Today I am so pleased to welcome Jesi Lea Ryan, Jordan Castillo Price, Clare London, and Dev Bentham to Joyfully Jay. The authors have come to talk to us about their latest releases, part of the Bad Valentine collection. They have also brought along a great giveaway! Please join me in giving them all a big welcome!

 

Bad Valentine: Four Stories, Four Authors, One Opening Line!

In comedy improv, there’s a game called “uses” where comedians pass around an object and take turns declaring what they think it could be. Starting four stories with the same opening line is a lot like that exercise.

“Nothing good ever came of a valentine,” is a sentiment plenty of folks can get behind, and it’s the sentence that launched all of our stories.

It’s always intriguing to see how multiple authors handle the same writing prompt. The four of us agreed that we wanted the stories to be light and low-angst for Valentine’s Day, but beyond that, the sky was the limit. What we ended up with was an array of adorable meet-cutes, wacky dates, and truly bizarre mishaps—but most of all, four fun stories that will bring a smile to your face.

Love Magic, Jesi Lea Ryan
The day Oliver met Derrick while playing his violin in the park was magical.
Unfortunately, love and magic don’t always mix.

Quill Me Now, Jordan Castillo Price
Dixon Penn’s family wasn’t terribly shocked when he announced he was gay.
But they were devastated to find out he’s the only one without the gift of Spellcraft.

Hidden Hearts, Clare London
Ethan’s dating history is one long catastrophe, until a mis-matched Valentines date with Kel brings the hope of new love. That’s assuming the romance survives a few more disasters!

Temporary Dad, Dev Bentham
A one-night stand that should have started a love story and the stupid lie that got in the way. Add a disruptive seven-year-old and mayhem ensues. For Nick and Dylan, there are plenty of twists on the road to happy ever after.

The Bad Valentine collection is available exclusively on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited. Get in the mood for romance today! https://amzn.to/2BcA91k


Blurb

Love Magic by Jesi Lea Ryan

“The day I met Derrick while playing my violin in the park was magical. Unfortunately, magic and love together don’t always mix.”

Oliver met Derrick while busking in the park, and they hit it off from the start. At first, Derrick’s “mysterious magician” vibe was intriguing, but after two botched dates, Oliver was ready to call it quits.

Fearing he lost his chance with Oliver, Derrick makes a last-ditch effort to win Oliver’s heart with a romantic Valentine’s date. But when love and magic collide, things tend to go awry. Will these two guys make it through the date unscathed?

 

Quill Me Now by Jordan Castillo Price

Spellcraft isn’t exactly a respectable business, but it does pay the bills. At least, it should. Unfortunately, Dixon Penn failed his Spellcraft initiation. Instead of working in his family’s shop, he’s stuck delivering takeout orders in his uncle’s beat-up Buick.

Winning a Valentine’s Day contest at the largest greeting card company in the tri-state area would be just the thing to get his life back on track—but something at Precious Greetings just doesn’t add up. And despite numerous warnings to quit pestering them about his contest entry, he simply can’t stop himself from coming back again and again.

It doesn’t hurt that the head of security is such a hottie. If Dixon had any common sense, he’d be scared of the big, mysterious, tattooed Russian.

To be fair, no one ever accused him of being too smart….

 

Hidden Hearts by Clare London

Accident-prone Ethan has a dating history that reads like a disaster movie script. Strong and silent Kel can’t seem to master the necessary small-talk on a proper date. When they both get signed up anonymously for a Valentines’s night event—”for those with an adventurous spirit but an open diary”—they never imagined they’d be matched. They never imagined the romantic sparks would fly. To be honest, they never imagined they’d survive the week.

A catalogue of disasters dogs the footsteps of their blossoming romance, including a coffee date with food allergies as an added extra, an intimate dinner that strays too close for comfort to chopped chillies, and a sensual massage with hot wax candles that threatens to alert the local fire brigade.

But if they can hold tight to their sweet, surprising, yet single-minded attraction – they might just survive this Valentine’s Day with something very special to look forward to.

 

Temporary Dad by Dev Bentham

Nick Compton owns a small but mighty fashion magazine. He already has enough on his plate, between work and, well, work. There’s no room for a kid in his life but when his sister drops her seven-year-old daughter for an extended stay, he has to figure it out. Just before his niece arrives, Nick meets a blazing hot firefighter. They get on like a house a fire and the sex—scorching. Too bad the he disappeared in the morning. Like smoke. Now Nick’s stuck with a kid he doesn’t know how to manage and without the man he’d love to get his hands on again.

Dylan Gil wishes like hell he hadn’t taken his roommates advice and lied about who he was. He’s finally met someone he really likes and can’t stop thinking about. But now he’s too embarrassed to confess that he’s just a second-grade teacher, not a manly firefighter. Good thing that work gets distracting, particularly when one of his brightest students goes to stay with her uncle and all hell breaks loose.

Some people shouldn’t be allowed to have kids.

If the term “dad pants” means anything it’s that taking care of children and fashion aren’t compatible. Does that mean these two doomed? Or is this the beginning of forever?

A contemporary gay romantic comedy by Dev Bentham, Temporary Dad features mistaken identity, opposites attracting, a one night stand and some steamy mm romance.


Bios

USA Today Bestselling Author, Jesi Lea Ryan, grew up in the Mississippi River town of Dubuque, IA. She holds bachelor degrees in creative writing and literature and a masters in business administration. She considers herself a well-rounded nerd who can spend hours on the internet researching things like British history and exploring foreign cities on Google Earth. She also enjoys listening to true crime podcasts, and she reads approximately two hundred books a year. Jesi currently lives in Maricopa, AZ with her spouse and two exceptionally naughty kitties.

 

Author and artist Jordan Castillo Price writes paranormal sci-fi thrillers colored by her time in the Midwest, from inner-city Chicago, to various cities across southern Wisconsin. She’s recently settled in a 1910 Cape Cod near Lake Michigan with tons of character and a plethora of bizarre spiders. Her influences include Ouija boards, Return of the Living Dead, “light as a feather, stiff as a board,” girls with tattoos and boys in eyeliner.

Jordan is best known as the author of the PsyCop series, an unfolding tale of paranormal mystery and suspense starring Victor Bayne, a gay medium who’s plagued by ghostly visitations. Also check out her mind-bending trilogy Mnevermind, where memories are made…one client at a time.

 

Clare London took her pen name from the city where she lives, loves, and writes. A lone, brave female in a frenetic, testosterone-fueled family home, she juggles her writing with her other day job as an accountant.

She’s written in many genres and across many settings, with award-winning novels and short stories published both online and in print. Most of her work features male/male romance and drama with a healthy serving of physical passion, as she enjoys both reading and writing about strong, sympathetic, and sexy characters.

All the details and free fiction are available at her website. Visit her today and say hello!

 

Dev Bentham truly believes in the transformative power of true love. She’s the author of many gay romances, including Moving in Rhythm, August Ice and the Tarnished Souls Jewish Holiday series. Over the years, she’s lived in way too many places and had far too many jobs, but she’s finally settled in frozen northern Wisconsin where she draws on her former lives to write enduring love stories in which wonderful men find each other. Her restless feet take her globetrotting whenever she gets the chance, but most of the time she’s tucked up in her office in the woods dreaming about romance.


Giveaway

The authors have brought a $10 Amazon gift card for one lucky reader. Just leave a comment below to enter. The contest ends on Wednesday, February 6th at 11:59 pm ET. 

And everyone is invited to our Facebook event on Feb 7 to celebrate the books, the Valentine’s season, and the joy of romance reading! https://www.facebook.com/events/2085314304867628/


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