About The Colors of Love and Autumn
Written by Lee Pulaski
243 pages / 97000 words
ISBN: 978-1-60370-322-2, 1-60370-322-5
Available file types - html, lit, pdf, prc
Fleeing a lengthy break up, Shilo David heads for the Wisconsin woods, hoping the fall foliage will heal and inspire him. What he finds is Jeffrey Layton, a man also on the rebound, but scared to love again, worried that he'll lose anyone he loves the way he lost his boyfriend to cancer.
Shilo and Jeffrey have to work together, searching for new love and learning that some things are meant to be, even when you fight them. Even when the odds seem insurmountable. Will they find true happiness that outshines even the forests Shilo longed to discover?
Review
Alexa Snow, author of Clear Cut and Sleeping Stone, writes: Shilo David walks away from his previous relationship with a hefty settlement, his cat Mew, and a determination to start his life anew. Leaving Arizona behind, he moves to Eagle River, Wisconsin, buying a house. While he hopes he might eventually find himself a new boyfriend, he's surprised that it happens so quickly; Jeffrey Layton is a small-town cop and about as deep in the closet as it's possible to be, a fact that makes Shilo more than a little uncomfortable. But Shilo finds that he likes Jeffrey, and slowly the two of them begin to carve out a relationship for themselves. Then a young gay man is murdered. While Jeffrey tries to find the killer, Shilo gets more involved in the investigation than he'd bargained for. Can they come out of the situation with the love and lives intact?
This story is a fun ride, with lots of interesting characters and a few twists and turns that might surprise you. Shilo's journey from stranger in a small town to a real member of the community is compelling, and Jeffrey's loyalty to his previous partner -- sometimes stronger than is healthy for him -- is believable. The secondary characters have a lot of personality, and some of them are particularly memorable. With a mixture of romance and excitement, this story will please a lot of readers!
Sample
Shilo David listened as the raindrops made an echoing sound on the metal tools that the repairmen had left on the roof earlier in the day. Ping! Ping! It almost sounded like a dripping faucet hitting a metal baking sheet. Shilo knew it wasn’t that because he hadn’t unpacked the cookware yet.
Shilo looked around the farmhouse he had bought a few weeks ago. It was a steal at sixty thousand dollars, but the price of a home in northern Wisconsin wasn’t as high as it was in other parts of the country. In Arizona, where Shilo had come from, sixty thousand dollars got you a tool shed -- unfurnished. Of course, it wasn’t the skyrocketing home prices that had driven Shilo from the desert climate to the woods of Eagle River. It was the prospect of starting a new life.
And boy, did he need to start over.
He needed to find a place where the pain of lost love didn’t hurt so much. He needed to find a place where he could be inspired to pour his heart onto a piece of paper. He needed to find a place where the cold, cruel world didn’t have such a firm hold. That certainly wasn’t in Arizona. Life in Arizona was a rat race, complete with rats.
Chandler had been one of them. Of course, he’d hidden his beady eyes and sharp teeth underneath the luscious exterior of a blond, buff bodybuilder, one who could make you melt with just a flash of his smile. Chandler’s beauty had mesmerized Shilo for nearly a year before the beast within reared its ugly head. Shilo had never seen it coming. All he could see was that he had a gorgeous Adonis for a boyfriend, and everything seemed perfect.
It wasn’t, though.
Shilo looked around at his new home. Boxes were everywhere, the compilation of most of Shilo’s adult life, from old college yearbooks to the china dishes he had purchased for himself and Chandler as a commemoration of six months together. The two hadn’t been married -- Shilo knew that could never happen, at least in the eyes of the law -- but after the breakup, Shilo had made out like a husband scorned. The money Shilo used to purchase this Wisconsin farmhouse came from money he had invested in a cockamamie business scheme Chandler had cooked up to get rich quick. He gladly gave Chandler twenty-five thousand dollars to start up a landscaping business. If only Shilo realized how much experience Chandler had at cultivating manure!
“Meow!”
Shilo looked down at his stocking feet. Mew nudged his ankles, urging him toward the kitchen. Shilo smiled. He knew what this sudden interest in his ankles meant; Mew was hungry. Shilo looked at his watch and saw it was 5:30 in the afternoon. He hadn’t realized it had gotten so late. Definitely feeding time for Mew.
Shilo walked into the kitchen and grabbed the box on the kitchen table that was labeled “Mew.” He opened the top and dug out two cans of cat food. This kind of food was designed to keep cats healthy and living longer.
Shilo sometimes wondered if it wasn’t a little cruel to keep such a loving creature in this heartless world for any longer than was absolutely necessary.
He looked absent-mindedly around the kitchen. Had he already unpacked the can opener? Shilo looked on the table, saw nothing and started to open cabinets. He was fairly certain he’d unpacked the utensil, remembering he’d fed Mew in the house earlier in the day. He knew he had used the can opener, but right now, Shilo couldn’t remember what he'd done with it.
“Meow!” Mew sounded a little more impatient.
Shilo raised an eyebrow. “Someone sounds a little spoiled today, doesn’t he?” Shilo asked the orange tabby glaring at him and twitching his tail. “I wish you could say something besides ‘Meow,’ like maybe tell me where I put that damned can opener. Even though you can’t, the very least you could do is find me a rock that I can use to open this yummy cylinder of delight.
“Cylinder of delight.” Shilo chuckled to himself. Despite the fact that he’d been feeling low, he could find offbeat ways to describe things. It came with being a writer. Shilo had found it difficult lately to find a way to make the beautiful words flow from his mind to a sheet of paper, but he could come up with one-liners on occasion.
“Meow!” Mew wasn’t letting up, and it was obvious that the phrase “cylinder of delight” was lost on the furry companion he’d found only six months ago. Shilo started searching in the lower cabinets now as Mew’s tail continued to swish back and forth to illustrate his impatience.
“You can flip that tail all you want, Mr. Mew, but it’s not going to help me find the can opener any faster. Unless you’ve gained magical powers all of a sudden and can make the can opener appear out of thin air, you can put a sock in it until I find a way to get your food open.”
The tabby jumped through the air and onto the kitchen table where the cans of cat food sat. Mew flipped one of the cans off with his paw. The can rolled to Shilo’s feet. Shilo looked down and realized he had been wasting his time. The cans had pull-tabs on them. He hadn’t needed a can opener, now or this morning. He couldn’t believe he had wasted the last five minutes on something so silly. He looked forward to the day when he could get his head back on his shoulders and be a little more mentally stable.
Shilo stood up with a can of food in hand, pulled the tab and turned the can upside-down, shaking the can once so the clump of food fell into Mew’s bowl with an unappetizing plop.
Mew bounded off the table and raced to his bowl, eagerly burying his face in a mixture of tuna and chicken. Shilo smiled.
“Apologies, my feline friend,” Shilo said to his companion. “Maybe we should develop some kind of kitty sign language to better communicate. Honestly, ‘Meow!’ can mean so many different things with you, from ‘I’m hungry. Please feed me,’ to ‘the call is coming from inside the house’.”
Mew stopped eating for a moment and started to lick the pads on his right front paw. He was facing Shilo as he did it. Shilo often wondered if the cat was really preening himself or using this as a cover to flip him the bird.
Shilo decided to figure it out later. He grabbed the second can of cat food and pulled the tab. Mew dove back into his bowl before Shilo could put the food into it. Shilo raised his eyebrow again.
“Unless you want to feed yourself from now on, you’d better move that fuzzy head of yours so I can finish serving your dinner.”
Mew ignored him. When it came down to a choice between food and Shilo, Shilo always found himself on the losing end of the debate. Shilo looked at the open can of cat food and thought, You know, the whole debacle with Chandler might have hurt less if he had dumped me for a can of Friskies.