The Bells of Time Square virtual tour Review, Guest Post & Giveaway {Riptide Publishing}

Hi, and welcome to the blog tour for The Bells of Times Square! This book is close to my heart--

if you read the extra front and back matter in the story, you will see that I drew inspiration from my 

grandparents and their roles in WWII. There was a lot of research involved here and also an unusual  

romance. I hope you enjoy this stop on the tour, and don't forget to enter the Rafflecopter below for the giveaway of two ebooks from my backlist and a signed copy of The Bells of Times Square! Feel free to comment, or to contact me at any of my links below--I'd love to hear from you!

Every New Year’s Eve since 1946, Nate Meyer has ventured alone to Times Square to listen for the ghostly church bells he and his long-lost wartime lover vowed to hear together. This year, however, his grandson Blaine is pushing Nate through the Manhattan streets, revealing his secrets to his silent, stroke-stricken grandfather.

When Blaine introduces his boyfriend to his beloved grandfather, he has no idea that Nate holds a similar secret. As they endure the chilly death of the old year, Nate is drawn back in memory to a much earlier time . . . and to Walter.

Long before, in a peace carefully crafted in the heart of wartime tumult, Nate and Walter forged a loving home in the midst of violence and chaos. But nothing in war is permanent, and now all Nate has is memories of a man his family never knew existed. And a hope that he’ll finally hear the church bells that will unite everybody—including the lovers who hid the best and most sacred parts of their hearts.

“Times Square on New Year’s Eve,” Walter murmured, and Nate could feel the smile against his lips. “We’ll meet at Times Square, whether or not there’s bells, right?”

“Of course,” Nate whispered. “That is where we’ll meet. God will call us home.”

The story starts in present day with Blaine taking his Grandfather to Times Square to hear the bells, and then the magic begins when you are transported back in time through Nate’s memories and begin to learn the importance of this trip, of those bells.

In 1943 in the middle of WWII, Nate Meyer and Walter Phillips form a bond of friendship and love, a forbidden bond in their time and era. The “wrongness” of their relationship weighs heavy on Nate and over the years he makes a few wrong decisions, including denying who he is and in that denial he betrays the very memory of the man he loved.

The story is told as a journey through the mind of Nate, a series of memories of his time in the war and his time with Walter. Now a WWII vet, Nate is an invalid after suffering a stroke, but his mind still takes him back to happier times, times with Walter, before he chose to live a life that was a lie. His grandson Blaine is there by his side though, and they have a lot more in common than one might think. Oddly, it is their mutual attraction to other men that gives Nate an understanding of Blaine and an acceptance that no one else has.

This is definitely classic Amy Lane. Tear your heart out, bounce it off the wall, jump up and down on it a couple times, then staple it back to your breast bone for good measure. I laughed a little, I cried a lot. There isn’t a Happy Ever After in this story per say, though there is happiness somewhere in all the madness and grief, you just have to look for it.

The descriptive of the time and place are just amazing, I love stories that are steeped in history especially when the author does their homework and presents actual facts and vivid imagery to go along with their wonderful writing skills.

Be warned, this is a half box of Kleenex book at the very least. But, it’s Amy Lane, that is sort of a given.

Amy Lane exists happily with her noisy family in a crumbling suburban crapmansion, and equally happily with the surprisingly demanding voices who live in her head.

She loves cats, movies, yarn, pretty colors, pretty men, shiny things, and Twu Wuv, and despises house cleaning, low fat granola bars, and vainglorious prickweenies.

She can be found at her computer, dodging housework, or simultaneously reading, watching television, and knitting, because she likes to freak people out by proving it can be done.

Connect with Amy:

·Website: greenshill.com

·Blog: writerslane.blogspot.com

·Twitter: @amymaclane

·Facebook group: Amy Lane Anonymous

·Goodreads: goodreads.com/amymaclane

Guest post from Auhor Amy Lane...

Iron Hearth

By Amy Lane

I have forgotten whose house I was visiting when I was young. Was it my step-mother’s grandmother? The grandmother of some friends of ours? Those hippies my parents loved who lived in what amounted to a cave and named their children things like Oak and Lorax?  (Not that I’m one to throw stones—those names inspired me when I named my own children.)

I can’t remember—but I do remember the wood-burning cook stove, because I remember my stepmom talking about how hard it was to use.

When I was trying to decide how Walter and Nate would survive, the wood-burning cook stove became a staple consideration in their time together. 

And it forced me to remember some of the basics of living.

You can’t just pop something in a wooden cook-stove for two minutes and bring it out heated.  The fire needs to be started and stoked, the temperature controls are more of a rule than a guideline, and the heat needs to have had time to permeate all of the conductive plates of the top in order to cook there.

Baking bread is an art in both fire maintenance and not slamming the oven door.

A wooden cook stove takes a good half an hour to an hour to get to an optimum performance heat, and if it’s not stoked, that heat doesn’t last.  They are touchy, moody, and the food quality is impacted by everything from outside temperature, to humidity, to the type of wood that’s being used, to the materials that are used to cook with. 

When a man came home in the 30’s and his wife had been slaving over a hot stove all day? That was no bullshit—that there was real.

So when Nate and Walter start forging their tiny, weather-fractured home, it’s no wonder that the wood stove becomes the heart of it. Walter cooks on it, they use it for heat, they boil water on it to wash.  When they first see each other undressed it’s while bathing, in front of the stove. When Nate wants to prove that he loves Walter, he spends all day warming water for a hot bath on the stove. 

And when interlopers desecrate their home, one of the final indignities is watching one of the intruders eating the food Walter had prepared.  Their little island of safety, of home, had been violated, and would never be the same.

When people talk about hearth and home, they are talking about the basics of survival—food, shelter, comfort, safety.  Before electricity was common and every house had gas, there was fire housed in iron and stone. 

But the cook-stove isn’t just survival. Making food on it took skill, took a desire to learn, to please, to create something that people would find pleasing. 

It took an emotion as strong as iron, as hot as flame, as elemental as meat, grain, and greens.

a Rafflecopter giveaway