A warm welcome to author I.M. Flippy joining us today to talk about new release “Summer of Sonny”.

I.M talks about characters, shares an excerpt and brought a wonderful giveaway for our readers!

Welcome I.M. 🙂

Blurb:

Jay Lauer is content with his life. He’s happy working for his dad at Blue Pine Lake Camp up in the San Bernardino Mountains where he fixes everything that needs fixing, handles logistics, and in his spare time makes stunning works of art at his beloved pottery wheel. He doesn’t need a change or a reason to leave the mountain where he’s comfortable. He certainly doesn’t need a handsome geophysicist from MIT who talks too much to upend everything he thought he wanted. On the bright side, Sonny seems kinda patronizing and dismissive of Jay. So Jay’s in no danger of falling in love…right?

Dr. Sonny Jacobsen has just gained his doctorate in geophysics from MIT. On a whim he decides to teach kids science lessons at Blue Pine for the summer, a well deserved break after a long and intense academic career. He doesn’t expect there to be a gorgeous handyman distracting him. But Jay hardly seems like the academic type, he can barely hold a conversation. So Sonny’s in no danger of falling in love…right?

It’s just as well that Jay and Sonny get the wrong impression of each other. Falling in love would only complicate an otherwise serene summer and they’re in no danger of that…right?

Summer of Sonny by I.M. Flippy
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Characters are my favorite toys. I don’t remember when this first occurred to me. It’s obvious, but it took me a while to grasp even though I’ve been writing since I could read. Like many readers, I came to the world of gay romance through fanfiction. In fanfiction, I’m given a toy box full of readymade delights. This is almost literally true. Fanfiction is just a tiny step beyond making your Captain America action figure and your Bucky action figure kiss as a kid.

When I’m writing original fiction, the toys are my own. They’re toys I’ve built myself, influenced by every book and TV show and movie I’ve ever loved as well as so many other things like aesthetic pleasures and even favorite songs. As a writer, everything you absorb travels through the filters of your mind and imagination, percolating and simmering, until something new and hopefully delicious is achieved.

As long as it took me to realize that characters are my favorite toys, it took me longer to realize that love stories are my favorite way to play with them. This does not make sense as I’ve been writing love stories in the realm of fanfiction for over twenty years. I guess I’m slow on the uptake. The pleasures I find in building my characters and watching them fall in love are endless. What if this type of person fell in love with this type of person?

When I read or write two characters falling in love, I need to know why it happened. What exactly do they love about each other? Why are they perfect for each other? Even if there’s no great speech where they list off all the things they love about the other person from positive traits to seemingly meaningless idiosyncrasies, I absolutely need to know that list exists in their minds. I can’t just be told that two characters are in love, I need to see it happen before my eyes like a slow magic trick. That’s what I strive for when I write romance and what I hope I’ve achieved in my books.

Jay Lauer was making pottery. Or rather, Jay Lauer, his loose denim shirt half unbuttoned, his hair swept over to one side as he leaned over a wide and spinning cylinder, had his strong-looking hands all wet and gray with clay now gently forming the rim of a bowl, dark eyes cast up as he gazed on his craft, his pink lips parted in inspiration.

Sonny looked on this and the scene was so serene and so inherently sensual his cock started to swell, and his breath was short. Sonny took a step back and knocked into the door, which made a horrible cringing squeal, and Sonny flushed as Jay looked up sharply, blinking until his expression went from inspired to blank.

Jay said, “Oh.”

“Sorry,” Sonny said. He was only a little hard. His jeans weren’t terribly tight. Jay surely wouldn’t notice.

Sonny stood on one leg, crossing one ankle over the other, shoving his hands in his pockets, attempting casual.

“I was just passing by,” Sonny said. “Heard the music. I didn’t mean to…”

But now that he’d announced himself anyway, he looked around. It must be Jay’s own private studio. The place was one huge concrete-floored room lined with white shelves displaying pottery and paints and lumps of clay in big thick bags of plastic. There was a giant window behind Jay and another in each wall, no curtains or blinds blocked the sunlight that shone on Jay as he sat at his wheel in the middle of the room. Boston’s “More Than a Feeling” was playing now from a phone hooked up to a speaker and a gray and white cat frowned up at Sonny, the intruder, as it pushed its nose against Jay’s leg.

“That’s okay,” Jay said. His eyes roved around the room as if Sonny might be there looking for something and Jay wanted to find it for him.

“I’ll leave you to it,” Sonny said, and started to go.

“Hey, wait,” Jay said. “Dr. Jacobsen?”

Sonny almost didn’t realize he was being spoken to. Nobody ever called him that, though he’d also only just gained his doctorate. He swallowed and turned back, nodding in question at Jay.

Jay licked his lips and gestured with his clay crusted hands. “I didn’t mean… I’m not used to attention. I just mean… You threw me off yesterday? About the pottery. So—”

Sonny heard him, but his mind jumped ahead instead of responding to what he was being told. “But your work is beautiful?” Sonny said, genuinely confused. Jay ducked his head again, looking away. “You must hear that often?”

“Yeah, but not from…” Jay coughed then and it turned into a chuckle as he sat there. He scratched his nose and left a smudge of pale clay there streaking down his cheek. Sonny thought it was kind of adorable. “Not so effusively.”

Sonny smiled at that. “I’m sorry if I embarrassed you.”

“No no.” Jay waved a hand. “Um… I embarrass easily. But thanks.”

“Ah.” Sonny rocked back on his heels. This conversation felt more comfortable between them than any previous. His attention caught on a handled pot reminiscent of the vase in his room yet opposite thematically. It was painted in charcoals, ambers, burnt oranges, flame patterns raised all around it growing larger toward the base. “Fuck, this is amazing,” Sonny blurted out.

“Huh!” Jay said, clearly startled.

Sonny didn’t dare to touch, feeling a sense of respect for the work, but his fingers hovered over the flames in relief that recalled the waves of his vase—silly of him to think of it as “his” vase. The two were a pair, Sonny was sure.

“Jesus,” Sonny said. “You know, you’re really something.”

“No, no,” Jay said. “Really, it’s a hobby. I just, I make pieces and sometimes I sell them. Um… Amanda made me a website? But I don’t… Well, I’m not very good at maintaining it, but I sell pieces on it here and there and… Anyway. It’s just a hobby—”

“No,” Sonny said, feeling very strongly about it. “You’re an artist. A talented one.”

He watched Jay’s mouth drop open. “Ah… That’s what Esther said. But…”

But what? Sonny didn’t know. Esther Lauer, that was Pops’ late wife. He had seen pictures of her all around the house. No one had told him she had died but her memory was everywhere. Pops had already quoted her during meals, smiling fondly even as he spoke in a tone tinged with grief. Jay had said before that Esther had made a couple of the pieces in the house.

The pause between them felt thick. Sonny found his heart was beating much too quickly. Maybe he was nervous.

“She was right,” Sonny said softly. And then he said: “I cannot figure you out.”

His heart started beating much too hard at that and he wanted to take it back. That was not the kind of thing you could just say in a quiet and serious voice to a coworker, alone with him in his studio. Not when they looked like Jay with a smudge of clay along his cheek, his eyes big and dark. Things would change unavoidably when you said things like that. Tectonic plates would shift.

“Do you need to?” Jay said.

“I don’t know.”

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