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Attraction
and Repulsion
BUY
AT: AMAZON
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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 friends—picnicking 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 Eros—all 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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BUY
AT AMAZON:
HARDCOVER
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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-Murder’s
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
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BUY
AT: AMAZON
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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
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