All Bets are Off with Kelly Reynolds

Sports romance is having a moment right now thanks to the Crave series Heated Rivalry, based on the book by fellow Canadian author Rachel Reid. But hockey’s not the only game in town (see what I did there?) Baseball has its own rituals, its own heroes, and a lot of tight pants and hands on crotches, just saying…

All Bats are Off

ALL BATS ARE OFF is a spicy MM novella (25k+ words) set in the Rose City Roasters universe. This one night stand-to-lovers romance between a thicc (with two c’s) bisexual baseball player who loves bread almost as much as blowjobs, and a gay, long-haired sports journalist with a pierced peen, features drag queen Bingo, braiding hair as a love language, county fair food porn, hotel bathtub hook-ups, and an almost entirely LGBTQIA+ cast of characters.


From the author’s bio:

By day, Kelly Reynolds works primarily as a freelance writer, professor, and author’s assistant. By night, she hosts the comedic romance novel review podcast, Boobies & Noobies. Since receiving her MFA in Screenwriting in 2016, she’s worked with several casting, development, and production companies and contributed to programs appearing on such networks as MTV, ABC, Hallmark, GSN and Netflix. Originally hailing from the San Francisco Bay Area, she currently lives in Portland, Oregon and spends the bulk of her time dreaming up sexy romcoms about fierce, fat girls falling in love.

Find Kelly here: https://substack.com/@authorkellyrey

Find out more about her book All Bats are Off here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/230070367-all-bats-are-off

Why choose?

Reverse Harem and the (r)evolution of Romance writing

If you aren’t an avid ebook reader, it’s likely you’ve never heard of the genre, which has begun to call itself “why choose” because algorithms are prurient snitches. Yet it’s the strongest trend in self published romance, with no signs of slowing down.

It is also an astonishing indicator of where culture is headed. Because two out of every five ebooks sold are romance, and reverse harem tropes are EVERYWHERE.

So what the heck is it? Nothing more or less than a romance story where the heroine gets ALL the boys. Without having to choose between them, favoring one and only one. Without lying or cheating, with the consent of all the men, which is perhaps the most fantastical aspect of the genre, that three or more cis-het guys could get over their egos enough to get along with their partner’s metamour.

OK so what the heck is a metamour?

It’s the point at which the Why Choose genre gets really interesting. Because, pardon me if I’m wrong, but this is polyamory. A metamour is your lover’s lover. Not your competition, just “the other person who loves the same person as me.”

Meaning the strongest trend in romance writing is a vigorous, fun-loving, open-hearted repudiation of the nuclear family. One of the lynchpins of Western society, blamed repeatedly (and quite sensibly) for maintaining women’s inferior status. Less than half a decade ago, women in the US were being arrested for wearing pants. A wife needed her husband’s permission to open her own bank account. The assumption was nearly universal that all women wanted was safety. That women weren’t sexual, weren’t interested in freedom in being their own person, in existing for any reason besides replicating DNA aka having babies.

Oh, my sweet summer child…

That has never been enough. And hear me out, this is not some Sandberg gaslighting about how every woman miraculously can have it all aka a high paying high pressure job as well as a functional marriage, happy children, and time enough to seek personal meaning. Such women usually have nannies. And they are frequently miserable. The women, not the nannies, though I reckon a fair few of them are less than thrilled with what often functions like a sort of indentured servitude.

This is of course not universal. But that’s the point. Women want different things. Women can finally have what they want. And yes, RH is a book trend. It isn’t a sign of the death of marriage. But it is certainly a sign that the Overton window has shifted hugely in the direction of even more freedom for women. And for men, who must bear the brunt of being denied softness, emotionality, compassion. Who are taught they must defend their tiny tribe against an entire world which wants them dead. Truth is, the world usually isn’t paying attention. Truth is, modern marriage isn’t a siege state. Wives are not chattel, nor are they princesses, to be kept in a tower and denied the world.

Women are raw, and horny, and also nice and pretty and kind, but still red-blooded, salivating, alive. And we are tired of being told what to do.

There is a world filled with possibilities. Even it’s only words on a page or a screen. A world where women get exactly what they want, and men are happy for it to happen. So come on over! Sometimes the grass really is greener even once you’ve hopped the fence.

What I read on vacation

against the backdrop of a bright blue ocean, someone lays on the pale sandy beach reading a paperback bookbeach

I went on a trip the end of April with the serious intent of reading some light fiction. I write it, so keeping up with what other writers are doing is kind of a job requirement, but I sometimes just don’t read at all.   Unfortunate but you know how it goes, *insert modern life* and all your plans are suddenly negotiable.  Regardless, I did do a fair bit of reading while away.  I’m not including buy links, just look ‘em up yourself. You got the internet on that thing, right?


When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

A nice book about how to die well.  I contemplate own mortality with more frequency than most people (don’t applaud, it’s maybe a bad thing) so nothing in here stunned me, but its gentle solace is a perfect fit for these grieving times.


Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

Did Not Finish at 40%.  I might have finished it if it was the only book at a beach cottage when the weather was bad.  I’m not big on murder mysteries and we’ll leave it at that, because I have Many Feelings about this book, its plot, its characters, and other books like it which I don’t want to voice. Inevitably, there’s a movie now.


The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

A brave little novel that tries really hard to not be a Cancer Story by being a book about books, yet is still inescapably a Cancer Story. But good, though I found the dialogue a bit forced. Yes, the characters are well-read for their age, but my own 19th Century aristocrats barely talk that high falutin’.  The author character was a nice touch, but again, another book I only read because it was on the shelf at the vacation rental.


Glitterland by Alexis Hall

I have no logical response to Alexis Hall ‘s romance novels. They’re all amazing IF you like his style, which is exuberant and passionate and unapologetically queer and very “head-space” with lots of ruminations by the main character. I will resist the urge to discourse on the historical antecedents of this sort of novel, but rest assured Hall does it on purpose.

What we end up with is a scorching POV of a man with serious mental illness and his star-crossed lover from Essex which is evidently the UK equivalent of the Jersey Shore. I told Hall himself that I hadn’t read a finer regional accent in prose since Irvine Welsh, and I now call everyone a ‘donut’ when they mess up but adorably. Ten million stars. It’s about to get reissued with (ahhh!!!!) bonus content and for the first time ever I am going to buy a book I already own.


His Lordship’s Secret by Samantha SoRelle

Born in poverty, ascended to wealth, Alfie hires his long lost friend Domenic to protect him from whomever is trying to kill him.  Events Ensue in a twisty and quite macabre Regency-era plot with interesting class commentary and solid period detail. I love a “dress you up” trope, which I didn’t expect to encounter but which aligned perfectly with our historical fashion-themed vacation. All in all, a nifty self-published novel in the growing canon of Queer Historical Romance


The Middle of Somewhere by Roan Parrish

Barely news (there’s a pun in there) to anyone who reads MM Contemporary Romance, but I am a decade behind thanks to an extended reading drought. Aaaaaaaanyway, I don’t typically like present tense in novels, but I grit my teeth and kept on with this one, because what else do you do on the plane? I was rewarded with good, gritty characters and a strong love story that hits a lot of comforting tropes without being too stereotypical. And the sex scenes are lit.


Ten Thousand Stitches by Olivia Atwater

An author who is finally getting the acclaim she deserves. Like her prior Regency fairy tale Half A Soul, this was a joy to read, with wonderful, complex female leads and a heart-breaking yet ultimately redeeming love story driven by genuine personal growth on everyone’s part. I adore her rendering of the realm of Faerie, 10/10 would visit but very cautiously. This story also aligned with our fashion-themed vacation, being mainly to do with magical embroidery e.g. the ten thousand stitches of the title.  Bravo Ms Atwater!

“Is This Seat Taken?”

a woman's beautiful bare legs as she sits in an easy chair by the window

So: your boyfriend who has family connections to your MBA supervisor invites you to an anonymous orgy. You want to go, because you like to fuck, so much that you agree, despite the fact that you will know probably half of the people there. But you try on the expensive mask he had made which really does cover your face well, a tight fitting cap of blood-red leather that extends to the base of your nose and conceals your hair. You look, in the mask and nothing else, totally gorgeous, a fact he tells you continually as he fucks you from behind, watching himself in the mirror over your shoulder. He is not wrong, and thinking of all the other men who will fuck this gorgeous masked woman, you come, shaking so hard he pulls out, thinking he’s hurt you somehow.

Idiot, you think again.

Yet you go to the party. The orgy. You wear the mask and a garter belt and stockings and heels and a long coat and nothing else. He has waxed not just his pubes but his chest, striding about in leather pants with a tear-away crotch. You spend very little time together, because the pants make you laugh, and as a designated sub that’s the kind of disrespect that earns you a shift in the stocks.

You like getting spanked. You do not like humiliation, being hung out for anyone to torment. Too many of the older men who dominate this scene fall back on that trope, one more reason why you are sitting alone in the back corner of the mansion’s front parlor, wondering if it’s possible to ghost on an orgy.

“Is this seat taken?” Before you answer the man sits down anyway on the other end of the little couch. “I just gotta relax for a bit.” He flops back, breathing hard, his half-hard cock laying against his thigh.

You check him out, because it’s that kind of party. A black beaked mask, Dread Pirate Roberts with a hint of Plague Doctor. The fit body of a dedicated college athlete keeping his shit together. No gray hair in the pubes. Who is he?

“Is the master enjoying his evening?”

“Don’t do that master stuff. You can just talk to me. And I don’t know. Yes and no. I’m thinking about going home.”

Ask me. You blush, because no matter how many dicks your boyfriend lets you have here and now, he will not lend his subs. He has told you so himself, because so many in his clique have asked to fuck you. Asked him, not you.

“Me too,” you say. The plague pirate turns to look directly at you, and you shiver, because the mask is only half of his menace, the rest in his dark eyes that seem to swallow you.

“I want your number,” he says.

“Okay. How—”

“I’ll remember it. And if I don’t, it’s my fault, right?”

“Okay.” You tell him your number.  He says it back to you. “You got it.”

“Does your boyfriend, sorry, master, read your messages?”

“God, no.”

“Good.” He stands up and stretches.  Like the slut you are, you stare at his erection.

“Are you leaving?” you ask.

“Yep.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to—”

He turns to you, and you shiver again under his dark gaze. “Not here. I want you paying attention.”

“Oh.”

He winks and walks away. His ass is amazing.

“Who was that?” your boyfriend asks as he approaches.

“I don’t know.”

“What did he want?” He is fiddling with his detachable crotch again. You do not love him. Now you know that you do not like him either.

 “Nothing.”

“Really?”

 “I’m getting one of those headaches.  Do you have any idea where my coat is?”

(2020)