Liam Livings
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Best Friends Perfect Book Three Review

2/12/2015

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I'm thrilled with this lovely review from Amos Lassen for the final part of Kieran's story.

The review is here, but I've also copied it below too:

Expectations

Amos Lassen

I have had this book for several weeks now but I have put off reading it because it is the last of a series that I have enjoyed so much and do not want to end. Now because I am so backed up with books to read and movies to see, I figured the time has come to face the fact that the series has ended. Expectations play an important part in our lives and while they are not always what we want, our expectations do influence to way we live. “Best Friends Perfect 3” is about what happens when a “perfect” best friend turns out to be not so perfect as per expectations.
It is 1999 and Kieran is a London university student looking everywhere for his Mr. Wonderful. His best friend, Jo and American students Julie and the Sarahs keep him busy along with his studies work at the hospital. What Kieran really wants is to share everything with Jo, but Jo has gone somewhere with his Irish boyfriend Andrew. Then there is Sean who has returned a phone call. As if things could not be any more difficult for him, something comes along and turns his world inside/out and upside/down. Kieran is in a place where he needs his friends around him. He is growing up and becoming the man that he is to be and as I read I recognized so much. It was like reading a memoir of a boy on the brink of adulthood and we share his emotional struggle. We met Kieran in book one as a high school student and now he is away from home and his friends. His new friends are Americans and Livings sees them as so many of the English do—Americans party much more than their European counterparts—this is not a bad thing or a good thing—it just is.

Jo, the guy with a great personality and quick wit; the guy who helped Kieran accept himself as gay is at the center of the story. Jo is not around much; he is in London at drama school and after the intense friendship relationship that he and Kieran shared, it is obvious that something has happened. His studies put him way across the city and the two do not see much of each other.

Without realizing the consequences, a prank that Jo engineered hurts Kieran and leaves him in need of a friend to talk to. Suddenly Joe has taken a plunge in Kieran’s eyes. It was enough to deal with his emotions about being away from home but this new event added some unnecessary baggage for him. Kieran becomes depressed and readers are reminded that something that they think might be trivial does not necessarily sound that way to someone else. What Kieran suffers makes his journey to adulthood more difficult than it had already been and while it might not seem to be so significant to others, it certainly bothers him. Being human, we sometimes forget that we have free will and for Kieran, there was the discovery that Jo, the guy he thought was perfect, was not perfect after all.

And so ends the saga or so we think but Liam Livings gives us an epilogue that explains it all and tells us what happens after the story ends. It is significant that he does this as an older and wiser person who looks back at his younger years and is able to evaluate them.
It is hard to say goodbye to the characters—we have grown together but now go in search of our lives. I loved the experience and hope to have more like it.

Buy Links
Best Friends Perfect, Book 3 on Goodreads
Wilde City
Amazon US
Amazon UK


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2 Years Of Being a Published Author

2/12/2015

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This month is the second anniversary of being a published author. In December 2013, my first story was published – Christmas Serendipity. The sequel to this story, The Next Christmas is now out, and available from JMS Books, and will shortly follow from other distributors.

What have I achieved in this two years? I've checked through my Amazon author pages, Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk my hard drive and my calendar and I'm pretty pleased with my progress. I hope this post doesn't come across as being smug, because it's not meant to - I've had an awful lot of help along the way with this, but I am pleased about it, definitely not smug, but pleased :-)

Publishing
  • I now have 3 novellas published – Christmas Serendipity, The Next Christmas, Heat Wave Astoria
  • A story in an anthology – Bedtime Stories – mine's called Frangipani Kisses
  • 7 Novels published with 3 publishers: Wilde City Press - Best Friends Perfect book one, two, three; Manifold Press - Escaping From Him and Wrong Room, Right Guy; Love Lane Books – And Then That Happened and The Guardian Angel (all available on my Amazon author pages).
  • Editing - While working on these stories, with different publishers and different editors, I've learned so much about editing, and really enjoy it. Every editor I've worked with has taught me something new that I've taken with me when I've written subsequent stories.
Contracted but not yet published
Serendipity Develops – a novella of David and Christian's story of what happens in the year between Christmas Serendipity and The Next Christmas. You can read these in any order, and they stand alone, but can also be read in sequential order too.

Writing

As I've written more, I think I've refined my writing process, so now I know what works and what doesn't work for me. Because I've worked out what works, and I write first drafts very quickly – 3-5000 words per day when I'm first drafting - I have been able to write a lot of stories over the 2 years. Many of them aren't in any fit state to be submitted anywhere yet, but as a rough guide, these are the things I've written over the last two years, but have yet to be published:
  • Kev Friends Perfect - a spin off trilogy from Best Friends Perfect, written from Kev's perpective – I still have one more book to write of this to fully finish Kev's story
  • Glitzy Gay Saga – my attempt at a gay bonk buster like a Jackie Collins novel
  • I Should Be So Lucky – my Nanowrimo 2015 novel about a backing dancer and a St John Ambulance volunteer
  • Love U More – adventures in nineties clubland in Ibiza
  • The Other Man – a spin off from The Guardian Angel - think a gay romance Stepford Wives mixed with The Witches of Eastwick
I've started writing: (a first chapter)

  • Imploding Marriage – a straight rom com / women's fiction story – I'll need a new pen name for that, to be decided...suggestions welcomed please!
  • The Summer House – a gay romance set the summer between finishing A levels and going to uni
I've planned out: (post it notes or general scribbles)

  • Tenerife – a gay romance set in Tenerife, that's the working title at the moment
  • Pinewood Husbands - a murder mystery set in the UK
  • Sci fi island idea – came to me one morning while we were on holiday in Australia
Socialising

I am a member of the RNA, attend their London and South East Chapter meetings and their annual conference.

I help run a local writers group – Waltham Abbey Writers – with Jean Fullerton and Victoria Robertson.

Events

I have been on the organising committee for UK Meet since 2013, which has been a great way to meet loads more author friends in the GLBTQ romance genre.

Studying

I have recently started studying a MA in Creative Writing (distance learning) at Kingston University. This will finish in autumn 2016.

Other

I am a reader for the RNA's New Writers Scheme, which is a great way for unpublished authors to get a very reasonably priced appraisal and report of their work.

I've even been in The Guardian (The Epping Forest Guardian, not *The Guardian* about my grandfather's war memoirs.

I have done some marketing consultancy work for a publisher. Yes, I am taking on new clients, authors, publishers, bloggers, no marketing job too small :-)

I've made loads of author, reader, blogger friends in through conferences, meeting people online, and everyone has been so helpful. I am very grateful for everyone's help who's beta read my stories, hosted me on their blogs, been there when I had a minor melt down, simply listened, or lifted my spirits when I felt down. Thank you all.

I'm pretty proud of it all really.
Liam

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    Liam Livings

    Gay romance & gay fiction author

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