On Love Bytes today we have author Alysia Constantine with her blog tour of Sweet.

Welcome to the blog, Alysia!

Author Name: Alysia Constantine

Book Name: Sweet

Release Date: February 4, 2016

Pages or Words: 246 pages

Publisher: Interlude Press

Cover Artist: C.B. Messer

Blurb:

Not every love story is a romance novel.

For Jules Burns, a lonely baker, it is the memory of his deceased husband, Andy. For Teddy Flores, a numbed-to-the-world accountant who accidentally stumbles into his bakery, it is a voyage of discovery into his deep connections to pleasure, to the world, and to his own heart.

Alysia Constantine’s Sweet is also the story of how we tell stories—of what we expect and need from a love story. The narrator is on to you, Reader, and wants to give you a love story that doesn’t always fit the bill. There are ghosts to exorcise, and jobs and money to worry about. Sweet is a love story, but it also reminds us that love is never quite what we expect, nor quite as blissfully easy as we hope.

Praise for ‘Sweet’ by Alysia Constantine from Publisher’s Weekly

Categories: Contemporary, Fiction, Gay Fiction, M/M Romance, Romance

Character interview: ‘Trice Walker

What’s your job like?

I am the assistant to a pastry chef. My job is like covering my naked body in cotton candy and running through a field of bunnies. That also has ants in it. Sometimes, I come home and the smell of sugar is so strong on me I want to vomit. But most days I think I’m pretty lucky. I mean, Jules and I have a pretty good rhythm in the kitchen, and I can boss him into letting me drink espresso and do the crossword at the front counter instead of chopping walnuts and helping him look for his lost masculinity in the back kitchen. I could be paid more, but I just make it up by drinking as much cappuccino as I can.

Would you rather be respected or feared? Why?

Well, that’s a hard question to answer, because I am both respected and feared as it is. I like being respected and feared. Fear is respect, isn’t it? Fear says, I respect the fact that you can gnaw my head off or smother me with your forearm. I like that.

What’s your favorite book?

If I say Sweet, is that cheating, since I’m in it? Cheating? Okay, then, Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson. I know you expect me to say Maya Angelou or Toni Morrison, or some lit-student-pat answer like that. But it’s Winterson. First of all, it’s by a lesbian, for lesbians. Secondly, it’s sex and violence all mashed together. Thirdly, I just love the language; it’s like jazz. The other writer I really love is Audre Lorde—her poetry is perfect, and I really loved Zami, but The Cancer Journals just breaks my heart every time I read it. It’s smart, beautiful, heartbreaking, and truthful. I love a strong, smart, fearless woman like Audre Lorde.

If you could go anywhere, all expenses paid, where would you go?

If I could go anywhere, I’d probably go somewhere I have no hope of ever going, like somewhere in Australia, or Africa. But I have always wanted to see the Northern lights, and Scotland sounds so cool, except for the bad food. I think I would probably need to go somewhere with good food. Wait. Can it be anywhere? Is this a trick question? Should I have said I would shrink myself and visit a brain cell, or go somewhere in outer space?

Tell us a bit about yourself.

My name is LaTrice, but I ask people to call me ‘Trice. I’m a baker’s assistant, but in my spare time, I’m a fiction writer, and I’m developing a career as a private chef. I’m a shark at pool. I’ve had two stories published in journals. I failed out of college, but on purpose (a story for another day). I have a birthmark on my left thigh. I love Brussels sprouts to an unnatural degree. Six of these facts are actually true.

“Speakerphone.”

“What?”

“Speakerphone. Put me on speaker so you can use your hands. You’re going to need both hands, and I won’t be held responsible for you mucking up your phone. Speaker.”

Teddy set his phone on the counter and switched to the speaker, then stood waiting.

“Hello?” Jules said. “Is this thing on?”

“Sorry,” Teddy said. “I’m still here.”

“It sounded like you’d suddenly disappeared. I was starting to believe in the rapture,” Jules said, and Teddy heard, again, the nervous chuckle.

Their conversation was awkward and full of strange pauses in which there was nothing right to say, and they focused mostly on how awkward and strange it was until Jules told Teddy to dump the almond paste on the counter and start to knead in the sugar.

“I’m doing it, too, along with you,” Jules said.

“I’m not sure whether that makes it more or less weird,” Teddy admitted, dusting everything in front of him with sugar.

“It’s just like giving a back rub,” Jules told him. “Roll gently into the dough with the heel of your hand, lean in with your upper body. Think loving things. Add a little sugar each time—watch for when it’s ready for more. Not too much at once.”

Several moments passed when all that held their connection was a string of huffed and effortful breaths and the soft thump of dough. Teddy felt Jules pressing and leaning forward into his work, felt the small sweat and ache that had begun to announce itself in Jules’s shoulders, felt it when he held his breath as he pushed and then exhaled in a rush as he flipped the dough, felt it all as surely as if Jules’s body were there next to him, as if he might reach to the side and, without glancing over, brush the sugar from Teddy’s forearm, a gesture which might have been, if real, if the result of many long hours spent in the kitchen together, sweet and familiar and unthinking.

“My grandmother and I used to make this,” Jules breathed after a long silence, “when I was little. Mine would always become flowers. She would always make hers into people.”

Teddy understood that he needn’t reply, that Jules was speaking to him, yes, but speaking more into the empty space in which he stood as a witness, talking a story into the evening around him, and he, Teddy, was lucky to be near, to listen in as the story spun itself out of Jules and into the open, open quiet.

When the dough was finished and Jules had interrupted himself to say, “There, mine’s pretty done. I bet yours is done by now, too,” Teddy nodded in agreement—and even though he knew Jules couldn’t see him, he was sure Jules would sense him nodding through some miniscule change in his breathing or the invisible tension between them slackening just the slightest bit. And he did seem to know, because Jules paused and made a satisfied noise that sounded as if all the spring-coiled readiness had slid from his body. “This taste,” Jules sighed, “is like Proust’s madeleine.”

They spent an hour playing with the dough and molding it into shapes they wouldn’t reveal to each other. Teddy felt childish and happy and inept and far too adult all at once as he listened to the rhythmic way Jules breathed and spoke, the way his voice moved in and out of silence, like the advance and retreat of shallow waves that left in their wake little broken treasures on the shore.

Only his fingers moved, fumbling and busy and blind as he listened, his whole self waiting for Jules to tell him the next thing, whatever it might be.

Buy the book:

Interlude Press

Amazon

ARe

Alysia Constantine lives in Brooklyn with her wife, their two dogs, and a cat. When she is not writing, she is a professor at an art college. Before that, she was a baker and cook for a caterer, and before that, she was a poet.

Sweet is her first novel.

Where to find the author:

Blog

Twitter: @ConstantAlysia

Facebook

Tumblr

Goodreads

Tour Dates & Stops:

4-Feb: Scattered Thoughts & Rogue Words, Book Lovers 4Ever, Hearts on Fire

5-Feb: A.M. Leibowitz, Love Bytes, Bayou Book Junkie

8-Feb: Fangirl Moments and My Two Cents, Divine Magazine, MM Good Book Reviews

9-Feb: Sinfully Addicted to All Male Romance, Kirsty Loves Books, Just Love Romance

10-Feb: Happily Ever Chapter, My Fiction Nook, Havan Fellows

11-Feb: V’s Reads, Kiki’s Kinky Picks, Lee Brazil, Elisa – My Reviews and Ramblings

12-Feb: Jessie G. Books, 3 Chicks After Dark, Book Reviews and More by Kathy

15-Feb: Wicked Faerie’s Tales and Reviews, Three Books Over the Rainbow, BFD Book Blog

16-Feb: Dawn’s Reading Nook, Inked Rainbow Reads

17-Feb: Prism Book Alliance, Up All Night, Read All Day, Molly Lolly, Alpha Book Club

Rafflecopter Prize: $25 Interlude Press gift card to one winner, e-copies of ‘Sweet’ to five additional winners

a Rafflecopter giveaway