Parker Williams believes that true love exists, but it always comes with a price. No happily ever after can ever be had without work, sweat, and tears that comes with melding lives together.
Living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Parker held his job for nearly 28 years before he decided to retire and try new things. He enjoys his new life as a stay-at-home author and also working on Pride-Promotions, an LGBT author promotion service.
Author Contact:
Connect with Parker on:
Twitter: @ParkerWAuthor
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/parker.williams.75641
Or you can visit his website: ParkerWilliamsAuthor.com
Publisher: Self-published
Cover Artist: Laura Harner
Blurb:
Adopted at an early age by a wealthy family, Jake Davis’s life appears easy. Even in college, he is blessed with good grades and an apparently clear path to a pro football career. Good thing his best friend keeps hanging around to keep his head from getting too swollen.
Zakiya Incekara has always been…odd. Being fluent in six languages and having a flair for international cooking should open the world to him, but those skills leave him isolated.
When Jake sees Zak for the first time, with water beading down his slender form, something inside him shifts, and it hungers for Zak. To have him. To claim him. And Jake knows that whatever it is, it won’t be denied.
Excerpt:
Jake’s hand was rough, his skin dry. Zak loved how his fingers gripped tightly, but not so much that it hurt. Jake said nothing as they walked along the streets of the campus. There were few people around, but Zak did not care if everyone was watching them. He was confused as to his attraction to Jake, but it was something he could not deny.
The soft jazz music poured from the door of the pub when Jake pulled it open. Jake’s hand on his lower back urged him inside. Zak sniffed appreciatively at the scent of Cajun spices, no doubt from the blackened catfish special. His stomach protested, and he heard Jake snicker, but he could not seem to raise the ire he should. Jake escorted him to a booth and allowed Zak to sit back against the brushed leather.
“Two dinner specials coming up,” Jake said brightly.
Zak gazed at Jake’s hulking form as it moved away, marveling at the sinewy grace as he dodged patrons and servers. It was odd. He had never met anyone like Jake. He doubted there was anyone like Jake. He felt comfortable in his presence. Jake’s size did not intimidate him. In fact, that made him all the sexier. But his eyes were what made Zak melt into a puddle of goo. The way they twinkled in the dimmest of light. When Jake so much as glanced at him, Zak felt he was the sole thing Jake saw.
Jake turned from the bar, and Zak watched as the bright smile turn into a sneer. He dropped the tray, the catfish crashing to the floor, before he stalked to where Zak sat. Jake grabbed a man, probably about forty, by his throat and pushed him against the wall.
“You don’t so much as breathe near him,” Jake snarled.
The man looked cool as he smiled and croaked out. “You are everything I had heard you would be, and more, my lord.”
Ben Walsh is well on his way to becoming one of Manhattan’s top litigators, with a gorgeous boyfriend and friends on the A-list. His life is perfect until he gets a phone call that brings it all crashing down: a car accident takes his parents, and now he must return to Austin to raise three teenage brothers he barely knows.
During the funeral, Ben meets Travis Atwood, the redneck neighbor with a huge heart. Their relationship initially runs hot and cold, from contentious to flirtatious, but when the weight of responsibility starts wearing on Ben, he turns to Travis, and the pressure shapes their friendship into something that feels a lot like love. Ben thinks he’s found a way to have his old life, his new life, and Travis too, but love isn’t always easy. Will he learn to recognize that sometimes the worst thing imaginable can lead him to the place he was meant to be?
My Review
Ben lives in New York at the start of the story, he’s friends with the influential and looking to rise quickly in the world of lawyers. His parents die suddenly and leave him his younger brothers to raise – back in Texas. He’s sure the thing to do is move everyone back to NYC , there isn’t anything keeping him in Texas and many reasons to leave the dust behind. Until…
Travis has been friends with the Walshes for a while now and is especially close to their sons. He plays an influential role in helping Ben reconnect with his brothers and somehow, along the way, finds himself being attracted to a man (Ben) for the first time in his life.
The attraction is mutual, though the path to love is far from easy. First there are the brothers – they don’t trust Ben and don’t know how he’s going to fit in their lives again. Then there’s the fact that Travis has some pretty hefty hurdles to overcome concerning his own sexuality. Finally, once Ben and Travis are together and the boys have come around, there is the problem of location. Namely, Ben can’t see himself in Texas and no one else can see themselves in NYC – especially not Travis, who really is a good ol’ boy at heart.
After some much needed time apart, the advice from friends and some unexpected visits from beyond the grave, Travis and Ben re-prioritize and we get our HEA.
**
I have to admit, I didn’t like this book nearly as much when I first read it as I do now that I have read the subsequent sequels. Without giving away too much, just let me say that Travis and Ben have much more to their relationship than we see here and the payoff is really, really worth it.
This is essentially a GFY story for Travis and a sort of coming of age story for Ben in that he has a lot of growing up to do, despite his years. The book is heavy on dialog and the romance, the sex is subtle, slow building, but very sweet. Again, with a re-read after knowing more about the characters from the next books, the subtleties are really showcased as quiet clues to a much bigger, more amazing story that you will want to re-read this book just to catch them.
I highly recommend this book and the subsequent books that follow.
I give it 4.5 of 5 hearts
Audio:
Charlie David is one of my favorite m/m narrators. He does a really fantastic job with the southern drawls and is very easy to listen to. The sound quality is excellent and I think that I enjoyed listening to the audiobook even more than reading it, due to the quality of the narration.
It’s the summer of 1983, and Trent Days is Major League Baseball’s rookie sensation. Born in Alaska to an Inupiat mother, the press have dubbed him the Eskimo Slugger, but a midseason collision at home plate temporarily halts his meteoric rise to the top.
Sent back to Austin to recuperate, Trent visits his favorite record store, Inner Sanctum, where he meets amiable law student Brendan Baxter. A skip in the vinyl of New Order’s “Blue Monday” drives Trent back to Brendan, and their romance takes them into uncharted territory.
As Trent’s feelings move from casual to serious, he’s faced with an impossible dilemma. Does he abandon any hope of a future with Brendan and return to the shadows and secrets of professional sports? Or does he embrace the possibility of real love and leave baseball behind him forever? As he struggles with his decision, Trent embarks on a journey of self-discovery—to figure out who he really is and what matters most.
My review
Trent is a baseball player from Alaska, thus the name Eskimo Slugger. He’s at the top of his game when he gets injured and ends up spending two weeks in Austin, TX. There he meets Brendan, a law student/record store clerk. They start as friends but once Brendan tentatively asks Trent “Is this a date?” the two acknowledge the deeper aspect of their blossoming relationship. The two immediately set sparks off one another, though neither has ever had a gay relationship before.
With some pretty funny forays into gay sex, the two explore each other and a relatively unexplored aspect to their personalities. For Brendan, being gay is something he’s pondered but been afraid of, but with the right incentive he embraces the idea and eventually decides to incorporate into his life fully and without secrecy.
For Trent, being gay means possibly (probably) the end of his career, certainly the end of his life as it stands currently, and though he’s always known he was gay, he has never let himself entertain the idea that he could actually live as a gay man.
Brendan enlists the help of Stanton and Hutch (from The Return) as “gay mentors” and together, with Bill Walsh (from The Nothingness of Ben) the group bonds, smoke a lot of weed and begin to form relationships that even death won’t end.
Ultimately, Trent has to make the biggest decision of his life: Choose baseball or choose Brendan. Perhaps the two can be together, but probably it’s one or the other.
**
By now you should have read the first two books (The Nothingness of Ben and The Return). If you haven’t – go! What are you waiting for? Technically this could be a standalone, I guess, but it won’t make a heck of a lot of sense and will leave you very unsatisfied.
If you have read the other books you know that the end of this book is really the beginning of TNOB. That, Brad Boney, is an amazing feat! Mr. Boney has managed to create this beautiful circular set of books that literally bleeds one into the other so that (as a reader) you want to just keep going round and round the merry-go-round.
I found myself referencing both of the earlier books time and again with the “treasures” that were revealed throughout this book. Without completely giving away all the secrets just know that the MCs of all three books are inter-related in various ways and little bits of their stories, past and present are slipped in throughout the story.
In The Return it was all about music – fast paced facts and quips, with Slugger it’s baseball. For me, the music was more interesting, but if you are a baseball fan this will really hit home. (See what I did there?)
I didn’t like the love story as much in Slugger as in The Return or TNOB, probably because it happens so quickly. I just never felt the emotion – especially from Brendan. Trent was invested, you get that feeling so strongly. Brendan was too standoffish for me and it made me a little sad. But… since I know what I know about how things end… he’s forgiven ☺.
I really, really enjoyed these books and was sad to see it end. I can’t say for sure, but I think that if I were to recommend a reading order I would say start with The Return, then Slugger then finish with TNOB. There may be something “missing” with that order, but I think, ultimately, it will be so much more satisfying. Or… do as the author may have intended and read it : TNOB, Return, Slugger, TNOB… and so on and so on…
Just a fantastic book all around, 5 of 5 hearts and for the series 6 of 5!
Music. Topher Manning rarely thinks about anything else, but his day job as a mechanic doesn’t exactly mesh with his rock star ambitions. Unless he can find a way to unlock all the songs in his head, his band will soon be on the fast track to obscurity.
Then the South by Southwest music festival and a broken-down car drop New York critic Stanton Porter into his life. Stanton offers Topher a ticket to the Bruce Springsteen concert, where a hesitant kiss and phantom vibrations from Topher’s cell phone kick off a love story that promises to transcend ordinary possibility.
My Review
This is two stories which intertwine into one.
First, Topher Manning is a mechanic by day and musician by night. He works at the same garage as Travis (from The Nothingness of Ben). One day he’s at work when a guy with car problems strolls in with a spare ticket to the Bruce Springsteen concert – one of Topher’s all time favorite bands. The guy, Stanton Porter, offers Topher the chance of a lifetime (floor seats at the concert in exchange for a ride) and they go together to enjoy the show.
The two have both nothing and everything in common. Stanton is 50 something, from New York, a music critic with an Ivy League education and an amazing affinity for all things music, especially pop-music. Topher is a country boy, 26, no college whatsoever, plays music in a rock-n-roll band, and an affinity for all things music, especially pop-music.
They essentially click, and though Topher has never had a “gay” thought in the world, he finds himself compelled to kiss Stanton in the middle of “Thunder Road”. This spurs the beginning of a strange and sometimes bewildering romance between the two that seems to cross state lines, age lines and time lines.
The second story is also about Stanton, but a 24 year-old Stanton, who falls in love with Hutch. Hutch is a trust-fund child who has been mostly “disowned” for being gay and a musician by his upper-crust family. He and Stanton fall almost instantly in love and they too share a love of music, though both have the education and a group of close knit friends in common.
Every other chapter switches between the older and the younger Stanton’s love stories. Needless to say there are some major tie-ins and co-incidences that are mind-boggling, and in a way it is both an epic tragedy and an amazing love-story rolled into one.
**
I can’t really explain much more about this story without giving too much away – and that would spoil the surprises. However, know this: there are some “paranormal” or “otherworldly” elements to this story like there was in The Nothingness of Ben which will have you riveted to your seat. Though the flash-backs (Hutch’s story) are amazingly difficult to read, they are also so touching and heart-warming that you won’t want to skip or even skim them.
Because the current story includes so many characters we’ve seen before, I recommend reading all three books to truly appreciate this story. I’d recommend either this order: TNOB, Return, Slugger, TNOB OR Return, Slugger, Ben.
Both Hutch’s and Topher’s stories are stories about living your dream and fighting for what you want. Stanton remains the constant. Though he, too, has to face demons and confront homophobic parents and in-laws, he serves as the anchor for both men.
Hutch’s story takes place in the early 1980s, when the AIDS epidemic was just beginning to take victim after victim, so it’s also a lesson in history. A glimpse at what it might have been like to live through the early days of AIDS. It’s so very hard to read, but also so important to understanding just how far we’ve come since then.
The secondary characters are so vivid and important in this book that at times they seem to take over the story. However, this does in no way detract from the main story line and only adds to the main story.
Origninally, when I had read The Nothingness of Ben, I was underwhelmed. I liked it (see my review on this site) but didn’t love it. Then when I got the chance to review The Eskimo Slugger I noted that it was a part three of the series, so I bought The Return to “catch up”. WOW! Was I ever glad for that. The Return is easily the best of the three books. It is also the longest (twice as long as the other two) and it’s hard for me to say, but I almost think it would be best read first, even though some things may show up out of sequence.
Now, after having read all three, I had to go back to re-read Ben and boy what a difference that makes. It’s still the weakest of the three but I have a new appreciation for it and love it a whole lot more.
When I got to the point in Return where I kind of figured things out, I got mad and had to set the book aside. After all, I wanted Topher for Stanton and was not pleased at all to hear about Hutch. However, the story line itself is so intriguing, the writing is so amazing, that I persisted. When I saw that it had an audiobook version out as well, I started listening as a way to help me get more involved in the story. That (explained here in a bit) sealed the deal and I absolutely fell in love.
For anyone with a fondness of music, you will find this book amazing, Brad has filled it with music trivia.
I highly recommend this book and give it 6 of 5 hearts.
Audiobook:
First let me say that I am a Charlie David fan. I have always enjoyed his narrations, I like his voice, find his performances engaging and appealing and always a dependable choice for a narrator.
This narration is hands down his best work (as far as I have observed). He does absolutely AMAZING things with the many, many characters. He has subtle accents, moments of intense emotion, moments of giddiness and drunkenness, AND he can sing! He sings two songs in this narration and they are fabulous!
It is obvious to me that when you combine an author with the talent that Brad Boney has with the right narrator, magic ensues. This is one of the cases where I can’t emphasize enough that this book should absolutely be listened to. It was an experience far, far above the normal and I was completely entranced.
I give the audiobook a 6 of 5 hearts.
Overall 6 of 5 hearts – this book was both heartbreaking and heart-warming that I couldn’t stop and listened to all 11 plus hours over one very long, long night and the book hangover I got was totally, absolutely worth it.
