Rating: 
Title: ePistols at Dawn
Author: Z A Maxfield
Genre: Contemporary romance
URL: Samhain Publishing
Price: US $5.50
Other Information/warnings: Explicit m/m, bad language, references to child sexual abuse and severe emotional trauma
Summary [from the publisher]:
Jae-sun Fields is pissed. Someone has taken the seminal coming-out, coming-of-age novel Doorways and satirized it. He’s determined to use his Internet skills and his job as a tabloid reporter to out the author as the fraud and no-talent hack he’s sure she is.
Kelly Kendall likes his anonymity and, except for his houseboy, factotum and all-around slut, Will, he craves solitude. There’s also that crippling case of OCD that makes it virtually impossible for him to leave the house. He’s hidden his authorship of Doorways behind layers of secrets and several years’ worth of lies–until he loses a bet.
Satirizing his own work, as far as he can see, is his own damned prerogative. Except now he has an online stalker, one who always seems several steps ahead of him in their online duel for information.
A chance meeting reveals more than hidden identities–it exposes a mutual magnetic attraction that can’t be denied. And pushes the stakes that much higher, into a zone that could get way too personal…
My review: I damn near stopped reading this after the first page, convinced the author was attempting an extremely lame satire on recent ‘discussions’ in the m/m genre about female authors pretending to be gay men – a subject on which I have no sense of humour left, considering the behaviour of the people involved. But I forced myself to continue, and realised that wasn’t the author’s intent (even if it may have been the inspiration). However, this novel does have an extremely stupid premise – that it would be remotely newsworthy to a gay gossip rag that the author of a gay erotic book (with the decidedly gender-ambiguous name of ‘Kelly’) would turn out to be a straight woman. Sorry to break it to you, Ms Maxfield, but gay men know about slash and m/m. Some of them even like it.
So Jae-sun Fields and his lizard-like editor come across from the start as too stupid to live, even if Jae’s rage at a straight person mocking and defiling a gay classic was much more credible. It didn’t lessen my initial poor impression that the banter between Jae and his office buddies, especially Shannon, sounded forced and not terribly funny at all (the author did humour of this kind better in her Physical Therapy which was otherwise a much weaker book than this.)
But then Kelly and Will, his self-described “houseboy, factotum, and all-around slut” came into the story, and things started to click. I loved Kelly and Will. I loved their conversations, their loving friendship, the way they cared about each other. And I warmed up to Jae too as he finds himself enmeshed in a tangle of deceit of his own making – a place he never wanted to be after the previous time he was caught out apparently lying to a lover ended so disastrously. Even Shannon grew on me, as the author thankfully left the verging on really nasty bitchy dialogue behind. Kelly, Will, Jae and Shannon ended up as a really quite attractive and credible quartet of best friends and lovers, looking out for each other in the most endearing way.
Vega, the editor, however, never redeemed himself. What an arsehole. And what a crappy business, running a mag which delights in outing closeted gay men – and not right wing politicians, actors trying to make a living in one of the most homophobic industries on the planet. Nice one, Vega. Creep.
This is a much more rounded and poised novel than Maxfield’s previous Physical therapy, with less incredible OK-homo stuff and inappropriately chatty gay men. The men are chatty in this but they use words for a living – while the dialogue was never quite as sparkling as it clearly was intended to be, it was enjoyable and at times raised a smile (though not the belly laughs I suspect we were meant to experience.) A fault in common with the other book, however, is that the characters are given tremendously angsty and tragic pasts which don’t quite gel with their actions in the present. Will’s childhood seems to fit well with his present behaviour and need for protection from Kelly, but when we learn of his immediately pre-Kelly career, it seemed to me not to fit at all with what we see of him. Jae also, didn’t make sense – if he’d seen up close and personal how catastrophic outing someone could be, why did it take several more emotional blows for him to actually question what he did for a living and where he worked?
And Kelly, endearingly nutty, had really rather convenient agoraphobia which he apparently could switch on and off at will. If you’re going to create a character imprisoned by his phobias, it weakens the impact if he’s going out to lunch, to visit his would-be lover and on vacation at the drop of a hat. I’m more agoraphobic than Kelly going on how he acts in this book.
But in the end, this is a highly enjoyable story, even if the plot does irritate in places through implausibility (the ubergeek teenage Asian hacker as a solution to all mysteries is looking a bit tired.) The sex is fun and Ms Maxfield earns bonus points for sex gone bad in the most credible fashion (from the story warnings – Jae’s note to self: OCD + socks + mouth = BAD.) The characters are beguiling and attractive, and interact in a credible, likeable fashion. The writing is tight and well-edited, and the pacing is also fine. Maxfield is an uneven writer, but this is one of her better ones, so this is a recommended read. Good fun.
