Sean Kerr is the wonderful author who drew me into the world of m/m. He is such a truly lovely person and I’m so glad to have him as my friend. He has had a pretty rough year, so I hope his holidays have been everything he could have hoped for! Let’s see what the holidays hold for Sean, and don’t forget to enter his contest!
If you’re keeping up with the blog tour, there are contests every day! Be sure to check out the other authors as well. Each day features one m/f author and one m/m author.
What is your favourite Christmas song?
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, as sung by Michael Buble. In fact, that entire Christmas album of his gets a hammering from the 1st December lol!! I love that album so much! It is pure Christmas in CD form.
What food do you most look forward to over the holidays?
In the UK, Turkey is the bird of choice over the Christmas period, and I look forward to that every year. I always have a huge bird, and I prepare two different types of stuffing to go with it. Sage and onion, and then chestnut stuffing. It is my favorite roast dinner of the year. Then, afterwards, there is all the cold cuts. Cold turkey, cold roast ham, mustard, cheeses. It is a feast in our house, and my fridge bulges with an assortment of festive cheer.
Yummy! You always show pictures of a HUGE amount of holiday food! Do you have a holiday beverage you like? Alcoholic or non-alcoholic?
Baileys Irish Cream. Now that drink is pure nectar in your mouth. We usually have three bottles of it in the house, and the first glass is consumed with utter relish on the 1st December. Also, Snowball (eggnog in the USA). This is a drink I have very fond memories of as a child, because every Christmas Eve, my parents would allow me and my brother one glass each. Now, as an adult, I need to bottles of the stuff to get through Christmas!
Is there a book you like reading at this time of year?
Sadly no lol. From the 1st December onwards, we watch a whole host of Christmas films, and we have a set routine of everything we like to watch on the build up to Christmas. And yes, Die Hard is one of them haha!! Also, for some reason, the original three Star Wars films.
Do you participate in Boxing Day shopping? Is Boxing Day a tradition in your country?
Having worked in retail most of my life, I refuse to go out shopping on Boxing day. Before I was self-employed, I always worked boxing day, and it really does spoil your Christmas. There is nothing in this world that you could possibly need bad enough to have to go out on boxing day. I think shops should be closed until the 27th December, to give everyone a fair chance of enjoying the season and to be with their family and friends. I lock the door, and I do not see the light of day until at least the 28th lol!
Do you get your shopping done in advance or leave it to the last minute?
No way could I do it at the last moment. Hell no! I have to be planned and organized right down to the last mince pie! I like to get all my gifts bought and wrapped in advance. Then I can relax and enjoy it all without having to worry about it all.
What’s your favourite Christmas movie?
The Polar Express. We watch that in 3d every Christmas Eve. The film is just so magical, and sitting there with a glass of Baileys Irish Cream and a few Snowballs while watching that film together with all the lights twinkling around us is pure joy.
I think that’s my Dad’s favourite holiday film as well. When do you decorate your house?
I usually start the week before the 1st December. We like to have everything done ready for the big switch on, on the 1st December. We have a lot of decorations, and three full sized trees. Also, we really do go overboard outside. The street looks forward to us turning on the outside lights every year, and they start asking in September ‘when are they going up?’ Christmas is a big deal for me and my husband, and my entire family, so we like to make as much of an effort as we can, and really enjoy it.
When you were a child what was the best Christmas gift you remember receiving?
A set of artists colored pencils and a huge drawing pad. Drawing and painting has always been one of my passions, and when I opened that set, all I could see was this immaculate forest of beautiful colors in this huge long tin, and I couldn’t wait to use them! My Christmas that year was taken up entirely with drawing.
Is there a unique holiday tradition your family keeps?
I wouldn’t say it’s unique, but we have a massive Christmas party every year. This year, it will be on the 11th December. The house is rammed, and we light candles everywhere and we sing carols. My husband prepares a song book for everyone, and we have the soundtrack set up to play through the sound system throughout the house. It is a glorious experience. Everyone has to wear a Christmas jumper, and also bring a musical instrument of some kind. It is huge fun, and really gets the season going.
When do you open Christmas presents?
Christmas morning. My husband wakes me up obscenely early…which is funny, because it’s the only time of year he ever gets up early! We open our stockings in bed while drinking coffee, and then go downstairs to open the main gifts around the tree. We are just like two kids, and we enjoy it as much now as we ever did when we were children.
What’s your favourite outdoor winter activity? If it doesn’t snow where you live what makes it feel like Christmas to you?
It has to be cold. The perfect Christmas morning is when it is so cold the land is covered in a white frosty crust and your breath exhales in wonderful white clouds. We don’t get much snow here in the UK, and I have yet to experience a white Christmas, but oh, how magical would that be to wake up on Christmas morning and find a layer of snow outside? I think I would cry!
Contest!
For your chance to win an ebook copy of Dead Camp Book 1 from eXtasy Books, comment on the blog! A winner will be selected on January 3rd and will have one week to be in touch about how to claim their prize.
The Man Inside Me
Victorian London is a difficult place to be when you are gay, as Henry and Gabriel know all too well.
When they were young at Oxford University, Henry and Gabriel’s love burned hot and bright, and they thought to change the world together until a devastating tragedy ripped them apart.
Now, as youth fades away, Henry can no longer stand to see his own reflection in the mirror. All he sees is a sad, tired old man whose body has betrayed him. He craves the touch of another, to feel attractive and vital once more but his obsession with finding a cure for insanity has stolen his life away, and now his work has taken on a dark and sinister dimension. How far will he go to recapture the passion of his lost youth?
Gabriel fears that Henry is losing his mind, and when a brutal killer invades their lives, they are thrust into the dark depths of Victorian London in a fight for their very lives.
As their friendship is tested to its limits, Gabriel cannot help but wonder if there is still a chance for love. Can they move beyond the friendship that has spanned over thirty years and find the love that once made their hearts beat as one?
You may never be too old to find love, but will you be able to survive it?
Author Bio
Hi everyone, I would like to introduce myself. My name is Sean Kerr, and I am a 49-year-old gay man living in Cardiff, Wales with my husband of 28 years, Derek. We have two cats, Rita and Harry, and a host of tropical fish.
I worked on building sites for years, and I used the money earned from that to put myself through college, specialist paint techniques etc. I trained in fine art, and then I went out and painted murals on client’s walls, and created Roman Bathrooms and fantasy hand painted bedrooms, all the rage back in the late eighties and nineties. I then became an Interior Designer for a large DIY chain. For the past thirteen years I ran my own Interiors business, and while that is no longer in existence, I am now looking for my next challenge in life!
By night I am an Author, and I am very proud to be an author for Extasy Books. It took me some years to get to this point. I spent a very long time trying to get an agent because I thought it was the right thing to do, and after a heck of a lot of refusals, I nearly gave up. I came so close to hitting the delete button on Dead Camp 1 because I thought I did not stand a chance. At the very last moment, I decided to have a go at approaching a few publishers directly, and I sent the manuscript to six. Within two weeks, I had offers of publication from three! Let’s just say that there may have been tears lol. It was my chance, at last, to become a part of a world that I have always loved and admired from a distance, and it is one of the very best things to ever happened to me.
Dead Camp is the first series I ever wrote, and then there is my short novella called Hush Little Baby. Dead Camp is my take on the Vampire genre, an MM Paranormal Romance series that is set against a backdrop of World War 2. However, the series uses key moments from History to tell one enormous saga, and I have loved every single moment of writing it. There are five books in the Dead Camp series.
Hush is a pure horror story with more than a nod towards such classic programmes as The Twilight Zone and Tales of The Unexpected. The project happened just after I completed Dead Camp 3 and it is a story that I had to get out of my system. It’s definitely a different beast to my Vampire saga, and I hope it will make you go to bed with the lights on lol!
I recently ventured into the world of self-publishing, and as such, I have just released my first independent book series, The Last Child. The Last Child is a horror series that is in 3 parts dealing with the occult. It has a definite Dan Brown vibe in that I love conspiracy stories, so I have used religion and some intriguing legends as the backdrop to this contemporary supernatural thriller that tells the story of a female protagonist trying to protect her young student. Neither of them realises how their lives, and indeed their histories, are intertwined in the most horrific and tragic ways.
My latest book, ‘The Man Inside Me’ is an MM Victorian Gothic Romance, and I think it is the favourite thing I have written so far. It deals with two men in their fifties trying to find love again, a subject that is very close to my heart as I approach that milestone. It is a very important book to me, and while it has some very ‘KERR’ twists and turns, it is, at its heart, a very romantic tale that deals with middle age. I am particularly proud of this book, and it is a very different spin on the MM genre.
Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I look forward to meeting you on social media.
Stalking links! Come and say hello!
