Hi guys, we have Eric Alan Westfall stopping by today with the tour for his new release No Way Out, we have a great interview with Eric, a great excerpt and a brilliant giveaway so check out the post and enter the giveaway! ❤ ~Pixie~ p.s. keep an eye out for the review coming soon!
No Way Out
Eric Alan Westfall
It’s April of 1816 in Another England.
And Jeremy—a whore from the Dock—is living in a guest bedroom at the London home of the (in)famous Iron Marquess, with over fifteen days missing from his life.
For someone who remembers everything from his third birthday on, it’s unnerving not to know. Fine, fourteen days for the coma and the infection delirium. But those first thirty-six hours. Do they explain how he got hurt, how he got to Ireton House, and why his lordship’s mountain-sized valet is taking care of him? Or why his ironness looks at him with nothing iron at all in his eyes?
Jeremy and the Iron Marquess both have dark secrets. Forced engagements, an inheritance, a scheme to clap Jeremy in Bedlam, the revelation of the missing hours, a problem with plumage, some numbered accounts, and a long sea voyage, all seem to mean there’s no way out of the snares surrounding them. Or is the old saying true: where there’s a waltz, there’s a way?
All royalties will go to a local LGBT organization.
Eric Alan Westfall Interview!
Tell us a little about any upcoming projects.
It’s something of a miracle that I’ve published two novels and a short story collection between the middle of August, 2018, and the middle of September, after such a long dry spell.
The rest of 2018 (“God willin’ and the crick don’t rise) will probably, hopefully, maybe see two more releases. With a chance for more.
The first is likely to be a gay retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Tinderbox. Our hero is Charlie. He was part of a special fighting unit in the war. He’d stroll onto the battlefield in his special fighting clothes—bits and pieces which didn’t cover much of his bits and pieces—and his stunning beauty…well, stunned the enemy soldiers, so the soldiers in Charlie’s “special unit” could kill or capture them. Along the way home he meets up with a wicked witch, as well as three marvelous doggies with odd eyes, guarding stacks of copper, silver and gold, and held captive by a mean tinderbox.
Eventually he winds up in Lunnon, capital of the Kingdom of Britlandia, ruled by her Most Moral Majesty, Victory, and her husband, Prince-Consort Albert. (No, it wasn’t him who designed the…you know…it was his son, Crown Prince Albert.) After adventures involving losing all his money and getting it back, Charlie hears about Prince Caspian the Charming, who lives in a copper cauldron, lest a prophecy be fulfilled that has Caspy (as his dear mummy calls him) marrying a…gasp!…common soldier.
In the process of Charlie getting to know Caspian much, much better, we meet some of Caspian’s no-soldier-will-marry-my-son suitors. Like Naplian Bumaparte IV (“Do call me Nappy”), a prince from the Kingdom of Frenze, right across the Channel.
Perhaps you can guess where this is going?
The other possibility is either: hrny 4 u, or Christmas at the Baths. Both are set in the “universe” of the FKN, SKN & JKN Enterprises, Inc., lawsuit which made old-fashioned bathhouses and adult bookstores (gloryholes—hallelujah!—and all) legal in Missouri in 2005.
hrny 4 u, set in an alternate Kansas City, involves an undercover gay FBI agent, who’s having a fake affair with his husband’s best friend (who works for the ATF) to feed the bad guys information to help FBI guy find out who’s at the top of Rubenstein Organization (no relationship to Artur). FBI guy’s husband also has a kind of perverse sense of humor.
Christmas at the Baths, set in an alternate St. Louis, involves two men who have been together for fifty years, and their children and grandchildren are only now finding out where they go every Christmas Eve (the baths) and why. A tremendous amount of love in this one, and I don’t think it’ll be quite what you think it will.
2019? Definitely two fairy tales (3 Boars & A Wolf Walk Into A Bar and The Truth About Them Damn Goats) and possibly another fairy tale, and/or Strathairn’s Warrior, the working title of a contemporary Another England story. Unless, of course, Mike the Manly Muse comes up with another idea which sends me off on a writing tangent.
What do you see yourself doing in another 1, 5, and/or 10 years?
I figure I’ll last at least another year, so I’ll still be semi-retired, working fairly regularly at Typing For Dollars, but nowhere near the 60-70 hours a week of my younger years, and enjoying life, treating myself to good movies, theatre, concerts, etc. (my never humble opinion of what’s good), taking myself out to dinner at good restaurants, and writing. Enjoying my trio of foundling dogs.
Five years? Ten? Assuming I retain my physical and mental health (knock on wood(en head)), I don’t expect things to be different. I truly enjoy my life the way it is, and don’t see a need for change.
Coffee or tea?
Oh, yuck! I know y’all drink that stuff, but…*shudder*. Cold, cold, cold skim milk with meals at home, wine with dark chocolate for a treat, and a really good Spatlese or Auslese (German white wines) if I can get them when dining out; otherwise, a good Riesling.
Reusable or disposable grocery bags?
Reusable, of course! I’d like to say it’s because reusing paper sacks aids the environment. But c’mon! I get ten cents off my bill for each double-bagged set of paper sacks I bring back.
What secondary character would you like to explore more? Tell me about him.
Now if you’ll give me your solemn word as an interviewer you won’t tell anyone else, I’ll let you in on a little secret. Adrian, Viscount Hawkwood, is more of a tertiary character in no way out, but a little birdie—a large hawk?—has told me he’s going get his own book in Another England. It may or may not be called The Serpent Mark. And someone who also makes an appearance in no way out will be starring with him.
So remember your promise. Shhhh! Not a soul.
Excerpt!
IT ALL BEGINS
6 April 1816
1:38 p.m.
Ireton House, London
no way out
The voice was back.
Inside my head.
Still I swiveled, twisting to look behind, knowing I would see what I always see when the words are said—nothing. The unpainted, scuffed wooden floor was empty. The door to second story elegance had not creaked since we passed through, shutting it behind us, moments ago. The stairs to lesser third-story elegance and fourth story no elegance at all were both bare of bodies who might whisper words only I could hear.
I turned forward again, teetered, and reaching out, slapped my palms flat against the walls of the narrow servants’ stairs. Pressing hard, I tilted back, but my socked foot slipped on the slick wooden edge. When I landed, the floor made known its displeasure with a sharp splinter through the rope-belted loose trousers, ill-fitting smalls, and into my bum. I yelped.
The cold voice of Thomas, the senior footman, rose up the stairwell from the landing below. “His lordship is waiting.”
I shifted my weight to my left hip, and rolled to my knees, giving him a fine view of my bottom if he was watching, which was by now instinctive. I made a point of lifting my left leg with great care, and with equal care placing my foot on the floor, again in case he was watching. A right foot repeat and then some clearly awkward struggling to get myself as upright on the landing as I could—although a boy with a twisted spine and a twisted leg can never be truly upright—followed by a shuffle-step away from the edge. I suppressed the temptation to rub my right arse cheek. Without turning around I called down, “Well, bugger ‘is bleedin’ lordship! Me feet ‘urt ‘n me arse ‘as been ‘urt, too.”
My feet didn’t hurt much any more. Though bandaged still, and covered with the thick wool stockings sagging around my ankles, they had almost healed. But the pretense might keep me here, with a comfortable bed, and good food, for just a while longer. I grinned a small, wicked grin to myself, and wiped it away as I turned to face the stairs. “Right, then. Shall I drop me britches, turn ‘n bend and you can see what’s stickin’ in me bum, ‘n maybe come up ‘n pull it out?”
It was amazing how much disdain could be contained in stare and stance. Thomas even managed to look down his nose while looking up the stairs.
“Orright, orright. Jus’ wait a bleedin’ minute. ‘n you might want to close yer eyes so’s y’don’t see somethin’ what might ‘orrify you, just in case me grip slips, ‘cause I ain’t goin’ nowhere with somethin’ stickin’ in me arse.”
My hands were on the knot in the rope, and I grinned broadly when the footman closed his eyes, with a stern “Be quick about it then, boy.”
I untied the knot, loosening the waistband since whoever supplied the trousers was much thicker around the middle than me, using my left hand to hold the pants up. I reached behind, and working my right hand into my smalls and found the painful little bugger. With thumb and forefinger I wiggled it free, brought my hand round to the front, and looked at the bloody, bloody thing. I shouldn’t have, but I did. I lifted the three-quarter-inch sliver before my face. “Oi! Is this a dagger wot I see before me?”
Bloody hell. Bloody, bloody, bloody hell. Maybe Thomas wouldn’t…. Well, bloody hell all over again, he did. The footman was looking at me now, his eyes wide, his mouth open to say something, and then he slowly shut it.
It would only make it worse if I tried to cobble together an explanation of why, or how a sixteen-year-old street boy (the age I gave) could paraphrase The Scottish Play. I shut my own mouth, dropped the splinter, retied the knot, and began descending the stairs with care, one thumping step at a time. I braced one hand against the wall—his lordship did not believe in hand rails for his servants—in case of another slip. The footman waited until I was almost at the landing before turning away. Watching my downward struggle, he was unconcerned about the possibility of another fall, his expression informing me if I fell I was on my own. I followed in silence as we went through the halls of the first floor to the front of the house.
Ah, his lordship’s library. I stared at the door.
I’d been in there, just the once, when I shouldn’t have been. But then, I shouldn’t have been in the house in the first place, but I was, though I didn’t know why. Or how I came to be here. Both were part of what was missing. I could remember every…bloody…thing in my life up to the night before…whatever…happened. Remember the Dock on the 12th, the clock in my head saying it was ten thirty at night when I finished the last man. I remember the glint of the shilling as it spun through the air, making me get off my knees, bend and stretch to reach it in the muck. The feel of the metal between my fingertips as I picked it up. Then the twist and roll away, my back taking the brunt of the kick meant for my belly. The man was one of those who, once done, and eager to be tucked and buttoned away, feels guilty and lashes out at the one responsible for his sin. I remember his silhouette as I got to my feet, his realizing how much taller I was, and how the silhouette turned and hurried away.
Then nothing more until I woke up too damned many days later in a bloody nobleman’s house, in sobbing agony, weak, my feet, head and thigh throbbing with pain.
About Eric!
Eric is a Midwesterner, and as Lady Glenhaven might say, “His first sea voyage was with Noah.” He started reading at five with one of the Andrew Lang books (he thinks it was The Blue Fairy Book) and has been a science fiction/fantasy addict ever since. Most of his writing is in those (MM) genres.
The exceptions are his Another England (alternate history) series: The Rake, The Rogue and the Roué (Regency novel), Mr. Felcher’s Grand Emporium, or, The Adventures of a Pair of Spares in the Fine Art of Gentlemanly Portraiture (Victorian), with no way out (Regency) coming out a month after Of Princes.
Two more fairy tales are in progress: 3 Boars & A Wolf Walk Into A Bar (Eric is sure you can figure this one out), and The Truth About Them Damn Goats (of the gruff variety).
Now all he has to do is find the time to write the incomplete stuff! (The real world can be a real pain!)
Giveaway!
Win! Two backlist eBooks (ePub or mobi) to one luck winner!
