Today, I'm thrilled to welcome Berengaria Brown to my blog. She's a fellow member of the Naughty Literati and her short story, Jewel’s Ménage Christmas is part of the great boxed set, Naughty List. Get to meet her with a great interview then enjoy a hot M/M story blurb and excerpt!
INTERVIEW
What is your writing process? Are you a plotter or a “pantser”?
I’m a mixture. The characters arrive in my head and start talking to me. I don’t begin writing until I have a beginning, and an ending, and several points I want to meet in the middle. The rest of the journey is sheer pantsing. Anything might happen.
How did you come up with the idea for your latest book?
After I finished writing the “Paint Store Boys” series, I kept thinking about Pinky’s gay bar. It just seemed sad that gay men had nowhere they could meet and relax except at Pinky’s. Pinky’s is a great place, but they need more than that. And then Abe decided to build a gay bath house and the “Bath House Boys” series was born.
What’s your favorite guilty pleasure?
Chocolate. Yum!
What inspired you to write male/male or menage romances?
The characters are very direct. They tell me who and what they want. Some days I just take dictation! Regarding two men and one woman ménages though, if one man kissing and touching you is nice, two men kissing and touching you can only be twice as nice.
What advice would you offer to aspiring writers?
Never give up. Keep reading, keep writing, keep polishing your craft.
In a nod to the Actor’s Studio, what's your favorite curse word and why?
Damn. Or in polite company, dayum. Why? Because saying the f word to the boss might get me terminated, but no one cares when I say day-um.
“Kissing His Man”: The Bath House Boys book 1
BLURB
Frank Ashman’s lover left him seven months, three weeks, four days, two hours and twenty-eight minutes ago. At Pinky’s gay bar the server shows him a brochure featuring the facilities of a new gay bath house that’s just opened in town. There he meets Ralph Sellars. They explore the delights of the bath house together. There are the rainforest showers, the hot tubs, the sauna, the swimming pool, and the restaurant, not to mention the freedom brought by the lack of clothing on the members there. Oh yes, and the bedrooms upstairs, each one complete with a drawer full of toys.
But both Ralph and Frank are burdened with baggage from the past. Can they move on and make a new future together? Or is their relationship doomed to be just sex in the bath house instead of a genuine future together outside in the world?
STORY EXCERPT
Ralph Sellars dumped his jeans, boots, and black wifebeater into the locker, slammed it shut, wrapped the towel he’d been given around his waist, and marched down the hallway to the huge swimming pool area. The ceiling was glass, or something that looked like glass, so the sun shone down on the pool, making it almost appear to be outdoors, except it wasn’t. An outdoor pool would be too cold for his liking at this time of year. He dropped his butt onto one of the chaise longues around the pool and lay back, ready to people-watch for a while. Then he’d swim, maybe try out the sauna, and definitely hang out in the public shower room for a while.
His membership here at the bathhouse was his thirtieth birthday present to himself, and he hoped it’d lead to some hot sex. To his right there were three unoccupied chaise longues, and then two pushed close together. From the looks of the tented towel around one man’s waist, those two men were doing more than just holding hands. He wished them luck. He hoped to get laid today, too. It’d been way too long since he’d had any company other than his own hand. Coming here was the first step in his plans to get out more.
It was just that his fucking boss always seemed to be going through one crisis after another, and he always expected Ralph to save his ass. Well Ralph was getting tired of doing that. He was more interested in fucking a willing man’s ass than pulling his boss’s ass out of yet another fire of the man’s own making. From now on he wasn’t going to answer his cell phone out of hours when his boss called him.
Ralph looked over at several occupied chairs on the other side of the pool, but the men there were just lying back, relaxing, like he was supposed to be doing. No action there. He crossed his arms over his chest staring at the ink on his left arm. He had the full sleeve completed now, and every part of the picture was a symbol that had a special meaning for him.
He ran a finger over the rose that signified the baby sister he’d adored all through his childhood and teenage years. But she’d grown up and become a total bitch, which was why the stem of the rose was covered in sharp thorns. He never would have guessed she’d become an adult who was totally bigoted against gay people.
A splash made him look at the pool again. A slender red-haired man was slicing expertly through the water. He looked like someone who came here every day and swam length after length. But instead he swam only to the end of the pool and got out. He’d left his towel at the other end of the pool, and Ralph had plenty of time to stare at the redhead’s lean but wiry body and taut little ass. Now that was an ass that interested him. Especially since the man seemed not to care about being naked. Ralph liked a bit of exhibitionism with his sex.
The redhead picked up his towel, rubbed his hair and upper body, and then tied it around his waist before walking over to the door that led to the sauna. Ralph climbed off his chair and followed him.
Not being used to saunas, Ralph stayed on the lowest step, working on the idea that hot air rises, so it’d be coolest lower down. The redhead, however, was sitting on the top row, leaning his back against the wooden wall.
“Wasn’t the pool warm enough for you?” he asked, wanting to get to know this interesting man.
“Hell, no. I mean, it’s heated. It’s warm, but I think I’ll like it better after a sauna when I want to cool down. Now this heat, this is delicious. This I like.”
“I do, too. Of course, in another five minutes I might have changed my mind.”
The other man laughed. “Yeah, me, too. I’m Francis, Frank.”
“Ralph. What do you do for a living, Frank?”
“I’m a town planner. What about you?”
For the first time ever he told a stranger what he really did, not the politically correct, politely spun version of his job. “I’m the bogeyman. I expose insurance frauds.”
“I don’t see that makes you the bogeyman. If people weren’t lying and cheating already they wouldn’t have any reason to fear you.”
Ralph laughed. “I think you’re the first person ever to see it that way. Most people think the rules are there to be broken. They see the extremely rich finding ways to avoid paying tax and think insurance premiums mean the money belongs to them and that the comparatively small amounts they steal are fair game. But I don’t chase people for ten cents. I chase them for thousands of dollars. And that includes the wealthy as well.”
Ralph stretched out on the step so he could see Frank’s face better. They began talking about their likes and dislikes, and when the buzzer rang to say their fifteen minutes in the sauna was up, Ralph was really surprised. He didn’t feel too hot, and he sure as hell wasn’t ready to stop talking to Frank.
“I suppose we’d better have a swim to cool down,” he said reluctantly.
Frank joined him on the floor of the sauna. “After that, let’s come back here. I was enjoying our time together.”
Ralph gripped the smaller man’s arms and pressed a kiss to his lips. “I was, too.” He stepped back and opened the door. Damn, the man had tasted nice. His lips were soft and sweet and just the tiniest bit sweaty and salty. I want more of him. Tonight.
Buy link: http://www.bookstrand.com/kissing-his-man
Berengaria Brown Bio:
Berengaria is an award-winning, best-selling, multi-published author of erotic romance with over one hundred published digital, print and audio books. She writes contemporary, paranormal (magic, ghosts, vampires, fairies, dragons, and werewolves), futuristic, medieval, and Regency-set historical. She loves to read all different kinds of romance so that is what she writes: MMF, MFM, FMMM, FFM, MM, FF, and MF. Whatever the characters need for their very hot happily-ever-after, Berengaria makes sure they get it.
Berengaria Brown links:
http://berengariasblog.blogspot.com/
http://berengariabrown.com/
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