De-blog

To celebrate the release of Tabula Rasa (Gray Fisher #2) on June 21st, The WAG and The Scoundrel (Gray Fisher #1) ebook is available for 99c (or thereabouts. Amazon, you know... Usual price is $3.99). Buy The WAG and The Scoundrel (Gray Fisher #1) : Beaten Track • Amazon • Barnes and Noble Smashwords • Kobo • iBooks • GooglePlay Preorder Tabula Rasa (Gray Fisher #2 ): Beaten Track • Amazon • Barnes and Noble Kobo • iBooks

Four days: that's how long I've spent trying to write this blog post. I had it half written and my computer didn't save it (thanks, Outlook, and well done me for my impressive use of technology—thought I'd get clever with speech-to-text on my phone). Anyway, the long and short of it is this: The Making Of Us is available for preorder! Beaten Track [Paperback] • Beaten Track [eBook] • Amazon [Kindle Edition] • Smashwords [eBook] • Barnes and Noble [eBook] • Kobo [eBook] I finished writing it over the weekend, and it occurred to me, somewhere around the 95k mark (it's 97k words in all), three of the last four books I've written feature non-binary main characters (the other two being Of The Bauble and The WAG and The Scoundrel ). This wasn't intentional, in the sense that all my characters, by default, are non-binary (because I am), so you can assume that's true unless I tell you otherwise. First, for those unsure of what non-binary ...

In this post: Anniversaries and Birthdays When in Paris... from Josh's Journal Celebratory Freebie Love Unlocked Giveaway Coming Soon Anniversaries and Birthdays I'm going to cut to the chase in this blog post, because there is SO MUCH to get through! Ten Years of Hiding Behind The Couch First up, this year is the tenth anniversary of Hiding Behind The Couch , which wasn't meant to be a series. I wrote the first book (from which the name of the series was derived) to prove I could write another novel. The following year, I was stuck for an idea for NaNoWriMo and wrote No Time Like The Present (Season Two). Long story short (hahaha), as I near the end of writing Reunions (Season Seven), the series consists of 11 novels, 7 novellas and 2 short stories - 1.7 million words! That's a lot of words. :) As existing readers will know, the series is about a group of nine (+/-) friends who met at school and university, and with the exception of Brea...

Am I going to rant? I don't normally. Haha. OK, I'm not going to rant as such , but I am going to make a number of points in this post that are powered by utter fury and frustration, but I'll do my best to remain objective and not shoot my mouth off. First up, in my last post - 2016 Writing Round-up Part 1: Those Jeffries Boys - I said "I've stuck to [taking Christmas off] with one exception, which was a Boxing Day discount event on All Romance eBooks . Obviously, that couldn't wait, but the twelve emails I've set aside can ." Well, what a total bloody waste of time that was! Between Boxing Day (26th December) and 28th December, All Romance eBooks went kaput. I won't go into the nitty-gritty, but what I can tell you is the email I received on 28th December, announcing the closure of the site, offered to pay 10% of royalties owed to authors and publishers. Authors for whom ARE acted as publisher were offered their rights back, and I believ...

This coming Thursday (22nd September, 2016) is release day for my novel, The WAG and The Scoundrel . It's a nerve-racking time. Will readers like it? Will they love it? Or will they hate it? Worse still, will they give it a big fat indifferent 'meh'? I've been writing novels for nearly twenty years, and that old chestnut 'you can't please everyone' is one I (mostly) accept. My books aren't for everyone, but it doesn't make negative reviews sting any less. But anyway, that's not what this post is about. Or it is, a little bit. What I'm going to attempt to do here is provide content warnings (for potential triggers), spoiler warnings and a general note about inclusivity in LGBTQ fiction so that readers do not go into The WAG and The Scoundrel entirely unknowing of what lies ahead. However, this will be sketchy information at best, because if I spell it out, it'll spoil the story! Content Warnings These are some of the key themes...

WIPpet Wednesday is a blog hop where authors share from their current works in progress - expertly organised/hosted by Emily Witt - and the excerpt has to relate to the date in some way. For links to other fabulous authors' WIPpets, visit: http://www.inlinkz.com/wpview.php?id=355404 So, it's the 18th August (I'm a day late :/): 8+18=26 sentences of my work in progress, The WAG and The Scoundrel , which is a white-collar crime mystery (ish) / romance (ish) (LGBTQ). It's the first book in the Gray Fisher Series , which is a spinoff of Hiding Behind The Couch . It's scheduled for an October release. It's written! Hurrah! I'm currently working through it - as is my no.1 beta-reader (Nige) to make sure it's fit for my editor. This will likely be the last snippet from this WIP. In the scene below, Gray and Will are having dinner and talking about Jean-Michel - Gray's deceased civil partner. Here's the WIPpet: "Very French," Will s...

WIPpet Wednesday is a blog hop where authors share from their current works in progress - expertly organised/hosted by Emily Witt - and the excerpt has to relate to the date in some way. For links to other fabulous authors' WIPpets, visit: http://www.inlinkz.com/wpview.php?id=355404 So, it's the 10th August: 3+7=10, and 8 is 378 words of my work in progress, The WAG and The Scoundrel , which is a white-collar crime mystery (ish) / romance (ish) (LGBTQ). It's the first book in the Gray Fisher Series , which is a spinoff of Hiding Behind The Couch . It's scheduled for an October release. It's...getting there. There are three main characters in The WAG and The Scoundrel: Gray Fisher, Will Richards and police officer Rob Simpson-Stone - a previous colleague of Gray's. In the scene below, Rob is at the public swimming pool with his son, Lucas. Rob and Lucas's mum, Zoë, are divorced, and Zoë has custody. Here's the WIPpet: "Mum said you could c...

WIPpet Wednesday is a blog hop where authors share from their current works in progress - expertly organised/hosted by Emily Witt - and the excerpt has to relate to the date in some way. For links to other fabulous authors' WIPpets, visit: http://www.inlinkz.com/wpview.php?id=355404 So, it's the 3rd August: 3x8=24 sentences of my work in progress, The WAG and The Scoundrel , which is a white-collar crime mystery (ish) / romance (ish) (LGBTQ). It's the first book in the Gray Fisher Series , which is a spinoff of Hiding Behind The Couch . It's scheduled for an October release. :o There are three main characters in The WAG and The Scoundrel. So far, the WIPpets have focused on Gray and Will. The third character is police officer Rob Simpson-Stone - a previous colleague of Gray's. In the scene below, Rob has not long been in bed when his phone rings. Here's the WIPpet: "Hello, who's this?" "My name's Naomi. Are you PC Simpson-Ston...

WIPpet Wednesday is a blog hop where authors share from their current works in progress - expertly organised/hosted by Emily Witt - and the excerpt has to relate to the date in some way. For links to other fabulous authors' WIPpets, visit: http://www.inlinkz.com/wpview.php?id=355404 So, it's the 27th July, 2016, or (2707/2016)=691, but that's too many words, so I halved it, thusly 346 (rounded up, plus the last little bit so it wasn't entirely left dangling in anticip-) words of my work in progress, The WAG and The Scoundrel , which is a white-collar crime mystery (ish) / romance (ish) (LGBTQ). It's the first book in the Gray Fisher Series , which is a spinoff of Hiding Behind The Couch . It's scheduled for an October release. :o In the scene below, Gray's at home alone, and he's trying to figure out his feelings about...everything! Here's the WIPpet: It was as well Gray had steered clear of the spirits. The time was fast approaching two a...

The post title may seem a contradiction, but I've taken a break from The WAG and The Scoundrel to write this post, so... Reflections in brief: I've just hit 60k words, which is quite awesome. I plan to write 75k words, but it's not set in stone. That usually means somewhere around 100k words, but I don't think that will happen this time. There again, I didn't think it would happen last time. Some characters are chattier than I anticipated, which is nice. I think. And there are too many of them (see below). Word clouds are an excellent (if not distressing) way to see which words should not be in there as much as they are. Trying to write to a genre is one of the greatest constrictions on my creativity. I am no longer writing to a genre. I don't care. Mostly. Look at all these characters! Main: Gray Fisher - ex DCI running the SIU. Now a PhD student and part-time lecturer / TV extra Will Richards - ex investment banker, animal rights activi...

WIPpet Wednesday is a blog hop where authors share from their current works in progress - expertly organised/hosted by Emily Witt - and the excerpt has to relate to the date in some way. For links to other fabulous authors' WIPpets, visit: http://www.inlinkz.com/wpview.php?id=355404 So, it's the 20th July, 2016; here's 20 sentences from chapter 7 of my work in progress, The WAG and The Scoundrel , which is a white-collar crime mystery / romance (LGBTQ). It's the first book in the Gray Fisher Series , which is a spinoff of Hiding Behind The Couch . It's scheduled for an October release. Eek! The characters in the excerpt below are Gray Fisher and Will Richards. Through a bit of sneaky match-making (in a previous story), they've reached the level of...friendship. It could go anywhere, depending on how much Will and I can get Gray to loosen up. Here's the WIPpet: If Gray had not been so at peace, he might have worried about the fact he was, in that m...

I've heard of (and been part of) many a discussion about the pure horror experienced by readers of M/M romance when all of a sudden, SMACK! BAM! in the middle of their hot man-on-man action, there's an intimate scene between a man and a woman! Gasp! More often, it's described as a 'hetero' scene, yet in many cases, the reason the scene has found its way into an M/M romance is because one of the two male main characters is bisexual. It may even relate to other aspects of gender/sexual/relationship/identity, but that's for another post. All I'm getting at is, the way I see it, it's at best hypocritical to be a proud member or ally of the LGBTQ community and then spit bi-erasing disgust when faced with the reality of love is love . Preachy bit over. I mention it, in part, to make clear my writing philosophy, which is essentially to follow where the characters lead. I love the process of getting to know a character, walking alongside on their journe...