De-blog

Every now and then, I remember I'm supposed to let my readers old and new know what I've been up to, what's on the horizon and all that jazz. Well, this is going to be a short (but hopefully informative) post. :D (OK, not that  short. I don't really do short.) We're midway through 2019 - the first year in many (since 2013) when I haven't already written at least one novel, and I'm OK with that. I realised a couple of years back that I'd somehow ended up on the book factory line, which isn't a bad thing, as it comes from readers actively asking for more. For instance, I wrote Checking Him Out in 2014, and enough people wanted Noah and Matty's story, so I published  Taking Him On in 2015 (and Checking In because people wanted more of Sol and Adam too), and then there was Jesse and Leigh's story, The Making of Us , which I released in 2017. During those three years, I also co-wrote the Seeds of Tyrone series with Raine O'T...

This probably isn't going to be the kind of post you're expecting, and, in fact, it has relatively little to do with M/M Romance per se. Had I reached a particular point in my writing life ten years earlier, this blog post may well have been titled 'My love-hate relationship with YA Fantasy'. I can write in both genres incidentally, although perhaps not as well as other authors. I am (or I was) most comfortable writing contemporary realist fiction, so even when I'm attempting to write within other genres, the outcome is somewhat of a crossover. Contemporary fiction is broad and not that descriptive as genre titles go. Indeed, it is not really a genre at all—it doesn't even have an entry in Wikipedia! :o It is, in effect, a catchall for any fictional story set in our time and space, and which doesn't fit neatly in any other genre. Anyway, that's what I write. Wrote? I don't know. I'm still hopeful for a present participle... that...

It's New Year's Eve, so it is! Not my favourite time of year, I must admit. I don't make resolutions, and I have a psychological aversion to fireworks and 'Auld Lang Syne'. But never mind all that. On Christmas Day, Raine O'Tierney and I released a Christmas story - Christmas Craic and Mistletoe - which is, in fact, two Christmas stories rolled into one. The second story - Tom and Michael - has a rather lovely chapter entitled 'What are you doing...' The inspiration for that chapter (aside from the characters themselves, of course) was the song 'What are you doing New Year's Eve', as recorded by Harry Connick Jr. So I thought I'd post a little teaser from the chapter, along with a link to the song, to help get you in a smoooth romantic mood! Whatever you're doing this New Year's Eve, have a good one! :) Deb x  * * * * * Excerpt from Christmas Craic and Mistletoe - 'What are you doing...' Tom rubb...

It's a terrible state of affairs that it's taken me TWO DAYS to post about the newest story co-authored by the wonderful award-winning Raine O'Tierney and little ole me. The reason? It's inexplicable, unfathomable and my own bloody fault. I decided we should put out this story on Christmas Day, and near-killed the pair of us doing it. So, two days of collapsy-coma-sleep and the mother of all headaches later, here I am, telling you about our latest story. It's a Christmas story (really, Deb? Yeah) and it's part of our amazing Seeds of Tyrone series . And yes, I do get to call it amazing, because...did I mention award-winning authors? Also, if we don't like our own stories, there's no hope for anyone else liking them. The best bit of collaboration is that we get to read and write at the same time, so my praise, really, isn't arrogance. It's praise for my co-author. Do you like Two-for-Ones? Because that's what you get with Christmas Cr...

So there I was, in the midst of responding to Q&As for our* Where the Grass is Greener ** blog tour when my co-author just chucks in an answer that leads to this blog post. * 'our' being the delectable and awesomely talented Raine O'Tierney and my adequate self **  Out today! 28th September, 2015 - Where the Grass is Greener The short version of a very long (two months) journey... I wanted a cover for my novel, When Skies Have Fallen , which was appropriate to the era in which the story is based. The story begins in 1944, when RAF corporal Arty Clarke meets USAAF technical sergeant Jim Johnson at a local dance hall. The novel follows their romance from 1944 through to 1967, against the social backdrop of war, post-war, persecution of homosexuals and decriminalisation of homosexuals in 1967 (in England). Now, there are a lot of old black and white photos of men being affectionate with each other—some of whom are definitely men who love men—around the internet,...