A warm welcome to author E.Davies joining us today to talk about new release “Flaunt”.
E. Shares a very interesting guestpost with us , an excerpt and their is a giveaway to participate in!
Welcome E. 🙂
Title: Flaunt
Author: E.Davies
Release Date: January 31st 2017
Genre: Contemporary MM Romance
BLURB
“He’s waiting for me to ask, and I’m afraid.”
“I’m just one more gay guy here.”
Moving to the suburbs of L.A. was supposed to give Nic Montero a fresh start. After escaping his family, coming out as a gay trans man, and excelling in computer programming out of desperation to get financially stable or die, everything should be easy. But joining gay culture now, post-transition, feels impossible… until he runs into the force of nature that is Kyle. Everything Nic isn’t, Kyle embodies. Green hair, garters and cut-off shorts, sports jerseys, and all, brash Kyle is the most gorgeous man he’s ever laid eyes on, and he pulls Nic headlong into the center of his world. If only Nic felt like enough for a man like Kyle.
“One-night stands are my only option.”
Loud, loving, and too much for most men to handle, Kyle Everett catches eyes and occasionally scorn… even at his job at the local HIV charity, Plus. His days and nights are spent at work, his precious spare moments spent with his son, Kevin, when it’s his turn to co-parent, or his best friend, drag queen River. He only has money or time for cheap flings, but the lanky otter who walks into his life makes Kyle want to hold him for longer than a night. He knows what it’s like for Nic to be without a family, but he isn’t brave enough to let this man into his life… until his charity is targeted by bigots, and Nic’s there for him.
“I’ll stay with you if you’re brave enough to be you.”
Nic spent his twenties avoiding family and even his own femininity, but his yearning is impossible to ignore. Kyle’s used to flying solo, but Nic offers him safety and fills gaps in his life he never realized existed and now can’t stand. Living in close proximity, they can’t run from their attraction, but they’re each used to being rejected, with the emotional scars to prove it. Can two men who feel like they’re not enough and too much find something just right?
Flaunt is a steamy, stand-alone gay romance novel with a HEA ending and no cliffhanger.
Purchase: Amazon US | Amazon UK
Flaunt: That One Missing Puzzle Piece
First, thank you for hosting me on this blog! I’m Ed Davies, and I’ve written twenty novels—including, most recently, Flaunt. When I was asked about my inspiration and characters for Flaunt, I had to smile. Every book has its own unique story of how it came to be—the moment characters or plot came together to create a story that had to be told.
Dreaming up Flaunt was a long process, and I was stuck for a while before the one missing puzzle piece gave me the spark. That piece was Kyle… or my inspiration behind him!
How Nic came to be… I’d known for a long time that I wanted to write Nic’s story. I enjoyed writing Grind, my other book with a trans main character, and I was fairly sure I wanted Nic to be trans. I wasn’t sure what stage of transition he would have reached, or how he’d feel about it at that point, but I knew I didn’t want the story to center on his transition. It’s an important piece of his life, but many trans characters aren’t given the dignity to have a full story and character growth that isn’t completely centered on transition—and, inevitably, physical transition. I did know a few other pieces of his story—that he’d left an unaccepting family, that this left him still feeling occasionally that he wasn’t enough, but that he was strong and tenacious enough to pursue the future he needed.
A guy like Nic needed someone really special who could bring him out of his shell without treating him like he’s delicate or taking for granted how far he’s already come by the beginning of the story. Nic also wouldn’t have the energy or patience to try to teach someone the 101 of how to deal with trans people—how to refer to him in the past (still “he”), to call him a trans man and not a trans just like one wouldn’t call a gay person a gay, those sorts of details. He wouldn’t deal with disrespect, either, having experienced a cheating relationship, but he also wouldn’t be hung up on emotional baggage from that past relationship. Who the heck could fit Nic’s needs?
And then, Kyle…
As I said above, I already had some small aspects of Kyle’s personality decided, but I was missing everything else. And then, at a small Pride festival last year, there was a guy about my own age with bright green hair, garters, and cut-offs. Boom: Kyle popped into my head. It made complete sense to pair Nic with someone who was so loud, out-there, and unapologetic that he could inspire Nic to get back in touch with pieces of himself he wasn’t fully comfortable with.
From this small visual cue, everything else flooded in: Kyle’s gregarious personality, and then his commitment to his work—which would place him in the best position to know a lot about the LGBT community. He could also advocate for realistic safer sex, showing by example (as most of my characters do) how to negotiate condom use and testing status. Plus, his profession could show how little many mainstream LGBT activist organizations know about trans people. He reminds me of many gay and queer men who are incredibly passionate about the work they do, and fight bureaucracy and ignorance on behalf of all of us every day. Really, coming up with Kyle was more like being introduced to a character than creating one! The hardest thing to decide was which of them to make trans, if not both—I stuck with just Nic in the end, but it was a close call!
Putting them together…
Once these two characters met, it was inevitable that the opposite aspects of their personalities would attract each other. Nic wanting someone to show him how to be the kind of man he wants to be, Kyle wanting to share the burden of his busy life with someone, and both of them needing each other in various practical and emotional ways… it’s easy to see the plot forming from there.
Dreaming up Flaunt was an absolute joy. I hope you enjoy reading it and meeting these men with whom I’ve spent so much time!
“Welcome to our headquarters! Er, not that we have other locations. Not full-time, anyway. Don’t worry about being late. I’m not even ready. I’m so sorry.” This had to be Kyle— the voice on the intercom matched this peppy yet sibilant, rapid-fire speech.
“I— that’s fine,” Nic assured Kyle with a quiet laugh. He was relieved not to be in trouble for showing up late, nor for showing up in formalwear when everyone else was probably going casual. “GPS pointed me the wrong way.”
“Oh, they do that! Right this way, please.” Kyle scanned his card against a reader near the staircase door. When he twirled to hold the staircase door open, his skirt flared out a little.
Kyle was wearing a skirt, over men’s skinny jeans and boots, and a blouse, and chest hair peeked out from the top of the blouse, his biceps unmistakeable. And his suspenders reached under the skirt, presumably to his jeans waistband. It made Nic wonder if he was wearing garters, which was a wholly inappropriate thought for their first meeting.
He awkwardly stepped through the doorway and Kyle brushed past him to trot upstairs at top speed, already talking again.
GIVEAWAY:
Win a $25 Amazon giftcard and 2 x Flaunt ebooks
E. Davies was proficient in real estate ad shorthand (the old-fashioned newspaper kind) by the age of nine. Growing up moving constantly taught him what people have in common, the ways relationships are formed, and the dangers of “miscellaneous” boxes.
As a teen, he tore through a stack of found romance novels, wishing someone had written similar for M/M, though he could never find anything at Chapters or the library. Just after graduating university in 2013, semi-out and clutching his English B.A. for dear life, he stumbled on an Amazon M/M short story. It was a whole new… phrase he dares not repeat for fear of lawyers. It shone and shimmered splendidly, though.
After failing forty times to avoid crafting happily-ever-after endings for steamy short stories, he plunged into romance novels and hasn’t looked back. As a young gay author whose formative gay fictional role models were characters punished for their sexuality, Ed prefers his stories lightly dramatic, full of optimism and hope.
Now out and proud, he writes full-time, goes on long nature walks, tries to fill his passport, drinks piña coladas on the beach, flees from cute guys, coos over fuzzy animals (especially bees), and is liable to tilt his head and click his tongue if you don’t use your turn signal.
To find out when E. Davies has a new release, you can subscribe to his newsletter.
Without a blog host like you Valentines wouldn’t be the same! Enjoy the day.
Thank you for giving us an idea on how the story came about. I like to hear authors tell behind the scenes stories about their books.
congrats on the new release
Thank you so much for participating in the tour xx
Thanks for the post and congrats. It sounds great. I’ve been wanting to read more stories with trans characters to learn more about that.