Title: Life Under New Management
Author: Jane Davitt
Genre: M/M romance
Publisher: Totally Bound
(Totally Five Star imprint)
Blurb
This is the third book in Totally Bound’s Totally Five Star imprint, set in glamorous hotels around the world.
Working for a perfectionist like strict, sexy-as-hell Ethan isn’t easy. Falling in love with him? No problem at all.
Taking a bar job in an exclusive hotel is a stopgap for Andy. He’s an actor and his big break is coming soon—he knows it. His hot, new boss, Ethan, is strict, demanding and totally off-limits, but Andy can’t stop thinking about him.
When Andy learns of Ethan’s need to be in control of his partner—in bed and out of it—he’s stunned by the intensity of his reaction. He wants Ethan guiding him, bringing order to his chaotic life. And he sees that Ethan needs him too, though they can’t be open about their feelings.
Ethan deals out deliciously perverse consequences for misbehaving, but when it comes to incentives, he knows just what to offer to have Andy on his knees begging for more.
But some secrets can’t stay that way for long. And when difficult choices arise, for once Andy can’t turn to Ethan for guidance. This time, he’s on his own.
*Reader Advisory: This book contains scenes of intense pain play, including the use of a Wartenberg wheel and figging.
Like the sound of Life Under New Management? Buy it here.
Guest Post - Jane Davitt
A Dish Served Hot
There’s a paraphrased saying, ‘Meddle not in the affairs of dragons for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.’
Another version could read, ‘Don’t annoy writers. They’ll put you in their books.’
Is this true? Do we really do that?
Well, yeah. Sometimes. If we’re picking a name for a villain, it’s not going to be the name of our BFF, but it could be the two-timing asshole who-- No, letting it go. Letting it go! But it’s usually not an entire person, head to toe, but a habit of theirs, a phrase they use, or maybe an incident that happened to us, names changed to protect the author. I mean ‘innocent’.
For instance, in Life Under New Management my new m/m romance set in a luxury Vancouver hotel, I included a cocktail I invented to celebrate my thirtieth birthday. It might have an official name, but on that faraway May night when I mixed Cointreau with vodka and added a splash of lemonade (English lemonade, the clear fizzy stuff, like Sprite/7-Up I guess) the Silver Jane was born.
Ethan tapped the bar. “Make me your cocktail. And without getting tacky—we don’t twirl bottles here—give me something to look at.”
“Huh?” Andy’s tie made his blue eyes a shade darker, but it had clearly developed a new ability of tightening at crucial moments, throttling the wearer. He couldn’t breathe. He was a performer, for God’s sake. What was wrong with him? He’d always excelled at improv sessions, even when the audience was hostile or unreceptive, and Ethan was neither of those. More like a teacher with a disappointing student, waiting for the correct answer and sure it wouldn’t be forthcoming.
“I’m a customer in a classy cocktail bar. I’m about to pay fifteen dollars for a fancy drink with an improbable name from an attractive young man.” Ethan’s mouth twitched. Not a smile. More of a pained grimace. “Give me my money’s worth, Mr. Naylor. Charm me, so the tip I leave is a generous one.”
Andy eased the knot on the tie and gave Ethan smile number four—or five. He’d lost count. “Sure thing.”
Ethan’s gray eyes hardened and he raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
“Yes, sir?” Andy hazarded.
“Better.”
Ethan’s whale watching? That was lifted from our family Vancouver vacation. I came to Canada from England on my honeymoon in 1994 and we wanted to go whale watching on Cape Breton Island but fog made it impossible. When we were on Vancouver Island twelve years later, we sailed out from Tofino to see the whales. I wish we’d stayed on shore. If you want to know what happened next, Ethan can tell you.
“I get seasick,” Ethan confessed. “Love the ocean, but only from the shore.”
“You’re kidding me!”
“Nope. We had a family vacation on Cape Breton once and went whale watching. I was fine for the first ten minutes, then the captain opened up the engine and we skipped over the water like a stone.” Ethan mimed it, hand rising then slapping the table. “Bam, bam, bam. Banged my elbow against the side and thought I’d fractured it. Then we got to the whales and he turned the engine off. Three seconds later, the boat wallowed, lurching from side to side. There were a lot of whales, but all I remember is dragging a little girl away from the bucket so I could throw up in it. Not my finest hour.”
Andy was laughing so much he had to finish Ethan’s juice and his to calm down. “That’s hilarious. How old were you?”
“Ten. Now stop laughing.”
“Can’t.”
“Try.”
There’s a danger in putting your own likes and dislikes into a book. When a character begins to rant about an issue, as a reader I wonder if it’s the character’s view or the author’s. I try not to do that, but from time to time I’ll slip in a reference to a meal I like but only if the character would like it too.
Because that’s the thing. They’re them and I’m me. We’re not the same. Most of my main characters are gay North American men in their mid-thirties. I’m English/Canadian, female, straight, and older than that. They didn’t grow up watching the same TV as me, or listening to the same music. Their kinks are not my kinks (sometimes they are, but not always) and their hang ups don’t match mine.
But now and then, our lives can overlap. Because there’s room on the whale watching boat for Ethan as well as me.
Meet Jane Davitt
Jane Davitt is English, and has been living in Canada with her husband, two children, and two cats, since 1997. Writing and reading are her main occupations but if she ever had any spare time she might spend it gardening, walking, or doing cross stitch.
Jane has been writing since 2005 and wishes she'd started earlier. She is a huge fan of SF, fantasy, erotica, and mystery novels and has a tendency to get addicted to TV shows that get cancelled all too soon.
She owns over 4,000 books, rarely gives any away, but is happy to loan them, and is of the firm opinion that there is no such thing as 'too many books'.
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