De-blog

I've been invited to answer these questions by C.M. Walker, author of M/M Romance. Her current titles include Pledge Number Seven and Gravitational Force . Both can be downloaded from her website cm-walker.com . What am I working on? I'm currently writing Crying in the Rain - a standalone story (novella, probably, but it's still growing), but with characters that will be familiar to readers of the Hiding Behind The Couch series. Crying in the Rain explores the romance blossoming between Kris and Ade, who meet for the first time whilst both working on the same radio play. It's told mostly from Ade's perspective, and "romance" is very much not on his agenda. He's recently come out of a traumatic long-term relationship, and is barely getting through from one day to the next, yet finds he can't ignore his attraction to Kris, and the feeling is mutual. But starting a relationship isn't going to be easy for either of them. It's going t...

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...

This week, our roundtable discussion is led by Brandilyn Carpenter and Rob Colton. You can read what they had to say by following the links below: Brandilyn Carpenter's Post: http://www.prismbookalliance.com/2014/06/lgbt-pride-roundtable-discussion-with-giveaway/ Rob Colton's Post: http://robcolton.com/post/88924899130/lgbt-pride-a-roundtable-discussion-week-3 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 gain entries into the giv...

I've been tagged in the Lucky Seven Game by the wonderful Hunter Frost. How does it work? Go to page 7 or 77 in your current WIP. Go to line 7 Post on your blog the next 7 sentences or 7 lines—as they are! Tag 7 people to do the same.  It caused me a bit of a dilemma, as my current work in progress is Two By Two - Season Six of the Hiding Behind The Couch series - I'm well into writing the final episode of this instalment, and everything is a spoiler! Thusly, I'm going with page 77 of the full season, and here are the seven lines:     “You know when you go collecting tadpoles?” he said.     Krissi frowned. “Yeah?”     “And you get the ones with two tails, or the ones that just kind of wiggle and get nowhere?”     “Hmm?”     Ade nodded. “That’s what my sperm are like.”     Krissi giggled. A lot. Then blushed. “I’m sorry,” she spluttered. “Th...

This week, our roundtable discussion is led by authors Brandon Shire and Larry Benjamin. You can read what they had to say by following the links below: Brandon Shire's Post: http://brandonshire.com/challenges-for-the-future-of-lgbt-rights/  Larry Benjamin's Post: http://authorlarrybenjamin.blogspot.com/2014/06/gay-pride-month-virtual-roundtable.html 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 gain entries into the giveaway, but...

This week on my blog, we're trying something a little different. In honor of LGBT Pride month, I am among a great group of panelists who will be hosting a month long discussion about Pride, LGBT Youth, Allies, and more. 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 , Debbie McGowan , and Brandon Shire . Each week, two people will answer two questions related LGBT pride, rights, and related topics. We will also be giveaway free copies of eBooks by our participating authors and a Amazon gift card. You can enter on the RC below. 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 gain entries into the giveaway, but more importantly, you can be part of a important and fun discussion. Though only 2 panelists will be posting each week, we will all be j...

I've spent sixteen hours typesetting the paperback and formatting the ebook for In The Stars Part II today. Am I inefficient? Maybe. Or perhaps it's down to the 210k, 572 page, fifty-five chapter leviathan I spawned... (yes, you read that correctly) Better still (or worse yet), this is only the second half of the story of In The Stars , which spans a year in the life of The Circle - the nine characters around which the Hiding Behind The Couch series revolves. The full story consists of the 105 chapters below - around 1,150 pages and something like 384,000 words. Which is, of course, why I'm releasing it not only in two volumes , but also as twelve separate episodes . Each episode is released in the month in which the related zodiac sign falls, so the first six episodes are already available (at time of writing). It doesn't have much else to do with astrology, to be honest, although the themes of religious beliefs, science, fate and fortune are key. I...

So, the thing is this. I got to the end of Checking Him Out , and it was all ready for submission. And, as all writers will know, it's a bit difficult to... ...just let go. I had plenty of other stuff to be getting on with, but I was watching the forums for Love's Landscapes . As I explained a couple of posts back , members of the MM Romance Group submitted "Dear Author" letters, detailing the story they wanted to be written, and authors claimed these prompts, which is their agreement to write that story. Unfortunately, circumstances mean that some authors have to pull out, and their prompt is then 'open' again for someone else to claim. On this particular evening, I was home alone, when two prompts became available at the same time. One was a sports-related prompt, which I had ideas for, but the prompter was hinting heavily at baseball, and I know next to bugger all about baseball (played with bats, and has that weird ballpark organ music, that g...

Checking Him Out is back from round #1 with my editor*, and she's pretty bloody awesome, that editor. I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't a bolshy, stubborn author who digs her heels in. Luckily she seems to know how to handle me, as I've come out the other side smiling and happy - a very different outcome to the one I had recurring dreams about two nights ago! *Addendum: it is now edited and with the proofreaders! There was also an interesting plot hole that she spotted, and it took me about ten minutes of sitting, staring at the screen, saying, "What the hell is she on about?" over and again, before the penny dropped. It's fixed now, and I've got to say that right at this point in time I think this is the best story I've ever written. It's probably just a post-writing / post-editing moment of euphoric bias, because I love my Hiding Behind The Couch series beyond the capacity for rational thought. However, Checking Him Out was a ne...

I've just submitted two stories to my publisher. That sounds pretty awesome, doesn't it? And you know what? It is! But this isn't any old publisher. It's not a traditional publisher, nor an indie publisher. It's an online community endeavour to publish a massive anthology of around 200 stories. Do not think for one minute that this makes it anything less than professional. The support from the moderators, the editors, proofreaders - they are truly incredible, and the community itself really is one on its own. About The M/M Romance Group The community I'm talking about is the M/M Romance Group on Goodreads , and I'm a member. That feels a bit like coming out, because if you're unfamiliar with the terminology, "M/M" is male/male, and it's a genre I'm still learning about, even though I've discovered that my first novel, Champagne (2004, 2014), is, in fact, a M/M romance. However, much of what I write falls under the umbrell...

In The Stars Part II Trailer Out Now! ♥ It's a labour of love. ♥ I've blogged about it before. Hiding Behind The Couch - my series about nine friends. I've blogged about it a good few times, in fact, because I have a problem. It. Sells. Bugger. All. It sells so much bugger all it made me do that one word to each sentence thing! It doesn't get many reviews either, even though I can see that the first two novels are being downloaded from my website . Because, you see, the first two books are free . Book four is technically free too, as it's available in instalments from Smashwords , with 'user sets price'. So what's going on? When it does get reviews, they're generally great. I've done interviews in the press and online. I've run giveaways, taken part in blog hops, made video trailers... I can't even be bothered to list the rest of the things I've done here, but the bottom line is this: It's contempor...

Blog hop! What a great idea, like playing the Wikipedia game of link-clicking and getting lost in a whole new world of knowledge, except here you get to meet some authors you might not have met before, so without further ado... In this post I'm going to tell you a little about my writing process and what I'm currently working on. I was tagged by the fabulous Larry Benjamin , author of What Binds Us , Damaged Angels and Unbroken (shortlisted for this year's Lambda Literary Awards ). You can read Larry's blog post here: http://authorlarrybenjamin.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/my-writing-process-blog-hop.html Larry's website is here: http://www.larrybenjamin.com What am I working on? I've just finished editing the second edition of my first novel, Champagne , and after a very drawn-out discussion with a reader last week about how much the story affected him, I'm thinking about writing a "sequel" that would bring resolution. I deliberately wrote...

Welcome to Part Two of our Roundtable discussion on sex in gay fiction, with authors, Larry Benjamin , WS Long , Andrew Q. Gordon and Hans Hirschi , all of whom write gay fiction. Deb McGowan , author, editor and publisher is the discussion's moderator. Miss Part 1? Don't worry, you can read it here. http://authorlarrybenjamin.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/lets-talk-about-sex-roundtable.html Don't forget we are also running a giveaway of eBooks and a $30 gift card. Just click the Rafflecopter link on this page to enter the drawing. You have until 12:00 a.m. April 8, 2014, to enter and winners will be drawn on April 9, 2014. Winners will be notified by email. DM: Welcome back gentlemen. Let's just dive in and pick up where we left off, shall we? What's your approach to writing sex? WSL: The sex scenes should propel the story, involve the characters at that moment. That's the only reason to include it. If the sex doesn't add to the plot then don...