WELCOME!!!

Thanks so much for visiting today! I have the hottest M/M writer this side of the universe for you as a treat! The lovely Tara Lain is going to talk to you about her Beautiful Boys of Romance. Her latest release, Hearts and Flour, is a brand spanking new romance from Etopia Press. Join me in welcoming her and thanks for reading her blog. 

Check out her giveaway and let’s give Tara some love!

Ready to Meet the Beautiful Boys of Romance?

Hi everyone. I’m so happy to be here at Milly’s today. Milly writes the hottest male/female romance around! Me? Well, I write the Beautiful Boys of Romance. Yep, I write MM romance. Have you ever read one? If not, you might want to give it a try. After all, the average reader of MM romance is a woman between 30 and 60. And most writers of MM romance are women. Surprising, huh?

I had never read M/M romance until a few years ago.  In fact, I didn’t even know that M/M fiction existed and, if I had known, it wouldn’t have occurred to me to read it. I didn’t own an e-reader so I bought my paperbacks from Amazon. But I did like erotic romance. I was reading an erotic romance author’s MF paranormal books and loved them so I ordered another book of hers from Amazon without reading the blurb! Imagine my surprise when it arrived and was a M/M book. I started to read, kind of looking over my shoulder to be sure no one was watching!  I loved it!

Now I write my Beautiful Boys of Romance in all descriptions. My new release is a quirky,  LGBT contemporary erotic romance called Hearts and Flour about the unlikely attraction between a vegan, raw-food fanatic and a cupcake baker. This is my 16^th published work and all but one have either gay or bisexual heroes. As you can tell, I’m thoroughly hooked on writing MM fiction. Here are a few things I’ve learned reading and writing male/male books:

• Male/male books have fewer gender stereotypes. It’s not unusual in these books for both men to be hunky alphas, for one of them to be more effeminate but still very dominant, or any combination. My artist character in Fire Balls is tiny and effeminate but also a black belt in karate and a dominant in bed.
• If you are a female reader, you don’t have a woman in these books with whom you automatically identify so you get the experience of identifying with a man.
• If you’re a gay man reading a M/M book, you get to see your world imagined by someone who has no limitations of your real life constraining the fantasy. No “but that never happened to me so it can’t happen.” You get a bigger fantasy.
• You get to see two men (or more if you read my books LOL) in love which is very cool. It’s not the same as women in love with men. It’s just not. Since, for many male couples, marriage and family isn’t yet the common practice (hope it will be soon), the relationship has to be about more than security or fulfilling family or societal expectations.
• Gay or bisexual men still bear huge burdens of discrimination so, even if those issues play a small role in the story, you get to admire the bravery of men who declare their love for each other.
• Men can be just as sappy and emotional as women. I know. I read MM romances by male writers too.  The deeply felt emotions pour from the pages and the ever after is just as happy.
• And, of course, the simplest reason. If like me you adore men, then two is better!

And just think, if you own an ereader, you don’t even have to glance over your shoulder to see who’s looking!  LOL I hope you’ll let some beautiful boys creep into your reading among those alpha males and feisty females.  Bet you’ll be a convert too.

Would you like to join our I Love Hearts and Flour Party?

Grand Prize? A Beautiful Cupcake Soap and Cherry Vanilla Sugar Scrub! 

Second Prize? A $5 Amazon GC . (Plus, there’s a book drawing–see below) Here’s what you do!

• Promo Hearts and Flour and/or Tara Lain in some way. Tweet it, Post it on FB, Pin it, email to friends, Like the Amazon Page, Post it on Google Plus, Share in a Goodreads group, add it to Shelfari, etc. Be creative!

• Then put a comment below saying what you did (with your email so I can find you!).

• You can enter AGAIN at Beautiful Boys Books — if you do another promo

• And there’s a special drawing for a backlist book too if you post on your blog or review the book.

•  Come to Beautiful Boys Books for all the rules if you want. First, do your promo and post your comment below with your email.

Excerpt : HEARTS AND FLOUR by Tara Lain; MM Contemporary; The Vegan and the Cupcake Baker

Available at Amazon  ARe

To Micah Truveen, raw, vegan food is his religion. So when his devoted customers show up with white flour cupcakes, Micah could kill. Then Mic

ah comes home to find his boyfriend, Dharamaram, in bed with someone else. He throws the rat out and agrees to go to his friend’s orgiastic anti-Valentines party where he meets a gorgeous cross-dressing guy who gives him a night to remember.

Southerner Quentin Darby wishes he could stop wearing women’s clothes. He so wants to live up to his grandmother’s glowing opinion of him, he’s never even told her he’s gay. And now there’s Micah who makes him wish he could just be who he is. But Micah finds out that Quentin is the baker responsible for the plague of cupcakes afflicting the community! And Dharmaram adds a little blackmail to the mix. Can two hearts rise above the flour?

Gasping for breath, he stopped outside the store. Locked. Of course. It was only eight thirty in the morning. At least Dharmaram’s class didn’t start until nine. If only Quentin would come here to the shop right after he dropped off his grandmother. Or maybe even before. Oh God. What if he went in and Dharmaram confronted them together? No warning. Just a smack in the face. Maybe he should run to the yoga studio? He took two steps down the pavement—

“Micah?”

He turned back to see that beautiful face. A beautiful face and body—dressed in men’s clothes. He’d seen Quentin as Queen. He’d seen Quentin naked. But this was the first time seeing him as a man.

“Wow.”

Of course, that masculine image was slightly compromised by the fact that Quentin wore an apron over his jeans and T-shirt. An apron covered in flour and dough. Micah wanted to lick it off. The first processed food he’d had in years.

Quentin wiped his hands. “What did you want?”

His eyes wouldn’t focus. He just wanted to keep staring at that loveliness.

“Maybe I could get one of your raw cupcakes?”

“You came here before opening for a cupcake?”

Micah shook his head. “No. I have something to tell you. Something pretty awful.”

Quentin frowned. “Something more awful than you going back to your yoga teacher a few hours after we had sex?”

Micah breathed out hard. “It’s related to that. Where can we talk?”

“There’s people baking in the kitchen. You know, baking that poison I make and force on people?” He stood very upright.

“I’m truly sorry for that. Just, please, let me tell you what’s happened.”

“OK.” Quentin stepped aside and pointed to the back. Micah walked into the shop, assailed again by the sweetest of smells. No second sweetest, after Quentin.

Quentin walked through the door that led to the kitchen and Micah followed. He turned right and stepped into a small o

ffice with a desk, computer, and a filing cabinet. Quentin pointed to a straight-back chair across from the desk. He took the desk chair. “So what did you want to tell me?”

Whew. Face-to-face, this was tough duty. His heart beat so hard he could feel it in his toes. “I, uh, I really care about you.”

Who knew Quentin’s face could get that angry. “You sure have a unique way of showing it, sugah.”

“Wait. I’ve done a bunch of dumb things, and I’m not sure which is dumbest. First, I did that whole priggish song and dance about the cupcakes being poison when I should have been telling you how much I admire you and appreciate how you take care of your grandmother. And I really want to know why you created those raw cupcakes—” he held up a hand “—but first I have to tell you about my other idiot moves. The reason you saw me with Dharmaram is because he was blackmailing me. He figured out that the beautiful woman he saw me with is the grandson of his most proper southern lady student, and he threatened to tell Mary Beth about you if I didn’t take him back in. What you saw was him moving his stuff into my guest room. That’s guest room.”

Quentin’s mouth literally hung open. “But why did you do that? Why didn’t you tell me?”

Micah shrugged. “I knew if I told you, you’d immediately come out to your grandmother, and I didn’t want to force you to do something you didn’t want to do.”

“So you’ve been hosting that snake in the grass on account of me?” The blue eyes widened to saucer expanse.

Micah shifted in the chair. “I was. But that’s why I ran here so fast this morning. I just couldn’t do it anymore. I woke up this morning and he was climbing in bed with me. I threw him out again.”

“Good.”

“Not good, because he’s going to go straight to Mary Beth and—”

“Who’s going straight to me, darling?”

The soft southern voice came around the partly closed door followed by a curly head and blue eyes that sparkled just like her grandson’s.

He would have smiled but fear seemed to have frozen him solid. What could they say? All he could do was follow Quentin’s lead.

Tara Lain’s first erotic romance novel was published in January of 2011. She’s now on book 17. Her best-selling novels have garnered awards for Best Series of 2011, Best Contemporary Romance, Best Ménage, Best LGBT Romance and Tara has been named Best Writer of the Year in the LRC Awards. In her other job, Tara owns an advertising and public relations firm, and she carries her promotional instincts into her writing career as well. She lives with her soul-mate husband in Laguna Beach, California, a pretty seaside town where she sets a lot of her books.  Passionate about diversity, justice, and new experiences, Tara says on her tombstone it will say “Yes”!

E-mail:                   tara@taralain.com

Website:              http://www.taralain.com

Author blog:       http://taralain.blogspot.com

Book blog:           http://beautifulboysbooks.blogspot.com

Goodreads:        http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4541791.Tara_Lain

Pinterest:         http://pinterest.com/taralain/

Twitter:               http://twitter.com/taralain

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Amazon:          http://www.amazon.com/Tara-Lain/e/B004U1W5QC/

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