Title: Drama Queens with Love Scenes
Series: Actors and Angels, book 1
Author: Kevin Klehr
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: April 17
Heat Level: 1 – No Sex
Pairing: Male/Male
Length: 72200
Genre: Romance, Literary Fiction, Angels, cisgender, Fantasy, friends to lovers, gay, humorous, Life after death, romance
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Synopsis
Close friends Allan and Warwick are dead. They’re not crazy about the idea, so to help them deal with this dilemma are Samantha, a blond bombshell from the 1950s, and Guy, an insecure angel.
Allan also has a secret. He has a romantic crush on his friend, Warwick, but shortly after confiding in his new angel pal, his love interest falls for the cock-sure playwright, Pedro.
Not only does Allan have to win the heart of his companion, he also has to grapple with the faded memory of how he actually died.
Excerpt
Drama Queens with Love Scenes
Kevin Klehr © 2017
All Rights Reserved
She looked like Jayne Mansfield without the attributes. Her cherry-colored wide-brimmed hat complemented her black unbuttoned jacket. A low-cut white dress completed the look. She seemed overdressed and would have looked better wearing a casual pink T-shirt and torn jeans, like a pinup girl sparking the imagination of a lusty army boy. Her pleasing smile said she had been waiting to greet us.
An angel stood next to her, barefoot in old blue jeans and a ripped-sleeved khaki shirt. While he didn’t have the glam factor of the female, his striking dove-gray wings drew focus. They spanned his height and then some, towering above his head by at least an arm’s length. He rarely made eye contact with us and stood hunched with his hands lightly clenched below his navel. His demeanor implied a vanilla hint of gayness.
Just what did we actually get up to last night?
My friend, Warwick, and I safely considered this scene from the doorway of our tiny room.
A moment ago, we had said goodbye to my uncle and his girlfriend, and now we were facing two strangers on what looked like the set of a Greek epic.
Our confused oohs and ahs echoed off the marble black and white tiles, which stretched so far into the horizon they became gray as they met a set of stairs. Each step alternated in color, again black and white. Someone had overdosed on 1980s pop videos when they conceived this design.
“What do you make of the red velvet curtains, classic or uninspired?” I asked my friend.
“Allan, they’re lush. Just lush.”
“Don’t be alarmed, gentlemen,” the Jayne Mansfield look-alike said with an air of whimsy.
As we nodded awkwardly, she shot a concerned glance at the angel and whispered, “Don’t smile like that. It doesn’t match the décor.”
Discouraged, he rolled his eyes and mislaid his smile.
I began biting my thumbnail as my eyes darted between our hosts and the opulent aspects of this room.
“A sex kitten and an angel,” I timidly said to Warwick. “Does this mean…?”
Warwick stepped through the doorway and addressed the angel. “Those wings? Please tell me they aren’t real.”
The angel gracefully flapped them three times before shrugging. I switched my denial into overdrive.
In the past week, Warwick and I had left our chaotic beach-town lives for a little break. My dead-end job was getting me down, and my partner in crime suggested a holiday would be the best remedy. Until this point, he was right. All had been going as planned. We’d visited my uncle Bryant and his new love interest in Melbourne before considering a driving trip around Tasmania. Who could have imagined this strange twist in our plotline?
Our hosts seemed to study us like a diplomat about to shake hands with a head of state. The angel endeavored to smile again, while the blonde bombshell gave us a moment to gauge our bearings. Then her arms extended in greeting like Jesus in a biblical painting.
“My name is Samantha, and this is Guy. We’re here to welcome you.”
* Guest Post *
A huge welcome Kevin Klehr, author of Drama Queens with Love Scenes!
As I developed my first novel, ‘Drama Queens with Love Scenes’, I wanted to explore some of my own relationship through the characters of Allan and Warwick, the two young male friends. When my partner and I met twenty-seven years ago, we were just pals for six months before our romance begun. So I took elements of our own story and twisted the facts to write this tale of unrequited love.
As reviews came out after its publication, readers fell in love, but not in the way I expected. The angel character, Guy, had won their hearts. Even a friend of mine who loved the book described Guy as the silent strong companion who keeps the main character on the straight and narrow, without judgement. Yet, Guy himself never knew his parents and has his own insecurities to contend with – including the fact that he doesn’t know how to fly.
Bloggers described him as the emotional centre of the story. One reviewer mentioned that she’d put in her own request for her favourite character to be her own guardian angel.
There was about a year’s gap between having the novel signed to its initial publisher and eventually working on the manuscript with my editor. So in that time I began the sequel, with no understanding of how popular Guy would become. I took on board what was being said about him and expanded his role for the second book, making him the guardian angel who my new protagonist first encounters in childhood.
Since then Guy has appeared in two short stories and will continue to show up from time to time in other works. But there’s a lesson here for writers. Readers may connect differently to what you’ve created than how you intended. In my case I learnt about the importance of being Guy.
Purchase
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Meet the Author
Kevin lives with his long-term partner, Warren, in their humble apartment (affectionately named Sabrina), in Australia’s own ‘Emerald City,’ Sydney.
From an early age, Kevin had a passion for writing, jotting down stories and plays until it came time to confront puberty. After dealing with pimple creams and facial hair, Kevin didn’t pick up a pen again until he was in his thirties. His handwritten manuscript was being committed to paper when his work commitments changed, giving him no time to write. Concerned, his partner, Warren, secretly passed the notebook to a friend who in turn came back and demanded Kevin finish his story. It wasn’t long before Kevin’s active imagination was let loose again.
His first novel spawned a secondary character named Guy, an insecure gay angel, but many readers argue that he is the star of the Actors and Angels book series. Guy’s popularity surprised the author.
So with his fictional guardian angel guiding him, Kevin hopes to bring more whimsical tales of love, life and friendship to his readers.
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Tour Schedule
4/17 Hoards Jumble
4/17 Zipper Rippers
4/17 My Fiction Nook
4/18 Stories That Make You Smile
4/18 Happily Ever Chapter
4/19 The Novel Approach
4/19 Fangirl Moments and My Two Cents
4/20 MM Good Book Reviews
4/21 Love Bytes
4/21 Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words
Giveaway
Love the title! Can’t really say the blurb drew me in, but the title reminds me of my “Red popcorn strings and gumball rings”. Draws you in the same way.
And btw: isn’t it just a bummer when you see a title that immediately grabs your attention, and when you read the blurb, you feel “Meh”? That happens to me a lot. And a lot of those kind of titles are steampunk (sp-authors seem to be creative with titles!) and you know how I feel about that genre 🙂
There’s another except at my website. 😊
I love the title, too. It sounds fun. I found the blurb intriguing. I was a little worried it might be grim, but the excerpt looks rather comedic.
Yeah, it’s entirely possible that I’m Mrs Grumpy Pants, because I’m in a terrible reading slump and nothing interests me right now. The other day I even reread a book I’ve given 5 stars earlier, and I was like “Meh? What was so good about this?” (Not Cultivating Love, though, don’t worry 😉 )
So the blurb is probably very interesting, and I’m the one at fault here 🙂
Any tips on how to get out of a reading slump? 🙂
Oh, geez, my advice would have been to reread a favorite, but apparently you’ve already tried that and failed. :-/