Spotlight and Guest post with author Andrew Grey...

* This is an adult M/M cowboy romance series, content intended for mature audiences only *

 

Spotlight, Stories from the Range series by Andrew Grey

 

Since mustering out of the Marines, Gordon Fisher has been off the grid and out of money, so when a group of ecoterrorists promises him big bucks to set some mistreated animals free, Gordon agrees. Unfortunately, the animals are Wally Schumacher’s large cats, and one of them decides to take a chunk out of Gordon.

Still hurting from a breakup, Mario Laria finds Gordon and escorts him back to Dakota's ranch at gunpoint, only to have his heartstrings tugged on when he discovers Gordon is living out of his truck.

With Dakota doctoring, Wally wanting Gordon gone for good, and Mario falling in love, Gordon hangs on for the ride. But what looms on his horizon threatens to tear apart what little hope he’s found. No one knows Gordon’s past keeps him up at night, and the military wants answers he just can’t give.



 

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After reading this series, coming to know and love the variety of characters, I had one question for Grey. How did you come up with the idea for this series? Here is what he had to say..


I have always loved cowboy stories. Years ago when I first discovered gay romance, I read a lot of cowboy stories. There’s definitely something about handsome men in tight jeans and cowboy hats, and chaps, let’s not forget the chaps... but I digress. Needless to say I read a lot of cowboy stories and decided to write one. Now when I wrote A Shared Range, I had no plans to create a series. I got an idea centering around wolves, ranchers, and a veterinarian and wrote the story.
From there, things seemed to happen and more ideas followed. Usually a story starts with the idea for a character and one by one I got the ideas for Willie Meadows, Haven, Wally, Dakota, Marty, and Gordon. Then the stories seemed to form and ideas have flowed ever since, but always around the original ranch which holds a special place in my heart. In places that can be rough or less than accepting, gay people have traditionally congregated in numbers. There’s The Village in New York, The Gayborhood in Philadelphia, and other neighborhoods in cities across the country. As I wrote the Range stories I found I was creating my own safe place in Wyoming that centered around the ranch and the family they all built together, a gayborhood with horses, wide open spaces, and of course cowboys. Yee Hah!

 

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Excerpt from A Volatile Range (book 6, Stories from the Range)..

 

The short Wyoming range grass poked at his chest as he belly-crawled in the direction of the house. He ignored the pricks, scratches, and jabs as he kept his mind and attention on his objective—a cluster of cages behind the house. He really didn’t care why he’d been contracted to infiltrate this particular ranch or why he’d been told specifically to get unseen to those cages and release the abused and malnourished animals inside. Gordon wiped his brow and kept
moving.

 

The lights had gone out in the house a while ago, darkness and near silence descending quickly on the land. Once his eyes adjusted to the dark, Gordon had been pleased he’d checked things out earlier in the day. If there was one thing he could count on, it was an innate sense of direction. It didn’t matter if he couldn’t see a thing anymore after he’d spotted a point or landmark—he could make a beeline to it and usually put himself over it with no difficulty at all.

Some light from the area around the barn combined with the partial moon to provide more than Gordon actually needed, and the cages loomed easily within his line of sight.

 

Raising his body off the ground, he thought about getting up and walking from here, but his instructions had been very specific: he was not to be seen under any circumstances. And if at all possible, Gordon was to make every effort to make it look like someone had left the cages open and the poor, mistreated animals had gotten loose. He was pretty sure that the people who’d contacted him were some sort of ecoterrorist group or something like that. What Gordon really cared about was that they had paid him in cash, and he desperately needed the money because he hated starving.

 

A sound behind him had Gordon stopping where he was. Dropping to his belly again, he listened and waited, but heard nothing more. Looking around as best he could, he saw no one, and was pretty sure there wasn’t any movement. Slowly, he began moving again. The cool night air had started to make its way through his clothing, and he wished he’d worn another layer, but it was too late now. He was getting close to the cages. He heard another sound and figured it
was small creatures moving through the grass, and if he didn’t keep moving, he’d have them to contend with as well, so Gordon moved closer and closer to the first set of cages. At the edge of the enclosures, he settled again and listened. Gordon could hear animals moving around in the cages. They didn’t make a great deal of noise, but when he carefully lifted his head to look, he
could see dark forms moving around. “Don’t worry, you’ll be free soon,” Gordon whispered, sending the animals his best wishes as he got even closer.

 

Thinking he could use the cages themselves as cover, Gordon shifted direction and began moving behind them and around to the far side. That was when he ran into trouble. Gordon was approaching the cage on the farthest side when he heard a snarl that nearly curdled his blood. He tried to move away but realized he was too close to the cage, and a pair of razor claws raked over his leg. Stealth or not, money or not, Gordon let out a yell that reverberated over the land and echoed off the hills at the edge of the valley. Lights came on from every direction. Gordon rolled away from the cage and kept rolling, getting farther and farther away. His leg hurt like flaming hell. He was scared to touch it, but he knew he was bleeding and his pants were now wet and clinging to him—that is, what was left of his pants.

 

Voices called from around him, and Gordon kept putting distance between himself and the sounds. He decided to settle in the grass and wait until everyone left before getting the hell out of here. “Are all the animals okay?” Gordon heard what sounded like a concerned voice ask as figures walked from cage to cage, everyone keeping away from the cage he’d gone near.

“Yes, they’re fine,” a man answered, shining a flashlight around the cages and on the animals inside. Gordon stopped breathing when he realized that the cage he’d gotten close to contained a tiger. Holy shit! There were lions and black prowling cats in the other cages. Fuck, if he’d actually opened one of the cages, he’d probably have been ripped to shreds. Putting his head on the ground, Gordon wondered how in hell he got himself into messes like this all the time. Well, not necessarily like this, because this was the first time he’d actually come close to being torn apart by wild animals. Before he’d only been shot at, not ripped apart and eaten. They’d told him the cages contained exotic animals, and he’d been expecting zebras and animals like the ones he used to visit at the petting zoo when he was a kid.

 

Gordon tried to breathe and wait out the activity happening closer to the house. It was still dark enough that the people around the cages couldn’t see him, but he had no intention of moving until they were gone. Then he was going to somehow make his way back to his pathetic excuse for a car and get the hell out of this town and, if he lived that long, the entire state. The activity calmed down, and one by one, the people went inside. Once he couldn’t see anyone else, Gordon got to his knees, gritting his teeth as he crawled farther and farther back across the field.

 

“I suggest if you want to continue breathing that you don’t move another muscle,” a gruff voice said, and Gordon stopped and slowly lifted his gaze.

 

My review of A Volatile Range:

Gordon Fisher makes his way to the Holden ranch with nothing but mischief in mind. The former marine, that is attempting to stay off the grid, is under the mistaken impression that Wally is mistreating the tiger’s he keeps at the ranch. What he finds instead is a group of men that are not only fiercely loyal to the wild animals they protect, but to each other.

Mario Laria has had an active role in this series since book 1. The foreman of the Holden ranch was briefly involved with Wally’s best friend Philip, and then ranch hand Dan. At the start of this story he is still actively pining over Dan, who left him for bigger and better things over a year prior. As the story progresses, Mario grows quite attached to the volatile marine, Gordon.

Sleeping dogs will not lie down in this story! The eco terrorist group that initially tried to get Gordon on their side are a constant thorn in everyone else’s.  And just when Mario and Gordon start to build something both of them can trust in, Dan shows up on their door step, begging for another chance. As if that weren’t enough to test the strength of the relationship that’s only just begun, the military are gunning for Gordon. They want to know all the gritty details of the mission in Iraq that ended in tragedy, the mission Gordon can’t remember.

I love the way these two men struggle with their individuality in an attempt to build a relationship. Each man knows the other has their back regardless, but the only way to build a future together is to come to terms with the demons of their past. As with every book in this series, we get to catch up with some of our favorite characters (Willie even makes an appearance toward the end.). But the basis of the story is the emotionally raw and ferocious love that builds between Mario and Gordon.

Warning, in Mario’s own words, Gordon is a “cave man”! He quite literally throws Mario over his shoulder a time or two. When the house is a rockin, don’t come a knockin, and the house if most definitely rockin!! I give this one 5/5, an emotionally charged gay romance with some seriously steamy sex and that element of mystery, not knowing what exactly happened to Gordon during his time in the military. Wondering throughout if he himself, will ever remember.

 

 Andrew Grey has generously offered up a signed copy of A Volatile Range, thank you Andrew, I anxiously await book seven in this series!!  

(artwork compliments of Crystal Bozeman)

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