Hi peeps, we have Stephen del Mar stopping by today with the blog tour for his series The Live Oak Tales, we ask Stephen a couple of question, there’s a brilliant excerpt, a great giveaway and Lisa reviews of Dark Love and The Bear, the Witch and the Web. So enjoy the post and click that Rafflecopter link <3 ~Pixie~

“Slay me,” said the dragon.

Stephen del Mar

Drake’s a pretty, blond twink of a college kid and he has a problem. It’s his twenty-first birthday and the one person he wants at his birthday bash isn’t there. Flint, his roommate, is missing. Drake decides to ditch his own party and find him. This is the night he’s going to tell Flint how he really feels but where is he?

Flint’s hiding out in a leather bar that’s secretly a dragon den. Things get interesting when Drake finds him, because Drake has a secret of his own, he’s really a dragon slayer. “Slay me,” said the dragon, is a wacky short story about star-crossed lovers and unintended consequences.

Short Story, about 14K words

“Slay me,” said the dragon, is the prequel to “The Live Oak Tales,” a contemporary fantasy/paranormal series set in the wider Stories from Bennett Bay collection. “Slay me,” said the dragon introduces us to the dragons and a bit of their lore.

Dark Love

Love and family, the two things Dieter wants most are slipping away. His uncle, the man who raised him as a father, is dead. Now his brother can’t wait to bulldoze and sell the family farm. Yet Dieter clutches at the memories of the past, fighting to hold them close. What Dieter doesn’t know is the past can be present and what is dead doesn’t always stay dead. He discovers that Dark Loves wants to live in the light.

“Dark Love” is a paranormal romance set in Stephen del Mar’s Bennett Bay region of Florida. There are witches, faeries, bears, twinks, a dragon drive by, and one very determined fag hag. Once again del Mar gives us the rich texture of his Florida setting that goes from the bayside tourist town of Bennett Bay to the backwater country hamlet of Live Oak. Remember, things are not always what they seem and be careful what you do under the light of the full moon!

The Bear, the Witch and the Web

A month has passed since the events in “Dark Love” and Max is preparing to deal with the passing of Flora May. What he isn’t prepared for is entering the world of faeries and dragons. The Jumble, the ancient wood just beyond the family farm, is in crisis. The fae are missing and the Witch of the Wood is dead. Can the Circle move past their grief and defeat the menace in the depths of the Pit? Will the secret of the Water Stone be revealed? And most importantly, will there be tea?

“The Bear, the Witch & the Web” is the second book in “The Live Oak Tales,” a contemporary fantasy/paranormal series set in the wider Stories from Bennett Bay collection.

Hunter Moon and the Red Wolf

Wolves! Wolves have returned to Florida, or at least in eastern Big Cypress County, and no one knows why or how. Janos Pac, the new Witch of the Wood, is desperately trying to hold Flora May’s old Circle together, but things are falling apart despite his best efforts. Stone, the youngest member of the group, is the only one to show up for Samhain. After his first cup of tea, the blue kind, things take an unexpected turn. A plot by the dragons is unearthed and everyone’s on the watch for owls. Beware the owls!

“Hunter Moon & the Red Wolf” is the third book in “The Live Oak Tales,” a contemporary fantasy/paranormal series set in the wider Stories from Bennett Bay collection.

Stephen del Mar short interview! 

Today I’m very lucky to be interviewing Stephen del Mar author of The Live Oak Tales series. Hi Stephen, thank you for agreeing to this interview. Tell us a little about yourself, your background, and your current book.

Thanks, I’m very excited to be here. This is my first blog tour. Basic stuff about me: I’m a 54 year old gay man living in the Tampa Bay area of Florida. I have a background in media production and attended seminary for a while.

I’ve just finished and released “Hunter Moon & the Red Wolf,” which is the last book in “The Live Oak Tales.” This series is a fun and, at times, a quirky take on contemporary/paranormal fantasy. We have witches, faeries and a number of shifter folk all trying to do the right thing and live together. All of this is set in the Bennett Bay area on the Gulf Coast of Florida. A fun little place I’ve made up. I wanted a place where I could condense all of Florida into one county with a tourist town and backwater villages. I’ve been very influenced by the southern literary traditions and setting is always one of my main characters. A strong sense of place is a must for southern fiction, as is a bit of spirit, in whatever form that may take.

What is your least favorite part of the publishing/writing process?

Overall I think it’s all pretty fun, but I do wish I could skip the editing part. Once I finish a story I want to be done with it and move on to the next one. So, I’ve gotten to the point that as soon as a draft is good enough to send out to the beta readers, I start on the next story. I imagine most writers are like this. You have a WIP you are drafting while the last one is being read and edited. Then you publish it and the wheel keeps turning. Oh, and now I’m doing the blog tour thing. That’s kind of fun too.

As an author, is there one subject you would never write about? What would it be?

That is really interesting. I want to say I don’t think so. But there are some qualifiers there. I don’t think I’d not write a story that came to me organically—something I made up. But I could see someone suggesting something to me and not wanting to do it. A subject doesn’t make a story. But anything can be told if it’s done right. You need the right characters, their motivations and a good setting. Then the plot can unfold.

Now having said all of that, I don’t see me writing any horror again. I did it as an experiment in the short story “HIM.” It’s a first person psychosexual story. When you write first person you have to get into the head of the character and that was intense. People like the story. I think “twisted” is the term most often used. But I’d rather not go there again. However, now that I’d said that, my muse will no doubt have other ideas. He really irritates me sometimes.  Who’s in charge of muse allocation anyway? Who do I complain to? Why did I get stuck with a bitchy little drag queen?

When did you first realize you wanted to write?

Late in high school or early college. I grew up with books and started reading early, seems kind of natural that at some point I’d want to start writing my own. It just took me a long time to finally get around to doing it. I’ve got a lot of lost time to make up for!

How long does it take to write your books?

Oh, that is an interesting one. “Dark Love” took about ten weeks. That was pretty fast for me, it’s around 110K words. The next book out, “Return to Cooter Crossing” has taken a good two years, maybe a bit more by the time it’s published. Of course I wrote three other novels and half a dozen short stories while I was working on it. For me at least, every story has its own pace, some just take longer to cook.

For Fun: Where is one place you’d like to visit you haven’t been before?

Well with the big vote in Ireland for marriage equality, I’d love to spend some time in Dublin. Find a nice pub somewhere, sample some fine whiskey and listen to some Irish lads tell stories. Maybe I could find one with ginger hair and green eyes. My editor has noted that I seem to have a thing for men with ginger hair and green eyes. She’s not wrong. I think Dublin would be a good place to write. I need to sell more books!

Excerpt

Excerpt from Dark Love: Book 1 in the Live Oak Tales

Setup: Dieter is alone at the family’s old farmhouse after the death of his uncle. His ex-lover and still good friend Innes comes over to comfort him. Innes finds the mysterious silver box Dieter found out in the barn, which seems to have human ash in it. Innes warns him that it might be dangerous. Innes is a witch and Dieter thinks magic is bull. Innes calls in his mentor, Flora May Crawford, to help him convince Dieter there is danger afoot. It doesn’t work. Later, Innes calls back with another warning for Dieter.  It doesn’t make him think Innes is any less crazy.

*****

Of course that was the moment my phone made the little nose-twitch tinkle-tinkle. I sighed, go with the flow and remember you love him.

I picked up the phone. “Hello, Innes.”

“Didn’t you get my text?” He sounded flustered.

“No. I haven’t looked at my phone. I’ve had other things on my mind.”

“Oh. Right. Well, what are you doing?”

“Sitting naked in the kitchen having soup and a sandwich.”

“Why?”

“Because I was hungry. What do you want?”

He didn’t say anything for a moment. I heard the creak of a screen door and the chirping of frogs. He must have moved outside onto Flora May’s front porch. “Look,” he said, “Flora May just got back from the faeries.” He paused like he expected me to comment. I had nothing.

“She’s not telling me a lot. Said they’re pretty agitated about the whole thing.”

Again the pause. Again I was silent; although I was worrying my grip on the phone would reach its crush point.

“Dieter, you gotta promise me to take this seriously.”

Actually, I didn’t have to promise him anything.

“Dieter?”

“Yes?”

I heard him swallow. “Tonight is a full moon.”

“So? It happens every twenty-eight days from what I understand.”

“Fuck.” He was agitated. “Listen, whatever you do, don’t jack-off in that box under the full moon.”

My mind kicked into neutral and spun its gears as it tried to make sense of the string of words it just received. Because they didn’t make any sense and they kept coming.

He continued. “I mean it. Whatever you do, do not mix your semen with that ash in the full moonlight.”

Some emergency back-up system took over. My thumb slid over my phone and ended the call. I stood up, opened the fridge and pulled a beer out. I twisted the top off and dropped it on the table. I pushed my way through the swinging door into the living room. As I fell back onto the couch, I tried to imagine a world where the idea of masturbating into a box of human ash existed, let alone the need to warn someone not to do that. Ohhh, I’m gonna cum, make sure the drapes are pulled and the lids are on all the urns, ‘cause we don’t want our spunk and ash and moonlight to mix! ‘Cause that will start the zombie apocalypse or something.

About The Live Oak Tales

The Live Oak Tales is a paranormal/contemporary fantasy series set in the wider Stories from Bennett Bay collection by Stephen del Mar. The series consists of one short story (“Slay me,” said the dragon.), which serves as a standalone prequel and three novels, Dark Love, The Bear, the Witch and the Web, and Hunter Moon and the Red Wolf.

“Slay me,” said the dragon. is a tongue-in-cheek look at a romantic encounter between a dragon and a slayer. It sets up the mythology of dragon shifters that runs through the rest of the series.

Dark Love, a metaphor for gay love, takes us from the ordinary world of the Bennett Bay, a Gulf-side tourist town in Florida, to the tiny, backwater village of Live Oak. Dieter Reinhold, the proprietor of a trendy café in Bennett Bay’s Spanish Quarter travels back to Live Oak to deal with the death of his great uncle, the man that raised him as a father. While there, he learns there are more interesting creatures in the woods than he ever imagined. He discovers that magic, witches, and undying love are real.

In The Bear, the Witch and the Web, Innes Callahan and the circle of witches we met in Dark Love are facing a number of crises. The greatest of which is that the faeries are missing. In fact, all the enchantment seems to be gone from the Jumble, the wild woods adjacent to the farm. They need to find the faeries and discover who the new Witch of the Wood will be.

The final book in the series, Hunter Moon and the Red Wolf, finds the Circle still in disarray as Janos Pac tries to come into his own as the new Witch of the Woods. This is complicated by a plot by the dragons and wolves returning to Florida after nearly a hundred years, but are they really wolves?

These books are on the lighter side of the paranormal spectrum with a fair bit of humor. However, they do touch on deeper issues. Dark Love explores loss, grief, and what it means to hide one’s love. The stories also explore what it means to make hard choices about our path in life; and, an overarching theme is the changing nature of family as we move through life. How we move from our family of birth to the family we create with friends and lovers.

About Stephen

Stephen del Mar is a fresh voice in Southern Gay Fiction. His Bennett Bay collection of books and stories explore life in that unique corner of the American South known as Florida. He also writes fantasy and science-fiction. Del Mar lives in the Tampa Bay region of Florida and enjoys Key Lime Pie and mango margaritas, but not at the same time.

Where to find the author:

Giveaway!

Win an ebook copy of Dark Love, Book 1 in the Live Oak Tales!

Stephen del Mar Rafflecopter giveaway!

Review

Title: Dark Love

Series: The Live Oak Tales 01

Author: Stephen Del Mar

Genre: Sci-fi, Dark Fantasy, Paranormal

Length: Novel (398 Pages)

ISNB: B00ISGDB5O

Publisher: LMW Books (March 5th, 2014)

Heat Level: Explicit

Heart Rating: ♥♥♥♥♥ 5 Hearts

Reviewer: Lisa

Blurb: Love and family, the two things Dieter wants most are slipping away. His uncle, the man who raised him as a father, is dead. Now his brother can’t wait to bulldoze and sell the family farm. Yet Dieter clutches at the memories of the past, fighting to hold them close. What Dieter doesn’t know is the past can be present and what is dead doesn’t always stay dead. He discovers that Dark Loves wants to live in the light.

“Dark Love” is a paranormal romance set in Stephen del Mar’s Bennett Bay region of Florida. There are witches, faeries, bears, twinks, a dragon drive by, and one very determined fag hag. Once again del Mar gives us the rich texture of his Florida setting that goes from the bayside tourist town of Bennett Bay to the backwater country hamlet of Live Oak. Remember, things are not always what they seem. And be careful what you do under the light of the full moon!

Purchase Link: http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Love-Story-Bennett-Bay-ebook/dp/B00ISGDB5O

Review: This is one of the books for the Bennet Bay series. It is a pretty good book. It comes off really dark fantasy type though. I wasn’t too sure what to think about it though. It seemed old world to me.

Dieter wants love and family. When his uncle passes away he goes down to the old farm to look around and say goodbye, but in reality, he is just left with more questions. He goes down there and meets up with his brother to discuss what they should do. However, his brother shocks him with his attitude and then even more when he leaves him there alone. When one of his best friends, Innes come down to spend the time with him and help him he is appreciative of the help. But it just gets even stranger for him. It would seem that the little box he had assumed was just an urn was in fact a soul catcher with magic surrounding it. His friend is a witch and gets a bit scared from it. What surprises him was when Innes tells him not to get any of his sperm into the box that holds the soul catcher and the ashes of Borris. A drinker who can only survive on the orgasm and sperm of men. The love of the Dieter’s uncle. Dieter is just about as lost as one can be.

Back in the time when the Nazi’s were in power is where the story truly begins. Dieter’s uncle, Wolfgang was thirteen years old and was in the Nazi camp. Most people remember that the Nazi’s were into the paranormal world and did experiments on people. When they came across someone who could only survive on sperm, they found a way to make his pain even worse. When Boris was not fed, he would go into a blood lust and would kill those around him. However, Wolfgang was the only one who truly saw Boris and not a monster. They had fallen in love. The Nazi’s were going to kill Boris in front of Wolfgang and that would destroy him. He had found away to keep his soul alive. Then many years later after Wolfgang’s death, Dieter comes home for the funeral. Finds the box and tells his best friend. Innes is a witch and knew what the box was, so in a fit of frustration tells Dieter not to get his sperm in it. Talk about a fantastic twist.

Dieter isn’t to sure about his friends and doesn’t have a clue about the paranormal stuff that seems to be coming around. Witches, faeries, bears, dragons and a very determined fag hag are only parts of the surprises coming around. And all he thinks about is the fact that he is just a restaurant owner who lost his uncle. So despite Innes talk about sperm and the box, he chooses not to listen. And Boris is brought back. Cursed he is still in the body of a nineteen year-old. They knew that they had to figure out how to help Boris.

When I heard this title I thought paranormal for sure, but it also comes off kind of different. The box that had held Boris’s spirit had a saying on it, to dust and from dust. Dark love grows from the seed planted under the full moon. Now when you get this story your thinking just about the paranormal parts to it, but it shows you something that many people still think is true. The Dark Love is in fact the love between two men.

It is the first time that I have heard that the love between two men was dark love, but it makes sense that some people thought that. I never really understood it though. I can’t help but think that these people need to see that this love is in fact very special. With this book, you get the feeling of the love these men have for each other. I love how Dieter meets Yanko. Their eyes meet their attraction to each other strong. Yanko is there for it all and Dieter finally realizes he loves this man more than anything in this world. He would give up everything to keep his lover safe.

I would recommend this book to everyone. It gives you everything that you can ever want. I love the dark fantasy touch, the different types of paranormal creatures, the love of Dieter and Yanko, and the way that everyone in this story is a family. A family not of blood but of love and choice. It is an amazing story and I cannot wait to read more from this author.

Title: The Bear, the Witch & the Web

Series: The Live Oak Talks 02

Author: Stephen del Mar

Genre: Gay Erotic Romance, Paranormal

Length: Novella (153 pages)

ISBN: B00WDF253A

Publisher: LMW Books (June 30. 2015)

Heat Level: Explicit

Heart Rating: ♥♥♥♥ 4 Hearts

Reviewer: Lisa

Blurb: A month has passed since the events in “Dark Love” and Max is preparing to deal with the passing of Flora May. What he isn’t prepared for is entering the world of faeries and dragons. The Jumble, the ancient wood just beyond the family farm, is in crisis. The fae are missing and the Witch of the Wood is dead. Can the Circle move past their grief and defeat the menace in the depths of the Pit? Will the secret of the Water Stone be revealed? And most importantly, will there be tea? 

Product Link: http://www.amazon.com/Bear-Witch-Live-Tales-Book-ebook/dp/B00WDF253A

Review: The Bear, the Witch & the Web is the second book in this series and I have to say that it was as good as the first although a little more hard to comprehend. It has a darkness to it that is what does it for this book. It is told with seriousness but even through it all there is quite a bit of humor. I mean in book one they brought Boris back from death to find out that he survives on man’s sperm. A little bit twisted to say the least. I got a big kick out of that one. In this I was not pleased with Max. You can tell that even though the feelings came out, he pretty much deserted. It doesn’t come off as a love story which for me was the down side. I was not pleased with the ending at all. I want a love story with a twist, but a love story no less. I wanted Max to stay at the farm with Janos.

Max came back for the woman who raised him. She had passed on and left him with a bit of a puzzle to figure out. He never believed in what she had told him. The fae, the dragon and all the magic just couldn’t be real to him. He was a business owner whose head is in the present. He loved the old girl but couldn’t believe in what was told. That is until strange things started happening. This is where it gets a bit hard to figure out. It is a great story but hard to follow in parts. I mean he even has sex with Boris. Strange to me.

Janos was to be the new owner and wanted Max. The fairies were dying and he couldn’t figure out what was going on. He needed help but just wasn’t sure how to get it. The woods and the family farm was in danger. Nothing was working, not even the sex they were having to help strengthen the fae. When they find a fae that is close to death, they learn that a spider is what is the problem. They needed to help and find a way around their grief at the same time.

As I said this is not really a love story which brought it down in my thoughts, but it has a great story to be told. I just couldn’t get over the fact that they though sex was the answer is some parts. It was a blast to read. When a story has humor mixed in I am usually willing to get it a try. Stephen gives you a world that you can lose yourself into. A world of darkness, death, life, hot sex, crazy friends, danger and a bit of suspense is just a bit of what you get in this.  Although the tea is a bit tasty.  Although Max doesn’t seem to think so.   

I had a blast reading this and look forward to reading the next story by Stephen. It gave me almost everything I could ask for in a story. I started reading it and couldn’t put it down to the very end. I love a story that you can get captivated with and even the idea of eating gets in the way. It was a fun read and I would definitely recommend reading it.

Check out the other blogs on the blog tour