A warm welcome to author Peter Grover joining us today to talk about his release “The Weather Baker’s Son”, part of the Worlds of Love collection from Dreamspinner Press
Welcome Peter 🙂
The Weather Baker’s Son by Peter Grover
Thank you Love Bytes for having me on your blog!
The World of Love project by Dreamspinner intends to evoke romance mixed with genuine local color. The reader can be delighted by those places, scents and sounds that are inherent to a foreign place.
Having spent much time in France and notably at a vacation home in southern France I have vivid memories of many charming towns, great people, and quirky adventures. Some of these are found in my book, such as the “famous perching dog” or the baker that can foretell changes in the weather.
I thought I would however take the opportunity to emphasize one enchanting sight, namely, the fields of bright red poppies known in French as coquelicots.
These flowers were especially a welcome sight for winter-weary Canadians in spring. There were also the irises we would gather and with which we would cover the dining table as well as the brilliant, golden fields of rapeseed flowers with their honeyed scent and swarms of happy bees. However, those intoxicating poppies above all represent for me the sensuality of France. From their silky ruby petals like the red lips of 50’s movie stars to their propensity to sway or dance in a breeze, their presence demanded constant attention, So much so that I have indulged their presence in my book at critical junctures, such as the following excerpt which I have started in the middle of an action so as not to give away too much:
“He felt dirty, needed to get away, and stammering out a hurried good-bye and something about being needed back at the shop, he quickly left. He took the shortcut through the meadows between the playing field and the town, picking up his pace until he was in a quick run.
As he ran through the meadows, hundreds of tall red poppies, coquelicots, swayed in the breeze created by his onrush, slapping back against his calves gently like hundreds of red lips, caressing his passage in a sensuous undulating stream. In the distance, vibrant golden fields of rapeseed beckoned and upon his approach released their syrupy sweet fragrance under the crush of his passing feet, dozens of drunken bees flying away from his passage.
He was oblivious to these sensuous calls of nature. He felt ashamed, perverted.”
I hope the reader through the descriptions of the countryside and the people will relive with me the amazing sights of this warm, exotic and sensuous part of France. They form an enchanting backdrop to the growing passion between two young men, a local and a vacationer who first run into each other one day at the market.
Blurb:
Nature’s call of desire among golden fields and intoxicating red-lipped poppies seems to proclaim a path to love and healing in southern France. Yet Peter, an American university student struggling with self-doubt following a failed love affair, is determined never to be hurt again. While on a vacation with his widowed mother, Peter is smitten by Gaston, a handsome local baker. Gaston, less bold than Peter, is drawn to Peter as well but fearful of the loss of family esteem—particularly the respect of his cousin Mario, who looks up to Gaston. Their friendship grows into more as Peter continues to visit the bakery, but their increasing intimacy does not go unnoticed. The road to fulfillment becomes increasingly obscured, and internal doubts and external events spiral out of control. The arrival of a handsome stranger, suspicions of murder, and the threat of harm might spell the end of more than just their relationship.
World of Love: Stories of romance that span every corner of the globe.
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Peter Grover has received no end of inspiration from his life with his husband and a gaggle of ghosts in a Gothic Victorian house. Peter has now arisen from a pile of dusty law books to relaunch his background in languages and literature, early passions before his career. Combining these passions with his many travels for work and pleasure has allowed him to illustrate local poetry, arts and landscapes that draw the reader into other, often exotic worlds. Peter loves to hike the deserts and mountains of the Southwest US in the winter while enjoying the lush scenery and lakes of Central Canada in the summer.