Hi all! I’m Nikki Ali, and I’m here to share with you all about my new erotic romance release, Book of the Flower Garlands! Here are five cool facts about my new book, so you can get to know it, its characters, and its author a little bit better!
- Book of the Flower Garlands is a queer erotic romance featuring two characters I absolutely adore: Hassan, a fifty-something guy experiencing a queer awakening; and Marco, a much younger man whom Hassan meets one fateful and sun-drenched summer… Book of the Flower Garlands is the first book in my ongoing series, which is called Archaeologists in Love. In my other incarnation, I am a professor of ancient history and an archaeologist! So writing these stories, with elements of archaeology and ancient myth set in some of my favorite sites, helps me bridge the different sides of who I am.
- Flower Garlands takes place in Athens, Greece (where the protagonist, Hassan, lives), one of my absolute favorite places on earth, as well as in some other gorgeous spots in the Mediterranean. Athens is a place that’s full of history, mythology, and art, and it was an absolute DREAM to write a love story set in that beautiful place.
- Every love story has a challenge—or what I like to call “good tension”! Hassan and Marco realize that, as much as they love each other, they are two very different people from very different worlds. Marco is just visiting Athens on a study-abroad trip; he is still in college, with lots of responsibilities and things going on back home. Hassan’s life is in Athens, and he has many challenges of his own. So their quest in this story is to carve out a place and a way that they can be together and allow their love story to grow.
- What’s in a title? Book of the Flower Garlands is named after one of its symbols, the flower garland, and flowers in general. The flower garland means a lot to me, and a lot within the story. The symbol is inspired by one of my favorite bits of ancient history: the lesbian poet Sappho used to weave flower garlands with her girlfriends, a ritual in honor of the goddess of love and sex, Aphrodite. And when we think of flowers in general—we give them as gifts to our loved ones, to commemorate and mark every conceivable type of occasion, from celebration to grief. But who deserves to receive flowers? This story is an answer to that question!
- I call the genre I write in “literary erotica.” I seek to elevate the genre of erotica, to inspire people to remember how important the erotic principle is in so many of our lives. For me, the erotic encompasses SO much, from sex to love to food to nature to all sorts of delicious embodied experiences… it’s that spark that makes us get up in the morning to dive in to our luscious world. I also very deeply believe that love and sex can be for everybody, in every body. And that’s why I wrote this book. So I hope you will hop on board and take this sweet, sexy, and deeply erotic journey with us!
Thanks so much for reading my post! I love connecting with my readers; hit me up on Instagram @mistressmwriter.
XOX,
Love,
Nikki
A steamy MM erotic romance of first times & lush settings. Will these unlikely lovers find a way?
Book Title: Book of the Flower Garlands (Archaeologists in Love 1)
Author and Publisher: Nikki Ali
Release Date: November 16, 2021
Genre: Erotic M/M romance
Tropes: Forbidden love, first times, age play
Themes: Coming out, intimacy & vulnerability
Length: 118 000 words / 347 pages
Heat Rating: 5 flames
It is not a standalone book. It is the first to be published in its series.
It ends with a sort of “happily-for-now.”
Buy Links
Blurb
Hassan Elsayed wants to find himself and follow his dreams–at fifty-four, he’s about two decades too late, but who’s counting, really? He’s left his hometown of Luxor, Egypt for Athens, Greece, and fulfilled his lifelong dream of becoming a writer.
Now, he’s hungry for love. The woman he’s loved for half his life has married someone else. When Hassan meets a beautiful nineteen-year-old boy one summer, their attraction and chemistry are instant, insistent, and impossible to ignore. But it’s his first time with another man, and Hassan is terrified to step into this new fire. Will he let himself be engulfed by the flames? Will he open his heart to this unlikely love he never saw coming?
Set in the lush, sun-drenched Mediterranean summer, to the backdrop of the ancient ruins of Athens, Book of the Flower Garlands weaves a warm, romantic story of sex, sensual pleasures, first loves and first times.
In the evening, Marco and I take a long, slow walk around Kolonaki as the sun is setting. My neighborhood is quiet, steep, cobblestoned. Some parts are narrow and rambling and old, some are lit up, gilt-edged, gleaming with signs for Prada and Gucci. There are trendy new restaurants and the older tavernas, like the one where I work. Young people are drinking cappuccinos at the coffee shops, tourists are taking endless photos of the sunset. I have tried to make this city home.
We decide to walk up Mount Lycabettus. It’s often part of our morning running route, but then it is an opportunity for hill work, not a site for its own enjoyment. Tonight we take a leisurely pace. Children from a family of German tourists scramble up the hill around us. We stop to admire the intricate patterns on the doors of the church on Lycabettus, delicate black tracery on glass, illuminated from within by warm golden light.
“These old churches almost make me wish I were Christian,” I tell Marco.
“I see what you mean,” he says softly, his eyes traveling over the shape of the church, the little white dome on top and the crowning cross.
On an impulse we decide to have dinner at the restaurant near the summit. “I’ve always wanted to eat here,” I say.
“Then let’s eat here,” Marco says, shrugging. He stops. “Let me treat you.” “Sweetheart. You don’t have to.”
“Let me. You’re always paying for stuff and cooking for me and taking care of me. Let me take you to just one dinner at a place you’ve always wanted to go.”
“Okay,” I say. I’d say my Arab ancestors were turning in their sandy desert graves, but surely those venerable old men have long since abandoned me. I am head over heels for a boy less than half my age.
Our breath is duly stolen by the view at our table, placed right at the edge of the mountain, beside a low stone wall. It’s twilight, and every moment the light flees, bleeding from the sky. That has its own bittersweet significance, but then, as the night grows blacker, the lights begin to glow to their fullest perfection. The neighborhoods are tiny handfuls of houses, each block outlined with veins of dark green summer trees. The lights are coming out like the stars we cannot see, like the lanterns the white-shirted waiters come out and set on each table. In the far distance we can see the softness of the sea, in the middle distance the magic radiance of the Parthenon sprawled on the acropolis.
“My God,” Marco says. “I will remember this view for the rest of my life.”
Nikki Ali creates high-quality erotica where love is for everyone, dreams come true, and sensuality is an integrated part of our life.
Nikki is also the editor-in-chief of Mistress M’s Community Publishing House (MMCPH), a new, boutique-style, full-service small publishing house founded on the principles that no matter what our hearts desire to create, there is an audience seeking it; that, by putting our work out into the world, our audience will find us; and that there IS space in the marketplace for the offerings of our hearts.
Connect with Nikki on Instagram @mistressmwriter.
Author Links
Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest
Newsletter Sign-up | Patreon | Amazon
Enter the Rafflecopter Giveaway for a chance to win
a $10 Amazon Gift Card
