Another sale

When Love Flue In is 20% off at Silver Publishing for one week only (11th-16th Dec).

Those of you who are eagle-eyed will notice that Silver have decided to change the title of my book in that promo with the omission of a single letter. Now my punny title implies that the story is about a severe cold bringing two lonely hearts together, when it is actually about a chimney sweep!

Read all about it

Or at least learn a little more about me.

I've answered a few questions over at UK Gay Romance, just by way of an introduction.

Want to know how I got started writing gay romance? 

Or the first published gay romance I read?

How about finding out what I'm working on now?

Or read an excerpt of one of my novels?

All of the above can be found in my interview.

Christmas comes early

with the Silver Black Friday sale.

Think Silver this Black Friday, Nov. 29th, and get a great deal on all ebooks with our Buy One, Get One Free sale! 
Note: try checking this sale on Thanksgiving Day depending on your timezone, as Silver's sales operate on GMT time (12 a.m. GMT Nov. 29th = 7 p.m. EST Nov. 28th)

Why not use this deal to pick up a copy of my Christmas story When Love Flue In?


Christmas, a time for friends, family and roaring fires. Unfortunately Dominic faces the festive season alone with a blocked chimney. A soot-haired sweep, an exploding flue and an uncooked turkey. It's an unholy trinity. This year Christmas might be perfect.

It's Dominic’s first Christmas since his divorce and, though he's spending it on his own, he's determined to have a traditional Christmas morning, including a roaring fire.
Which is why Reagan, a soot-haired chimney sweep, is head and shoulders up Dominic's flue.
Unable to take his eyes off Reagan's low-slung jeans and enticing arse while he sets about the hearth with rods and brushes, Dominic knows five years is a long time to have an obsession with the man who sweeps his chimney every Christmas.
This year there's nothing to stop Dominic from acting on his desires.
But Dominic will need to stop hiding who he really is before a special sweep can light a fire in his heart.

Two guys dancing the tango

Every once in a while something catches your eye on Youtube and just has to be shared.

This is one of them. The quality isn't great but the dancing is impressive.







Enjoy.

Money, money, money...off

This week JMS Books are the featured publisher at Romance Lives Forever Blog. To celebrate this fact they are offering a special promotional code to use this week only.

Save 40% off your order with the code RLFblog
One use per customer and expires on 15th September 2013.

Pick up your copy of Waiting for a Spark.

Go on, what are you waiting for?

Giveaway

Fancy winning a copy of Waiting for a Spark?

Head on over to Stumblingoverchaos to add your name to the mix. Contest closes on 13th September.

Good Luck.

News from our sponsor

From JMS books:

This Labor Day weekend, we're having a HUGE sale on our site!

All e-books, all lengths, all formats, in all genres, are 40% off from now until midnight (EST) on September 3rd. Visit JMS Books or Queerteen Press to save on all our e-books TODAY!

You will still receive 10% in Reward Points on all purchases, which can be used toward a future order and do not expire, so the more you buy, the more you save! 

It seems now would be the perfect time to pick up a copy of Waiting for a Spark. 

Oops! I did it again...

Nope, I didn't play with your heart. Nor did I get lost in the game. And I'm certainly not that innocent.

But I did miss a release date.

My short story 'Waiting for a Spark' is now available from JMS Books. Actually it came out last week.

Blurb

Jerome’s life is humdrum, mundane even. Every day he catches the bus to work, listens to his best friend, Nav, rant on about the latest crisis in his life and tries to stop his attention from wandering to the gorgeous guy at the back of the bus too often. After all it would be embarrassing to get caught staring.

Friday morning had been no different. Except that the object of his blatant attention was definitely making eye contact, his Asian best friend had involved the entire bus in a racist rant against the East Europeans and Jerome appeared to have been struck dumb.

Now two days later Jerome’s run out of milk and all the local shops are shut except for the Polskie Delikatesy. Jerome’s hanging about on the pavement, studying adverts in the window which appear to be made up of far too many Zs & Ks, and wondering if he could do without milk for the evening. Stepping through the door brings Jerome face to face with the realisation that racism isn’t just about rants and rallies, but is inherent in thoughts and deeds, things said, or even in silence. That being a target for other people’s prejudice because of his sexuality, doesn’t mean he’s immune from false and pre-conceived notions. If he can come to terms with that and accept that everyone -- even a gay liberal trainee journalist -- might be just a little bit racist, then maybe, just maybe, he could be going home with more than a pint of milk.

This story originally appeared in the Lashings of Sauce anthology.

Lovers Entwined - Review and Giveaway

Lovers Entwined has been been reviewed over at The Armchair Reader today.

Cole has agreed to do a giveaway as well, so if you want to win a copy head over there and leave a comment.

Tangent Tuesday (by the skin of its teeth)

Comedy is subjective. What one person finds hysterical, wet your pants funny can leave the next man cold. On an international level that can be even more pronounced.

However I defy anyone not to find this funny, especially the geeky TV nerd types that I seem to hang about with on the internet.

Most people will have seen it I'm sure, if so remind yourself of its brilliance. If however you are a Death Star Canteen virgin that sit back, relax and enjoy yourself.

Eddie Izzard's Death Star Canteen acted out in Lego.




If Eddie floats your boat, as he does mine, then you can find his offical Youtube channel here.

Tom of Finland this is not - Tangent Tuesday

I umm'd and argh'd over whether to post this for Tangent Tuesday or Fiction Friday. After all, fiction isn't just about books. Comic strips count too...at least they do in my world.

I just wanted to share the love for my favourite comic strip on the web at the moment.

Tripping Over You

I've been reading for a couple of months but they've just gone back and posted a prologue, so now seems as good a time as any to rec it. 

Here's the link to the prologue. After that you will need to go back to the start. Alternatively you could just use the archive. You'll notice the change in drawing styles going from the more recently drawn prologue and then back to Chapter 1, but then I think it's quite interesting watching the drawing style develop.

I'm currently up to date, on Chapter 5 and eagerly awaiting each new development. Luckily posting is regular and at the moment quite frequent. 

Chapter 5 also contains the warning 'Contains Adult Themes', which should give you an indication of the heat level of this comic. Themes, not images. There is nothing that could be construed as NSFW about this comic. In fact I would consider it to be the comic version of YA fiction. 

A sweet tale of two young men discovering their sexuality, beautifully drawn. 

Which are your favourite comics with gay characters?

Cover reveal

(Waiting for a Spark originally appeared in the Lashings of Sauce anthology)

Author interview

I'm over at RJ Scott's blog today answering a few questions.

Pop over and see what I'm waffling on about.

Tangent Tuesday - Another clip

For a show that I sometimes find there are no acts I want to see once, let alone twice, this week's BGT gave me four acts I found myself wanting to share.

Sunday I shared the act that shocked and surprised me--and seriously I want that song as my ringtone--so today I thought I'd show you one of my other favourites. Which one though?

The cute?

The comic?

Or the camp?

Come on, everybody likes a bit of camp, right?




If you can find a clip with the judges comments all the better.

Tangent Tuesday makes way for Surprising Sunday

I hope I have such a 'kickass, don't give a f**k' attitude when I'm in my 70's.

From last night's BGT:




Can't see her singing that in front of the Queen though. But the idea of Prince Philip joining in with the chorus would make the Royal Variety show well worth watching.

And the winner

of April's giveaway is...

Drum roll please...

Penumbra.

And I'm so over it

Okay, it not really a secret that I love me a movie. So on Thursday I dragged myself out and braved what I knew would be a packed cinema (I know it's no good for the industry, but I do love it when we have the theatre almost to ourselves) to see Ironman 3 on the day of release. And it was packed, heaving in fact.

The film was great and two hours flew by. Even the kid was brilliant, although in part that might have been because practically all of his scenes were with Robert Downey Jr.

So you ask, your title, what are you over?

Robert Downey Jr? No, no, no. Is that even possible? Not for me at any rate. I find him a joy to watch these days--to be honest I always have, I thought his Chaplin was brilliant--he fills the screen with his delivery and larger than life persona. I can think of nobody better suited to play Tony Stark. And Ironman isn't even my favourite role of his, that honour goes to Sherlock Holmes.

If it's not the actor, then it must be superhero films in general? After all there has been such a glut of them of late and there is no indication that they are slowing down. Hmm, let's have a quick look down my favourite films of the last few years: Sherlock Holmes (both of them), Avengers Ensemble, Thor, Green Lantern, Ironman 3, Captain America... Are you seeing a theme here? Yep I love a man in Lycra.  And as we look forward to the coming months which films are on my must-see list? The Lone Ranger and Thor 2. Even the Avengers sequel in 2015 is penciled into my diary--it'd be in pen but I don't know the exact release date. Since I first picked up a Spiderman comic I've loved superheroes, and that feeling was only cemented by watching Dean Cain & Terri Hatcher in Lois & Clark - The New Adventures of Superman. I think I'll be a comic book geek in some form or another to my dying day.

Not superheroes that I'm over then. I'll put you out of your misery.

It's 3D. Why does everything have to be in 3D? I'll confess I'm probably biased, I can't watch 3D. The images never look right to me and I find myself with a headache that verges on a migraine before half an hour has gone by. I will always go to the 2D version of the film, if I can't then I'll wait for the DVD. No way am I spending a tenner to have a sick inducing headache.

The problem with 3D as I see it, certainly in these big blockbuster films, is that it is all so predictable. Even in 2D those scenes when a 3D effect is coming are obvious. The trailer for The Lone Ranger had these moments in spades, so much so that I leant over to my companion and started a litany of 'That's 3D' to what felt like every clip. Unfortunately those moments are even more apparent in the trailers when you don't have the flow of the story to distract you from the arrow shooting toward your head, or the derailed train flying out of the screen. All fun and games for a 15 minutes film at Legoland but not for 2 hours.

These films are fast paced, full of witty dialogue, stunning special effects and action sequence after action sequence. They don't need the novelty value that 3D offers.

Hollywood, give me a crossbow and arrows or a derailed train if they are necessary for the story, not just so you can show off your clever new toy.

Just a few more days

to qualify for my Giveaway.

Leave a comment here to put your name in the hat.

From the heart

If you include an autistic person's family, autism touches the lives of over two million people every day.

April 2nd is World Autism Awareness Day and I’m taking part in RJ’s month long blog hop to promote this.

The theme of this year’s blog hop is Prejudice. 

photo credit: alles-schlumpf via photopin cc

I have to admit that my heart fell a little when I saw that I would be expected to write on this subject. Luckily for me it is something that I never experienced, if I have been the victim of prejudice then I’ve never been ‘aware’ of this fact, or it was such a fleeting event at the time that the memory of it no longer resonates with me. Not a flicker. And no amount of dredging the deep dark recesses of my mind helped reveal any—I did find a few coins, a very sticky, fluff-covered sweet, one odd sock and a wheel off a toy car that had been thrown away years ago. Nope, that was the time I moved the sofa—anyway, no prejudice.

Of course I was thinking on too epic a scale, of words ending in ‘ism’ and great injustices. And me, even in the scheme of this blog hop, I am an insignificant thing—most of you probably skipped over my name without even seeing it—so it is no surprise that the world at large would give me nary a glance.

Prejudice - preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience; dislike, hostility, or unjust behaviour deriving from preconceived and unfounded opinions.

That is the definition of prejudice according to the oxforddictionaries.com. And the first of those definitions is something all of us have been on the receiving end of at some point and, I hasten to add, something we have all been guilty of too. You start to form opinions and beliefs about somebody from the first point one of your senses registers them. Strangers on the bus, make that a fat stranger eating a pie, first thought for most people would be ‘fat bastard get on a diet’, no matter that the stranger eats porridge every morning for breakfast, that their alarm clock hadn’t gone off and they were running late for work, that this was the first pie they had eaten in a whole year, that their weight was due to a thyroid condition… I could go on but I think I’ve made my point, the person is a stranger to you, you know nothing about them so how can you make any sort of judgement.

How many times have you put a face to the voice of someone you’ve only ever spoken to on the phone only to meet them in person and have your ‘preconceived opinion’ altered by the reality. On the internet it can appear to be even worse often with nothing to go on but a person’s words, but here is where you would probably get the best chance of finding out my true self without the rest of your senses bringing to bear.

You can’t judge me on my race or sex, my height or my hair colour because in all fairness you don’t know. You can judge me on the fact that I am an author of m/m romance—and many out there do—without even picking up a copy of my books, or even one of my more esteemed colleagues tomes. The books are there for all to see, they are fact. You may make a judgement based on that fact and your own misguided perceptions, and that would take you into the second category 

You are reading my words, they are integral to me and show a part of me that anyone looking from the outside in will never see, unless they too chose to read my words. Even if every word I have ever written on the internet is untrue that will reveal something about me, that I’m a liar. Every word we write exposes something about us whether we want to or not; that comment posted in the heat of debate might not completely reflect our true opinion but it shows that sometimes we are quick to anger without giving the issues due care and attention. 

The process of putting words down on paper might come from the brain, but I’m a great believer that the words themselves, they come from the heart.
__________

If you would like to read some of my words—and yes, I do feel I put my heart and soul into my stories, which is why you only get one a year—then leave a comment below to win a book from my backlist (excluding the anthology because that isn’t mine to give).


See who else is taking part in the blog hop by stopping over at RJ's blog.

Oh my

Puppets and Neil Patrick Harris, what's not to love...

I'm just a fangirl at heart

& this... this makes me really happy.



Can't wait 'til Easter Saturday.

Nuff said.

Eeny, meeny, miny, moe

Today is Fiction Friday and I'm blogging about a series of books that I read recently.

Men of Smithfield by LB Gregg

Four books make up this series, all based around the fictional town of Smithfield. Totally unconnected in story arc--Tony is the only character who appears in all four--each book deals with a different couple, easily identifiable since their names are in the title (the revised versions published by Carina), and the path they take to get to a relationship. Those roads are rocky, believe me.

The books as a series have made it into my re-read folder, no mean feat I can tell you. However, I got to thinking the other day, if I could only read one which would it be? Which couple is my favourite?

That is possibly on par with asking a parent to pick their favourite child.

I know which is my least favourite. Couple, not child! That dubious honour goes to Seth & David. Not to say I didn’t enjoy their story, I did, the book is safely nestled in my re-read folder with the rest of the series. However something about both Seth and David made it difficult for me to connect with the characters straight away. The main problem had to be placed firmly at Seth’s feet. Closed off and almost impossible to warm to; intentionally or not, he treats David like crap for a fair portion of the book. Seth has ISSUES, but I don’t think they necessarily justify his behaviour.

However, at some point in the story my opinion must have changed because I found myself rooting for them to work things out. Yes, I still wanted to give Seth a swift kick up the arse on occasions but by the end I was adamant they were meant to be together.

There is another reason which might have sub-consciously dragged this one to the bottom of the list for me, and it’s purely a personal one. The book has kids in it. I see kids in m/m and big flashing warning lights go off in my head. Don’t get me wrong, I love kids—I used to be one. But the sort of kids that regularly pop up in m/m are normally pre-school, precocious and wise beyond their years and the men are often perfect parents. Believe me no-one is a perfect parent; whether you’ve got a dick or not, we all make a complete hash of it at some point. Thankfully, here the kids feel real, and Seth is an awful parent. No, he’s not but he thinks he is, constantly questioning whether he is doing the right thing. In the end I think that uncertainty was his saving grace for me.

Okay, I know the last sentence of that paragraph completely contradicts the first but then a good book is like that, turns your opinions on their head and makes you think. Anyway let’s get away from Seth and David before I dig myself into an even deeper hole.

So we’ve dealt with my least favourite book the couple I had the most issues with. But my original question was which couple were my favourite.

Let’s go to the very beginning because everyone knows sequels are inferior, right? Raiders of the Lost Ark. Awesome. IJ and the Last Crusade. Er…Sean Connery. OMG. Even better. Okay so that wasn’t the best film to pick as a comparison. Police Academy compared to Police Academy V. Better example? Right. Back to the books.

Mark & Tony. The first book. This has everything I need to be my favourite without a doubt. Friends to Lovers. Tony’s a cop, which feeds my uniform kink. And they are closest in age out of all the couples. Favourite, then. Er, no. There were too many occasions when I’d have gladly given David a slap, and one where Tony deserved one too.

I toyed with giving Adam and Holden the top spot, even though the age gap, at 16 years, is greater than I would normally enjoy. I loved how Adam appeared older than his years, yet had the occasional flash of youthful exuberance, how broken Holden was and how patiently Adam helped put him back together.

So in the end, having said choosing my favourite would be impossible, it appears I’ve not only found my favourite couple but my order of preference for the series.

4^th Seth & David

3^rd Mark & Tony

2^nd Adam & Holden

Which means my favourite couple are Max & Finn.

Max & Finn. What can I say about Max & Finn?

Max is an ex-Marine. Hey, there’s that uniform kink thing again; although Max is long out of uniform, the attitude is still there. Strong, silent, hiding a tragic secret. The book starts with hot sex that quickly dissolves into awkwardness leading to an embarrassing and uneasy enforced non-relationship. So bloody good, almost enemies to lovers in its style.

Finn is a teacher. One of the cool teachers you love having as a teenager. The development of their relationship was perfect. The mystery is good, ramping up the action to something more serious than it first appeared.

Yes, Max and Finn are most definitely my favourites.

Reading this post I’m sure you might wonder why these books make it into my re-read file. I appear to have done nothing but pick up on character flaws.

Because they are bloody wonderful, that’s why. The flaws I’ve described aren’t with the books, they are purposely and intrinsically tied to the characters. It is why they act the way they do, the sole reasons why their stories follow the paths they take. Without those flaws these stories wouldn’t be half of what they are. They wouldn’t have grabbed me. Forced me to read one after the other. Without them they wouldn’t have made it into my re-read file at all.

  

Just a quickie

I know this video has been all over Goodreads and other feeds in the last week but I'm offering it up here as my Tuesday Tangent for anyone who hasn't seen it.

This Troublemaking Kid Is Reason Enough To Support Gay Marriage

Seriously it is so cute. Even watching with the sound off is worth it. Then scroll down the page for stills that will give you that mushy feeling all over again and a smile that won't quit.

Lillian Francis – Dealer in decadence

Seller of Smut? Purveyor of Porn? Writer of wantonness?

Anyone who’s ever read anything I’ve written, be it published or not, knows none if the above labels apply to me. Romance with several angsty chasms to negotiate before the happy ending, and the very occasional, often oblique, coming together of my (hopefully soon to be a) couple. That is what I write and I see that very clearly in my head. The sub-genres vary; historical, contemporary, paranormal, but I think my readers know what to expect from me in style.

However since both my lead characters are men it appears the rest of the world can only see with tunnel vision. To the world outside our circle—small it’s true, but definitely growing—gay romance equals erotica. If I write about the developing relationship between two guys, then that’s smut, right? No. Wrong, with a big fat capital W.

To the world at large there are no shades of grey; gay romance doesn’t exist, only hot sweaty, hard bodies, writhing against each other. People with artfully crafted matt-black reading material tucked under their arms in the most public of places—the beach, a train, their kids school playground!—will look at me as if I’ve grown two heads when I declare that I write gay romance. What makes my sweet sexy exploration of love worse than the 300 pages currently nestling against their sweaty armpit? Oh yeah, two guys bumping uglies—or not, as the case may be.

This is an issue that seems to have caught the imagination of writers of the sweet ‘n’ sexy variety over the last few weeks. I have been involved in several discussions on this very subject, and people, we are revolting. By which I mean we’ve decided to speak out and make our discomfort known, in the most genteel way possible. A blog post here, a new group there. Alex Beecroft wrote an eloquent and impassioned post here. I strongly urge you to read it.

Elin Gregory, another gentle soul—as I’ve taken to referring to us in my head—also blogged on this subject recently and in the time it has taken for me to gather my thoughts a Goodreads group has been formed. Join us if you’d like.

As you can see from my covers I am currently published with Ellora’s Cave. They publish work under different ‘lines’, distinguished by the amount and type of sexual content included in the book.

Romantica: follows most of the conventions of the romance genre, focusing on the development of a central love story culminating in an emotionally satisfying, happy ending. The difference lies in the erotic component of Romantica stories. Romantica books contain frequent sex scenes, described explicitly using frank language rather than flowery euphemisms.

Exotika: focus is on the sexual journey or adventures. Although they might or might not include a romance and do not typically end in a committed relationship, Exotika books do not generally adhere to the traditional romance book formula.

Blush®: Sometimes you want a little more romance, a little less sex. The Blush line is more traditional romance. There might still be some sex scenes in Blush books, but they are less numerous and less graphically described.

Guess which ‘line’ I write under. Yep, I’m a Blush writer. However, until EC agreed to publish my debut novel, Lesson Learned, they had no authors writing m/m in Blush. I was the first writer of gay romance to be published in their traditional romance range. To say I was amazed was an understatement. Gobsmacked would be a better description, worried would have summed up my feelings at the time. Did I really write so little sex into my stories in comparison to all the other m/m writers out there? Would anyone want to read a story that so obviously went against what EC as a brand normally published?

(I have to confess I had read very little published m/m at that point, romance or otherwise—an error I’m fast putting right.)

The answer of course was yes, people are reading Lesson Learned. EC were happy to publish Lovers Entwined under the same Blush imprint. They have never pressed me to add extra sex scenes in the name of titillation. So, yes there is a market for less explicit stories. I’m not the only one who would happily only read a sex scene if it moves the plot forward or adds to our awareness of the character of the persons involved.

The more m/m I read, the more I realised that there were other authors out there who like me kept the sex scenes to a minimum. Authors whose work could be described as sweet and sexy, and no more erotica than many who write mainstream romantic fiction.

Why should the mainstream of our profession lump me and mine in with erotica when authors such as Judith Krantz and Jackie Collins (I realise picking these authors ages me somewhat but I last read het romance in my teens and never of the Mills & Boon/Harlequin style) are considered general romantic fiction? The fact that both the characters in my stories have a penis. Shocker!

Maybe I’m really a frustrated (failed?) erotica writer, but I don’t think so. I find writing scenes of an erotic nature exhausting. They take days, valuable hours when I could be writing plot or relationship angst, so each scene has to say something about the characters or move the story forward. The last thing I want is for any sex scene that I write to become an automatic exercise, otherwise you run the risk of what should be emotionally charged scenes of connection becoming a ‘tab A into slot B’ situation. I never want to read in a review that someone has skimmed (or heaven forbid, skipped) the sex scenes in one of my stories. Unfortunately, this is a comment I see far too often on Goodreads, strengthening my resolve not to write gratuitous smut.

As readers we know there are writers of erotica, while other author’s works are more plotty and character driven. Some even drive the plot and character motivation forward using sex. You read and you learn who will provide you with which type of story. If I pick up something by Alex Beecroft or Josh Lanyon I’m fairly certain I’m going to get something with a solid plot and I’m not going to get sideswiped by too many sex scenes, unnecessary or otherwise.

The problem as I see it isn’t how we perceive ourselves as a genre but more as the outside world sees us.

Gay=niche.

Niche=different.

Invariably niche scares people, they don’t know how to bracket us within the mainstream, or if we should even be allowed within the mainstream. We are different, afterall.  Aren’t we?

No. I sat in a room of gay romance writers last September and I can honestly say that you wouldn’t pick most of us out of a lineup. A more unassuming bunch of people you’re unlikely to meet, until one of us starts to speak or you hear the topics of conversation over lunch. Lube over spit. Knotting. Cowboys. GFY. Condoms. Tentacle sex, anyone?

And that maybe is our downfall. Our sense of humour. We are happy not to take ourselves too seriously. We can joke about tentacle sex without batting an eyelid. Many of us have come from fanfic of some kind or another where, whether you like it or not, you can be exposed to the strangest things imaginable and still find some redeeming feature in the writing.

Being different is not so bad.

Looking at Word’s Thesaurus ‘different’ can be ‘unusual, special, singular, distinctive, out of the ordinary, uncommon, unique.’ I can live with all and any of those labels. Claim them even.

I can even cope with being labelled different. I’d just like people to understand how I’m different.

And that will never happen while the only label the mainstream are willing to give me is Erotica Writer.

My plans to bore you shitless & an update

Earlier in the week, I hinted that I intended to blog more. That is my plan, whether I will manage to stick to it is another matter. My idea is to blog once a week, either on a Friday, cleverly titled Fiction Friday--and shamelessly stolen from my best friend, Katherine Halle--or on a Tuesday, Tangent Tuesday to be precise.

Pretty self explanatory titles. Fiction Friday will be about books and writing, m/m naturally, but I'm going to try not to focus on my own work and what's happening, or not (I write very slowly) with me. Instead I plan to talk about other fiction based things. And Tangent Tuesday, well, that could be about anything, even a rant about pancakes.

I'm impressed that I have 'a plan' but how long I'll manage to keep to it for is anyone's guess. Right now, between projects, I'm eager to do this and do it well, but I have a tendancy to get buried in a new book and forget about life outside the page I'm writing on.

We'll see.

So, today is Friday, which means I'm talking about Fiction. Having said earlier that I'm not going to talk about my own work too often I'm going to break that rule straight away and today's post will be a quick update.

Having been working on it for months--seriously, I not kidding. The short story this novel developed from was written back in April last year--I have finally finished Theory Unproven. It's been read, pre-read, corrected, re-written, re-read, summarised for the synopsis, bundled up in a tidy bow and sent out to publishers. One publisher actually, set my sights high and if they fail, then flood the market at a later date. There is another publisher I'm considering sending it to as well, but it's finding the time to change the formating.

Next I intend to return to the WW2 story I had proposed to submit for Riptide's submission call but epically failed in reading the submission dates correctly. *facepalm* Probably start working on that again sometime next week.

I'll leave you with the tag line for Theory Unproven. (I'd give you a blurb but I haven't got that far!)

Unless you give it a chance, love will always be a theory unproven.

 

A little rant

Today I'm blogging over at RJ Scott's blog.

Well, blogging might be a generous description of the mini tirade that I ended up writing.

Go, read. See what got me all riled up.

In other news, I plan to blog more. Yes I know I've said this before but I this time I really intend to carry out my threat to bore you all silly.

Late as usual - A WIP snippet

Since I offered up a snippet weeks ago and then failed to deliver, by way of apology, here is the whole of page 40 from Theory Unproven.

The story is currently with my critique partners and if you want any further information see my last post 'The Next Big Thing'.

On to the story. FYI this is page no. 40 of 248 & first draft.

“Your letter,” Tyaan said, holding it out.

There was the faintest brush of fingertips over the back of his hand as the letter was taken from his unresisting grip, but the guilt-tinged elation he expected to feel was overshadowed by the look of unbridled happiness on Eric’s face. The writer of the letter obviously meant a great deal to Eric, and Tyaan stamped down on a sharp pang in his diaphragm that he adamantly refused to acknowledge as jealousy.

“It’s from my gran.” Eric’s exclamation was joyful as he studied the smeared postmark that was inked across the stamp.

His gran. The whipcord of tension that had pulled across Tyaan’s shoulders eased.

Slipping the letter into the folder with his paperwork, Eric tapped the requisition form. “I’ve got an extra box. I don’t think it’s mine. No label.”

His boot knocked against a wooden crate on the bottom of the pile, The Foundation’s supply label conspicuous by its absence.

Tyaan scuffed his foot in the dirt and watched as dust coated the toe of his boot. “That one’s from me. For the elephants.” Tyaan glanced up quickly before returning his gaze to the ground. The glimpse he’d gotten of Eric was enough to realise the zoologist was watching him with undisguised curiosity. “It’s only windfall fruit from the garden.”

“Oh. Ta. Look…”

And Tyaan did, raising his head even though it probably wasn’t an instruction, to be greeted by another tentative smile.

“…do you want some lunch? It’s about that time.”

“I can’t. Normal service resumes,” Tyaan said reluctantly, raising his clipboard. “Full day’s deliveries today. I’ll be lucky to be finished before dark.”

The smile stayed fixed in place but Eric’s blue eyes lost some of their shine and the crinkles in the delicate skin which surrounded them smoothed out.

“Sure.” Eric picked up a box from the top of one of the piles and turned away to place it in the back of the jeep.

“Honestly, I’d like to but—”

“Yeah, you’re busy. I got it.”

Hope you all enjoyed the snippet.

Here's wishing you all the best for 2013.