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Book Title: Skater Boy: Hot Off the Ice #4
Author: A. E. Wasp
Publisher: Self-Published
Cover Artist: Ana J. Phoenix
Genre/s: Gay Sports Romance
Length: 303 pages
Skater Boy is a standalone story in the Hot Off the Ice series.
Blurb
In a world that measures success in dollars, how do you put a price on happiness?
Love, marriage, and a baby carriage. It’s all Alex Staunton has ever wanted. Well, that and an Olympic medal for figure skating. The medal he got. The rest of it – not so much.
When his most recent poor decision comes to a door-slamming end, Alex moves into the house of his best friend, Thunder starting goalie, Sergei Pergov. But when tragedy strikes, giving Sergei custody of the twins he fathered confidentially, Alex’s problems take a backseat to the needs of two infants, and Alex vows to be the best fake-dad and house-husband he can be.
Sergei is dazzled by the way Alex makes managing all the craziness look as easy as doing a triple-axel. As their friendship grows even deeper, Sergei realizes he doesn’t want to imagine a life without Alex in it. Alex is the one who makes their house a home; his love makes them a family. How can Sergei make Alex understand he’s worth everything?
Skater Boy is a story about falling in love with your best friend. It contains discussions about baby poop, day drinking, girls’ night out, and the purchase of a mini-van.
Buy Links – Available in KU
‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there,
They have to take you in.’
I think everyone has probably seen this quote on a plaque or a Pinterest post. I wanted to see where it originated, and Google led me to a poem by Robert Frost called “The Death of the Hired Man.” (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44261/the-death-of-the-hired-man) It’s a conversation between a husband and wife, Warren and Mary, about a man named Silas, someone they had hired over the years to help with the haying. He wasn’t a particularly good worker, and Warren is not happy to hear he has shown up on their doorstep. But, the wife informs him, Silas has come home to die.
“Home?” Warren doesn’t understand how this man, gone for years and no kin of theirs with a brother a few miles away, has come to consider their house his home. “Yes,” Mary tells him, and then says the quote above. Silas went where he knew they would take him in.
Why am I talking about this?
Almost every writer I know who has more than one or two books out finds that with each book, they keep returning to the same theme. After a few books, it became clear to me that every story I write is about finding a family and finding a home. (What that says about my personal issues, I don’t know. If any therapists are reading this, feel free to drop me a line.)
This issue is near and dear to the hearts of many of us in the LGBTQ+ community for various reasons. When your family of origin (the people who are supposed to love you, no matter what) rejects you, it can almost impossible to believe that other people actually want you in their lives.
While the romantic relationships are at the center of my stories (they are romances after all) the larger circle of relationships—family of origin, chosen or found family—is equally important.
One of the most popular scenes in City Boy is ‘Friendsgiving.’ Even though Dakota has pulled back from these people because of his trauma, they are still there, waiting for him. They weren’t keeping score in the friendship. They embrace him with open arms. And they welcomed Bryce and his family and friends into their day as well. They
I think that is a level of connection and community necessary for a person to be whole.
Friendship is not a subordinate relationships to romantic love, not a consolation prize, it’s a vital element of life in its own right.
Friendships can often stand up to stressors that could crush romantic relationships due to the different dynamics and (realistic or not, spoken or unspoken) expectations we have of our romantic partners. Friends call you on your crap, tell you when you’re wrong, support you when the right decisions are difficult, believe in you, and support you.
But, to me, within your found family there is a level of connection that transcends even friendship. It more like the special bond you can have with your siblings (if you are lucky) where you love and hate them and fight with them and are their biggest defender all at the same time. I don’t know about you, but I have friends I want to throttle sometimes, and I’m sure the feeling is mutual, but if they called me in need, I would drop everything and go.
I think it is this connection that Robert Frost, through Mary, is speaking of. And when, in reply, Warren says:
‘I should have called it
Something you somehow haven’t to deserve.’
I think this is the language of Grace, an undeserved and unearned love.
It is this kind of love that is at the heart of Skater Boy (and all my books, but Skater Boy most directly.)
Alex has spent his life thinking he only gets things he ‘deserves.’ If he doesn’t win a competition, it’s because he didn’t deserve to, someone was better than him, more deserving. Sergei, like many LGBTA+ who have been rejected by their families simply because who they are and who they love, can’t believe that Alex and his family love him unconditionally. Why would then? They are under no obligation to love him. He was a stranger who lived with them for a while then moved on.
Neither Sergei nor Alex can believe in or accept this love. Until, and this is the key to all my books, they learn to accept themselves for all of who they are. Good and bad. And we all know it can be easier to accept the bad about ourselves more than the good.
To quote the great Ru Paul, “If you can’t love yourself, how the hell you gonna love somebody else?”
You can’t love yourself when you are living a lie. You can’t build real connections to others until you are living as your authentic self. Living a lie, or trying to be something you aren’t – in whatever context –puts huge barriers between you and love. Between you and joy. And that voyage of self-discovery and acceptance is the journey I take my characters on, and I invite everyone to take it with me.
It was funny how much one kiss could change everything. Well, kissing and whatever else he could get away with. Sergei loved finding ways around the rules or seeing how much he could get away with while still technically staying within bounds.
Alex had typed up a list of the rules and taped them to the inside of the door that held Sergei’s coffee mugs and tea cups. “This way I know we’ll see it at least once a day.”
“In case I forget?” Sergei pulled Alex’s hand toward him, tracing light patterns over his wrist and palm in the same way Alex had tortured him the other night.
“Bastard,” Alex said, yanking his hand away. He darted in for a quick kiss. “In case I forget.”
Then last night after dinner, he’d come up behind Alex in the kitchen while he was washing dishes, and keeping his hands above the waist and over the clothes, lifted up Alex’s gorgeous hair and kissed the back and sides of his neck until Alex begged him to touch him. “Just a little. Please? Just my stomach.”
“Rules say no hands under clothing,” Sergei said, voice heavy with regret. “You made rules.”
Without another word, Alex slid out from under Sergei. Grabbing a pen from the junk drawer, he stomped the few feet to the cabinet, opened the cabinet, and crossed off the word ‘clothing.’ He wrote ‘pants’ above it, handwriting sloppy.
Slamming the door, he marched back to Sergei. “Better?”
Sergei yanked Alex against him, face to face this time. He slid his hands up the back of Alex’s shirt. His skin was softer than he had ever imagined and so warm. “Much better,” he growled, then pushed Alex up against the counter. They kissed until Sergei’s lips were numb.
After time spent raising children, earning several college degrees, and traveling the world with the U.S. State Department, she is returning to her first love – writing.
A dreamer and an idealist, Amy writes about people finding connection in a world that can seem lonely and magic in a world that can seem all too mundane. She invites readers into her characters’ lives and worlds when they are their most vulnerable, their most human, living with the same hopes and fears we all have. An avid traveler who has lived in big cities and small towns in four different continents, Amy has found that time and distance are no barriers to love. She invites her readers to reach out and share how her characters have touched their lives or how the found families they have gathered around them have shaped their worlds.
Born on Long Island, NY, Amy has lived in Los Angeles, London, and Bangkok. She currently lives in a town suspiciously like Red Deer, Colorado.
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Sometimes a cover just makes you smile and feel good all the way through. This one certainly qualifies! I love the quotes and can’t wait to read, what I’m sure will be an amazing HEA!