RELEASE BLITZ with EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT and GIVEAWAY: 'Winter Burning' by Rain Carrington

Title: Winter Burning

Author: Rain Carrington

Release Date: May 18, 2017

Publisher: Self-Published/AAS Publishing

Cover Artist: A.J. Corza/Seeing Static

Genre: Contemporary Romance; Erotic Romance

Length: 400 Pages

Tags: Gay; M/M

About Winter Burning

James Snow Bringer is an impressionable young Native American man living on the Montana sheep farm his family has owned for decades. His life on the reservation bores him to death and James yearns to see more of the world. During a trip into town, he meets a bus load of hippies, headed to a commune. When he goes to stay with them, he gets a taste of a different world which only wets his appetite to learn more. Wyman Crow has faced hate many times and serving his country in Vietnam, and losing his lover there, only makes things worse. He returns home with the deep-seated knowledge that he will always be hated for his skin color wherever he is. It takes some time, but Wyman learns to accept himself and vows to become the warrior his ancestors were, the only way he can. He tells their stories. Wyman will not lie down and let bigots win, determined to fight for equality in a world that doesn’t want him. A chance meeting at a pow-wow brings James and Wyman together where they quickly succumb to mutual attraction. Wyman falls in love with the innocent young man but when James persists in asking questions about who their people are, Wyman decides to do more than tell him. He shows him. When they embark on a journey of discovery together, James is eager to learn. He’s not prepared for what he finds. Winter Burning – An epic tale of painful truth, hatred, and most important of all, deep and abiding love.

The sound of moving water was getting increasingly louder the farther they went in and up the trail. James knew they were going towards a waterfall; he’d seen a couple in his day, a ledge of a creek or river rising some, letting the water cascade over rocks to the bed below. They had been lovely, but nothing that impressed him much.

Then, when they arrived, all his preconceived notions were swept away as he stared in absolute awe at the sight in front of him.

They’d had to climb around a little, but they ended up back on the trail. The creek ran sluggishly, but that wasn’t what he stared at. Like a gigantic hand, a wall of brilliant white ice emerged from a crevice in the top of the hill and spread out fifty feet down the side, fingers of ice reaching to the creek below like it was trying to grab it and hold on to the liquid that trickled through the ice around the edges.

Wyman’s hand was in his, and though their gloves prevented their skin from touching, he felt Wyman anyway. “What do you think?”

It was so big, dramatic, even. He felt his eyes widen at the sight, though the sun reflecting off the frozen water made it hard. He couldn’t have blinked if he tried, his eyes frozen like the sight in front of him. “It’s…damn. I…I can’t explain.”

Leigh laughed at his lack of ability to form words, but not in a mocking way. “It’s the hand of the Great Spirit! Man, dig it, reaching for us, showing us that Mother Earth and Father Sky are always and forever one!”

“That’s so fucking deep.”

Again she laughed, the sound childlike and joyous. She took a lighter from her pocket and lit the dried sage in her hand, walking over to them as the smoke made a woodsy, sweet scent in the brisk air. Wyman let go of his hand and stripped off his gloves, holding both hands over the smoke and scooping it toward him, like it was water and he was washing his face with it.

“A ho,” Wyman whispered, his eyes closed and his face slack like hers had been as she picked it.

When she held it to James, he mimicked what he’d seen Wyman do, and felt the smoke over his face, warm for a second, the smell surrounding him. He, too, closed his eyes, the worries of the recent times flowing away from him. The tense way his shoulders had been for days suddenly relaxed and he smiled without knowing why.

“Wyman, dance for us!” Leigh laughed and James opened his eyes to the falls, the frozen white falls, knowing that was exactly what he wanted.

“Yeah, Wyman, please? Dance.”

He smiled at both of them and asked, “You two eat a bunch of peyote or something? Now? Here?”

“Where better, brother? Here, under sky and on this earth, celebrate it with us!”

James didn’t usually get excited about things, not like this. He figured this was the way he’d feel at a rock concert, shaking with excitement, ready to jump around, clapping and screaming. A rock concert didn’t sound like anything at the moment, not unless Mick Jagger and the boys would come and play right here, just for the three of them. “Please?”

Reluctant, Wyman’s face was darkening with the flush of blood. His protests gave way to reverence. “Fine. Clap a beat for me, like the drums. Not too fast at first.”

James did him one better and crouched down, drumming on his thin thighs as Leigh started to clap. It took them a few seconds to get in sync, but once they had, James saw his lover transform.

It started with his face, his eyes closing and his head bobbing a bit, his torso turning one way, then the other. He bounced with the beat and his mouth opened as he started to sing.

“Yes, brother,” Leigh sang out, clapping a little faster, so James had to catch up.

There it was, that face he’d become so enraptured by at the powwow. Everything was gone, Wyman was gone. He was left with only the beat of the makeshift drums inside of him as his body moved with it. Controlled by it, but uncontrolled as well. He wasn’t a marionette on a string, he was fluid and unburdened of every worry known to modern man, taken back to a time when all there was, was sun and wind, family and a nice fire.

There were no cars, no television. His body was as natural as the branches of a tree moving in the breeze of a winter evening. Cold, warm, hot, it didn’t matter, he embraced it.

James watched his feet, the way they stomped the ground and were back in the air so quickly, it was a blur. The way he turned, the way his head lifted and fell. Wyman’s arms lifted to the sky as his voice rang out, no longer singing any kind of words. This was no language, except for a cry that could have been the wind through the rocks of a mountaintop, or a call of an eagle as it fell to earth to capture its prey. It resounded inside of him, and James knew then that he would love this man for the rest of his life.

Wyman was the animals, the earth, and the sky. He was the stone, the river, the tree. He was a part of this all, and with him, James was feeling his part as well.

Leigh’s hands stopped, and James realized that his had too. When Wyman stopped dancing, it was because he fell to the ground, his knees in the tamped down snow. James fell to his knees as well and watched him, the tears falling from his eyes. As he crawled to Wyman, he did so slowly, carefully.

“Wyman…”

His head hung and he turned it enough to look at James out of the corner of his glossy eye. “I’m okay, Mѐ’oo’o. It’s this place. I feel them here.”

“Who?”

His laughter came out choked. “Them. The old ones.”

Leigh was standing and he felt her hands on his shoulders as she whispered, “The ancestors. If you try, you can feel them everywhere. You can hear their voices and sing their songs.”

“Like Wyman just did?”

Wyman confirmed, “Yeah. They were coming through me. See, James, I don’t want you to learn only the bad. The killing times, massacres, theft of our land. I want you to learn the heartbeat of this land. Who came before, and who still guides us all.”

Their voices were quiet, reverent. They were respecting…something. Whether it was the ghosts of those who’d lived there centuries ago, or the earth itself, he didn’t know. All he knew was that his own voice was like theirs. “I want to know more.”

Meet the Author

Carrington started writing when she was just a teenager in Trinidad, Colorado but didn’t start writing M/M romance until much later. Through the years many of her gay male friends told stories of heartache and the struggle to find “the one” so she told them stories, fantasies all about them and their future cowboy, fireman, biker or policeman. When she found a writing site that encouraged her to write them down she started what was an adventure like she never had before. Her first story, Cabin Fever, about a young man searching for love and finding it wrapped in a member of a mafia family gained her readers who cheered for more. She knew then that she had found her place in the world. To make stories of love and kink that not only her readers but she could get lost in as well.

She fights for LGBT rights from her home as best she can now and keeps in close contact with her friends that fight on two good legs to point them where they should go. She is a fervent believer that one door never closes without another opening so there are no limits she can’t get past.

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