Showing posts with label Take Me Home. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Take Me Home. Show all posts

Dec 13, 2011

Meet Kyle and Evan

I'm thrilled to announce the release of my third novel-length e-book, Take Me Home.

Take Me Home is the story of Kyle and Evan, two friends who've known each other for over 10 years and who are both at a turning point in their writing careers. Every December they take a holiday trip from California home to Ohio. This year's trip is quite different, though. For starters, Kyle has a journal from his grandfather that someone desperately wants to get their hands on, and it seems a cross-country train trip won’t stop them from coming after it.

That’s not all that’s distracting Kyle and Evan from their writing. This is the first time they’re making the trip alone since their initial drive out to California. Evan’s former boyfriend isn’t going with them, and now they are ready to finally face what they mean to each other. Or are they?

Thank you to my lovely editor, Antonia, and everyone at Loose Id for helping this story find its way.

Inspiration Pics for Kyle and Evan

Kyle

Evan  




Blurb for TAKE ME HOME

Aspiring television writer Evan Walker has been in love with his best friend since high school, but Kyle doesn’t do boyfriends. Never has. Never will. Evan knows it’s a bad idea to give in to desire when he wants more than a friend with benefits. He has a new dream job. Now all he needs is the dream partner.

Kyle Bennett is a mystery novelist with a severe case of writer’s block. He needs a change. He has three days on their cross-country train trip home for the holidays to figure out how to tell Evan he’s staying there for good. He also has to write the overdue pages for his editor. Only, he’s a little too distracted by the close quarters in their sleeper compartment—and Evan’s ass—to get much done.

The sparks that fly between them are hotter than ever. Good thing they have a real-life mystery to focus on: why people all around them, including Evan’s new boss, want to get their hands on a journal that once belonged to Kyle’s grandfather.

When a blizzard traps them in the mountains, Kyle and Evan steam up the train’s windows and must finally face their true desires.


Excerpt from TAKE ME HOME

Evan shivered. Which made no sense. He was still warm from the run, the sweat on his skin not even dry yet.

Kyle took another step. Evan wanted him to stop. He wanted to shout all the reasons why this had to stop, before it got started, wanted to tell Kyle not to move another inch.

He didn’t.

And Kyle didn’t stop coming at him until they were practically touching, Kyle staring down at him.

Evan tried to focus on Kyle’s words, on the news about the journal and his grandpa, but all he could think about was what he’d seen when he’d walked into the apartment: Kyle, all skin and taught muscles, wearing only his tight-as-sin white underwear, the briefs stretched over his cock, and the way Kyle had looked at him in the dim light of the hallway.

Just once. He’s leaving anyway.
Evan closed his eyes and forced himself to concentrate on the conversation. He looked up at Kyle again. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” Kyle said the word with a slight curve of his lips. He took a step back and reclined against the wall, looking casual, like he was about to flirt with a bartender for a free drink. “After I read it, I was thinking about that night in the motel room in Iowa on our first drive out here.” He slowly swung his head in Evan’s direction. “Do you remember that night?”

Evan nodded.

“Do you ever think about it?” Kyle’s voice was barely a whisper.

Up until a few months ago, Evan hadn’t let himself, but since he’d moved in with Kyle… “Sometimes.”

“Like right now?”

“Yeah.”

Kyle slid along the wall, traveling the last remnants of space between them. “Ev, I’ve been waiting ten years to finish what we started.” He pushed off the wall and turned until they were face-to-face again, his dark eyes unflinching as he leaned in. He stopped before their lips touched. The heat of that mouth and body so close stoked the fire inside Evan.

His own body reacted, his cock pushing at his shorts. He wanted to shove Kyle against the wall and kiss him until morning, do everything he’d ever dreamed of when it came to touching Kyle, everything he ached to feel about the man.

The smile Kyle gave him next wasn’t the usual cocky one he’d used with countless guys over the years. He pressed forward and slid his lips along Evan’s skin from the base of his neck to his earlobe, leaving a trail of goose bumps in his wake. He lingered over Evan’s ear and whispered, “You smell so damn good. I want to fuck you, Ev.”

Evan shivered again. “We shouldn’t…” He couldn’t say more. Didn’t want to. The time for talking was over. Kyle ran the tip of his tongue along the outside of Evan’s ear, and Evan instinctively moved closer. His breath hitched with the touch of Kyle’s bare abs against him. Why had he worn a T-shirt to go running?

Using only the weight of his body, Kyle turned them until Evan’s back was against the hall wall, then flattened his palms to the wall on either side of Evan’s head. He licked his lips and spread his legs until their bodies lined up groin to groin, then rolled his hips, putting pressure against Evan’s cock. “God, Ev…”

With that movement, those two words, Evan groaned and let his head fall back to the wall. He couldn’t stop himself. He rocked his hips in time with Kyle’s. The feel of Kyle’s body, his hard cock against him, drove his own arousal higher.

Kyle spoke again, his voice even lower. “It could be so fucking good.”

Evan lost track of the arguments he’d been telling himself since he’d left the apartment earlier. He raised his head, and their lips met, the softest brush of flesh until Kyle opened his mouth, seized Evan by the back of the head, and slid his tongue into the touch. The kiss deepened, and Evan thought he’d never be able to stop feeling Kyle’s mouth on his, their tongues pressed together.


Take Me Home is available now at Loose Id.

Thanks to all my readers for their support!

Sloan Parker
www.sloanparker.com

Oct 13, 2011

You Are Already Naked

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about goals and accomplishments. My editor and I have just sent my upcoming release off to line edits. Yay!

It feels good to be getting closer to the completion of this project. Take Me Home was an unexpected story for me and definitely threw my goals off the original plan for 2011. I’m okay with that, though. I’m extremely proud of how this one turned out. It did, however, mean I had to put a hold on my other manuscript and thus put a longer gap between my releases than I would have liked.

For that reason, and the many other roadblocks that we writers face, it can be easy to get discouraged in this business and give into the fear that comes with putting your creativity out into the world.

The quote below started making the rounds again after the recent passing of Steve Jobs. I think it’s a great quote for anyone who has a dream of accomplishing something but are afraid to try, to put themselves out there where failure is a real possibility, especially public failure. As an author, I can relate to that fear. Most writers live with it on a continual basis.

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything—all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."

- Steve Jobs in a commencement address at Stanford in 2005


Fear (of failure and success) can be a part of what makes it difficult to push forward with any goal. One way to look at it is along the lines of what Steve Job was saying: in the end what do you really have to lose by trying? Another way to look at it is that most accomplishments require a series of tasks. Break down a goal into tasks and it becomes less frightening and more manageable.

Very few writers can create a publishable first draft. And those who do often edit and revise as they write that draft. They have a process that involves re-reading their work as they write, either chapter by chapter or at the beginning of a writing session or whenever they get stuck and need to go back over what they’ve written. It varies for everyone. Even with creative endeavors there are steps that one can take, a process that works for the individual writer or painter or musician or whatever, and moving forward with those steps is the way the end result is achieved.

That’s how many goals are accomplished, how dreams are discovered. Through creativity, diligence, and perseverance.

Just think about where Steve Jobs (and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak) started with Apple and how far personal computers advanced during his lifetime. Sure, he was only one part of that achievement, but the advancement of the technology does illustrate how far a dream can go.

FROM THIS...

1976 - Apple I
Photo Credit: Flickr/Ed Uthman


TO THIS...

2010 - iPad
Photo Credit: Apple

So, for all of you out there with a dream to achieve a specific goal—whether it’s writing or mountain climbing or losing weight or anything else—I hope you see that you are already naked and decide to give it a try.

“To reach a port, we must sail—Sail, not tie at anchor—Sail, not drift.”
- Franklin Roosevelt

Sloan Parker
www.sloanparker.com
Design by: Anne Douglas based on Arsenal by FinalSense