Please help me welcome E. Ayers to my blog today. Anyone who emails E. for the free copy of A Son will be eligible to win a free copy of any one of her books of their choice.
Hi, Cynthia. Thank you so much for inviting me to be here. This is February and the month for love. And what says love more than a good romance? Chocolate, flowers, diamonds, chocolate… Did I mention chocolate? Okay, grab a piece of chocolate and your favorite drink to go with it because I’m going to talk a little about falling in love.
When people fall in love, it strikes each one differently. There’s no thunderbolt that strikes. The clouds aren’t going to part, and stars aren’t going to line-up in a heart formation. Some people do get gobble smacked. I’d say it’s a feeling that rolls over us. Sometimes it’s a little, and sometimes it’s a steamroller. For me, it was a little poke that didn’t go away and it just kept poking me harder.
It was an unusual set of circumstances that put us together. I was still seventeen and in college. He was an ex-GI when being a GI wasn’t popular. His hair was short when other guys could have pulled theirs into a ponytail. He wasn’t very tall, although it was obvious that he was well packaged with broad shoulders over a slim waist. I later found out he was schooled in martial arts. There wasn’t a part of his body that wasn’t wrapped in trained muscle.
He wasn’t the boy-next-door. He looked European. I wasn’t far off the mark. His mother was French Canadian. His father was Ukrainian. He spoke French and Italian fluently, along with some German. He was different and the poke became stronger.
He admitted later that he took one look at me and decided he was going to have me. I was a little slower on Cupid’s hit. Cupid must have emptied his entire quiver of arrows into me. First I fell in love with his brains. He talked, we talked, and he talked about everything in the universe. Matching wits with him was surreal. He was funny. We became instant friends and the poke was harder. When I was with him I got poked and when I wasn’t, I was poked even harder. We spent every spare minute talking.
Not quite three weeks later, someone asked if I was going to marry him. I laughed. That night I told him about the earlier conversation and giggled my way through it. He thought it was a great idea. Our conversation became serious. Big poke! It hit me. I had this wonderful guy who loved me just for being me. I had this incredible, intelligent, handsome man, who actually talked. We had the same values, were interested in the same things, we could finish each other’s sentences.
Less than five weeks after we met, I turned eighteen. We got our marriage license that day and a few days later, we were married. No one figured it would last, but it did. A year later, I had a brand new house, new baby, and two cars in the driveway. Having been the product of a loveless marriage, I had no idea what it was to really love someone, but with each passing year, I loved my husband more and more.
I like bringing the love that we shared into my stories. Being an author, allows me to be the matchmaker for the characters who wander through my mind. I like finding the right personalities and matching them together. No one is perfect and neither are my characters.
In Coming Out of Hiding, I wrote about Max who was injured while serving his country. Burned on over forty percent of his body, he became a recluse. He knew no one would ever accept his scarred body. But there’s more to the story. Maxwell Hutton has ED (Erectile Dysfunction) as a result of that scarring. It’s a topic that men don’t want to discuss, yet it affects over thirty million men in the USA for various reasons.
Tae becomes his housekeeper. Life had handed her plenty of lemons, but she kept going. But falling off the ladder and being injured in Max’s house was a lemon she wasn’t expecting. That fall brought him out of hiding. She discovers he’s nothing compared to creepy images she had conjured up. He’s tall, with a handsome face, and warm, genuine smile. Her initial revulsion when she sees his scarred hand fades as she accepts him and his companionship.
Tentative friendship blossoms into love, but Max’s own vanity makes him think that he’s not man enough to be more than a friend. The physical pain of loving Tae forces him to seek treatment. Even then, he discovers that he’ll never be the man he once was. But Tae’s about to prove he’s more a man than he realizes.
I wasn’t expecting the stir over a hero with ED. Erectile Dysfunction is a very real problem, and most men before the age of forty have had at least one bout of it. Its causes are numerous, and it impacts the relationship. Coming Out of Hiding is a love story and it does have some scenes directly related to his ED that are not meant for young readers. To some extent, I’ve brought a serious problem out of hiding with this novel.
On a lighter note, my next River City novel, A Son, will be released this week. If anyone would like to know which days I will be offering it for free on Amazon you may contact me at e.ayers@ayersbooks.com . This is book number five, but you don’t need to read them in order. The glue that holds them together is the city.
Talk about a mess! It’s not Gerald’s baby, it’s Joey’s. Katie is a chubby redhead. Her parents are divorced, and she’s been pulled between her parents in custody battles for years. Her mother is a democrat, and her father and stepmother are Bible-thumping Republicans. They are not going to be happy with Katie, but she’s done being pulled. She’s trying to stand on her own two feet, and she’s going to do what’s right for her son. Joey is brilliant, handsome, and his mom was 1/2 black. He’s kicked Katie out and denies paternity. Gerald Olsen looks like a Nordic god, all blond and blue-eyed. He’s also heir to the Riverton Chemical & Petroleum Company. But Gerald falls in love with Katie, and he’s not choosing between body parts. He wants her and the son she’s carrying.
BIO
Fascinated with the way people deal with everyday problems, E Ayers has always been an observer and a listener. A simple problem for one person is a mountain for another. She utilizes those common predicaments, which is why her books touch so many lives.
Today, she spends most of her free time writing while living in a pre-Civil War home with her two dogs and a cat. Rattling around in an old money pit gives her muse plenty of freedom. Her idea of a perfect day is to spend it at the keyboard of her computer, coffee in hand, and everything in the house actually working as it should. (Which she swears never happens!)
E. Ayers has spent over seven months on Amazon’s best selling western lists with her In Wyoming novellas and several of her other books have also enjoyed being best sellers. Her books are available at most online retailers.
Coming Out of Hiding is exclusive at Amazon http://amzn.com/B00AB68SEI
Thanks for having me, Cynthia. I’ll be hopping in and out, and I’d love to hear from everyone. If anyone has questions about ED and doesn’t want to post them just email me. It’s a subject that has been swept under the carpet for too long! Men will do anything they can to hide it, even from a spouse. It is so tied to their egos.
A Son has a serious side to it, but I promise watching Katie and Gerald will renew your faith in true love. And who wouldn’t want to fall into the arms of a man who looks like a Nordic god?
So glad to have you here to day, E. Hope you have a great time.
Your real romance sounds amazingly like mine! Proposal after 4 weeks, 35 years this year. 🙂
Best luck on the new release!
Rose
Thanks, Rose. I know you have found your true love. It’s such a wonderful thing to find! Wishing you another 30 years together.
Add me to the fast love story. And I, too, fell in love with the brains and sensitivity first. His biggest fault, now that we’re both retired, is that he’s GD chipper in the morning and I’m not! A small price to pay, though.
Jane
I feel for you. I’m not a morning person. Fortunately my husband realized that and never told me anything important in the morning. He’d leave me a note. Just because I was on my feet did not mean my brain was engaged.
Wow, sounds like a fabulous book. I enjoyed reading your post, too. I think it’s so rare to find true love that will last a lifetime. So glad you found yours.
Thanks, Lorrie, for stopping by. I hope you’ve found your true love.
Sounds fun and exciting!
Waving hello to Sass. Glad you stopped by.
Lovely post, Elizabeth. What a wonderful story of young romance. Speaking of romance, I’m totally immersed in ‘Coming Out of Hiding’ – more than half way and gripped more and more with every page. Excellent story – I just wish I had more time to read each day.
I love the worlds you craft; they pull me in so completely that it takes me a while to adjust when I stop reading.
Best of luck with ‘A Son’ – I’m sure it will be enormously (and deservedly) successful. Lyn xxx
Lyn, thank you so much for your kind words. That was a tough story to write, and when I was finished, I tossed it to one side and figured I’d never release it. But it kept poking me and begging for release. Finally I decided the time had come. I was just as guilty of sweeping an important issue under the carpet. It was time to show the world that ED wasn’t the end of a sexual relationship, and that Max and Tae had a right to find happiness too.
Great post E about a tough subject. Coming Out of Hiding is on my TBR list! And best of luck with A Son.
Hi, Lynda, I just love adding to people’s TBR pile! I’ve got plans to take two weeks to clean house and read! I intend to make a major dent in my TBR pile. (I’m not goofing off reading if I’m washing and drying clothes, right?) We collect all these wonderful books that we want to read and sometimes we just have to sit and read them. Besides, I’ve already bought the chocolate! I am prepared! LOL
I fell in love with my husband–and he with me–at first sight. We eloped six weeks later. He was ex-Marine, very strong, very protective. Still is.
Oh, I love it! Got to love a Marine. Once a Marine, always a Marine.
There’s something very special about that love at first sight. I’m so glad you found your true love!
“Coming Out of Hiding” is a great title. There’s no better hero than a Marine.
Thanks, Angela. My hero spent time in the Army, but I just had a family member retire from the Marine Corps. Got to love a man in uniform!
Your love story is very touching. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you, Susan. And thank you for stopping by. I read your book SENSE OF TOUCH and totally enjoyed it. You have a wounded hero in that book.
Thank you for sharing with us today. This is a new series for me and I am liking what I see so far and I am looking forward to reading Max and Tae’s story 🙂
Love won’t solve most problems, but it allows people to cope and keep moving forward. People need to be loved, respected, and accepted. It’s as basic as food, water, clothing and shelter. Thanks for stopping, Denise. I hope you enjoy my books.