QSFer Eric Alan Westfall has a new MM historical romance out:
It’s April of 1816 in Another England.
And Jeremy—a whore from the Dock—is living in a guest bedroom at the London home of the (in)famous Iron Marquess, with over fifteen days missing from his life.
For someone who remembers everything from his third birthday on, it’s unnerving not to know. Fine, fourteen days for the coma and the infection delirium. But those first thirty-six hours. Do they explain how he got hurt, how he got to Ireton House, and why his lordship’s mountain-sized valet is taking care of him? Or why his ironness looks at him with nothing iron at all in his eyes?
Jeremy and the Iron Marquess both have dark secrets. Forced engagements, an inheritance, a scheme to clap Jeremy in Bedlam, the revelation of the missing hours, a problem with plumage, some numbered accounts, and a long sea voyage, all seem to mean there’s no way out of the snares surrounding them. Or is the old saying true: where there’s a waltz, there’s a way?
All royalties will go to a local LGBT organization.
Giveaway
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Interview
Do you have a favorite quote?
I have, I think, a sort of packrat mind, which over quite a few decades (to quote my late partner, I’m older than dirt) has accumulated bits and pieces of lines that I like. Lyrics from songs, nothing recent, and a lot of them musicals. Snippets of Shakespeare. Things from poetry or novels. And I use them in pretty much everything I write. Although I don’t sit there and think, “Okay, I need an allusion to a lyric. What will it be?” I’m just typing along and there the reference is.
So I have a Shakespearean “thing.” The first quote is one I’ve used often, and it appears in no way out, to hopefully good effect. It’s King Henry’s speech at Harfleur, the start of which is:
Once more unto
the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the
wall up with our English dead.
In peace there’s
nothing so becomes a man
As modest
stillness and humility:
But when the
blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the
action of the tiger;
Stiffen the
sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair
nature with hard-favour’d rage...
I know that much “by heart,” but the totality of it is so extraordinarily powerful.
The second is because it always moves me, no matter how many times I reread it. Sonnet 29, which begins: “When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes//I all alone beweep my outcast state...” and ends with such a glorious uplift.
How did you come up with the title?
The title and the opening line are one and the same. It was never going to be anything other than no way out—lowercase. Why lowercase? Because I think it visually suggests flatness, despair, fear, concern. Those three words are the core of the book. Both men feel there is no way out of the problems which beset them individually, and later, together. Yet they try. And since all of my Another England (alternate history) novels ultimately have an HEA, they succeed. But how? Well, I hope the manner is unexpected, a great deal of fun, and quite beautifully romantic...with a little Latin thrown in. (No, no, no. Get your minds out of the gutter. The language, not a guy. Sheesh!)
Do your characters try to make like bunnies and create ever more convoluted plots for you? Or do you have to coax them out of your characters?
Any convolution in plots is pure (impure?) me. When I start writing, I have the title, the opening and the ending, and a pretty good idea of how I’m going to get from start to finish. The only book I didn’t have the right title for at the start was The Warlord and The Bard. It started life as a long, long ago short story called “The Meeting” and pretty much stayed that way until I started expanding the plot and eventually the final title popped into my head.
I know writers who have had characters do just that...demand more, different, you can’t do that you have to do this...but it’s never happened to me. What takes the plot off in a new direction is usually an idea that occurs to me, and once I start writing, the story expands to explore the logical (my logical, not necessarily the world’s “logical”) consequences.
For example, in early August when I was starting the push to finalize no way out...which included finishing a number of incomplete chapters (I don’t write linearly)...I woke up in the middle of the night, stumbled around until I got to my office, blinded myself with the light, grabbed a pen and bit of paper and started writing, then stumble-staggered back to bed with my night vision shot.
The first thing was a new title for an important chapter: In Which Several Secrets Are Surrendered. The second thing was notes on a box and its contents which have significance for one of the MCs, some dialogue, jottings on what happened. But when I started turning the notes into typing I realized this scene revealed something important about the MC, a facet of him I hadn’t realized existed, but which made so very much sense...in my never humble opinion. I started having fun exploring that facet and incorporating it elsewhere.
I hope this makes sense.
What are your future projects?
After a long dry spell I’ve released three books recently. A Cocky Confession Story Collection was released 8/6. It’s an eclectic collection of fantasy, paranormal and contemporary short stories, with the contemporaries being sexy, humorous reading. On August 13, Of Princes False and True, a gay retelling of a fairy tale from Andrew Lang’s 1910 collection, The Lilac Fairy Book. (Appropriate, huh?). The third was no way out.
I’m hoping to have Christmas at the Baths done and out before Christmas. It’s a somewhat different, perhaps unusual story, from what the title might suggest. Contemporary. I’m not sure whether it’ll be a short story or a novella. I’ll have to see where Mike the Manly Muse takes me, if he’s not spending too much time in a towel, cruising.
Next year, I’m confident I’ll have two more fairy tale novels to publish. 3 Boars & A Wolf Walk Into A Bar (I’m sure you can figure out the source) and The Truth About Them Damn Goats—setting the record straight in the words of the troll himself...on a TV show.
Excerpt
6 April 1816
1:38 p.m.
Ireton House, London
no way out
The voice was back.
Inside my head.
Still I swiveled, twisting to look behind, knowing I would see what I always see when the words are said—nothing. The unpainted, scuffed wooden floor was empty. The door to second story elegance had not creaked since we passed through, shutting it behind us, moments ago. The stairs to lesser third-story elegance and fourth story no elegance at all were both bare of bodies who might whisper words only I could hear.
I turned forward again, teetered, and reaching out, slapped my palms flat against the walls of the narrow servants’ stairs. Pressing hard, I tilted back, but my socked foot slipped on the slick wooden edge. When I landed, the floor made known its displeasure with a sharp splinter through the rope-belted loose trousers, ill-fitting smalls, and into my bum. I yelped.
The cold voice of Thomas, the senior footman, rose up the stairwell from the landing below. “His lordship is waiting.”
I shifted my weight to my left hip, and rolled to my knees, giving him a fine view of my bottom if he was watching, which was by now instinctive. I made a point of lifting my left leg with great care, and with equal care placing my foot on the floor, again in case he was watching. A right foot repeat and then some clearly awkward struggling to get myself as upright on the landing as I could—although a boy with a twisted spine and a twisted leg can never be truly upright—followed by a shuffle-step away from the edge. I suppressed the temptation to rub my right arse cheek. Without turning around I called down, “Well, bugger ‘is bleedin’ lordship! Me feet ‘urt ‘n me arse ‘as been ‘urt, too.”
My feet didn’t hurt much any more. Though bandaged still, and covered with the thick wool stockings sagging around my ankles, they had almost healed. But the pretense might keep me here, with a comfortable bed, and good food, for just a while longer. I grinned a small, wicked grin to myself, and wiped it away as I turned to face the stairs. “Right, then. Shall I drop me britches, turn ‘n bend and you can see what’s stickin’ in me bum, ‘n maybe come up ‘n pull it out?”
It was amazing how much disdain could be contained in stare and stance. Thomas even managed to look down his nose while looking upthe stairs.
“Orright, orright. Jus’ wait a bleedin’ minute. ‘n you might want to close yer eyes so’s y’don’t see somethin’ what might ‘orrify you, just in case me grip slips, ‘cause I ain’t goin’ nowhere with somethin’ stickin’ in me arse.”
My hands were on the knot in the rope, and I grinned broadly when the footman closed his eyes, with a stern “Be quick about it then, boy.”
I untied the knot, loosening the waistband since whoever supplied the trousers was much thicker around the middle than me, using my left hand to hold the pants up. I reached behind, and working my right hand into my smalls and found the painful little bugger. With thumb and forefinger I wiggled it free, brought my hand round to the front, and looked at the bloody, bloody thing. I shouldn’t have, but I did. I lifted the three-quarter-inch sliver before my face. “Oi! Is this a dagger wot I see before me?”
Bloody hell. Bloody, bloody, bloodyhell. Maybe Thomas wouldn’t.... Well, bloodyhell all over again, he did. The footman was looking at me now, his eyes wide, his mouth open to say something, and then he slowly shut it.
It would only make it worse if I tried to cobble together an explanation of why, or how a sixteen-year-old street boy (the age I gave) could paraphrase The Scottish Play. I shut my own mouth, dropped the splinter, retied the knot, and began descending the stairs with care, one thumping step at a time. I braced one hand against the wall—his lordship did not believe in hand rails for his servants—in case of another slip. The footman waited until I was almost at the landing before turning away. Watching my downward struggle, he was unconcerned about the possibility of another fall, his expression informing me if I fell I was on my own. I followed in silence as we went through the halls of the first floor to the front of the house.
Ah, his lordship’s library. I stared at the door.
I’d been in there, just the once, when I shouldn’t have been. But then, I shouldn’t have been in the house in the first place, but I was, though I didn’t know why. Or how I came to be here. Both were part of what was missing. I could remember every...bloody...thingin my life up to the night before...whatever...happened. Remember the Dock on the 12th, the clock in my head saying it was ten thirty at night when I finished the last man. I remember the glint of the shilling as it spun through the air, making me get off my knees, bend and stretch to reach it in the muck. The feel of the metal between my fingertips as I picked it up. Then the twist and roll away, my back taking the brunt of the kick meant for my belly. The man was one of those who, once done, and eager to be tucked and buttoned away, feels guilty and lashes out at the one responsible for his sin. I remember his silhouette as I got to my feet, his realizing how much taller I was, and how the silhouette turned and hurried away.
Then nothing more until I woke up too damned many days later in a bloody nobleman’s house, in sobbing agony, weak, my feet, head and thigh throbbing with pain.
Author Bio
Eric is a Midwesterner, and as Lady Glenhaven might say, “His first sea voyage was with Noah.” He started reading at five with one of the Andrew Lang books (he thinks it was The Blue Fairy Book) and has been a science fiction/fantasy addict ever since. Most of his writing is in those (MM) genres.
The exceptions are his Another England (alternate history) series: The Rake, The Rogue and the Roué(Regency novel), Mr. Felcher’s Grand Emporium, or, The Adventures of a Pair of Spares in the Fine Art of Gentlemanly Portraiture(Victorian), with no way out(Regency) coming out a month after Of Princes.
Two more fairy tales are in progress: 3 Boars & A Wolf Walk Into A Bar(Eric is sure you can figure this one out), and The Truth About Them Damn Goats(of the gruff variety).
Now all he has to do is find the time to write the incomplete stuff! (The real world can be a real pain!)
Author Facebook (Author Page): https://www.facebook.com/Eric-Alan-Westfall-1045476662268838
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