Today we say welcome to author Suki Fleet. Suki talks to us about the music that inspired her new release “Foxes” and she brought along a giveaway for our readers !

Welcome Suki 🙂

Dear Love Bytes, thank you so much for having me 🙂

I’m going to talking a little bit about the songs that inspired Foxes.

My early inspiration for this story came from listening to the song Common People by Pulp while walking past the ridiculously expensive spectacle that is Harrods in London.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuTMWgOduFM

Living in poverty is something far too many people face every day of their lives.

Mickey by Toni Basil

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NW7VnHnX3LQ

I kinda love this one, plus it has a punky cheerleader video—I mean, what’s not to love :p  The chorus was my inspiration for Micky—all sparkly and brightly alive. Especially for the first time Danny sees Micky and is completely taken with him.

Little Fluffy Clouds by The Orb.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTxg-15TfHg

As well as being generally obsessed with the sky, this song reminds me of growing up. I had a conversation with my sister’s partner sometimes after he read This is Not a Love Story, and from talking about homelessness we somehow ended up talking about the deserts he’d visited in America. “Big skies, you know,” he said, and those words plus this song inspired a whole plot turn that had me researching the Mojave Desert.

Publisher: Dreamspinner Press

Length: 274 pages

Release Date: February 8 th, 2016

Cover Artist: AngstyG

Blurb:

When Dashiel’s body is found dumped on an East London wasteland, his best friend Danny sets out to find the killer. But Danny finds interaction difficult and must keep his world small in order to survive. By day he lives in an abandoned swimming pool and fixes electrical devices to trade for supplies, but by night, alone, he hunts sharks—a reckless search for dangerous men who prey on the vulnerable.

A chance meeting with an American boy selling himself on the streets throws this lonely existence into disarray. Micky is troubled, fragile, and Danny feels a desperate need to protect him—from what, he doesn’t know. As Danny discovers more about Micky, he realizes that what Micky needs saving from is the one thing Danny can’t help him fight against.

To save Micky, Danny must risk expanding his world and face something that scares him more than any shark ever could: trusting he will be accepted for who he is. If a freezing winter on the streets, a sadistic doctor, and three thousand miles don’t tear them apart first, that is.

THE BOY I’m watching from my street corner looks a little like Dashiel, with his large dark eyes and messy mop of dark hair. It’s the only reason I followed him here. There are plenty of other boys—and girls—selling the only thing they have left to sell, risking themselves out here tonight.

I wish I could watch all the sharks who circle these streets. I wish I could destroy them. But I can’t. I can’t.

After about ten minutes, the boy is practically begging to get in the car with the shark. He just wants it over with. He doesn’t understand what’s going on and why the man is fucking him around.

I wonder if this is how it happened with Dashiel—if he knew he was going to die, and at that point he just wanted it over with.

My heart lurches. Hurts. I squeeze my eyes shut and focus on the crumpled notepad gripped in my shaking hands. I focus on the reason I’m wandering the streets in the middle of the night doing this.

For him.

The pain slowly lessens, though it doesn’t leave me. Perhaps it never will.

When the car starts up with them both inside, I pull myself together enough to make a note of the make and registration. I note the car is a saloon with a boot big enough to stuff a body in. I mark the color as just dark. It’s hard to reliably gauge the true color of anything in the glaring streetlights. Even the falling snow looks orange. From the registration I can tell the car is new, and the engine has a quiet electric purr.

They pass right by me, so close I think I might catch the boy’s eye. I sink farther into the shadows as I scribble down a brief description of the shark and the direction they head off in.

When I see him in profile in the passenger seat, the boy looks old enough to be legal. Most of the boys and girls selling themselves around here don’t, and they aren’t. Most of them are so, so young.

I wish I could help the boy. I wish I could help them all. But all I can do is grit my teeth and hope that tomorrow he’s not another body dumped on the wasteland.

Buy Links:

Amazon.UK

Amazon

Dreamspinner Press

ARe

Suki Fleet grew up on a boat and as a small child spent a lot of time travelling at sea with her family. She has always wanted to be a writer. As a kid she told ghost stories to scare people, but stories about romance were the ones that inspired her to sit down and write. She doesn’t think she’ll ever stop writing them.

Her novel This is Not a Love Story won Best Gay Debut in the 2014 Rainbow Awards and was a finalist in the 2015 Lambda Awards.

Links

Email: sukifleet@gmail.com

https://www.facebook.com/suki.fleet.3

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7919609.Suki_Fleet

http://sukifleet.tumblr.com/

http://sukifleet.wordpress.com/

https://twitter.com/SukiFleet?lang=en

Suki brought along a ecopy of Foxes to giveaway!

Leave a comment on this blog post to have a chance to win 🙂

( contest ends feb 20 th )

Good luck!