A Free Read, A 5-Star Review, and A Pretty Pretty Picture

While I’m waiting to hear back from the mechanic about car repairs (my car has sprung an oil leak), a few housekeeping notes:

My m/m short “Christening,” part of the Dreamspinner Press Halloween Howl promotion, can be downloaded here, if you haven’t located it on your own yet. 🙂

Musings of a Bookworm gave Sand & Water a lovely 5-star review. A snippet: If you like reading a story about the human condition this is the book for you. It is gentle and stunning and you won’t regret the journey.

And finally, I have beautiful cover art by Reese Dante for my short “In From the Cold,” part of Silver Publishing’s Dreaming of a White Christmas set:

 Oh myyyyy, that’s one blue eye!

(The blurb for the story: When Jeff Young walks into the rural Georgia lodge Neal Owens runs, he’s just looking for a room to escape a frigid December night. What he ends up finding is a new friend, a lover, and maybe more, all wrapped up in one hot package.)

What Planet Am I On?

Sorry about the sudden radio silence there, folks. Yes, I’m still alive and kicking! A combination of day-job busyness and GayRomLit have kept me pretty much limited to 140 characters at a time. 🙂

But I’m here now with an update, albeit brief. GayRomLit in New Orleans was amaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazing. So much fun meeting so many authors and readers, and New Orleans itself is always a fun time. My favorite parts were the Dreamspinner publisher’s spotlight and the riverboat cruise, but everything else ran a close second. 🙂

A few of the things I learned: Damon Suede has enough personality in his little finger to charm the pants right off your body; I have a total platonic girl crush on J.P. Barnaby; Kate McMurray is basically me, except she lives in Brooklyn; it’s Marguerite Labbe’s fault the Braves and Red Sox tanked at the end of the season; Rick Reed is a sweetie and much quieter in person than you’d expect; Rowan Speedwell has an incredibly cool earring collection to match her incredibly cool self; William Cooper loves daiquiris and is totally adorable and I would totally adopt him, but I can’t afford to pay his tuition; construction in a hotel full of gay romance writers and readers will result in many, many comments about drilling and screwing; and I am in total awe of the event organizers for getting such a crazy bunch of people into any semblance of order.

I could go on for days (no, really), but unfortunately, the day job keeps dragging me away. Le sigh. More updates and such soon! 🙂

NOLA, Here I Come!

Headed off to New Orleans today for GayRomLit. Looking forward to seeing a bunch of people there! I’m not registered as an author, so I don’t have a scheduled signing or anything. But I’ll be at the Dreamspinner publisher’s spotlight, at least, so come by and say hi. 🙂

Monday Music: Really Gave ‘Em… Well…

Yes, I went there. See everyone in NOLA this weekend!!

Advent Calendar Pre-orders Available

Aha! Pre-orders are up for the Dreamspinner Press 2011 Advent Calendar set, I’ll Be Home for Christmas. You’ll get 31 stories in all, one delivered each day in December to your bookshelf on the DSP site. The full story list is included under “Excerpts” on the sale page. (My contribution is a short story, Of Holiday Spirits, Wake-Up Calls, and Happily Ever Afters.) 

The full set is $39.99 for the rest of October. It goes to $49.99 after that, and the regular price in December will be $64.99. Individual stories will also be available for purchase in December, but pre-ordering now is by far the best deal. 🙂

A Question…

If I were to do a series of blog posts about American-specific information for non-US authors, and/or Southern-specific information for non-Southern authors… would you be interested?

I see a lot of questions on various mailing lists and boards about how things are done here (“here” meaning both the US and the South), everything from slang to sports to schools. There are resources to investigate a lot of those questions, but sometimes there’s no substitute for first-hand experience.

I also see things in stories set in the US sometimes that just don’t fit. Not long ago, we had a discussion on a mailing list about the Canadian practice of taking off shoes when coming into someone’s home. I had no idea that was common north of the border; it isn’t common at all here. Now I don’t wonder when I see it in stories based in Canada, but I read a US-based story by a Canadian author recently that included it with no explanation (and no, the characters involved weren’t Canadian). It was a relatively small thing, not enough to throw me out of the story, but it only happened in one scene. Had it been throughout, it could’ve become problematic.

Back to my question: if I were to dive into the fray with this, what kinds of things would you want to see covered? 🙂

Monday Music: You Can’t Pull Me Down

My sister and I saw “Wicked” for the first time Thursday night, so nothing could be more appropriate for today than this:

Six Sentence Sunday: Model Student

For this week’s Six Sentence Sunday, I’m dipping into the wayback machine and pulling out a snippet from my first published story, Model Student. Can’t believe it’s been a year already! 🙂

One of Aaron’s favorite old guilty-pleasure movies featured Ginger Rogers as a girl trying to decide between three suitors, making her decision based on which of them set off some kind of bells in her head when they kissed. Aaron was pretty sure he was living out the climactic moment right then, mouth fused to Matt’s. It wasn’t until Matt pulled away that Aaron realized it wasn’t bells but his cell phone, chiming and vibrating in his pocket.

Matt was laughing. “I think your thigh is trying to have its way with me,” he said, nudging his leg against the hard case in Aaron’s pocket.

“Yeah, well, so was I,” Aaron grumbled good-naturedly, reluctantly pulling his hand out of Matt’s hair and digging into his pocket instead.

View From My Balcony On A Perfect Day

Dreamspinner’s Halloween Howl

Dreamspinner Press is holding a special event this month! Here’s the info:

To celebrate Halloween, Dreamspinner is inviting people to come trick-or-treating at our web site. Thirty-one of our fantastic authors have donated free short stories. Search through the different pages on the web site for Gary the gargoyle. Each time you find him, click on him for a free download by the author whose page he’s hiding on! And make sure to check out the end of each story for a discount code good any time in the next year.

Dreamspinner will also be offering 25% off all orders this weekend. Have fun searching and stocking up! 🙂