Strength In Numbers by Brad Vance #LGBT #BlogTour #Giveaway

Author Name: Brad Vance

Book Name: Strength In Numbers

Series: The Game Players

Book: Two

Series should be read in order.

Release Date: February 10, 2016

Pages or Words: 50,000 words

Categories: BDSM, Contemporary, Crime Fiction, Erotica, Fiction, M/M Romance, Mystery, Romance, Thriller

Publisher: Brad Vance

Cover Artist: Brad Vance

Blurb:

They’re back! In their first adventure, Marc Julian, software billionaire, and Jesse Winchester, hacker extraordinaire, survived the evil plans of the Krom Brothers and Jesse’s first lover, Chip. But Jesse has old debts to pay to Russian gangster Leonid Ivanov. Now Leonid is calling in those debts, demanding that Jesse find a great treasure for him, and a new game is set in motion…

The mysterious “Satoshi,” creator of the cybercurrency Bitcoin, has been hiding $400 million worth of the currency for years. But now, he has chosen to start a quest for the keys to the Hoard, and he who controls the keys controls the fortune. And this will be a quest that will test the strength, the will, and the character of those who pursue it.

But Marc and Jesse aren’t the only ones on the hunt, as old enemies resurface to try and beat them to the treasure… And even if they reach it first, they must ask themselves – do they really want to give a Russian gangster $400 million to pursue his deadly enterprises? And what would be the consequences if they don’t?

The pursuit will take them through the museums of Tokyo, the streets of Buenos Aires, and the coast of Mexico, in a desperate and dangerous race to keep the fortune in digital gold from the hands of all their enemies…

Buy link: Amazon

Goodreads Link: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6886454.Brad_Vance

Marc smiled as he made clinking sounds in the galley of his private jet. He already had the black slacks on, so it was the work of a moment to take off his polo shirt and slip into the white epauletted button-down short-sleeve shirt of a steward. The wings were already attached to the lapels, and he’d even had a name tag made.

“Here you go, sir,” he said as he handed Jesse his drink on a tray. Jesse was already involved in something on his phone, and he absentmindedly reached for it.

Then he paused, sensing that something had changed. He looked up to see Marc dressed as an airline steward, his eyes dancing with heat.

Marc didn’t smile as he said, “Is there anything else I can get you, sir?”

Jesse swallowed. “Maybe a warm blanket.”

Marc took the drink from his hand. He pressed a button on the side of Jesse’s chair.

“The seat fully reclines into a bed, sir. Let me make you comfortable.”

As the seat back flattened and the base lifted Jesse’s feet up, Marc pushed another button, and the chair’s arms lowered out of the way, which gave him room to straddle Jesse’s hips.

He put his hands on Jesse’s chest, and Jesse reached up to finger his collar. “How did you earn those wings, steward?”

Marc idly stroked Jesse’s hand where it lingered on the wings. “Oh, those, sir? For achieving membership in the Mile High Club. Are you a member?” Marc began to grind his ass against Jesse’s crotch, feeling the transformation below his slacks.

“You know, I am not. I’ve never been invited to join.”

Marc leaned in to whisper in his ear. “Let me be the first to welcome you, then.”

Today I’m very lucky to be interviewing Brad Vance, author of “Strength in Numbers,” the second book in the “Game Players” series, after “Would I Lie to You?” Hi Brad, thank you for agreeing to this interview. Tell us a little about yourself, your background, and your current book.

Thank you for having me!

How do you feel about e-books vs print books?

I love ebooks as a writer, and print books as a reader. Ebooks have enabled me to “control the means of production,” end to end. I write, edit, copy edit (okay, I get help there!), create the cover, the blurb, etc. I’ve had traditional publishing contracts, and nothing’s more frustrating than seeing that one cog in the machine that fails and ruins everything (terrible cover, for instance). I love the immediacy of ebooks, none of this nonsense of waiting a year to publish something. Strength In Numbers is hot off the press, right when people are talking about kids using sexting apps, corrupt prison guards, Bitcoin, etc. If I had a tradpub contract, all that would be old news in a year when it went to press. I was able to take the price of Bitcoin on publication day and insert it directly into the manuscript, which you could never do in tradpub. You’d just have to guess and hope that it didn’t soar or crash in the meantime, and the currency’s current value is a critical plot point.

And, when you screw things up in an ebook, you can just…fix and republish! I always feel sorry for these nonfiction authors who get reviewed in the New York Times by a fellow expert/enemy in the field, and they get totally reamed for three small errors…and those errors are there forever, in print, or at least until the paperback version. Whereas I’m free to remake my book at any time, fix what’s broken on the spot.

As a reader, though, I love print. I love that I own the book, which means I can loan it to my technophobic mom, or I can resell it for not much less than I paid for it, if it’s relatively new. And of course I can decorate with them, which you can’t with ebooks, obviously! And I stare at a screen reading all day for work – the last thing I want to do when I relax with a book is stare at one more.

What process did you go through to get your first book published?

My first tradpub book went through the usual grind. I met someone who introduced me to his agent, who got me a deal for my Binky/Doan series (long out of print in paper, but which I repubbed as ebooks). I was never very good at working with publishers, though, and I fell out with my agent, my publishers, etc. They’d say, “write a 100,000 word book” and I’d finish a story that was far shorter, and the length was right for that story, but publishers specify words by the yard. That’s why you read so many books, especially thrillers, that get stuffed with extraneous meetings and conversations and such in the middle – somebody’s got to kill the pace of their story to make a contractual word count.

And the royalty thing is bullshit, of course – they know from BookScan how much money your book is making every day, but they pretend they have one little man with a green eyeshade and a calculator in the back room, and that’s why it takes so long to pay you. And don’t get me started on “reserve on returns” and all the other ways they screw you. As a publisher, Amazon is a ruthless beast in so many ways, but…they always pay on time. Every month I get a direct deposit, rain or shine. I remember having to pursue my agent for a royalty check, and she once said, “I can’t get anything done right now, Mercury is in retrograde!”

My first ebook came about when Aubrey Watt did an AMA on Reddit in 2012 about being a “smut writer.” That was back when you could make some serious bank writing short erotica. I read one of her stories and thought, hmm, I have a dirty mind…I can do this. I knocked out a story (Good Cop, Bad Boy, now in my Seven Hits anthology) and sent it to her, and asked if she thought I could do this for a living. Hell yeah! she responded enthusiastically, and I was off to the races. She also introduced me to a self publisher’s forum where I learned all about EPUBs and making covers and writing blurbs and chasing trends. I absolutely love the total control and independence I have now.

How do you find or make time to write?

You can’t find time to write. You have to make time. For years, I had a full time job on top of my budding selfpub career. So I had to get up at 4 am every morning, to have 2-3 hours of writing / publishing / marketing time before I knocked off at 6:30 to get ready for the day job. I’m not a night person, so I knew if I tried to do it when I came home, it would not happen. I did this every day until I made good my escape from Cubicle City. Later I discovered this was exactly what Elmore Leonard did, getting up at the same time to do the same thing before his day job! You have to want it so bad that you’ll go to bed at 9 pm every night, get up at 4 am, every day. Even now I still wake up very early, it’s so ingrained in my psyche that “this is when we write.”

Name one person who you feel supported you outside of your family members?

I won’t name names, but my hard core fans who’ve been with me for years have bucked me up lots of times when I felt frustrated, doomed, stymied, on the verge of failure, enraged when I saw crappy books succeed when mine failed. Their passion for my work was there when mine wasn’t. It’s hard to survive in selfpub, all the odds are against you, and Amazon stacks them ever more against you every day by squeezing the compensation lower all the time. I know it’s the tritest corniest bullshit in the galaxy to say “I couldn’t do it without my fans,” but it’s fucking true. I’d have given up long ago without that support.

Tell us about a book you’re reading now.

Well, it’s gonna sound like “Egghead’s Corner,” but I’m participating in the “Infinite Winter” reading group. It’s a bunch of people who’ve committed to read David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, an 1100 page novel with copious endnotes you have to refer to constantly (or you’ll miss key plot points). It’s like James Joyce’s Ulysses – you can read it on your own, but you’ll miss a lot, and probably give up unless you have that accountability to a group of people to finish. But I’m always looking for novels that both challenge and entertain me – I think a novel is a failure if it doesn’t suck you into its world, make you care about the people, but also teach you something you’d never know otherwise.

Meet the author:

Brad Vance writes gay romance, erotica and paranormal stories and novels, including the breakout hits “A Little Too Broken” and “Given the Circumstances.” Keep up with Brad at www.BradVanceErotica.wordpress.com, email him at BradVanceErotica@gmail.com, and friend him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/brad.vance.10

Where to find the author:

Facebook: www.facebook.com/brad.vance.10

Blog: www.bradvanceerotica.wordpress.com

Twitter: @BradVanceAuthor

G+: https://plus.google.com/u/1/+BradVance/about