Welcome everyone! Today I have my good friend, Julie Lynn Hayes, visiting. She's here to talk about her upcoming release Yes, He's My Ex. It's a screwball comedy, and yes, I beta read it lol. You just have to love Sonny, even when wanting to slap him upside the head lol.
The Dreamspinner release date is April 2nd.
~M
They don’t make comedies like they used to.
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Nowadays, you don’t see comedians like the Marx Brothers, or
WC Fields, or the Keystone Cops. Groucho Marx could elicit belly laughs just by
the way he rolled his eyes or waggled his thick painted-on eyebrows. The
Keystone Cop films were famous for their chase scenes—just good old-fashioned
fun—while Harold Lloyd swung perilously off the end of a clock hand.
As a kid, I watched the Marx Brothers and WC Fields, Joe E
Brown and Mae West. One of my favorite scenes in the Marx Brothers many
hilarious films comes from A Night at the Opera. The boys are in their
stateroom on the ocean liner, and it’s one of the most famous comedy sequences
ever in which any number of people end up inside this tiny stateroom, and you
sit in the audience wondering who else can possibly fit.
There were also romantic comedies too, films like Jimmy
Cagney in Boy Meets Girl, in which he presents the formula for every love story
ever told: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl. Of course, it’s fun
to turn that trope around and change it to: boy meets boy, boy loses boy, boy
gets boy. Because two men in love?
You can never go wrong, right?
I loved Doris Day as I was growing up, and she made some
very funny romantic comedies. In one, she was dragged out of bed by an irate
Rock Hudson and carried through the streets in her pajames to the scene of the
crime—the bachelor pad she had so viciously “decorated” for him, thinking he
was nothing more than a playboy on the
make. In another film, The Glass Bottom Boat, Doris got a job with the
Space Agency and met a handsome astrophysicist, played by Rod Taylor, who took
a liking to her, but the suspicious people at NASA thought Doris was a Russian
spy, and things just went crazy from there... Of course, all’s well that ends
well. You can’t very well have a romantic comedy that ends badly, that makes it
a tragedy, doesn’t it?
That’s what I’ve tried to do with Yes, He’s My Ex. It
started out as a flash fiction on my
blog, a simple story about an ex-boyfriend who couldn’t seem to get it through
his thick head that they were over. But then things began to happen. A cry for
help leads Tim into a race to save Sonny. Goofy gangster, a dumb ex-boyfriend,
and the FBI... what else can happen to Sonny and Tim? Read Yes He’s My Ex and
find out!
Thanks for having me here today, it’s been fun!
Blurb:
Sometimes Sonny Scrignoli forgets he’s Tim Mansfield’s ex.
He waltzes in and out of Tim’s apartment like he still lives there, driving Tim
crazy. Is it really so hard to remember they’ve broken up? Then again, maybe
Tim should quit having sex with him.
When Sonny disappears for two weeks, Tim can’t help but be concerned. A strange phone call and a mysterious cry for help leads Tim on a desperate search for his ex.
Sonny’s in big trouble, and it’s Tim to the rescue! He’s the only one who can save his ex from a fate worse than death. Bumbling gangsters, a thick-headed former boyfriend, and secretive FBI agents lead Tim and Sonny on a merry chase full of laughs and quirks.
When Sonny disappears for two weeks, Tim can’t help but be concerned. A strange phone call and a mysterious cry for help leads Tim on a desperate search for his ex.
Sonny’s in big trouble, and it’s Tim to the rescue! He’s the only one who can save his ex from a fate worse than death. Bumbling gangsters, a thick-headed former boyfriend, and secretive FBI agents lead Tim and Sonny on a merry chase full of laughs and quirks.
Excerpt:
Sonny’s real
name is Mario, but he’s been called Sonny since he was a small bambino, as his mother
puts it, so Sonny it is. Sonny stands almost six foot tall in his bare feet, which
are surprisingly small for a man, almost dainty. He has chocolate brown hair that
grows thick but not long, and generally looks tousled; blue eyes so dark that sometimes
they look purple in the proper light, framed behind silver wire spectacles; a generous
nose and wide sweet lips which have been known to give the most amazing head this
side of anywhere. Put that with the body of an Adonis, and you have Sonny.
I had Sonny, but not anymore. He seems not
to realize that, though. At least not most of the time. Hence the part where I see
him more often than should be considered normal for someone who’s my ex. Which is
where I began.
Sometimes
I think he forgets that he has indeed attained that past participle ex-boyfriend
status. Granted, it’s only been six months. His mother tells me he just needs time
to adjust, please don’t be too hard on her boy. Yes, I still see her too. On a rather
regular basis, in fact. Hard not to, when she’s my mother’s best friend. Lucky me.
Lia’s a nice lady, I love her to death. But she has this deep-seated belief that
Sonny and I are going to get back together again, a belief he seems to share. Along
with my mother. And most of our friends.
No one seems
to listen to me when I say snowballs rolling along the floor of Hell have a better
chance of survival than our relationship. Least of all Sonny. I guess that’s why
he keeps coming over here, because in some strange deranged naïve corner of his
mind, there’s still an us, and he isn’t an ex. So he wanders over whenever he wants.
Sometimes he calls, sometimes he doesn’t. Today he called.
Sometimes
I just get tired of telling him no. Some days I don’t even get that far. Today,
I didn’t want to waste my breath, so I just said, “Fine. As long as you promise
to behave.”
By behave,
I mean quit assuming we’re going to have sex. Even if sometimes we do. I know, I
know, he’s my ex, right?
Sometimes
I just don’t know where to draw that fine line, I think. No wonder the boy’s confused.
Dreamspinner buy link: http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=4845
Meet the author:
Julie Lynn Hayes was
reading at the age of two and writing by the age of nine and always wanted to
be a writer when she grew up. Two marriages, five children, and more than forty
years later, that is still her dream. She blames her younger daughters for
introducing her to yaoi and the world of M/M love, a world which has captured
her imagination and her heart and fueled her writing in ways she'd never
dreamed of before. She especially loves stories of two men finding true love and
happiness in one another's arms and is a great believer in the happily ever
after. She lives in St. Louis with her daughter Sarah and two cats, loves books
and movies, and hopes to be a world traveler some day. She enjoys crafts, such
as crocheting and cross stitch, knitting and needlepoint and loves to cook.
While working a temporary day job, she continues to write her books and stories
and reviews, which she posts in various places on the internet. Her family
thinks she is a bit off, but she doesn't mind. Marching to the beat of one's
own drummer is a good thing, after all.
Her published works can be found at Dreamspinner Press, Amber Quill
Press, MuseitUp Publishing, Torquere Press, and eXtasy Books, and coming soon
to Wayward Ink Publishing and Prizm Publishing. She has also begun to
self-publish and is an editor at MuseitUp.
You can find her on
her blog at http://julielynnhayes.blogspot.com, and you can contact
her at tothemax.wolf@gmail.com.
My links:
Twitter @Shelley_runyon
