Happy Saturday, everyone, and welcome to Christopher Koehler’s All That Is Solid Melts Into Air blog tour.
Enjoy Christopher’s guest post, and then be sure to click on the Rafflecopter widget below to enter for the chance to win a $25 Gift Card.
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Cameos
Thank you very much for giving me space to talk about All That Is Solid Melts Into Air (ATISMIA) and one of my very favorite things to do, give characters from previous books walk-ons in later books. Seriously, I live for this and it got totally out of hand in ATISMIA.
If you’ve read Poz—and if not, why not?—you’ll know that Brad St. Charles is still kicking around the Cap City Rowing club. They’ll have to pepper spray him to get him to leave. It was a way for me to check in with one of my favorite characters from the original CalPac series and a way for me to let my readers know how he’s doing, too. Tough luck for them, I guess, if they don’t like Brad, although of all the people in the original quartet of books, he’s the one who showed the most personal growth. Nick and Morgan virtually disappeared after Rocking the Boat, which is interesting, because I have more to say about them, I’m just not sure what and have no plans to address it or them.
One of the things I’ve struggled to do is keep the chronology moving, both within the CalPac books and as I’ve moved from CalPac to “The Lives of Remy and Michael” series. The characters age. Freddie Cochrane from Settling the Score exemplifies this the best. He’s five in STS. In ATISMIA, Fred (as he prefers to be called now) is approximately twelve. I used Fred to figure out the ages of the original CalPac characters, actually.
So, what this means is that there are approximately six or seven years between the CalPac books and “The Lives of Remy and Michael,” depending on when you start and stop counting. Remember, between Rocking the Boat and Tipping the Balance, the original CalPac crew graduated. Settling the Score opened after Stuart had graduated and before he started medical school. The point to all of this is that those original CalPac rowers were in their late twenties in ATISMIA, with Nick and Drew a few years older. Remember, Nick is eight years older than Morgan, so if Morgan is, say, twenty-eight in ATISMIA, then Nick is thirty-six.
So will the original men from the CalPac books make more cameos in Finding Solid Ground, as I plan to title third book in “The Lives of Remy and Michael”? Probably, but FSG will be set ten years after ATISMIA, which means Nick Bedford will be forty-six. That’ll be easy to write, because I’m forty-five right now, so I’ll know exactly what aches, pains, and reading glasses he’ll have ;-)
That also means Fred Cochrane will be twenty-two in FSG and probably be in his last year of coxing for CalPac…
As for other cameos? I have had to sit on my hands not to connect the CalPac/Cap City world to the world of First Impressions….
Title: All That is Solid Melts into Air
Series: The Lives of Remy and Michael: Book Two
Author: Christopher Koehler
Publisher: Harmony Ink Press
Publication Date: 22 Jan 2016
Cover Artist: Bree Archer
Genre: Contemporary, Gay, New Adult
Blurb: The Lives of Remy and Michael: Book Two
A CalPac Crew Story
I thought life after high school would be easier. I’d go to California Pacific for a year while I got a handle on my HIV, then after Michael graduated from high school, we’d blast out of here for colleges—and life—on the East Coast. Then I visited Boston and everything changed. I realized I like CalPac. Turns out, Boston didn’t have anything for me beyond one of the biggest regattas in North America.
Life grew more complicated when I got home. I couldn’t find a way to tell Michael that I’d just blown our plan for our lives out of the water. Then my CalPac coaches dropped a bomb on me. Those rowing officials who’d been watching me? They were recruiters for the national team, and my coaches wanted me to try out. They’d even let Lodestone coach me. Now I have to choose, school or crew, CalPac or Michael, and I still haven’t told Michael I can’t transfer. Is there even a place for Michael in my life? Somehow we have to withstand training at the highest levels and having different goals. Will love hold us together… or tear us apart?
Buy Links: Dreamspinner Press || Amazon US || Amazon International || All Romance eBooks
About the Author: Christopher Koehler learned to read late (or so his teachers thought) but never looked back. It was not, however, until he was nearly done with grad school in the history of science that he realized that he needed to spend his life writing and not on the publish-or-perish treadmill. At risk of being thought frivolous, he found that academic writing sucked all the fun out of putting pen to paper.
Christopher is also something of a hothouse flower. Inside of almost unreal conditions he thrives to set the results of his imagination free, and for most of his life he has been lucky enough to be surrounded by people who encouraged both that tendency and the writing. Chief among them is his long-suffering husband of twenty-two years and counting.
When it comes to writing, Christopher follows Anne Lamott’s advice: “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.” So while he writes fiction, at times he ruthlessly mines his past for character traits and situations. Reality is far stranger than fiction.
Christopher loves many genres of fiction and nonfiction, but he’s especially fond of romances, because it is in them that human emotions and relations, at least most of the ones fit to be discussed publicly, are laid bare.
Writing is his passion and his life, but when Christopher is not doing that, he’s an at-home dad and oarsman with a slightly disturbing interest in manners and other ways people behave badly.
Visit him at http://christopherkoehler.net/blog or follow him on Twitter @christopherink.
The Giveaway
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Tour Dates and Stop:
22 Jan – Dreamspinner Press Blog
23 Jan – Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words
26 Jan – BFD Book Blog
28 Jan – The Land of Make Believe
30 Jan – Prism Book Alliance
1 Feb – MM Good Book Reviews
3 Feb – JP Barnaby
6 Feb – The Novel Approach
9 Feb – The Purple Rose Teahouse
10 Feb – Diverse Reader
The Fine Print:
*Entrants must be 18 years or older to qualify
*All comments must be relevant to the author’s prompt to be eligible (when applicable)
*The Novel Approach will not be held liable for prize delivery unless otherwise specified
*Void where prohibited by law
The Novel Approach Reviews 
Cameos are probably one of the best reasons for reading series books I enjoy catching up with previous characters having a little peek into their lives.
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That’s probably why I do it. I like to keep in touch with old friends, too.
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I am ambivalent bout cameos to be honest. I like them when they are subtle. But dislike them when they overtake the story and put the two main guys in the background.
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I see that. Visits are great, but these people have had their day in the sun. It’s someone else’s turn, now.
In the case of ATISMIA, I’m not too worried about it. It’s written in the first person, so everything that happens is from Remy’s POV. It would be impossible to overshadow him. Then, too, his is a very strong personality.
From a craft standpoint, I’ve read too many books that hop from head to head, if that makes sense. Even in writing in third-person close, I’ve learned to pick a viewpoint character and stick with him (or her, but not in this genre). As a reader, head hopping makes me stabby, so I try not to do it to my own readers. With cameos, that’d be all too easy.
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I like cameos, esp if it’s for characters I really love. I like to see what they are up to. I’ve added this to my buy pile
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Thanks :-)
As a reader, I always like to know what people are up to, and this way I can let my readers know what’s going on with people from the previous series in this world without committing to an actual book.
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This is the first I’ve learned of these series, they sound cool. I’m a person whose life revolved around water living on a sailboat, and actually, think life after that is more interesting, so it got got attention!
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I enjoyed this post. Thanks for sharing some background info
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