Title: Seeing Red
Author: Alex Beecroft
Series: Trowchester #4
Genre: M/M Romance
Release Date: May 12, 2019
Bad boys don’t tame easy.
Victor is a bad man. Is there anything he won’t do for power and money?
Destroy a local business so he can buy it cheap? Kick out its owners and turn it into a cash cow? He relishes the chance.
Idris is a good man in possession of a renowned tea-house. He’s put his heart and soul into the place. It’s everything he has and wants...
Except for Victor.
He wants Victor too.
Can the love of a compassionate man soften a predator’s heart before it’s too late? Or is Idris doomed to lose his life’s work, and his heart with it?
A contemporary mm romance, Seeing Red is a long-awaited new installment of the critically acclaimed Trowchester Series. Each book in the series is a standalone, and can be read in any order. Feel free to start here and work back!
“You were brought up poor?”Idris’s inner voice was now more of a clench of pity and anger in his gut. “And you see yourself in these dogs?”Stray dogs, un-fed, unwanted, dogs that were being taken out to be drowned. “I won’t ask you the story behind that,”Idris put out an arm and pulled the man closer to him, relishing the way Victor melted into him, letting his meagre weight rest against Idris’s sturdier frame. “But I want to remind you that not only you but also I fell in love with these dogs the moment we saw them. Those who mistreated them before... not everyone is like that.”
“They are, though.”Victor’s head came slowly down to rest on Idris’s shoulder, tentatively. His cynical words made even that little gesture of trust seem enormous, more than Idris deserved. “It’s kill or be killed out there, and I’m not... I’m not going to be killed.”
Of course, he had fought off two men only a couple of hours ago—bigger men than himself. That must have taken some courage, and he was probably now exhausted from the adrenaline crash. With that and whiskey on top of it, he was confessing private insecurities to a man he had only just met.
As much as Idris would have liked to carry on supporting all his weight, hearing his murmured confessions, and perhaps sliding his fingers into that drying hair and stealing a kiss or two, he realized that this was absolutely not the time.
They had done a good thing here. Idris would not sully it by continuing to make a pass at a man who was more vulnerable than usual, whose judgment might be impaired, and who might therefore regret it in the morning.
“Let me get you to bed,”he said, and then hurriedly, realizing it could be misinterpreted, ”you need to sleep. In the morning, I’ll convene an emergency book-club meeting and we can meet up again then. All right? I think you’re too tired for anything else.”
“Out of the habit,”Victor raised his head slightly and smiled fuzzily.
“Out of the habit of... rescuing dogs?”
“Fighting, ‘cept—except with words. I guess I am tired.”
“They are, though.”Victor’s head came slowly down to rest on Idris’s shoulder, tentatively. His cynical words made even that little gesture of trust seem enormous, more than Idris deserved. “It’s kill or be killed out there, and I’m not... I’m not going to be killed.”
Of course, he had fought off two men only a couple of hours ago—bigger men than himself. That must have taken some courage, and he was probably now exhausted from the adrenaline crash. With that and whiskey on top of it, he was confessing private insecurities to a man he had only just met.
As much as Idris would have liked to carry on supporting all his weight, hearing his murmured confessions, and perhaps sliding his fingers into that drying hair and stealing a kiss or two, he realized that this was absolutely not the time.
“Let me get you to bed,”he said, and then hurriedly, realizing it could be misinterpreted, ”you need to sleep. In the morning, I’ll convene an emergency book-club meeting and we can meet up again then. All right? I think you’re too tired for anything else.”
“Out of the habit,”Victor raised his head slightly and smiled fuzzily.
“Out of the habit of... rescuing dogs?”
“Fighting, ‘cept—except with words. I guess I am tired.”
What is the biggest influence/interest that brought you to this genre?
It’s actually fanfiction. I had been thinking up m/m love stories ever since I was eleven, but it didn’t occur to me that anyone would want to read them - and certainly not that anyone would want to publish them - until I encountered slash fanfiction.
I first discovered slash - as we called fanfiction with gay love stories in those days - around the time that Star Wars: The Phantom Menace came out.
I spent a good ten years writing slash fanfic before I accidentally stumbled over the fact that there was a market for m/m novels. That was a revelation. I’d always wanted to write novels.
Lee Rowan, who wrote the Ransom series of Age-of-Sail novels mentioned to me that her publisher was running a competition in order to discover new authors. So I put Captain’s Surrender together out of a series of short stories that I’d written, and entered that. And I won!
That was how I became a published author for the first time, and I haven’t really looked back since.
When writing a book, what is your favorite part of the creative process(outline, plot, character names, editing, etc)?
Oh that’s hard. All stages are simultaneously the best and the absolute worst. But if I had to choose…
I think my favourite is writing the first draft.
I enjoy the excitement of thinking up the plot outline. That’s a very creative stage, and I love the way that you can start with nothing on the first day, and by the end of the week have a plan with named characters and thirty-odd paragraphs of ideas on what to do next.
I enjoy the editing, because that’s when I realize that perhaps the first draft isn’t as terrible as I feared, and I can see the imperfections being sanded away to reveal something I can be proud of.
But nothing really tops the magic of the first draft, when a whole new world comes streaming through my fingers, sometimes surprising me as much as it does anyone else. It can be really hard work, and there are days when I’d rather do anything else, but I still don’t know anything in the world more rewarding.
When reading a book, what genre do you find most interesting/intriguing?
I love science fiction and fantasy, but I have very high standards for it, which means that often I won’t get very far into a SF/F book before putting it down and moving on to something else. On the other hand I go to mystery for comfort and don’t need it to be more than competent. I’m happier with whatever I’m given if I know I’m going to find out whodunnit at the end.
If you could co-author with any author, past or present, who would you choose?
I really admire Ursula LeGuin’s writing, but I think I would spoil her elegance, so I’m willing to put down one of my top three authors. But choosing between Patrick O’Brian and Tolkien would be so hard. O’Brian’s prose is so exuberant, and his understanding of people is so sympathetic. I just love him! But Tolkien… Tolkien remains the author of my heart. It would have to be him.
Have you always wanted to write or did it come to you "later in life"?
When all my little playmates, around age ten or so, stopped wanting to play “let’s pretend” with me, that was when I started writing stuff down. I’ve wanted to be an author since I was eleven and someone told me that you could do that for a job. I count my blessings to be able to do this every day!
Thanks so much for having me!
Alex
It’s actually fanfiction. I had been thinking up m/m love stories ever since I was eleven, but it didn’t occur to me that anyone would want to read them - and certainly not that anyone would want to publish them - until I encountered slash fanfiction.
I first discovered slash - as we called fanfiction with gay love stories in those days - around the time that Star Wars: The Phantom Menace came out.
I spent a good ten years writing slash fanfic before I accidentally stumbled over the fact that there was a market for m/m novels. That was a revelation. I’d always wanted to write novels.
Lee Rowan, who wrote the Ransom series of Age-of-Sail novels mentioned to me that her publisher was running a competition in order to discover new authors. So I put Captain’s Surrender together out of a series of short stories that I’d written, and entered that. And I won!
That was how I became a published author for the first time, and I haven’t really looked back since.
When writing a book, what is your favorite part of the creative process(outline, plot, character names, editing, etc)?
Oh that’s hard. All stages are simultaneously the best and the absolute worst. But if I had to choose…
I think my favourite is writing the first draft.
I enjoy the excitement of thinking up the plot outline. That’s a very creative stage, and I love the way that you can start with nothing on the first day, and by the end of the week have a plan with named characters and thirty-odd paragraphs of ideas on what to do next.
I enjoy the editing, because that’s when I realize that perhaps the first draft isn’t as terrible as I feared, and I can see the imperfections being sanded away to reveal something I can be proud of.
But nothing really tops the magic of the first draft, when a whole new world comes streaming through my fingers, sometimes surprising me as much as it does anyone else. It can be really hard work, and there are days when I’d rather do anything else, but I still don’t know anything in the world more rewarding.
When reading a book, what genre do you find most interesting/intriguing?
I love science fiction and fantasy, but I have very high standards for it, which means that often I won’t get very far into a SF/F book before putting it down and moving on to something else. On the other hand I go to mystery for comfort and don’t need it to be more than competent. I’m happier with whatever I’m given if I know I’m going to find out whodunnit at the end.
If you could co-author with any author, past or present, who would you choose?
I really admire Ursula LeGuin’s writing, but I think I would spoil her elegance, so I’m willing to put down one of my top three authors. But choosing between Patrick O’Brian and Tolkien would be so hard. O’Brian’s prose is so exuberant, and his understanding of people is so sympathetic. I just love him! But Tolkien… Tolkien remains the author of my heart. It would have to be him.
Have you always wanted to write or did it come to you "later in life"?
When all my little playmates, around age ten or so, stopped wanting to play “let’s pretend” with me, that was when I started writing stuff down. I’ve wanted to be an author since I was eleven and someone told me that you could do that for a job. I count my blessings to be able to do this every day!
Thanks so much for having me!
Alex
I was born in Northern Ireland during the Troubles and grew up in the wild countryside of the English Peak District. I studied English and Philosophy before accepting employment with the Crown Court where I worked for a number of years. Now a full time author, I live with my husband and two children in a little village near Cambridge and try to avoid being mistaken for a tourist.
Asexual, agender and mother of a transgender son, I still feel like my place in the LGBT community is perhaps peripheral. But it’s very important to me nevertheless.
I’m only intermittently present in the real world. I have lead a Saxon shield wall into battle, I can be found most weekends practicing an eight hundred year old form of English folk dance, and recently I’ve been getting into Steampunk, with a character who’s a cross between Evie from The Mummy and Indiana Jones.
I write queer romance – that is, my main characters are typically gay, bisexual, transgender, pansexual or asexual men. Best known for historicals, I also write Fantasy/SF and contemporary romance, all of which tends to be on the sweeter side of the heat spectrum.
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