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I’m so excited to announce The Glass Man and other Stories is now available! (And look at this awesome cover by Arus Threepersons!)

It contains three novellas that were previously published: The Glass Man and Ice with Torquere Press in 2010, and Webs with Changeling Press in 2013. This collection is self-published, and it is available in eBook, paperback, and through Kindle Unlimited.

I chose to put these three novellas in one volume because of the threads they have in common—they are all erotic romances set in science-fictional worlds. One is set on Earth in the present, one is set on the planet Mirandt, and the third is set in space.

Each story has been freshly edited and revised. They appear in the order in which they were written. It’s been a lot of fun revisiting these characters, and it’s exciting to know they will be available to readers again.

Content advisory: These stories are erotic explorations that include BDSM, drug use, nonconsensual contact, and other kink elements.

The blurbs:

The Glass Man

Seductive and passionate, Zalen is the perfect sex slave. But his owners don’t know the past that Zalen is hiding, and no one sees the pain that he seeks to drown in the oblivion of sex. Then one night he is bought by a radiantly beautiful young lord with a penchant for roses who asks for the one service Zalen is afraid to provide—love.

By the time Zalen realizes that the touch he craves is the touch of a rose, it is going to take every bit of the lord’s love to set Zalen free again.

Ice

Summer vacation in Acadia and a hot, seductive stranger in a gay bar—perfect. But the offer of a glass of cubes turns Tace’s vacation into a nightmare. Before the evening ends, he’s locked in a chastity device and addicted to the rapture-inspiring vapors that dance out of the substance known as Ice. Against his will, Tace falls into a secret and dangerous world.

Thirty years later and physically unchanged, Tace is on the other side of the glass of Ice, but it’s not as easy finding recruits as he’d thought. But William seems to be the ideal candidate, and Tace’s vision of the perfect man. How can he force Ice onto someone who is holding his heart?

Webs

He wakes nameless, without memory, and in chains. He expects death. Instead, he falls in love—not once, but twice. The passion that binds three men will change not only their lives, but the whole galaxy. That is, if they escape the webs they’re caught in.

You can get the book here: https://www.amazon.com/Glass-Man-Other-Stories-ebook/dp/B089XPBCMY/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1591877645&sr=8-1

Thank you so much!

Well, 2019 was quite a year.

In January, I published Flights of Dragons, a sequel to Notice, a novel-length collection of stories set in the Notice Universe. Think dragons. Varian and Josh. In December, I published Owl, a YA novel about an owl shifter trapped in his owl form. Two vastly different publishing experiences. In between them, Winter went out of print, not even having made it for a full year. I have decided to let that one rest for a while before I decide what to do with it. There has been plenty said elsewhere about the state of the niche publishing world I’m part of. Despite everything, I love both my new books and I’m very proud of them.

Moving on, my next plan is to self-publish The Glass Man and Other Stories, which will be another volume of previously published stories. These are science fiction in nature, and will include “The Glass Man,” “Ice,” and “Webs.” All I have left to do is get the cover organized and start the dreaded formatting process.

In terms of new writing, I have several books in various stages of completion: Wings Over Water, which is in the Notice Series, Cricket, which is in the Another Healing series, and Windkind, which is brand new. I’m finding, as I get older, that it takes more time to write a book, and I’ve learned that I need to give projects time to rest and then come back to them, sometimes again and again, to allow them to find the depth they need. So please bear with me, and I promise these will all find their way to publication eventually.

At the moment, I’m immersed writing the first book in a new series I’m calling Space and the King, which is based on an idea I’ve had going on in my head for a long, long time. Rock star from Earth meets the king of a moon under siege from a malevolent space ship who takes prisoners to use as power sources. This is part of the universe I created in “The Glass Man” and “Webs,” which is partly why I want to bring those stories back into print. See, I do have a master plan going on. Sort of.

In my real life, things have been rough. Cancer has been striking people around me like lightning in the past couple months, and I’ve had a health scare myself, though everything turned out to be fine. I’m in a place right now where I pick what I’m going to worry about next, and keep cycling around. I am so, so grateful I have my writing to dive into for solace. And my kayak waiting patiently for spring. And my crazy young dog is finally beginning to show signs of pretending to be trained, at least. And the fact that my husband and I bought a Jeep yesterday. And there may be an RV in our future. Oh, and we’re taking our whole family on a Caribbean Cruise in February. And, as always, I live surrounded by nature and very special people.

So I wish everyone a wonderful and meaningful 2020, and thank you all so much for reading my books and just being there.

Today I’m at My Fiction Nook. Read about how a place that’s important to me became important in the novel. And it’s a turtle!

https://www.myfictionnook.com/2019/12/blogtour-owl-by-m-raiya.html

Today I’m at the Harmony Ink blog, and my post is about an owl learning to be human again.

https://www.harmonyinkpress.com/news/a-scene-from-owl-by-m-raiya-360

Today I’m at Sparkling Book Reviews on my Owl blog tour, talking about how I wrote from the point of view of an owl.

Here’s a link: https://sparklingreviews.home.blog/2019/12/11/guest-author-m-raiya/

Today is Owl’s release day.

I love this book. It came to me easily, caught me up, and caught up the people who helped to perfect it. The novel is young adult, but I think that the learning and growing into love of two souls with a lot of obstacles in their way has a universal appeal. And there’s action and adventure aplenty.

A book release day is always full of excitement, nerves, and joy. I’m feeling those aplenty, too.

I know there’s a lot of pain in the publishing world right now, and in the world in general, and in all of us. But I offer my book Owl, and it spreads its wings.

Here is a link to the book trailer. All the photos are mine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26o2_X_WhHE

Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Owl-M-Raiya-ebook/dp/B07Z7FD9XC/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=M.raiya+owl&qid=1574270027&sr=8-1

Dreamspinner Press: 

https://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/books/searchresults?q=m.+raiya+owl

Harmony Ink Press: 

https://www.harmonyinkpress.com/books/owl-by-m-raiya-635-b

Only love stands between two lonely, misunderstood boys and death.

To save a friend, Gabriel broke his clan’s most sacred rule—he shifted to his owl form in front of humans. Now banished, Gabriel lives in a hollow tree and subsists on rodents, unable to shift back and slowly losing what’s left of his humanity.

Vincent seems to have it all, but the secrets he’s hiding are killing him. Sometimes it feels like ending everything might be better, and he has no one to talk to but the owl from the hollow tree….

Only the closer the boy and owl become, the more dangerous it gets. Gabriel might think his clan has forgotten about him and what he did. But they haven’t. And they’ll do whatever it takes to make sure Gabriel doesn’t break the law again….

Cover Artist: Brooke Albrecht

Harmony Ink link:

https://www.harmonyinkpress.com/books/owl-by-m-raiya-635-b

Dreamspinner Press link:

https://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/books/owl-by-m-raiya-11321-b

I have created a new page here on my website where I’ll be posting some free reads, starting with some of my out-of-print stories. The first one is up now. It’s called “My Boyfriend Has a Scar,” and it was originally published by Torquere Press in 2011 as a charitable donation to the It Gets Better Project.
 
Here’s the blub:
 
A gay teen’s worst nightmare — to be caught in the act. Gage snaps under his conservative father’s fury and bolts. He flees school, the family farm, and his shy, quiet boyfriend, Kyle.
Ten years later, a violent thunderstorm brings the two together again.  Can weathering the storm mend the damage?

I was really pleased with this story, and it got some lovely reviews and raised money for a good cause. I’ve always enjoyed writing about thunderstorms, and this one is truly a character in the story. So is the brook, which is based on the one that crosses the dead end, dirt road where I live. A few years ago, after I wrote this story, we had a really bad flood that completely washed out the culverts. I was trapped at home for three days without my family, except the furry members, while the town put in a temporary bridge. Now there is a permanent bridge that is much better than the culverts were, and the old floods are a thing of the past. Let this story hold their memory! It can also serve as a testimony as to why an improvement was needed. (Side note: being trapped wasn’t all that bad. I had plenty of food, electricity, a good excuse not to go to my day job, peace and quiet, and lots of writing time. But I was really glad when my family could get home. It was funny—all they wanted were clean clothes and their own beds. I wanted to go out for dinner!)

Enjoy the story. I’d love to hear what you think.

Free Reads

In other news: my new YA novel, Owl, which is being published by Harmony Ink Press, has just passed through the second round of edits, and I can’t say enough about how much I LOVE this book. More information including the cover reveal (it’s soooo cool!) and the book trailer made from all my own photos will be coming soon.

Thanks for reading!

M. Raiya

Last night, I signed a contract with Harmony Ink, the YA imprint of Dreamspinner Press, for my novel, Owl. So where the heck did this come from?

Well, I published some YA a while ago under a different name back in the Torquere days. I enjoy writing books with younger characters sometimes, and the idea for Owl came one day when I was thinking about shifters other than dragon, and the characters that sprang to life in my head were young. One is just graduating high school, the other is nineteen. I feel like this story will fit in with my general body of work, so rather than try to resurrect my now defunct YA pen name, I decided to publish Owl here. My books have always been all over the heat spectrum from BDSM in Winter and Webs to fairly hot in Another Healing to milder in Notice. Obviously, Owl will be on the mild side in terms of sex, but the plot is intense and I think the characters are engaging. So it will say YA in the description, but it’s the kind of book that I would enjoy reading as a adult. I hope you all will, too.

Anyway, Owl is about an owl shifter who gets banished from his clan and trapped in his owl form. He survives on his own for three years, and he’s close to losing his humanity and sinking completely into owlness, when he meets a young human man with troubles of his own…

I haven’t forgotten about Wings Over Water, the next in the Notice Series, don’t fear. My editor said it needed a bit of rethinking (which is the polite way of phrasing this) so it’s getting a major overhaul. I am very close to dumping it back on her lap for the next round of edits. So I will definitely be self-publishing it at some point hopefully in the not so distant future. It’s getting better all the time. Stay tuned…

And further down the road, I’m going to put together another volume of my out-of-print novellas. This one will include The Glass Man, Ice, and Webs. I think. It’s only just starting to take shape. I really feel an urge to get my older pieces back out there, now that I’m getting the hang of self-publishing after Notice and Flights of Dragons. I think I’ll just keep working slowly at it.

And I’m working on a brand new novel called Windkind, which is pure Fantasy in a whole new universe. It’s pretty cool. I’m about half way through the rough draft.

So that’s where I’m at as we move through spring, which has been cold and rainy and good for being inside and writing!

https://animoto.com/play/R1H1ozxJBgy3wxHP40k4Dw