I don’t have a release date yet on Saugatuck Summer, but I’m anticipating it will be spring or summer, 2014. Saugatuck Summer is part new adult/coming of age and part romance. My protagonist, Topher Carlisle, is a 21-year-old college student at a critical time in his life, trying to work out his troubled relationships in his family, reconcile his history of abuse, and figure out where he’s going personally, academically, and financially.
In this segment, he meets his best friend’s father for the first time.
I turned back to trudge up the beach toward the house.
When I reached the bottom of the stairs climbing the dune, a man was coming down. He was dressed preppy-sharp: stonewashed blue Oxford shirt, well-fitted tan slacks. He appeared to be out for a stroll, not coming down to lay around the beach.
He looked like Robert Redford in his prime. Only not quite. The bone structure had that same sort of chiseled definition, but the eyes — which I could see only by virtue of the fact that his sunglasses were that weird sort where the lenses were tinted at the top but not actually dark — were long-lashed and feminine, more like Tom Hiddleston. And the mouth was softer and fuller, like David Wenham.
So, okay. He was basically an amalgamation of every redheaded man to ever turn my crank (and how!) And he lived in a popular gay resort town, which meant the chances were above average that he might actually be interested. Watching him trot lightly down those stairs to the beach, I realized what my objective this summer would be.
Agent Carlisle, your mission, should you choose to accept it, will be to find out which of these residences belongs to Mr. Strawberry-Blond Hunka Burnin’ Love and convince him to have sex with you on every horizontal surface — and against a few of the vertical ones.
I was so up for that gig.
He flashed a smile at me as he reached the bottom of the stairs and slid his sunglasses down his nose, revealing eyes so dark and sparkling a blue they made sapphires turn green with envy. And he had deep smile-creases in his cheeks, too long to be called dimples. Suddenly I wondered if my loose shorts were loose enough.
And he was smiling like he knew me. What—?
His hand darted out to shake mine. “Hi, you must be Topher. I’m Morgan’s dad, Brendan Gardner.”
Abort mission! Abort! Abort! Abort!
Seriously? Fuck my life.
The fiction of Amelia C. Gormley 