Spotlight & Giveaway: SAPPHIRE STORM by C. Travis Rice

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Christopher Rice writing as C. Travis Rice to HJ!

Hi Christopher and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, SAPPHIRE STORM!

 
Greetings, Readers!
 

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

Scandals! Secrets! A beautiful beachfront resort. Scheming Hollywood celebrities. Two strong willed men — one a gorgeous young fitness celebrity, the other a gourmet pastry chef at the height of his career — who try to fight their unstoppable desire for each other with everything they have…and fail. The third novel in my Sapphire Cove series is a standalone story full of the type of page-turning drama that defined the nighttime soaps I loved as a child. But Roman and Ethan are two of my most passionate heroes, and their age-gap, enemies-to-lovers romance completely consumed me. I hope they consume you as well.
 

Please share your favorite line(s) or quote from this book:

“People could survive with secrets. But could they thrive with them? If there was a part of your past you didn’t want discovered, ambition made you a target.”

“I feel like if I’m with you, I won’t just get better. I’ll be better. Because when you talk to me, you see me. You see me and not the things that I have to put on or take off to get attention. And it scares me and it makes me excited. And I guess it makes me desperate and crazy too. ”

“It had been years since he’d enjoyed a kiss that felt full and complete by itself, and not just the sloppy prelude to a quick disrobing. He felt as if he were kissing all the Romans at once. The Roman who cried, the Roman who grieved, the Roman whose eyes twinkled when he was excited, and yes, also the Roman who’d bared himself in the hot lights earlier that day. They were all one man, one man with whom his breaths were now joined.”

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

The fictional resort of Sapphire Cove was largely inspired by the real-life resort Montage Laguna Beach, and many of its staff members assisted me with research. In fact, their executive pastry chef, Lee Smith, helped design the special desert Ethan Blake makes for Roman Walker towards the end of the book.

What first attracts your Hero to the Heroine and vice versa?

I’m obsessed with heroes who don’t believe in happily ever afters. I’m obsessed with giving them the type of true love they never believed possible. As a gay man, these themes resonate deeply for me given how often queer people are told their relationships aren’t worthy of existing.

Did any scene have you blushing, crying or laughing while writing it? And Why?

For me, it’s almost always the line that comes before, right after – or during! – the first kiss. And with Sapphire Storm its no different. After pages and pages of fighting his desire for Roman Walker – because he’s younger, because a painful incident brought them together at first — Ethan Blake finally sets his inner alpha free. The result had me sweating at the keyboard. Here’s a taste

“I could consume you, you know that?” Ethan whispered. “I could do things to your body that no man’s ever done before. That doesn’t scare you?”
“The only thing that scares me is that you’ll be too afraid to try,” Roman whispered back.

Readers should read this book….

They like their male/male romance full of drama and spice and with atmosphere so heavy they can feel the ocean air on their face as they read. They like a handsome hero who knows how to cook. They’ve always wanted to know the best way to use a bucket full of ice cubes on a gorgeous naked man.

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have in the works?

Together with my producing partner, Eric Shaw Quinn, also a New York Times bestselling novelist, I run the production company Dinner Partners. Among other projects, we produce the weekly podcast “TDPS Presents CHRISTOPHER & ERIC”, which includes the special series Christopher & Eric’s True Crime TV Club. You can find all the latest episodes at www.TheDinnerPartyShow.com. I’ll write Sapphire Cove stories until my fingers fall off. As Christopher Rice, I write thrillers and I’m an executive producer for television.
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: Print copies of Sapphire Sunset, Sapphire Spring and Sapphire Storm.  

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: Have you ever fallen for someone you once thought was a villain in your life?

 
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Excerpt from SAPPHIRE STORM:

Roman didn’t just want to fly, he wanted to fly with Ethan. This knowledge filled him with a warmth that drowned out his anxiety, a feeling more powerful than his terrible fear of heights. Roman, in all his wild, restless enthusiasm, wanted to share something with Ethan that brought him joy, and that fact alone brought Ethan joy before they’d even left the ground.
When Roman emerged onto the trailer’s porch, helmets in hand, he said, “Are you sure?”

“Absolutely,” Ethan said firmly, but this time he didn’t have to work very hard to keep the fear from his voice.

He wasn’t sure they would survive. Wasn’t even sure he might not lose the contents of his stomach. What he was sure of was that he wanted to do whatever he could to fill Roman with more of this intoxicating enthusiasm.

The next thing he knew, they were standing a few yards from the cliff’s edge while his pilot-to-be strapped him into the chair, which was really more like a double harness. He could barely feel his feet, and he was nodding a lot to hide the fact that he was having trouble breathing and wasn’t hearing much of what Roman said.

“Cold?” Roman asked before snapping a buckle closed.

“Perfectly comfortable,” Ethan lied.

“Really? ’Cause your hand’s shaking.”

“I’ll heat up once we get going, I’m sure.” Once I piss myself, Ethan thought.
Then the two of them were fully strapped in. Roman’s warm body pressed against his back was a soothing balm for his paralyzing terror.

“Turning him to face their destination, the cliff’s edge and the shining sea beyond, Roman said, “Now, don’t worry. That fifteen-minute training class I took online was super comprehensive.”

Ethan dug his feet into the dirt. “Fifteen minutes?”

Roman cackled. “I’m kidding. It was a bunch of training sessions. I know what I’m doing. Ready? On three.”

If he waited that long he’d chicken out, so he started running right away, and by the time Roman got to two, they’d left the edge and Ethan was howling as his feet cycled through open air.

Every fiber of his being was braced for a terrifying plummet through the void below. When it didn’t happen, his desperate yell turned into a high, barking laugh. The force that filled the parachute behind them, lifting them above the cliff’s edge at the last possible second with a confident yank, felt otherworldly, divine.

They were floating. Then they were flying. Sailing. Soaring.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

Under his new pen name, C. Travis Rice, New York Times bestselling author Christopher Rice offers tales of passion, intrigue, and steamy romance between men. The third novel, SAPPHIRE STORM, once again transports you to a beautiful luxury resort on the sparkling Southern California coast where strong-willed heroes release the shame that blocks their hearts’ desires.

Ethan Blake has dedicated his life to satisfying other people’s appetites. At forty-three, he’s finally landed his dream job—head pastry chef at an exclusive resort. Now he’s got a jet-setting career that’s taken him to romantic locations all over the world. But years before, after his parents threw him out for being gay, Ethan supported himself in a manner he’d rather keep under the covers today.

Roman Walker is a twenty-five-year-old fitness celebrity awash in thirsty followers. But when he walks through the doors of Sapphire Cove, it’s not just to oversee the menu for his celebrity client’s wedding. Decades ago, Roman and Ethan crossed paths on a New York street corner during a terrible, life-changing moment that scarred them both. Now Roman’s back for revenge.

But when his plan goes wildly off the rails, Roman suddenly finds himself at the center of an even stranger and darker plot concocted by his most famous client. Well-versed in the ways of the wealthy and the entitled, Roman’s former target offers to be his strongest ally during a moment that might derail the young man’s newfound career. But the experienced older man’s offer also ignites an irresistible and forbidden attraction that threatens to consume them both, even as it exposes old secrets and incurs the wrath of the powerful and the famous.
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Meet the Author:

Christopher Rice is the recipient of the Lambda Literary Award and is the Amazon Charts and New York Times bestselling author of A Density of Souls; Bone Music, Blood Echo, and Blood Victory in the Burning Girl series; and Bram Stoker Award finalists The Heavens Rise and The Vines. An executive producer for television, he collaborated with his mother Anne Rice on the novel Ramses the Damned: The Passion of Cleopatra and Ramses The Damned: The Reign of Osiris. Together with his best friend and producing partner, New York Times bestselling novelist Eric Shaw Quinn, Christopher runs the production company Dinner Partners. Among other projects, they produce the podcast and video network TDPS, which can be found at www.TheDinnerPartyShow.com. He lives in West Hollywood, California, and writes tales of romance between men under the pseudonym C. Travis Rice. Visit him at www.christopherricebooks.com.
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