Driven Together by Neil S. Plakcy

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Book Title: Driven Together

Author and Cover Artist: Neil S. Plakcy

Publisher: Samwise Books

Release Date: February 23, 2026

Tense/POV: First person/past tense

Genres: Contemporary MM Sports Romance

Tropes: Slow burn

Themes: Second chance at love, coming out

Heat Rating: 3 out of 5 flames

Length: 81 000 words/301 pages

It is a standalone book and does not end on a cliffhanger.

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Buy Links - Available in Kindle Unlimited and Paperback

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They were each other’s first love—and the one that got away.

Blurb 

When journalist Wally Pulaski reunites with his college sweetheart Jonathan Hirsch, now a Formula 1 driver, old feelings ignite with dangerous speed. Jonathan is fighting for the championship of his life. Wally is assigned to cover the season, reporting every triumph and failure to a global audience that demands objectivity. Falling in love again could cost them everything they’ve built.

As the Formula 1 circus sweeps from Monaco’s glittering streets to historic European circuits and roaring modern tracks, Wally is pulled deeper into a world of precision engineering, split-second decisions, and relentless scrutiny. Behind the glamour lies a sport where careers are made and broken in fractions of a second, where every personal choice is magnified under the spotlight.

Balancing professional integrity with unresolved passion becomes a high-wire act. Media pressure mounts. Rivalries intensify. And the closer Jonathan comes to his dream, the harder it is for either man to pretend their hearts aren’t still in the race.

Driven Together is a second-chance MM romance set against the adrenaline and international spectacle of Formula 1. Combining the emotional depth of Tal Bauer and the sports-romance energy loved by readers of Rachel Reid, it delivers an intimate story of ambition, identity, and the courage to choose love in a world that never slows down.

As the season intensifies and the spotlight grows harsher, Wally and Jonathan must decide what they’re willing to risk for a second chance at the love they never forgot. Because in Formula 1, every fraction of a second matters—and so does every choice of the heart.

Ten years after losing each other, they have one chance to get it right—and this time, the stakes are higher than ever

Excerpt

I looked at him, really looked. Jonathan Hirsch, Monaco Grand Prix finalist, sitting in a dive bar in Monte Carlo at midnight, asking me to take a chance on something that might be wonderful or might be a complete disaster.

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay?”

“Okay, let’s see where this goes. Barcelona to Spa, five races to figure out if we’re brave enough to make this work.”

Jonathan’s smile was radiant. “That’s all I’m asking for.”

He kissed me across the small table, soft and sweet and tasting like beer and possibility. Around us, the bar continued its late-night rhythm, oblivious to the fact that a Formula 1 driver and a motorsports journalist had just decided to rewrite their carefully planned lives.

When we broke apart, Jonathan was grinning.

“What?” I asked.

“I was just thinking,” he said. “Once, we were too practical to try long distance. Now we’re going to try dating while you cover my races. We’ve either gotten much braver or much stupider.”

“Probably both,” I admitted. “But you know what? I’m okay with that.”

We finished our beers and walked back toward the harbor, where the parties still buzzed. Jonathan tugged me toward the paddock. Behind the glitter, the Monaco Grand Prix was already vanishing, piece by piece. Crews swarmed over the cars with military precision, wiping them down, draining fluids, and sliding them into padded crates as if they were Fabergé eggs instead of machines built for speed.

The air still vibrated with leftover adrenaline. The sharp tang of fuel, the sweet stink of rubber ground into the asphalt, the faint bite of hot brakes cooling in the night mixed with the briny breeze from the harbor, a perfume of glamour and grit all at once. Everywhere I turned, there was motion and sound: the staccato crack of impact wrenches, the slap of gloves on metal, the hollow thud of crates sealing shut. Cables coiled like sleeping snakes at the workers’ feet as garage walls folded into flat panels and tool chests slammed closed, the paddock dissolving from carnival into pure efficiency.

I couldn’t look away. One moment it had been champagne and music and color; now it was stripped to bare bones. Somehow that made it even more impressive. The glamour was temporary, but the precision and the discipline was permanent.

I breathed it in, dizzy with the noise and smells and sheer scale of it all. My first Grand Prix was ending, but even in its aftermath I felt the pulse of something bigger than myself, alive and relentless.

“By morning, you won’t even know we were here,” Jonathan said beside me in his Meridian jacket. “Barcelona’s only a few hundred miles. The trucks will drive overnight, and the setup crew will already be waiting.”

I nodded, picturing cars cocooned in trailers, engineers and mechanics scattering onto buses and budget flights while Jonathan and his teammates slipped onto a private jet with their race engineers.

The Monaco Grand Prix was over, but the season stretched ahead. Twenty-two more races, five more chances to figure out if second chances were worth the risk.

About the Author  

Neil S. Plakcy is an award-winning author of sexy, fast-paced MM romances including The Big Race, about which Joyfully Jay wrote “A truly enjoyable read.” He also writes the Ormond Yard series of Victorian MM romances, and the Love on series of sun-kissed South Beach romps. His website is www.mahubooks.com.

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Hunter’s Hidden Camera by Anthony Auswat

NEW RELEASE

Book Title: Hunter’s Hidden Camera

Author: Anthony Auswat

Publisher: Point Liberty Press

Cover Artist: Vangega 

Release Date: April 1, 2026

Tense/POV: first person, present tense, single POV

Genres: MM Psychological Thriller

Tropes: Forbidden desire, taboo obsession, slow burn, secret crush, friends to lovers

Themes: Coming of age, coming out, gay awakening, voyeurism, sibling rivalry

Heat Rating: 3 flames

Length:  68 000 words/318 pages

It is a standalone story and does not end on a cliffhanger.

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Buy Links - Available in Kindle Unlimited

Amazon US  |  Amazon UK

A high school track athlete with a perverse hobby. A college heartthrob with a secret life. A dark gay m/m thriller that will stop at nothing until everyone gets exposed.

Blurb

Hunter seems to have it all: brains, biceps, and a bright future beyond the halls of his oppressive high school. He also has a private obsession that he knows is wrong: secretly recording his older brother, Nash, with a spy cam. It starts as a thrill and morphs into a power trip. But one day, the video footage reveals something so disturbing that it cracks Hunter’s life straight down the middle.

Now he’s trapped in a nightmare where desire leaves fingerprints, loyalty pulls triggers, and the brother he thought he knew might be the most dangerous person in the room. To survive what he’s uncovered, Hunter turns to his best friend, Oscar, who may also be the man Hunter never knew he needed.

When the family you’re born into puts you at risk, the family you choose may be the only thing that keeps you alive.

Hunter’s Hidden Camera is an emotionally charged LGBTQ coming-of-age psychological thriller about hunger, shame, and the brutal cost of exposure.

Smile for the camera.

Excerpt 

M y brother has Big Dick Energy. He walks tall, as if he’s purposefully stretching out his body, a real-life Mr. Fantastic, his head held high but kind of cocked to the side, like he’s sizing up the world and impressed with what he sees. His arms swing almost carelessly, taking up more space around him than he needs. He’s got very visible swagger, his right foot landing on the ground a bit wider than his left one, landing a little crooked, as a way to make room for the almost always noticeable bulge in his pants.

But despite all this, despite the way he carries himself, he doesn’t come across as arrogant. His confidence is quiet. You can see it when you catch a glimpse of him alone, like when he’s cooking salmon and vegetables for himself for lunch or when he’s shooting baskets in the backyard. You can also see it in the way he interacts with others: the ease with which he talks to people, familiar and strange, and the friendliness he brings to almost every encounter.

I mean, I guess if you have a dick that big, life is all sunshine and blue skies and you want to be friendly to everybody. God, I hate him.

It’s not that I have a micro-penis or anything. I think I’m proportional, or at least average, or at least almost average, but it’s hard to tell because most of the dicks I see are in porn and that’s not the real world. I’m eighteen, my brother’s twenty-one, and I have now resigned myself to the fact that I’ll never catch up.

I’m thinking all this while digging in one of my brother’s dresser drawers, the one with all his underwear in it. He rotates between boxer briefs, trunks, and briefs, all different colors, some with patterns. He’s got designer brands like Calvin Klein and Diesel, but he’s also got some targeted at the youth market, from stores like Abercrombie & Fitch and Hollister. There are also a few very basic Fruit of the Loom and Hanes thrown in there, probably left over from his high school days.

Sometimes I wonder if his underwear works the same way a costume works for a superhero. Peter Parker is just Peter Parker, but when he puts on his Spider-Man outfit he is a man transformed. He is more confident, feels more powerful. Same goes for Iron Man, Ant-Man, most of them. Is my brother just a normal person, brimming with insecurities and worries, whose BDE only turns on when tighty-whities are wrapped around him?

My brother (his name is Nash) is away at college, currently a senior majoring in business, and my parents are on vacation in Las Vegas, so I have the house to myself this morning.

I grab one of Nash’s white Calvin Klein trunks. I’m jealous that he can rock these like a model. He wouldn’t look out of place next to Noah Centineo and Shawn Mendes, who broke the internet when their hot underwear ads were released. Again, it’s not that I’m out of shape or some kind of freak of nature. I’m actually pretty fit, pretty athletic, and pretty much the best track athlete at my school. It’s just that compared to Nash I feel like nothing.

About the Author

Anthony Auswat is the author of dark, demented, and deeply gay thrillers, including The Teacher Inside Me and Hunter's Hidden Camera, which were viral sensations online before they were officially published. He draws from personal experience and transforms it into genre storytelling. He lives in California, where he keeps a low profile and a high body count.

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