Love bytes welcomes the next author in their GRL Featured Blogger tour : Miss Christina E. Pilz.
Christina talks to us about Yuri on Ice , shares the info of her series and brought with her a giveaway for our readers.
Welcome Christina 🙂

Confessions of a Yuri on Ice Lover

by

Christina E. Pilz

I was recently introduced to Yuri on Ice. Since the characters are two-dimensional, they’re not real to me, at least not real in the way that, say Starsky and Hutch are real. You know what I mean

Here’s the premise: Yuri is a young competitive skater from Japan who has a crush on a Russian skater named Viktor. It’s when Viktor comes to be Yuri’s coach that the fun really begins. There’s the Grand Prix Finals to get ready for, and each episode tells of Yuri’s progress, and that of his direct rival, Yurio. (Yurio is my secret favorite because he’s so beautiful and protective of his fangirls, who he pretends to loathe.)

I’ve watched the series twice now, trying to determine what made me fall in love with it, which I have, with Yuri, with skating, with Japanese animation, everything. I sigh over the beauty and the music and the movement. I cheer when the skaters do well, laugh when Yurio loses his temper and growls at everybody, and sigh again with pleasure when Viktor and Yuri exchange rings.

But the main thing I love about it is that, unlike every other movie or TV show out there, Yuri on Ice never falls into the trap of being simply about the characters doing destructive things to the competition or anything predictable like that.

The characters only want to improve their personal best. They might envy another character’s success, but they never wish them ill. There are no attempts to corner any skater in a locker room to beat him up so he can’t skate. No, the story is about the beauty of the skaters as they fall in love, and make friends, and eat pork cutlet bowls.

I am surprised that I like Yuri on Ice, seeing as it’s the antitheses to my Oliver & Jack series, which in addition to having no skating, contains all the darkness that is nowhere to be found in Yuri on Ice. What Oliver and Jack go through would never happen to Yuri, or Yurio, or Viktor, or even J. J.

I am mean to my characters. I beat them. I starve them. I torture them, and lock them in small dark rooms. I put them in harm’s way by leaving them tied up in an ancient, rotting hulk on the bank of the Thames River to wait for the tide to come in, and much more, besides.

I’m currently working on the sixth book in the series, called Oliver & Jack: In London Towne, which should be ready for readers by the time GRL happens in October 2017. And though the series will end Happily Ever After, there’s already enough torture and mayhem to satisfy my readers who have come to expect such things from me.

But here’s the thing. I don’t want it to end. I want to keep being mean to Oliver and to Jack, and make them each watch while the other one suffers, and I’m okay with that. Currently I’m working on shorter stories about Oliver and Jack so I can share the scenes that didn’t make it into the final cut. For example, there’s a bit about a funeral reception to which Oliver is invited. He, in turn, invites Jack, who is a straight-talking fellow and suffers no fool gladly, least of all anybody who would besmirch Oliver’s good name. Yes, Jack causes a scene, and couldn’t give a rat’s arse.

But back to the HEA for Oliver and Jack. It might be that since I’m getting close to the end that something like Yuri on Ice appeals to me in a way that it would not have before. Japanese skating boys are completely different than my long-suffering Victorian lads.

I have found it inspiring, as well, to watch young love blossom without anything in their world trying to hurt them. Sure, Viktor’s old coach thinks that Viktor is wasting his time on Yuri and should come back to skating. Sure, Yurio thinks that Viktor is wasting his time on Yuri and should be coaching him instead! But there are no threats, though there is some shouting, and there is lots and lots of anime hair, and skating boys, and really good music – and there’s a lot about love.

Love should be the cornerstone in any good romance, and Yuri on Ice reminded me of that. I’ve tortured Oliver and Jack long enough, don’t you think? I know I do, so though there will be short stories, my Oliver and Jack have had a long, slow climb to where they are now, and they will be happy in the end, I promise. They certainly deserve it.

Fagin’s Boy: The Further Particulars of a Parish Boy’s Progress, Oliver & Jack: At Lodgings In Lyme , Oliver & Jack: In Axminster Workhouse, Oliver & Jack: Out In The World, Oliver & Jack: On The Isle Of Dogs

Oliver & Jack: In London Towne (Fall 2017)

Author’s Name Christina E. Pilz

Publisher Blue Rain Press

Genre Historical romance, Victorian era, gay romance

General Synopsys

The Oliver & Jack series tells the tale of two young men from different worlds, who meet by chance one day on the High Street in Barnet.

The story of their relationship spans the whole of England, from the middle class shops of Soho to the slums and gin-palaces of Saffron Hill in London, and from there to Lyme Regis, and Hale, and Axminster, and Chertsey, and back to London again.

The story is a fascinating look at the contrast between the filthy streets of thieves and fences and the lives of ordinary folk, who live only to work and go to church.

 

It is an enticing, lush tale of repressed intimacy and a mutual but dangerous attraction that, should it be discovered, would result in hanging, castration, or deportation. (But what’s a poor workhouse orphan to do when he’s in love with a pickpocket?)

Book Links 

Christina E. Pilz

Amazon

Christina was born in Waco, Texas in 1962. Her family moved to Boulder, Colorado in 192, and she’s lived in the area ever since. As the moss started to grow beneath her feet, her love for historical fiction began with a classroom reading of Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

She attended a variety of community colleges (Tacoma Community College) and state universities (UNC-Greeley, CU-Boulder, CU-Denver), and finally found her career in technical writing, which, between layoffs, she has been doing for 19 years. During that time, her love for historical fiction and old-fashioned objects, ideas, and eras has never waned.

In addition to writing, her interests include road trips around the U.S. and frequent trips to England, where she eats fish and chips, drinks hard cider, and listens to the voices in the pub around her. She also loves coffee shops, mountain sunsets, prairie storms, and the smell of lavender. She is a staunch supporter of the Oxford comma.

Tidbits

• She lives in Colorado. She’s tried to live elsewhere, but it never works.
• She loves wooden floors, and prefers them to carpet.
• She doesn’t have pets but does have lots of plants
• She has a green armchair that she call The Vortex, because once she sits down in it, it’s impossible to get up out of it.
• She loves the structured orderliness of school and so ended up going to college for a long, long time.
• She loves beer and cider.
• She loves hot summer nights, lightning storms, and fireflies.
• She loves going to England, and have gone so often that she pretty much knows her way around without a map.
• She will never get tired of London or Devon
• She dreams in color with surround sound.
• Naps on stormy afternoons are one of her favorite things.
• She has camped on the hillside where the Sound of Music scene for “Do-Re-Mi” was filmed.
• She once spent five weeks on a three-masted barque off the Atlantic coast of North America, where she scrubbed decks, polished brass, washed dishes in cold seawater, and nigh on froze to death in the icy rain while on watch.
  

Website:www.christinaepilz.com, Blog:http://www.christinaepilz.com/blog/, Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/christina.pilz.98, Facebook Author page https://www.facebook.com/ChristinaEPilz Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChristinaEPilz, Tumblr http://christinaepilzauthor.tumblr.com/, Goodreads:http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8025754.Christina_E_Pilz

Christina brought with her a copy of the first book in her series for one Lucky winner!

leave a comment on the blog post to have a chance to win

Good luck!

 

 

Additional Info

These are not YA books; they might be considered New Adult books, or for anyone 18 or older.

My readers are adults like myself who enjoy historical fiction with a romantic relationship that just happens to be between two men. I think that women would enjoy this type of book more than men, because I focus on the relationship and the complexities of falling in love, also, in 1846 England; homosexuality was not only immoral but illegal, so I touch on that theme from time to time.

There is some sensuality in these books. They contain some explicit content and sexual themes, but they are not erotica. There is pissing in chamber pots, and vomiting in public. There is a lack of bathing. There is the drinking of gin and of beer. Fish are gutted by hand. Sometimes life is gross. There are a few times that Jack says the “f” word, and “bloody” and “damn.” Oliver never swears in thses books because he’s a tad prissy about those sorts of things.

My desire in writing these books was to demonstrate that Oliver Twist was not a two-dimensional milksop of a character, as he is typically described. It has always been my opinion that any nine year old who can survive the workhouse system, then beat up a fellow like Noah Claypole, and then walk over 70 miles to London, to then survive not only the stews of London but the machinations of Fagin and Monks? Well, a fellow like that deserves to have his story told, deserves to fall in love, and really deserves to live happily ever after. (Which he will by the end of the series!)

Please let me know if you have any additional questions, and I would be happy to answer them.