GUEST POST with EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT: Rowan McAllister of 'We Met in Dreams'
Title: We Met In Dreams
Author: Rowan McAllister
Published: February 27, 2017
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Cover Artist: Ann Sikorska
Genre: Contemporary Romance; Historical European
Length: 268 Pages
Tags: Gay; M/M; Victorian Gothic
About We Met in Dreams
In Victorian London, during a prolonged and pernicious fog, fantasy and reality are about to collide—at least in one man’s troubled mind.
A childhood fever left Arthur Middleton, Viscount Campden, seeing and hearing things no one else does, afraid of the world outside, and unable to function as a true peer of the realm. To protect him from himself—and to protect others from him—he spends his days heavily medicated and locked in his rooms, and his nights in darkness and solitude, tormented by visions, until a stranger appears.
This apparition is different. Fox says he’s a thief and not an entirely good sort of man, yet he returns night after night to ease Arthur’s loneliness without asking for anything in return. Fox might be the key that sets Arthur free, or he might deliver the final blow to Arthur’s tenuous grasp on sanity. Either way, real or imaginary, Arthur needs him too much to care.
Fox is only one of the many secrets and specters haunting Campden House, and Arthur will have to face them all in order to live the life of his dreams.
Thanks very much to Kimmers for giving me space to talk about my newest release!
On other stops of the blog tour, I’ve talked a little about the research, and some heavy themes like mental illness and pollution, but in the end We Met in Dreams is a romance. It’s Arthur and Fox’s story. It’s the story of Arthur’s struggle to find a balance between who he is and who he believes he should be, and the story of a jaded man’s search for a little redemption, though he finds love instead. Both Arthur and Fox have heavy burdens to bear but those burdens are lessened when shared.
For me, one of the most beautiful things in the world is finding someone who loves you for who you are, be they friend, family, or significant other. (I didn’t include family of the four-legged variety, because we already know they love you just the way you are)
Take a peek!
Unable to say more, I shrugged, my gaze full of pleas I could not voice.
He seemed to understand at least some of it, because he growled and pulled me to his breast. “I don’t care about what you’re supposed to feel. I only care about what you do feel. The world outside these walls isn’t always right, Arthur. That’s the first thing you’ll learn when you’re able to experience it. Society is full of folly… but it is ever-changing as well. Only a few short decades ago, I could have been hanged for the kind of loving I’ve shared with others of our ilk. And today, it results in a mere prison sentence, scandal, and public shaming. You see?” he laughed bitterly. “Such vast improvements in so short a space should be lauded. Only think what the future may hold.”
His touch on my cheek was gentle despite the acid in his tone, and I managed a wobbly smile for him.
“You are not sorry for what we did?” he asked, his brows knit, his eyes soft with concern.
“No,” I replied, feeling the certainty of that sink in as I said the word.
“No regrets?”
“None,” I answered more confidently. I lifted my chin and laid my palm over his hand on my cheek. I could still feel the dampness there, and I brushed irritably at the evidence of my weakness. “However, you may have regrets, being tied to such a pathetic creature as I.” Of all the emotions swirling inside me, anger at myself was winning now. I’d ruined a perfectly beautiful moment with my weakness and my nerves.
“Don’t say that again,” he ordered harshly. He rolled on top of me, straddled my hips, and gave my shoulders a firm shake. “I regret nothing, and you are by no means pathetic. How long will it take before you believe me?”
“I believe you.”
“You don’t. I know you don’t.”
“I am ill, Fox,” I insisted. “You cannot deny that. I may get better. I may not. But this is how I am.” I had no idea why it was so important for him to acknowledge that fact right this moment, but I frowned defiantly at him until his scowl fell away and he sighed.
“I know this is how you are. I just don’t believe it is so great an obstacle as you think it.” He climbed off me and stretched out next to me again. With his chin propped in his palm and his gaze pensive, he said, “I happen to like how you are a great deal, actually.” He traced a lazy caress over my chest and down to my belly. I shivered and closed my eyes as he continued to draw patterns on my sensitized skin with his fingertips. “We all have flaws, Arthur. There isn’t a soul beyond these walls who is perfect. From childhood we’re taught how to act and what to say. We create masks to wear in society. Like papier-mâché, layer by layer we craft them. Then we paint them with respectability. But they only hide our real selves. They aren’t who we are. Only the dullest and simplest among us actually becomes the mask.”
“What does that make me, then?”
“You, my dear lad, are clever, charming, beautiful, passionate… and stronger than you think. Your mask is gossamer thin. That’s all. You hide nothing, and that’s wonderful.”
I grimaced and lowered my gaze to the palm he’d laid on my chest. “I hide more than you think.”
“You don’t have to. I don’t want you to. I want to see everything you feel.”
“But it isn’t how things are done outside. I need to learn, Fox. Just like I told my uncle, I can’t stay here forever. I have to change some things, or I’ll never be well. I’ll never be free.”
He sighed and moved his palm over my heart. “I know. I want you to have everything you desire, but you don’t have to worry about those things when it’s only the two of us. That’s the beauty of taking a lover,” he said with a grin. “Outside doesn’t matter when we’re together.”
I fiddled with his hand, stroking his fingers, before entwining them with my own. “I’m your lover now?” I asked tremulously.
“It would appear so,” he answered wryly. He was silent for a moment, and then he sighed. “If you really want me to, I can help you with your mask, but I like you better as you are.”
About the Author
Rowan McAllister is a woman who doesn’t so much create as recreate, taking things ignored and overlooked and hopefully making them into something magical and mortal. She believes it’s all in how you look at it. In addition to a continuing love affair with words, she creates art out of fabric, metal, wood, stone, and any other interesting scraps of life she can get her hands on. Everything is simply one perspective change and a little bit of effort away from becoming a work of art that is both beautiful and functional.
She lives in the woods, on the very edge of suburbia—where civilization drops off and nature takes over—sharing her home with her patient, loving, and grounded husband, her super sweet hairball of a cat, and a mythological beast masquerading as a dog. Her chosen family is made up of a madcap collection of people from many different walks of life, all of whom act as her muses in so many ways, and she would be lost without them.
