I went on a reading bender this week

and there was lots of gore. Okay not really gore. I'm not fond of gore. I can handle some horror but not gore. Scare the hell out of me, don't make me puke. It's why I stick to mostly romance. Okay so back to the reading bender. I'm stuck in edits and trying to finish a WIP that I won't be able to sell. Really. Until I'm sure this mess with one of my publishers is resolved I can't even submit it anywhere. Enough about that. So thanks largely to the week of free reads from Dreamspinner Press this past week and a couple of ill advised purchases I read a great deal. I read fast, very fast. It's more to the point that when I read I don't read I inhale. All of it. At once. By the same token if I can't get into a book I don't finish it. All or nothing. Most of the books offered last week were short reads. A hundred pages maybe one fifty. I read those in about an hour. They were okay. I loved the story of one, but I thought it was very underdeveloped. Two of them I couldn't get past the first two chapters. I'm not fond of intrigue. And one was down right, okay it was bad.

I love the simple two people meet, they are attracted, some crap happens, they hook up a couple of times, some more crap happens and then its HEA time. I know I'm somewhat of a Mary Sue I guess. I just want me a good old fashioned love story, with some smutty sex, or smex as I keep seeing lately. I want more romance than smex, and I want good smex. And not the same scene every time. Come on people I write this stuff I can tell when you have one scene and you plop it in change a detail and call it a sex scene. Uhm no. I give one star reviews on Goodreads for really bad sex. Not under Mercy's name, huh. I don't rate or comment under my pen name. I prefer to adhere to that idea that reviewing your peers is somehow wrong. And no I've never stooped to rating my books under my real name. I've left enough clues to figure out what my real name is so it wouldn't be hard to tell and that would be wrong.

Back to Dreamspinner Press. I have a love hate relationship with them. I'm not published by them so I think I can speak freely. They are as near as I can tell the premiere publisher of gay romance. Their books sell lots and quickly. But they have a bad habit of putting out some stinkers. By stinkers I mean, how in the fucking hell did this book get bought in the first place, do they have any editors at all and oh my god are you writers crazy you can't, that is just, do you know how to use google to research oh my god. That kind of bad. And quite frankly many of their books are just one long usually bad excuse to have sex, not a whole lot of plot. Just some humping and bumping and butt plugs in virgins.....yikes.

I may not be the best person to call the kettle anything. It's all trial and error really, I've written some pretty cliche stuff, made some mistakes, forgot the lube once. I grimace over that. But I tell stories, it's not about condoms and lube and butt plugs for me. It's about the story. Yes I want some smex. I do. I can even handle the butt plugs if done correctly. But in the long run I want me a boy meets boy story that's going to knock my socks off and make me use them to dry my eyes. I want to wake the house because I'm laughing so hard at three in the morning and I can't contain it. I want for the story to end and all I can do is sit and stare into space and sigh. I want to go to bed smiling because someone has a happy ending even if they are fictional.

Now back to Dreamspinner Press. Sometimes DSP has gold hiding in their lists. I've featured two such books on this very blog. Books that knocked me into next week they were so good. And I'm about to do it again...but there's a hitch. I sort of sort of know the author and I feel sort of weird going all fangirly.

As a rule I don't read books by people I know. I don't want to have to answer the inevitable question. "So what did you think of it?" Uhhh. How do you answer that if you thought it was less than stellar. I'm a coward. I know but...okay. I don't really know this author. I don't sit across a room from her once a month, I've never met her, I know her from twitter and blogs. I respect her and honestly I would never have read her book if it hadn't been one of the free books offered last week.

Yeah Marie Sexton, I'm talking about you.

Okay so because when I read a book that knocks my socks off I like to share it with my followers, all three of you. And I see no reason why I shouldn't this time just because I've had personal correspondence with the writer. And just so I cover all the bases:
I am not a reviewer. I procured this book from the publisher as part of their anniversary free promotion week. I do not profit from featuring this book on my blog (And I had a whole paragraph here that blogger cut out completely when I published what's up with that?) yada yada

So okay, on to the book.

Promises by Marie Sexton

I read this book in one sitting. Couldn't put it down. Had to. Had to cook for the kids. I rushed to get back. 

The story is in first person POV strictly from Jared's POV. I'm not really a fan of first person, mostly because its most often done very badly. In this case. I barely noticed it was first person. Ms. Sexton tells a beautiful story in Jared's voice starting the day Matt walked into his hardware store. Matt is straight, or so he thinks, he's a cop. It's a small town. I grew up in a small town. I feel their pain.

I think that's why I loved this story so much. I could identify with it. Two everyday protags. No larger than life settings. Just small town ordinary people doing and living and being in a small world. Fitting in in a small town is hard. And I don't have to imagine how people who are different are treated. This is a story of finding true love. Having the courage to accept that love. And standing up and being. Just being. I bawled my fricken head off. 

This story was beautifully written. The attention to detail. Geo caching, I've never even heard of that. Probably because around here we'd just end up in a swamp somewhere. The lush Colorado scenery. This was a perfect book. 

With no butt plugs. Not that there is anything wrong with that. 

I linked to the publisher above the photo. Really go buy this book. You will not regret a single word of it. 

And just as a heads up and totally unrelated. Marie is going to be my first guest blogger. Next week. So all of you who pop in a read and look at my pretty men. I'm expecting you guys to come in and make Marie feel welcome. And if you want to know more about Marie here's the link to her site. I'd give you the link to her tumbler but she has a tendency to cause mass heart failure. 

Marie Sexton home 

and you can find her here too

Coffee and Porn blog