Michael, thanks so much for hosting me. It’s very much appreciated.

I’m here to talk about my Rough Boys trilogy. The final novel, Rough Boys: Revenge, came out in mid-February, and to celebrate I’ve made the first novel, Rough Boys: Runaway, available for free.

I touch on a lot of themes in this novel, but at it’s heart, it’s a love story. Three different love stories, actually, and as with most true love stories, there are some bumps along the way. Let me introduce you to the couples:

Ty, a runaway, is rescued from freezing to death by Abe, who stumbles across him on the way home from his work as a trauma nurse. The connection is strong from start, but Ty has a lot of self-searching to do before he can accept that he’s sexually attracted to Abe. For Abe, falling in love with Ty is easy, it’s being in love with him that is difficult.

Dani moves to the city from a small town to pursue a career in acting or music. When he meets the favorite local band’s English drummer in person, he can’t help but feel star struck. Nigel is taken with Dani too, but he is used to living a rock-star lifestyle, with a different boy every night. He’ll need to change his wicked ways if he wants to get together with the beautiful, talented young musician, and Dani will need to find forgiveness as well as bolster his courage and confidence before he can take a chance with his heart.

Kaeden didn’t dream his conservative parents hadn’t figured out he was gay until he went over the top with his femininity one day. Give a choice between conforming to his parent’s ideal or moving out, the optimistic Kaeden set forth on his own. He was fortunate to find employment right away with a woman who is running an upscale escort service … or is he? Sean, an Irish musician who likes to live on the wild side, has always had a thing for Asians. He is instantly smitten with the one-of-a-kind Kaeden, but the flamboyant femme can’t see the heart-of-gold hidden behind his rough exterior.

Although Rough Boys could be considered a coming-of-age novel, I did not write it for young adults. Not only are the sex scenes explicit, some parts of the novel are quite gritty, especially the first chapter. There themes of abuse, homelessness, drug addiction, homophobia, and racism, but there are also themes of love, hope, overcoming adversity, forgiveness and healing. I’m also a firm believer in HEA. I’m not sure how often it happens in real life, but as down and dirty as things might sometimes get in my stories, I am writing fiction. And because it’s fiction, I can make my endings however I want, and I want HEAs.

Rough Boys is the first novel I’ve ever written. I got a bit carried away and ended up with three book’s worth of story. I struggled over the decision to break it up, because I wrote it as a single novel and personally hate getting to the end of a story only to discover that it’s not really the end. However, long novels tend not to sell as well in the romance genre, and in order to look credible I would have had to price it pretty high. That seemed like a steep hill to climb for a first-time author, so I did end up breaking it into thirds. I’m happy with that decision because, otherwise I never would have gotten the other two covers that PL Nunn created—the one for Rough Boys: Redemption is absolutely delicious—or the opportunity to give the whole first third away for free.

I hope you’ll check out the novels—links are below. Happy reading!