Adventures in Writing

Okay, I knew the excitement was dying away... but the m/m group at Goodreads seems to have released the 4th volume of the Don't Read in the Closet anthology (that's right, of course... the one my story is in) without even an announcement!  Anyway, I haven't read any of the stories yet, but if you're interested in a lot of free m/m shorts, you can download the anthology here.

I've finished the first draft of my newest m/m Romance - still not sure whether it's going to be Beneath the Surface or All There Is.  But, either way, 60 000 words of men struggling through external obstacles to find each other.  And smoochies.  Hardly any sex, in this one.  There just wasn't much of a place to put it. 

I think I'm happy moving in that direction, anyway.  My publishers tell me that heat sells, and I believe them, but it's just not as much fun for me to write that way.  I mean, if it fits into the story, and if I can find a way to add characterization and plot development and a little bit of banter into it, then, giddyup! But I can't just shoehorn it in where it doesn't belong as a way to add 'flames' to my ratings.  Just doesn't work for me.

So, now I need to let it sit for a while.  I've got to get better at that.  I've got releases scheduled pretty steady from now until July, so there's no rush to get something new on the market, and I think the quality will be much better if I'm able to re-read my draft with fresh eyes in a month or two.  That's my goal.

I think I might also try self-publishing this one. I love working with Dreamspinner, and my experience so far with Samhain has been excellent, but I'm curious about the self-pubbing options.  And, of course, the income.  I want to see how it works out.  Then again, I also want to get something placed with Carina - again, I'm curious!  So maybe I'll sub this one there? 

Anyway, I think I've got a good idea for my next story - YA, which is a bit tricky because it's breaking into a whole new genre, but what the hell?  I'll give it a try! I want to write a kick-ass heroine who ISN'T supernatural or futuristic or anything else that can't really happen.  I'm not knocking the scifi heroines, 'cause I love them, but I want to have a 'real' girl being tough and smart, too.  And I think I have just the girl for the job...

Sometimes I have to force myself to sit down and write.  It's not that I don't love writing, but it's work, and I'm lazy.  And NaNo this year was not good for me, as a writer.  I finished the required words, but they were on a project that I shouldn't have used for a 'forced writing' type project - it required more thought and planning than I was able to give it, so I ended up walking away thinking that I had wasted my time and produced a lot of useless drivel. (I haven't gone back to read it over, yet, to see if that's true). So I was feeling a bit discouraged about writing.

Then, I took a few days off.  Just a few days.  By the third, driving home from my family Christmas, my mind was darting from one unwritten scene to the next and my fingers were wriggling on the steering wheel, imagining how it would feel to be typing again. That's all it took, just three days.  I forced myself to go to bed last night, but when I woke up at four because my sleep had brought me a character epiphany, I gave in, got up, and wrote.  Turns out the epiphany, like most things that come to me in my sleep, was total nonsense.  But I figured that out before I'd even sat down at the computer, and there was still LOTS more to say.  Wrote for an hour, went back to bed, and I'm starting the day already up 2 000 words!  It's going to be a good day for writing!

What am I working on?  Another contemporary m/m romance... I'm torn between Beneath the Surface and All There Is for a title.  It's about a country boy who loves his land and a city boy who loves making money, and plans to make money via a gravel quarry right next to country boy's farm.  I'm not sure if the 'gravel pit' is a big enough threat to make the story dramatic - nobody's going to die, but I do make it clear why it's a threat to a way of life.  And then I worry that I'm spending too much time making that clear, and not enough on the boys...

That's what beta readers are for, right?  I'll get it done, and then see what I need to fix.

Happy New Year, everybody!  I think mine started today at about 4 am.

There is just something about getting the final cover image for a book.

It makes everything seem much more real, somehow. Someone else (in this case, the inestimable Justin James) has used their time and energy to create something for my little story. I don't mean to diminish the work that the editors do - lord knows I appreciate it (and I may, someday, overcome my comma addiction). But that's still just them working on MY stuff. A cover is someone else creating something completely new, for me and my story! I love it!

Anyway, without further ado...



Dan and Evan and Jeff are back, and they are, as usual, fighting. Fighting each other, of course, but also fighting FOR each other. Still waiting on a firm release date, but it should only be a few more months, I think.

In the meantime, lots of extras are available... see my website for a list

Picking character names is hard!

I've been experimenting with Scrivener, a piece of writing software that a lot of authors love, and it doesn't do too much for me. I tend to write in a really linear fashion, so I don't need the 're-arrange index cards' feature, or much of the rest of it, although I can see that it would be nice to have all my notes arranged in one place. But the program DOES have a great name-generator that, I swear, is probably worth the price of purchase. I know, there are on-line name generators available for free, but Scrivener, thus far, has given me really excellent names in not much time at all!

(In case the name thing didn't make it clear, I'm starting another story. I'm taking a premise that was going to be het and switching it to m/m - the premise was maybe a bit bland for het, but I think adding the gay aspect will pump things up considerably. And it makes it easier to avoid the gender cliches. The story's about a farmer whose land is threatened by the evil developers, and the developer's representative is the love interest. And I want the developer's rep to see the error of his ways, eventually. So if I made the farmer female, then it would be the cliche of a woman teaching a man to trust his emotions and be in touch with nature, and if I made the developer's rep female, it would be the cliche of a woman being taught that having a career is bad, and she should go wash dishes barefoot in the farmer's kitchen. - I must keep this problem in mind for the next person who asks me why I write m/m!)

It takes Amazon a couple days to get going with this whole 'publishing e-books' thing, so I've started the process a bit before the November 21 target date. That means that "On Deck", a short story from the Dark Horse series, previously available as "The Date"... is now available, still for free but in gussied-up e-book format!

Details here. I'll update when it's finally available at Amazon, but please note - I'm TRYING to make it free at Amazon, I swear I am. But they won't do the price-match thing, or at least they won't do it very quickly. I gave the details for price matching for the other three books as soon as I posted them, but they still haven't gone down. Sorry. So, if free is important, go to All Romance e-books, or wait for Amazon to get going with it. Otherwise... ninety-nine cents probably won't kill you, but I do feel a bit guilty about it. Oops.

Home Ice skates into stores on November 11 - Remembrance Day in Canada, and, hey! My birthday! I guess it's not appropriate to be 'excited' for Remembrance Day, but I'm certainly looking forward to the other two!

Home Ice is my first book with Ellora's Cave, and it's always interesting to see how a new publisher does things. In this case, things started off slow, but once the editing process was over, it all happened FAST. I wasn't sure the story would even be out this YEAR, but, damn, they kicked it into gear! So, November 11 - very exciting.

I've also got a 'guest blog' thing coming out on the same day... maybe I should have included THAT in the first paragraph, too. Anyway, it's a 'Story Behind the Story' thing at Jadette Paige's journal. I think it's pretty cute.

Ellora's Cave has set November 11 as the release date for Home Ice, my newest m/m story, and my first official novella! Very exciting.

When they were young men playing on the same hockey team, the heat between Jason and Mike had been almost enough to melt the ice they were skating on. But Mike went off to be a star in the NHL and Jason stayed behind to start his life as the dedicated, deeply closeted coach of the town’s junior hockey team.

Now Mike is back in town and Jason finds that their passion burns as hot as ever. But they’re both still in the closet and when Jason is threatened with exposure, he freezes. The flames of desire can’t melt Jason’s fears, but maybe, just maybe, the warmth of love will thaw the ice.

Sometimes You Just Know is now up, I think, at All Romance e-books and hopefully soon up at Amazon (apparently it takes a while for it to be posted, there).

I don't know - I'm pretty confident that I did everything right for ARe... Amazon, on the other hand, I'm insecure about. And it will probably be asking people to pay for it, from Amazon, at least for a while, until they price-match the ARe price. I THINK that's how it goes.

Yikes. Let me know if things aren't working for you.

So, I know I said I wouldn't be writing a third book in the Dark Horse series, but... I lied! That's my way, apparently.

It was good to visit the boys again, for sure. And it's always fun to torture them. But it was strange, too, because my writing style has changed since the Dark Horse days, and I decided to go with the change rather than trying to fight it, so the new book is a lot less rambling than the old ones. I think there's still lots of emotion and angst, but there's less filler. I don't think I tell you about Dan's breakfast a single time.

Which is what I like when I'm reading. But I know that a lot of readers liked the way they crawled right inside Dan's life with the last two books, and I'm not sure if that happens with this one. Especially since I give Jeff and Evan's POVs, too, this time.

I don't know. I think it's well done, and my beta readers all said nice things, and gave solid suggestions for improvements, which I've taken. So I think people will like it. But it's always a bit nerve-wracking to send my babies out into the world!