A warm welcome to author Crystel Greene joining us today here at Love Bytes to talk about her release “Glacier Gold”.
Welcome Crystel 🙂
Hi everyone, I’m Crystel, and I’m delighted to be here at Love Bytes Reviews today to celebrate the release of my m/m romance novella GLACIER GOLD! It’s a World of Love story set in Austria, and I’m going to tell you about my rather angsty romance with this country for a bit.
Born and raised in Northern Germany, I came to live in Austria in 2000 because of my husband’s new job. Moving to Austria was not something I was keen to do initially!
Firstly, I’m a North Sea girl. I love the coast, including the storms and the epic seaside rain. Secondly, I had been to Austria before, and let’s say the trip wasn’t exactly a raging success.
It was a winter vacation, and I was seventeen. And yes, I was floored by the scenery and the breathtaking views, much like my protagonist Justin is in GLACIER GOLD. Have you ever been to the Alps? If you have, you’ll agree they are pretty impressive! Standing on top of one of those mountaintops really is a fantastic experience.
And same as Justin, I developed a crush on a local―predictably, my skiing instructor. Toni was tan, fit, and fun: what’s not to like, right? And he seemed really into me.
Well, I was in for a reality check. I was going to learn that there’s romance, and then there’s après-ski. And while making out in a Tyrolean bar called Mouse Trap can be great fun to be sure, it’s not to be recommended for a girl who’s seventeen, who thinks she’s in love, and who’s been raised on a reading diet consisting mostly of Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer.
I don’t blame Toni. He was just very different from Mr. Darcy. When I came back from powdering my nose after some pretty intense kissing, he was busy taking care of the next student. And that was the end of that.
Sadly, the Gods weren’t smiling upon the sports part of that vacation either.
I did learn to do a solid if a little less than graceful wedge turn. But on my last day I slipped on an ice patch on the nursery slope, took a tumble, and ended up with a severe concussion. I stayed in Austria for two weeks longer than intended―in hospital. People kept telling me about skiing accidents much worse than mine, including fatal ones. It didn’t cheer me up. I made a vow to myself to forget not only Toni, but skiing too, and to never return to Austria.
But fate had other plans. A good ten years later, there I was, back again in Austria and destined to stay. Scared to death of going skiing. But I had to do it. My kid would be going on a school ski trip that same winter, and I had to show her that skiing is fun and that it’s totally worth it to learn the wedge turn.
My daughter is grown now and skis like a pro. I still hate going down icy slopes.
But I’ve changed my attitude about skiing. Have you ever read about how you’re supposed to do something scary every day? Apparently it’s good for your stress system. It can get out of control if you live the comfortable life of the modern homo sapiens, or so my husband and very own live-in natural scientist tells me. With better chances of survival than ever before in human history, but a risk-assessment system in our brains that expects saber-toothed tigers just around the bend 24/7, it seems we can develop a tendency to feel threatened without a cause. Which in turn can foster anxiety disorders. Or something like that. So, for the sake of my mental health, I go skiing. And it’s kind of not so bad, really.
Being up in the mountains clears the head and cleanses the soul they say, and it really does. I guess it’s got to do with the change of perspective you can’t help but experience once you’re above five thousand feet. If you don’t ski or snowboard, don’t think you have no business getting into that funicular and riding up that mountain. Just do it.
I guess you can tell by now that I love living in the Alps these days!
I’ll always be an ocean girl; I need to spend the summer at a northern beach. But I’m at home in Austria now too, and I’ve come to love it as one of the best places to be in the world.
PS I haven’t thought of Toni in a long time; I only really remembered him when I was reliving that vacation writing this post. Now I think there might be a reason why Andi, Justin’s love interest in GLACIER GOLD, is this sort of Tyrolean Mr. Darcy (—an heir to great riches, standoffish, a little bossy, and totally intriguing—), and that the reason is Toni. Toni had the looks too, tall, athletic, the shock of black hair, but Andi has it all. Andi is Austen material. Maybe I still needed something like closure with Toni; maybe that’s why I dreamt up this perfect man for Justin.
God, I love Andi.
I hope you will too!
At the moment it feels like the thought of Andi might ruin the rest of my life.
The problem is he’s even more perfect than I realized.
I only discovered this morning at breakfast it’s him who does the graphic design of the Fankhauser News. It says Layout: A. Fankhauser in very small print on the last page. Same with the hotel brochure. He hasn’t done anything wildly artsy with the design; there’s just some fancy initials, and he seems to like corner flourish swirls. It’s all rather retro, really. But still.
The idea of him sitting in front of his computer by night with his glasses on, adding this stuff to the text files, adjusting things till he’s satisfied with the effect—it makes me want to swoon with happy adoration.
Made me want to swoon. Yes, he’s perfect, and probably in more ways than I’ll ever know, but it’s over.
He has seen me buck naked and told me he liked the view, and he locked eyes with me in a way that completely rocked my world. With both of us fully dressed. It doesn’t even make sense.
But now he seems to have decided it was all a mistake. Perhaps I shouldn’t have let him look at me like that. From that close, and with me being swept off my feet like I was. He must have decided in that moment I wasn’t that great a catch after all.
Obviously, with his looks, he can have anyone. And he’s not only the son of a millionaire and, like, the prince of the valley, he’s also this whiz kid who speaks foreign languages and is all kinds of talented. Yeah, why would he care to be with someone who tries to chat him up with preplanned lines they wrote down to memorize them? With someone who’ll probably never get their act together? Sure, I never told him I’m this loser who flunks his college exams, but it feels like he knows anyway. …
BLURB:
Up in the Alps, a single night can change your life.
Struggling college student and self-taught graphic artist Justin Bennet isn’t the most self-confident guy, but he knows he’s good at two things: snowboarding and sex. Why does Andi, the hot instructor at the Tyrolean ski resort, pretend Justin doesn’t exist?
Justin becomes all but obsessed with the idea of scoring with the young Austrian. Because for all the man’s reserve, he made it quite obvious he likes Justin—at least from the neck down.
When Justin books a private heliboarding trip with Andi as his guide, he thinks he’s one step away from striking gold.
But then the forces of nature take over, trapping the men in a snowstorm, and things get real. What was supposed to be about some freeriding fun and inviting a closeted guy to start exploring his options suddenly becomes about survival—and the hidden truths of the soul.
World of Love: Stories of romance that span every corner of the globe.
The first man Crystel fell in love with was Beauty’s Beast. Next came Robin Hood, then Mr. Darcy. Two decades of married life later, she still loves fictional men—especially when there are two of them who are meant to be! She likes it best when she can create their plights and fights herself, and she can always be counted on to throw in some sizzling hotness and a lot of feels. Here’s her author promise: no fade-outs when things get steamy or emotional, and an ending that will leave you smiling.
Crystel is a lawyer by training, a lover of pastry, and a believer in Happy Ever Afters. Born and raised in Hamburg, Germany, and a North Sea girl at heart, she lives in the beautiful Austrian Alps with her husband and four kids.
PS She loves reader mail!
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https://www.goodreads.com/crystelgreene
https://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/authors/crystel-greene-1081
https://www.amazon.com/author/crystelgreene
I love the cover! I picture them in a beautiful chalet in Switzerland, just by looking at the cover. I also enjoyed reading this post. (jozywails@gmail.com)
Thank you! 🙂 <3
Great post! Thanks for sharing a bit of your life.
Thank you for reading!
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So exciting! Thanks for sharing!
Thanks Randi! 🙂
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