Hot Head [Kindle Edition]

Damon Suede (Author)

Book Description

Winner of One Perfect Note (Overall Honorable Mention) in the 2011 Rainbow Awards.


Where there’s smoke, there’s fire...

Since 9/11, Brooklyn firefighter Griff Muir has wrestled with impossible feelings for his best friend and partner at Ladder 181, Dante Anastagio. Unfortunately, Dante is strictly a ladies’ man, and the FDNY isn’t exactly gay-friendly. For ten years, Griff has hidden his heart in a half-life of public heroics and private anguish.

Griff’s caution and Dante’s cockiness make them an unbeatable team. To protect his buddy, there’s nothing Griff wouldn’t do… until a nearly bankrupt Dante proposes the worst possible solution: HotHead.com, a gay porn website where uniformed hunks get down and dirty. And Dante wants them to appear there—together. Griff may have to guard his heart and live out his darkest fantasies on camera. Can he rescue the man he loves without wrecking their careers, their families, or their friendship?

Editorial Reviews

Review

"5+ stars... Desert Island Keeper...Hot Head is a book you will want to savour...a plot that grips you and makes your stomach ache... an unforgettable story... gritty... raw... delicious... I felt as if I was living this story rather than reading it. Highly recommended." (Reviews at Jessewave)

 "Up front, this is one of the best M/M romances I have read lately... It had that level of romanticism that makes your heart ache good... I strongly recommend this novel to all romance lovers, I'm sure you will love it as much as I did." (Elisa's Reviews and Ramblings)

"Hot Head is not your run-of-the-mill gay romance...the hottest homoerotic sex scenes I've read, and yet...the story is about none of that and so much more than that...This book completely fulfilled all of my requirements for a 5-star romance read... If you are ready to be scorched, read it!" (Viv Santos at Queer'd Magazine)

"Awarded the Golden Nib: for books that knock our socks off!
Magical and beautiful even when it gets down and dirty and completely gutter-talk raunchy. A raw, emotional, very hot, worth-every-penny read. I've re-read it three times now, and it should get old, but it hasn't. That's Golden Nib worthy!" (Miss Love Loves Books)

Selected as one of 15 candidates for Best Romance 2011 at Goodreads, the only M/M romance so honored.

Product Details

• File Size: 737 KB
• Print Length: 320 pages
• Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
• Publisher: Dreamspinner Press (June 14, 2011)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B00564ACK8
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #17,664 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 46 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars This one is just so original, the guys so sexy.. June 20, 2011

By R.Parklane TOP 1000 REVIEWER

Format:Kindle Edition

This one is a wonderful surprise. Not the usual at all. There is a raw intensity in the writing which I find captivating. So what if certain phases are overboard. It just gives the guys' story that much extra punch.

I could never resist a M/M romance firefighters story. There is just something so sensual and sexy about these hunks and they are heroes. And this is who Griff and Dante are. Like the first reviewer, I love the way the writer blend the "9-11" tragedy into their story. Griff and Dante were there and because of that these two firefighters seemed so real to me.

The story is told from Griff's POV but we get to know Dante just as well. I love both characters as they struggle with the realization that their love for one another is far beyond between brothers or best friends. These guys' chemistry is palpable, their love story intense and gritty. As for the sex,wow..

From the description I was worried the sex could be too much but how wrong I was. This is foremost about emotions, raw, intense and gritty emotions. There is a marvelous plot here from the time Griff is "adopted" by Dante's caring family, the boys blossoming into best buddies, covering for each other, Griff's struggle to overcome the painful impact of "9-11", Dante's dare devilled attitude and Griff's solid presence in his life...So much to marvel about these guys.

Oh yes, back to the sex. When it happens it just sizzles. Very hot. This is coming from someone like me who has got into the mundane habit of fast forwarding sex scenes. No fast forwarding here at all. There is that one chapter in which the writer lovingly describes one of the guy's body, posts and postures, which I find so hot and sexy. Yet there is an underlying melancholy too when one paramedic is so horribly "gay-bashed", which could easily happen to one of them. While I am satisfied with the ending, I do hope there is a sequel soon. As for the supporting characters they are just as likable from one Russian owner of "Hot Head" to one charming little girl. This MM romance is definitely a winner among the many being churned out every day.

28 of 31 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Hot Head - An unforgettable love story June 18, 2011

By Jessewave

Format:Kindle Edition

From the ashes of 911 Damon Suede has written a novel that's raw, dialogue that's fresh, a plot that grips you and makes your stomach ache, prose that entices, and characters that are so incredibly complex, flawed and over the top you will have no doubt who wrote Hot Head because the author's fingerprints are all over every page. This book has all the elements I look for in an unforgettable story - drama, human tragedy, family, heart, guts, excitement, the unexpected, and above all, unconditional love.

Reading Hot Head I was transported to the delicious mix of the ethnic neighbourhoods in New York - Brooklyn, the Bronx, Staten Island, Yonkers, Queens - in all their decaying decadence against the glamour and glitter of preppy upscale Manhattan. The smells and different races living on top of each other trying to make a living and barely doing so were realistic and immediate and I felt as if I were living this story rather than reading it. The city was alive and the atmosphere sparkled underneath the mosiac that made up the Big Apple, but that apple had a worm at its core because of the reality that was 911.

Hot Head is a book you will want to savour. The characters are exceptionally well drawn and New York City with its beauty and flaws is a fitting canvas for Griff's and Dante's romance. Amidst all of this rich history and the daily grind of work, Griff and Dante are two men who have a new reality - they are in love with each other but in their world of firefighters that love is not welcome. Nothing in this book is predictable. The emotions are gritty and raw, the protagonists are flawed, the supporting characters are as diverse as you would ever want to meet in the pages of a book, people get hurt, the writing is mostly great even though at times it's so over the top that I had to admire Damon Suede for having the guts to dare write such prose and dialogue. But the prose is so rich and intense it made me forgive the author's excesses as he writes the way he lives, OUT LOUD!

Everything in the book is on a grand scale with no apologies. Hot Head is more than a romance. It's also part of the Twin Towers aftermath but not in a way that's maudlin. Sure, thousands died when the Towers were blown up but the book did not dwell on what is now history, it embraced it and moved on.

Griff grew incredibly during the book and evolved from the overgrown 6f5 shy, self effacing character with no self confidence into a wonderful man who knew he was loved by the one person who meant the world to him and was the core of his life. He was a contradiction because he was huge in terms of his physical proportions, but on the flip side he was emotional and needy. I could feel the heat and intensity between the protagonists because Dante was no slouch either where his feelings for Griff were concerned. He was like a bright flame that burned at both ends and Griff was the moth. Dante loved danger, embraced it without thinking about the consequences, and lived his life on the edge. However he was the one constant in Grifffs life who took care of him when he suffered from panic attacks for years.

You will love the Anastagio family, especially the parents and Dante's brash sister Loretta. There are too many characters to mention but Tommy Dobsky, a paramedic who almost died horribly in a hate crime, will break your heart, and he's coming back in the next book in the series, Hard Head.

Hot Head is entertaining, vibrant and original, the writing is fresh, the protagonists kick butt, and oh! before I forget, the sex is off the chart

14 of 17 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Hot Head review June 17, 2011

By Boy Detective

Format:Kindle Edition

Suede plays with his readers like a master seduction artist: he turns the heat slowly until you're boiling with sexual anticipation and barely able to keep the lid on. In fact, I didn't. His characters' are violently restrained - not due to contrived plot points but due to the organically real and detailed restrictive and established world of firefighters. What elevates Hot Head, in spite of the rather banal and genre-generalized title, is, in fact, three things: 1) His well-researched, richly detailed landscape of New York firefighters, 2) deliciously surprising and playful vernacular (Suede has a delightful way of continually combining ordinary vocabulary in naughty and inventive ways), and 3) fleshing out substantial, skin, blood, and bone characters aching with emotional and sexual restraint in identifiable ways - yet maintaining the mouthwateringly exotic desirability of each character. Suede has produced a meaty, sweaty work one wants to dig into like one digs into beer and pretzels at the bar after a long day of hard labor on an empty stomach - and not a delicate gay fable refined for the plastic, Los Angeles, Cosmo-sipping set. One suspects and hopes Suede's elevated penchant for details will one day encompass other worlds apart from New York City - and certainly other time periods. Yes, let us hope this is the beginning of an exciting, well-traveled gay fiction career.

More About the Author

Damon Suede grew up out-n-proud deep in the anus of right-wing America, and escaped as soon as it was legal. He has lived all over: Houston, New York, London, Prague, with a few long stretches in New Orleans and Vienna. Along the way, he's earned his crust as a model, a messenger, a promoter, a programmer, a sculptor, a singer, a stripper, a bookkeeper, a bartender, a techie, a teacher, a director... but writing has ever been his bread and butter. He has been happily partnered for nearly a decade with the most loving, handsome, shrewd, hilarious, noble man to walk this planet.

Though new to the M/M genre, Damon is an award-winning author who has been writing for print, stage, and screen for two decades, which is both more and less glamorous than you might imagine. He's won some awards, but his blessings are more numerous: his amazing friends, his demented family, his beautiful husband, his loyal fans, and his silly, stern, seductive Muse who keeps whispering in his ear, year after year.

Damon is a proud member of the Romance Writers of America and the Rainbow Romance Writers. He would love to hear from you... you can get in touch with him at DamonSuede.com.