Let's give a warm welcome to Angelina Sparrow as she tells us about her newest release with Gabriel Belthir, Heart's Bounty.
We all know I have a soft spot for well rounded LGBT romance and Sci-Fi!
Hunting is a young man’s game and Miho is well suited to it. He is a product of centuries of selective breeding, making him human-plus. He has a reputation for finding his quarry. But he doesn’t expect to find an older man at the Tag Board looking for work of his own.
Hevik was outlawed and banished from his homeworld, and now lives a solitary life hunting small-time criminals among the planets. A pretty boy with hair as dark as deep space makes him reconsider that lifestyle.
As the fates keep throwing them together while they pursue the same bounty, both of them discover depths about themselves, and about their lust and need for each other, that makes chasing their quarry all the more dangerous.
Big galaxy, lots of sex.
When writing same-sex romance, an author has to both serve the story and appease the readers. The world isn't made up of nothing but gay men living in an all-male environment, despite what the occasional reader might demand. “No females in my fiction!” was the rudest I had seen, and seldom applies to any of my books. Women exist in the world, as do female-bodied men and FTM. Most readers will tolerate female characters, but not in sexual situations. Some are more generous and tolerate women having sex, as long as it doesn't involve our heroes.
Heart's Bounty is the first story in a long time I've written where the characters were either actively bisexual or just not picky. Miho prefers boys, but has been known to put himself into sexual situations with women. At one point, he and a male sometimes-lover wander back to bed, where a couple of female-bodied friends (who may or may not identify as women, it wasn't important to the story) are already making out. The implication is that the bed is big enough for all four and nobody much cares as long as orgasms are had by all.
In the excerpt attached, Hevik dances with a woman in a club, showing off very sexily, before he approaches Miho for a dance. Hevik also has an ex-wife and a teen-age daughter. His brother implies in a conversation that Hevik leans strongly toward women and Miho is an unusual choice of partner.
During a scene at an orgy, our heroes walk past an opposite sex couple having sex, under the direction of a master, they watch a lesbian bondage scene and a gay knifeplay scene. They deal with the Carson Sisters, professional dominatrices who top men and women equally. We see Miho's parents, a married couple. We meet an engaged couple undergoing a rite of passage. There is a lot of heterosexuality happening around them, but the focus is on Miho and Hevik.
So basically, this is a heads up to readers: when the publisher says “scenes of m/f, f/f, threesomes and moresomes” the first two are literal scenes, things seen by our heroes in passing. They aren't involved in those. The threesome is much more fun, as our neophyte Hevik is taught the best ways to top his beautiful boy by an old and very skilled friend.
Welcome to the big galaxy. Stay and play. We'll have a lot of fun.
Where to find me
I am valarltd on LiveJournal, Pinterest and FetLife
I am Angelia Sparrow on Facebook and Google+
My website is http://www.brooksandsparrow.com
My blog is angelsparrow.blogspot.com
My small press, open to submissions, is http://www.inkstainedsuccubus.com and blogs at inkstainedsuccubus.blogspot.com
Thanks for having me!
Excerpt
Orange and red dominated the decor while dancers moved on ground and in air on the multi-gee dance floor. Hevik ordered a shot of the local whiskey and watched the young people dance.
He’d get out there himself soon enough. He sipped the alcohol, feeling the fire of it warm his chest, washing away the last of the tension from the trip. There were a lot of pretty folks here tonight. He was sure he could find someone to enjoy. They swirled and leapt, some achieving a hovering lift in the low-gee sections, designated by blue and green lights, while others stomped and lumbered in the heavier parts, which were lit red and orange.
A flash of black hair tumbled through the low-gee section, in the midst of a group of dancers, dark amid all the colorful clothing, the blue lights lending it rare highlights. It caught his eye and he remembered the pretty kid who was also on the job. Nah, couldn’t be him.
He watched the group of dancers, males and females, gyrating as the song wound down. The next one started, a heavier beat to it, and a low, groaning chorus that sounded as though the singer were having an orgasm as he sang.
Hevik finished his drink and made his way across the dance floor to the low-gee section and the knot of dancing kids. He took care to move and turn and twist, dancing his way over. He got a better look. By all the stars, it was the kid.
Hevik watched him dance as if he were the hottest thing on the floor. Apparently more than a few of his friends thought so too because he was carrying a tail of admirers like a comet. Hevik watched as he stretched up to kiss a pretty girl and then tumbled to hang upside down and kiss a lovely boy. Time to show this kid how a man did things.
Hevik caught the hand of one of the girls and pulled her close to dance with him a minute. He did a good job keeping the beat and enticed her into some showier moves, spinning her into a few twirls and a swing ending in a dip. She laughed and spun into his arms to let him grind against her to the orgasmic chorus as she faked—at least he thought she faked—a dozen orgasms in time to the moans.
By the time the next song started, Hevik had worked his way to Miho. He realized his erection was completely obvious as he reached out and grabbed Miho’s shirtfront.
“This one’s mine, boy,” he said as the music went into a classic call-and-response chase song. Around the floor, couples and groups faced off, ready for the old-fashioned dance.
Miho’s eyebrows rose as the newly coiffed version of Hevik took the place of a beautiful man he’d been dancing with. “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked, his eyes looking around for his coterie, who didn’t seem to be noticing. “Aren’t you a little old for this kind of party? The folk-dancing club’s down the street. If you would put your spectacles on, you might not have missed it.” The music began as they bowed to each other, too late to pull out of the song.
“Folk dancing ain’t my style, kiddo,” Hevik shot back. “This is.”
“Sure you wouldn’t prefer one of my friends?” Miho gestured to the girl Hevik had just been dancing with, who was now practically cuddling between a squat, heavy-gee brunette girl, who bounded around the dance floor, and her willowy low-gee blond boyfriend, who stood in one place and shimmied, looking exhausted early in the evening. The boy dragged himself off the floor to sit in a lower-gee part of the bar and breathe from a vapor tube.
“Just you.” Hevik lunged in, taking the aggressor’s role in the hunt.
Miho took three steps to the left, as did every other prey dancer.
They kept to the old forms, not varying from the classic dance. But Hevik tried to make each move a showcase of how much he wanted Miho, every attack an expression of desire and every failed capture a heartbreak. Pretty soon he became aware that a lot of people weren’t dancing anymore, just watching the two of them. Miho had gotten into the spirit of the dance and turned every dodge into a taunt and every evasion into a flirtation.
At the end of the song, the hunter caught his prey, Hevik wrapped Miho in his arms and they danced the last chorus together, as every other couple on the floor did. When the music stopped, Hevik turned Miho in his arms and yanked him in for a kiss.
He tasted the kid’s lips, but Miho didn’t open and melt for him, remaining instead all fire and defiance. He twined his fist in the ponytail and yanked Miho’s head back to feast on his throat. Miho pressed closer against him and thrust against Hevik’s belly even as his hands balled into fists.
Hevik chuckled and kept hold of the ponytail and one arm. “Come with me,” he said in Miho’s ear. “I’ll fix your little trouser problem.”
