Tag Archives: Spanish setting

Release Blitz: The Book of Elis by Lou Skelton

The Book of Elis | Lou Skelton

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Release Date: July 12th, 2022

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Blurb

Q: What happens when a summer romance ends? A: The Book of Elis.

Two childhood friends reunite on vacation. Elis is a vain attention-seeker, yet Ieuan can’t help falling for him. Knowing the clock is ticking, Ieuan records their romance in his diary.

But Elis is full of surprises. Is there more to him than it seems? And, with Elis and Ieuan living on opposite sides of the world, can there ever be anything deeper between them?

I decided to write this last night after everyone had gone to bed. Elis had sneaked into my room so we could mess around in the dark. For the first time, he kissed me. In four days our holiday will be over, so I don’t have long left. I have to get it all down while it’s still happening; before I forget what it was like.

Ieuan couldn’t be less impressed by the self-obsessed Elis, who brags about his life in Australia and who seems desperate for the attention of a girl back home. But, stuck together in a Spanish villa, they are drawn into a steamy and surprisingly tender romance.

Once the holiday is over, Elis must go back to Brisbane and Ieuan to a rainy village north of Cardiff. Though they remain in touch, Ieuan’s expectations of Elis are low. He is unreliable and immature—soon he’ll tire of the novelty of their relationship and the distance keeping them apart.

Or so he thinks. Because Elis is full of surprises, and Ieuan has to decide how much of his heart he dares to trust him with.

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Excerpt

Sunday, 14th July (evening)

We just got back. I am sitting on the bed in my old room at home and everything is quiet and flat. Dad is bumping around in the loft putting the cases away, Mum is downstairs ordering us a Chinese. I’m supposed to be unpacking or something, but really I came up here to write. I decided on the plane that I should keep this whatever-it-is going—diary, journal? I don’t know, both sound wrong to me. Reading it back now, I suppose it’s the usual story—a boy, a crush, etc. Was all this to be expected? Once we’d started messing around, I mean. We had a good time, so it must have been inevitable that I’d end up missing him now he’s no longer here.

Right?

Unless there really is something about Elis that I can’t get anywhere else… But I sort of don’t want that to be true. Elis is a few hundred miles away and getting further away all the time. I have to keep reminding myself that he lives in Brisbane, which is nine thousand miles from here, and that the cost of seeing each other again is so far out of my budget that he might as well live on the moon. I should close this doc I’m typing in and give it up as a bad job.

But the text he sent from the airport shows our story is not finished yet. So here I am, still writing it all down.

Don’t forget, he’d said. Send me one back. The photo that came with his message looks so good I can hardly describe it. I smiled all the way to the check-in desk—can a dick pic be romantic? It’s not just a dirty picture, you see—it’s proof of something we couldn’t quite say. He’d taken it in the main bathroom of the villa we’d all shared, my family and his, while he was getting ready to leave. The tiles on the wall behind him gave it away. And his faded red shorts—I wonder if he’s still wearing them now?

In the picture he’s sort of leaning back, sucking his stomach in, and there are three fingers resting lightly on his dick as if he’s paused mid-stroke. His hips are pressing forward towards the camera, towards me. His underwear is pulled down, trapped under his balls, and the button-fly of his shorts is falling open. I remember those shorts well, and I remember, too, the feeling of his cock hot in my throat. He fucking loved that—I don’t think anyone had sucked him that deep before. I did a lot of things that no one else had done to him before—no wonder he’s sending me pictures of his dick.

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About the Author

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Lou Skelton writes fun, filthy and feelsy gay romance stories from her home in south east London.

She particularly enjoys subverting romantic tropes and heteronormative narratives, but she still loves a good, old-fashioned happy ending. She has several books in development and is in the middle of writing her first series.

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https://goodreads.com/lou_skelton

http://author.to/LouSkelton

https://www.bookbub.com/profile/lou-skelton

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Giveaway

To celebrate the release of The Book of Elis, Lou is giving away two e-copies of the release

A Rafflecoper Giveaway

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Release Blitz: Meet Me In Madrid by Verity Lowell

Meet Me in Madrid | Verity Lowell

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Release Date: October 26th, 2021

Buy Link: https://www.harlequin.com/shop/books/9781335631008_meet-me-in-madrid.html

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Blurb

In this sexy, sophisticated romantic comedy, two women juggle romance and career across continents.

Charlotte Hilaire has a love-hate relationship with her work as a museum courier. On the one hand, it takes her around the world. On the other, her plan to become a professor is veering dangerously off track.

Yet once in a while, maybe every third trip or so, the job goes delightfully sideways…

When a blizzard strands Charlotte in Spain for a few extra days and she’s left with glorious free time on her hands, the only question is: Dare she invite her grad school crush for an after-dinner drink on a snowy night?

Accomplished, take-no-prisoners art historian Adrianna Coates has built an enviable career since Charlotte saw her last. She’s brilliant. Sophisticated. Impressive as hell and strikingly beautiful.

Hospitable, too, as she absolutely insists Charlotte spend the night on her pullout sofa as the storm rages on.

One night becomes three and three nights become a hot and adventurous long-distance relationship when Charlotte returns to the States. But when Adrianna plots her next career move just as Charlotte finally opens a door in academia, distance may not be the only thing that keeps them apart.

Excerpt

The car arrived with the luggage while they were still flirt­ing and deliberating in the kitchen, the cava as yet unpoured. Hearing the buzzer, Adrianna had reluctantly thrown on a robe and slippers and run down the three flights, leaving Charlotte still leaning on the counter to contemplate what came next.

“I’m putting your very nice suitcase in my room,” a breath­less Adrianna said as soon as she closed the apartment door behind her. “It won’t fit in the study.”

It would have fit in the study. But it fit a lot better in the bedroom.

“I’m out here,” Charlotte informed her. She had taken the bottle and glasses and resituated herself on the living room sofa. If it had been in the States, the long, upholstered couch with its plethora of throw pillows would have sat smack-dab in front of a flat-screen TV. This one, by refreshing contrast, faced a wall of tall, arched casement windows looking onto mostly sky and a distant cityscape punctuated by the city’s nu­merous church towers. Today the potted trees and summer furniture on the neighboring balconies were coated with an inch or two of velvety snow.

What sun there had been was already dimming.

Adrianna was surprised, but certainly not disappointed, to find Charlotte curled up at one end of said sofa, glass in hand, taking it all in just as she herself liked to do at sunset.

“It’s beautiful,” Charlotte said. “Doesn’t look like any place else I’ve been.”

“Sure doesn’t.” Adrianna sat down close beside Charlotte. Encouragingly close, she hoped.

Charlotte filled Adrianna’s flute with pale bubbly and raised hers in a wordless toast. Their glasses clinked.

“What are we drinking to?” Adrianna asked.

“Bank closures and oversold hotels?” Charlotte replied with a laugh and a gulp. Her legs were folded under her and as she went to set down her glass, she slipped into Adrianna’s shoul­der, not seeming to mind at all when Adrianna leaned into her and caught her eye.

“If you’d have looked at me like that in school, I’m not sure what I would have done,” Charlotte said.

“I can’t promise I never did,” Adrianna admitted. “Espe­cially there at the end.”

“You were definitely shopping around at one point, as I re­call. Like a freshman for new classes,” Charlotte said. “Least that’s what it looked like from where I stood.”

“I was a train wreck,” Adrianna said solemnly. “My ex cheated on me with someone I cared about and I was worried to death I wouldn’t get a job—and interviewing cross-country practically every week while I finished the last chapter of my diss. Those days seem incomparably easy, yet completely im­possible when I look back. But I fucked things up with a lot of people and I hate thinking about it.”

“Your heart was broken,” Charlotte said, reaching for the cava. She’d stopped looking at Adrianna but her voice conveyed empathy.

Had someone broken Charlotte’s heart? Adrianna wanted badly to know.

“And I did that to others in return,” she said.

“You are indeed a heartbreaker,” Charlotte laughed.

“You’re one to talk,” Adrianna replied. “I can’t believe you weren’t dating your pretty little ass off—or seeing faculty on the sly at least. I don’t think I do believe it.”

“Well, you can believe it or not. I’m not saying I didn’t sleep around some. But grads and faculty were off-limits. Not out of moral approbation. I just knew it would throw me off my game. I don’t mind telling you I had tempting offers from both parties.”

Good thing Adrianna wasn’t one of those former suitors. It was so much better finding her again like this, now that they were both past the stage of perpetual heightened insecurity. Now that there was no history with Charlotte, only possibility.

Neither of them were drunk, just usefully relaxed, their inhibitions disarmed by the alcohol, their focus sharpened by the caffeine.

Adrianna set down her own near-empty glass and turned toward Charlotte.

“Let’s toast to layovers instead.”

“With what?”

“Come here,” Adrianna said, just to see how Charlotte re­acted to being told what to do.

“Make me,” she replied, finishing what was left in her flute and starting to rise.

“Where are you going now?”

“I’m thirsty. Think I’ll get a glass of water…”

“Fuck the water,” Adrianna said. She pulled Charlotte back down to her for a deep, wet kiss that burned deliciously from the sparkling wine in her mouth and on their lips. Charlotte responded with a kind of unrestraint, immediately taking the lead. God did she. Adrianna suddenly seemed to feel her touch everywhere.

It was one of those moments when you don’t realize how much you want something—someone—until she’s within reach. She wasn’t going to lose her second chance.

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Carina Adores is home to highly romantic contemporary love stories featuring beloved romance tropes, where LGBTQ+ characters find their happily-ever-afters.

Discover a new Carina Adores book every month

The Life Revamp by Kris Ripper (coming November 30th)

If You Love Something by Jayce Ellis (coming December 28th)

D’Vaughn and Kris Plan a Wedding by Chencia C. Higgins (coming January 25th)

Sink or Swim by Annabeth Albert (coming February 22nd)

Going Public by Hudson Lin (coming March 29th)

About The Author

Verity Lowell is a professor and occasional curator who writes queer of color romance. She likes imagining and describing a world where art, ambition, and history provide the background for diverse and steamy love stories, mostly about women falling hard for women.

She and her partner and their cats live in New England and sometimes elsewhere.

Social Media

Website: https://www.veritylowell.com/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/21135117.Verity_Lowell

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