Today we have an interview with Brad Vance, author of Conning Colin. Tell us a little about yourself and your current book.
- What’s the best line you ever wrote?
Not so much a line as a thought. In Would I Lie to You, Marc and Jesse talk about what they might have done differently if they could go back and fix one thing. To which Marc responds, “Only the person you are now can decide what you’d change then. But making a different decision then, would make you a different person now. Who in turn would regret something different, so the person you became instead of who you are now, would decide to change something else.”
- Do you listen to music while writing? If so, what kind?
Oh yeah, I have my playlist: The War on Drugs, Foals, Tame Impala, Lord Huron, City and Colour, Ray LaMontaigne, TV On The Radio. Weird swirly stuff that fits my creative thought process.
- If your book were made into a movie, what actors would you like to see star?
Well, that’s easy for Henry! He’s got a huge obsession with Matt Bomer from White Collar. And not only does he look like him, but my cover artist even found a pic with a model with an uncanny resemblance! For Colin, I don’t know, he’s sort of a Joel McHale, young Greg Kinnear type. Not really sure which younger actor would fit that mold now. We’ll find out in the audition process 🙂
- What genres do you write in?
Gay romance, obviously, and from now on I’m focusing on adventure stuff (Marc and Jesse, things like Sam and Derek) and romcom. I’m over angst, and I’m hoping that most readers are getting there, too. Time for some fun… the world is depressing enough now.
- Where and when do you prefer to write?
I write early in the morning. It’s a habit I developed when I was still bound to Cubicle City, and I had to get up at 4 o’clock if I wanted to get anything done by 6:30, when I had to “really get up” and get ready for work. I’m not creative after 3 pm, and if it doesn’t happen early, it doesn’t happen!
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Synopsis
Hamilton Dillon is a high class Manhattan escort, polished, well dressed, and cultured. Colin O’Neill is recently divorced, questioning his sexuality, and disappointed by his first fumbling gay hookups. So he figures, why not hire the best of the best to show him the ropes?
What he doesn’t know is that Hamilton Dillon is really Henry Davis, yet another New Yorker living on the financial edge, cobbling together several jobs to make a living. “Hamilton” has one great suit he can wear on an overnight date, but Henry’s got a good friend at GQ who makes a nice side income renting designer men’s wear for weddings, job interviews, and oh yeah, high end escorts on long weekend assignments. The “top agency” that represents “Hamilton” is really just a smartass lady in India with a Skype account, whose face Henry’s never seen. Oh, and Henry’s also the gruff and very unpolished New York Straight Man “Dillinger,” a solo porn star.
In other words, he’s not at all who Colin thinks he is. Which is just fine, until their relationship gets… complicated.
Available from: Amazon US | Amazon UK
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Excerpt
Colin O’Neill hung up the phone, dizzy with excitement and fear. He’d done it. He’d called the number, talked to the agency, and booked a “date” with Hamilton Dillon.
He’d looked at Hamilton’s Rentmen.com ad a hundred times, at least, over the last three months. He’d looked forward to new profile photos the way a kid keeps an ear cocked for the ice cream truck. Even though all the profile pictures had been beheaded for discretion, it didn’t matter. Hamilton Dillon had a way of posing that expressed more personality with his body than most other guys ever did with their faces.
The way he sat on a park bench in nothing but a pair of running shorts and Nikes, shirtless, manspread, his arms thrown over the back of the bench, his strong graceful neck taut, telling you that the face just out of frame was tilted up towards the Central Park sunshine, that the man was reveling in his easy beauty, the unique joy that comes from being young and hot and free in New York City…
Then the way he floated in the air in those same shorts and Nikes, leaping for a football, the camera capturing him from behind in the moment the ball touched his fingers, the imminence of his success apparent, ordained, the muscles in his back bunched, the mass of his shoulders gathered together, sweat flying off his brown hair, in the seconds before you knew he landed on the lawn, arms curled around the ball, surely to rise in triumph and be slapped on the back by all his equally hot and shirtless buddies…
The way he sat at a café table, in a slim fit navy blue polo shirt, one of his sculpted vascular arms holding open a well-worn copy of The Fortress of Solitude and the other just toying with a cup of espresso as if it was the back of another man’s hand…
Colin often did something that very few men did anymore, which was to masturbate furiously and successfully to a series of still photos. And with no penises in sight, to boot. He’d done it so often over the last three months that he’d stopped donating his old t-shirts, because he needed them for cleanup duty, at least until they became hopelessly stained.
He had been divorced for six months now, amicably, from a wife who’d pretty much always known he was gay but had decided to let him figure it out for himself. Elspeth was a career woman whose need for a husband was seasonal, from the company picnic in July to the company Christmas party in December, with various client dinners in between.
He was twenty seven years old, and had engaged in sexual intercourse with one woman and two men. Intercourse was pretty much the word for it, he thought. It sounded less like passion and more like, well, cars merging on the freeway, and all three partners had been just about that exciting. (Actually less so, since on the freeway there was always the thrilling risk of death at the hands of someone who’d rather kill you than let you merge.)
Then one night, half drunk and inhibitions lowered, he’d thought, Fuck it, let’s hire a professional and see how it feels when it’s done right.
He’d paged through the escort ads on Rentmen, hundreds of them in Manhattan alone. It was mind numbing, the diversity, and it was overwhelming, the number of choices. He knew he didn’t want to visit Master Bob in his safe and private play space, and he knew he didn’t want to party with Anaconda Joe. The ones who caught his eye were, well yeah, the ones who looked… classy. The one thing he knew he didn’t want was to get ripped off.
And he didn’t want it to feel… He didn’t want to feel like he’d got a burger in a fast food drive through. He wanted it to be special, if that was really possible with a paid companion and not just something that happened to teenage boys in Hollywood movies.
But even the upscale-looking ones, well, there was something about them that… He knew it was good business, to offer yourself up as “versatile,” and available for “mild to wild,” but… Well, the more he saw what he didn’t want, the more a picture began to form in his mind of what he did want. He didn’t want someone who looked like an investment banker but whose profile also said, “Hey I look classy but I can drop it if you just want a dirty pig fest and you’ve got the money for it.”
No. He wanted someone who was one thing. Who wasn’t whoever you wanted him to be. But who was what he said he was. Classy, for real. Not “up for anything.”
And then he found Harrison Dillon.
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Meet the Author
Brad Vance writes romance stories and novels, including the breakout hits “A Little Too Broken” and “Given the Circumstances.” Keep up with Brad at BradVanceAuthor.com, email him at BradVanceAuthor@gmail.com, and friend him on Facebook at facebook.com/brad.vance.10.
Author Links
Website: https://bradvanceauthor.com/
Facebook: http://facebook.com/brad.vance.10
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BradVanceAuthor
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6886454.Brad_Vance
Email: bradvanceauthor@gmail.com
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Tour Schedule
6/5 – Bookslaidbareboys – http://www.Books-Laid-Bare-Boys.com
6/5 – Wicked Faerie’s Tales and Reviews – http://wickedfaeriesreviews.blogspot.com
6/6 – Book Lovers 4Ever – http://bl4ebookblog.blogspot.com/
6/7 – Sharing Links and Wisdom – http://sharinglinksandwisdom.blogspot.com
6/7 – Love Bytes – target=”_blank”http://www.lovebytesreviews.com
6/8 – Erotica For All – http://eroticaforall.co.uk
6/9 – My Fiction Nook – http://myfictionnook.com
6/12 – Divine Magazine – https://www.divinemagazine.biz/
6/13 – MM Book Escape – https://mmbookescape.com/
6/14 – V’s Reads – http://vsreads.com
6/15 – Kimmers’ Erotic Book Banter – http://kimmerseroticbookb.wixsite.com/kimmerseroticbb
6/15 – Bayou Book Junkie – http://bayoubookjunkie.blogspot.com
6/15 – Happily Ever Chapter – https://www.facebook.com/happilyeverchapter
6/16 – MM Good Book Reviews – https://mmgoodbookreviews.wordpress.com/
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Giveaway