I have
always loved to read. When I was a pre-teen and teenager, I read young adult
stories from CS Lewis and Tolkien and a host of other writers in a variety of
genres. But the magic and fantasy of Lewis and Tolkien always seemed to echo in
the back of my mind. With all the stories I read, however, I never once found a
gay character. There was no young gay boy struggling with his identity, or even
just struggling against some outside force.
My first stories published were gay erotic short stories,
which soon turned into gay erotic romance stories of a host of genres. But
there was a story in the back of mind that just wouldn't go away. This seed of
a story was about a girl who moved in next door to a house surrounded by a tall
wooden privacy fence. From her window, she could see a beautiful garden in
bloom, but never saw anyone tend to it. Then one night, as she's trying to get
to sleep, she hears someone out in the yard beyond the fence and she peers out
her window…
The story always stalled there, and I could never figure out
why. Just recently, it finally hit me. That character wasn't supposed to be a
girl at all. No, that character needed to be a boy, and he would fall in love
with the mysterious boy who lived behind the fence.
Once I came to that realization, everything jus opened up for
me. There would be magical creatures and adventures, and the story would be
told over a number of books, not just one. And The Midnight Gardener - A Town of Superstition Story: Book One came
to be. I decided it should be kept separate from my erotic romance writing and
sent it to Harmony Ink Press with the author name R. G. Thomas. A second book
in the series is through final edits with Harmony Ink, and I'm about halfway
finished writing the first draft of the third book. My main characters,
Thaddeus and Teofil, have a lot of adventures together.
Here's an excerpt from The
Midnight Gardener - A Town of Superstition Story: Book One, available now
at all e-book sellers.
Book Blurb:
The Midnight Gardener - A Town of Superstition Story: Book
One
Contemporary Young Adult fantasy gay romance
Harmony Ink Press
At fifteen, Thaddeus Cane has moved thirty-two times
with his father. Each time he’s displaced without explanation, Thaddeus loses
any friends he’s made. The name of their latest town is Superstition, but it
seems normal enough, with one exception.
Thaddeus’s bedroom window gives him a view into the
beautiful gardens next door. Every night after dark, an attractive guy around
Thaddeus’s age appears to tend the plants. When Thaddeus visits his neighbor,
he discovers not only how deep his interest in the other man runs, but also
that Teofil, the midnight gardener, isn’t human. He’s a garden gnome, a
revelation that will lead to more secrets coming to light and an adventure
unlike anything Thaddeus ever imagined.
Buy Links:
Harmony Ink Press:
https://www.harmonyinkpress.com/books/the-midnight-gardener-by-r-g-thomas-340-b
Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Midnight-Gardener-Town-Superstition-Book-ebook/dp/B017F71GXU/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1446386854&sr=1-1&keywords=midnight+gardener
Apple Bookstore:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-midnight-gardener/id1054820841?mt=11
Barnes and Noble:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-midnight-gardener-r-g-thomas/1122878346?ean=2940151075657
Midnight Gardener excerpt:
He had left his windows open a bit to enjoy the night
air, and the sound of someone humming drew him to the one that faced west.
Thaddeus peered down into their neighbor’s yard where the light of the moon
bleached the color from the flowers and the grass. Someone was out in the yard,
moving from flowerbed to flowerbed, humming an odd tune. Fireflies danced
around the figure, and Thaddeus frowned as he watched them move along with the
person. He’d never known fireflies to trail after someone like that. This
deserved a closer look.
The grass was wet and cool under his bare feet,
sending a shiver up Thaddeus’s legs. He crept along the tall, wooden privacy
fence, looking for a space between the boards or a knothole he might be able to
peer through. But the fence was solidly built, and Thaddeus couldn’t find even
the smallest crack to try and get a glimpse of the mysterious neighbor.
On the other side of the fence, Thaddeus could hear
the humming gardener moving closer to the fence. A few fireflies drifted over
the top and circled Thaddeus’s head, their lights flashing in rhythm. He moved
a few steps back, and the fireflies spun around the place where he had been
standing before rising up and slipping back over the fence.
Just as Thaddeus parted his lips to call a greeting
over the fence, the skin at the back of his neck prickled, and he stopped.
Someone was watching him.
He turned slowly toward the wooded area at the edge of
their property. Just inside the closely spaced trees, Thaddeus saw something
standing very still and staring at him. It was an animal of some kind, a big
one, but he couldn’t tell if it was a dog or a wolf, or maybe even a cougar, as
the moonlight didn’t reach far enough between the trees to illuminate it.
Chills rattled through him, stilling his voice and
freezing him in place. He stared at the creature in the woods, trying to
decipher form from shadow. It stared back, not moving or making a sound, and
that was more frightening to Thaddeus than if the thing charged him.
The humming grew louder as the midnight gardener moved
to a flowerbed just on the other side of the fence from Thaddeus. Thaddeus
swallowed and tried to find his voice to shout a warning to his neighbor, but
decided it would be unnecessary since his yard was completely closed in.
Instead, he willed his legs to move and stepped backward toward the house. The
shadowy creature remained standing in place, but it lowered its large head, and
moonlight flashed within its eyes.
That sparked a reaction within Thaddeus, a thawing out
of his fear, and he turned his back to run to the house, glancing over his
shoulder every second step. Nothing pursued him, however, and he stepped
through the side door and quickly closed and locked it behind him. Now that he
was safe inside, shivers took him, and he stepped up and down in place to get
them out of his system.
“Okay, so, no moonlit strolls,” he said to himself
with a firm nod. “Got it.”
He crept upstairs, being quiet so as not to wake his
father whose room was at the top of the steps. After pausing in the bathroom to
wipe the grass and dew from his bare feet, he entered his bedroom and leaned
out the window that overlooked the neighbor’s yard. The mysterious gardener was
gone, and the fireflies now meandered around both yards, sparking and fading
like normal insects. Thaddeus leaned a bit farther out of the window to see the
place in the woods where the animal had stood and watched him. He squinted but
couldn’t tell if the creature still lurked in the shadows.
With another shiver, he drew back inside and closed
the window. After a second’s hesitation, he latched it even though his bedroom
was on the second floor. Despite the excitement of his midnight sojourn, or maybe
because of it, a yawn crept up on him. He slipped beneath the sheets and curled
up on his side. He yawned once more before drifting off to sleep, where he
dreamed of walking through a dense wood while a large creature followed him,
both of them trying to track down the person who was humming a tune among the
trees.
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