Hi guys, we have Eddy LeFey popping in today with his debut novel Love Cubed, we have a great guest post from Eddy, a tasty excerpt and a brilliant giveaway, so enjoy the post and click that Rafflecopter link <3 ~Pixie~
Love Cubed
Eddy LeFey
Three very different young men meet at St-Frederick’s University.
Francis, haunted by his past and seeking a new life.
Andrew, the introverted football jock.
And Sebastian, the charismatic and confident hockey star.
Francis, wary and troubled, didn’t count on meeting anyone he could care for.
Andrew, closeted and lonely, didn’t think anything would matter more than his football career.
And Sebastian, content to float from conquest to conquest, never believed he’d meet someone who could hold his interest.
An encounter with a journalist causes consequences for all three.
Will they be able to take what they need from one another in order to cope?
Eddy LeFey and writing
I wanted to talk a little about how I became an author. It’s very fresh in my mind, since Love Cubed is my first published original work. It involves fanfiction. The idea of fanfiction and those who write it tends to put people in two camps: the lovers and the haters.
Haters of fanfiction have told me that they believe that the quality of the writing of most fanfiction authors leaves a lot to be desired. I have to admit, I have read some terribly written pieces, but the quality of the writing isn’t why people read or write fanfiction. They read and write it because they are passionate about a certain movie, book, TV program, actor, or fictional character; so much so, they need a vehicle to write or read their passion. They simply can’t get enough of it, even if the fanfiction piece strays a little, or even a lot, from the original premise.
All I know is, I wouldn’t have started writing Love Cubed if I hadn’t started writing fanfiction first. It gave me a vehicle for my creativity. I started writing fanfiction that stayed true to the essence of the characters but strayed from the originally created universe. I met a few like-minded people who had done the same.
We encouraged each other to try new things. One day, a friend sent me a copy of an original piece that she was working on. She wanted to know my opinion. I thought it was brilliant and I told her so. A few days later, another friend sent me one of her pieces.. It was also quite good. I corrected some of her grammar and we’ve helped each other ever since.
They gave me the courage to try to write something original. Love Cubed was not the first novel I started, but it was the first one I finished. So all I can say is, thank goodness for friends, and god bless fanfiction.
Excerpt
FRANCIS
FRANCIS SAT on the edge of the bed in his new dorm room. He had mixed feelings about this move he had made, travelling across the country to go to a small-campus university. He had left the great hustle and bustle of a private high school in Ottawa to end up out in the middle of nowhere in New Brunswick. He supposed it was for the best. He could start anew where no one was likely to be aware of his past, or know anything about him. He would like that very much, since his high school experience hadn’t exactly been a good one. It hadn’t been all that bad, until the last year of school when everyone found out what he had done. Or more specifically, what someone had done to him—but like everyone else, he blamed himself.
Francis shook off the sense of dread, guilt, and shame. Those feelings were always there, nestled deep in his subconscious. They were not going away any time soon, but as his doctors had told him, he couldn’t let what happened to him ruin his life. If he did they would have won, and Francis had enough self-esteem left never to let that happen again.
He looked around the dorm room. It was somewhat typical—a bed, a desk in the corner, and a portable closet. A swivel chair near the desk was finishing a dying rotation, using up its energy supplied by Francis’ push just moments ago. In one corner, there was a small fridge and a microwave/convection oven. In another corner there was even a television, and underneath that an Xbox. Most students just didn’t have these luxuries; gifts from his father Francis had been reluctant to accept because he hadn’t quite forgiven his dad for all the pain he had caused. Although, who could say no to an Xbox?
The television and the Xbox, along with the fridge and oven, and the fact he had a room to himself even though it was the university’s policy for first-years to share, were all accommodations the university had made to allow for Francis’ special circumstances. It probably didn’t hinder things that both his parents, independently, had given large sums of money to several of the university’s foundations. Francis sighed. He knew when his fellow floor-mates found out he was only a first-year student and that he had his own room, there was bound to be resentment, but he could deal with it. He had had to deal with a heck of a lot worse. The television, microwave, and fridge permitted him to cocoon himself, to be somewhat self-sufficient, if he deemed it necessary. This would enable him to control the amount of interaction he would have with his floor-mates. If he had to, he could survive in his little world, alone, without being bored to death.
He stood up and walked around his room again, pushing the chair so it began a second rapid circular rotation, going nowhere fast. “Yup, chair, that’s how I used to feel. Let’s hope I have better luck than you’ll ever have,” Francis murmured to himself.
When he reached the closet, he stood there a moment looking at himself in the full-length mirror suspended on the door. Francis didn’t like mirrors. He hated the way he looked. He was tall—six foot four inches—but he had a somewhat lanky frame. He currently weighed 175 pounds. His own opinion was that all his muscles were in his legs. He looked like a Satyr. The top half of his body was slim and lithe, smooth and practically hairless. His bottom half was much hairier in comparison and extremely muscular; like the half-man, half-goat of Greek mythology.
Not that Francis could see much of his body. He was never naked. Not for long. He even took a shower in his underwear. Right now he was wearing a green, turtle-necked sweater, two sizes too big, and loose-fitting blue jeans—well, they were supposed to be loose. Nothing was ever that loose on his bottom frame. His very-green eyes stared back at him and he could see his own distrust. He shook his head and frowned a little. His shoulder-length, black hair waved briefly in the air with that movement, falling in waves to frame a long, boyish face. He was eighteen, but most people would have assumed him to be much younger. Francis laughed at that. How many over-six-foot-tall thirteen-year-olds were there in the world? How could anyone think he was that young? He would never be able to figure that out; just another reason for people to consider him an outsider. Who would want to hang around with a guy they thought was four or five years younger than they were? Not anyone Francis cared to be around much anyway.
Francis sighed. He looked around to see if he had put everything away. All the food was either in the fridge or on the shelves he had been allowed to erect. His clothes were all in the closet. Everything was neat and tidy. Francis wondered how long this was going to last. He wasn’t known to be the neatest person in the world. When he got depressed, which was quite a frequent event, he tended not to care what was on the floor of his room. He had promised his mother he would work on that side of him. He had been told he would be getting frequent visits from his dorm leader, and from his court-appointed psychologist, to ensure his room wasn’t a complete disaster by the end of the year. Francis hadn’t met them yet. In fact, he hadn’t met anyone yet. Not really. He had seen a few faces and bodies flying by, moving toward their own little worlds, when he first arrived with all his suitcases and boxes. He’d seen teary-eyed parents saying goodbye. His parents had said their goodbyes—separately—earlier that morning when he boarded his plane to Saint John. A car had been waiting to take him to Saint-Frederick-on-the-Sea, and the driver had cheerfully helped him bring his things up to his room before, just as cheerfully, saying goodbye.
Another sigh escaped his lips as Francis decided he should take the plunge and introduce himself to his floor-mates. The notice on the board near the elevator stated there would be a floor meeting at 17:00 in the common room, and everyone was expected to attend. It was 16:45, so Francis took a step unto the breach, as some would say.
About Eddy
Eddie LeFey started reading m/m romance fanfiction a few years ago. At one point, during a crucial point in the soap opera storyline of his favorite gay couple, the story went on hiatus. He needed a fix and decided to write his own version of what he wished would happen. Friends wanted to read it, so he plucked up his courage. Pressing the submission button was nerve-wracking, but he did it. People liked it. He wrote a few more.
Up until that point Eddy had tried his hand at writing many times. The delete button was his friend, as was starting over, and over, and over, but he could no longer do that if he wanted people to read his works.
A few of his writing friends decided to create original stories, and feeling brave, Eddy did the same. The stories were shared among a select few. They encouraged him to submit one of them. Low and behold, it is now being published.
Eddy lives in Canada with his husband Ken and his cat Oscar Wild. He is busy writing many more stories.