One cranky man-child. One snooty artist recluse. Total trouble.
The Infinite Onion by Alice Archer Publisher: Shine Even If Release Date: March 31st, 2020 Length (Print & Ebook): Print: 388 pages Subgenre: Contemporary gay romance The truth is harder to hide when someone sharp starts poking around. Grant Eastbrook hit the ground crawling after his wife kicked him out. Six months later, in Seattle without a job or a place to live, he escapes to the woods of nearby Vashon Island to consider his options. When he’s found sleeping outdoors by a cheerful man who seems bent on irritating him to death, Grant’s plans to resuscitate his life take a peculiar turn. Oliver Rossi knows how to keep his fears at bay. He’s had years of practice. As a local eccentric and artist, he works from his funky home in the deep woods, where he thinks he has everything he needs. Then he rescues an angry man from a rainy ditch and discovers a present worth fighting the past for. Amid the buzz of high summer, unwelcome attraction blooms on a playing field of barbs, defenses, and secrets. 
Grant has never felt more like a failure. He’s lost his marriage, his job and now his pride. His only option is to secretly stay in an isolated cabin owned by his ex’s arrogant brother. He’s hoping that Vashon Island will be the inspiration that he needs to find his way again. Instead, he finds a man who insists on probing his most vulnerable feelings and who is more infuriating mystery than anyone else that he’s ever known.
With practiced movements, Oliver grabbed stuff from drawers and cabinets without needing to look. He moved with a grace that made my words dry up, and he didn’t rush to fill the space with conversation, which was good. My internal argument required my full attention.
Oliver is known by everyone on the island as an incredibly talented and eccentric artist. He’s lives in the same house that his father and grandfather before him did. His life is filled with friends, art and of a relationship that will never amount to more than a one-night stand.
Deep down he longs for the kind of love that will set his soul on fire. He just never expected it to be with a guy that he found sleeping soundly in a ditch. Grant is an enigma. Maybe it’s the way he’s so openly affectionate with his nephew Kai. Maybe it’s the way that all the kids on the island follow him around. And maybe it’s the way that he stares at Oliver when he thinks that no one is looking. Every man carries a secret that has shaped everything that he is and one day, if he’s lucky, he will find that one person who will cherish the broken light within. Grant Eastbrook was officially messing with my life—a life that had worked fine without him for a long time. I hadn’t invited him into my fantasy, but he’d barged in anyway.
Reading Alice’s The Infinite Onion feels like stepping into the most beautiful of watercolors. Each word is a brushstroke tinted in hope and heartbreak. From every angle, she delivers an unforgettable multi-sensory experience where I could smell the grass and feel the chill of the island wind.
It’s not an easy love story. But any bite is softened with the sweetness of Kai, his friends and an ending that made me smile so high. And it's a feeling that I'll always hold dear... 
Our Exclusive Q & A with Alice ~
Thank you to Agents of Romance for hosting me here. My latest novel THE INFINITE ONION is out! This is a contemporary gay romance about a cranky man-child and the snooty artist recluse who tries to rehabilitate him, with troublesome results. I’m so happy to be sitting with AoR to chat a bit about THE INFINITE ONION and my writing process!
1) On a typical day, how much time do you spend writing? AA: The answer depends on how we define writing. For very focused work on a story, I can do about a four-hour block, best done first thing in the morning, by the end of which, my noggin begins to whimper. When I try to push that, the next day I can’t do as much. That has been mostly while also working a full-time job, which has been morphing into less than full-time as my writing career picks up. I’m excited to push the daily four hours of focus to longer and more — more writing, more stories, more characters — more time doing my favorite thing. But those focused hours aren’t the only time I’m “writing” in a day. The story in progress gets rather shouty with demands for attention. It butts into meals, walks, conversations, sleep. I have a spiral notebook for each story, to jot ideas and developments into between focused writing times, but the notebook isn’t always close enough, so a snowfall of thoughts written on whatever loose paper was closest to grab tends to swirl me into the next writing session. 2) How do you develop your plot and characters? AA: I’m still a rank newbie when it comes to writing novels, and I’ve been slow about it up to this point. I wrote EVERYDAY HISTORY in 2014. It was published in 2016. Then I spent three years writing a second novel, THE INFINITE ONION, in part because I don’t really know what the hell I’m doing yet, and I futzed about with different writing systems in an attempt to zero in on what works for me. Also, I try to write the type of novels I most love to read — novels with layers that take time to notice, with themes that tangle and surprise, with characters that leap off the page fully formed and demanding attention. I aspire to depth and wonder, to stories that make readers feel deeply as they’re being entertained, and maybe gets them inspired to be more true to themselves. It’s a big aspiration, on top of figuring out the technicalities of creating a novel from start to finish. So, to (finally) answer your question: I don’t know. Or, rather, my way of developing plot and characters, so far, is to fumble about, notice what feels most true, and keep doing that. What’s true shifts and changes. Somehow, a novel emerges. Magic! Ask me this question again after my fourth or fifth novel, and I bet I’ll have a different answer. 3) How do you do research for your books? AA: Great question. I’m so curious to find out what my answer will be. My first two novels, EVERYDAY HISTORY and THE INFINITE ONION, are contemporary romances. I attempted to make the worlds of those stories close to current reality. For THE INFINITE ONION in particular, because of some of the themes and settings involved, that meant doing a lot of detailed research to verify facts, in order to keep readers from being taken out of the story by something “untrue,” so to speak. There’s a lot I don’t know. I researched everything from legalities around child car seat usage, exact sunset times on exact days of the year, oil painting processes, and much more – mostly through online research, but I also talk to experts and people with perspectives I want to know more about. My current work in process has been even more research intensive, because it deals with loaded social and cultural issues. For this story I’ve been reading stacks of books on a wide variety of topics. The novel I’ve planned for after that may be a reaction to all this research, because it’s shaping up to be a gritty fantasy — just me and my imagination, and to hell with the real world. 4) Let’s talk writing style. How did you develop yours? Was any literary figure of particular influence? AA: Well, my mom was a poet. She was a really interesting combination of dark and light. I learned a lot from her about language (I hear her voice when, as an editor, I share tips with authors, like regarding whether to use “lie” or “lay” in a sentence: “Chickens lay; people lie.” I have tons of those handy tips from her running around in my brain.) As a child and young adult I read truckloads of books and gradually identified the type of writing I loved, which usually wasn’t mainstream. I’d often recommend books to my friends, who would read them and then scratch their heads and say things like, “Um. I learned more about you.” I didn’t care. I’d keep recommending my favorites to anyone who would listen. Novels like Nancy Lemann’s LIVES OF THE SAINTS and Suanne Laqueur’s VENERY series; non-fiction books like Annie Dillard’s HOLY THE FIRM, Ray Bradbury’s DANDELION WINE, David Hickey’s AIR GUITAR, and many others – all of them bursting with language and style and thoughtfulness. I’d read and feel drunk with love for perfect turns of phrase and brilliant word choices, for the way the words pinged inside my chest. My writing style comes from wanting to be the cause of that feeling for others. About The Author ~
Alice has questions. Lots of questions. Scheming to put fictional characters through the muck so they can get to a better place helps her heal and find answers. She shares her stories with the hope that others might find some healing too. For decades, Alice has messed about with words professionally, as an editor and writing coach. She also travels a bunch. Her home base is Eugene, Oregon.
Visit With Alice ~
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Enter The Giveaway ~
Join us to celebrate the release of THE INFINITE ONION by Alice Archer with this special giveaway.
3 prizes:
1 e-copy of critically acclaimed EVERYDAY HISTORY; 1 e-copy of THE INFINITE ONION; 1 grand prize of a paperback copy of THE INFINITE ONION.
*Must be 18 to enter and win. Physical prizes mailed only with the USA; international winners will receive e-copy.*
3 prizes:
1 e-copy of critically acclaimed EVERYDAY HISTORY; 1 e-copy of THE INFINITE ONION; 1 grand prize of a paperback copy of THE INFINITE ONION.
*Must be 18 to enter and win. Physical prizes mailed only with the USA; international winners will receive e-copy.*
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