F.A.S.T. — Firefighter Assist and Search Team. Firefighter and surfing champion, Jerry Wallender, looks like a hero to the world, but he can’t see it. He keeps falling for these intellectual guys who end up making him feel dumb and unneeded. On top of that, Mick Cassidy, super-gorgeous firefighter and total homophobe, makes Jerry’s life miserable with his slurs. Then one day Mick’s nice to Jerry and, at the Firefighter’s Ball, Jerry offers a helping hand and ends up with a hand-job. What the hell is going on? Mick Cassidy is great with fighting fires and solving math problems but rotten with people. Raised by a gay-hating preacher, Mick’s carefully constructed world of gay bashing starts to crumble when he meets Jerry, the nicest, kindest man he’s ever known. Mick’s never wanted a woman and can’t stop thinking about sex with Jerry. In fact, he can’t stop doing it. Does that make him gay? And if he’s gay, what happens to his whole life? A hook-up between sweet Jerry and mean Mick might be total disaster — or the smartest idea Jerry ever had.

The Tale of the Title

Hi! I’m so happy to be here celebrating the release of my new book, FAST. Balls. Where, you might ask, did that title come from? It’s a bit of a story. I love book titles. I usually have my title before I write the book and it helps to guide my themes and plots. When I wanted to write a book about a bull rider and an interior decorator, I created the title Cowboys Don’t Ride Unicorns, which a lot of people love. Another favorite of readers is Wolf in Gucci Loafers, a story of a half-human werewolf who’s very fashionable! My Cinderella-story MM fairy tale has heroes named Mark Sintorella, called Sinders, and Ashton Armitage. Of course, the book is titled Sinders and Ash.

The titles and in fact the writing of my very popular series, Balls to the Wall, happened almost by accident. I created a book that I thought would be a stand-alone and, because two of the heroes are volleyball champions, I called it Volley Balls. The book was a big success and I decided to write more books in the series. All the books took on the naming convention and they all ended with Balls in the titles– Fire Balls, Beach Balls, and Snow Balls. But then I wanted to write a story about two firefighters. I had already used Fire Balls, and needed another Balls title. I was stumped — and that’s not easy to do with me and titles. I ran a contest on my blog and promised to dedicate the book to the winner. I got lots of great suggestions, but Mary G. told me that FAST stands for Firefighter Assist and Search Team. It’s an actual fire department term. The winner! I love the title and even built the FAST protocol into the storyline. Thank you so much, Mary. And I hope you all love Mary’s inspiration, FAST Balls!

For those who have asked, yes, Snow Balls will also be coming back in December, but even cooler, there are two more entirely new books coming to the series. High Balls will release in October and Bleu Balls in January of 2018. High Balls has two new heroes, but all the boys will be back as support characters and in Bleu Balls we get the love stories of the McMillan twins who you might remember from Snow Balls. I can’t wait for you to see the new books!