Hi guys, we have Amy Lane stopping by now with her newest release The Deep of the Sound, we have a brief guest post from Amy and she brings along a great excerpt, we have a brilliant giveaway and we have Aerin’s review, so enjoy the post and leave a comment (with email address) to enter the giveaway! <3 ~Pixie~

The Deep of the Sound

Amy Lane

Cal McCorkle has lived in Bluewater Bay his whole life. He works two jobs to support a brother with a laundry list of psychiatric diagnoses and a great-uncle with Alzheimer’s, and his personal life amounts to impersonal hookups with his boss. He’s got no time, no ambition, and no hope. All he has is family, and they’re killing him one responsibility at a time.

Avery Kennedy left Los Angeles, his family, and his sleazy boyfriend to attend a Wolf’s Landing convention, and he has no plans to return. But when he finds himself broke and car-less in Bluewater Bay, he’s worried he’ll have to slink home with his tail between his legs. Then Cal McCorkle rides to his rescue, and his urge to run away dies a quick death.

Avery may seem helpless at first, but he can charm Cal’s fractious brother, so Cal can pretty much forgive him anything. Even being adorkable. And giving him hope. But Cal can only promise Avery “until we can’t”—and the cost of changing that to “until forever” might be too high, however much they both want it.

Amy Lane!

I know that I’m famous for writing family, but most of us are aware that family can be a double-sided coin.  On the one hand, family is a wonderful source of support, of love and kindness, of a solid foundation on which to build an amazing future.

On the other hand, sometimes the demands of family present a finger-trap of good intentions and unbearable pressures.  The only way to wiggle out is to give in, but giving in doesn’t always take you in the direction you need to go.

Cal is the first main character we meet in The Deep of the Sound—and he’s caught in a finger-trap of the most painful sort.  Now, anybody who wants to maybe read ahead to how he gets out, you may recognize Nascha from the Nascha, in Lights, Camera, Cupid.  But if you’d rather be surprised, by all means take a look at Deep of the Sound!

Excerpt

Chapter One

Going Out

“You going out today, Calladh?” Uncle Nascha sounded surprised. He’d slept in the battered recliner the night before, and the corduroy wrinkles obscured his face so much Cal hadn’t seen his eyes were open in the dark of the living room.

Cal had just come in from the boat dock to grab his forgotten lunch, and he didn’t state the obvious: he was wearing his hip waders and old slicker, and it was five o’clock on a misty, freezing morning in February. There was nowhere to go but out.

“Yeah, Nascha—if I can catch enough freshwater cod, the chef at the Global’ll buy ’em from me.” Nascha knew this. Cal worked two jobs—one was as a busboy at the Global Restaurant and Casino and the other was his own independent fishing business. Between the two of them, he could just barely afford the payments on Nascha’s ramshackle beachfront house and someone to come look after Nascha and Keir.

“Your brother will miss you when you’re gone.”

Cal closed his eyes. “I know, Nascha. But you need to make him take his pills anyway.” Keir didn’t listen to Nascha quite like he listened to Cal, but Cal couldn’t help that. Cal had set the meds out in the little weekly plastic thing, the white one for day and the black one for night. God, he hoped he’d gotten it right. Adderall, risperidone, Cymbalta—ADHD, Asperger’s, anxiety, OCD, possible bipolar—it was a powerful cocktail, and they’d gone through . . . hell, vehicles, teachers, sheriffs, and half the kitchen to get it right. Keir was prone to hitting things with rocks and fire when he was anxious or upset. Nascha used to be able to deal with him, but Nascha had his own drug cocktail now, Exelon ranking high on the list. Nascha didn’t always remember that Keir needed his medicine—morning and evening cocktails—without Cal or a caregiver around. He also didn’t remember to turn off the stove or take the bread out of the toaster or keep Keir inside the house.

Mostly, he didn’t remember that Keir was no longer a little boy running down the street screaming in a voice that would shatter glass. Keir was twenty now, with a powerful body and a fondness for all of Cal’s fishing knives (which Cal kept locked in the safe out by the boat), and a disturbing habit of tracking the girls in their neighborhood.

“Cherry’s rounding the corner, yellow dress, shows her ass when she bends over. Stop yelling, Cherry. Stop yelling, it leads to hitting.”

Keir’s fixation on girls wasn’t limited to the extremely young, but what was Cal supposed to do? He’d told the doctor who dispensed the meds, but his only response had been to up Keir’s medication.

Cal knew—just knew—that his parents would have been able to deal with Keir. His mother and father had been so . . . capable, had such pure hearts and such practical joy in dealing with their fractious, damaged son. But they’d gone for a drive after heavy rains six years ago, and their battered pickup had been washed off the side of a mountain in a mudslide.

Cal’s dreams of college, of playing sports, of meeting a boy the way his mother had met his father—all of that had been washed down the mountain too. At barely eighteen, he’d been left in charge of keeping things together, and part of that was making sure Keir had his medication, and Uncle Nascha got his too. And living with that gnawing worry, every day, from dawn until dusk, past dusk, until he was just too tired to see anymore.

“I don’t mean go out to work,” Nascha said, snapping Cal back to the present through eyes gritty with lack of sleep. “I mean go out tonight. It’s Valentine’s Day this week, Cal—don’t you have a school dance to go to?”

Oh. Okay. So Cal was in high school now. He understood.

“No, Nascha—no dances for Cal. Cal doesn’t go to dances, remember?” Cal doesn’t go to dances because Cal doesn’t really like girls, he thought ironically. Yet one more thing he hadn’t been able to talk to his parents about since their car had gone tumbling down into the river.

“If Cal was on the reservation,” Nascha said, his voice ironic too as they spoke of Cal in the third person, “Cal could dance with the two-spirit children, and nobody would think less of him.”

Yeah, sure, it always sounded like Mecca when Nascha talked about the reservation, but Nascha had left when he’d been not much older than Cal. Cal understood that Indian Gaming had improved things somewhat on the reservation—but that didn’t mean he was a fan of all the changes it brought about in the nonreservation parts of the state.

“Maybe I just want to be left the fuck alone,” Cal snarled, feeling bad even as he did. Nascha and Keir were his family—his only family. He couldn’t afford to piss them off, because they were all stuck in this tiny house together, and they were all each other had.

Cal would lie in bed awake sometimes, exhausted and aching because he needed more.

“Maybe you just need to go dance,” Nascha said calmly, not taking offense. Just like when Cal had been a fractious kid, losing patience with Keir because he’d been fixating on the same damned cartoon for weeks, Nascha had never lost his keel.

Cal loved that about him. It was why, in spite of his increasing anxiety over leaving Nascha alone with Keir, he couldn’t bring himself to put Nascha in a home either.

But God, he was exhausted.

“Well, I’ll let you know if a dance opens up for me,” he muttered, swallowing against the tightness in his throat.

“Calladh!” Nascha spoke sharply, and the long-ingrained habit of responding to his elders with respect crackled through Cal’s bones, snapping his spine erect and widening his eyes.

“Yes, Great-Uncle.” His hip boots were clean, thank God, so he could walk across the worn brown carpet and into the living room. The old television—36”, but pre-flat screen, so it took up about a third of the space in the small room—was set low, but a parade of Viagra commercials and spoiled rich women reflected off Nascha’s face, even as he turned his attention to Cal.

“You listen to me. I know sometimes I forget—sometimes your mother is still alive, and your father, bless their hearts. Sometimes you and Keir are boys and your family is staying with me and I am so happy. But when I remember, I see what time has made of you, and you are old before your time.”

Oh. This was the Uncle Nascha that Cal had loved as a child. The Uncle Nascha who had been young at heart, and kind, and who had offered patience and peanut-butter-and-honey sandwiches and native stories about the gods who fought each other while the people watched, leaving behind mountains in their wake. The Uncle Nascha who would wander away when his parents were having money troubles, and come back in a few days, smelling of cigars and whiskey, with more cash than should be legal in this world.

Cal kneeled in front of his great-uncle’s chair. “It’s not so bad,” he said roughly, thinking that it wasn’t anything, any sacrifice at all, as long as Nascha could be like this, be the elder and the confidant and the grown-up all the time.

“You should sell this house, Cal,” Nascha said, and his voice warbled, became fractious. “The reservation would pay money for it, set up a casino and a marina—you could make enough money to put me in a home, to take care of your brother. You could go out and live your life.”

Cal took a deep breath, and then another, willing his face to stay stoic, willing his eyes not to burn. “But what is my life without my family?” he asked, trying hard to smile.

Nascha sighed. “Is that what I say to you when I can’t remember?”

Verbatim. “It’s what I know to be true,” Cal said, finding his feet again, remembering who really was the grown-up. He bent and kissed his uncle’s forehead, hating himself for the brief moment of hope. “Dottie will be here at eight. She’ll feed you both. I’ll try to get her to remember the medicine.”

Dottie was in her sixties—which was good because it made her exempt from Keir’s pathological hatred—but she was also apparently from a time when healthy men didn’t rely on pills to keep them tethered to the earth. She was good at keeping them fed, at reminding Uncle Nascha he needed to use the john, at getting him out to walk around the neighborhood, and at not taking Keir’s shit—but she was just as likely to “forget” the meds and pretend they had no use at all. Those were the days Cal came home to find Keir banging his hand against the wall until it bruised and Nascha in tears because he didn’t know who the crazy man in the living room was.

It was really better for all involved if Nascha, when he was bright and alert in the mornings, could remember the medication for both of them.

“Cal!” Nascha called to his retreating back, and Cal couldn’t take it anymore.

“What?” he demanded, losing control of his voice and his composure. “But make it quick, old man, because my fish today are buying our groceries, and right now there’s only about enough spaghetti left for lunch.”

Nascha’s look of hurt followed Cal out the garage door and into the dory rocking gently on the waters inside.

About Amy

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!

Every comment on this blog tour enters you in a drawing for an eBook package of all of Amy Lane’s backlist titles with Riptide! (Excludes The Deep of the Sound and anthologies.)

Review

Title: The Deep of the Sound

Series: Bluewater Bay 08

Author: Amy Lane

Genre: Contemporary

Length: Novel (309 pages)

ISBN: 9781626492752

Publisher: Riptide Publishing (June 15th 2015)

Heat Level: Steamy

Heart Rating: ♥♥♥♥♥ 5 Hearts

Reviewer: Aerin

Blurb: Cal McCorkle has lived in Bluewater Bay his whole life. He works two jobs to support a brother with a laundry list of psychiatric diagnoses and a great uncle with Alzheimer’s, and his personal life amounts to impersonal hookups with his boss. He’s got no time, no ambition, and no hope. All he has is family, and they’re killing him one responsibility at a time.

Avery Kennedy left Los Angeles, his family, and his sleazy boyfriend to attend a Wolf’s Landing convention, and he has no plans to return. But when he finds himself broke and car-less in Bluewater Bay, he’s worried he’ll have to slink home with his tail between his legs. Then Cal McCorkle rides to his rescue, and his urge to run away dies a quick death.

Avery may seem helpless at first, but he can charm Cal’s fractious brother, so Cal can pretty much forgive him anything. Even being adorkable. And giving him hope. But Cal can only promise Avery “until we can’t”—and the cost of changing that to “until forever” might be too high, however much they both want it.

Product Link: http://riptidepublishing.com/titles/deep-of-the-sound

Review: Thoughtful, heartbreaking, real, hopeful, amazing…this is what Amy Lane’s writing is to me. This is just another successful book written by her, which I loved with all my heart. I don’t thing there’s anything this writer can put on page that I wouldn’t love, she’s the superwoman of the MM genre. I always try to compare her books against her own previous releases, because it stands in a category of its own. This was a great addition to the Bluewater Bay series, it showed us the opposite side from the glamour of the stars we got in the first few books in this series. But then I expected that, because this is Amy Lane, and nobody shows the struggles of the less fortunate better than her. This is not as angsty as some of her work, but there’s plenty of heartbreak.

In this story we meet Cal(Calladh); he’s got it rough. He works himself to the limits in order to provide the basics to his brother Keir and his great-uncle, Nascha. Keir and Nascha have problems of their own, and living with them, being in charge of their well being, is taking a toll on Cal’s soul. Ohhh how I wanted to hug him! Keir is suffering from a cocktail of psychological problems: Asperger, ADHD, anxiety, OCD, possible bi-polar…he’s a ticking time bomb. On top of all that, Keir has a serious case of hatred towards younger women that nobody can explain, and Cal knows and fears there will be a time when he’ll have to make the decision that will break his heart: put Keir is the system care. Nascha is suffering from the on-setting of Alzheimer’s, and while him and Keir are a burden to Cal, Cal doesn’t want to imagine life without the only family he has left. Can you see the source of the angst and heartbreak? Yet I found myself laughing or chucking randomly; there was just enough humor delivered sparsely to chase away the tears I felt coming: 

“For a little while, once I figured out what they should be,
I dreamed about having a little brother,” Cal said, his voice
husky for no reason Avery could imagine. “And I dreamed
about having a dog.”
“Good dreams,” Avery said promptly. “I never had either
one.”
“I did. My little brother killed my dog.”

Keir’s smile was so sweet, so pure—God, it was hard to
remember he was a little psycho in the making.

“Do you have any idea what you did to me, old man?” he
demanded, voice growing ugly, cracked, furious and bleeding.
“You and Keir were my life, and you just . . . just stole that from
me?”

Nascha smiled, suddenly about twelve years old. “Dottie
had her tablet, Cal. Do you know what the internet can do for
you?” Suddenly he laughed, the delighted sound of the dirty
old man. “Porn. Man, I’m telling you. There is the best porn
on that little magic box.” 

Avery, sweet darling Avery. He knows he’s not a good looking man, and that’s one of the reasons he lets others take advantage of him…until he doesn’t. I loved and respected his decision to start a new life somewhere else, away from the parents who wouldn’t accept him for who he was, away from his asshole boyfriend who treated him like dirt. His journey is not easy, there are many bumps along the way, but he perseveres. I loved how Cal called Avery his “rescue puppy”, I thought the name fit at the beginning of their journey, as well as at the end, even though the meanings behind the name were polar opposites. Their relationship was the bright spot in Cal’s life, and the affection for each other is obvious; especially Avery’s adoration for Cal.

He looks at you like you’re Apollo. Like you’re
beautiful and gifted and . . .”
Cal stared at him, some of his excitement deflating.
“George—you know who I am. I’m . . . nobody.”
“Not to him,” George said earnestly. “Just . . . I’m glad for
you.” Cal smiled a little.
“Until we can’t,” he said, and for once,
it sounded like that wasn’t a death sentence.
“That’s most people who’ve been married for years,”
George agreed.

One thing I absolutely loved was the humor during sex. Is there anything better than reading a passionate sex scene that has you gulping and your throat going dry? Yes, getting a laugh when it’s over; Amy Lane gave us that, and I love her even more for it!

“I’m gonna make you come,” Cal whispered, his breath
fanning Avery’s sensitized crown, his heat filling the entire
space of Avery’s lower body with a thunderstorm of promise.
“I’m going to make you come, and then I’m going to fuck you,
and if you’ll be too sore after you come you’d better tell me
now.”

“Wow, Rescue Puppy—I feel like . . . like I discovered
something. Like I picked you up on the side of the road
looking all sad and shit, and you were . . . like secret sex gold
or something!”
Avery laughed weakly. “That would be all you,” he panted.
“I swear, I was planning to go write after you came, rolled over,
and went to sleep.”
Cal laughed too. “Gonna go write now?”
“Can’t brain words. No.”
“Good,” he murmured, nuzzling Avery’s ear. “This is the
way it should be.”

And after that they had the rest of the night to fuck like
lemmings, make love, touch each other tenderly, and bang like
a screen door in a hurricane..

Without the weight of the world on his shoulders, Cal
made love like the Native American god of sex, whomever
that may be.

Their HEA is beautiful, but then I expected that. It’s why I love suffering through Amy lane’s writing, because I know she’ll give us that happy ending to make it all worth it. I couldn’t recommend this enough.

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