Wheat Kings and Pretty Things by GS Wiley | Cat's Release day Review & #giveaway @Dreamspinners @gswiley

As soon as he graduated high school, Paul Thompson fled the tiny, heavily Ukrainian town of Liddon, Saskatchewan, for bigger and better things. Now in his late thirties, Paul owns a struggling art gallery in Toronto. His grandmother’s one-hundredth birthday is approaching, and Paul will return to place where he grew up for the first time since he left.

The town—and the province—don’t match Paul’s memories. Have they changed? Or has he? He reconnects with Dylan Shevchenko, an old friend who now teaches phys. ed. in Regina. When Paul learns his grandmother had an Aboriginal son he never knew about, he wonders what else he missed while he was away. Did he make the right choice all those years ago? He receives the rare opportunity to start over when he discovers a gallery for sale in Regina. He’s faced with a choice between his youthful dreams in the big city and making a life with Dylan in a place that somehow finally feels like home.

World of Love: Stories of romance that span every corner of the globe.

Buy links: Dreamspinner | Amazon US | Amazon UK

3 meows 3 purrs

Paul left as soon as he graduated to go to Toronto and become an artist. When that fell through he opened a gallery that is now struggling.

He goes back home to Lidden for his Grandmothers 100th birthday and receives some great advice from her.
Dylan is a teacher in Regina and makes a confession to Paul that could affect his decisions.
Wheat Kings and Pretty Things is a sweet short story about life, growing up and decisions.
There are some surprises, lots of intriguing characters and a sweet romance with an HEA
I thought the story was good but it cut off quickly and would have been a great longer story.

Excerpt...

THE ENTIRE Liddon High School graduating class of 1997 could fit into the back of a large pickup truck.

They knew this because, after the graduation party at the Legion Hall wrapped up, all eleven of them climbed into the back of Dylan Shevchenko’s dad’s truck. Paul didn’t want to go. His flight to Toronto was already booked, scheduled to leave at ten o’clock the next morning. Even though he wasn’t scheduled to start university for nearly four months, he couldn’t wait any longer to get out of there. But he was jostled along, dragged into the back of the truck before he could turn down the people with whom he’d spent every school day for the past thirteen years.

Dylan drove them out of town, into the bush. The truck was old and woefully in need of new shocks. Paul felt every stone on the dirt road as they jounced along. Daisy McLaughlin’s slippery silk dress rubbed against his arm on one side, while on the other, the stench of Connor Boyko’s overpowering cologne hung like a fug, threatening to asphyxiate them all. Just a few hours, Paul assured himself. A few more hours, and I’m free of all this, forever.

Dylan wasn’t the world’s greatest driver under the best of circumstances. Under these circumstances, in the dead of a dark, rural Saskatchewan night on a road that likely hadn’t been maintained for decades, he was appalling. Paul clung to the side of the truck, his knuckles white and his heart hammering. It would be just my luck, he thought, to die now, so close to freedom.

After what seemed like hours, Dylan pulled off the dirt road onto another, even worse one. This time, it was barely a track, a narrow path with corn growing on each side. The headlights bounced up and down, illuminating the field around them.

“Spooky,” Daisy said.

“Boo!” Connor reached across Paul to jab her in the ribs. Daisy squealed, and Paul sighed.

When they reached a little house, Dylan stopped. Connor and another boy, Jake, opened the back of the truck, and they all poured out onto the grass.

“This is my uncle’s place,” Dylan announced. “So don’t fuck anything up.”

Paul wasn’t sure how that would be possible. The shack looked like something out of a horror movie. Even by the light of the stars, Paul could tell the paint, where it existed, was peeling badly. The door hung awkwardly on its hinges, and large holes in the bug screens meant they would be useless to keep out any sort of insects, or, for that matter, small mammals. Paul felt like he could catch half-a-dozen illnesses just looking at the place.

“There’s beer in the fridge,” Dylan continued. To a group of post-grad teenagers, that was like waving a red flag in front of a bull. They rampaged into the shack, squeezing through the narrow door like clowns. Connor and Jake even got stuck, for a moment, straining against one another and the doorframe until they popped through to the inside. Paul was surprised he didn’t hear a comical sound effect, like a bottle uncorking.

Paul and Dylan were the only ones left outside. “Nice place,” Paul lied, because he had been brought up that way.

“It’s a shit hole,” Dylan admitted. Paul was glad. They’d known each other for over a decade. While they weren’t exactly friends, Paul had never thought of Dylan as a delusional idiot, although that was precisely how he viewed many of their classmates. “But if we’re all together, then I know nobody’s out doing something fucking stupid.”

Paul blinked in surprise. “That’s… really nice of you.”

Dylan grinned, his teeth glinting in the light. He was taller than Paul by a couple of inches, but much broader. If they’d lived somewhere else, like Regina or Saskatoon, he would have played football, but it was hard to make up a team at Liddon High School, where grades nine to twelve only counted forty students, total.

“I’m not a complete asshole.”

“Right.” Paul shifted, feeling awkward. “No. No, I never thought you were.”

“Really? Not even when I called you a queer in front of the entire school?”

Paul cleared his throat. “It… it was only the high school. So, like, forty people. And to be fair, most of them knew anyway.” Everyone knew. Paul didn’t think of himself as particularly camp, but he did have a taste for fashion, which made him stand out in the world of Roughriders jerseys, sweatpants, and ball caps they called a school. After saving up his allowance and his birthday money for more than two years, he’d mail-ordered a Burberry cape and worn it to school the first cold day of grade eleven. He’d expected a reaction. If he was honest, he’d wanted a reaction.

Dylan’s smile faded, gradually disappearing from his handsome face. “Yeah. But it was shitty of me. I shouldn’t have done it.” He looked up, staring at the thousands of bright stars that surrounded them. “You won’t get a sky like that in Toronto, I bet.”

“No. I guess not.” Paul hadn’t considered that before. It was a fair trade, he supposed. He wasn’t sure what else to say. He was wondering whether he should go into the shack with the others when Dylan suddenly stepped forward, into Paul’s personal space.

For a moment, a brief flash of an instant, Paul thought Dylan meant to hit him. He tensed up, ready to absorb the blow—even instinctively, he knew he had no hope of fighting back or fleeing—but instead of a fist to the stomach, Dylan kissed him.

It was quick, a peck on the corner of Paul’s mouth. Close enough to qualify as a kiss on the lips, technically, although it was very far from any kind of display of passion, and from anything Paul had spent the last few years imagining himself doing with Brad Pitt and Antonio Banderas and nameless handsome urbane men in Toronto. He’d never pictured doing it with Dylan. Or with anyone he knew.

“Sorry,” Dylan said, as soon as he pulled away. It was too dark to tell if he was blushing, but he looked down at the scuffed Nike running shoes he wore everywhere, including, apparently, to his high school graduation. “Sorry,” he said again. He turned around and went inside, leaving Paul alone.

G.S. Wiley is a writer, reader, sometime painter, and semi-avid scrapbooker who lives in Canada.

Visit G.S.'s web site at http://wileyromance.googlepages.com/

Be sure to leave a comment to be entered into the TTC Books and more monthly comment giveaway. EVERY comment that is relevant to the specific post will be entered. Prizes include various gift cards and swag donated by Publishers, Authors and blog Owner. REMEMBER TO LEAVE YOUR CONTACT INFO! How else will I notify you if you win?