Happy Book Birthday to College Town

 

It's Valentine's Day, and the one-year bookiversary of College Town. Mired deep in the middle of writing Lord Have Mercy, at that stage in a book that size when it feels as though it will never end, I was struck by a sudden burst of unrelated inspiration, and ended up writing a standalone M/M romance that not only helped me work through some sticky places in LHM, but became my favorite project of the year. 

It features a second-chance romance between childhood sweethearts, some mafia action, and a surprise twist ending. You can grab a copy here, or at B&N or Kobo, and there's also a follow-up novella told from Tommy's POV, A Cure for Recovery. Both are perfect short and spicy-sweet V-Day reads. 

Blurb:

Welcome to Eastman, home of the Eastman University Eagles. They’ve got twelve bars, twice as many coffeeshops, and Lawson Granger’s probably going to die behind the counter of Coffee Town, watching all the bright young people in town get their degrees and get on with their lives. He’s not miserable, exactly, but between working retail, writing books that’ll never get published, and helping take care of his infirm father, his life’s running a little short on joy. He has his family, though, and his best friend, Dana, and dreaming about being published is somehow better than accepting that he never will be.

Then the boy who broke his heart twenty years ago walks into the shop one day and throws Lawson’s entire small world into chaos. Tommy Cattaneo grew up handsome. And rich, clearly, judging by his suit, and his watch, and his chauffeured Lincoln. If Lawson’s shocked to see him, Tommy is dumbfounded. Lawson’s happy to pretend they’re strangers, despite the traitorous racing of his heart, but Tommy is adamant that they talk. He wants to explain why he left town suddenly…and returned twenty years later, with a beautiful fiancée, and a mansion, and a wardrobe that costs more than Lawson’s car.

When it becomes clear that Tommy means to stay in town for a while, and that he won’t take no for an answer, Lawson agrees to hear him out. Just once, and then he can lay his old heartache to rest. It’s probably a stupid excuse, anyway. I mean, t’s not like Tommy’s in the mafia…right?

A Cure for Recovery: Debriefing

When they get back in, the sun is setting lavishly through the skyscrapers beyond their window, liquid orange and glittering with eye-watering ferocity off every metallic surface across the span of city that separates their thirtieth-floor room from the river. Tommy’s drawn to the window; his breath fogs the glass as he stares out at the vista, the cars crawling below like ants, boats moving on the Hudson. He counts five rooftop gardens, one strung with fairy lights that snap on as he watches, tiny people gathering at a table and toasting one another with tiny glasses.

Even at his most miserable during their twenty years apart, he always found a kind of bittersweet comfort in the sheer busyness of the city. The knowledge that, even if he was pining and lonely, there were so many others out there, just beyond his window, living, and loving, and enjoying themselves.

Now, he gets to be one of their number.

He catches the ghost of his own smile in his reflection as he turns, and puts his back to the view, and focuses instead on the view that’s for him only. 

I'll keep it brief - ha - because this is a novella and not a big doorstopper, but there are lots of little truth bombs and tender moments in A Cure for Recovery that make me happy I took the time to pen it. 

When I was wrapping up College Town, I wanted to dig a little deeper into Tommy's recovery, and the challenges therein, but ultimately decided to end the book on a high note. The story had reached a natural denouement, and I felt like digging too deep into "what comes next" would throw off the pacing of the rest of the narrative. But his recovery - and recovery in general - was a topic I wanted to write about, so here we have A Cure for Recovery, which is essentially 38k words of domestic fluff and angst, without the mystery/suspense angle of the original novel, but with its own kind of muted, what I think of as a very real-world plotline. 

While I'm very happy with the way College Town ends, I don't think it allowed Lawson or Tommy the chance to unbox their leftover anxieties with regard to finding a true permanence in one another's lives. Lawson's still worried that Tommy will wake up one day, wonder what the hell he's doing, and go back to New York. And Tommy's worried that, after twenty years apart, and finally getting together, Lawson's going to resent having to play both husband and caretaker, furious at his own body for what he sees as "failing" him. 

Their circumstances in College Town were a bit extreme - the forced separation, the deception, the mafia plot - and Cure feels like a chance to step back and approach the practical, day-to-day aspects of their relationship. Making things work when lives aren't on the line, and it's just drinks at Flanagan's and career frustration. 

As a writer, I don't know that I ever truly leave a project, a story, or a couple alone. There's always ideas left dangling. In this case, Cure was a chance to share some of those in a coherent novella, and to help my brain work through some of the more domestic challenges of Lord Have Mercy. I'll put Lawson and Tommy to bed - for now. No promises I won't ever revisit them again. And I really hope you enjoy their epilogue, which does, never fear, feature another happily ever after. 

You can purchase it here: 

Amazon (Kindle/paperback)

Kobo

Nook