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Christopher Koehler's blog about rowing and writing and who knows what else.
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Christoarpher

Please Welcome Jaye Edgerton

Please Welcome Jaye Edgerton

 

Thank you for having me, Christopher! This is my first big publication and I’m thrilled to death to be a part of this big community of readers and writers! Yesterday I was over at M. A. Church’s Decadent Delights, and tomorrow I’ll be back home at JayeEdgerton.com for my release day! I’m also running a giveaway that you can enter on my blog.

How did you get started writing m/m romance? Did you always want to be a writer?

 

I was definitely a born writer. When I was in high school the last subject of every notebook was devoted to writing elaborate space operas instead of taking notes. But I never imagined I’d end up with something like The Winter Lord as my first published fiction.

 

Writing M/M Romance grew out of writing gay characters in general. I’ve always been a very emotion-focused writer, very into the angst, and I’m also the sort who writes sex scenes for her characters whether they actually happen or not! I have some bigger, more mainstream projects I’m working on, and (probably because I’m a lesbian myself) the gay relationships just clicked better for me than the straight ones. So I spun that feeling off into some new characters and new settings, and surprise! That’s getting published before any of my non-romance work! Because, being a novella, it was a small enough project to actually finish.

 

Tell us a little about your story. Did you something specific inspire you to write it?

 

The Winter Lord is about a man named Erik who travels to the realm of the elves and the fey looking for a way to bring spring back to his home. He’s rescued from freezing to death by a mercurial winter fey who decides to keep him.

 

I hate to be that person in M/M who says, “I wrote this as fanfic but then I changed all the names!” but it did start out as the backstory for a Dungeons & Dragons character. I took the original idea and went back to the roots, since so much in D&D comes from actual folklore, and gave it a much more Norse flavor. And then I gave it an actual ending, since the entire point of a D&D backstory is to be open-ended.

 

What’s next on your plate? What are you working on?

 

Apart from my generally not very romantic, more mainstream fantasy, I’m gearing up another M/M novella called His Dark Knight. It’s about a prince whose longtime best friend-slash-secret crush-slash personal guard escapes from a horrible magical experiment being carried out by the king’s wizard to create a force of knights powered by dark magic. The pair of them join up with a rebellion trying to depose the war-mongering monarch and set the prince on the throne in his place. His friend has to master his new magical powers as they finally face their long-denied feelings for each other.

 

One insoluble debate in the m/m romance world is whether women have any business writing it, that women authors appropriating the lives and experiences of gay men for their own ends or profit. What are your thoughts on this subject?

 

I think generalizations are terrible. There may be a few women out there who write insensitively, but it’s like saying no men should ever be able to write about women. Some do it well, some do it less well. And it sure seems like a lot of men get away with writing women badly without repercussions! I’ve tossed away my share of male-penned mainstream fantasy novels when I discovered a rape-as-romance subplot or noticed the author’s Madonna-whore complex was showing. Part of why I find M/M so comfortable is because of all the bad writing of women that’s out there, some even by other women. Believe me, women know what it’s like to be objectified! We understand!

 

The funny thing for me is, as I said, I’m a lesbian. I’m not even interested in those bits! But I’m attracted to romance, and I’m attracted to people enjoying each other’s company physically without the disturbing baggage of misogyny and patriarch. It’s about the characters for me, and I have the imagination to empathize with them. It should be able the characters for any good writer, male, female, or otherwise. If you have an issue with an individual writer, take it up on Goodreads. Don’t generalize.

 

 

 

Blurb:

 

When Erik, a human scholar and amateur mage, sets out to find Alfheim, the legendary home of the light-elves, he has nothing to lose. His village suffers under a mysterious Unending Winter, and his lover died in a hunting accident while trying to find food. Erik wants to find a way to end the cold, but he doesn’t expect a beautiful but Winter-cursed fey lord who wants him for his champion—and his bedmate.

 

Lord Therial is an elemental creature, tied to the land, and the elves of his kingdom revere him like a spoiled but rightful ruler. A spell cast by a rival fey locks him and his little corner of Alfheim into a perpetual Winter that seems connected to the one afflicting Erik’s home. If Erik fails to defeat the enemy, both realms will remain trapped forever.

 

 

Excerpt:

 

Erik had been a fool, and as he lay in the mountain snow—pulled down by exhaustion, his extremities numb, his mind succumbing to the alluring phantom warmth that presaged death from hypothermia—he understood that his own mistakes were going to kill him. He hadn’t realized he’d be so accepting of his own death, lost to the frozen http://www.christopherkoehler.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/WinterLordThe-200x300.jpgmountain peaks while the Unending Winter still embraced his home, killing others as it had killed his Rowan. The legends he’d uncovered in the writings of the village elders said the barrier between worlds was thin here, and if one came at the right time, one could find a way into Alfheim. The home of the Ljósálfar was supposed to be an emerald oasis in these white peaks, a refuge stumbled upon by lost travelers dying from the cold. He had studied the stories, the generations of tales of those who had found the place and returned to tell of it, which the scholars of his village had written down. He had expected a warm oasis. Instead he found only an angry, bitter cold where a beautiful elven castle was supposed to appear, a cold his meager human magic couldn’t hope to drive back.

 

As Erik lay on his back, vision framed by the fur trim of his leather hood, it seemed night had fallen early. The days had never grown long again after the last solstice, but he was sure it was only just after midday. Was he losing track of time? Had he passed out, lost a few hours without even realizing it? The sky had been a hard steel gray before, but now when he looked up he saw the clear, starlight-pierced black of the sky on a biting winter’s night when the air was too cold for snow or even clouds. Something about those stars looked wrong. The constellations were unfamiliar. Erik struggled to make himself care through the exhaustion, to make the analytical mind that had gotten him here consider how such a thing could be, but the urge to give in to the warmth and the sheer pleasure of closing his eyes and settling into the soft snow after climbing so far was too strong. It would be a painless death.

 

Perhaps he’d see Rowan again….

 

As he let go, a shadow blotted out the stars. “You poor thing,” whispered a voice like the winter wind. Fingers as cold as the snow brushed his cheek, and Erik fell into darkness.

 

 

Bio:

 

Jaye Edgerton lives in Columbus, OH, with three ferrets and a long-suffering best friend-slash-roommate. “Eccentric” is a nice way to put it. In addition to fiction, she writes about geek culture for her local alt-weekly. She likes her fluffy happy romance to be about men and her serious dark fantasy to be about women—she’s contrary that way. Before deciding to take her writing seriously, Jaye spent a cumulative five-and-a-half years working in bookstores, used and otherwise. After that she spent seven years in tech support where she mostly wanted to cry a lot, but the experience encouraged her to chase her dream of being a professional writer instead of just writing dirty vignettes about her Dungeons & Dragons and World of Warcraft characters that she showed to all of two people. She’s much too fond of office supplies, out-of-print sci-fi/fantasy authors, and Transformers.

 

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Christoarpher

the story of Burning It Down

So have been checking out Rainbow Gold Reviews these days? It’s the fresh new thing on the reviewing horizon, well that and Prism Book Alliance. I’ve been having a lot of fun with both, actually. One of today’s features at Rainbow Gold is Firefighters Day and RG is kind enough to spotlight the third of my CalPac novels, Burning It Down (BID). 

 

BID was a funny one as far as the CalPac canon goes. It was never supposed to

 

http://www.christopherkoehler.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Coverartdraft2_BurningItDown_Koehler-200x300.jpg

Cover art, Burning It Down

exist, and neither was Owen Douglas.

 

Obviously he and BID do exist, however. Astute readers of my novels know that Owen first shows up in Tipping the Balance (TTB) and was instrumental in make sure that Brad Sundstrom and Drew St. Charles acted like the adults that they are and worked through their misunderstanding. Brad and Drew are a couple because of Owen Douglas.

 

The thing is, Owen appears nowhere in my outlines for TTB and neither does that smoking hot scene between Owen and Brad in TTB. Owen essentially spun himself into existence in a few hours one evening while I was writing. I remember writing to my publisher to ask if something like that would detract from the story, because the sparks between Brad as the project foreman of the renovation of the Bayard House (why does no one get that I named the major plot device in TTB after Bayard Rustin?) and Owen as the chief official of the fire department present. I knew they were going to have sex as soon as they met. My publisher told me that so long as it wasn’t gratuitous it would be fine.

 

So I gave up keeping them apart and let whatever was going to transpire happen, and happen it did. A hot daddy firefighter and a muscular bear cub? Damn. Not only did Brad learn that he was not merely gay for Drew, he was gay, period, but I managed to avoid all those bad jokes about sliding down a fireman’s pole. Or did I? Maybe you should go read TTB and find out, because that scene was incendiary.

 

Still, I felt bad for Owen, because even at that magic moment, Brad thought about Drew, not him, and Owen could tell. Even if I hadn’t been enthralled by Owen for his own sake, I’d have owed Owen his own book just to make it up to him. He was noble and self-sacrificing, but that won’t get you laid, you know? 

 

And there it was, the beginning of Burning It Down

 

Well that, and this video: 

 

 

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Christoarpher

Please Welcome Christopher Moss

Please Welcome Christopher Moss

 

I have the distinct pleasure of welcoming Christopher Moss to my little corner of the internet today. He’s here to promote his new book, Beloved Pilgrim. I’ve been waiting for Beloved Pilgrim for a number of reasons. First of all, it looks like a great story. Second of all, it features a transman as a protagonist. Third of all, it’s an historical romance. I know, right?

 

Blurb

 

At the time of the earliest Crusades, young noblewoman Elisabeth longs to be the http://www.christopherkoehler.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/BelovePilgrim_cover-200x300.jpgperson she’s always known is hidden inside. When her twin brother perishes from a fever, Elisabeth takes his identity to live as a man, a knight. As Elias, he travels to the Holy Land, to adventure, passion, death, and a lesson that honor is sometimes found in unexpected places.

 

Elias must pass among knights and soldiers, survive furious battle, deadly privations, moral uncertainty, and treachery if he’ll have any chance of returning to his newfound love in the magnificent city of Constantinople.

 

 

Today, however, Christopher is going to tell us about his own journey, which I think is a real privilege. So I’ll just be getting out of the way and shutting up, now.

 

Christopher Hawthorne Moss

 

http://www.christopherkoehler.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Christopher-Moss-300x168.jpgTo be honest, I never was a straight woman.  I was born with a female body, and as I matured sexually I knew my predilection was for men.  It’s not surprising that I thought I was a straight woman.  But I am and always have been a gay man.  It just took me 60 years to figure that out.  60 years of feeling out of place, not myself.

 

How can a person have a female body and be attracted to men sexually and not be a straight woman?  Easy.  Be born with a male brain.  It’s more common than you think. There are two times when a child is bathed within the uterus with sex hormones.  The first is very shortly after conception.  That bath determines what sexual organs the child will have.  Even then the options are astoundingly various, with many more combinations than just boy or girl.

 

What has generally been unrealized is that there is a second time the fetus is soaked in a flow of hormones, and that is about six weeks into a pregnancy, just as the brain is starting to develop.  The hormones do not necessarily match the earlier set.  A girl baby may find herself with a male brain, and a boy baby may find himself with a female brain.  MRIs have shown many babies have brains with characteristics of both males and females.

 

Now let me ask you something.  If for strange science fiction reasons you were forced to choose either your body or your brain to survive, the other one being destroyed, which would you choose?  Are you your body?  Or are you your brain?  Looking at popular culture it seems we see our brains as who we are.  Think of stories with heads preserved alive in mad scientist labs. Your brain is essential to what we think of as a sentient being.  That’s where your mind, your thoughts, your personality, your perceptions of the world, your communication is located.  We never say of a person with a broken limb, “She’s out of her arm.”  But we most certainly say it of someone not acting normally “He’s out of his mind.””

 

That should explain what’s going on with someone who is transgender pretty clearly.  I’ll continue with myself as the example.  My body has been female, breasts, vagina, the whole nine yards, for all of my life.  So are the genes that identify me as XX.  I used to have a uterus, long gone now.  But I don’t have a penis and testicles, or a prostate.  Which am I, male, female, or none of the above?

 

From a very tender age, I don’t remember how long but it’s at least from the age of four, I knew I wasn’t like most girls.  I wasn’t into sports, not in the Little League way, but I was very much into swords and bows and arrows and male heroes like Robin Hood.  When we played “House” I chose to be “Brother”.  When I started writing stories, I never wrote about women except as side characters.  The letters and later stories a female friend and I wrote that ultimately became my first novel had us role-playing: she was the queen and I was King Lawrence.  As  far as I am concerned, I still am.

 

I knew something was not fitting when I came of age sexually.  I knew even then that I was not a straight woman.  Given the choices I thought I had, I guessed I must be a lesbian.  I tried living as one, but it never worked.   I wanted to be with a man.  It was not until I read gay and M/M fiction that I started to get a hint as to what was going on all this time.  I found the sex scenes very hot, but not as a spectator, as so many straight female writers explain.  I liked being one of the two men.  I felt everything the men were feeling, wanted everything they wanted, in spite of not having the equipment myself.  That’s why they call it fantasy, right?  Might it be more?

 

I soon learned that there is a difference between your sex, your gender identity and your sexual inclination.  Mix and match.  Many people, and this includes many gay, bisexual and lesbian people, have the mistaken belief that a person who is called transgender wants to be the other sex than they were born.  They believe the person wants it for sexual reasons, or they want it because they don’t think you can have both worlds, or they are disturbed or at best don’t really understand what they want.

 

Where does the mistake lie?  Is it in whether a person can or should want to be other than they are?  No.  It’s in the assumption that the person wants to be a member of the opposite sex.  You can’t turn a straight woman into a gay man.  He already is one.  I already am and always have been a man.  My shell is as false as if I ran around in a dress.  If I could take off my body the way I can take off my clothes, then there would be no gender identity disorder.   You and I would see the same thing. a guy.  Me.

 

Why do we even lump gay and lesbian with transgender people?  There are straight transgender and gay and lesbian transgender.  It is because our society sees us as similar.  It is because we are subject to the same kinds of discrimination and violence.  It is because of ignorance and fear that gay/lesbian people and straight transgender people are treated the same way.

 

Let me tell you that when a person has body modification to match his or her gender identity, they no longer have gender identity disorder.  They are the gender they know themselves to be.  The difference is only in the eye of the observer.

 

Perhaps the most profound example of my own confusion is my novel BELOVED PILGRIM which was released just yesterday by Harmony Ink Press.  I originally made the protagonist a lesbian who took the identity of a man in order to live as a knight.  I said I had written it so I could have the experience of writing a woman I could relate to.  Having written it on the brink of my understanding of myself as a man, I came to realize that the only kind of woman I could relate to is one who is really a man.  I rewrote the novel to reflect this new understanding, letting the protagonist Elisabeth/Elias experience the journey I had had.

 

I have been on hormones for about a year.  Since I realized truly who I am I have relaxed, become more natural, more at peace with and at home with myself.  My therapist observed  that my facial expressions are now that of a male, and along with the men’s clothing I wear, my posture and movements as well.  The real Christopher is emerging from the masquerade.  You see, with transgendered people, the change in dress is not the costume.  The clothing we used to wear was drag.  Those of us lucky enough to have access to the whole process of changing our biological bodies come to be clearly visible as their true gender.

 

Author Bio

 

Christopher Hawthorne Moss wrote his first short story when he was seven and has spent some of the happiest hours of his life fully involved with his colorful, passionate and often humorous characters. Moss spent some time away from fiction, writing content for websites before his first book came out under the name Nan Hawthorne in 1991. He has since become a novelist and is a prolific and popular blogger, the historical fiction editor for the GLBT Bookshelf, where you can find his short stories and thoughtful and expert book reviews. He lives in the Pacific Northwest with his husband of over thirty years and four doted upon cats. He owns Shield-wall Productions at http://www.shield-wall.com. He welcomes comment from readers sent to christopherhmoss@gmail.com and can be found on Facebook and Twitter.

 

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Dreamspinner Press

 

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Christoarpher

An interview with Kate Sherwood

Dreamspinner released (at least) two books on Monday, December 16, my own Settling the Score and Kate Sherwood’s The Fall. Personally I’m a bit tired of Settling the Score after writing it and all those rounds of editing. The Fall’s what I can’t wait to read, which is why I’m so pleased to offer an interview with Ms. Sherwood today.

 

Blurb

 

Every relationship leaves something behind. Dumped by his sugar daddy, part-

 

http://www.christopherkoehler.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/FallTheLG-cover-200x300.jpg

Cover, Kate Sherwood’s, The Fall

time model Scott Mackenzie somehow ends up owning an abandoned church in rural Ontario. He dreams of using it for gay weddings, even if he’ll never have one of his own.

 

Joe Sutton is trying to keep his family together after his parents’ deaths. Between the family ranch, his brother’s construction company, and commitments around town, he doesn’t have time for a relationship. But Mackenzie is hard to ignore.

 

As both men fight their growing attraction, challenges to Mackenzie’s business threaten their relationship. If he can’t make it work, he’ll have to crawl back to the city in defeat. But the only solution involves risking the ranch Joe loves, and each man has to decide how much he’ll sacrifice for the other.

 

Interview

 

Tell us a little about your story. Did you something specific inspire you to write it?

 

My current release is The Fall, the story of  a pampered city boy coming to live in the country and the taciturn cowboy he grows to love. The city boy ends up in the country because he and his ex-sugar-daddy bought an abandoned church in the area with the plan of using it for gay weddings (“A traditional venue to celebrate your non-traditional love”). And that idea was inspired by a real-life abandoned church that was down the street from where I used to live. The whole community, actually, was loosely based on my former home, but the church was definitely the part that stood out for me.

 

In real life the church got converted into a house and lost all of its original charm. I wanted something better for it, so I gave it an imaginary life in my book!

 

How did you get started writing m/m romance? Did you always want to be a writer?

 

When I was in university, I read a few romances and figured writing one would be an easy way to make some money. I think I got the first… chapter, maybe? Then I realized that it wasn’t so easy after all.

 

Later, I stumbled into fandom and was amazed by the quality of some of the writing. I mean, yeah, there was a lot of crap, but if you knew where to look?  There was some great stuff. I lurked and read for a while, then finally did a bit of writing. And it was the immediate feedback I got from fandom that made me able to keep writing. Write a chapter, post a chapter, get feedback on the chapter. It took writing from being a solitary pursuit to a social one, and even though I’m about as introverted as a person can get, I needed that social element. Even after I started ‘pro’ writing I still had a small group of people who read my books chapter by chapter as I wrote them. Just a few words of feedback from them was enough to keep me going. I write full books without feedback, now, but I still miss the excitement of the early days, posting a chapter and getting to find out what people thought moments after they read it.

 

Do you have any writing or reading squicks? Things you don’t like to read and can’t see yourself ever writing?

 

I keep trying to read more het romance. I love the m/m, but I do wonder why I’m so intrigued by it when I don’t generally enjoy more traditional romances. And I think the problem with too much of the het romance I read is the alpha-hole heroes. I just… yeah. Major squick. It’s hard to get into a romance when you want the heroine to punch the hero in the face and then run as far away as she can get.

 

That said, there’s some het romance out there without alpha-holes, and I’m getting better at finding (and enjoying) it. I’ve got two published het romances and one more with my agent, so it’s not like I hate the whole sub-genre. Just that one trope.

 

What’s next on your plate? What are you working on?

 

I just wrote the last sentence of a novel-length version of a short story I wrote for the Goodreads m/m group a couple years ago. The short story was called In Over His Head and I think the novel will be called In Too Deep. It was interesting to do the conversion, because I’d originally thought I’d more-or-less lift the entire short story and plop it down in the middle of my novel, but it turned out I didn’t do that at all. Elements that made sense in a short story seemed over-the-top in a novel.

 

There are elements of the short story that I love that I couldn’t make fit in the novel, and elements of the novel that might have enriched the short story if I’d been able to make them work, but overall – two surprisingly different stories.

 

As an M/M writer, do you feel that the trend is changing where it is becoming more mainstream?

 

I hope so! I’ve never felt the need for an agent when writing m/m, but I recently wrote a YA novel and found an agent to represent that, and since I’m working with her anyway I asked her about the m/m. She was cautious, but willing to give it a try (selling it to one of the big publishing houses).

 

I feel like sooner or later, one of the big houses is going to give m/m a chance, and wouldn’t it be fun to be in the first wave of that? It’s hard to strategize, though… my stuff tends to be pretty conservative, in terms of heat levels. Not quite ‘sweet’, but not really racy, either. So maybe that’ll be a disadvantage, if the big houses see m/m as a type of erotica rather than a type of romance. Or maybe it’ll be an advantage, because it won’t be quite as risqué for them… Who knows! But it’s fun to experiment.

 

I read a blog about M/M writers losing their imagination because they are writing the same subjects repeatedly, what are your thoughts?

 

http://www.reviewsbyjessewave.com/?p=42883

(readers: please note that Jessiewave will be closing at the end of 2013 and the question of archives hasn’t been answered.)

 

I don’t know. I think there are original books in every genre, and derivative books in every genre. How many fantasy books feature epic quests and wise elves? How many mystery/suspense books have a hard-bitten rebel detective bucking the system in the name of justice? Tropes can be done well or they can be done poorly.

 

In my opinion, m/m has a lot more flexibility than het romance. Maybe because we’re mostly with smaller publishers, I don’t think we’re pushed to be nearly as formulaic, and I think there’s a lot more variation within the character types.

 

And often tropes become tropes because people like them.

 

One insoluble debate in the m/m romance world is whether women have any business writing it, that women authors appropriating the lives and experiences of gay men for their own ends or profit. What are your thoughts on this subject?

 

I’m genuinely torn about it. I’m a straight woman. I think two men together is hot. Am I fetishizing them? Othering them by seeing them only as sexual creatures?

 

I guess I don’t think so, or I wouldn’t still be writing m/m. I think I’m okay partly because I don’t fetishize actual gay men. I mean, I do not want to know about the sex lives of my gay friends, just like I don’t want to know about the sex lives of my straight friends. I don’t haunt gay villages and hope to see men making out. I think fictional gay men are hot. Real gay men? They’d better have good personalities, or I’m not too interested.

 

The other reason I think I’m okay is because my characters aren’t just sexual creatures. It’s an aspect of their personalities, sure, but they’re more than just that. In The Fall, (coming December 16 from Dreamspinner Press!) Mackenzie has been objectified – he works as a model and his sugar-daddy wants him to look good and be available at all times. But his character arc through the story allows him to become a much more rounded person as he gains his independence from his ex and learns to stand on his own two feet. Sure, he finds romance with a new guy, but romance isn’t just about sex, right? And the new guy, Joe, is barely sexual at all at the start of the book. His whole family is after him to start dating again, but he’s too busy (and too chicken) to actually do much. In this exchange, his twin brother Will is bugging him about it after their first encounter with Mackenzie:

 

Will sighed and finally turned to look out the windshield. “He seemed okay,” he offered.

 

But Joe wasn’t playing that game. “He seemed like a complete pain in the ass. I bet those jeans cost two hundred dollars and came prefaded.”

 

“But his ass looked good in them.”

 

“Are you sure you’re straight? They say it’s pretty likely for twins to have the same sexual preference.”

 

“Are you sure you’re gay? Or maybe you’re… what’s it called? Asexual.”

 

“Yeah. I think maybe I am. So you should respect that and back the fuck off.”

 

“When’s the last time you got laid, Joe? Just how long’s it been?”

 

Jesus, this conversation was getting annoying.

 

Excerpt

 

Lorraine snorted. “He didn’t seem too friendly? I’m not surprised.” She shrugged philosophically. “It’s probably the gay thing.”

 

It hit Mackenzie almost like a slap. He’d thought he was prepared for small-town attitudes toward his sexuality and had absolutely considered homophobia as a possible barrier to setting up his wedding chapel somewhere like Falls Creek. But he couldn’t believe it was being treated so casually. “You’re saying he was rude to me because I’m gay?”

 

Lorraine looked startled. “No. I’m not sure I’d call it rude, but the way he acts? Distant, kind of? I always figured it was because he’s gay. You know, he’s always been a bit different, so he’s never really tried too hard to fit in. He just hangs out on his ranch, being a lonely cowboy….” She trailed off and fixed her gaze on Mackenzie. “But you say you’re gay as well? I mean, I can’t say it didn’t cross my mind. But it seemed rude to ask….”

 

“Joe Sutton is gay.” Mackenzie had always prided himself on being able to read people and certainly on being able to pick up on that little spark from a man who was noticing Mackenzie’s undeniable charms. But he’d gotten none of that from the cowboy brother. “That’s confirmed? Or you’re just guessing?”

 

“Well, I haven’t been there in the room with him and another fella,” Lorraine said with an arched brow, “but it’s general knowledge. He’s never tried to hide it, not that I ever heard of.”

 

“Maybe he just couldn’t be bothered to speak in order to deny it. He doesn’t seem like someone who cares a whole lot what other people think about him.” Mackenzie was trying to figure it all out. He wanted to find a mirror and make sure he still looked like himself. First Nathan had dumped him for that twenty-year-old, and now a man living in what must surely be a gay desert had crawled right past Mackenzie’s bountiful oasis?

 

“You could ask Nancy Yeats’s nephew, if you wanted. Trevor something or other. He lives over in Darton, and I guess the two of them were seeing each other for quite a while.” Lorraine’s grin was a mix of curiosity and mischief. “If you’re interested, I can find out if he’s seeing anyone right now. I haven’t heard of it, and usually that’d be a good sign that it isn’t happening, but like I said, Joe’s a bit different. A bit more private than most folks.”

 

Private was not a good enough excuse for failing to pay attention to his surroundings or, more importantly, failing to pay attention to Mackenzie. But none of that needed to be shared with a woman who clearly gossiped as a way of life. He smiled brightly. “Oh, no, I’m not interested. You know, not like that. I was just curious. I wanted to know what kind of people I’d be doing business with if I had the Suttons do the work on the church.”

 

“The best kind,” Lorraine said firmly. “You couldn’t do better.”

 

Lorraine started telling a story about the Suttons helping out some poor family that had lost everything in a house fire—well, of course the whole community had chipped in, but the Suttons had done the biggest part—and some people might say that’s because they’re blood, but really, they’d be third cousins at best—because it was Susan Sutton’s grandmother? Yes, grandmother, Maggie Johnson—she was from out in Newfoundland, back before it was even part of Canada, and she’d carried that accent with her for her whole life…. Mackenzie tuned out. Joe Sutton was openly gay. And Mackenzie was a model, for Christ’s sake. Maybe his career hadn’t quite taken off, but that was because Nathan hadn’t really liked it. He hadn’t been rude enough to try to forbid it, but he’d be grumpy for days before and after Mackenzie went out of town for even a couple days, and there just weren’t enough shoots in Toronto to propel someone into the modeling elite. The first time Mackenzie turned down a New York job, Nathan had leased him a silver Mini convertible as a reward. Mackenzie had been thrilled by the symbol of Nathan’s affection and by the adorable new wheels. But being a good boyfriend had made it a bit difficult to be a good model. So, no, it wasn’t as if Mackenzie had set the world on fire as a model. Still, he must be a tastier piece of ass than Nancy Whoever’s nephew!

 

Mackenzie forced himself to pay a bit more attention to Lorraine’s chatter, but the biggest part of his brain was still focused elsewhere. He was not going to be ignored by some desperate hick pretending to be a damn cowboy. No. Joe Sutton was about to get his world rocked. “Nobody puts Baby in a corner,” he muttered to himself, and then he smiled when Lorraine shot him a quizzical glance. “I’ve got to go,” he said without trying to explain. “But thanks so much for catching me up on all this. You’ve given me a lot to think about.”

 

He beat a hasty retreat inside and went to sit in the sanctuary of the church. A lot to think about. And a lot of things to do, things actually based around the important points of building a successful business and keeping himself out of the poorhouse. But his mind kept drifting back to the tall cowboy who’d told him he had bats in his belfry. And then ignored him. What the hell was Joe Sutton’s problem?

 

Bio

 

Hot men. Horses. Canada. Angst. Millionaires. Hot male millionaires riding horses in Canada while dealing with all their angst! Hell, yeah. No, not all my books are the same, and not all of them deal with every one of those ideas, but there are definitely some common themes!

 

I ride horses in Canada. I like hot men. But I’m not a millionaire, and I’m not especially angsty. So, I’ve combined the ‘write what you know’ rule with ‘write what you like’, and I’m enjoying it.

 

My first novel was published in June of 2010, and I’ve been pretty busy since then. I stuck with m/m romance for quite a while, but I’ve also got a couple m/f romances, and I’m exploring other genres as well. Basically, I love writing, and I’ll do it in any genre that I can!

 

You can find more information at my blog or my website, http://www.katesherwoodbooks.com/, and I’m on Goodreads, Twitter, Facebook – everywhere, it seems. Come say hi!

 

 

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Christoarpher

An Interview with Posy Roberts

First of all, I’d like to welcome Posy Roberts here today to share news of her latest release, Fusion, the eagerly awaited sequel http://www.christopherkoehler.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/CrazyTree-233x300.jpgto Spark. Fusion releases today, and I’m very excited to host her on release day. Usually we climb up high into our crazy trees on release day, high high up into the branches and chuck pinecones down onto people’s heads. Seriously, it’s a nerve-wracking day.

Fusion

How do you tell your friends and family you’ve fallen in love with a man when they’ve only ever known you as straight? How do you explain to your kids that you loved their mother very much, but your new partner is your best friend from high school?

Kevin Magnus must figure it out while trying to build a relationship with Hugo Thorson, whose bigger than life, out-and-proud drag queen persona is simply too big to be contained in a closet—even for the time it takes Kevin to come up with an explanation for his kids and Erin, his soon-to-be ex-wife.

But Erin faces an even bigger obstacle—one that shakes the entire family to the core. When she unexpectedly turns to Hugo, they form a connection that forces Hugo to grow up and offers Kevin the chance to become the kind of father he wants to be. Despite the coming complications, they’ll all benefit from a fortunate side effect: it becomes clear that Hugo is very much a part of this unconventional family.

An Interview with Posy Roberts

Tell us a little about your story. Did you something specific inspire you to write it?

http://www.christopherkoehler.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/FusionCover-200x300.jpgFusion is the second book in my North Star Trilogy. At the end of Spark, we left Hugo and Kevin realizing they wanted to give their relationship a real and solid chance. Fusion starts out very hopeful, but it doesn’t take long before Hugo and Kevin realize their relationship might not be able to move forward and that it could be dead in the water before it even had a chance.

A real life conversation inspired all of North Star, and especially this book. What would I do? was the question that kept popping up in my mind as I was told about an impossible situation a friend was facing. It inspired another dilemma to go through my mind and the story formed very quickly from there. I dove into the books and wrote them one right after the other before I edited a word.

Do you find you put a lot of yourself into your characters or is fiction just fiction?

I think it’s hard not to put parts of myself into some of my characters, but I could say the same thing about what I pull into my characters from my friends or people that drive me nuts. I write from my experience or from the experiences of people around me, and occasionally from overheard conversations, but everything is going to be filtered through my lens. Yet, at times I write a character based on some psychological issue or birth order or some other such thing.

Kevin in Fusion is not at all like me, but he is very affected by the emotional abuse his father dolled out over the years. I see some of myself in Hugo. He’s an ambivert who at times wants to be with people and at other times wants to hole up and left alone. But that’s a very small part of both of us.

How did you get started writing m/m romance? Did you always want to be a writer?

Ever since I was fourteen, I’ve wanted to write, but my heartsick poetry wasn’t what I’d had in mind. It only took until I was 37 for me to pursue writing more seriously. There were many years of college papers and what felt like ages of working on my thesis. After a time, writing simply had a bad connection in my head, or at the very least, a non-creative connotation.

It was the same with reading, because for many years I had to read 250-400 pages a night for classes. About the last thing I wanted to do was read more, even if it was for pleasure. Knitting and crocheting actually became my relaxation activity, along with watching sci-fi shows with my husband. I had to work past my learned hate of reading in order to even enjoy fiction again, let alone love it.

After a long enough time away from graduate school, I read something other than non-fiction for fun. I got started writing M/M romance after an extended illness where reading was about all I could manage. I wasn’t finding the stories I wanted to read, so I decided to take a stab at writing them.

What is the hardest part about writing for you? The benefits?

Finding long enough chunks of time to write is hard. I like to immerse myself in a story. Getting to that point when I have a child needing my attention, a job to go to, and pesky things such as the need to eat interrupting me makes my way of writing tough at times.

As for benefits, I find writing to be cathartic. I’m able to connect with my id and let loose on the page. Of course, my superego and ego do have to come out to regulate too or else I’d never do rewrites or edit my stories.

Do you have any writing quirks? (ie computer has to be facing a certain way, cup of coffee on the left, certain music playing, etc)

I need my coffee on my right, but my wine on the left (if that’s my beverage of choice that night). My music has to be lyric-less and not too stimulating. I prefer a heating pad to be on my lower back, and I always have my feet up on a stool in front of me with my feet crossed at the ankle (right over left). The best motivator in the world for me is to see a graph of my words added each day. I also need to be near a window so I can see outside while I write.

Do you have any writing or reading squicks? Things you don’t like to read and can’t see yourself ever writing?

I read fan fiction for so many years that I feel nearly squickless. Heck, I probably wrote most people’s squicks back when I was writing fan fiction. But I won’t read rape, molestation, and non-consensual acts meant to titillate.

It’s not a squick, but I don’t think I’ll ever write any hardcore BDSM. I don’t know anything about that world aside from what I’ve read, so I’d be too intimidated to even attempt it. I’d most certainly mess it up.

What’s next on your plate? What are you working on?

I have several things in the works, but I’ve been so busy this fall getting my novels and a short story ready for release in quick succession, I’ve had no time to write at all. I have several stories in mind. Over my winter break, I plan to dive in headfirst again.

Look forward to Feathers From the Sky released December 1st in Dreamspinner’s Advent Calendar. Hugo and Kevin’s teen story from Spark has been adapted and expanded for Harmony Ink. It’s called Private Display of Affection and is out December 12th. And book 3 of North Star, Flare will be released January 13th.

Posy’s short biography

Posy Roberts lives in the land of 10,000 lakes (plus a few thousand more). But even with more shoreline than California, Florida, and Hawaii combined, Minnesota has snow—lots of it—and the six months of winter makes us “hearty folk.” The rest of the year is heat and humidity with a little bit of cool weather we call spring and autumn, which lasts about a week.

She loves a clean house, even if she can’t keep up with her daughter’s messes, and prefers foods that are enriched with meat, noodles, and cheese, or as we call it in Minnesota, hotdish. She also loves people, even though she has to spend considerable amounts of time away from them after helping to solve their interpersonal problems at her day job.

Posy is married to a wonderful man who makes sure she eats while she documents the lives of her characters. She also has a remarkable daughter who helps her come up with character names. When she’s not writing, she enjoys karaoke, hiking, and singing spontaneously about the mundane, just to make normal seem more interesting.

Links:

Fusion (book 2)

Spark (book 1) 

North Star (series link) 

Posy Roberts’ page on Dreamspinner 

 

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Christoarpher

Blog Hop Interview—Tag, You’re It!

A while back, my friend James Austen tagged me. Then I got sick. But it’s my turn now, so here I am. I know you’ve all been breathless with antici-say it, Franky!–pation.

1) What are you working on right now?

I’m actually working on a couple of things at the moment. Settling the Score, the fourth installment in the CalPac Crew series, will be released on December 16, 2013. I expect galleys any moment. So I’ve spent a lot of time lately on multiple rounds of editing. It’s the cover art that’s driving me nuts. I think the artist and I are on the second draft. As soon as I get one I like I’ll post it here, don’t worry.

I’m also in the earliest stages of outlining my next project. The hard truth is that I’m essentially done with the CalPac Crew, at least in its present incarnation. I’ve told the stories I want to tell with the present cast of characters. Sure, there may be a few holiday stories to come, maybe a few short stories, particularly where Morgan and Nick are concerned, but I’m essentially done. I’ve told the stories of the characters I’d intended to handle in novels. Sure, there are more stories to tell about minor characters, and I may yet tell them, but they won’t be CalPac Crew stories, not really.

That said, I keep coming back to the idea of taking it back to the freshmen crew at CalPac, the New Crew as such a series might be dubbed. One of the characters in particular has been demanding a great deal of my attention. I don’t have a name for him yet, but that’s about all this guy’s missing.

He has also told me he’s poz.

So how’d he get that way? You must admit, it’s unusual to start college with HIV. He’s not a hemophiliac, and in any event the tests to screen the blood supply are much better than they were when I was an undergrad and a hemophiliac roommate died of complications relating to HIV.

No, this guy was exposed to HIV in high school the old-fashioned way, through unprotected sex. Since it will have been in high school, this suggests a YA adult novel published through Dreamspinner’s Harmony Ink imprint. I’ve dangled the idea in front of the publisher and she seemed interested.

What worries me is that I’ve seized on the notion of telling each character’s backstory through a YA novel. This means I’d be writing two series simultaneously. Even I’m not that crazy. Am I?

On top of all that, I’ve finished the tenth? twelfth? draft of a dieselpunk novel set in an Edwardian world of political and familial treachery in which the magic is slowly coming back after a thousand years of slumber. I’ve no idea whether or not it’s any good.

 

2. How does it differ from other works in its genre?

Hmmm, good question. I’ll answer in reverse order. I’ve been asking that question myself. I try to link the culture I depict in the dieselpunk to the dislocations in our own world as it made its fitful transition to the modern world (n.b. modern in this sense refers to a historically bracketed period of time, rather than as a synonym for contemporary, and is characterized by a shift of populations from rural to urban life, a shift of life’s rhythms to “factory” time, a feeling of uncertainty and anxiety, a sense of isolation from others, a sense that the pace of life was increasing beyond all control, a sense that the wholeness of social life had splintered into nothing but social atoms in the void, a world—as Marx said—where all that is solid melts into air), a world on the verge of ripping itself to shreds as it hurdled at break-neck speed to the First World War.

I’ve taken gross liberties with the technology and magic, as well, of course, but all of this is world building and doesn’t really answer the question. Where I hope it differs is in my view of the people involved, of the characters I hope I bring to life. To an extent, fantasy and science fiction—if not any kind of literature—depend on a “great man/woman” view of history. There is something extraordinary about these people, even if it’s in their utter lack of greatness. Something always sets them apart in some manner, even if it’s just the fact that the fates kicked them in the teeth. But it’s important to remember that even if called on to do great things, they’re still men and women, with the same hopes and fears as the rest of us. I hope I’ve remembered that human element.

As for my m/m romances, that may be even trickier. It’s been suggested that there are actually very few stories to tell in this genre…the fish out of water, the late bloomer, gay for you, cops or firemen, poor communications, to name just a few. These tropes exist for a reason, because in the hands of a good author they seem fresh and exciting. Our stories are ultimately about people and a good author, knowing that, makes people the center of her stories. The rest is just wallpaper. It hangs there in the background and looks tasteful, only coming to our attention when it looks tacky or starts coming undone like a poorly handled plot.

So while collegiate and/or master’s rowing hasn’t been handled by very many people, and certainly not in novel-length stories, I hope it’s my guys that draw people in. After all, if I made rowing the focus of my stories I’d lose people quickly. It’s always been a tricky balance, actually. Include just enough rowing detail to let the reader know why something’s important, but not include so much that it’s a boring info dump.

It all comes back to our characters, doesn’t it?

 

3. Why do you write what you do?

I’ve long read fantasy and speculative fiction, although I’ve never much use for hard sci-fi. It all started one rainy afternoon when Dad gave me a copy of Katherine Kurtz’s Camber of Culdi. I tried to write fantasy seriously toward the end of grad school when I realized that academic history was a bust. I’m still working on the same novel, trying to express the same themes of fin-de-siècle concern about shifting expectations about sex and gender, as well as a distinct unease about modernity, something sensed but unseen, an invisible threat in the air like the smell of gun powder and the report of cannons on the horizon.

I started writing m/m just a few years ago after I read Urban and LaRoux’s Caught Running and one of JL Langley’s werewolf books. It wasn’t so much the plots of the books themselves that captured me, it was reading stories that featured gay men who were perfectly normal (okay, werewolves…drop it). Up until that point, most of what I’d read about me and my kind had been from the queer studies corner of the history of sexuality. Sodometries has that “ooh, look I’m talking about sex” cachet, but just wasn’t the same as reading about normal (there’s that word again) men going about the business of living and loving.

Since I’ve always been a writer, expanding my writing to include contemporary m/m romances seemed like a natural thing to do. As it turns out, it’s been a congenial home.

 

4. What’s your writing process like?

The earliest part of my writing process looks a great deal like staring off into space. I may appear to be daydreaming, but then, that’s where ideas come from, isn’t it? Honestly, I don’t even know if this counts as part of the writing process per se, but one of my stories starts as an idea on a scrap of paper or jotted into the memo app on my phone or something similar. One recent idea was sparked by an article in the local birdcage liner and I spent the next 45 minutes fleshing it out.

From there it’s a matter of adding successive levels of detail until I have a solid outline. At each stage I make note of what research I need to do and obvious holes in the plot. Eventually I end up with an outline that moves me (and the reader) through all stages of the story and the plot structure, including snippets of dialogue that have come to me, as well as notes on what a given scene’s viewpoint character should be feeling.

Then I actually have to start writing. The benefit of this outlining is that when I’m about the 2/3rd to 3/4th mark, when I decide the entire thing stinks on ice and that I have no talent as a writer, I have an outline to fall back on. The outline looked good when I wrote it and I have to make myself trust it when I hit that point dreadful point when I’m that close to finishing.

After that, it’s just a matter of the usual submission and editorial process.

 

In a week or so, look for the answers to these questions on the pages of these fine writers:

 

Posy Roberts

 

Z.A. Maxfield

 

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Christoarpher

Guest Blogger Ellis Carrington

<p>We love Ellis. This is why she ends up in the acknowledgements of a lot–if not all–of our books. That’s also why I’m pleased as punch to help her publicize her newest release, <em>Stripped Clean</em>. So…heeeeere’s Ellis!</p>

<p>E: Thanks for letting me hijack your blog for the <a href="http://www.enchantressofbooksblogtours.com/" target="_blank">Enchantress of Books blog tour</a> to promote <em>Stripped Clean</em>.</p>

<p>C: So not a problem. Tell me a bit about <em>Stripped Clean</em>.</p>

<p><b><i>Book Blurb: </i></b></p>

<p><a href="http://www.christopherkoehler.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/StrippedClean_Final_900x1519.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-305" alt="StrippedClean_Final_900x1519" src="http://www.christopherkoehler.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/StrippedClean_Final_900x1519-177x300.jpg" width="177" height="300" /></a>Carlos O’Shea is stuck. He knocked-up a girl in college after a night of too much drinking, and then married her to be honorable. With little money, fewer options, and no degree, he winds up cleaning the floors in a small town gentleman’s club and thinking desperate thoughts about the handsome owner that’ll lead to nothing but trouble.</p>

<p>Greg Moorehouse only invested in a nudie bar to help his best buddy out of a financial crisis. Now his drug-dealing ex boyfriend, his reverend father, and a parade of surgically-enhanced DD’s are driving him insane. But what’s really stripped him of all good sense is his growing obsession with his married employee, Carlos.</p>

<p>They circle each other in a push-pull of misunderstandings and growing attraction. Carlos needs to get his boss out of his head, and Greg can’t abide cheaters and married men. So what are a strip club owner and the guy who cleans going to do with their undeniable desires?</p>

<p><i>Please note: This is an adult GLBT romance (male/male romance), for mature readers only. Contains explicit love-making between two hot-blooded men, angsty dark moments, and cupcake-baking exotic dancers.</i></p>

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<p>C: Um…cupcakes?</p>

<p>E: You’re missing the point, Chris.</p>

<p>C: Story of my life. Anything else you want people to know?</p>

<p>E: Yes. My bio, as well as the buy links and my author’s links.</p>

<p><b><i>Author’s Bio & Picture:<br /></i></b>Romance requires a hopeful ending and that is why Ellis Carrington is driven to write it. She loves<a href="http://www.christopherkoehler.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/38706_medium.jpg"><img class="alignright wp-image-304" title="The Lovely Ellis Carrington" alt="38706_medium" src="http://www.christopherkoehler.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/38706_medium-300x300.jpg" width="180" height="180" /></a> to create original stories that are gritty, witty, and a little unexpected, just like the heroes who inhabit them. Her guys come in both human and non-human form because spirit guides and vampires deserve love too. Her favorite things are great friends, great music, and books that make her sob like there’s no tomorrow.</p>

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<p><b><i>Book Links:</i></b></p>

<p>Goodreads: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18485072-stripped-clean">http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18485072-stripped-clean</a></p>

<p>Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FUAUJFG</p>

<p>ARE: https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-strippedclean-1317889-149.html</p>

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<p><b><i>Author Links:</i></b></p>

<p><i>Website/Blog:</i>  <a href="http://elliscarrington.com/">http://elliscarrington.com/</a></p>

<p><i>Twitter:</i> <a href="https://twitter.com/MMbyEllis">https://twitter.com/MMbyEllis</a></p>

<p><i>FB Author Page:</i> <a href="https://www.facebook.com/EllisCarringtonRomance">https://www.facebook.com/EllisCarringtonRomance</a></p>

<p><i>Goodreads:</i> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4639529.Ellis_Carrington?from_search=true">http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4639529.Ellis_Carrington?from_search=true</a></p>

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<p><a href="http://www.enchantressofbooksblogtours.com/" target="_blank"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-306" alt="Enchantress of Books Blog Tours.jpg" src="http://www.christopherkoehler.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Enchantress-of-Books-Blog-Tours.jpg-300x38.jpg" width="300" height="38" /></a></p>

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<p class="facebook"><a href="http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http://www.christopherkoehler.net/blog/?p=302" target="_blank" title="Share on Facebook">Share on Facebook</a></p><iframe src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.christopherkoehler.net%2Fblog%2F%3Fp%3D302&layout=standard&show_faces=true&width=450&action=like&colorscheme=light&height=80" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:80px;" allowTransparency="true"></iframe>

 

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Christoarpher

Guest blogger: Lynley Wayne

This entry is part 2 of 2 in the series Book Reviews

I have a guest blogger today (and until I get around to updating my blog), Lynley Wayne. I met Lynley at GayRomLit last year, and she’s one of the sweetest people ever. I also have to give kudos to her talented husband, Brian, too. Not only does he do all the cover art for her books, but you have to figure he was hit on at least once at GRL, but if it bothered him, I haven’t heard about it. Seriously, though, check out her book covers. The art is fantastic, in my opinion.

Anyway, Lynley’s here to pimp her new book, Rocky’s Road, and I’m happy to give her space to advertise her latest.

I’d like to thank Christopher for having me today. Rocky’s Road will be released from MLR Press September 20th. Rocky and Landon are both characters that were introduced in, Scars. By the end of that book I knew, without a doubt, that these two were meant for one another.

 Blurb:

How can you find yourself when you don’t know where to start?

For Rocky, the move from Indiana to Maryland isn’t half as daunting as the prospect of finally taking the time to explore his sexuality.  Luckily for him, Rocky has his brother’s best friend for a guide…

Landon had all but given up on finding someone to spend his life with. Hope sparks in his chest when he meets Rocky, whose naturally submissive nature perfectly complements Landon’s dominance. As Landon introduces Rocky to the world of BDSM, the two men learn that sometimes you have to traverse a rocky road to find your way to happiness.

Excerpt: 

An hour before Landon’s shift was over, he was sent to the ER due to a car accident. He was one of the nurses who got pulled off the floor if they needed extra hands in the ER.

They had multiple injuries, and Landon was two hours late getting off work. By the time he climbed into his car to head home, he was tired and more than a little sad. One of the victims brought in from the crash had been a ten-year-old little girl. She had been in the backseat of the car that was first hit. Her father had been driving and was killed instantly in the collision, her mom was in critical condition, and she had suffered an injury to her spinal cord. At ten years old, she would never walk again. It was cases like that that had made Landon move from the ER in the first place. It was too hard to have to see people suffering and not be able to do anything to help them.

Landon pulled into the driveway and made his way to the house. Rocky was still sleeping when he walked into the bedroom. Landon stripped down and headed to the shower. He let the water run extra hot and scrubbed himself good. He didn’t want to take a chance of bringing anything into their bed.

Once he was done, he got out and dried himself off. He climbed into bed beside Rocky and pulled the other man close. Rocky didn’t even open his eyes. “I love you. Glad you’re home,” he mumbled, snuggling up to Landon and falling right back to sleep.

Landon smiled and let himself relax. He kissed the top of Rocky’s head. “Love you too, Pet.”

Even half asleep, that Rocky was glad he was home helped to relieve some of his sadness. He’d carry that little girl’s loss with him for days while he made sure there wasn’t anything he could’ve done differently. He was still thinking about what that little girl was up against when he fell asleep. Rocky, safely tucked in his arms, gave him more comfort than he had ever had.

http://www.christopherkoehler.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/rockys-front-cover-RGB-copy-190x300.jpg

Cover of Lynley Wayne’s Rocky’s Road

Bio:

Lynley Wayne is the pen name of a thirty-something female living on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. When not writing, she can usually be found reading and thinking up creative ways to avoid housework. She is married to a very understanding husband who doesn’t complain when she spends hours in front of the computer and he ends up having to fix supper on occasion. Or when she asks random off the wall questions. Or when she talks for hours about whatever story she’s working on. Yeah, basically he’s vying for sainthood.

Lynley strongly believes everyone is entitled to their own version of happiness, no matter how it may differ from the norm. She writes characters she wants to read and hopes others enjoy them as much as she enjoyed writing them.

While most people who know her wouldn’t guess, she’s a hardcore romantic at heart and loves nothing more than a happily ever after. Lynley may have come to romance later than some, but once she found it she never looked back. It was years later when she accidentally stumbled onto the male/male genre and knew it was where she was meant to be. From then on she’s spent endless hours writing about love in it’s many forms.

It is her hope that one day society will be able to look past the labels and see the person behind it. That they will realize we are all the same. Until that time comes, she will continue telling stories of a love others may believe is wrong, but she thinks is nothing short of beautiful.

 

You can find Lynley on the web at www.lynleywayne.com, on twitter @LynleyWayne, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/LynleyWayne for my author page and www.facebook.com/lynley.wayne.1 for my personal page. You can also find her on Linkedin and Goodreads. She loves to hear from readers so feel free to email her at lynleywayne@gmail.com.

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Christoarpher

Deep Process: Settling the Score updates

So the fine folks in the editorial department at Dreamspinner have been busy busy busy! with the manuscript for Settling the Score.

I’ve already turned in the front matter. For the non-editors out there, front matter is everything between the title page and the start of the story. Authors have control over very little of it, since it includes things like the publication information, ISBN, copyright information, etc. What I control is the acknowledgements, and I’m afraid it was a bit of a kitchen sink affair. I also control the dedication. I don’t want to say it was a struggle, because it wasn’t. The dedication makes perfect sense to me. But I’ve already taken care of my immediate family, so I wasn’t sure at first who to dedicate this novel to.

Then there was the blurb request. These always baffle me. Well, that and annoy me. Blurb requests always make me feel like someone’s trying to get me to do her job for her. Or maybe that’s because I’m horrible at writing them. Let’s be honest, a blurb is rather like a sales pitch for a book, isn’t it? Writers aren’t really good with people. Sure, I’ve got my friends and I can deal being around them. Mostly. But perhaps this example will put it in perspective…

At Gay Rom Lit last year, I ran into two people I know, one I’d met before at Yaoicon (I’m pretty sure it was there…if it wasn’t, I’m more confused than I thought) and one I know from extensive email correspondence. I looked at Taylor Donovan like I’d never seen her before and furthermore who the hell was she. Fortunately she’s one of the sweetest people on earth and patiently led me through the realization that, yes, we had met before. For her part, Anne Tennino practically had to hit me upside the head with one of her crocheted penises.  Yo, dumbshit. We email and text constantly.

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Easily overwhelmed in public? Who knows, but it’ll probably be expensive to treat.

Anyway, blurb requests. They’re just awful. I had come up with zingers about the plot without giving away all the good bits. It’ll be interesting to see what Editorial comes up with.

Perhaps the most fun was the cover spec request. I can tell the Dreamspinner has been working on its editorial process, because this came hard on the heels of the front matter request. The amazing and talented Paul Richmond, now the assistant art director at Dreamspinner, has done the covers for my previous books, so I kind of begged for him to do the cover for Settling the Score in the name of artistic continuity. He’s taking his art in some interesting directions, as with the cover of another Dreamspinner title, Anna Marti’s Cricket for example, so maybe some of that will show up on the cover. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

Interesting thing about this cover spec request, however. Unlike the other CalPac novels, I did n’t have that clear a vision about what scene I want on the front of Settling the Score. Burning It Down? By the time I’d finished, I knew what I wanted on the cover. But not this time. Covers sell books. It’s a fact. So this time I re-read the manuscript for every scene in which Philip and Stuart interacted. I think I came up with a good one this time, but I guess we’ll see, won’t we?

The only drawback to that was all the little errors I found. Okay, and the glaring contradictions within the text. I mentioned some of this to a friend on the editorial department, and these comment found their way to the Editor in Chief. She now thinks that I’m either a conscientious writer or a completely hopeless head case.

I think we all know the answer to that…

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A nasty little thought

Here’s something to think about if the world community is successful in pushing the integrity-challenged IOC to move the Winter Games away from Sochi in response to the Russian government’s appalling policies towards sexual minorities.

It occurs to me that once attention is turned from Russia, things might well be ten or a hundred times worse for Russia’s LGBTs as that failing mafia state inevitably looks for someone to blame, because they sure as shit won’t blame themselves and their horrible, bigoted policies.

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iron knuckle games

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Announcing Château d’Eternité!

Château d’Eternité by Ariel Tachna

Released March 29, 2013 by Dreamspinner Press, revised and greatly expanded (by 40,000 words) from the free novella published last summer.

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Cover, Chateau d’Eternité

Blurb:

 

When Russ Peterson accepts an invitation to an all-expense-paid vacation at a castle in southern France, he doesn’t expect to learn he has the ability to travel through time. For a historian, it’s a dream come true, offering the chance to find answers to the mysteries of the past. But it’s not without risks—to Russ and to the world as he knows it.

 

After a few short supervised visits, Russ still hasn’t made up his mind about his newfound abilities. Then, on his first extended trip, he meets Quentus Maximus, second in command to the Legate of Nemausus. While learning firsthand about the realities of life in Roman Gaul, Russ is shocked by his reaction to Quentus’s dominant nature. After a week with Quentus, Russ’s vacation is up, and he realizes he wants a chance to see if their relationship can flourish.

 

Arranging a year-long sabbatical from work to give time to make the decision is easy. Figuring out if he can live with Quentus’s dominant nature long-term, and finding a way to establish a life for himself in Roman Gaul, is an entirely different matter.

 

Excerpt:

 

“Ah, Monsieur Peterson,” Bernard said, coming into the foyer from somewhere else on the ground floor. “I didn’t expect you back downstairs so quickly. Our guests often take a little longer to settle in to the ambiance here at the château.”

“It certainly is quite atmospheric,” Russ agreed, “but fascinating. The attention to detail is astounding. You must have some incredible decorators to create such elaborate reproductions.”

Bernard smiled. “As you say. Shall we retire to the parlor? It gets chilly here in the front hall in the evenings. The fire will be most welcome.”

Russ nodded and followed Bernard into the parlor, another amazingly appointed room, this time in the Baroque style. The sideboards were heavily gilded with ebony veneer and beautifully lacquered scenes. The armchairs near the fire were similarly carved and gilded, the brocade on the cushions catching and reflecting the light of the fire. “I feel like I’ve walked into a museum,” Russ said.

“Not quite,” Bernard replied. “What can I offer you? A glass of champagne? Some sherry or vermouth? Or perhaps a kir?”

“Um, whatever you’re having is fine,” Russ said. “I… I’m not a big drinker.”

“Then we’ll have kir,” Bernard said. “A sweeter flavor than champagne.”

Russ shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other as Bernard prepared their drinks. He wanted to explore the room, but he didn’t want to seem rude. It struck him as equally rude to sit without being asked.

Bernard turned back around, glasses in hand. “Sit, sit,” he urged, herding Russ toward the fireplace. “We are not a museum. You should never hesitate to use our pieces for the purposes they were intended.”

Russ took one of the two chairs and the drink Bernard offered him. Bernard sat in the other chair and clinked his glass against Russ’s.

“To open minds and new adventures.”

“That sounds ominous,” Russ said, but he took a sip of his drink nonetheless. The light fruit flavor surprised him. He’d expected something harsher. “This is good. What is it called again?”

“A kir,” Bernard said. “Bourgogne Aligoté and crème de cassis. It’s a regional specialty of Burgundy, but one that is well appreciated all over l’Hexagone.”

Russ almost asked for a clarification of the last reference as well, but Bernard didn’t give him a chance. “You must be wondering what you’re doing here.”

“I’ll admit to a certain curiosity,” Russ said, fully conscious of the understatement.

“You’re here because your last round of medical tests at your physical indicated a genetic marker that is of particular interest to the denizens of château d’Eternité.”

“Denizens?” Russ repeated, nerves jangling at the thought of some stranger having access to his medical records. He forced himself not to freak out yet, though. He would hear Bernard out before he decided if a meltdown was in order. “I haven’t seen anyone but you.”

“I am the only resident at the moment,” Bernard admitted, “but there are about twenty people who live here for some portion of the year. The rest of the year, they are traveling.”

“Traveling where?” Russ asked. “Look, I don’t know what this is about, but stop talking in circles and just tell me. Am I sick?”

“You aren’t sick at all, Russ. You’re gifted, and to answer your question about where, the answer is anywhere, indeed anywhen they want.”

Russ rolled his eyes. “Anywhen? That’s not even a word, and you’re implying… what? That they can travel through time?” The very thought was so ludicrous he felt stupid even saying it.

“Yes,” Bernard said, “that’s what I’m implying, and no, I don’t expect you to believe it. Not yet, anyway. No one does when they first come here. I didn’t believe it when I first came here forty years ago either. Now I’m the guardian of the château and its secrets.”

Russ rose from the chair, pacing in agitation as he ran one hand through his hair. Time travel. If he understood correctly, the affable old man sitting next to the fire with a perfectly sanguine look on his face was telling Russ people could travel through time, that he could travel through time. “How? How is this possible?”

“That is a question for the ages,” Bernard said, “but if you sit down, I will tell you what I do know. It won’t answer all your questions, because some of them have no answers, but perhaps it will answer some of them.”

Russ returned slowly to his seat, trying to open his mind to the possibilities of whatever Bernard would say. His ability to look beyond the obvious made him an asset at the university history department as he pored over old records, seeing not just what was there but what was missing. He needed to turn that same sharp mind to this new problem. “Okay, I’m listening.”

“As I said, you have a genetic abnormality that was identified in your last routine medical exam,” Bernard said. “That mutation allows you the ability to move through time. Before you ask, no, it appears not to be an inherited trait. We know of no instances of two people in the same family having the ability. It appears to be a completely random mutation. Once the mutation occurs, the ability will manifest of its own accord on the person’s thirty-fifth birthday or, if it happens after that age, on their next birthday—if they haven’t already learned about the ability, and how to control it, before then. And no, we don’t know what it is about that age, or birthdays in general, that triggers the ability, but we have seen it happen consistently.”

“Okay,” Russ said slowly. “Assuming this is all true, assuming I believe you managed to get hold of my medical records despite all the layers of privacy surrounding them these days, that still doesn’t tell me why I’m here. Why not just let it happen in three years when I turn thirty-five? Why go to the expense of maintaining this place and bringing me over and all the rest?”

“Because the dangers of time travel are not inconsiderable,” Bernard said with a Gallic shrug. “Not only to yourself, but also to the stream of history and to life as we know it. Dangerous enough that the greater good supersedes those layers of privacy you mentioned. We can trace a number of catastrophic events in history to someone traveling back unprepared and leaving behind absolute chaos. The assassination of Julius Caesar and the ensuing war, the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand that triggered World War I, the sacking of Rome that led to the Dark Ages… there are others, but you begin to see the problem.”

“The world would be a completely different place if those things hadn’t happened,” Russ said, his mind racing as he considered all that might have happened and not happened if the knowledge held within the Roman Empire had not been forgotten, if World War I had not reforged the face of Europe, if…. “God, the possibilities!”

“Indeed,” Bernard said. “It is possible to shift through time without setting off such dire consequences, with training, care, and practice, but you can see why we might not want people discovering the ability without assistance. Once we identify them, we bring them here to teach them how to use their abilities before they manifest naturally.”

“Assuming I believe the rest of it, then, yes, I can see that,” Russ said. “So I’m here for two weeks of training?”

“Essentially, yes,” Bernard replied, “but you are still skeptical. Perhaps a demonstration?”

“A harmless one?” Russ asked.

“I do my best to make all my time travel harmless,” Bernard replied with a wry smile. He extended his hand.

Russ shifted his weight from one foot to the other, hoping his nerves weren’t as obvious in his movements as they were in the racing of his pulse, and accepted Bernard’s hand.

He couldn’t have said what he was expecting since he’d never actually thought about what it would feel like to travel through time, but he would have expected something, some physical sensation of displacement, disorientation, movement… something.

Instead, everything got blurry for a moment, and when it came back into focus, they were somewhere else. Russ had no idea where, but the elaborate baroque furniture was gone, replaced by simple, almost rustic pieces, and only a few. A bed with a mattress over a rope frame, a plain chest of drawers with wooden handles, and a single, straight-backed chair with a wooden seat and no cushion were the full contents of the room.

“Where are we?”

Bernard didn’t answer, gesturing toward the small, single-paned window on one wall. Russ went to the glass and peered out, but the quality was so poor he could barely make out the shapes of anything outside. It took him a minute to figure out the unfamiliar catch on the casement, but once he got it open and stuck his head out, the scene in front of him stole his breath.

He had never been to Versailles, but he had seen enough pictures to recognize it, except that he’d never seen it like this, with one wing still under construction—construction, not renovation—and the grounds only partially planted, with workers digging beds next to those other men were planting.

The men had horses and carts, shovels and picks, but not a single mechanical tool in sight. No electric wires, no tractors or backhoes—just saws and axes, shovels and the strength of their backs to carve out the gardens, levers and pulleys to lift the heavy stones, and mortar and trowel to fit them in place.

Russ pulled his head back in and sat down hard on the chair. “We’re in Versailles, probably in the 1680s because they’re still working on the gardens, and Le Notre died in 1700.”

“Impressive,” Bernard said. “You do know your history. It is, in point of fact, 1678. Jules Hardouin-Mansart is in the middle of adding the second story and the north and south wings. It will take several more years before everything is truly completed, but already Versailles is the crown jewel of the French royal palaces.”

“And we are in…?”

“The servants’ quarters,” Bernard said. “Shall we return to the château d’Eternité? I imagine you have questions.”

Russ wanted to protest leaving so soon, but they were hardly dressed to go exploring. He nodded and held out his hand. As Bernard took it, the door behind them opened and a man walked in.

The scene blurred out before Russ could speak.

When it cleared again, they were back in the parlor of the château d’Eternité. “That man,” Russ said. “He saw us. Is that going to cause a problem?”

Bernard chuckled. “Why do you think I chose that room to take you to, still in modern dress and totally unprepared for what you might see? That is Gilles. He works at Versailles in the kitchens when he is not wandering through time looking for more interesting adventures.”

“He’s one of us?”

“You are taking this better than most,” Bernard said, returning to his seat. “Yes, he is one of us and has given me permission to use his room during the day while he is working.”

“So explain this to me,” Russ said, sitting down again as well. “I can travel through time, or I can if you help me, anyway, but you said there were dangers, so there must be rules, or guidelines, at least.”

“There are,” Bernard said. “Would you care for another kir? Dinner will be served in an hour, and there may be others joining us. We never know when others will return.”

Russ blinked a couple of times, trying to sort out everything in his head, but he quickly gave up. This wasn’t about sense. It simply was.

“Um, no, thank you,” he said when he realized Bernard was waiting for an answer. “I need to concentrate so I’ll remember everything you’re saying. I don’t want to mess up later.”

“You don’t mind if I do?” Bernard asked. “Traveling is more exhausting than it used to be, and I find a little glass of something restorative upon my return makes quite the difference.”

“Of course,” Russ said.

Bernard refilled his glass and returned. “So, then, the rules, as you called them. The most important one, the one that you must not violate under any circumstances, is that you must not try to change history, your own or anyone else’s. The repercussions of doing so could be cataclysmic.”

“Isn’t my simple presence in the past enough to change it?” Russ asked. “If I wasn’t there before but am there now, doesn’t that change it by definition?”

“Yes, but there are changes and then there are changes. If you go to the past and do your best to fit in, to blend in, any changes your presence generates will be small ones, the ripples caused by a raindrop on a large lake, but if you go to the past with the intention of, for example, assassinating Hitler before he can rise to power, the changes you cause will be like a storm on the ocean, so destructive and far-reaching that you might not even have a present to come home to. For better and for worse, Hitler’s rise to power shaped the world as we know it today. Changing that would so change the present that you might not be able to get home. Indeed you might not exist anymore. It is a risk we will not take.”

Russ nodded. “I understand the difference. No messing with the history books.”

“Secondly, you must not return to a time in your own lifetime. Neither you nor your past self will survive that confluence. The universe knows there should only be one of you during the past thirty-two years. If you create a situation where there are two of you, something will happen to alleviate that overlap, and that will change your history irreparably as well.”

“You know this?” Russ asked.

Bernard nodded. “It has been part of our lore as far back as I have been able to trace, but twice in recent years, people have disregarded the rule and not returned. When I checked later, I found no records of the person beyond the date to which they returned and no trace of either body.”

Russ shuddered. His life hadn’t been all a bed of roses, but he couldn’t think of anything worth taking that risk to change. He hoped the people who’d disregarded the rule had gotten what they hoped for out of their sacrifices.

“Anything else?”

“The amount of time you spend in the past is the amount of time that will have elapsed here when you return to the present,” Bernard said. “If you are gone for five minutes, like when we went to Versailles, chances are no one will even notice, but if you go for a week or a month or more, be prepared to explain your absence when you return, or prepare for it before you leave, so no one will worry about unanswered e-mails, unreturned phone calls, absences from work. Time as a whole is fluid. Your timeline is not.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Russ said. “If I can choose a time in the past to go to, why can’t I choose a time in the present to return to?”

Bernard shrugged. “Because you can’t. Because none of us have ever been able to do that, even when we have tried to do so deliberately. You can move from one point in the past to another point in the past, but your return home will always take you to that amount of time after your departure, no matter how specifically you attempt to control it.”

“If you say so.”

“I do,” Bernard replied.

Laughter in the hall interrupted them.

“And if you don’t believe me, you can ask our new guests at dinner,” Bernard suggested. “I believe that will be Chou and Linda returning. They wanted to see the crowning of the Jianwen Emperor.”

“So space is as fluid as time?” Russ asked. “I mean, we were here, then we were in Versailles. You’re talking about them going to China.”

“Only from here,” Bernard replied, “and no, I don’t know why, before you ask. If you are at home, you can travel back to that location at any point in the past, but only from here can you move to other locations. That is why we bring everyone here to begin. If you travel to the past and then move away from that place, you may not be able to return there safely. If you need to get out in a hurry, you need a safe place to come. You will always be able to come here as well, even if you left from home.”

“That doesn’t—”

“Make sense,” Bernard finished. “I didn’t say it made sense. I said it’s the way it is. We didn’t make up these rules. We have just learned to abide by them for our safety and the safety of the rest of the universe.”

The door to the parlor opened wider and two people came in, obviously of Chinese descent and still wearing the garb of fourteenth-century China. “Hallo, Bernard,” the man said. “Got a new one tonight?”

“Good evening, Chou,” Bernard said. “This is Russ. Perhaps you should change before dinner. Your clothes are still in your room.”

“But I like these clothes,” Chou replied.

“The wardrobes are open for anyone to borrow from, but we expect them to be returned when you’re done with them,” Bernard reminded him. “We will see you at dinner.”

“Wardrobes?” Russ asked when Chou left.

“You didn’t think we normally jump back in time in modern garb, did you?” Bernard asked. “We would be found out before we got ten feet. The château has an extensive collection of costumes from times and places all over the world, as authentic as we can make them from our own travels and the travels of those who came before us. We even have a tailor on staff to help with adjustments. You can, of course, buy garments when you return to the past if you intend to stay that long, but anything created in the past must remain in the past.”

“You’ve thought of everything,” Russ said with a shake of his head.

“Certainly not,” Bernard replied, “but we’ve taken as many precautions as we can for the situations we have thought of.”

“What about communication?” Russ asked. “I speak English, and I read a little of some European languages, but that’s not going to help if I’m trying to blend into ancient China.”

Bernard chuckled. “You have no idea you’ve been speaking French since you got here, do you?”

“What?”

“The mutation makes it possible for you to understand what you hear and reply in the appropriate idiom. It won’t keep you from saying something culturally inappropriate, but the words that come out of your mouth will be understandable to those around you.”

 

 

 

 

 

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Faaaaanfuckingtastic e-Books

So there’s news of a pirate site going around writerly circles today, spreading faster that gossip. There’s nothing that gets writers whose work is published primarily electronically angrier than e-book pirates. They’re stealing from us, plain and simple, so what we usually prefer to see happen is for those responsible to be held down and Garden Weaseled for a few years. Don’t pretend you don’t remember what those are.

Well, today I learned about one that’s even more diabolical. Mostly I use that word ironically, and while I don’t truly mean this outfit is satanic, I do have to wonder. Outwardly, Fantastic e-Books claims to be selling electronic copies of books from not only today’s hottest authors, but also schmucks like me as well as people who’ve been out of print for years (first tip off that something’s not right–publishers, which are barely getting the message about e-books now, certainly didn’t put out electronic copies of books published before I was born–1970 if any of you care).

As it turns out, they’re not actually selling pirated books. No, they’re using the promise of those books as bait to steal people’s PayPal information. I don’t like being used as bait. Of course, the so-called victims of this scam were trying to buy pirated copies of books, in my case, First Impressions, so my levels of sympathy for them are so vanishingly small as to be extra-dimensional.

Oh, and the servers for this outfit are hosted abroad so that cease and desist letter I sent? It’s as useful as tits on a tomcat.

So the moral of the story, kiddies, is that you can’t get something for (close to) nothing, and if someone tells you that you can, there’s a good chance s/he’s a grifter. I like that word, grifter. I just wanted to say it. Grifter.

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Updates of various kinds

So I think my midlife crisis started yesterday. The Kid Himself was due to meet me at my car after school yesterday, and I thought that if I changed plans and met him at his classroom, maybe I could help him find his lost hoodie and we could go to the school library and look for the last book he needs for the mission project.

[n.b. for those who don't live in California: the focus in history/social studies in the 4th grade is on California history and features a huge project on the history of the era of the missions in Alta California. TKH scored Mission San Juan Capistrano, so my parents and I took him down there before the winter holiday, when among other things, I had lunch with a dear friend I don't see often enough.]

Instead, TKH chewed my hand off, part of his ongoing mission to bite the hand that feeds him. I mean, I was all set to take pictures of the pages he needed with my phone since he’d maxed out the number of books he could check out. But no, chomp chomp chomp.

As I sat in my car, I thought, “Suburbia really is hell, isn’t it? I mean, is this all there is? I always thought my life would be different. More about ideas and less….this. More Les liaisons dangereuses and fewer uncooperative ingrates. More scary kisses and bettering up my badness and less quiet loathing.”

Oh well. So I decided to write a holiday novella for Dreamspinner, the only way I could do a holiday CalPac story. All the stories for the DSP holiday anthologies have to be stand alones, no spin-offs. Since I’ve kind of been itching to do something out of the main CalPac narrative, this seemed like a good way to do it.

I’d originally thought of something focusing on Nick an Morgan’s first Christmas, but since I’ve got so many words to play with, I may expand it a bit, maybe all the established couples thus far reminiscing about their first holidays together. If I’m feeling really mean, I’ll include Stuart and Philip, just to tease you.

DSP defines a novella as 15-30K, and then there’s a long novella too, which is between 30-70K. After that, it’s a novel. I’m really not planning to make it a CalPac holiday novel, especially since I’m halfway through Stuart and Philip’s story and currently taking a breather to work on a steampunk novel that has nothing to do with m/m, although there are, for want of a better couple, gay people in it.

Anyway, the deadline for holiday releases is in July. So I get to pretend to be in a festive mood when the temps are heating up in Sacturdmento.

Also, I apologize of the paragraph spacing is off. WordPress hates me today.

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The Next Big Thing

The Next Big Thing

Hi there, and welcome to the Next Big Thing blog hop. First a big thank you to Belinda McBride for inviting me to participate. This is different approach to blog hops, kind of a chain letter, if you will. Belinda tagged me, Amy Lane, ZA Maxfield, and E.M. Lynley. Go check them out. They are the cool.

Meanwhile I, in turn, have tagged Ellis Carrington, Edmond Manning, Michael Murphy, and Anne Tenino, for December 12. They’re a fun group and I can’t wait to see what they’ve got cooking.

My Next Big Thing is actually the release of the latest Cal Pac Crew novel, the third in the series.

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Cover art, Burning It Down

What is the title of your book?

Burning It Down.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

For those of you who’ve read Tipping the Balance, you’ll recognize this scene. The Bayard House has been hit by arson, and Brad Sundstrom has been called out in the middle of the night to deal with it, since he was the project foreman.

The firefighter in charge of the effort there is Owen Douglas, and he made his interest in Brad very clear. Since Brad and his then-boyfriend were on the outs, Brad went for it, but Owen could tell Brad’s mind was on someone else. Owen pushed Brad to reconcile with the man who would eventually become his partner in business and in life, and all’s well that end’s well…for Brad.

But not for Owen, and that’s the odd thing about all this. I’m a freak about outlining and nowhere in any of my prewriting or outlining does that scene between Owen and Brad appear. One evening, however, an impulse seized me and I wrote twenty pages in an hour and there it was.

But even after I’d finished Tipping the Balance, Owen was clearly not done with me. I could’ve started work on either Owen’s story or on Stuart Cochrane’s story. Either one. Owen, always the hook-up and never the boyfriend, won out.

What genre does your book fall under?

m/m contemporary.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie?

I was a bit stumped by this, to be honest. In part, it’s the fact that I don’t go to movies or subscribe to any kind of television service, much to my son’s distress. I think part of it might be the photos I’ve used to visual my guys, because a good friend of mine who marinates in all things pop culture couldn’t really come up with anything either.

But I think Aaron Eckhart might make a nice Owen, once some red dye’s been applied to his hair.

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Aaron Eckhart…could he play Owen Douglas?

As for Adam, his love interest, this may be a tougher challenge, if only because Adam’s so tall (6’5”). But I suppose these things are negotiable in casting. I’m thinking of Bradley James, who played King Arthur on the BBC series Merlin.

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Bradley James…he’s got the hair for it, but is he really Adam Lennox?

What is a one-sentence synopsis of your book?

One sentence? Really?  I could barely come up with a short synopsis when I submitted the manuscript, and now I’m to come up with one sentence?

Owen and Adam can handle the stresses of new jobs, but can they survive the threat posed by Adam’s abusive ex?

 

Will your book be self published or represented by an agency?

Neither. Dreamspinner Press releases the book on December 7, 2012.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

Burning It Down, like most of my novels, takes roughly six months from rough outlining to a manuscript that’s ready to submit. Based on the way I outline, my completed first draft is almost ready to submit.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre.

As a matter of policy, I don’t compare my books to those of other authors because that leads to jealousy. “Why’s that book selling better, when mine is so clearly superior in every way?” or “Well hell, if that’s what I’m competing against, why am I bothering to write?” Neither one’s healthy, and firefighter stories are a dime a dozen in m/m romance.

In terms of other books that feature a veterinarian, a firefighter, and a cat, I’ll say that Shae Conor’s novella En Fuego will be released by Dreamspinner on December 12, 2012.

I plan to read it as soon as possible because I want to see what Shae did with the same elements. She and I are both amused that two manuscripts with very similar plot elements were put on the publication calendar so close together. We may even promote our book together, so watch this space.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

This is the third book in a projected series of four; there are a certain number of stories I wanted to tell about the rowers in the CalPac world, or at least about this group of rowers. So Burning It Down is another step along the road toward completion.

What else about your book might interest the reader?

I must admit that the cat tends to steal the show.

And now, just because I’m feeling generous, here’s another teaser from Burning It Down:

“Like I texted you, he was assaulted this evening—”

“Where?”

“He was at home. Someone broke in and beat the crap out of him. Owen’s assailant knew what he was doing, too.”

“What do you mean?” Adam demanded, steering Mike over to chairs and forcing him down.

“Why’re hospital chairs always hard plastic? Just once, I want something comfortable,” Mike muttered.

“They’re hard plastic so they can be wiped with disinfectant after people bleed on them or cough tuberculosis all over them,” Adam said. “Keep talking.”

“Whoever he was, he re-broke Owen’s left leg. Went after it with a baseball bat, as a matter of fact,” Mike said. “That’s all I know, right now. Do you have his sister’s number? She should be notified.”

“Goddamn, he was finally making headway on rehabbing it after the last setback,” Adam muttered. “Yeah, I’ll call Avril, and thanks for letting me know about Owen. How much longer will he be in surgery?”

Mike shrugged. “Another hour or more, I guess, given what they’re dealing with.”

“Then I’d better call Avril.”

After Adam called her, he tried to get some sleep, but as Detective Cabot had pointed out, the chairs and comfort were not well acquainted. He thought about stretching out in his SUV, and he thought about offering the other front seat to the detective, but he wanted to be there when Owen got out of surgery, so plastic seats it was. He pulled his parka’s hood over his face to block out the harsh florescent lights, or try.

“Adam? Wake up, honey, it’s me.”

“Go away, Mom. I’m wearing my retainers.”

“Okay, that might’ve been funny when John Hughes wrote it, but you’ve got about five seconds to wake up before I pour my coffee down the neck of your sweater.”

Adam blinked a few times to clear his eyes. “Avril?”

“Yes. What the hell’s going on?”

“You’re here.” Adam struggled to sit up. He rubbed his eyes with his hands and then nudged Mike Cabot. “Detective? Wake up. Owen’s sister’s here.”

“Of course I’m here! You told me someone took a baseball bat to my brother!” Avril said shrilly.

“I didn’t tell you he was in critical condition or anything. It’s his leg, Avril. He’ll be fine.” Just what he needed, but that didn’t stop Adam from getting up to give her a hug.

“Eventually maybe,” she said, her voice muffled by his chest, “but again with the leg?”

“I know,” Adam sighed. “Believe me, I know.”

“So who’s watching the kids?” Adam asked.

“My oldest is old enough, and I let my best friend know what was up, so she’s on call. Hopefully I’ll be back in time for breakfast. Other than my kids, Owen’s all I’ve got in the world,” Avril said.

Adam made the appropriate introductions and they settled back into the waiting.

Fortunately for Avril, she didn’t have to wait very long, because while the estimate given to Detective Cabot was wildly off, the surgeons finally finished putting Owen’s leg back together—again—not long after her arrival.

A tired looking woman came out of the OR. “I’m Dr. Singh. Is one of you family?”

“I am,” Avril said.

Dr. Singh frowned. “Then who are the rest of you?”

“I’m the detective handling Mr. Douglas’s case,” Mike said.

“And I’m his boyfriend,” Adam said.

“Was this a bias crime?” Dr. Singh said.

Mike sighed. “No, at least not in the way you’re thinking. He wasn’t bashed because he’s gay.”

“Well, thank goodness for that,” Dr. Singh said, “but that doesn’t explain why he had a testicle clenched in one fist.”

 

 And don’t forget to check out  Ellis CarringtonEdmond ManningMichael Murphy, and Anne Tenino on December 12. They’re some of my favorite people, not just as colleagues and writers but as friends.

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Burning It Down teaser

I thought I’d post a little teaser for Burning It Down, now that it’s posted on Dreamspinner’s Coming Soon page.

As you know from reading the blurb on the Coming Soon page–you have read it, haven’t you?–Owen is injured in the line of duty.

So here’s a visual idea of what he went through. That said, Owen’s was much, much worse, but this clip did give me the idea.

 

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Fire, Water, Burning It Down

So I went to my first convention as a writer, Gay Romantic Literature or GayRomLit as it’s abbreviated. I’ll spare everyone my splenetic rants. Only a few people received those via email, and honestly they don’t paint me in the best light. I had a good time meeting fans I’d only interacted with online (hugs and kisses for Stacia http://www.christopherkoehler.net/blog/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif , as well as catching up with writer friends I don’t get to see that often (h/t Z.A. Maxfield, Amy Lane, and Ellis Carrington–the really sad part is that Amy and I live about 30 miles from each other. Do we see each other frequently? Nooooo). The biggest take-home lesson I could file under “The Care and Feeding of Introverts.” It was funny how so many of us authors (and for all I know, readers) hit the introvert wall at the same time.

 

One of the best parts of GayRomLit was debuting the cover of my forthcoming release, Burning It Down, the third installment in the CalPac Crew romances.. I begged and whined like an Irish Setter, so the publisher Elizabeth North and cover artist Paul Richmond relented. Maybe it was my argument that the con was almost exactly seven weeks before the release date, or maybe the just wanted to shut me up. Whatevs, I got my cover art. I think it’s my favorite one so far. Paul did a great job capturing my guys.

http://www.christopherkoehler.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Coverartdraft2_BurningItDown_Koehler-200x300.jpg

Cover art, Burning It Down

 

Here’s the blurb from the back of the book:

 

  Quote
When newly promoted fire battalion chief Owen Douglas skips out on physical therapy after an on-the-job injury, his one-time hookup, Brad Sundstrom, bullies him into joining the adaptive rowing program at the Capital City Rowing Club. There, Owen meets Adam Lennox, a veterinarian and former rower who also works as a volunteer. Adam is new in town and eager to make friends, but the chemistry between him and Owen is blistering.

 

Despite Owen’s commitment issues, he wants more this time. He makes a move, and the friendship he shares with Adam turns into more. But Adam hasn’t left his past as far behind as he thought. When his abusive ex-boyfriend, Jordan Sanders, returns, Adam and Owen find themselves in grave danger. Jordan won’t let anything stop him from getting Adam back—not even a court order. Soon Adam has to choose between breaking up with Owen to save him from Jordan’s fury or risking both their lives to stay by Owen’s side.

 

Yep, Burning It Down tells Owen Douglas’s story. You remember him, of course you do. He’s the hot daddy fireman who tricked with Brad, the one who blew Brad in the still-smoldering Bayard House. Brad thought of Drew the whole time, and Owen could tell. Ring any bells? If not, it’s time to re-read Tipping the Balance.

Burning It Down is not yet on Dreamspinner’s Coming Soon page, or I’d give you a link. I’ll post it when it’s up, but the release date it December 7th. So unlike most of the time, I will actually be updating my blog as we get closer.

 

Oh, and what am I working on now, you ask? I’m 48k words into Settling the Score, which tells the story of Stuart and his relationship with Brad’s older brother, Philip…

 

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Calpac Updates

So now that fall’s rolling back around–although you wouldn’t know it from looking out the window in northern California–it’s time to check in with the boys from California Pacific College.

 

Nick and Morgan haven’t been around much, I’m sad to say. Morgan’s been busy working on a combined MA and teaching credential. Not that it’s the best time to go into education in California, but it’s what he wanted to do, and Morgan’s always been the sort to do as he pleases, as Nick well knows. Too many school districts in California are cutting back and firing teachers these days. Oddly enough, administrators seem secure in their jobs.

 

Fortunately for them both, Nick’s going into a field with plenty of growth potential. He’s currently doing a hospital-based internship in physical therapy. Unfortunately, since his entire class was looking for such hospital-based internships in the Sacramento area, he couldn’t get one locally, so he and Morgan are living apart. Nick’s not lonely, however. Besides keeping busy at work, he’s staying with Morgan’s parents in the Bay Area while he works in a hospital there.

 

Brad’s finally hitting his stride. There’s no nice way to put this, but he was kind of an asshole in Rocking The Boat, wasn’t he? He just hadn’t figured himself out. Once he did, he started to show maturity and a certain grace that made his friends welcome and appreciate him instead of hide the breakables. He’s still playful and boisterous, he just knows when to quit. Drew helps with that. The two of them, through much hard work, have made their remodeling business a real success.

 

Drew had a bit of a hard time when Brad not only helped out Owen, a man he hooked up with once (in Tipping the Balance), but brought him into the adaptive rowing program at the Capital City Rowing Club. Brad smoothed it over for his partner, and helped Owen, who’d been injured in the line of duty, work things through with his beau, veterinarian and rower Adam Lennox, who has some issue of his own. You can read their story in Burning It Down, available from Dreamspinner press sometime in December 2012. Yep, that’s the only teaser you get, at least for now.

 

Lastly, Stuart’s life has gotten interesting. Stuart was a year behind most of his friends from Rocking the Boat. He was younger, for one thing, but he also had to work to support himself. Sure, he had scholarships and grants that took care of most of CalPac’s tuition and living expenses, but they weren’t quite enough. Well, he’s finally graduated from California Pacific and found himself at a crossroads.

 

Guess who he found waiting for him at that crossroads? No, not Jonathan Poisonwood. They broke up, in part because Jonathan was a rich idiot who set Stuart’s teeth on edge. No, he found Philip Sundstrom. Brad may have been so far in the closet that he was the uncrowned king of Narnia, but Philip’s bi and has always known it; his flings with men have been short and sweet. It just wasn’t worth crossing their father, but now, thanks to Philip’s maneuvering and Randall Sundstrom’s own vicious actions (see Tipping the Balance), Randall’s not a factor anymore.

 

Stuart’s starting medical school soon, and has a burning prejudice against rich people, which is a problem, since Philip’s loaded and can’t keep his hands off Stuart. Philip’s also the only man who’s ever really “gotten” Stuart. Unfortunately for Stuart, he’s not looking for a commitment, having just been dumped by his long-term girlfriend. Check out Settling the Score, available from Dreamspinner sometime next summer, to see how these unlikely boyfriends face corporate machinations and lies, serious illness and a lack of personal understanding, and a fatal traffic accident.

 

So there we are, cherubs. I hope that’s enough to keep you coming back for more.

 

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Building A Series Lexicon With J.p. Barnaby

Hello, everyone,

 

Please welcome J.P Barnaby, a friend and the author of the well-received Little Boy Lostseries. Little Boy Lost is a coming of age story about two teenage boys—Brian McAllister and Jamie Mayfield—growing up gay in rural Alabama. The six book series chronicles their lives as they navigate through peers, parents, and porn, desperately searching for the perfect combination of circumstances in which they can be together. Through their journey, they find friends, pain, acceptance, loss, and most importantly, themselves.

 

http://www.dreamspin...hp?cPath=54_412

 

Reviews for Little Boy Lost

 

http://www.christopherkoehler.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/AbandonedLg1.jpgThis is a compulsively readable book. I sat down with it the other day, intending just to skim it for this re-review, but within a few pages I was pulled completely into the story just like I was last year. Brian and Jamie are wonderful characters, beautifully drawn and realized. They experience the wonder and excitement of their first love, going through each step: a touch, a kiss, an embrace, and more. At the same time, they are terrified of what might happen to them should anyone find out about their relationship. They live in a very small town in Alabama where faggot jokes and homophobia are the norm. How do they reconcile their feelings for each other with the reality of the time and place in which they are living? – JesseWave

 

What this author does in ABANDONED is just amazing, it is a pure and honest kind of writing that bares the soul of a seventeen, going on eighteen year old. It offers the worst of circumstances in which various forms of love can ignite, nourish and inspire Brian on his journey. I never expected to experience such a strong connection to the person Brian is. I’m still amazed by it and savoring it every chance I get. ABADONED blew me away as J.P. Barnaby continues the story of memorable characters who just go for your heart. This is just about as good as it gets in the M/M genre! – Leontine’s Book Realm

 

First things first, what is a lexicon?

 

The first example of a lexicon that comes to mind, and honestly the best I’ve ever seen, is the Harry Potter Lexicon (http://www.hp-lexicon.org/). It details every character, every spell, every location, every bit of information that J. K. Rowling wrote into her amazing series. But, their lexicon went beyond that. It also includes all of the secret, beautiful, unpublished tidbits that were released through interviews or on her website. Literally everything you want to know about the series, you can find on that site. It’s so comprehensive that J. K. Rowling admitted that she sometimes used it while writing the later books to reference a detail or two.

 

Why is a lexicon important?

 

Little Boy Lost is a six book series that follows the same two boys. It’s not a series of spinoffs, though spinoffs certainly benefit from detail continuity. Brian and Jamie along with their friends, family, environments, and timeline have to flow seamlessly from one book to the next in order to keep the reader engaged. Key points in a character’s personality and appearance need to be reinforced so that the reader can keep six books full of characters straight. In the Harry Potter series, you would never confuse Neville Longbottom with Dean Thomas because the detailing on each character is so well done. If your book is going to continue into another, you need to have your facts at your fingertips.

 

 

 

The Little Boy Lost lexicon

 

The Little Boy Lost lexicon is kept hidden from the world on my laptop in Microsoft OneNote 2010. More important, it is also backed up to the hilt. As an IT professional, I understand the importance of keeping my computer backed up and my information safe. As an author, this is especially important for recordkeeping and legal purposes as well as keeping safe the thousands of hours I’ve invested in my work. I use Microsoft OneNote because I don’t have the time or patience to develop a website for it. OneNote is drag/drop, copy/paste, and web clip efficient. I can put in pictures, voice, video, or text. If I copy something from the internet, it automatically adds a reference to where I found it. The notebook/tab/page structure of the program is conducive to research, and it’s fully searchable.

 

http://www.christopherkoehler.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Screenshot1-1024x545.jpg

 

As you can see from the image, the Little Boy Lost lexicon includes tabs for character information, an events timeline, ideas, and research that would pertain to the entire series and then a tab for each individual book with more detailed timelines, and other information that pertains only to that book (for example, Brian’s injuries in Abandoned which are referenced later in the series, but all of the medical research is in the tab for Abandoned). I have pictures of each character and a full biography, some of which is never used within the book, but it gives me a better sense of who the character is and how he will react in any given situation. I have a notebook like this for each book, each series that I work on.

 

http://www.christopherkoehler.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Screenshot2-1024x575.jpg

 

I write in Microsoft Word, but I keep a copy of the original scene inside of OneNote to make things easier to find. I may not know what chapter something is in, but I can usually find it faster by looking at the scene titles. When I’m working on a book, I generally write out of chronological order, sketching out scenes as they come to me. I keep that outline, partial scenes, and sketched out ideas in OneNote as well. Again, some of the stuff may never be used, but when I need to reference it, the information is all in one place. My life has suddenly become very busy and I find that writing is easier when I’m hyper-organized.

 

With the notebooks for each book in my Windows Live account, I can access them anywhere from any device. There is a mobile app for my phone, a web interface, and of course the actual OneNote application on my computer. That is extremely helpful to me since I do most of my writing on my commute with limited internet access on my phone. It also helps when I get an idea and want to capture it—I can just pull out my phone, and add the appropriate notes to my notebook or put it in a note on my phone and copy it to OneNote later. I can also record voice notes on my phone and load them into OneNote.

 

Continuity is part of the editorial process with Dreamspinner Press who publishes the Little Boy Lost series, but they don’t live the series like I do. If I need to know what Micah’s brother’s name is for a spinoff book, I won’t have to try to remember which book I used it in so that I can find it. I introduced Micah in the third book and he has a strong presence through to book six. That information is one word within 255,000 words. Having it at my fingertip is far easier than an all out search.

 

About J. P. Barnaby

 

As a bisexual woman, J.P. is a proud member of the GLBT community both online and in her small town on the outskirts of Chicago. A member of Mensa, she is described as brilliant but troubled, sweet but introverted, and talented but deviant. She spends her days writing software and her nights writing erotica, which is, of course, far more interesting. The spare time that she carves out between her career and her novels is spent reading about the concept of love, which, like some of her characters, she has never quite figured out for herself.

 

 

 

Website: http://www.jpbarnaby.com

 

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/JPBarnaby

 

Facebook: http://www.Facebook.com/JPBarnaby

 

 

 

The Little Boy Lost blog tour continues June 25th – July 24th . Make sure to comment at each stop for more chances to win some really great prizes such as an entire series autographed to you by J. P. Barnaby. For additional entries – tweet about the tour including @JPBarnaby and #LittleBoyLost.

 

Tour Schedule: http://www.jpbarnaby.com/?p=637

 

 

 

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We have a wiener!

I wonder what how Germans accidentally on purpose make a reference to cocks? http://www.christopherkoehler.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/ISeeWhatYouDid-300x227.jpg

 

Anyway, I have chosen a winner for my new tagline, and it’s a line I actually wrote years ago for an early incarnation of First Impressions: ‘Don’t compare me to Oscar Wilde. Both our reputations will suffer.’ Like most of what I say, it’s layered, so rather than gloss it for you, I’ll leave it to you to figure out.

 

Since it occurred to me through a conversation with Amy Lane, she’s the lucky winner of a copy of First Impressions or something else of her choice. For those of you who’re wondering, yes, all m/m authors know each other. Actually we don’t, even though it seems like it some days, but Amy and I live about thirty miles from each other and so get together for lunch once in a while when we need to get out of our own heads.

 

Anyway, I’ve already tweaked the blog to reflect it and will get to work on swag for Gay Rom Lit in the next week or so. There are all kinds of interesting things out there.

 

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Help me choose a new tagline! Win swag!

I’m having a contest and you can win stuff!

 

So what’s the deal? The deal is that I need a tagline, something sums up and marks off my brand, because like it or not, writing’s a business as much as it’s an artistic and creative pursuit.

 

I’ve got one, but it’s a little too close to ZA Maxfield’s, for one thing, and she really doesn’t deserve that. (Full disclosure: she’s a dear friend and all kinds of awesome, so there’s really no need to go tearing off in high dudgeon and email her, because all that’s likely to happen is that she’ll email me and we’ll both have a good laugh.) For another, it doesn’t really speak to my writing in particular.

 

Of all the elements of my writing, the dialogue in particular seems to be It, one of the things that people consistently like about my writing. Reviewers mention it, readers mention it. Even my husband’s noticed it. While I like to think I pour a great deal of effort—the proverbial blood, sweat, and tears—into all aspects of my writing, the dialogue jumps off the page.

 

I see my dialogue crisp, snappy, true-to-life, and above all witty. It’s what my friends sound like when we’re on fire, and it’s what my son, whom I refer to online as The Kid Himself, is coming to sound like, even thought he’s still several months shy of his ninth birthday. Yeah, there’s an almost-nine year old clone of me running around. The first time I heard him snark I must confess it brought a tear to my eye.

 

I’ll save how I write dialogue for various guest blog spots as I promote my work, in large part because I’ve never actually sat down to think about the nuts and bolts of it. I make sure my dialogue sounds to my own mind’s ear what people “really sound like,” because let’s not fool ourselves—we’ve all read stories that make us sit up and, with varying degrees of disgust, snap, “That is not what people sound like, certainly not when they’re talking about that.”

 

I try to raise a more lofty standard. I like to think I succeed, and I like to think many of you agree with me.

 

So with that in mind, my lovelies, I need you to help me come up with a tagline that keeps that knack for dialogue in mind. It’ll be use on my promo items like all the swag I’m going to have made up for Gay Rom Lit, my email signature, the subheading on this blog, things like that.

 

Guidelines:

 

It needs to emphasize the crisp, witty dialogue we all know and love in my writing.

 

It needs to be succinct, snappy, and short. Think advertising slogan rather than explanation.

 

Examples:

 

“Romance is funny, so you might as well laugh at it.” My current one. 1) it doesn’t play off my crisp dialogue. 2) It’s too close to ZAM’s.

 

“Words of affection wielded with wit.” I can’t say I’m a fan of this due to the alliteration, but this is one example that DSP’s publicity maven and I came up with.

 

What’s in it for you?

 

If I choose yours, or if yours inspires me to come up with one I like better, you’ll win a copy of First Impressions or something from my backlist. Or if you’re willing to wait, a copy of Burning It Down (CalPac #3) when it’s released in December.

 

Or a swag bag full of GayRomLit goodies. I can’t tell you what’ll be in it, because I haven’t ordered anything yet since I’m waiting for my new tag line.

 

Deadline:

 

I don’t suppose I have a hard and fast date in mind. As soon as I have one I like, I’ll post it here, tweet it, etc. I don’t want to wait too long, as I’d like to get to ordering all that swag, even though Gay Rom Lit isn’t until October.

 

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Quick update

I’m just about done with the outline for CalPac #3, Burning It Down. For some reason, I’d envisioned that this one would be the penultimate story, with Philip and Stuart’s story being the last full-length novel. Perhaps later on I’d write a story about Nick and Morgan because I miss them, but that would more or less be it for the world of the rowers of California Pacific College.

 

Uh…no.

 

I’m not even done with the outline of the macroplot of Burning It Down and two minor characters have already jumped out as another couple with a story just begging to be told. Of course, with each iteration the connection to rowing becomes more and more tangential, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

 

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CalPac Crew #3 teaser

So even as I wait for the second round of edits on First Impressions from Dreamspinner, I’m ramping up work on future CalPac books. I have tentatively titled the third installment of the CalPac books Burning It Down, and it tells the story of Owen Douglas, the fire captain (if that title even exists…it may not, and I

 

http://www.christopherkoehler.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/kitten-02-cm-150x150.jpgHow I usually write

 

have to research it), and Dr. Alexander Lennox-Johansson, DVM. Owen has been injured in the line of duty and Alex has escaped an abusive relationship. For some reason, I feel like writing about wounded people. They seem more interesting. Maturation as a writer, or an emergent mean streak, you choose.

 

I also thought it might be interesting to pull back the curtain on the writing process, assuming–perhaps erroneously–that any of you cares about how the stories are written, only that they are written. There are still a few macro-level plot points to resolve, so who knows, maybe crowd sourcing will come up with some ideas.

 

I think the first thing to mention is that I generally follow a W-shaped plot structure, with the five points of the W representing the highs and lows of dramatic action (called barriers below).

 

  1.  First Barrier: The protagonist begins work toward his objective and encounters the first barrier. [They recognize the attraction, but after their hook-up, Alex is too embarrassed, Owen dejected by Alex’s perceived rejection since he post-injury he feels old and useless]
  2. First Barrier Reversal: Things don’t look good, but the protagonist manages to overcome the first barrier [They decided to give it a go—what does this look like? Two people pining for each other, have to show them going about life and missing each other, but what else?]
  3.  Second Barrier: At the high point of the action, just when it looks like the protagonist has it made and his objective is within reach, the rug is suddenly pulled out from under him in the unexpected second reversal. [Things are going great between Alex and Owen, but then Jordan the abusive ex shows back up, stalking Alex and threatening Owen]
  4.  Second Barrier Reversal: At the low point of the action, when things look very grim, the protagonist still has an opportunity to overcome this catastrophe and achieve his objective. [Alex breaks it off, allegedly to protect Owen but also his own fear. But Owen won't go quietly, and they realize they can’t let Jordan control them, so they renew their relationship. Jordan locks them in the boathouse—while they’re having sex?—and sets it on fire]
  5.  Resolution: The protagonist either does or does not pull out of the catastrophe, resolving the plot either tragically or triumphantly. [aftermath—Jordan’s trial, Owen regains his self-confidence as a man, Alex realizes fear can’t rule his life, they move in together?]

Usually, I more or less end a novel with the protagonists getting together, but Burning It Down will be a bit different. Alex and Brad will be together fairly early on in the story (at least compared to the way I usually tell stories), unlike Nick and Morgan and Drew and Brad were, to an extent, threatened more by their own perceptions and beliefs. Owen and Alex, however, will face a very real and existential threat in the person of Alex’s psycho ex.

 

So…what do you think?

 

http://www.christopherkoehler.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/SuperStock_4102-3215-300x236.jpgCrowd-sourcing plot points

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh yeah, on Friday I’m doing a citizen’s ride-along with my local fire department. For research. Get your minds out of the gutter. I think it’s a pretty cool opportunity.

 

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Coming distractions.

I’m afraid to check the last time I updated my blog, but I’m here now. That’s the important part. It’s been a busy few months, that’s for sure. I tend to disappear into a cave–metaphorically, if not literally–when I’m deep into writing. It’s not the easiest place to be, as my tendency would be to focus entirely on my writing if only my son and husband didn’t want attention. Instead, their voices just become whistles and clicks and it takes a while for them to get my attention. I even avoid my usual social-media wastes of time. So my blog got short shrift. It’s as if I can only write so much, and if I’m deep into a novel, I write nothing else. So I apologize to my fans, both of you.

 

http://www.christopherkoehler.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Bermuda-300x225.jpgThe Bermuda Triangle of Productivity

 

Anyway, I finished writing First Impressions, a new novel, after Turkey Day and then farmed it out to my beloved and trusty beta readers, all of whom returned me edits before Christmas. After a brief hiatus while I recovered from influenza (you can always tell when someone’s had genuine influenza because he calls it influenza to distinguish it from whatever generic virus has received a promotion…trust me, they’re different), I got to work on edits and submitted it for publication a few weeks ago. What makes this different from my usual experience with submission (not that, you perv) is that not only did I hear back in a relative hurry, but Dreamspinner offered me the chance to bring First Impressions to print in a definite hurry. The publisher told me that another writing had “indefinitely postponed” his/her book and there was now a hole in her publication schedule. I hate to think what brought this on for one of my colleagues, but is it too terrible of me to say that I’m willing to take advantage of it if it meant the difference between publication in April vs August?

 

First Impressions isn’t related to the world of the CalPac Crew, even thought it, too, is set in a somewhat fictionalized version of Sacramento, and I hope you’ll forgive me for that. I needed a break from CalPac books, and this provided the perfect one as I’m now in the research and outlining stages of not one but two CalPac novels. More on them later. So, First Impressions. It’s a gay riff on Pride and Prejudice. I don’t even remember when I started First Impressions, sometime last summer, I suppose. Actually, I first started working on this story more than a decade ago, when I realized that my social milieu bore a marked resemblance to Jane Austen’s. In Sacramento’s gay community and Regency England both, life was a series of parties and balls all designed to find a husband, we all knew far too much about each other’s business (and mating habits), and one wrong move or poorly chosen outfit could lead to social ruination. The story didn’t work very well then, but I’ve learned a lot about story telling in the mean time.

 

With that in mind, meet Henry and Cameron:

 

On the cusp of thirty, Cameron is struggling to find his way in life. He’s realized his insistence on doing it his way has only led to frustration, and his goals seem further away than http://www.christopherkoehler.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Cameron-150x150.jpgever. How can Cameron share his life with someone else when he doesn’t even know what his life’s about? 

 

http://www.christopherkoehler.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Henry-150x150.jpgA man of varied business interests, Henry is desperate to escape his past. His last boyfriend used him for his money, and he doubts the love was ever really there. Burdened by his secrets and burned out on relationships, can Henry find last happiness in a relationship if he’s lying to himself about being happy in the first place?

 

When the two meet, fur—not sparks—flies, but as circumstances and coincidence throw them together, can each man admit he was wrong and move past his disastrous first impression to realize that sometimes, love bears no resemblance to what’s expected?

 

(note on pictures: these are pictures I found on the internet that captured how I envisioned each character. I do not own the rights to these photos, and for all I know there are “real” people who might not appreciate starring in my novel. If either of these men is you, or if you own the rights, please email me using the contact form at the top of the page, and I’ll remove them.)

 

So there we are. I’ll post updates on publication dates as I get them, as well as cover art when it’s appropriate. In addition, there’ll be excerpts here from time to time. But the next post will be about the CalPac novels, I swear.

 

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