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All right, some signs were there, my LiveJournal is devoted to Gay Romance, and it's two years that it has a continuous growth that is almost scaring, and not, I'm not self-flattering myself, it's something that made me really wonder, if you don't count last month, that with the Rainbow Awards and all, it was a special month (more than 35.000 single visits, 82.000 page views), the previous month was more or less 25.000 single visits, more or less 5 times the visits of the same month the previous year.
So yes, something was happening, and fast, but really, I wouldn't believe to see the day when Harlequin, the most conservative romance publisher in the world, the same publisher who owns Mills&Boon in England, would open a new line accepting Gay and Lesbian story! But it's true, read here:
"Carina Press is a new digital-only publisher that combines editorial and marketing expertise with the freedom of digital publishing. With a long history of digital marketing and editorial experience, the Carina Press team is committed to bringing readers fresh voices and new, unique editorial.
Our philosophy is: no great story should go untold!
Carina Press will publish a broad range of fiction with an emphasis on romance and its subgenres. We will also acquire voices in mystery, suspense and thrillers, science fiction, fantasy, erotica, gay/lesbian, and more!
Our first books will hit the digital shelves in Spring 2010. Stay tuned!"
http://carinapress.com/
All right, there is Angela James behind it, the same Angela James who, with Samhain Publishing, brought out so good M/M romance authors, so I'm giving them credibility, and will look forward to the Spring of 2010.
So yes, something was happening, and fast, but really, I wouldn't believe to see the day when Harlequin, the most conservative romance publisher in the world, the same publisher who owns Mills&Boon in England, would open a new line accepting Gay and Lesbian story! But it's true, read here:
"Carina Press is a new digital-only publisher that combines editorial and marketing expertise with the freedom of digital publishing. With a long history of digital marketing and editorial experience, the Carina Press team is committed to bringing readers fresh voices and new, unique editorial.
Our philosophy is: no great story should go untold!
Carina Press will publish a broad range of fiction with an emphasis on romance and its subgenres. We will also acquire voices in mystery, suspense and thrillers, science fiction, fantasy, erotica, gay/lesbian, and more!
Our first books will hit the digital shelves in Spring 2010. Stay tuned!"
http://carinapress.com/
All right, there is Angela James behind it, the same Angela James who, with Samhain Publishing, brought out so good M/M romance authors, so I'm giving them credibility, and will look forward to the Spring of 2010.
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Yes, I know, when you read a book you should try to judge it for the book itself and not for your personal experience, above all if the book is not fiction, but a memoir. People are different and they behave in a different way in front of the same event. Anyway, I can't read a book about a dying parent, without recalling my personal experience: I lost my father when I was 19 years old, and he was ill, terminally ill, for the last three years. In particular the last year I couldn't do anything if not spending hours and hours near his bed, or in the next proximity, waiting. My father was a very strong man, and even if the illness made him weak, he never once wanted to impose on me or my brother. So no, we couldn't help him, and he rarely spoke. Only twice he acknowledged his illness with me, once when he was still hoping to have a chance to fight it back, we were on car, he driving, and he told me that the last months had been hard, but he was probably good now. He wasn't. The second time it was some month before his death, when he had to go to a funeral of a friend of his who didn't manage to survive cancer, the same cancer my father had. I went with him, losing one day of school but my mother and I thought my father shouldn't be alone, and outside the church, waiting for the service to end (my father was atheist and didn't like to enter churches, neither for a funeral), he told me that he didn't want a funeral, and above all not in church. Now you have to understand that in Italy there is no any other way to have a service if not in church. We haven't funeral home, we usually don't cremate. But this is another story, enough to say that my father had a service on the street, with hundreds of people attending, all standing. I think my father would have liked it. 
Due to the time of release, Hallowen, and the author, Jordan Castillo Price and her vampires and psycops, I was expecting something "paranormal" from this seasonal novella, and instead, to my surprise and delight, it was a very nice, and normal, romance, with a good love story.
Heart Song is a short story that puts a lot in game. Rafe and Charlie were a May and December couple, and plus there was also a difference in social status, being Rafe only a policeman and instead Charlie a wealthy businessman. But Rage really loved Charlie, and since he loved him so much, he had to leave the older man: he felt that that Charlie didn't love him as much as he loved him, there was always something or someone else that kept a big share of the man's heart. When Rage left Charlie for that last time, he was sure this time he wouldn't have changed his mind, but he didn't know that it wouldn't have any other chance to do that, Charlie dies and leaves behind him a lot of unanswered question, and a letter.
Director: Yair Hochner 
This short story by A.J. Ryan, another pen name for Geoffrey Knight, author of the Fathom's Five series, is a pure fun and naughty sexy romp. Eighteen years old Tommy and his nineteen years old newly stepbrother Dash are all alone for the summer, since they parents left for the honeymoon, and they promise to stay together and look for each other... like asking to the wolf to look out for the sheep... oh yes, Dash will look good for Tommy, but his idea is not to protect the boy. As the author well says, the two boys are very similar... apart that one is blond and the other brunette, apart that one has blue eyes and the other green, apart that one is a wasp boy and the other an Afro-American from the ghetto... yes they are the same in the desire to get into trouble and get into each other pants. 
It's really difficult to disconnect the author, Jim Arnold, from his character, Ben Schmidt. They have so many traits in common and Ben comes out so strong from the page of Arnold's novel, that it was really like reading a personal journal more than a fictional novel. 
Broken is, as expected, a story very heavy in the angst side but not overtly dramatic. I poured my one tear or two, but basically, I think the story was more sweet than anything else, and I really enjoyed the fact that it was "physical" without being sexy. Let me explain a bit: both main characters, Eli and Alec, are very aware of each other in a physical way, the love between them is both a match of minds than bodies, and all around them there are people who are in different stage of relationships, but the novel never goes down to the details, never once there is a full sex scene, even if, more than once, the men fall asleep together (and you will have to read the book to know what I mean). So yes, the novel is physical, but it's not sexy, we and they are aware of the men and their sexuality, and so no, this is not a "sweet romance" as the old romance rules state (no sex we are English...), but it's sweet since the author manages to maintain it on a balanced level, not too much of that, not to few of this. 
All right, this was a very daring book. And it's the classical book that who read and like it, as me, then feels bad about liking it. Why? Because we are "programmed" to consider certain things as bad, and I hate it! I would really be able to read a book like this one and closing it with only a satisfied feeling, not guilty at all. Well, at least I read it, and I liked it, so, that is a step more, isn't it? 
