A warm welcome to author Avon Gale joining us today here at Love Bytes to talk about her new release “Conversation Hearts”.
Avon also brought along a wonderful giveaway !
Welcome Avon 🙂

Conversation Hearts by Avon Gale
Published by Dreamspinner Press
Pages: 31
Cover Artist: Aaron Anderson
Release Date: February 10 th , 2016

Blurb:

It’s Valentine’s Day, and grad student–and male escort–Levi Barron expects to spend his evening with a client who’s paying him for his services in bed… not an assassin who needs to borrow the view from his hotel room in the morning.

With nothing to do but endure the company of his unwanted guest, Levi and the assassin, Sinjin, spend some time bonding over HGTV, minibar beverages, Flannery O’Connor short stories, terrible Valentine’s candy, and the necessity of lying about their jobs.

Their evening takes an unexpected turn when they decide to indulge in their mutual attraction, and in the morning Levi doesn’t know if he’s spent the night with a hired killer or a hydraulic engineer with a very specific fantasy. Either way, the two have enough chemistry–in and out of bed–that Levi isn’t sure one night with Sinjin will be enough.

And a message left in candy suggests the feeling is Mutual.

Buy Links:

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Short Stories

When I wrote “Conversation Hearts”, I really wanted to try my hand at writing a short story. It was originally for an anthology call with a word count requirement, so I knew it had to be a contained narrative in not a lot of words. And this is not easy for me because I’m super wordy, so it was something of a challenge to see if I could do it. One thing I love about short stories is that the relatively short build up often results in quite an emotional punch to the gut at the end.

I’ve mentioned that one of the inspirations for this story was Richard R. Stockton’s “The Lady, or The Tiger?”, which I recall reading in school when I was younger and the end of it always stuck with me. It’s sort of ambiguous and leaves the end up to the reader to decide, and I remember that was the first time I’d ever come across that concept before. Sure, I’d read “Choose Your Own Adventure” books, but those definitely had a decisive ending. Usually involving you falling down a well or being eaten by a monster. Who was writing these things, anyway? All I know is they were responsible for a lot of kids falling into volcanoes, ending up in dungeons or turning into toadstools back in the 80’s.

Anyway, the art of the short story is definitely not something with which I am comfortable writing but it is one of my favorite things to read. Levi’s studying Flannery O’Connor in the story, and makes a note of one of my favorites of hers, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” The premise of that story is about humanity and what it means to be a part of it, and how some truths are harder to face than others. There’s a bit of that going on in Levi and Sinjin’s story, too. Only with more banter and references to House Hunters, because banter is my weakness. And I do really like HGTV shows even though they’re all the same.

My favorite author, Shirley Jackson, wrote a great short story called “The Lottery” which is unsettling and creepy. The other stories in that collection with the same name are also excellent, and I highly recommend them. She manages to tell such a complex and involved story in so few words, the kind that stick with you long after you read them.

I’m a huge horror fan, and my favorite horror short story is called “One Thing About the Night” by Terry Dowling. I read this story a few years ago in a horror anthology, and it still freaks me out. It’s about a guy researching a “psychomanteum”, which is a room of mirrors that can supposedly be used to contact the dead. I think I shrieked out loud at the ending and it still gives me chills to think about it.

“Conversation Hearts” is more of a dark comedy than anything else, so probably not a lot of chills to be had. But I had a lot of fun writing it, and hopefully you’ll enjoy reading it! I love hearing what people think about the ending, so feel free to let me know if you think Sinjin was an assassin or a hydraulic engineer.

(And if you happen to be a hydraulic engineer, I promise I don’t think your job is really boring. If you’re an assassin, I saw nothing.)

If given a choice, Levi Barron would definitely prefer to have been stood up, rather than have a gun pointed at his head. His client for the evening was already two hours late, and just when it looked like Levi would be spending Valentine’s Day reading some poorly articulated thoughts of college freshmen about Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, he heard the unmistakable sound of a door opening. Levi put a bit more Southern in his Georgia accent as he went to meet his client—only to find himself greeting the business end of a gun. “Well,” the guy said, sighing. “This is awkward.” Levi couldn’t seem to breathe. He’d heard stories about this kind of thing happening (and he’d maybe, once or twice, watched a few similar-yet-sexy versions of this exact scenario on RedTube), but the reason Levi’s agency rented a room in a luxury hotel in downtown Nashville wasn’t just for client comfort. It was also so that Levi and his colleagues didn’t end up robbed or sold into sex slavery. “I don’t have any money,” Levi said immediately, raising his hands even though the man hadn’t told him to do anything with them. “The agency handles all of the financial transactions. Even, uh, gratuity.” That Levi was a poor graduate student in American Literature being robbed at gunpoint was sort of hilariously depressing. The guy lowered the gun. “What? I’m not here to rob you, for fuck’s sake.” Oh God. Suddenly being a sex slave didn’t sound as appealing as those videos implied it would be. “Are you going to kidnap me and sell me to a sex dungeon?” Worst. Valentine’s. Day. Ever. “Are those actually real? I thought they just existed on RedTube.” The gunman, dressed in black with equally dark hair and eyes, looked kind of like Edgar Allan Poe. Only without the creepy mustache. Levi couldn’t believe this was really happening. At some point he expected cameras and a television reveal, followed in a few days by an uncomfortable meeting with the English department about his choice in part-time jobs. “Are you going to kill me?” The man grimaced. “I’d rather not. Look, I just need to borrow the window for a few minutes in the morning. No reason anyone has to die.” The man paused. “Anyone other than the… never mind.” He set something down on the ground. Either the guy was going to pull a violin out of there and serenade Levi, or it was a rifle case. Rifle case. Windows. Gun. Shady guy dressed in black, skulking around and breaking into hotel rooms. Levi’s uninvited guest was an assassin. “You’re going to kill someone on Valentine’s Day?” Levi made a face, even as he backed away and glanced anxiously toward the window. “That’s awful. What are you, evil Cupid?” “Technically I’m not going to kill anyone until tomorrow,” quoth the raven. His voice went flat and cold. “But if you keep asking me questions, I might change my mind. Now sit down and let me think.” Levi sat.

Avon Gale wrote her first story at the age of seven, about a “Space Hat” hanging on a rack and waiting for that special person to come along and purchase it — even if it was a bit weirder than the other, more normal hats. Like all of Avon’s characters, the space hat did get its happily ever after — though she’s pretty sure it was with a unicorn. She likes to think her vocabulary has improved since then, but the theme of quirky people waiting for their perfect match is still one of her favorites.

Avon grew up in the southern United States, and now lives with her very patient husband in a liberal midwestern college town. When she’s not writing, she’s either doing some kind of craft project that makes a huge mess, reading, watching horror movies, listening to music or yelling at her favorite hockey team to get it together, already. Avon is always up for a road trip, adores Kentucky bourbon, thinks nothing is as stress relieving as a good rock concert and will never say no to candy.

At one point, Avon was the mayor of both Jazzercise and Lollicup on Foursquare. This tells you basically all you need to know about her as a person.

Find Avon:

@Facebook||   @avongalewrites.com|| @twitter || bourbon and candy (avon’s mailing list)

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