There they are, the two covers. Varian and Josh. All the stories published again. And in print, at last!
It occurred to me that those of you who haven’t been following me since my Torquere days might not have any idea what Notice is all about or why it’s so important to me. Here is the tale, in brief.
I began publishing m/m fiction in 2010, when my first novella, The Glass Man, was published by Torquere Press. Before that, I had published some “literary” fiction in journals and magazines, so I was incredibly excited to have a story accepted by a press that actually paid money. I published another novella with them called Ice, and then I had a short story taken for an anthology, and by then I knew I’d found my niche and was ready to go for a novel. I dug out a short story about dragons from my backlog and exploded it into a novel, and Torquere accepted it, and suddenly I had fulfilled a lifetime dream and Notice was born at the same time.
Those were wonderful days. I had suddenly gone from years of mostly writing only for members of my writing group and sending out endless queries to publishers and agents and being rejected, to being an author. I worked with wonderful editors (one of whom I refused to let go of and still work with today) and got to know other friendly authors. I began to get reviews, and fans. I started a blog and dove into social media. This was not easy, considering when I’d learned to type in high school, it was on a manual typewriter. The scariest thing I had to do was host Torquere Press’s LiveJournal account whenever I had a new release. For twenty-four hours, the account was mine, and I had to come up with interesting posts and chat with people who left me comments. I was petrified the whole time. Learning new technology does not come easily to me, and I’m shy and easily embarrassed. Conversing live with people all over the world about a book I’d written was something I never dreamed I’d do. But it was the most wonderful thing I’d ever done. (Well, if you ask my husband and my editor who had to put up with me the first day I hosted LJ, they might tell you differently.)
Notice was a hit, and readers took to my characters, especially Josh, who is very flamboyant, kind, wise, and dared to fall in love with a dragon-shifter. In rapid succession, I wrote six novellas and short stories continuing the romance between Josh and the shifter Varian, merging their story line with that of another dragon and human couple, Justin and Wells.
The title, Notice, came from the beginning of the first book, where a knight gives Varian notice that he is going to kill him, or attempt to do so. Varian is a teacher, and the knight was one of his students, and the notice is given during a high school class Varian is teaching. From that moment on, Varian’s three lives–his secret dragon identity, his teaching career, and his homosexuality, collide with each other, and his relationship with Josh goes to a whole new level.
But then real world problems happened to Notice, which many readers are probably aware of. Some publishers of m/m fiction began to fail and then go out of business, some of them rather spectacularly, and many authors got caught in the middle. Suffice it to say that Notice and its sequels lost their home.
I have published other books in other places and have had a wonderful time doing it, but it wasn’t until last year that I was in a place to take on the daunting task of self-publishing. Bringing back Notice was the first thing on my list, and I managed it last fall. Now I have collected all six of the other stories and written a new one to go along with them, and published them under the title Flights of Dragons. It’s been scary and frustrating and expensive, but overwhelmingly great to know that they are out there again. And at last, I’m free to write more in the series.
So here are the blurbs for both books, and purchase links. I’ll put out some excerpts in a later post.
Thank so much for reading, and for those of you who are still around from the beginning, I LOVE YOU!
Notice Blurb:
Consider this your official notice …
Teaching a high school history class is hard enough, never mind the secrets Varian has to hide to keep his job. It’s not like the school board would look kindly on a fire-breathing gay man. And that’s no euphemism.
Varian is the light-anointed leader of a dragon shifter clan, one of a handful of dragon communities still thriving after centuries of persecution by the secret society of knights. When he’s challenged by formal notice from an unknown knight, he can no longer pretend that he’s got it all under control. There are life-or-death choices to be made—including whether to admit his sternly controlled feelings for the man to whom he’s never told the truth.
This is the revised second edition of a novel originally published in 2011 by Torquere Press.
Notice buy link: https://www.amazon.com/Notice-M-Raiya-ebook/dp/B07GSHKDLQ/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1549412259&sr=8-2&keywords=M.+Raiya+Notice
Flights of Dragons Blurb:
Modern dragons can only dream of flying free in the daylit sky.
Sun on their wings would mean discovery and likely death at the hands of humans. Fear has ruled their lives for centuries. Some of them have hidden, struggling to keep their kind alive. Others have blended with humans, risking the loss of their true selves.
Varian Kendall is one of a handful of shifters who believe they can challenge the old ways. Will they realize the dream of a world no longer balanced on the sword blade of disaster? Their own questions may be the biggest challenge they face in learning what it means to be a dragon—or to love one.
This is a compilation of six Notice universe stories originally published by Torquere Press, plus a seventh all-new story!
Flights of Dragons buy link: https://www.amazon.com/Flights-Dragons-Notice-Book-2-ebook/dp/B07N31NHM7/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1549412259&sr=8-1&keywords=M.+Raiya+Notice