What I Am Reading ~ J.M. Snyder: No Apologies

No Apologies by J.M. Snyder
From: Aspen Mountain Press

Donnie Novak and Jack Sterling have known each other forever. Growing up together in a small Midwestern town, they were best friends. After high school, they both enlisted in the U.S. Navy at the same time, and somehow were assigned to the same company before being stationed on the U.S.S. Oklahoma together.

One night on leave, Donnie crosses an almost imperceptible line between friendship and something more. A stolen kiss threatens to ruin what Donnie and Jack have built up together all these years, and the next morning, he can’t apologize enough.

But a squadron of Japanese bombers has their sights trained on Pearl Harbor’s Battleship Row, and in the early hours of December 7, 1941, Donnie might not get a chance to set things right.

You guys all know how harsh I can be, oh yeah the pig sometimes cringes at his own mouth. Half the time I don’t even fucking realize how I am coming across which just goes to show you I am such a PIG. It’s not funny.

Can I be honest here? I may not like every J.M. Snyder book I have ever read but every damn one of them was worth reading just for the quality alone. She goes places and writes things that leave me maybe not always in love, especially when it comes to the length of her stories, but I remain damn impressed. There is a talent to writing a good short story and Snyder has it. Anyway, what are you waiting for? Go buy her stuff and enjoy and get off my lawn!

Tags: Aspen Mountain Press, Gay, Historical Romance, J. M. Snyder

What I Am Reading ~ J.M. Snyder: Summer Kisses & Ice Cream Dreams

Summer Kisses & Ice Cream Dreams by J.M. Snyder
From: Aspen Mountain Press

His name is Andrew. He looks at me dead on, then clears his throat and shrugs. “Something warm and sweet,” he says, his gaze burning into me. “With lots of cream.” He turns to Chad. “You have anything like that?”

God.

Chad frowns at the menu. “Well…”

If he tells them about the hot fudge sundaes, I’ll just die. Warm and sweet, lots of cream. And he’s already got a girl? Damn.

“How about a hot fudge sundae? Perfect way to end a perfect day, don’t you think?”

I roll my eyes. Of course, I have to work for Mr. Comedian. Andrew stands there smiling because he knows he wasn’t talking about the sundaes, and he knows I know he wasn’t talking about ice cream…hell, from the smirk on her face even his girl knows what he’s talking about, and if I wasn’t already hiding in the corner behind the soda fountain, I’d sink into the floor and just disappear.

My knees are weak from that pale gaze, that deep voice, and any moment now I could melt away like chocolate. I imagine myself as chocolate beneath his hands, melting into his touch, moaning his name, his lips like cherries on my skin, his tongue a swirl of sensation across my body.

Tony’s as oblivious as Chad. “Fudge sounds good.”

Andrew shrugs as I shake ice from my drink into my mouth. “Maybe I’ll go for something hard,” he says. The ice cracks loudly between my teeth when I bite down on it.

Tony frowns. “You want something warm and hard?”

Damn it to hell, I’m blushing, I know it, flushed and red—I’m not prepared for this. Any other night I’d flirt back; it’s summer and there are a million guys on the boardwalk, but this one makes me ache as if I’m waking from a good dream, one I don’t want to lose in the daylight. If he didn’t have a girl with him, if the Romano kid wasn’t here, if Chad wasn’t here, maybe I’d flirt back. If I could even look at him and remember how to speak.

Tony squints at the menu and has the audacity to ask, “You want a Popsicle or something?” Looking around Andrew, he asks the girl, “You want to split a sundae with me, Lori?”

“Sure.” She ducks out from under Andrew’s arm and, with a twitch of her hip, bumps him over as she squeezes in between her friends, edging him closer to my end of the counter. “Move over.” Andrew complies, sliding down a little, down towards me.

To Chad she says, “We’ll get a sundae then, and give this boy something hard to suck on.”

This title needs more cow bell!

Tags: Aspen Mountain Press, Gay, Gay Romance, J. M. Snyder

J.M. Snyder: Trin

Trin by J.M. Synder
From: Aspen Mountain Press

He pushes past her as he races down the hall. The image burns in his mind-he closes his eyes and still sees the gunner’s slack cheeks and open mouth, his eyelids half-shut in lust. A hand stroked Gerrick’s thigh, another curved around his flat ass, a man knelt before him with the gunner’s fingers plunged deep into his thick hair.

The hard length suckled between red lips, Garrick in him, fucking the bounder’s hot pink mouth as the shower poured down between them. The bounder, Trin recognized his eyes when he turned to see why it was all of a sudden cold behind him.

Gerrick’s eyes widen slightly and the gunner sighed his name, “Trin.”

No explanations, no hurried excuses-he didn’t even push the bounder away, just kept thrusting into the softness between his lips and uttered his name. Trin. For the first time he was getting off he said Trin’s name, and it wasn’t even on him.

Behind him Gerrick calls out but Trin’s beyond hearing. He runs down the hall, head tucked between shaking shoulders, chin pressed to his chest. He tells himself he won’t cry, even as the first hot tears cut through the sweat on his cheeks.

J.M. Snyder’s story Trin is set in a post apocalyptic world where Devlars (Dragon like creatures) attack from the sky. Only the wild and warrior like gunners protect the people who populate the string of towns known as outposts. Trin, a mechanic, lives in what seems to be the local truck stop with his older brother Blain and Blain’s girlfriend Alissa. Blain used to be a gunner who ran with a man known as Gerrick whom Trin has a well known long time crush on.

Then one day Gerrick rides in.

It is hard to call Trin a gay romance. It follows all the romantic requirements. You have two men, one who is not so secretly in love with the older warrior. They do get around to having sex and there damn well is conflict that keeps them apart. Well, if you read the excerpt above then you know it is not so much conflict as betrayal, on both sides eventually. They get a type of HEA but…

The real stomach punch for me came at the end. It is not so much an HEA as a coming to terms and accepting responsibility with what you have left after the illusions shatter. I know that sounds vague but just read this thing yourself. I consider it very a stunning bit of writing.

This book will never rest easily on my favorites shelf, the really powerful ones never do. This one will sit in the back and be brought out to show someone just how effective a little eBook story can be. I myself recall being this incredibly young, of walking in and finding a man I had grown to love in bed with another. I still remember the chaos of that moment very clearly as if it happened yesterday. These characters and their reactions in the story rang true till the very end.

This is not a fairytale and there is no Prince Charming, nor is there a damsel in distress. Not really, neither character can be seen as blameless or very smart. As Morpheus told us “Welcome to the Desert of the Real.”

Grade A writing, Grade A story telling, for a book that contains some very jagged bitter pills.

Tags: Aspen Mountain Press, Gay, Grade A, J. M. Snyder, Sci-fi Romance