Hi guys! We have Jackson Marsh visiting today with his new release The Students of Barrenmoor Ridge, we have a brilliant guest post, a great excerpt, and a fantastic $20 Amazon GC giveaway, so check out the post and enter the giveaway! ❤️ ~Pixie~ p.s. keep an eye out for my review coming soon!

The Students of Barrenmoor Ridge

Jackson Marsh

Book two in ‘The Barrenmoor Series’ of MM romance stories with a mountain rescue theme.

Liam has set himself a goal. To come out to his best friend, Casper, before his 18th birthday while hiking at Fellborough in the Yorkshire Dales.

Things don’t go according to plan, and when a violent storm hits, the camping trip takes a potentially fatal turn. Local mountaineers, John Hamilton and his husband Gary are called to help, but it soon becomes apparent that the rescue is more than physical. Liam and Casper both have secrets that when known, have the potential break or mend their hearts.

A mix of YA, romance and adventure, ‘The Students of Barrenmoor Ridge’ brings back popular characters from the first Barrenmoor book in a familiar setting with love, mountaineering and the dangers of both.

‘The Mentor of Barrenmoor Ridge’ is the first book in the Barrenmoor Series of MM romances with a mountain rescue theme. ‘The Students’ takes place two years later, and it is better, but not vital, to read the stories in order.

Jackson Marsh!

When did you start writing? What’s your writing history?

My interest in writing stories began when I was 11, and it was thanks to an English teacher at school. There had been a national disaster on the London underground, and we were asked to write a story based around the event, which might, these days, sound a little macabre, but we are talking the 1970s. I wrote my piece, the teacher said he was impressed, and asked me to write it again and improve it, thereby giving me my first lesson in editing. I rewrote the story one weekend, and it won me some very minor award at school which boosted my confidence and, I reckon, set me on the path to writing.

Not only did that teacher inspire me to write stories, but he also arranged for me and a friend to assist him in a local history project over the summer holidays, and thus, not only taught me about editing but about research. At the end of this project, my friend and I had helped him put together a small book about an important, local church and a month or so later, it was published with our names in the back. Seeing my name in print at the age of 12, as I was then, was another thing that inspired me to write.

I was lucky. I had inspirational teachers, both at the prep school I went to and later at the secondary school. There, my music and English teachers were a married couple; he taught me music, helped me write and put on my own shows, revues and choir pieces, and his wife made sure I read books outside the curriculum and took part in the school plays – all to widen my knowledge and interests. Thanks to these teachers, I developed a love of creativity, whether it was music, the stage or prose, and I have them to thank for the fact I now make a living from stringing words together.

I didn’t get into writing and self-publishing novels, however, until much later when my husband and I moved from the UK to Greece, in 2002. At this time, we took the plunge, gave up the house and security of decent jobs and moved to a small island with two rucksacks and a laptop. Eighteen years later, we are still here, though with a lot more clutter. The move, though, allowed me to spend time writing, and when self-publishing started as a concept, I was right there at the front of the queue. I brought out was a book of our experiences moving and living here (under my real name). Then, I started on novels, and I’ve learned a hell of a lot since.

After publishing several ‘straight’ novels, all with gay characters but not out and out gay or MM novels, I started to feel restricted by my readership. I know, sounds like an odd thing to say. What I mean is, my readers were mainly people who came to the island for holidays, older, straighter, retired and rather twee, or so I thought, and I didn’t want to disenfranchise the from my real-name novels. That’s why I started writing as Jackson Marsh, not because I didn’t want my James Collins readers to know, but because it gave me the freedom to write exactly what I wanted to without worrying about confusing those who already bought my books. Since then, of course, I have found out that a lot of my James Collins readers now read Jackson Marsh and love the stories, so it was foolish of me to worry about what other people might think.

These days, writing is my job and my pastime. I write for a couple of online companies as a way to pay the bills, and that takes me a couple of hours each morning. After that, I write for my readership and myself, usually spending six hours per day at the computer or my writing desk, devising, researching, plotting, writing, editing, re-writing and now and then, doing promotions for my novels. I wouldn’t say I was yet able to retire on the proceeds (I wish), but the quality of life is more important, and being able to do what I love doing, where I love doing it, and doing it to get by, is reward enough, and it’s all down to my English teacher back in 1970-sometime making me rewrite a two-page story because he thought it was worth it.

Note:
[If you are interested in the Greek island connection, Jackson’s blog, as James Collins, is found at www.symidream.com ]

Excerpt!

John was unable to sleep that night. The raging wind didn’t bother him even though the roof tiles rattled, and he knew the old yew tree would be creaking as it bent towards the lean-to. He was used to it and so was the cottage. It was well built.

Gary was curled up behind him, spooned in with one arm across John’s chest. The bedroom was warm, Gary’s presence warmer, and the pillows were soft. There was no reason sleep shouldn’t come, they were safe from the battering, cocooned in the perfect shelter of each other’s arms, and yet…

The scream of the wind as it charged them from the summit of Lhotse, the vibrations of the ground when an avalanche fell, the hiss of snow stinging the tent, and the mountain’s roar, all sounds he heard through the inconsequential force six doing its best to rattle the house. The bitter bite of memory gnawed at his mind for sure, but the main reason his thoughts leapt from the anesthetising approach of sleep to the worst conditions in the world had nothing to do with the past.

There were people out there now, at Everest, yes, but also on the fells. The team were over at Northpeak and they’d picked a fine night for training, but closer to home, there were hikers and climbers huddled beneath inadequate canvas hoping their pegging was sound and wishing the night would end. Daylight might bring security, but it didn’t guarantee good weather, and it was still hours away. A lot could happen. The storm had worsened to a frightening zenith before the thunder abated slightly, but still he couldn’t sleep. The lessening conditions meant the eye of the storm was overhead, and there would be more, possibly worse, to follow.

He pictured the fell from above, seeing through the agitated clouds to the swamped ground a mile below. Lit by lightning bursts, he imagined it as waves frozen in mid-roll with Fellborough peak a crest and the lower terrain its ripples. Peppered around it were insignificant dots of inappropriate colour, the shop-bought, budget tents of the unwary trembling against the elements.

He had pictured the scene on many nights as he lay listening to the conditions and wating for the MRT radio to spark into life, or for his pager to double-beep the call sign, but tonight he was seeing it more clearly, as if it was unfolding on a widescreen television in high definition. Unaffected by the storm, he floated above it, watching over its potential victims, safe at his altitude and apart. The          unhinged tempest beneath blasted from one insane thought to another, swiping at anything in its path, but John was safe, hovering on a warm updraft that dulled him towards the soft paws of sleep.

Until he fell.

Security gone. No handholds, no rope, only the empty space between him and the life-taking certainty of rock.

Gasping, he opened his eyes as his body jerked. The clock glowed one-forty-seven, and Gary had rolled away leaving him exposed and vulnerable. The pager was silent, and John was safe in his bed, but a few miles away, people might be battling for their lives, and all he could do was wait.

 

The rain no longer stung when it swiped Liam’s face, his flesh was too numb to register the pain. The torch beam was nothing more than a thread through barely penetrable blackness, but it showed him the ground a few steps at a time.

That was all he needed to do, take it slowly using common sense and exercising caution. The tent had been facing west, and he found the way down from the ledge between two large boulders with no trouble. Straight on to the south, he met the path. Over to his left, the lightning was now on the horizon, and the wind was swooping down from the fell on his right. If the storm didn’t change direction, it would keep him on course, and the path, now more like a stream, was marked here and there by cairns. With the wind to one side and the dying lightning to the other, he only needed to keep going downhill until he met the riverbed. If it was flooded, he’d wade straight through to if he had to.

It was his fault that Casper was in trouble. Whatever had made him go out unprotected in the storm, and whatever had happened next didn’t matter. There was nothing that could be done to change that, all that mattered now was finding someone who could save him. Repercussions of a bad decision would come, and Liam would deserve them – unprepared, inexperienced, thinking he knew what he was doing… Why hadn’t he just taken Casper down to the beach at home to tell him? Why drag him halfway up the country and make him climb a hill to ruin their friendship? He could have done that weeks ago had he not been such a ridiculous romantic. There was nothing romantic about destroying their friendship and leaving his best friend shivering to death on…

He yelled at himself to stop. Beating himself up wouldn’t do any good. He had to concentrate on his footing, and pretend he knew what he was doing. Casper needed him to be strong, to be wise, to take only a course of action that would lead to rescue, everything else had to wait.

Not knowing how far he had descended, he stopped and took out his phone. Sheltering it as best he could against his chest, he switched it on only to find no signal and the battery bar now glowing red. The phone back in his pocket, the torch aimed at the path, his head down, he continued.

The rain was easing off, that was a blessing, but the gale roared in his ears, low and booming one moment, high-pitched the next. As uncoordinated as his frozen feet, as wild as the anger he turned in on himself, it would not leave him alone. It taunted and jabbed as it bullied, and in the cacophony, he imagined laughter, spiteful and insulting, but deserved.

Another sound grew closer on a rumbling vibration beneath his feet, and a few paces further, he came to the edge of the riverbed.

Except now there was no bed, only river as thousands of gallons of water teamed from the blackness on his right to vanish back into the night on his left. The torch lit foam spewing around rocks in untamed channels that bubbled wildly and fast across his path. There was no way to judge the depth, and no way of knowing if the rocks that stood above the surface were stable, but equally, there was no time to think about it. Squinting through dripping eyelashes and aiming his light, it was impossible to see how wide it was either, but he knew for certain that there was no way to go up and around. Downhill, it could flow east for miles and take him off his path. The only way was through, and he knew he might not survive.

About Jackson!

Jackson Marsh is a British born author of novels and screenplays.

Jackson has a background of theatre, cabaret and music and yet holds a social policy degree. He was born on the Romney Marshes in Kent, UK, but now lives on a mountainous Greek island. During the 1980s in London he campaigned for gay rights and performed political satire cabaret, writing song and reviews, appearing at Pride events, national venues and on television.

He moved to Greece in 2002 and married his partner there in 2017. He has won awards for his gay erotic writing, and in 2007, won a European-wide award for short stories. In 2017, he won awards for his screenplay writing.

Jackson is the author of ‘The Clearwater Mysteries’, and also writes fiction under the name James Collins.

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