I got these photos of a lovely doe last weekend.
White Tail
I’m Free!
Well, Notice is. Tomorrow morning from 7-8 AM, CST.
To celebrate its tenth anniversary, Torquere Press is offering a sampling of book for free, one a day during the month of September. I’m honored to have Notice among all the fine titles.
So if you don’t know who Josh is but have been wondering, now is your chance to enter into the Notice series for free. Meet the man who fell in love with a dragon-shifter. Meet the dragon who trusted his heart to a human. It’s a wild ride that I’m thrilled to be part of.
(The Dragon and the Mistletoe)
What I Write…
A review for Webs has already popped up — yea! SOOO wonderful when someone recognizes what a writer is trying to do. Read the review HERE
And read more about Webs HERE
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And if you liked Webs, you might enjoy my very first published M/M story, The Glass Man. It’s also about a man who finds himself and love in the more extreme forms that passion can take.
Read more about it HERE
And Ice has got some chilly stuff in it, too. Read more about it HERE
And don’t forget my Charity Sip, Final Awakening — There’s a bit of sex under pressure in there. (Or should I say, “sex while being stretched?”) Buy it HERE
People comment to me that my writing seems to go in several different directions. But I don’t really feel like it does. I don’t write any differently when I’m writing a BDSM tale than when I’m not. I just write about characters who touch me. How they express themselves sexually is just part of who they are, and part of what I explore about them. What’s right for Jared and his partners would not be right for Varian and Josh (but Justin and Wells, on the other hand… hmm…) Does that make sense?
As always, thank you all for reading! It never ceases to amaze me that people I’ve never met are connecting to what’s inside my head. (Which is a very strange place, believe me!)
More on Webs
I’m just really excited about Webs. To whet your appetites a little more — it’s a BDSM menage story, and the heat rating is over the top hot. Which is like, really hot. It’s a science fiction tale that takes place on a spaceship that is fueled by the energy released from orgasms. So that means that there are lot of them.
I wanted to explore what would happen if I took a strong man and stripped him of everything — his freedom, his memories, and his inhibitions — and put him in a situation of danger. What happened was a surprise to him as well as to me. Then, half way through, he has the option to have his memory restored, but at the cost of losing his recent memories,
Being inside Jared’s head was a very interesting place to be, for sure. He grows in a lot of ways as he explores his relationship with a fellow prisoner and with their alien captor. But mostly, he learns a lot about a part of himself he’s never dared to let surface before. Accepting who he really is inside is the hardest thing he’s ever had to do.
Get your copy HERE
Oh, and in case you’re squeamish, there are no spiders in the story. The “web” is created entirely by the characters.
Webs is Out!
It’s official! Webs is available! The buy link is HERE
Here is the blurb:
He wakes nameless, without memory, and in chains. He expects death. Instead, he falls in love. Not once, but twice. The passion that binds the three men will not only change their lives, but change the whole galaxy. That is, if they escape the webs they’re caught in.
And here is an excerpt:
When I woke, I was on the floor beside the table. The bracelet still clasped my wrist. Smashing it hadn’t done a thing except turn my flesh red and puffy and make the band feel ten times tighter. I struggled to my feet and then stood still, cradling my throbbing arm to my chest. Then I noticed new pain. I hadn’t been left alone. Someone had pierced my nipples.
I groaned. Two small silver rings hung from me. They burned when I pulled at them. Like the bracelet, they had no obvious means of opening.
I did a quick check. Nothing else seemed to have happened. My body was healthy, fit, clean. My skin was light in color, I had very little body hair, but what there was looked dark and fine. I was clean-shaven, the hair on my head was short and wavy. My features felt — average? I had no mirror and nothing to compare myself to, anyway.
I could rip the nipple rings out. But I would bleed, and I had nothing to staunch it with. Still, the idea of just sitting here and letting this happen to me was abhorrent. I could feel my temper boiling, lava beneath my surface. I suspected that being powerless was a new feeling for me.
Still, if I ripped out the rings, I’d draw negative attention to myself. Should I pretend to comply until I’d figured out what was going on, then take calculated action? Yet whatever was going on seemed pretty effective. My chance might never come. My memory could be gone for good.
Gritting my teeth, I took hold of both rings. This was going to hurt like hell. But if I started acting passive now, it would only get easier until my drive to fight would be gone. And that would be the worst thing that could happen.
Just as I started to feel the pain, the door to the room burst open. The light went out at the same time. For an instant, I saw a tall, hooded, cloaked figure outlined in the doorway, but then the door shut and I couldn’t see a thing. I backed into a corner, letting go of my rings and raising my arms in defense. I sensed the person approaching — I could hear soft footsteps and the swish of the cloak. I crouched, put my right arm over my head, and charged forward, hoping to ram the person in the stomach and dash out the door.
Instead, I hit the corner of the metal table, hard. Something snapped in my forearm. Agony lanced up to my shoulder as the force knocked me backward. I cried out as hands grabbed at me, caught me, held me, and then lifted me onto the table. My ears rang from the pain, and a darker darkness pulsed around me. Through it, I felt someone straighten my right arm. Bone grated on bone. I fought, struggling, kicking, writhing. Then something ice-cold shot outward from the bracelet. Numbness engulfed me. I couldn’t fight what was taking me from the inside out, and after a moment, I found myself lying motionless.
I couldn’t even scream. All I could do was lie there and pant, but I could feel pain washing through me, so intense that it swallowed even my fear.
“We are almost there,” a voice said above me. It was male, cold and yet sensual, worming inside my mind. Instantly, I knew I had heard it before, and that I hated it more than anything.
“We have come a long way in the last few hours, my friend. You have not disappointed me. I knew from the first that you were material I could work with. Now that you have been stripped to your bare essence — your troublesome mind is gone — we can finish and you will serve me well. You know in your soul that this is true.”
I drew a deep breath and said through my pain, “I may not be able to remember you, but I hate you!” He laughed, and the sound made me ten times colder. I began to shiver violently on the table.
“Exactly,” he said. “I shall milk your strength until you have nothing left. And it will be beautiful,” he added, his voice falling.
I felt a fingertip in a silky glove trace down the side of my face and across my throat. I shuddered.
He laughed again. “Oh, it would almost be worth it to restore your memory for a moment, so that you could see yourself lying here mindless before me, as I told you that you soon would be. You begged me at the end, you know. You were most pitiful, the things you promised me. Which was quite pointless, since you will do all those things anyway.”
He was lying. I would never have begged this monster for anything!
“Oh, yes you did,” my captor said, “when I took the one thing from you that you would have died to protect, if you’d been able to. But I digress. It is time to move forward.”
He touched the bracelet on my arm. I ignored what he was doing. He’d given me one piece of information. He could restore my mind. How could I get him to do it? Comply? Fight? Beg? Everything at once? He didn’t give me time to figure anything out.
“Sit up now.” He gently pulled me upright. I was so limp that my head fell forward, and I didn’t have the strength to lift it. Nor could I stop shivering. Cold. So cold. My broken arm ached, but nothing like it had even moments before.
“You should begin to feel relief soon,” he said. “I just released drugs from your bracelet that will heal you. But before your strength comes back, I need to take a few precautions. How is your arm feeling?”
I opened and closed my hand, tried moving my arm. It worked, almost as though it hadn’t been broken.
“Excellent.” He took my arms and pulled them gently behind me.
What a Week!
Wow, is all I can say.
Final Awakening released from Torquere Press yesterday.
Webs coming out from Changeling Press tomorrow.
And yesterday, I signed a contract with Dreamspinner Press to publish Another Healing! I couldn’t be more thrilled.
Another Healing is the long awaited sequel to my 2010 Charity Sip, The Rosebud. People may remember James, the hurting healer who falls in love with everyone he heals, and Ambient, the man he saves after a car accident? I have been asked so many times for more of their story. Why does James have this strange healing talent? Why is Ambient the one who breaks the curse and falls in love with James? And can these two make a life together?
Well, I was as interested as everyone else, and I wrote a novel to find out. I have to say, some of the answers threw me for a loop.
I REALLY worked hard on this novel for most of three years, and it would have been done sooner though not as well if a friend hadn’t shaken her head and told me to pretty much start over. One of the most important things she said was that nobody was going to remember The Rosebud. At least the finer details of it. (I mean, really, who could forget someone named Ambient?) So since The Rosebud was long out of contract anyway, I incorporated it into the first chapter of the novel. So don’t worry if you can’t remember all the details — you’ll get to read them again.
This is my first full length novel since Notice, and it will be my first one in PRINT! That is very cool by itself!
Oh, and don’t forget, I have a really neat ghost story novella, Haunted Halls, coming out sometime soon with Less Than Three Press. I love that story, too.
This is what happens when I don’t publish anything for a while. A whole bunch of stuff happens at once. It’s kind of freaky for a shy writer.
2013 Charity Sip Blog Hop
Our Bloghop Starts Here: Torquere Press
Welcome to my blog! I’m very excited to be part of Torquere’s Blog hop. This is my fourth time taking part in Torquere’s Charity Sip Blitz. It’s always an honor to be included and to feel like I’m doing something to support the gay community in some fashion or other.
My contribution this year is Final Awakening, a sequel to my story last year, Slow Awakening, the story about the king who visits a cave and has the most incredible night of his life. Then he finds out in the morning that the man who’d been his master for the evening is none other than the new ambassador from a neighboring land, and that two the of them will have to work together publicly.
In Final Awakening, the king visits the ambassador’s homeland, which is even less supportive to men of their persuasion than his own. Not only does their love come to the test, but so do their lives.
And what does this have to do with uniforms? As the ambassador finds out, a lot can change depending on which one he’s wearing.
Here’s the blurb:
Forbidden love and the risk of execution dance together, a dangerous waltz of passion and terror. When the nightmare comes true for the ambassador, the king must use every bit of his cunning and wit or they will both face the sword.
And here’s an excerpt:
My lover was gagged and bound to a chair facing the door.
The wrongness of it slammed into me. It was like seeing — I wasn’t even sure what could compare. It was like that day when I was a child when the sun had disappeared at noon and everything turned black and the stars came out, the sun eaten away. The terror that touched me then was like the terror that touched me now. The sun had returned and been the same ever since, but I had never looked at it with the same trust.
My lover met my eyes for the briefest of instants. His blue eyes were full of things I’d never thought to see. Fear, guilt, anger. Then his gaze fell to the floor and I knew in my heart that he was ashamed. Ashamed for me to see him like this. He wore the brown tunic of one in service to this land, instead of the black of a freeman. Anger flooded me — who would dare do this to him? — and anger on top of terror was never a good combination. It took all the skill I had to make my face a mask as I turned to another man rising from where he’d been sitting in the shadows. A tall man in a rich, sumptuous brown cloak, edged with russet. Dark haired, dark eyed, fit, commanding, and wearing a gold circlet on his head that was nearly identical to the one that bound my own temples.
King Oban.
Oh, this was a whole lot of not good.
I admit that I had a little trouble coming up with an idea for this call when it was announced last spring. I honestly don’t have much experience with uniforms and all that they symbolize, though my father served in WWII and my great-great grandfather fought in the Civil War. And my daughter’s fiance is an EMT. But being able to be out and serve seems like a really good idea, so I wanted to come up with something. As usual, when reality is lacking, I turn to fantasy, and my characters from last year were haunting me, and then I suddenly had an idea and soon a story. I hope you all enjoy Final Awakening!
I admit that I had a little trouble coming up with an idea for this call when it was announced last spring. I honestly don’t have much experience with uniforms and all that they symbolize, though my father served in WWII and my great-great grandfather fought in the Civil War. And my daughter’s fiance is an EMT. But being able to be out and serve seems like a really good idea, so I wanted to come up with something. As usual, when reality is lacking, I turn to fantasy, and my characters from last year were haunting me, and then I suddenly had an idea and soon a story. I hope you all enjoy Final Awakening!
A Visitor
This handsome gentleman visited our yard last week, enjoying the apples that have fallen from our apple trees:
And we had some spectacular clouds a while ago:
Fall is in the air in Vermont, for sure. After a hot and stressful summer, this is not a bad thing. I have an overwhelming urge to be snowed in with a cup of hot chocolate and good story.
Webs is Getting Closer!
Watch for my newest novella Webs on September 20 from Changeling Press. It’s been heaps of fun working on this story. It’s from my — ahem — darker side, to put it gently. New characters, new setting, and an unusual plot.
Here’s the blurb:
He wakes nameless, without memory, and in chains. He expects death. Instead, he falls in love. Not once, but twice. The passion that binds the three men will not only change their lives, but change the whole galaxy. That is, if they escape the webs they’re caught in.
Here’s the link to me at Changling Press. (Yes, this is the same me. Just… a different part of me.) *Blushes*
But please do NOT go there if you aren’t an adult!
Very Cool!
I was just offered a renewal contract for my novel Notice for two more years! Very pleased. So Varian and Josh aren’t going anywhere in a hurry!
Just got to say, I’ve always loved this cover. It’s so Vermont. I mean, yeah, the dragons are here, and they’ve got attitude, and you can see them if you just close your eyes for a second…
