De-blog

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...

I've been tagged by Hunter Frost to take part in the Meet the Character blog hop. Hunter Frost is a very talented author of M/M erotic romance, and has been writing since high school. Her publications to date include the wonderful A Thoreau Affair  - a free short story about a former English professor and the student he can't forget - and the rather raunchy short, What Brown Can Do For You - where attraction blossoms between an IT geek and the UPS guy. You can read more about Hunter Frost here: hunterfrost.net/about . Hunter is one of 23 authors contributing to the Boughs of Evergreen holiday anthology , which is being published by Beaten Track Publishing on November 21st, and she came up with the rather wonderful idea of us taking a hop around the characters from our anthology stories. Last week, Hunter introduced us to the delectable Mitch Sterling - the main character of An Angel in Eyeliner . Meet Mitch Sterling: http://www.hunterfrost.net/meet-the-cha...

So this lil blog hop keeps on a-hopping. It's not quite a month since I did the " Fabulous Five Blog Hop ", which was actually my last post, because I'm far too busy to write blog posts. So, when Hans Hirschi asked me if I would like to be the next hop from his own post , and the questions were exactly the same, I said, "I'll give it a go." That might seem a bit of a contradiction - no time to post, but offering to do so anyway. But the thing is, you make time. Like now. It's almost two in the morning, and I'm writing this. The other part of it is the challenge. "What's the point if you've just done it?" Hans asked. So I told him. Four weeks ago I was working on something different, and that's not the only thing that's changed. My thoughts on my responses to the other three questions have also changed. I'm a thinker. I'm also a doer (hence time has moved on and so have I), but when it comes to quickfir...

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...