De-blog

It's been a really busy day. That's what I've been telling everyone, along with mumbled explanations about uploading books, putting together covers, writing reviews and blog posts and so on and so forth. What I've really been doing - spent an inordinate amount of time doing, in fact, is... Finding somewhere to hang my bunting. I kid you not. I probably don't strike you as a bunting kind of person, but this is no ordinary bunting. Oh no. This is homemade, meticulously stitched and ironed(!) bunting. Don't believe me? Well, feast your eyes on these splendiferous triangular beasties! Good, eh? :D The bunting is a lovely release day gift from Dawn Sister - one of my fellow authors in  Seasons of Love   anthology, which is released 31st July (officially - it's already out). Thank you, Dawn. I intend to keep it up for at least a month. Then I'll carefully fold it away into its bag and bring it out again same time next year, and the year afte...

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

I'm going to be totally up front here. I've not yet read any of Rose Montague's books, but I'm going to be rectifying that very  soon, and I'll tell you why. What you're getting is my first impression of an author who is new to me, of whom I know nothing. No interview, no review tapping; I'm going in cold. Before I go any further, I should mention that one of Rose's books is on a Kindle Countdown deal, and it's available at $0.99/£0.99 until 27th January, 2018. For the impatient who aren't interested in reading on, here are the links: Amazon US:   http://amzn.to/1FdKmWL Amazon UK:   http://amzn.to/18KgEfd Teaser: A presidential election. A witch with a target on her back and a magical arrow. A shadowy government agency made up of witches with unusual abilities. A game called Witch Pong. The Mighty Thor? See how it all comes together in a school you will never forget. Blurb: Jewel has a problem. She's in a witch school and c...

It's Bisexual Awareness Week , so what better time to give you all a bit more info on the bisexual characters in my books? Before I go any further, I'll warn you this is an obscenely long post. At the end, I've listed the books that can be bought this week at discount price (50% – two of them are free) as part of Beaten Track Publishing's #biweek celebration . On we go... In case clarification is needed, the definition of 'bisexual' at work here is this: an identity marker that refers to the capacity to be attracted to people of more than one gender. It doesn't require someone to have had relationships with more than one gender, and if someone identifies as bisexual, it is not up for question or discussion. On a day-to-day basis, this causes lots of difficulties for bisexual people because their current relationship status is used as snapshot evidence to argue that they're really gay (if it's a same-gender relationship) or really straigh...

I wrote the opening paragraphs as the start of a story for the Take a Chance anthology , but I didn’t get any further, and it’s been loitering on my computer since, so I thought I’d throw down a few more words (577 words in all) and share it. That was the first time Robbie saw him. He remembered the smell of the dirty rain that pelted the streets and his stinging cheeks, the heavy grey sky draped over the world like an unwashed blanket, the wa-wa of the music and the beeps and the clicks, the spiralling zooming lights that seemed a million times brighter in the dead cold of the wet November afternoon. And he remembered him—the boy in torn tracksuit pants, too-big t-shirt and trainers with no laces that flipped and flopped until they were finally flung aside. Robbie wasn’t allowed in the arcades. When he’d told his parents about the Saturday job in the fish and chip shop, it was the first thing they’d said. Not ‘well done’ or ‘good for you’. Do not— we repeat —do NOT go in th...

Read on WattPad: https://www.wattpad.com/myworks/115931648-the-pastors-last-drop I will update this post as I add more chapters to the story. (images are all in the public domain, used under Creative Commons Licence) Cover (Derived from 'Liverpool from Wapping' , John Atkinson Grimshaw, 1875) Chapter One Jacques Brel - La Chanson de Jackie John Atkinson Grimshaw painting (snipped and edited from 'Glasgow Docks', 1881 ) Cobblestones (snipped from 'Last Call' ) Chapter Two Becker - Piketipeli (snipped and edited from 'Piketipeli' ) Chapter Three Plimpton and Ruggles - View of a Canal Boat (snipped and edited from 'View of a canal boat, Lockport, N.Y.' )

Title: Regeneration Author: Louise Lyons Published: January 15, 2017 Genre: Gay fiction, science fiction, MM romance Length: 75,000 words Cover design: Simon Searle   Purchase Links: Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01NAL4NJ8 Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01NAL4NJ8 Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/688822 Blurb: In the 23rd Century in the galaxy of Sigma Kappa, Kim Fortune was the first surviving experimental enhanced human—a regenerate. Aged fifteen, he escaped the lab and years later, his failings as a regenerate and the suspicion of regular humans, leave him lonely and lacking in self-worth. Stranded on an abandoned planet, the arrival of a stricken ship and its crew give him hope that he may finally find what he always longed for—love. Christian Novak is a successful regenerate with all the intended attributes—including lack of human emotion. Despite their immediate attraction to each other, Kim's failing confidence, ...

It's the holiday season! Fun first...  And a thought... I'm not going to get ranty, but however you celebrate, if you are one of the fortunate, take that little spark of festive magic and do something wonderful with it. It could be life-changing for someone else, and it will make you feel nice. Now the hard sell! :) Me? Hard sell? As if! I had a job doing door-to-door canvassing for a kitchen company once. I lasted a day. But! I am selling something, so here goes... I wanted to officially launch Checking Him Out For the Holidays , which is available to buy for around $2 / £1.25 via Beaten Track , Amazon (Kindle) , Smashwords , All Romance eBooks , and a few other places by now, I would imagine. If you went torrent hunting you might even find it there, but I'd rather you bought it. I took it as a sign that I was finally getting somewhere when my recent novel, Crying in the Rain , made it to the file-sharing sites within three days of release. There...

Next Monday (December 15th) marks the release of my second Christmas story of the year, Red Hot Christmas , so we'll start as we mean to go on, by officially revealing the FABULOUS cover, created by Natasha Snow . Natasha's a brilliant cover artist / designer, and such a great person to work with. For both Red Hot Christmas and Crying in the Rain , I gave her a brief outline of the story and her first ideas were what we eventually went with, even though I fuss and fret and go all around the world before I reach the conclusion that she had it right all along. I think it's what comes of writing a series, whereby Crying in the Rain and Red Hot Christmas are chronologically #5 and #11 (full list at end of post), although I wrote Red Hot Christmas last Christmas, and wrote Crying in the Rain during the summer. By this point, the characters are so familiar to me that I have a clear picture in my head of what they are like - it's more of a psychological profile...

So, yes, well. I have NEVER been so tired in my life. Or not since my dear daughters were yay big [imagine me holding up a finger and thumb with an inchy inchworm sized gap between]. But today my youngest daughter is leaving home. She's the blondie at the start of the Boughs of Evergreen trailer. My eldest says she's never leaving home... can't say I blame her. Home is nice. Home is also my place of work, and part of the reason I'm so blooming tired, but we're...so...close... Boughs of Evergreen - the holiday anthology from Beaten Track - is out on 21st November and today is the 5th [kudos, Mr. Fawkes, not quite the folk hero people think, but anyway] and I am still editing. Goodness! But fear not, intrepid readers! We shall be victorious! How victorious? Well, there's a giveaway to enter, if you're quick! You can find it on the Beaten Track website here: http://www.beatentrackpublishing.com/?n1=boughs_of_evergreen And here, for your viewi...

This week, our final Pride roundtable discussion is led by Rick Bettencourt and Lane Hayes. You can read what they had to say by following the links below: Rick Bettencourt's Post: http://rickbettencourt.wordpress.com/2014/06/23/lgbt-roundtable-discussion/ Lane Hayes' Post: http://lanehayes.wordpress.com/2014/06/23/lgbt-pride-month-roundtable-discussion-what-does-gay-pride-mean-to-you/ Our panelists are a diverse group of readers, writers, and supporters of gay fiction, including Larry Benjamin , Rick Bettencourt , Brandilyn Carpenter , Rob Colton , Andrew Q Gordon , Lane Hayes , and  Debbie McGowan . Each week, two people will answer two questions related LGBT pride, rights, and related topics. We will also be giving away free copies of our eBooks and an Amazon gift card. (Enter on the RC on any of the blog posts.) There are special entries for each week of June, so don’t miss out on those. Please join in the discussion in the comments. You can g...