I promised more heat and romance from Xcite’s fabulous Secret Library collection and today’s guest, back with her second fabulous novella with the title story from the anthology, One Long Hot Summer, please welcome back, Liz Coldwell.
Mmm, Toy Boys…
If there’s one thing I’m rather partial to, it’s a toy boy – in my fiction, at least. It’s not that men my own age (or even rather older) don’t have their charms; it’s simply that from a writing point of view, young male characters offer a wealth of possibilities. Unlike their older counterparts, they haven’t seen it all before and they don’t tend to come with a wealth of baggage. There’s so much they haven’t yet experienced, which is where an older woman is ideally placed to step in and show them the way…
Of course, the relationship between an older woman and a younger man is one that’s all too easy to turn into a capacious reticule of clichés. She can seem too desperate; he can come across as an improbably experienced stud. And the idea that this type of partnership can really last has taken a severe bashing, as the poster couple for toy boy love, Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher, who at one stage didn’t appear to be able to keep their hands off each other, have gone their separate ways. Though maybe their break-up should serve as nothing more than a warning not to post nauseating love notes and sneaky crotch shots of the missus on Twitter…
The reasoning why this works well as a pairing was always that men in their late teens are at their absolute sexual peak, and so are women approaching thirty. This theory may have been largely discredited, but the idea still lingers that the only reason women want much younger lovers is for sex. And while erotica thrives on what happens between the sheets, the best stories are always those which present the characters as rounded individuals, with lives that extend beyond the bedroom door. In which case, what does a young man really have to offer a woman who’s older and more mature than him, and is it really possible for them to turn lust and physical chemistry into lasting love?
One Long Hot Summer, from the Secret Library collection, is my latest tale of age gap romance. Not that Lily Metcalfe, the novella’s heroine, is looking for any kind of romance at the start of the story. She’s split up from her long-term partner, and the trauma of the break-up has left her with a severe case of writer’s block. In an attempt to cure it, she accepts her friend Amanda’s offer to house-sit for the summer, spending time on Dorset’s beautiful Jurassic Coast and (so she hopes) taking inspiration from her new surroundings. Her plans are thrown into disarray when Amanda’s son, Ryan, turns up, intending to spend the summer surfing and partying with friends. The last time Lily saw him, he was a gawky sixth-form boy, and now he’s filled out into a hunky young man whose presence in the house might just cure her block, but could also lead her into temptations she never expected. What happens next? You’ll just have to get hold of the book (which also contains stories by the very talented Penelope Friday and Shanna Germain) to find out more!
One Long Hot Summer is available from http://www.thesecretlibrary.co.uk