Hi guys, we have Amy Lane stopping by with her newest release The Bells of Times Square. We have a great excerpt, a brilliant giveaway and two reviews for you to check out, so enjoy the post and click that Rafflecopter link <3 ~Pixie~

 The Bells of Times Square

Amy Lane

Every New Year’s Eve since 1946, Nate Meyer has ventured alone to Times Square to listen for the ghostly church bells he and his long-lost wartime lover vowed to hear together. This year, however, his grandson Blaine is pushing Nate through the Manhattan streets, revealing his secrets to his silent, stroke-stricken grandfather.

When Blaine introduces his boyfriend to his beloved grandfather, he has no idea that Nate holds a similar secret. As they endure the chilly death of the old year, Nate is drawn back in memory to a much earlier time . . . and to Walter.

Long before, in a peace carefully crafted in the heart of wartime tumult, Nate and Walter forged a loving home in the midst of violence and chaos. But nothing in war is permanent, and now all Nate has is memories of a man his family never knew existed. And a hope that he’ll finally hear the church bells that will unite everybody—including the lovers who hid the best and most sacred parts of their hearts.

Introducing Amy Lane!!

Hi, and welcome to the blog tour for The Bells of Times Square!  This book is close to my heart– if you read the extra front and back matter in the story, you will see that I drew inspiration from my grandparents and their roles in WWII.  There was a lot of research involved here and also an unusual romance.  I hope you enjoy this stop on the tour, and don’t forget to enter the Rafflecopter below for the giveaway of two ebooks from my backlist and a signed copy of The Bells of Times Square!  Feel free to comment, or to contact me at any of my links below–I’d love to hear from you!

Excerpt

Nate had a notion that being inside a real mosquito was probably much quieter than being inside of a de Havilland DH.98 Mosquito—wooden sides or not. The airplanes were versatile—light bombers, tactical bombers, day or night missions, and, of course, converted photo-surveillance planes. While the top sported the squadron insignia, as well as Captain Thompson’s personal insignia—a mosquito wearing a flowered dress with a purse—near the cockpit, the bottom of Miss Mossy (as the captain called her) had been painted dark gray to blend in with the nighttime cloud cover. Still, Nate had always been surprised that every plane that went flying over German airspace hadn’t been shot down.

“Stuttgart,” Nate said resignedly into the intercom as the plane took off. “Five shots at the coordinates. We have ten flares.”

“I know the mission,” Captain Thompson stated flatly. “I know the mission, I know the risks. Do you need me to hold your hand?”

“Only if it would help you feel better,” Nate replied just as flatly.

Thompson grunted, the sound translating over the intercom as a crackle of static. “Not bloody likely. Do you have anything else obvious you’d like to tell me? Do I take a right or a left to get to Germany? How’s that? Can you tell me how to fly this boat to Germany, you uppity shit?”

“I assume you point it east and go,” Nate snapped. “Wake me up when we get there.”

But Nate had no intention of sleeping.

The view through the cockpit window wasn’t ideal. Nate had thought more than once that he wished he could fly facedown on a clear platform so that he could see everything—the countryside, the farms, the smokestacks, everything. Because even with the hum of the Mosquito in his ears, when he gazed down on the sleeping mass of Europe, he knew he wasn’t seeing the complete vista, and the artist that he was hungered for the whole picture.

Bombs would be dropped on some of the towns down there; devastation would follow. What would that look like? Who would be killed? He was skilled with the specialized camera and the twenty-four-inch lens that allowed him to take shots from the plane, although the pictures he usually shot needed a room full of intelligence officers with magnifying glasses to pinpoint exactly what the photo targets were. What he was not skilled at was understanding the distance between the plane, at fifteen thousand feet, and the people on the ground. Empty space? The handbreadth of God? What made it so someone such as he could determine whether people he would never see or touch would live or die?

The silence in the plane became oppressive, and Nate scanned through his viewfinder to keep himself from sleeping in earnest. The shiny, roiling mass of the ocean sat underneath them, but the horizon of France and Germany was not that far away. Oh, hey—a town, smaller than Stuttgart, right across the black silver of the channel.

“Hello, what’s that?” Nate murmured to himself. “Do you see that?”

“I don’t see it!” Captain Thompson snapped back, but Nate was too preoccupied with what looked to be large smokestacks coming from the ground, just north of the tiny city below, to respond to his tone. That couldn’t be right, could it? There would have to be an installation underground. He couldn’t see in the dark—or without his camera.

“Captain, give us a candle drop—”

“Those are saved for the—”

“I know, but we’ve got ten. We’ll only need two. I just want one.”

“I don’t like it—we’re hours away from Stuttgart.”

“Do you see anyone, Captain? There’s no one out tonight, and that . . . that thing down there. It looks like a plant. It wasn’t there the last time we flew up this way, and it just feels wrong—it’s something important, can’t you feel it?”

“Could give a shit what you feel, you fuckin’—”

“Captain, do you really want to finish that sentence?” Nate asked, his skin chilling underneath his voluminous flight suit.

“Yes, damn it!” Thompson snapped, but he didn’t. “Candle dropping. Where do you want to go?”

“That town below us—it’s small. You see the outskirts of it to the east a little. Yes. There. Go.”

“Count off,” Thompson snarled, and Nate held his breath. There. They were close. Close. Close.

“Launch candle in ten-nine-eight-seven-six-five-four-three-two— Candle launch!”

Thompson hit something on the dash, and the flare cascaded out of the plane, falling, falling, falling before exploding harsh and white, lighting up the sky around them.

Nate was ready.

He clicked the shutter furiously, all of the settings ready for nighttime pictures. One, two, three, four—the light began to stutter—five, six.

“Shit!” Thompson cried, and Nate finished his last shot and looked around. Oh hell. Sure enough, framed against the clouds by the stuttering flare was a pair of Messerschmitts.

“Can you—”

“Shut up and let me call for backup,” Thompson barked, and Nate heard him radio for a couple of bulldogs to come take care of the Messers on their tail.

And then Captain Thompson did what was best for everyone involved and flew that little plane as fast as it could go.

The Messerschmitts weren’t going anywhere. They stayed on their tail, firing occasionally but lacking the necessary range. Miss Mossy had a lead on them from the very beginning, and if Captain Albert knew one thing, it was how to fly quick like zoom.

“Where’s the bloody bulldogs?” Captain Thompson snarled. “What’s the good of having planes out with guns if they can’t shoot that bloody lot out of the fucking sky?”

Nate wisely didn’t answer. He changed the film in his camera in tense silence, putting the canister in the cargo pocket of his flight suit and readying the camera for Stuttgart on faith.

They didn’t make it.

The Messerschmitt Bf 110 was a superlative night fighter, and Miss Mossy, who was fitted out with cameras all around, had no guns. Her cooling system had been modified to keep the cameras and the pilots from freezing during the high-altitude missions, and when pushed too hard, her engines tended to get hot. Even while Nate despised Captain Albert, he knew the man was flying a fine line between outrunning the enemy and cooking their engines with speed.

Their one hope was that the call for backup would be answered and some dogfighters would appear over the horizon around them.

Nate kept lookout, and when the first bursts of fire spurted from the newly appeared specks behind them, acute relief almost stopped his voice.

“Friendlies!”

“Brilliant. We might not die up here.”

“I am not overwhelmed with optimism,” Nate muttered, but either Thompson’s voice was lost in the engine noise or he didn’t deign to answer.

Below, the various lumps and smokestacks of Stuttgart appeared. Very few lights—all sides had learned the trick of the blackout to confuse bombing raids—but Nate had flown over and taken pictures before. He knew the shape, the basic landmarks—and although he knew their support was behind them and if they couldn’t outrun the Messerschmitts before the bulldogs got there they were in real trouble, for some reason the city gave him comfort. It wasn’t featureless, wasn’t blank. He recognized the landscape, and they weren’t lost.

And just as he figured it out, tracers of antiaircraft fire passed to his right, shattering his peace.

“They’re closing in!”

“Not them! It’s another group! Hang on and spot the bastards!”

Calmly, Nate placed his camera and lens in the case and buckled it shut, using his stomach muscles and thighs to keep his seat as the plane began a series of vicious evasive maneuvers that might have made his stomach rebel when he’d first started to fly. When the camera was safely stowed, he grabbed hold of the grips on either side and did what Captain Thompson had ordered: held on and spotted.

“Three o’clock, Cap. Two planes closing.”

“Dive roll. Don’t puke.”

“They’re following, following—lost them. Not puking.”

“Don’t be a bloody arse! Fire from six o’clock. G roll.”

Oh hell. The negative-G rolls—Captain Thompson’s specialty—were Nate’s least favorite aerobatic. He held on and didn’t puke—his first time up in the cockpit, he had puked, and had to live in it for hours. Never again.

“Nine o’clock, Cap—friendlies.”

“Fucking firing! Blast it and bugger God’s arse!”

The blasphemy didn’t faze Nate, but the fact that they were stuck between friendly fire and enemy fire without guns themselves was starting to wear on his hard-earned calm.

“Evade, Captain. Friendlies engaging!”

“I am evading, you stupid kike. Shut the fuck up and let me work!”

Oy! Now they get to the bottom of Captain Albert’s hostility? “For heaven’s sake,” Nate muttered, but Thompson let out another round of cursing, and the plane jerked, shuddered, and rolled some more. They had flown past Stuttgart now, beyond the borders, and dropped their altitude in an attempt to evade. The featureless landscape loomed below them, a black trough of rural woods.

“Holy God, there’s more!”

“You had to stop and take a fucking picture!” Thompson snarled. “We had one lousy job to do, and you had to stop and take a fucking picture, and we’ve got these buggers following us from fucking everywhere!”

“Well, that means whatever was there was pretty damned important, don’t you think?” Nate shot back, because that was the truly frightening thing. Stuttgart was a big city, pretty close to the border of France and Germany; there should be important things in Stuttgart. But that smaller city, on the tip of land across from England, the Axis shouldn’t be making anything there, should they?

“We’re not bloody likely to find out, are we?”

They executed a barrel roll evasive maneuver then, the horizon spinning dizzily and leaving Nate gasping for breath in the hopes that he wouldn’t throw up and wouldn’t pass out. Captain Thompson swore again, and the plane suddenly lurched in the middle of a barrel roll.

“We’re hit!” Thompson screamed. “We’re hit! And I’m going to die because a bloody kike Jew had to jerk off his camera!”

***

Later, it would occur to Nate that for all his shortcomings as a companion, Albert Thompson was an amazing pilot. The plane heaved level, which saved his life, and descended at a terrifying, dizzying speed. Too fast to jettison, even if bailing out of a Mosquito was possible at this altitude, but slow enough to keep the plane from disintegrating on impact. Maybe.

The wood under his feet trembled, and the plane skittered and rattled, shaking Nate like a yolk in its shell. Something exploded behind him, the force of air blowing Nate forward, then back, until he cracked his head on the window and the world detonated into the blackness inside his skull.

About author

Amy Lane exists happily with her noisy family in a crumbling suburban crapmansion, and equally happily with the surprisingly demanding voices who live in her head.

She loves cats, movies, yarn, pretty colors, pretty men, shiny things, and Twu Wuv, and despises house cleaning, low fat granola bars, and vainglorious prickweenies.

She can be found at her computer, dodging housework, or simultaneously reading, watching television, and knitting, because she likes to freak people out by proving it can be done.

Connect with Amy:

 

Giveaway

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Review

Title: The Bells of Times Square

Author: Amy Lane

Genre: Contemporary, Historical, WWII

Length: Novel (236 Pages)

ISBN: 978-1-62649-185-4

Publisher: Riptide Publishing (December 15, 2014)

Heat Level: Explicit

Heart Rating: ♥♥♥♥♥ 4 1/2  Hearts

Reviewer: GiGi & Tams

Blurb: Every New Year’s Eve since 1946, Nate Meyer has ventured alone to Times Square to listen for the ghostly church bells he and his long-lost wartime lover vowed to hear together. This year, however, his grandson Blaine is pushing Nate through the Manhattan streets, revealing his secrets to his silent, stroke-stricken grandfather.
When Blaine introduces his boyfriend to his beloved grandfather, he has no idea that Nate holds a similar secret. As they endure the chilly death of the old year, Nate is drawn back in memory to a much earlier time . . . and to Walter.

Long before, in a peace carefully crafted in the heart of wartime tumult, Nate and Walter forged a loving home in the midst of violence and chaos. But nothing in war is permanent, and now all Nate has is memories of a man his family never knew existed. And a hope that he’ll finally hear the church bells that will unite everybody—including the lovers who hid the best and most sacred parts of their hearts.

Product Link: http://riptidepublishing.com/titles/bells-of-times-square

Gigi’s Review: ♥♥♥♥♥ 5 Hearts

More powerful than any book I’ve read in four years. The way I judge whether or not a work of art is successful, is if that painting, music, or piece of literature moves me, touches me emotionally, and causes me to react to that emotion. In that case, The Bells of Times Square is an outstanding success. As the hot salty tears cascaded down my cheeks, I was both heartbroken and thankful to experience such pure raw human emotion. The Bells of Times Square made me feel the depth of human emotion: I felt pain, I felt heartbreak, I felt fear and loathing, I felt relief and release, and I felt human.

Starting out as a grandson prepares his aging grandfather, who has suffered a severe stroke, for his annual journey to Times Square on New Year’s Eve. We feel the Grandson’s love and respect his grandfather. As they continue, the grandson’s hope and fear at coming out, and the importance his grandfather’s approval carries as Blaine introduces his boyfriend to his Zayde is just a foreshadowing of the powerful events that occur. What I wish Blaine could have realized is the secret his Zayde, Nate, has carried all these years. That what the two generations have in common is who they had fallen in love with, and the secret Nate holds in his heart that takes him to Times Square every year, and especially this year.

As the grandfather, Nate, has memories, flashbacks to the time he went to war, we get to journey through a gay man’s experience of hiding his self-discovery in a time of danger, fear, and violence. We see what amazing care and love can sprout during a fight for life. The sacrifices men and women make for the greater good during such a horrible and violent time.

Nate and Walter’s time amongst themselves, a brief beloved period of pretending and playing house, of sharing hopes, dreams and fears has to come to an end. There is no hiding forever and they both need to sacrifice to bring the war to an end, ending injustice and ending their fantasy. The events that transpire are breathtaking.

The ending is poignant and beautiful, and though it ripped my heart out, I felt grateful for the continuation of hopes, dreams, and dedication that Nathan’s grandson Blaine would carry forward.
Love is beautiful and painful, and this story was beautifully crafted to make me feel it so powerfully. Five stars and then some. You must read this story, yes, there are tears, but they are wondrous tears.

Tams Review: ♥♥♥♥ 4 Hearts

“Times Square on New Year’s Eve,” Walter murmured, and Nate could feel the smile against his lips. “We’ll meet at Times Square, whether or not there’s bells, right?”

“Of course,” Nate whispered. “That is where we’ll meet. God will call us home.”

The story starts in present day with Blaine taking his Grandfather to Times Square to hear the bells, and then the magic begins when you are transported back in time through Nate’s memories and begin to learn the importance of this trip, of those bells.

In 1943 in the middle of WWII, Nate Meyer and Walter Phillips form a bond of friendship and love, a forbidden bond in their time and era. The “wrongness” of their relationship weighs heavy on Nate and over the years he makes a few wrong decisions, including denying who he is and in that denial he betrays the very memory of the man he loved.

The story is told as a journey through the mind of Nate, a series of memories of his time in the war and his time with Walter. Now a WWII vet, Nate is an invalid after suffering a stroke, but his mind still takes him back to happier times, times with Walter, before he chose to live a life that was a lie. His grandson Blaine is there by his side though, and they have a lot more in common than one might think. Oddly, it is their mutual attraction to other men that gives Nate an understanding of Blaine and an acceptance that no one else has.

This is definitely classic Amy Lane. Tear your heart out, bounce it off the wall, jump up and down on it a couple times, then staple it back to your breast bone for good measure. I laughed a little, I cried a lot. There isn’t a Happy Ever After in this story per say, though there is happiness somewhere in all the madness and grief, you just have to look for it.

The descriptive of the time and place are just amazing, I love stories that are steeped in history especially when the author does their homework and presents actual facts and vivid imagery to go along with their wonderful writing skills.

Be warned, this is a half box of Kleenex book at the very least. But, it’s Amy Lane, that is sort of a given.