Guest Post, Exclusive Excerpt, and Giveaway: Mended with Gold by Lee Welch

We’re so pleased to have author Lee Welch joining us on the Mended with Gold blog tour. Lee’s chatting about heroes with us today, and there’s also a giveaway, so be sure to check out the entry details below.

Welcome, Lee!

Superheroes vs Real Heroes

In Mended with Gold, Joe, one of the main characters, makes comics – he both draws and writes them. Lots of people immediately think of superheroes when they hear the word ‘comics’. Alex, the photographer who falls in love with Joe, first thinks of Superman and Batman. But when it comes to Joe’s comics, Alex couldn’t be more wrong.

Joe’s superheroes, when he features them at all, are hopeless, with useless superpowers, or so pompous no-one can stand them. There are lots of faded superheroes like this in the comics world – ordinary people, with mortgages, expanding waistlines and relationship problems. And a superpower.

Joe’s comics are set in the small imaginary town of New Erewhon and feature an eclectic cast of real people, animals and anthropomorphised objects. There’s a talking fish, a bucket having an existential crisis, and a horse that quotes Kierkegaard. Alex has never read anything quite like it. And it makes him laugh, at a time in his life when laughter sometimes feels a long way away.

Joe is, gently, one of the most anti-establishment people Alex has ever met. Joe doesn’t like violence, money, ‘being cool’, or authority (well, he might like a bit of authority in the bedroom!) and his mockery of superheroes is borne out of that dislike; it’s a reaction against the deification of muscle-bound tough guys who solve their problems by hitting things.

Joe is far more likely to hero-worship someone for their artistic vision, for their creativity and kindness – someone socially adept, who can speak confidently in public (Joe’s worst nightmare), and who’s lived a life rich in experience. Someone who values the peace and loneliness of the wild beaches Joe loves, and who never makes fun of other people’s imperfections.

Someone, in fact, exactly like Alex.

About the Book

Buy Links: Amazon US | Amazon UK
Publisher: MLR Press
Length: 27,000 words approx.
Blurb: A photographer with post-traumatic stress disorder falls for a comics artist on a wild New Zealand beach, but can he find true love when he feels so wounded by life?

Everything changed when the bomb exploded. Forty-five-year old, Alex Cox worked as an international photographer until a deadly explosion left him with post-traumatic stress disorder. Emotionally wounded, and desperate for a sense of safety, he’s run all the way to wild and remote Kahawai Bay, New Zealand.

Under the worst possible circumstances, Alex meets Joe, a shy young comics artist. Joe lets Alex into his playful, gentle world of comics, and soon Alex is falling for him, hard. Alex longs for more. Joe is reticent. But is it shyness? Or does Joe not want a much older lover with ‘issues’? Or is something else keeping them apart?

This is a tender and uplifting story about creativity, adversity, true love, and comics.

The Excerpt

Now he had a surname, Alex Googled Joe Taylor Wellington artist, and clicked on images, hoping equally for photos of the artist, or more of his pictures. What he got was a website offering page after page of comics. All in the same style as the one lying on his bedside table, but in colour.

Joe’s comics were set in the small town of New Erewhon and featured an eclectic cast of real people, animals, and anthropomorphised objects. Edith made an appearance, along with a talking fish, and a bucket having an existential crisis. There was a knight in armour who was a caricature of Joe himself with a pot on his head, riding an old white horse around the country roads. The horse, named Blue, sometimes hung out in Joe’s leaf-roofed house and quoted Kierkegaard when Joe was sad. The horse smoked marijuana in secret behind its stall, and then craved oats, which Joe couldn’t afford.

For Alex, comics were a childhood thing: Superman, Batman, Mickey Mouse. As an adult, they’d barely been on his radar. But as he read, the world Joe had created began to grow on him. And when he reached a storyline with Joe’s green snowflake sweater as a character in its own right, he laughed out loud. In the comic, Joe treated the sweater carelessly, not realising that at night it came to life and roamed the dark hillsides, causing mischief and performing mysterious rituals.

No one had any money in Joe’s comics. Their lives were not glamorous. Characters sometimes died or got eaten or were simply thrown away. The remaining characters suffered from ennui or thwarted love affairs. Their ambitions were often ridiculous. Occasionally, Joe put superheroes into his storylines. They wore spandex suits and tried to do good, but they were all hopeless, with useless talents, or so pompous no one could stand them.

But a thread of joy or hope ran through all of Joe’s stories. Ingenuity and kindness always won through, and people were seldom alone unless they wanted to be. In the bleakest storylines, there was always a suggestion of redemption in the final panel. Even as the bucket concluded that life wasn’t worth living, another bucket was washed up on the shore behind him, weakly calling for help. The storylines were so tight, the art so accomplished, and the characters so nuanced, that they drew Alex in to a world he didn’t want to leave.

Defining Joe from his comics was more difficult, because while his website’s About page stated that they were semi-autobiographical, his flights of fancy made it difficult to know which things had really happened and which had not. Quite a lot of the older comics had the ‘Joe’ character pining after a beautiful mermaid, and Alex’s heart sank, because that seemed to signal pretty clearly where the real Joe’s romantic interests might lie.

But the mermaid tired of Joe, and Joe met the Prince Frog, a charmer who became crueler and more frog-like with every kiss. Of course, it was a work of fiction. Of course, it was none of Alex’s business. Of course, a comic in which a sweater came alive and horses talked philosophy was hardly proof of anything. But all the same, Alex couldn’t help lingering over the panels in which Joe lay in bed with the Prince Frog, or tried to hold his webbed hand.

Eventually, Alex tore himself away from the world of New Erewhon. He found that there was a book, a collection from a publisher called Earth’s End Comics. He bought it, and fetched the pencilled comic strip Joe had left behind, Alex’s own personal piece of New Erewhon. Perhaps he could reciprocate with a print of a photograph. There was a dark room at the studio. He knew exactly which image he’d choose.

About the Author

Lee Welch wrote her first book aged seven (a pastiche of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) and first had an idea for an m/m romance aged twelve. She loves books and comics, and when she’s not writing, she’ll probably be reading. Her favourite authors include Ursula Le Guin, Graham Greene, Linda Medley, Dylan Horrocks and KJ Charles. By day, Lee works as an editor and business communications adviser, mainly persuading people not to say ‘utilise’ when they mean ‘use’. Her job has led her to work in areas as diverse as mental health, nursing, accident prevention and the criminal justice sector.

Lee loves to hear from readers. You can find her at: Website || Twitter || Facebook

The Giveaway

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Follow the Tour

November 17 – BooksLaidBareBoys, Slashsessed, Valerie Ullmer, Gay Media Reviews, The Geekery Book Review, MM Good Book Reviews
November 18 – Love Bytes
November 20 – BFD Book Blog, Zipper Rippers
November 21 – Gay Book Reviews
November 22 – Dog-Eared Daydreams, Making It Happen
November 23 – Diverse Reader
November 24 – A Book Lover’s Dream, Archaeolibrarian – I Dig Good Books, OptimuMM, Jim’s Reading Room
November 25 – The Novel Approach
November 27 – Mirrigold: Musings & Mutterings, Hoards Jumble, Hearts On Fire Reviews, Diverse Reader, Au Boidoir Ecarlate
November 28 – Alpha Book Club