Author Name: Brad Vance
Series: The Game Players- Book: One
Release Date: April 24, 2015
Pages or Words: 289 pages
Categories: BDSM, Crime Fiction, M/M Romance, Thriller, Cybercrime
Publisher: Brad Vance
Cover Artist: Brad Vance
Goodreads
Blurb:
Software billionaire Marc Julian’s orderly life is shattered one night by a cyber-intrusion into his company’s servers. He’s always surrounded himself with the best people, but finding the culprit behind this might require a real expert...and sometimes it takes a thief to catch a thief.
Jesse Winchester and his team of “grey hat” hackers are suddenly available to Marc. Marc doesn’t know if he should trust Jesse with the keys to his company’s kingdom. After all, Jesse’s a convicted felon, sent to prison for violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. A felon sentenced to thirty-five years in prison, who mysteriously served only three years before being released…
Marc’s first company, his whole life, was shattered because he trusted the wrong person. This time there’s even more at stake, but few other options. Especially when his evil enemies, the billionaire industrialist Krom brothers, are revealed to be the source of the intrusion.
Is Jesse there to help Marc, or does he have his own history with the Kroms, his own score to settle? As Jesse and Marc spend more time together, their growing intimacy is at war with their need to win their respective battles. Soon the game they start to play with each other, against each other, becomes more exciting, more exquisitely frustrating…and more dangerous.
Excerpt:
He’d made a mistake with Marc. He’d thought they could play a game together, to pass the time, let off steam, release stress. Marc was smart enough to know that that’s all it was.
Right?
But the look on his face, when Jesse said goodbye… The shock. The disappointment. The…
Say it. The hurt. That was when Jesse knew that for Marc, it had been more.
That was when Jesse knew that it had been more for him, too.
1. When and why did you begin writing?
I started writing when I was a kid, it was just a compulsion. I got these stories in my head and I had to write them down. I started with crazy science fiction stories about my dog, who was secretly the Empress of Dogonia, and the space dogs would come and rescue me from a lonely bullied childhood and take me to their planet!
2. When did you first consider yourself a writer?
I knew I was a writer for real, when I got my first byline in a newspaper. I started writing for the Bay Area Reporter in San Francisco, doing book and theater reviews, and eventually ended up with my own column. I knew then that I was gonna make it.
3. What inspired you to write your first book?
Well, rage was part of it LOL. I was on a project at my day job with a verbally abusive team leader, and I just thought…I need to double, triple my writing productivity if that’s what it takes to make a living at it, to make sure that I’m never in this situation again, where I just have to take this abuse. And I wrote “Given the Circumstances” in a white heat. I’m a huge football and baseball fan, so it was really fun to do the research, to dig into the NCAA regulations from that time period to see what was and wasn’t allowed, as far as practice activities, banned substances, etc. And I loved substituting Roger, the football player, for Tim Tebow in the final round of the Heisman selection. (Tebow didn’t exist in that universe!)
4. Do you have a specific writing style?
Yeah, I’d say so. I’m all about realistic dialogue. If you were to read my characters’ dialogue out loud, it wouldn’t sound like a turn of the century melodrama. It would sound like two people talking today, at the table next to you. I used to do a lot of narrative ranting, really inserting my opinions into the story, but I’ve stopped that, unless I have a single pithy line that just makes the point.
5. How do you come up with the titles?
Titles are tough sometimes, easy other times. “Would I Lie to You?” was an easy one. I just looked at that picture on a stock site (the model is Daniel Sobieray), and I could hear him say exactly that. “A Little Too Broken” came to me as part of the concept of the book – all the New Adult titles were coming out, oh they’re young beautiful and broken, can they love again, and I thought, shit, you don’t know broken. What if there were two characters who were just a little too broken, who couldn’t be magically fixed by the end of the book? And there it was.
6. Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?
I really don’t have a “message” in this one. These guys are very smart, very wary, very funny, very easily bored. I just wanted to write a story where two guys like that made a connection. They don’t just Do It So Hard on the first page; there’s a lot of sexual anticipation that they deliberately string out into a game, a competition. And folded up into that are their trust issues, of course, because Marc has very good reasons not to trust Jesse, and Jesse has very good reasons to hide things from Marc. They both know that going in, so the game is about who’s going to keep their lust reined in longer, who’s going to hold out for more from the other man before they go there.
7. How much of the book is realistic?
All of it! The grifting, the cyberwarfare, even the big action scene is based on research I’ve done on these things. Some of it may sound preposterous, but it’s all real – it’s either happened or could happen. Research is really my trademark – I’d never have written my “Colum’s Viking Captivity” stories, for instance, without reading a lot of books and articles beforehand. I couldn’t just say, he’s a Viking, he’s a captive, here’s some sex. That would be really boring to me.
8. If you had to choose, which writer would you consider a mentor?
Well, for the “Game Players” series, it’s Dorothy Dunnett. It would be really brazen and crazy of me to even compare myself to her works, but it’s her “House of Niccolo” series that’s inspired Marc and Jesse’s relationship. Her two characters are Nicolas and Gelis, and after Nicolas was responsible for Gelis’ sister’s death, the two of them embark on a love-hate relationship that goes on for novel after novel, with all these twists and turns in which Gelis takes her revenge, piece by piece, even as they draw closer and their unconsummated love gets more intense. They’re also two brilliant, troubled people who would just…die of boredom if their relationship wasn’t a game, if there wasn’t some intellectual competition. Of course, Jesse and Marc aren’t playing a game of revenge, one against the other, but I really took those characters as my role model for how two brilliant people would construct a relationship that could last.
9. What book are you reading now?
I’ve always got a novel and a nonfiction book going at once. I just finished “Take Down,” this really great action adventure set in Vegas, about a bunch of grifters who rip off casinos, and “Longbourn,” a novel set in the “Pride and Prejudice” household of the Bennets, but told from the viewpoint of the servants. Up next is “Fourth of July Creek,” about a social worker in the depths of backwoods Montana. For nonfiction I just started “Embers of War,” about the French in Vietnam, and everything that led up to American involvement there.
10. Can you share something about your works in progress?
I’d love to! Up next is a standalone story in the “Game Players” series about Ryan the escort, a character people just love from “Would I Lie to You?” His story is really writing itself already. Which is good, because I need to take some time to figure out where Marc and Jesse go from here. I don’t want to just phone in a sequel to stay hot, you know? It’s gotta be just as good or better than the first one. After that, I have a “good cop” novel, about a policeman in a rural California college town, and his relationship with a journalist from San Francisco. That was going to be my next one, but since “Lie” is taking off, I gotta strike while the iron is hot there!
About the author:
Brad Vance writes gay romance, erotica and paranormal stories and novels, including the breakout hits "A Little Too Broken" and "Have a Little Faith in Me."
Where to find the author: Facebook ~ Facebook Author Page ~ Twitter ~ Google+
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Series: The Game Players- Book: One
Release Date: April 24, 2015
Pages or Words: 289 pages
Categories: BDSM, Crime Fiction, M/M Romance, Thriller, Cybercrime
Publisher: Brad Vance
Cover Artist: Brad Vance
Goodreads
Blurb:
Software billionaire Marc Julian’s orderly life is shattered one night by a cyber-intrusion into his company’s servers. He’s always surrounded himself with the best people, but finding the culprit behind this might require a real expert...and sometimes it takes a thief to catch a thief.
Jesse Winchester and his team of “grey hat” hackers are suddenly available to Marc. Marc doesn’t know if he should trust Jesse with the keys to his company’s kingdom. After all, Jesse’s a convicted felon, sent to prison for violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. A felon sentenced to thirty-five years in prison, who mysteriously served only three years before being released…
Marc’s first company, his whole life, was shattered because he trusted the wrong person. This time there’s even more at stake, but few other options. Especially when his evil enemies, the billionaire industrialist Krom brothers, are revealed to be the source of the intrusion.
Is Jesse there to help Marc, or does he have his own history with the Kroms, his own score to settle? As Jesse and Marc spend more time together, their growing intimacy is at war with their need to win their respective battles. Soon the game they start to play with each other, against each other, becomes more exciting, more exquisitely frustrating…and more dangerous.
Sales Links: (Amazon exclusive) Amazon
Excerpt:
He’d made a mistake with Marc. He’d thought they could play a game together, to pass the time, let off steam, release stress. Marc was smart enough to know that that’s all it was.
Right?
But the look on his face, when Jesse said goodbye… The shock. The disappointment. The…
Say it. The hurt. That was when Jesse knew that for Marc, it had been more.
That was when Jesse knew that it had been more for him, too.
1. When and why did you begin writing?
I started writing when I was a kid, it was just a compulsion. I got these stories in my head and I had to write them down. I started with crazy science fiction stories about my dog, who was secretly the Empress of Dogonia, and the space dogs would come and rescue me from a lonely bullied childhood and take me to their planet!
2. When did you first consider yourself a writer?
I knew I was a writer for real, when I got my first byline in a newspaper. I started writing for the Bay Area Reporter in San Francisco, doing book and theater reviews, and eventually ended up with my own column. I knew then that I was gonna make it.
3. What inspired you to write your first book?
Well, rage was part of it LOL. I was on a project at my day job with a verbally abusive team leader, and I just thought…I need to double, triple my writing productivity if that’s what it takes to make a living at it, to make sure that I’m never in this situation again, where I just have to take this abuse. And I wrote “Given the Circumstances” in a white heat. I’m a huge football and baseball fan, so it was really fun to do the research, to dig into the NCAA regulations from that time period to see what was and wasn’t allowed, as far as practice activities, banned substances, etc. And I loved substituting Roger, the football player, for Tim Tebow in the final round of the Heisman selection. (Tebow didn’t exist in that universe!)
4. Do you have a specific writing style?
Yeah, I’d say so. I’m all about realistic dialogue. If you were to read my characters’ dialogue out loud, it wouldn’t sound like a turn of the century melodrama. It would sound like two people talking today, at the table next to you. I used to do a lot of narrative ranting, really inserting my opinions into the story, but I’ve stopped that, unless I have a single pithy line that just makes the point.
5. How do you come up with the titles?
Titles are tough sometimes, easy other times. “Would I Lie to You?” was an easy one. I just looked at that picture on a stock site (the model is Daniel Sobieray), and I could hear him say exactly that. “A Little Too Broken” came to me as part of the concept of the book – all the New Adult titles were coming out, oh they’re young beautiful and broken, can they love again, and I thought, shit, you don’t know broken. What if there were two characters who were just a little too broken, who couldn’t be magically fixed by the end of the book? And there it was.
6. Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?
I really don’t have a “message” in this one. These guys are very smart, very wary, very funny, very easily bored. I just wanted to write a story where two guys like that made a connection. They don’t just Do It So Hard on the first page; there’s a lot of sexual anticipation that they deliberately string out into a game, a competition. And folded up into that are their trust issues, of course, because Marc has very good reasons not to trust Jesse, and Jesse has very good reasons to hide things from Marc. They both know that going in, so the game is about who’s going to keep their lust reined in longer, who’s going to hold out for more from the other man before they go there.
7. How much of the book is realistic?
All of it! The grifting, the cyberwarfare, even the big action scene is based on research I’ve done on these things. Some of it may sound preposterous, but it’s all real – it’s either happened or could happen. Research is really my trademark – I’d never have written my “Colum’s Viking Captivity” stories, for instance, without reading a lot of books and articles beforehand. I couldn’t just say, he’s a Viking, he’s a captive, here’s some sex. That would be really boring to me.
8. If you had to choose, which writer would you consider a mentor?
Well, for the “Game Players” series, it’s Dorothy Dunnett. It would be really brazen and crazy of me to even compare myself to her works, but it’s her “House of Niccolo” series that’s inspired Marc and Jesse’s relationship. Her two characters are Nicolas and Gelis, and after Nicolas was responsible for Gelis’ sister’s death, the two of them embark on a love-hate relationship that goes on for novel after novel, with all these twists and turns in which Gelis takes her revenge, piece by piece, even as they draw closer and their unconsummated love gets more intense. They’re also two brilliant, troubled people who would just…die of boredom if their relationship wasn’t a game, if there wasn’t some intellectual competition. Of course, Jesse and Marc aren’t playing a game of revenge, one against the other, but I really took those characters as my role model for how two brilliant people would construct a relationship that could last.
9. What book are you reading now?
I’ve always got a novel and a nonfiction book going at once. I just finished “Take Down,” this really great action adventure set in Vegas, about a bunch of grifters who rip off casinos, and “Longbourn,” a novel set in the “Pride and Prejudice” household of the Bennets, but told from the viewpoint of the servants. Up next is “Fourth of July Creek,” about a social worker in the depths of backwoods Montana. For nonfiction I just started “Embers of War,” about the French in Vietnam, and everything that led up to American involvement there.
10. Can you share something about your works in progress?
I’d love to! Up next is a standalone story in the “Game Players” series about Ryan the escort, a character people just love from “Would I Lie to You?” His story is really writing itself already. Which is good, because I need to take some time to figure out where Marc and Jesse go from here. I don’t want to just phone in a sequel to stay hot, you know? It’s gotta be just as good or better than the first one. After that, I have a “good cop” novel, about a policeman in a rural California college town, and his relationship with a journalist from San Francisco. That was going to be my next one, but since “Lie” is taking off, I gotta strike while the iron is hot there!
About the author:
Brad Vance writes gay romance, erotica and paranormal stories and novels, including the breakout hits "A Little Too Broken" and "Have a Little Faith in Me."
Where to find the author: Facebook ~ Facebook Author Page ~ Twitter ~ Google+
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