FOR A GOOD TIME, CALL by Anne Tenino & E.J. Russell ~ #Giveaway #Excerpt #MMromance

 

 

Welcome to the For a Good Time, Call Blog Tour! We’re delighted to have you stop by, so please, make yourself comfortable. Can we offer you a virtual beverage?

As part of this blog tour, Anne and E.J. are giving away a $50 Riptide Publishing Gift Certificate to one lucky winner! *confetti* To enter the giveaway, please comment on any official tour post with your name and contact info before midnight (EDT), April 15^th. Good luck, and enjoy the tour!

 

About For a Good Time, Call…

Thirty-seven-year-old Nate Albano’s second relationship ever ended three years ago, and since he’s grace—gray asexual—he doesn’t anticipate beating the odds to find a third. Still, he’s got his dog, his hobbies, and his job as a special effects technician on Wolf’s Landing, so he can’t complain—much.

Seth Larson, umpteenth generation Bluewater Bay, is the quintessential good-time guy, content with tending bar and being his grandmother’s handyman. The night they meet, Seth’s looking for some recreational sex to escape family drama. But for Nate, romantic attraction comes before sexual attraction, so while Seth thinks they’re hooking up, Nate just wants to talk . . . genealogy?

Dude. Seriously?

So they declare a “just friends” truce. Then Seth asks for Nate’s help investigating a sinister Larson family secret, and their feelings start edging way beyond platonic. But Nate may want more than Seth can give him, and Seth may not be able to leave his good-time image behind. Unless they can find a way to merge carefree with commitment, they could miss out on true love—the best time of all.

Now available from Riptide Publishing. http://www.riptidepublishing.com/titles/for-a-good-time-call

 

About Bluewater Bay

Welcome to Bluewater Bay! This quiet little logging town on Washington state’s Olympic Peninsula has been stagnating for decades, on the verge of ghost town status. Until a television crew moves in to film Wolf’s Landing, a soon-to-be cult hit based on the wildly successful shifter novels penned by local author Hunter Easton.

Wolf’s Landing’s success spawns everything from merchandise to movie talks, and Bluewater Bay explodes into a mecca for fans and tourists alike. The locals still aren’t quite sure what to make of all this—the town is rejuvenated, but at what cost? And the Hollywood-based production crew is out of their element in this small, mossy seaside locale. Needless to say, sparks fly.

This collaborative story world is brought to you by eleven award-winning, best-selling LGBTQ romance authors: L.A. Witt, L.B. Gregg, Z.A. Maxfield,  Heidi Belleau, Rachel Haimowitz, Anne Tenino, Amy Lane, SE Jakes, G.B. Gordon, Jaime Samms and Ally Blue. Each contemporary novel stands alone, but all are built around the town and the people of Bluewater Bay and the Wolf’s Landingmedia empire.

Check out Bluewater Bay! http://www.riptidepublishing.com/titles/universe/bluewater-bay

 

About Anne Tenino

Catalyzed by her discovery of LGBTQ romance, Anne Tenino left the lucrative fields of art history, non-profit fundraising, and domestic engineering to follow her dream of become a starving romance author. For good or ill, her snarky, silly, quasi-British sense of humor came along for the ride.

Anne applies her particular blend of romance, comedy and gay protagonists to contemporary, scifi and paranormal tales. Her works have won awards, she’s been featured in RT Book Reviews, and has achieved bestseller status on Amazon’s gay romance list.

Born and raised in Oregon, Anne lives in Portland with her husband and two kids, who have all taken a sacred oath to never read her books. She can usually be found at her computer, procrastinating.

Connect with Anne:

Website: annetenino.com

Blog: chicksanddicksrainbow.com

Twitter: @AnneTenino

Facebook: facebook.com//Anne-Tenino-Author

Goodreads: goodreads.com/annetenino

 

About E.J. Russell

E.J. Russell holds a BA and an MFA in theater, so naturally she’s spent the last three decades as a financial manager, database designer, and business-intelligence consultant. After her twin sons left for college and she no longer spent half her waking hours ferrying them to dance class, she returned to her childhood love of writing fiction. Now she wonders why she ever thought an empty nest meant leisure.

E.J. lives in rural Oregon with her curmudgeonly husband, the only man on the planet who cares less about sports than she does. She enjoys visits from her wonderful adult children, and indulges in good books, red wine, and the occasional hyperbole.

Connect with E.J.:

Website: ejrussell.com

Blog: ejrussell.com/bloggery/

Facebook: www.facebook.com/E.J.Russell.author

Twitter: twitter.com/ej_russell

Pinterest: www.pinterest.com/ejrussell/

 

Giveaway

To celebrate the release of For a Good Time, Call…, one lucky winner will receive a $50 Riptide credit! Leave a comment with your contact info to enter the contest. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on April 15, 2017. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries. Thanks for following the tour, and don’t forget to leave your contact info!

 

Excerpt

Chapter One

It’s just a theater, not a torture chamber. You’re here to consult, as a favor to a friend, nothing more.

No matter how many times Nate Albano had repeated that to himself in the last few hours, his palms were still sweaty as he entered the Bluewater Bay Theater lobby. Chill. Focus on the task at hand—or on the building itself, not what it stands for in your own pathetic life.

From his research into town history, Nate knew that the theater had started life as a vaudeville house in the early twenties, but had hosted barely six months’ worth of acts before it closed, a victim of the rise of the nickelodeon and the difficulty of luring quality performers to the Olympic Peninsula. It’d had a second life as a first-run movie house in Hollywood’s golden era, but had closed again with the rise of the multiplex and a downturn in the local economy.

Now, it was experiencing another revival—in more ways than one. The vintage movie posters lining the lobby were a little yellowed with age, but now they were encased in glass and high-end frames. The carpet, still dotted with random crimson tufts where the installers had been sloppy with the vacuum, hadn’t lost the odor of newness. No doubt about it—the playhouse had benefited from its association with Levi Pritchard.

Nate could relate. He had Levi to thank for his own presence in Bluewater Bay. In the aftermath of Jorge walking out on their six-year relationship, Nate had burned so many bridges in Hollywood that he hadn’t worked for over a year. Then he’d gotten that call out of the blue—Levi had recommended Nate for a spot on the special effects crew of Wolf’s Landing on the strength of his work on the SFX crews of Levi’s indie films. So what if setting foot in a theater again knotted his belly and sent his pulse into overdrive? Levi had asked for his help on his latest community theater production—and Levi could pretty much ask him to do anything, short of taking a flying leap off the edge of Sandy Bluff, and Nate would follow through.

When he slipped into the auditorium, Levi was standing at the edge of the stage, flanked by a woman wearing a headset and a man scribbling notes on a clipboard. Nate knew the drill all too well—he’d logged enough hours in darkened theaters to identify the defeated slump of the crew’s shoulders and the tension fairly vibrating off Levi. Welcome to tech week.

Nate started down the aisle as Levi cursed under his breath.

“The set looks great, Jack, don’t get me wrong. But the vibe for this scene—Darla, can we do something with the lights to make this look more like a luxury hotel gone to seed and less like the Transylvania Holiday Inn?”

The woman muttered into her mic, and the lights bathing the stage dimmed and took on a bluish cast.

“Yeah, that’s it. Can we get more of the moonlight effect through the window? And what about— Nate.” Levi beckoned him over. “Thank God. Come meet everyone.”

When Nate reached the front of the house, Levi clapped him on the shoulder. “Folks, this is Nate Albano, who’s on the special effects crew for Wolf’s Landing. Darla’s our lighting designer.” She nodded but turned away to continue her conversation. Levi turned to the man with the clipboard, a thirtysomething guy with sandy hair and a determined chin. “And Jack’s my technical director. He’s done miracles with our limited budgets.”

Nate shook hands, nodding at the set, with its dark wainscoting and realistic plaster walls. “I can tell. You must have a killer fly system to be able to cap the walls with the ceiling that way.”

“Yeah.” Jack shrugged. “Thanks to Levi. He ponied up half the cost for the upgrade a couple years back.”

“Don’t give me more credit than I’m due,” Levi said. “Guy Parker was the real hero there. Between his fundraising campaign and his own donations—”

Jack leaned toward Nate and spoke out of the side of his mouth. “Only because he didn’t want the scenery to fall on his wife’s head.”

Levi chuckled. “Elle Parker is one of our regular actors—she’s playing Elizabeth. Hey, Elle,” he called. “Come on out and meet the man who’s facilitating your murder.”

A willowy blonde woman poked her head out of the wings. “You bellowed, oh fearless leader?” She walked out onto the apron, her long rehearsal skirt setting the residual construction dust swirling. A thin, nervous-looking man in a business suit followed her, squinting in the lights.

“Elle, meet Nate.” Levi nodded at the man. “That’s her husband, Guy.” Guy raised a hand in greeting but didn’t come closer.

Elle leaned over to shake Nate’s hand. “Pleased to meet you. I make it a practice to be on good terms with all my killers.”

“Don’t think of me as a killer. I’m more a serial enabler.”

“That’s right,” a deep voice boomed. “Don’t encroach on my territory.” A huge guy—made even huger by boots with stacked soles and a shirt with some serious shoulder padding—stomped onstage. His face was seamed with scars and distorted by some convincing prosthetics.

Holy— Ty, the cook at Flat Earth, was intimidating enough just wielding his long-handled pizza peel. But now? “You’re playing the Creature, Ty? Wow. Talk about typecasting.”

“Watch it, Albano,” Ty growled, “or I’ll slip jalapeños under the mushrooms on your next combo pie.” Then he grinned, offering Nate a fist bump.

“Elle, Ty, can you run through the blocking for this scene for Nate? I want him to see what we’re trying not to do.”

“Sure thing, Levi.” Ty lumbered off stage right, while Guy sidled over to stand next to Nate and Levi.

Elle took her place in the middle of the set and began to pace, glancing at the camelback clock over the fireplace, peering out the window as if waiting for someone to return.

Something thumped stage right outside the door. Elle spun around as the door swung open slowly, revealing Ty looming outside, filling the doorframe. He growled low in his throat, took a step forward . . . and banged his head on the lintel.

“Ow!”

Elle burst into giggles as Ty rubbed his forehead.

Levi sighed. “Ty, we talked about this. You need to slam the door open. Try it again, and this time, really whale on it.”

“Got it.” He exited, closing the door gingerly.

The actors started the scene again, and on cue, Ty flung the door open so hard that it bounced off the wall and creaked closed in his face. This time, even Levi laughed—although he also pinched the bridge of his nose.

“See why I called you? This is a climactic scene. If we were doing Young Frankenstein instead of just Frankenstein, that would have been golden.”

Nate’s cell phone shrilled from his jacket pocket. “Shit. Sorry, Levi. Should have silenced it before I came in.” His mother would have murdered him for disrupting a rehearsal with a cell phone call. He pulled the phone out—speak of the she-devil—and took great pleasure in turning the damn thing off when he saw his mother’s name on the caller ID.

Levi cleared his throat. “Didn’t mean to invade your privacy, but Iris Bedrosian, Nate? The Iris Bedrosian?” His eyebrows snapped together. “You’re not leaving Wolf’s Landing for Broadway, are you?”

“Trust me. There’s zero chance of that.”

“Then why— I mean, sorry if I’m intruding, but it seems odd she’d call you if it wasn’t about a job.”

“Well . . .” Nate rubbed the back of his neck. “She’s my mother.”

“You’re kidding. We’ve known each other how long, and you never thought to mention it?”

“Not exactly something I advertise. I didn’t speak to her for over fourteen years.”

Levi nodded. “Mom issues. I get it. Been down that road myself.”

“Yeah? Did yours lie to you the way mine did to me?”

“Actually, it was the other way around. I lied to her and my father about being bisexual.”

“We didn’t have that issue, but—” Nate shook his head. “Hey. We’re not here to talk about motherly love or lack of it. I take it you want to beef up the impact of this scene.”

“You think?”

“So . . .” Nate squinted at the coffered ceiling on the hotel room set. “How would you feel about an audience-shits-their-pants moment?”

Levi grinned. “I’d kill for one. Think you can deliver?”

With this set and a competent TD? “Yeah, I can do that.”

“That’s why I love working with you. What have you got?”

Nate pointed to the ceiling. “We can take full advantage of the current design. All we have to do is—”

“Levi?” Carter Samuels called from halfway down the aisle. “Are you ready to go?”

Levi’s smile bloomed as he gazed at his husband. “Hey, babe. What—” He winced. “C.J.’s party. Damn. I forgot. But it’s tech week—”

“Yeah, and your actors and crew have other jobs.” Carter sauntered over. When he gave Levi a kiss, the expression on both their faces was one of total adoration. Just like I thought I had once. “Come on, you slave driver. Let everyone go.”

“You’re right.” He turned to the stage. “That’s it for tonight, everyone. Tomorrow night, same time.” He grabbed Nate’s elbow. “Not you, though. You can fill me in on your ideas at the party.”

“I . . . uh . . . wasn’t planning to go.”

Levi frowned. “How long have you been in this town? Six months? Seven?”

“Eight and a half, actually.”

“Eight and a half, then, and you haven’t gone out with us once.”

“I have. A couple of times.”

“Only because you were forced. This’ll be an easy one. It’s just over at Ma Cougar’s, nothing too fancy, everyone welcome.” Levi lowered his voice, let go of Nate’s elbow, and squeezed his shoulder instead. “It’s been three years since he left. Isn’t it time to get out there again?”

What was it about people who were stupid in love? Why did they think everyone else burned to be in the same state? Nate was managing just fine on his own. He had his job, his dog, his hobbies. If he was lonely from time to time, so what? Better that than a futile search for a soul mate, someone who got him. I’ve had that. Twice. Can’t expect lightning to strike a third time.

“I’m good, Levi. Really.”

“Even so, you’re coming along tonight. Have a drink or two and tell me about your ideas, because we’ve only got a week to implement them. Jack? Can you join us?”

“Sure. Soon as I lock up.”

“See you there.” Levi slung his arm across Carter’s shoulders. “Let’s get going—the sooner we make our appearance, the sooner we can leave.”

Nate sighed and followed the couple up the aisle. What the hell—it wasn’t as if he had to meet anyone’s socializing expectations. It’s just a drink. For Levi, surely he could survive one evening out.

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