<%@LANGUAGE="JAVASCRIPT" CODEPAGE="1252"%> Robert Scott Leyse Online


 


Attraction and Repulsion

BUY AT: AMAZON /
BARNES & NOBLE

Read Chapter 1 of
Attraction and Repulsion HERE

Description:

A Parisian fight-for-love story.

Having arrived in Paris, New Yorkers William, Christina, and Pascale are looking forward to six weeks of uninhibited merriment with their French friends, a group of students and aspiring actors—all are in their early twenties, neither settled into careers nor domestic life. Adventures are soon had in Père Lachaise cemetery, at a raucous Montparnasse loft party, under the stars in Montsouris Park, and at sunrise in Place de l'Opéra.

Matters become unexpectedly serious when William meets Genevieve, a native Parisian, and they fall deeply in love—a first time experience for both. As William and Genevieve begin to get to know one another and learn about love an obstacle presents itself in the person of Baptiste, a childhood friend of Genevieve's. Mistakenly believing himself entitled to Genevieve's affection, Baptiste commences a campaign of interference and intimidation, quickly becoming highly unstable—a situation that forces a violent confrontation.

Love triumphs in Attraction and Repulsion, but not easily—William and Genevieve must fight through extreme tumult before enjoying their right to love one another in peace. Along the way they learn that love deepens when it suffers through opposition, and bonds of trust are stronger when forged in the fires of conflict. They also reaffirm what they already know: a circle of devoted friends is a gift beyond estimation, and fun is a very effective medication for tension. They marvel at how their chance meeting has forever altered the course of their lives.

Attraction and Repulsion is a celebration of the unpredictability, beauty, and responsibility of love; it is also an adventure story—with a large cast of colorful characters—that takes place in the parks, cemeteries, streets, apartments, and on the rooftops of Paris.

Read Chapter 1 of
Attraction and Repulsion HERE

Reviews / Testimonials:

“Love can't fully bloom while obstacles stand in its way. Attraction and Repulsion tells the story of a pair of lovers in Paris, as they pursue love and the forces that keep them apart try even harder. A story of love in spite of all those who would end it, Robert Scott Leyse constructs a gripping story that will be hard to put down.”

Midwest Book Review (in "Small Press Bookwatch, April 2011")

“Here in the span of a few tumultuous days, in the heart of Paris, being the only theater that could stage this resplendent play on sudden love, we find a dreamed love that becomes real with quick edges, a purported ménage à trois that is not a threesome, a plotted death that is not murder, where death’s sanctuary becomes a playground, and where actors become characters and characters become actors.”

Tom Sheehan, author of Epic Cures and Brief Cases, Short Spans

“Ah, to be a young man in Paris with two lovely, liberated ladies in a very contemporary ménage à trois and with a colorful crew of international misfits for friendspicnicking gourmet-style in Montsouris Park, sneaking into Père Lachaise cemetery after dark to cavort amid a thunder storm, partying all night in the City of Light, delighting under the playful spell of Erosall of it good fun until true love and jealousy intrude, and their lives take a serious turn. Robert Scott Leyse gives us a Parisian romantic comedy with a well-earned happy ending and repartee as sparkling as the champagne. À votre santé!”

—William T. Hathaway, Rinehart Award winning author of Summer Snow and Radical Peace

“Add a love triangle and a love-hate triangle together in Paris, mix in some festive adventures and crackling dialogue, and Attraction and Repulsion is the entertaining result. Page-turning fun, love, duress, and triumph: true happiness doesn't come cheap in life, or in this novel.”

—George Fosty, ESPN featured author of Black Ice and Splendid is the Sun

 


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HARDCOVER / PAPERBACK KINDLE

Read the opening
of Self-Murder HERE

Description:

A dark love story of emotional turbulence, obsessive fixation, perceptual disorientation, unabated insomnia, and psychic seizures—with madness waiting in the wings.

Told in first-person confessional, Self-Murder is the tale of a young man who asks the question, “Do you dare to fall in love?” and responds by detailing an instance of attraction to a “breath-stealing” beauty which swiftly becomes an obsessive fixation, such that all else melts from his awareness, his sanity is stretched to its limits, and madness threatens to overtake him. Ever-shifting emotional extremes, unfulfilling sensual excess in the arms of random strangers in vain efforts at escape from this one woman’s hold upon him, accelerating paranoia, and prolonged sleep deprivation combine to further erode the young man’s tenuous hold on rationality and propel him into a somnambulistic waking state where the distinction between what’s real and imagined blurs and he’s no longer able to be certain of how he’s behaving. Without being fully aware of it, he may be committing heinous crimes.

Falling in love isn’t dangerous for most people, but it is for the young man of Self-Murder.

Reviews / Testimonials:

“No sleep, no rest for the mind just makes the descent all the more quick. Self-Murder is the tale of a man who falls deeper and deeper into a haze of confusion, as his insomnia deprives him of sleep and he finds his only comfort in the excesses of life. As he pursues love, the strength of that emotion only spins his life out even more, and as he loses control of reality, he may do things he regrets. Self-Murder is a fascinating and excellent psychological thriller readers won't be able to put down.”

Midwest Book Review (in "Small Press Bookwatch, February 2010")

“A phantasmagoria of unbridled lust, sexual obsession, and stealth madness, Robert Scott Leyse’s Self-Murder is a dazzling indictment of desire that brims with sensory imagery and moments of exquisite verbal beauty delivered by a narrative voice that is baroque but disturbing and more than a little reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe.”

—Gary Earl Ross, author of Blackbird Rising: A Novel of the American Spirit and the Edgar Award-winning drama Matter of Intent

“Robert Scott Leyse channels Baudelaire's Queen of Spades and Jack of Hearts, speaking darkly of dead loves, in this new book. He also reminds me of James Purdy's notorious eccentricity. There's plenty of middlebrow stuff if you want it. Self-Murder isn't that.”

Kris Saknussemm, author of Zanesville and Private Midnight

“After his first novel, Liaisons For Laughs, which took Sex and the City to new heights and depths, Robert Scott Leyse's second one, Self-Murder, explores broader, deeper, and darker territories. Leyse achieves a striking stylistic gallimaufry: Proustian memories underpinning thoughts, words, and deeds; obsession treated in a way which evokes Lolita without those irritating Nabokovian curlicues; romps that Henry Miller would have enjoyed; a finale that delivers a blow to the solar plexus.”

—Barry Baldwin, Emeritus Professor of Classics, U. of Calgary, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada

Self-Murder is lush sensuality of language injected with menace. A vivid portrait of mental disintegration and an explosive picture-show. Hallucinations without substance-abuse. Overwrought nerves and insomnia are Self-Murders drugs of choice.”

—George Fosty, ESPN featured author of Black Ice and Splendid is the Sun

“Here is a psychological struggle and sensual breakout where you best get a comfortable seat, grab the joy stick, and hang on. This is a delicious look at the mystery of self-psychoanalysis, sensual release, acceptance of gifts of the tallest order, or the lowest. For those with wander-lust, and all the taste, touch and aroma imaginable in-between, Self-Murder is a journey to gorge the senses where the reader gets relished time and time again, as the protagonist chases himself through discovery of the basics that make the world go round.”

—Tom Sheehan, author of Epic Cures and Brief Cases, Short Spans

"This is a good/fun read I can highly recommend to readers searching for something different and don't mind entering the mind of the insane."

Allbooks Reviews

 


BUY AT: AMAZON /
BARNES & NOBLE

eBook: BooksOnBoard

Read excerpts from
Liaisons for Laughs HERE

Description:

Romps, mischief, pranks, legal maneuvering, and avoiding the poison of a media-manipulated personality.

Angie & Ella are beautiful, bright, energetic, and fearless associates at a Manhattan law firm. They are fond of reliving their escapades, as well as concocting new ones, via email. Entirely epistolary, Liaisons for Laughs chronicles their frolics during a New York summer. Told in a gleefully sassy tone, and always rich with humor, Angie & Ella's adventures include “Trailer Trollop Romp & Martin’s Comeuppance,” “Circumstances of Spying,” and “Romance Novel Hell.”

Equally concerned with furthering their careers and indulging their penchant for pleasure and pranking, Angie & Ella tell of both in a unique vocabulary, each seeking to keep pace with the other with the verbal pyrotechnics of their emails. With the frequent participation of their shared boyfriend Steven, as well as Manhattan itself, they hungrily fling themselves into a flurry of vamping, masquerading, and fantasy roles—never neglecting to get their work done on time and keep the partners happy.

Reviews / Testimonials:

Some friendships are bonds that can't be broken. 'Liaisons for Laughs: Angie & Ella's Summer of Delirium' tells the story of two best friends in a frank and entertaining method. A hilarious and endlessly entertaining collection of stories about the little things of life, 'Liaisons for Laughs' never stops its assault on the funny bone. A fine and entertaining novel, 'Liaisons for Laughs' is a choice pick for fiction readers.

Midwest Book Review (in "Small Press Bookwatch")

...we absolutely love Robert Scott Leyse’s Liaisons for Laughs: Angie & Ella's Summer of Delirium. Leyse is the editor of the popular erotica website Sliptongue and his first book release is fun, steamy, and intelligent.

Ian and Alicia Denchasy, LA Weekly

“Licentious. Salacious. Those rich, naughty, mannered words from another era are given a cunning and contemporary twist in Leyse’s reinvigoration of a classic literary form--the epistolary. At a time when so many ‘real life’ intimacies are overlooked because we’re too tired to be seduced or to instigate some imaginative new direction in our mortgage anxious relationships, it’s refreshing to be reminded of the pleasures, prurient and also just plain human and often very funny, of overhearing other people’s intimacies. Fun and eroticism don’t go together nearly often enough. They do in Leyse tit for tat. This is clever, humane, word-sensual writing.”

Kris Saknussemm, author of Zanesville and Private Midnight

Liaisons for Laughs re-enlivens a venerable literary tradition, the epistolary novel, but now in an arousingly contemporary form. The erotic emails of these two libidinous heroines recount their escapades with wicked charm and droll humor. Their tales memorialize the lusty landscape of the New York corporate world, and the bratty sophistication of their narrative voices makes their sensual adventures all the more appealing. Angie and Ella are trollops for our time, and Robert Scott Leyse is a Trollope for our time.”

William T. Hathaway, Rinehart Award winning author of A World Of Hurt and Summer Snow

“You can feel the humidity in your own backyard as Angie and Ella soak up the summer in New York with various paramours with their super sexy, sex-positive attitudes. This is one of those books that, finally, puts sluts in their rightful places. They aren’t shameful or shamed. They’re proud of it, and having the time of their lives, and the reader will, too.”

Susan DiPlacido, author of 24/7 and House Money

 

 

 

 



All contents Copyright © 2007-2011 by Robert Scott Leyse. All rights reserved.