Thursday, August 27, 2015

'Love Like Lightning (Ten Stories of Love at First Sight)' by Ken Bachtold


Blurb:

LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT. DOES IT EXIST? OR IS IT JUST A LOVELY FANTASY? JUST ASK THE 10 MEN FEATURED IN THESE STORIES! 

For instance, take JOSHUA CRANDELL. 
He was very surprised. Afterward, he could never quite explain what, after many years, had prompted him to turn right into the gay bar. After many failed relationships, he'd virtually given up on ever finding the romance, actually love long-lasting. 
The one man sitting alone at the bar glanced at him, his well-shaped head only slightly turned. Josh was stunned. There sat the most beautiful man he'd ever seen. 
The fellow smiled slightly and very slowly turned his barstool fully around facing Josh directly for a moment. With an involuntary intake of breath Josh saw that the right side of that beautiful face was badly scarred. Josh protested in his head that he wasn't that kind of guy. He stepped forward and purposely crossed to the right side stool and sat down next to this man. 
"Hi," he said. "I'm Josh. Or Joshua, if you insist on formality," he quipped. 
"What? You want to talk to the poor disfigured guy, pat yourself on the back and then leave, having done your good deed?" 
"Look," Josh said, "Let's start over. Hi, my name's Josh." 
He held out his hand to shake. In return he got a look that was still suspicious. But after a time, the guy said, "I'm Andrew, or Andy, if you want to be less formal." 
He slowly and, obviously, reluctantly, held out his hand. Their touch was electric.

http://amzn.to/1PwGnHM



About the author:

BA & MA from San Francisco State University in Theatre (Acting and Directing) with a minor in Art.

My latest book (All By Myself) was just published by Dreamspinner Press and can be found on Amazon. This followed Dreamspinner’s publication of my last two novels (Seeing The Same Blue and Blue Valentine Blues).

Before that, Outskirts Press published Love Like Lightning – Ten Stories Of Love At First Sight, also on Amazon.

My original play, Starting Over (which I also directed), was just staged as part of the Ninth Annual Fresh Fruit Festival here in New York. Audience reaction was terrific. It was one of nine plays accepted out of 60 submitted. It was an MM romance. The blurb in the brochure for the festival read, "A play about love and loss. Griff has recently lost his longtime partner. Can he find happiness with Ben, the new neighbor down the hall. Supported by his sister and opposed by his widowed mother, now remarried to a homophobic preacher."

I've also written 5 musicals, book, music and lyrics.

Saloon (loosely suggested by the old melodrama The Drunkard) which opened The Gatetway Dinner Theatre in New Jersey to great reviews. It was subsequently optioned by Broadway producer Jerry Schloschberg (who, at the time was, producing the revival of On The Town with Bernadette Peters), but a show sluggishly following the old material opened and closed the same night and he backed off thinking there was now a "stigma" on the material.

The Facts Of Life (a musical about War, Prejudice and Aging, circa the ‘60s) was written at the BMI Music Workshop taught by Broadway orchestra leader Lyman Engle after several auditions before acceptance in the class. It was deemed worthy of a staged reading there.

Boo!, based on the old gothic novel The Castle Spectre was done by several regional theatres.

I was hired to doctor a musical based on Ephigenia At Aulis, called The Winds Of Aulis. I changed the name to Delimma! and wrote a subplot and mostly new lyrics. Although the play was fully backed, it never reached production and I never found out why.

I’ve written and staged numerous night club and cabaret acts and taught singing for the musical stage for 15 years.

http://amzn.to/1PwDQ0i

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