Love Bytes gives a very warm welcome to author A.L. Lester who is joining us today to talk about the new release “Taking Stock”.
A.L talks about Taking stock , shares an excerpt and brought a fabulous giveaway!
Welcome A.L 🙂

Thank you so much for having me today to tell you a little bit about Taking Stock!

Taking Stock is a 40,000 word gay romance set mostly in rural England. It’s set on Webber’s Farm, which I first wrote about in Inheritance of Shadows. Inheritance is set in 1919 and is part of my spooky paranormal universe. I based the farm on somewhere I used to know as a child on the Quantock Hills in Somerset and didn’t want to leave after Inheritance. Taking Stock is the result. Although it’s set in the same universe as my other books and some of the same background characters are there, there’s nothing paranormal or suspenseful.

Instead it’s a gentle story about two people who are hurt and angry and tired, who find their way toward each other and help each other heal.

Initially Laurie was going to have a similar chronic condition to me…I have fibromyalgia and seizures…but then just before I actually sat down to get the words out of my head and on to the page, my Mama had a very severe stroke. She is in her eighties and has been more or less working her seven acre smallholding singlehandedly for years. Her frustration and anger at her situation translated directly into Laurie as I was writing. So he’s a combination of both my own feelings about my lack of agency through my disability, and hers.

It was a very emotive story for me to write and I hope you enjoy it.

• Tags: MM, gay, romance, historical, ownvoices, disability, farming, 1970s.
• Length: 40,000 words
• Publisher: JMS Books LLC
• Release Date: Sept 19th 2020

Blurb:

It’s 1972.

Fifteen years ago, teenage Laurie Henshaw came to live at Webber’s Farm with his elderly uncle and settled in to the farming life. Now, age thirty-two, he has a stroke in the middle of working on the farm. As he recovers, he has to come to terms with the fact that some of his new limitations are permanent and he’s never going to be as active as he used to be. Will he be able to accept the helping hands his friends extend to him?

With twenty successful years in the City behind him, Phil McManus is hiding in the country after his boyfriend set him up to take the fall for an insider trading deal at his London stockbroking firm. There’s not enough evidence to prosecute anyone, but not enough to clear him either. He can’t bear the idea of continuing his old stagnating life in the city, or going back to his job now everyone knows he’s gay.

Thrown together in a small country village, can Phil and Laurie forge a new life that suits the two of them and the makeshift family that gathers round them? Or are they too tied up in their own shortcomings to recognise what they have?

You can buy/preorder Taking Stock here

Amazon Buy Link

Phil found his feet turning up the lane toward Webber’s Farm a couple of days after his meeting
with Laurie Henshaw almost without thought. He had got in to the habit of walking regularly early on
in his sojourn in the cottage. Some days he took sandwiches in the knapsack he’d bought and just went
up the footpath at the top of the lane and headed off into the winter woods. It was quiet and peaceful
and he found that if he could get in to a swinging rhythm, one foot in front of the other, the swirl of
anger and betrayal that seemed to accompany him like a cloud quieted, gradually draining down in to
the earth as he walked.
Today though, rather than his feet taking him up the hill in to the burgeoning spring, they took him
down toward the farm. Henshaw…Laurie…had grabbed his interest in a way that nobody had for
months. The man had been on his last legs sitting in the Post Office and his frustration with himself had
been obvious. Phil had enjoyed coaxing a smile out of him. Sitting in the farmhouse kitchen with the
quiet warmth of the Rayburn at his back, he’d spoken more about his personal life to a complete
stranger than he had opened up to anyone since that awful day when Adrian had got him out of the
police station.
It would only be neighbourly to pop in and see if he was all right. That’s what people did in the
country, didn’t they? Phil had been here months now, apart from a brief visit to Aunt Mary over
Christmas and New Year, and if he was going to be here much longer he should probably make an
effort to get to know people properly.
That made him pause for thought. Was he going to be here much longer?
He didn’t know.
He walked through the farmyard cautiously. He knew enough to go to the back door, not the front.
The two sheepdogs who had cursorily examined him earlier in the week shot out of the open porch and
circled round, barking and wagging cheerfully. No need to knock, then. He did, regardless. And called
out “Anyone home?”
“In here,” Laurie’s voice answered, distantly. “Come in, whoever you are!”
He stepped in to the porch, past a downstairs bathroom and through the scullery with its stoneflagged floor, and pushed the door into the kitchen fully open.
Laurie was washing up. His stick was hooked on the drainer and he was resting against the sink with
one hip. He turned as Phil came in, propping the final plate on the pile beside the soapy water and
reaching for the tea-towel flung over his shoulder to dry his hands.
“Mr McManus! Phil, I mean,” he corrected himself, “what can I do for you?”
Phil paused. He hadn’t got this far in his head. He had just…walked.
“Erm. I was just passing?” he tried. His voice lifted at the end, in a question.
“You were?” Laurie looked at him, one side of his mouth twisted up in a little smile. Or was that the
side affected by the stroke? He didn’t know. Didn’t matter, anyway.
“Yes. I was.” He made his voice firmer. “Sally is at my place this morning, so I thought you might
let me hide here.”
Page 3 of 4
“Only if you’ll let me retreat to your place when she’s cross with me,” Laurie replied. “Although
that will probably mean I have to move in, at least for the moment.” He pulled a face.
“Have you upset her?”
“No. Yes. Sort of….” He turned toward the Rayburn and dragged the kettle on to the hotplate. “She
wasn’t very happy about me over-doing it the other day. Patsy told tales on me.”
“Ah. Yes, I can see that. She obviously cares about you a great deal. She talks about you all the time
when she comes up to do the cottage.” He paused. “Have you been together long?”
Laurie choked and dropped one of the tea-cups he was moving from the drainer to the table. He
fumbled for it and at the same time Phil stooped to catch it. They both missed and it smashed on the
stone floor into a thousand tiny pieces. “Shit!” Laurie said, trying stifle his coughing. “That was one of
the good ones, too.”
He bent to pick up the pieces, still choking and Phil said, “Stop it, you bloody fool, let me. It’s
everywhere.” He put his hands on Laurie’s shoulders and pushed him upward from his bent position
and then back and down, in to one of the kitchen chairs. Laurie’s leg gave as he sat and he made the
final descent with an unglamorous wobble.
He was still coughing. “Sally!” he got out, around between coughs. “Bloody hell!”
“Where’s the dustpan?” Phil asked, ignoring him.
Laurie gestured to the cupboard under the sink. “Under there.”
It was the work of moments to sweep it all up, on his knees at Laurie’s feet. Thankfully it had been
empty. He rested back on his heels with with full dustpan. “Where does it go?”
“Put it in one of the flower-pots on the window-sill,” Laurie said, gesturing. “I’ll stick in the bottom
of a pot for drainage when I plant the new ones up.”
Phil nodded and got to his feet. He lurched as he did so and steadied himself on Laurie’s knee as he
rose. Warm, he thought. The man smelled nice. A mixture of soap and fresh air and woodsmoke.
“Ooops,” he said, pushing himself upright. “Sorry.”
Laurie grinned at him as they briefly made eye contact. Something flickered in his eyes. “Not a
problem,” he said. He pointed at the window-sill behind the sink. “Knock those dead chives in the
middle pot out the window in to the yard.” He grinned again, but it was a different sort of smile this
time, with slightly too many teeth. “I can’t really balance to water them properly at the moment
anyway.”
Phil opened the window and emptied the dead plants outside ad then tipped the pieces of crockery in
as instructed. He replaced the dustpan under the sink and stood up and leaned against it, crossing his
arms. “Doesn’t Sally help with that sort of thing?” he asked, looking down at the other man.
“No. Yes. Sometimes.” Laurie wouldn’t meet his eye and started to stand. “Sit down, let me get a
new cup.”
Phil put his hand back on his shoulder and gently but firmly pushed him back down on to the chair.
“What do you mean?” he asked, in a voice that matched his grip, “No-yes-sometimes covers all the
wickets.” He removed his hand and turned round to collect another cup and saucer, moving past Laurie
to put it on the table beside him and then reaching to pull the kettle off the Rayburn and put both tealeaves and the boiling water in the teapot.
Page 4 of 4
He brought the teapot over and put it on the cork table-mat in the middle of the table before opening
the pantry door and rummaging in the fridge for the milk-jug. Laurie sat and let him, watching him
slightly warily.
As Phil sat down and folded his arms again, waiting for the tea to brew, Laurie muttered, “I told her
not to do it.”
“You told her not to do it?” Phil repeated. “Ah, I see.” And he did, in a way. He wouldn’t be in
Laurie’s shoes for anything.
Laurie worked his thumb over and over one of the whorls of wood in the table-top. It was smoothed
from long use. “I hate it, Phil,” he said in a low voice. “I hate not being able to do all the simple things.
It makes me feel useless, having them all run round after me.”
“You’d rather let the plants die than accept help?”
Laurie bit his lip and continued to worry at the knot in the table. “It sounds daft when you put it like
that,” he said.
Phil didn’t say anything.
“Okay, I know it’s daft.” He looked up and met Phil’s eyes, his own anguished. “But I hate it,” he
said, vehemently. “I hate it, Phil.”

About A. L. Lester

Writer of queer, paranormal, historical, romantic suspense. Lives in the South West of England with Mr AL, two children, a badly behaved dachshund, a terrifying cat and some hens. Likes gardening but doesn’t really have time or energy. Not musical. Doesn’t much like telly. Non-binary. Chronically disabled. Has tedious fits.

You can stalk me on all sorts of different internet platforms here: https://lnk.bio/gjD5

A.L. brought not one but two giveaways!

Have a chance to win an Ecopy of “Inheritance of Shadows”

or an Audiobookcode for either “Lost in Time” or “The Flowers in Time”

Leave a comment on the blog post incl your prefered giveaway prize 🙂

Good Luck!