’t J. His family would have borne the disgrace but he truly wanted a more adventurous life than the one they had planned for him.
Amadeo’s parents are still alive at the start of the story, though Salvesto’s are not. Amadeo’s father is a cruel man. I’d like to explore more of his family in a sequel with his brothers and sisters, his mother.
Compare yourself to your main character.
Hmm. We’re all Italian; I’m a quarter Sicilian and a quarter Neapolitan. I’d love that Tuscan villa, as Salvesto does, and I’m a fan of the early Italian poets like Dante and Cecco Angliolieri, as Amadeo is.
Describe your past week as a type of landscape or a weather forecast.
Cloudy skies have been accumulating as deadlines begin to loom on the horizon, so we’ll have to keep a careful watch on those into the beginning of next week, as they are not going to simply go away.
Everyone knew everyone’s business in the small hilly honeycomb town of Siena. The house the Masello had once occupied for short periods during the year belonged to a rich merchant now. The eldest Masello had died in a hunting accident in the countryside, and his father, it was said, died of grief a year later. This event had brought the new conte home to the villa with the leaky roof, the broken-backed barn, and massive debt. Yet perhaps Conte Masello was not as bad off as they said, for he had paid Amadeo’s debt to Guelfetto.
Likely Amadeo was wrong about that, too, as the conte had traded for his freedom with silver dishes and spoons. Amadeo swallowed hard but could not dislodge the lump in his throat, a combination of gratitude and resentment. Life in a Florentine bathhouse and sexual slavery to the traditional enemies of Siena was no life at all. He shuddered. He had meant it about throwing himself on the tender mercy of the river.
What kind of master was the new Conte Masello? He glanced at the man beside him and found warm hazel eyes gazing down at him. His new master’s hair was as brown as chestnuts and touched with gray strands. Whatever he’d been doing while the family fortunes dwindled—soldiering, sailing, perhaps even tramping about in the New World—had made him a man with a face weathered by the sun and muscles that strained the seams of his fine clothes. He was broad-shouldered and a forearm’s length taller than Amadeo, who felt like a willow tree beside such an oak.
“We have another stop to make,” the conte whispered. “Finish your prayers.”
The hard press of the conte’s velvet-clad shoulder and the intimacy of his warm breath on Amadeo’s neck sent a small shock through him, and his cock stirred restlessly in response.
Oh no, you don’t. You are not to ruin this chance for me either. Pardon me, dear Saint Catherine. I pledge to you I will stay away from the gaming tables and this man’s bed.
Buy the book:
Heloise West, when not hunched over the keyboard plotting love and mahem, dreams about moving to a villa in Tuscany. She loves history, mysteries, and romance of all flavors. She travels and gardens with her partner of 10 years, and their home overflows with books, cats, art, and red wine.
Where to find the author:
Email: heloisewest@hotmail.com
Tour Dates & Stops:
15-Sep Bayou Book Junkie, Mikky’s World of Books, Velvet Panic,
22-Sep Happily Ever Chapter, The Novel Approach
29-Sep Bike Book Reviews, Cathy Brockman Romances, Hearts on Fire
6-Oct Prism Book Alliance
13-Oct Wake Up Your Wild Side, My Fiction Nook
20-Oct MM Good Book Reviews
27-Oct Divine Magazine
3-Nov Love Bytes
10-Nov V’s Reads
17-Nov Emotion in Motion
24-Nov Parker Williams
1-Dec BFD Book Blog
8-Dec Amanda C. Stone
15-Dec Inked Rainbow Reads
22-Dec Molly Lolly
29-Dec Jessie G. Books
Rafflecopter Prize: One of three copies of ‘If I Were Fire’
Congratulations, Heloise!
thank you! 🙂
Finally an author’s bio that could be me! I too want a villa in Tuscany and my home mirrors yours! I’ve developed a serious appreciation for mm historicals too.
lol good, because I’m getting ready to submit another one, set in the artists workshops of Medici Florence. 🙂
P.S. Congrats on the book!
Grazie!