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    The Fine Art of Reading Riley
    The Fine Art of Reading Riley
    The Fine Art of Reading Riley
    Ebook81 pages1 hour

    The Fine Art of Reading Riley

    By R.W. Clinger

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Stone Daye has planned the perfect book club gathering for the last three weeks. But when that the day arrives, he faces a morning snowstorm as he runs a few last-minute errands around town before his book club meets.

    While out shopping, Stone bumps into Cameron Phillips, an old friend and former lover who now works as an administrator at a local college. The two have a heated and romantic history, and seeing Cameron again brings it all back for Stone.

    That evening, Cameron makes an unexpected appearance at Stone's book club. Old feelings are stirred up again, but are the fiery embers of their previous relationship strong enough to ignite a new romance together?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJMS Books LLC
    Release dateJan 14, 2017
    ISBN9781634862820
    The Fine Art of Reading Riley
    Author

    R.W. Clinger

    R.W. Clinger is a resident of Pittsburgh. He has a degree in English from Point Park University of Pittsburgh. His writing entails gay human studies, and includes the novels Just a Boy, Skin Tour, Skin Artist, Soft on the Eyes, Pool Boy, and The Last Pile of Leaves. He has published many stories with Starbooks Press as well as The Weekender, a novella with Dreamspinner Press. His gay mystery, Cutie Pie Must Die, is published with Bold Stroke Books. For three years he has held the position of managing editor for the literary magazine, The Writer’s Post Journal. For more information, please visit rwclinger.com.

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      Book preview

      The Fine Art of Reading Riley - R.W. Clinger

      The Fine Art of Reading Riley

      By R.W. Clinger

      Published by JMS Books LLC

      Visit jms-books.com for more information.

      Copyright 2017 R.W. Clinger

      ISBN 9781634862820

      Cover Design: Written Ink Designs | written-ink.com

      Image(s) used under a Standard Royalty-Free License.

      All rights reserved.

      WARNING: This book is not transferable. It is for your own personal use. If it is sold, shared, or given away, it is an infringement of the copyright of this work and violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

      No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts used for the purposes of review.

      This book is for ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. It may contain sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which might be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.

      This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

      Published in the United States of America.

      * * * *

      To Kenito Padilla.

      * * * *

      The Fine Art of Reading Riley

      By R.W. Clinger

      The book club invitations Stone Daye sent to his guests included the following information:

      Date: January 11, 20—

      Time: 7:00 P.M.

      Address: 2378 Messgrove Avenue

      Plimpton, Pennsylvania

      Chosen Book: A Winter Affair

      Author: Robert Riley

      RSVP by email: stonedaye@…

      * * * *

      Stone placed the invitations in the mail on January 1. As of January 10, he had heard from a few guests who wanted to attend. Now it was January 11, the day of the event and…

      Stone looked at his watch and realized he had eight hours until book club members started arriving at his two- to three-hour party. The scheduled time for the event was 7:00 P.M., but Lance, his irresponsible and sex-swooned nephew, never failed to be late, and his bestie, Conner Worthington, had to work late, probably tied up at least until eight. No matter what, the book club started on time each month, with or without all nine members, all of which Stone knew would eventually show.

      Feeling overwhelmed, having a lot to do today and suffering from a clusterfuck of thoughts inside his head, Stone wanted everything to be perfect since the last book club event at Marigold Lofty’s cottage in Harrison Hills turned out be an epic failure. Stone wanted tonight to be enchanting, almost whimsical, and rather uppity, without coming across as being pretentious and arrogant, which all of the club members thought of him.

      He had a list of chores to accomplish by seven that evening. The Tudor needed cleaned from top to bottom. Sadie Harrison, a Baptist Congolian with bright-white eyes and a beer belly, had planned to come around at noon and scrub the place clean, concentrating on every nook and cranny. Stone had hired the grandmother of six to do menial tasks throughout the year. He wanted to impress his book club members the way Marigold tried to impress them with a male stripper named Ralph X, which ended up being far too shocking. Stone had groceries to buy at The Basket Grocery Store and a stack of Robert Riley paperback books to pick up at Turn the Page Books, which were door prizes he wanted to share with his guests. There were also flowers to pick up, chocolates, both gifts for Lance, since it was almost his twentieth birthday. Lance loved flowers, a botanist at heart, always captivated by red roses or pink carnations.

      At some point in his day, he had to eat. Honey mustard drizzled over a cranberry-almond salad with sweet- and salt-buttered rolls had been the plan for lunch. Granted, it wasn’t the healthiest, low-calorie meal he could chow down in a hurry, but it seemed better than two cheeseburgers, a large fry, and a milkshake at a fast food restaurant.

      Weight had always been one of Stone’s problems. Love handles were a nuisance in his life, and he tried to work out at least three times a week at Muscles & Men, a gay gym on Plimpton’s Main Street. He really needed to cut back on his carbohydrates, though, having a sick weakness for a slew of breads, particularly rye and pumpernickel with slices of Dutch cheese. If he could just lay off the pasta, too, things in the weight division of his life would look better for him. For now, it wasn’t going to happen, particularly today.

      Besides lifting a few weights, jogging, and rowing at his local gym, he liked to speed walk. Studies in a variety of fitness magazines stated that speed walking could be unhealthy, and other magazines said it was the way to go. Stone really didn’t care what nonfiction writers thought of his workouts, wanting all of them to mind their own love handles, of course. So shame on them.

      The reason he enjoyed speed walking so much was because he could listen to one of Robert Riley’s megahit e-books. Truth and Eco’s Desire was Stone’s last pick, and he wasn’t unsatisfied in the least. Something about Riley’s writing came across as soothing, meticulous, and challenging all at the same time. He really couldn’t explain why he liked Riley so much, but he did. No one was about to tell him otherwise.

      Truth and Eco were lovers during a nuclear and apocalyptical war set in 2093, somewhere in, or near, Kansas; Riley didn’t make such a place official for his readers. The author purposely created the characters as hermaphrodites, confusing most readers and critics, which Stone loved about the four-hundred and fifty-page tome. Most of the other club members found it tedious and a blur. Another attribute about the book entailed its short chapters, a total of over two hundred, and all being less than two pages long. Yet another fascinating fact about the best-selling novel was that Truth and Eco were brother and sister, but not by blood, only by reconstructed

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