Kai knows there’s no escape without a lot of talent, hard work—and luck: Teardown, LGBT Fiction by William Campbell Powell Book Tour with Guest Post & Giveaway

 

TEARDOWN

William Campbell Powell

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GENRE:  

LGBT+ Romance ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BLURB:

Growing up in a dead-end, Thames Valley town like Marden Combe, Kai knows there’s no escape without

a lot of talent, hard work—and luck.

Two weeks before the Clayton Paul Blues Band plans to set out on tour to Germany, their singer quits, and drummer Kai takes matters in hand. With bandmates Jake and Jamie, they recruit a talented new singer—the enigmatic Dominique—as the new face of the band and set out on the road to Berlin in a rickety white van.

Dogged by mishaps and under-rehearsed, the band stumbles through their first shows, zig-zagging between

chaos and brilliance. But as the first gig in Berlin draws near, the band begins to gel. They’re clicking with

their audience, and even the stone-hearted Kai starts to crumble under the spell, first of Dom and then…

of Lars.

As the end of the tour approaches, Kai must make hard choices. Dom? But she’s keeping a dark secret. Lars?

Not after the acrimony of their last parting. The band? Or will that dream crumble too?

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EXCERPT

So I pulled the mic stand around to the side of the kit, set it up so it didn’t get in the way of the hi-hat,

and we gave it a go. I picked ‘I Come from the Blues’, which was one of Clay’s compositions.

It had fallen out of the set sometime in the last six months, but I loved Clay’s soft, jazzy butterscotch

vocals on it. If it had been up to me, it would still be in the set, but Clay had said he wanted to move on.

Where did I come from? I come from the blues.

Where am I going? I’m going to lose.

Where is my future? I’m sure I have none.

Where is my hope? My hope is all gone.

I’ve always sung along—off-mic and under my breath—so I didn’t have any trouble fitting the words

in the right places. And I’ve got decent pitch and rhythm. So I think I did all right.

Now, Jamie wouldn’t meet my eye.

“What?” I demanded. “What was wrong with that?”

He mumbled something.

“I can’t hear you, bro. What did he say, Jake?”

Jake looked away. He didn’t want to get involved in any squall between me and my brother.

Besides, he’d used up all his words for the day.

“I’m not sure how to put this, Kai. You’ve got a good voice. It’s, well…not very, well, rock’n’roll.

No…grit. Too pure. Sorry.”

“I see.”

“Look, we’ll ask around our friends. Social media. There’s got to be something online.”

I didn’t say anything. I was thinking lots though. About how I’d discovered that this was something

I really wanted to do.

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Guest Topic:

Topic: Did you have a minor character who insisted on playing a larger role 

in the story. If so, please tell us about it. And if not, please tell me how you get the characters in your head to behave.

Hi, and thanks for inviting me to talk about a minor character who assumed a much larger role.

Well, that question just made me grin so much! Yes, my characters are such an unruly bunch. 

It doesn’t help that – as an author – I’m a pantser. I don’t sit down and map out the novel from start to finish. I start with an idea, and usually a mental picture of one or two scenes – maybe the ending, but not always. And then I just start writing.

So, there’s a key section in the book where the band has got to Berlin, and instead of a conventional “pub/club” performance – the band on stage, the audience properly segregated in seats or at tables, it’s a private party, and the host has explicitly encouraged them to mingle. It’s at this party that Kai, the main character, first meets Lars, one of the potential love interests. But there are a lot of other 

interactions going on, ripples that spread out and resurface throughout the story.

One of these is with ‘Orange Fedora Guy’ – I won’t say what he was originally called, because it wasn’t very complimentary. He was added as a bit of comedy relief, a man with the habit of engaging everyone he meets in conversations about guitars. Conversations? Well, maybe monologues would be a better description.

In an early draft, he corners the band’s guitarist, Jake, and is bending his ear – though Jake was doing some ear-bending of his own, when Kai needs to re-unite Jake with someone special. It doesn’t look like that conversation is going to end any time soon…

So Kai takes one for the team and takes Jake’s place. And that should have been that.

But my editor picked up on the character’s original name – rightly so – so I gave him the ‘Orange Fedora’ appellation, and thought that was job done. But no. He wanted a bit of backstory, and an apology for being made fun of. Which I gave him, via Kai. And I went off to go fix a couple of other plot problems.

“I can help…”

It was Orange Fedora Guy. Now named Helge Klein.

“You? How can you help?” I replied.

“Jake needs a guitar, right?”

I nodded. Jake had lost his guitar. But that was fine. Dom had a credit card…”

“That’s a cop-out solution. And Dom’s credit is fraying. My backstory…”

“Right. You own the Orange Fedora guitar store.”

He smiled, like you do when you hold all the cards. He and Jake had had a long conversation about guitars, and he’d also heard Jake play. Who better to find Jake a new guitar?

And the other plot point? 

Sorry-not-sorry, but you’ll have to read the book to find that out.

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

William lives in a small Buckinghamshire village in England. By night he writes speculative, historical, crime and other fiction. His debut novel, EXPIRATION DAY, was published by Tor Teen in 2014 and won the 2015 Hal Clement Award for better than half-decent science in a YA novel—the citation actually says "Excellence in Children's Science Fiction Literature".

William’s latest novel - TEARDOWN - was published 10th December 2024, by NineStar Press in the US; it is an LGBT+ romance/road-trip.

His short fiction has appeared in DreamForge, Metastellar, Abyss & Apex and other outlets.

By day he writes software for a living and in the twilight he sings tenor, plays guitar and writes songs.

My websites: https://williamcampbellpowell.com/

https://teardownbook.co.uk/

Buy Links: https://teardownbook.co.uk/#where The book will be on sale for $0.99

Social Media:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WillCamPowell/

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/willcampowell

BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/willcampowell.bsky.social

My comps for the book:

The novel combines elements of LGBTQIA+ romance with Road Trip fiction, and - with its focus on music - might sit alongside Taylor Jenkins Reid’s ‘Daisy Jones and the Six’ (2016) or Dawnie Walton’s ‘The Final Revival of Opal & Nev’ (2022), or - with its focus on (Kai's) gender-ambiguity and relationships - near Camille Perry’s ‘When Katie Met Cassidy’ (2018) or Beth O’Leary’s ‘The Road Trip’ (2022).

One USP: The book is about a band and contains original songs, for which I have created demos – see/listen: https://williamcampbellpowell.com/music/music.html

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GIVEAWAY

William Campbell Powellwill be awarding a $20 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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