A warm welcome to author Lou Sylvre joining us today for her blog tour on new release “Falling Snow on Snow”.
Lou talks about a market place in Seattle and she also brought with her a giveaway to participate in!
Welcome Lou 🙂
Hello Love Bytes readers! For my Falling Snow on Snow blog tour stop here today I’m talking about Pike Place Market in Seattle, the place Beck Justice and Oleg Abramov meet and fall in love. For those of you who’ve read some of my other books, you may remember this is not the first time I’ve put a couple of sexy characters in the market. Luki Vasquez and Sonny James have had some doings there too. At least three times.
First, In Delsyn’s Blues (Vasquez and James #2), they’re on a very special shopping errand. The things they see in the market on the way are not at all fictional. The shop they stop at is made up, but if it were real it would fit right in, I think.
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“Let’s eat,” Luki said, and Sonny raised no objections. He also didn’t object when Luki peeled off his raincoat and made Sonny put it on. He let Luki—far more a man of the city—take his hand and, artfully dodging despite his wounded leg, pull him through the rain and across the street in a zigzag jaywalk. They threaded through a crowd of tourists ogling a large, bronze pig statue and took shelter in Pike Place Market, a place halfway between a multi-storied farmer’s market and a boutique mall, a Seattle landmark. Inside a collection of conjoined buildings—including a former hotel, a one-time drugstore, and the original Market building—shops lined both sides of the wide halls on every level. Among them, on street level, a bistro served sandwiches and, judging by the aromas, rich, hot coffee. It seemed made to order for hungry men on a rainy day.
On the way to the bistro they watched the men at the famous fish market tossing huge fish between them, also a Seattle tradition. A dozen people stood in line to be served, another dozen snapped pictures and took video with their cell phones. Sonny and Luki picked their way through, trying to not to get in anybody’s picture, and moved on toward the bistro. On the way they glanced into the window of an understated little shop on the right. Letters had been painted on the window in an arch, the old-fashioned way. “Bailey Swanson, Metalsmith,” the sign said.
There on a swath of midnight velvet lay two rings, each a perfect image of the other—one yellow gold, one gleaming white.
“Look at that, Luki.”
“I know. Let’s go in.”
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Now, some not so very nice stuff happened at Pike Place Market for Luki and Sonny too, (because hey, that series is romantic suspense) and I won’t go into that, but for their tenth wedding anniversary both of them secretly shopped there for the other. Sweet, right?
But for Beck, in Falling Snow on Snow, the Market is his livelihood. He’s a busker, moving from place to place in the maze of halls to play his guitar for tips. That tradition is very real, and always a treat for shoppers. My favorite musical memory of the Market was a couple playing hammered dulcimers on a landing in a back stairwell. The acoustics were amazing, like sound sorcery.
Unfortunately, Beck is lonely and not at all in love with the holidays, and he doesn’t think the life of a Pike Place Market busker is all that sweet in December. To help get through the long days with their long, enforced breaks between busking spots, he often brings a book with him—one of the gay romances left behind by an ex-boyfriend.
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When George had left him for greener pastures—green as in money—he’d left behind a few things. Not much, because while they’d been together, they’d mostly lived—like many of the homeless—in one or another of the tent cities in Seattle, and it was hard to accumulate much in the way of belongings while living that kind of life. The villages of tents weren’t permanent, and when the lease was up, so to speak, a person had to be ready to move on. But George had liked to read when he wasn’t panhandling, and he’d amassed a paperback fortune consisting of Lord of the Rings, three of Jane Austen’s novels, and eleven gay romance novels.
Beck hadn’t read any of them while George was still around. For inexplicable reasons, he’d schlepped them around with him during the months between George’s desertion and Dooley’s rescue, and when he got his apartment, he’d made a shelf for them next to his bed out of a plastic crate he’d found at Value Village, and then he’d finally started reading them. Having individual love-hate relationships with each of the books, he was currently working his way through them for the third time. He liked the way he fell in love with the characters every time. He dreaded the way he felt so much more alone when he reached the end.
On a break during Thursday that week, he finished one, and consequently he felt irritable, unsettled, and basically shitty. Then he started to play, and if it wasn’t bad enough he had to play trite Christmas songs, some smartass designer-shoe-wearing teenager had started hollering lyrics at the top of his unpleasant voice, driving away anybody who might have been tempted to toss a few bills into his guitar case.
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But in an unguarded moment, when the holidays and their repetitive and (in Beck’s jaded opinion) trite music aren’t driving him crazy, the Market’s musical magic gives a lift to Beck’s guitar, and to Oleg’s voice, too, when he joins in. It weaves their lives together with its spell, and though their united fortunes have their ups and downs, after their enchantment, love is, apparently, fated.
If you’re ever in Seattle, wander around the market for an afternoon. Find some music, visit the small shops, eat at a bistro like Luki and Sonny, or follow Beck and Oleg upstairs to Storyville for coffee and sweets. Watch the fish market men tossing fish. Get your picture taken with the pig. And if you bring a lover or find one there…
Could be magical, right?
Thanks for reading. Be sure you enter the rafflecopter giveaway! And I hope you’ll join me at some of the other tour stops. It’s been a pleasure to be here today—thanks for hosting me Love Bytes!
Blurb:
Beck Justice knows holiday sparkle and snappy carols only mask December’s cruel, black heart. He learned that lesson even before he landed on the streets eight years ago, and his recent step up to a tiny apartment and a busker’s permit for Seattle’s Pike Place Market has done nothing to change his mind. But one day in the market, Oleg Abramov joins his ethereal voice to Beck’s guitar, and Beck glimpses light in his bleak, dark winter.
Oleg, lucky to have a large and loving family, believes Beck could be the man to fill the void that nevertheless remains in his life. The two men step out on a path toward love, but it proves as slippery as Seattle’s icy streets. Just when they get close, a misunderstanding shatters their hopes. Light and harmony are still within reach, but only if they choose to believe, risk their hearts, and trust.
Buy Links:
Lou Sylvre lives and writes on the rainy side of Washington State, penning mostly suspense/romance novels because she can’t resist giving her characters hard times but good love. Her personal assistant is Boudreau, a large cat who never outgrew his kitten meow, and he makes a point of letting her know when she’s taken a plot tangent too far. Apparently an English major, he helps a lot, but Lou refuses to put his name on the byline. (Boudreau invites readers to give their feedback as well!) When Lou isn’t writing, she’s reading fiction from nearly every genre, romance in all its tints and shades, and the occasional book about history, physics, or police procedure. Not zombies, though—she avoids zombies like the plague unless they have a great sense of humor. She plays guitar (mostly where people can’t hear her) and she loves to sing. She’s most often smiling and laughs too much, some say. Among other things and in no particular order, she loves her family, her friends, the aforementioned Boudreau, his sister George, and their little brother Nibbles, a chihuahua named Joe, a dachshund named Chloe, and a slew of chihuahua/dachshund puppies. She takes pleasure in coffee, chocolate, sunshine, gardens, wild roses, and every beautiful thing in the world.
Blog:
http://www.sylvre.rainbow-gate.com
https://www.facebook.com/AuthorLouSylvre
Twitter:
@sylvre (https://twitter.com/Sylvre)
Goodreads
www.goodreads.com/author/show/4873260.Lou_Sylvre
lou.sylvre@gmail.com
- December 16 – MM Good Book Reviews (An interview with Beck Justice.)
- December 21 – Oh My Shelves (A Little Love for Oleg Abramov.)
- December 23 – Prism Book Alliance (An author interview)
- December 23 – Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words (An exclusive excerpt)
- December 27 – Two Chicks Obsessed with Books and Eye Candy Oleg and Beck interview the author!
- December 28 – Love Bytes
- December 29 – Alpha Book Reviews (And epic playlist)
- December 30 – Dreamspinner Press Blog
- December 31 – Aisling Mancy
Thank you for hosting me on my tour!