Blooming Marvellous and collected stories

By Josephine Myles

What do a graffiti artist, a nerdy virgin, a lunar cop, a handsome devil, a sexy boater, a disgraced aristocrat and a misbehaving valet all have in common? Bestselling gay romance author Josephine Myles, of course! In this collection of nine short stories you'll find all these characters coming together (quite literally sometimes).

The collection mingles contemporary erotica with a hint of a happy future with historical, paranormal and futuristic kinky romance. There are even a couple of stories that are sweet romance. One thing you can be sure of, though: the blokes in these stories will always get their man!

Buckle up for Jo's British sense of humour and fun, and don't be surprised if there's sex in the potting shed, because with Jo, anything can happen.

NB: all these stories have been previously published in anthologies or on the author's website.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Josephine Myles
• Release date: Jul 3, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301900787

Josephine Myles

English through and through, Josephine Myles is addicted to tea and busy cultivating a reputation for eccentricity. She writes gay erotica and romance, but finds the erotica keeps cuddling up to the romance, and the romance keeps corrupting the erotica. Jo blames her rebellious muse but he never listens to her anyway, no matter how much she threatens him with a big stick. She’s beginning to suspect he enjoys it. Jo now has over a dozen novels and novellas under her belt. Her novel Stuff won the 2014 Rainbow Award for Best Bisexual Romance, and her novella Merry Gentlemen won the 2014 Rainbow Award for Best Gay Romantic Comedy. She loves to be busy, and is currently having fun trying to work out how she is going to fit in her love of writing, dressmaking and attending cabaret shows in fabulous clothing around the demands of a preteen with special needs and an insatiably curious toddler. Website and blog: http://josephinemyles.com/  Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/hrQ4s  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/josephine.myles.author  Twitter: @JosephineMyles 

Book preview

What do a graffiti artist, a nerdy virgin, a lunar cop, a handsome devil, a sexy boater, a disgraced aristocrat and a misbehaving valet all have in common? Bestselling gay romance author Josephine Myles, of course! In this collection of nine short stories you’ll find all these characters coming together (quite literally sometimes).

The collection mingles contemporary erotica with a hint of a happy future with historical, paranormal and futuristic kinky romance. There are even a couple of stories that are sweet romance. One thing you can be sure of, though: the blokes in these stories will always get their man!

Buckle up for Jo’s British sense of humour and fun, and don’t be surprised if there’s sex in the potting shed, because with Jo, anything can happen.

Smashwords Edition

Copyright Josephine Myles 2013

Cover Art by Lou Harper

All these stories have been previously published:

Blooming Marvellous – Tea and Crumpet anthology (UK MAT, 2011)

River Rat – Sexy Sailors anthology (Cleis Press, 2012)

The Devil Went Down to Swindon – Mine anthology (Torquere Press, 2010)

Passive Resistance – Like That Spark anthology (Circlet Press, 2010)

The Frog Prince – The Handsome Prince anthology (Cleis Press, 2011)

Dragon Dance – Lashings of Sauce anthology (UK MAT, 2012)

Demon du Jour, Three Wishes and Tea for Two are all available on the author’s website.

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Contents

Introduction

Blooming Marvellous

Demon du Jour

River Rat

Three Wishes

The Devil Went Down to Swindon

Passive Resistance

The Frog Prince

Tea for Two

Dragon Dance

About the Author

With thanks to Lou Harper and JL Merrow, my long-suffering crit partners.

For me, it all began with shorts.

I wrote the story of Mr. and Mrs. Conker when I was a child. As I recall, not much happened, but they did live very happily inside a large horse chestnut tree and I provided proof of this with colourful illustrations. There followed several happy years of making things up before the general demands of being a teenager took over. I tried again at university, writing some terribly pretentious, supposedly literary stories I’m too embarrassed to go looking for now (I think they’re on a floppy disc, so I probably wouldn’t be able to view them anyway).

After another long dry spell, I fell back into short story writing when I discovered the allure of writing erotica. I originally intended to write all kinds of erotica, but as soon as I penned my first gay erotic story I realised I’d found my niche. There followed a period of answering as many anthology calls as I could, partly because shorts gave me the ideal platform to experiment with writing in different styles, but also because they were so much easier than slogging on with my first novel!

This anthology contains a selection of gay romance and erotica stories I’ve written over the last few years. They’ve all appeared elsewhere—either in anthologies with other authors or as freebies on my website—but I wanted to pull them together in one book, as I know what a pain it is when you have to go looking all over the place to gather stories by a particular author.

Blooming Marvellous is one of the shorts I’m most proud of, and was the obvious choice for the title story. It was inspired by some of the fabulous street art I’ve seen—particularly the works of Banksy, who started out in my neck of the woods. The story tells the tale of a young graffiti artist on community service who meets a man from the other side of the tracks, and it first appeared in the UK Meet anthology, Tea and Crumpet. It’s followed by Demon du Jour, which is a short paranormal erotica piece available as a free read on my website, and was an exercise in writing comic erotica while indulging my geeky side with plenty of Star Trek references. River Rat is another contemporary story that I’d categorise as kinky erotica rather than romance, although it definitely has a strong hint of a happy future for the two protagonists. It features a narrowboater, because I do have a minor obsession with boaters after living on the canal for a couple of years. It first appeared in a Cleis Press anthology called Sexy Sailors.

The very short contemporary romance Three Wishes has appeared as a free read on my website, and is one of my rare attempts to write a story with absolutely no erotic content so I could give it to my dad to read. It’s followed with a rather more kinky paranormal offering, The Devil Went Down to Swindon, which used to be available in a Torquere anthology, Mine, but has been out of print for some time. Why Swindon? Probably because after being stuck there once for half an hour, I decided it genuinely was the most boring town on earth. Passive Resistance is next and it’s one of my rare forays into science fiction—a genre I’ve always loved to read but which intimidates my muse on account of all the world-building I’d have to do. It was also my first epublished story, appearing in a Circlet Press anthology called Like That Spark back in the spring of 2010.

The Frog Prince is another contemporary erotic romance story, and is also available in The Handsome Prince anthology from Cleis Press. It’s set firmly in one of the poshest towns in England, and was an exercise for me in writing an upper class hero rather than my usual working class bits of rough. I’ve followed it with my first (and so far, only) foray into writing historical erotica, Tea for Two. There’s a strong element of D/s in this story, although nothing too heavy, and it reflects the terribly English obsession with tea and crumpets (and sock suspenders—but I think that’s just my thing). The final story is Dragon Dance, and it’s the most recently written, first appearing in the 2012 UK Meet anthology, Lashings of Sauce. It was intended to be erotic romance but it ended up being a rather sweet coming of age story with a hint of magic realism, and was inspired by chatting with a couple of members of my local Somerset Chinese community.

These days I don’t write as many short stories, but they still have a strong pull for me. There’s an exciting challenge in getting across the essence of two characters in such a short word count, and in including just enough hints of their past and future to satisfy the reader without bogging down the flow of the story. I know that my muse will keep feeding me short story ideas, so look for more anthologies like this in the future.

I hope you enjoy the read.

Jo Myles

June 2013

Ky, you’re with a first timer today, so make sure you behave yourself, you hear?

Who, me? I flash my most innocent smile.

Bert just gives me this Yeah, right, look so I pout to see if I can get him to crack a smile. He ain’t having none of it this morning, though. Reckon Mrs. Bert must have put sour milk in his tea.

He’s a respectable businessman so I don’t want any of your shenanigans, all right? Just get the bloody flowers in and get the van back in one piece.

Can’t be that respectable, can he? Not if he’s landed up here.

Bert sniffs as he hands over the van keys and the planting plan for the roundabout.

C’mon, what’d he do? Must have been pretty bad if he got landed with this rather than a fine. What’d he nick? Or did he smash something up?

Bert sighs. You know I’m not allowed to tell you. Just . . .

I think he’s about to give me a clue then and I lean in so none of the other volunteers can earwig.

Look, he’s one of your lot, okay? I don’t want anyone giving him any shit for it, so you just keep busy and play nicely.

As we walk over to meet my mysterious, respectable partner for the day, I wonder what Bert means by calling him one of my lot. Wasn’t like him to be coy about my race, so I didn’t reckon it would be another black guy. Not a tagger, surely? Not that I think of myself that way—I’m a street artist, but still, it don’t seem like the kind of thing a suit’d get up to in his spare time.

Then I see the fella in his crisp new T-shirt and spotless jeans, and bloody hell, does he look good. Mum’d probably call him a silver fox coz his cropped hair’s heavier on the salt than the pepper, but he don’t look all that old—not with the way he fills out those too-clean clothes. A few inches shorter than me, but all-powerful shoulders, nice pecs and slim hips. I catch him looking at my raggedy jeans and I wonder if that’s scorn on his face, but then when his gaze pans up I see these two spots of colour on his pale cheeks and he looks away, speedy-like.

Oh yeah, now I know what Bert meant by calling him one of my lot. I grin and put a little wiggle into my walk. Not a full-on mince, you follow, but just enough to tease him, should he look back. And there he goes, looking back and then away again. I’m gonna have fun with him today.

James, this is Ky, one of our regulars. He’ll look after you. Got a bit of a gob on him, but he’s all right. Ky, you remember what I said?

Yessir! Absolutely, sir! I give Bert a salute and he just sighs, heading back to the greenhouse shaking his head.

I turn back to James, who’s looking kinda nervous. I know I can come across a bit scary to white guys sometimes, what with the height and the shaved head n’ all, but at least he’s making an effort and holding out his hand. I think about kissing it, just to catch the look on his face, but then I take pity on him and give it a shake instead. Poor bugger probably can’t figure out how he ended up here—he don’t look like the criminal type at all. Up close he’s even more like a businessman in his weekend gear, although he does have a nice bit of stubble and a sparkly earring in his right lobe. Cute. Maybe not all that uptight after all.

All right, mate? James, innit? Climb on in, she’s already loaded. Bert told you what we’ll be doing yet, has he? It’s nothing too tricky, just putting the blooms in on the Homebase roundabout. Worst bit’s gonna be the state of your jeans by the time we’ve finished. I keep up a steady stream of chatter as I drive us out there, sneaking the odd look at James under the cover of checking the mirrors. He seems to relax a little, losing the furrow in his brow, which only means he ends up looking ten times hotter. Shame he’s way too old for me, but it don’t hurt no one to look, like Mum always says when I catch her ogling boy bands on MTV.

I pull up onto the paved edging strip of the roundabout and kill the engine.

Can you park here? James asks, all worried sounding. I don’t want a parking ticket on top of this.

Council van, innit? You can park wherever you bloody well want and nobody’s gonna do nothing.

He just gives me this look, which I think is meant to be intimidating, but it sends the wrong kind of shivers through me. Or the right ones, depending on which way you want to look at it.

We can park in the car park if you really want to ferry all those flowers over in the wheelbarrow. I glance down at his Birkenstocks doubtfully. Didn’t anyone tell him you needed proper footwear for this? If you think you’re up to dodging the traffic in those Jesus sandals.

James stares at the cars, vans and lorries circling around us and I can see him weighing it up. Right, the sooner we get on with this, the sooner we finish. He rubs his hands together and looks almost keen. Heh. He’ll learn soon enough.

I get James unloading the