Storm Grant Fiction that's pretty, witty, straight and gay!

  Home      Bio      Blog      My Delicious     Contact       Online Fiction        Nonfiction     Links

Tart and Soul, complete at just under 15000 words, is a fun, angsty, and sexy tale of young hookers in love, now available from Torquere Press!

Cameron Fairchild is an ex-marine plagued by weird allergies and atypical PTSD. Following a violent incident in an upscale department store, the courts release him into the custody of his mother, San Francisco's premiere madam! He learns a great deal at his mother's knee, including how to get down on his own. During the course of his internship, he falls for a pretty young man he first attempts to recruit, and later rescues from a nasty pimp. Together they find love and happiness and a brand spankin' new definition of monogamy.

Reviews (read more here)
“not your average m/m romance”
“original gay romance with a sense of humor”
“refreshing, at times even wacky”
“strange but interesting”
“one of the most unlikely romances I've had the pleasure of reading”
“an unusual but charming read!”
“distinct, refreshing and enjoyable”
“this short yet definitely sweet story was an absolute pleasure to read”
“I would love to read more from this writer”

Excerpt:

Harsh fluorescents lit cold, still forms. Unnatural limbs twisted in grim postures. Cam felt covetous eyes tracking his feints and dodges as he threaded his way through unfamiliar terrain. He reached for his sidearm. Shit. Shit. Shit! Gone, along with his military career.

One of the locals approached him; he rebuffed her smoothly, unsure whom to trust. Desperately out of his element, Cam needed to reconnoiter the territory before attempting contact.

Sweat dampened his palms, leaving faint marks on the things he touched in passing. His heart rate spiked, his breathing grew erratic as he passed anxiety on his way to full-blown panic. He spied a man waiting in ambush around the next corner. A khaki-clad woman advanced from Cam’s left. Footsteps clack-clacked behind him. He swung right in terror, frantic to escape, his grasp on reality slipping.

A frontal attack then, a young boy with a chemical spray. Cam clawed at his eyes, mind racing through deadly possibilities: saran gas, napalm, cyanide. Which one smelled of lemons? Cam twisted ‘round, swinging, felling his assailant with a fierce right hook.

His skin itched and burned and his eyes swelled shut even as he tore his chemical-soaked clothing from his body, gasping, choking.

The enemy surrounded him now, a barrage of noise and fury. Cam, naked, weaponless and half-blind, struggled and fought. He kicked and punched at shadowy outlines until something cracked across the back of his head. His last blow flew wide as he folded in on himself, collapsing to the floor in slow motion. Black pinpricks danced across his vision, expanding and overlapping until nothing remained but darkness.

 * * *

Cam swam into consciousness one nauseating sense at a time. The reek of urine assailed him, competing with the acrid taste of stale vomit. He gagged, the taste of bile sour at the back of his throat. He cracked open one eye while hunting through hazy memories, trying to sort dreams from the merely surreal.

He lay on a cot of some sort, an old blanket over him. Naked beneath the blanket, Cam vaguely remembered being gassed, of ripping his saturated clothes off.

“Cameron Julius Fairchild, you’ve been arrested and are being held for questioning. Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

Cam expected the cell, and the interrogation. The familiar voice of the interrogator, though, shocked him. He rubbed crusty residue from his eyes, blinking to clear his vision. An elegant woman stood outside his cell, her arms crossed over her Chanel suit jacket.

“Uh, hi, Mom?” Cam shuddered; a headache beat a rough tattoo behind his eyes.

“So, Cameron. You want to tell me what that perfume boy ever did to you?”

Continued . . .