Rainbow Snippets 4th/5th June

Rainbow Snippets is a Facebook Group that invites authors to post 6 sentences of their work each weekend. It can be from anything you like, your current WIP, a recent release, the golden oldie that even you had forgotten you had written, or just a scrap of an idea (as long as it has 6 coherent sentences). Nothing of your own work worth mentioning? How about a 6 sentence review of your favourite LGBTQ+ story.

No Rainbow Snippet last week because I was at ComicCon.

Edits are finally finished on Resistance and I'm in the process of formatting the manuscript so I have some ARCs available for reviewers when the cover reveal takes place.
I thought we'd have another clip of Rick and Mal. Since we've already had a clip from Chapter Three in an earlier snippet, here's a few lines from the beginning of Chapter Four.


It was amazing how quickly he’d become used to Mal’s presence in his life, in his home, even if it was only at the weekends. Seven weeks since Mal’s first ever visit and Rick found it hard to imagine his cottage without Mal in it: the scents and sounds of somebody cooking for him, Mal’s clothes in the laundry basket, waking up on a Sunday morning with long legs twined in his own and safe arms wrapped around him. Last weekend, he’d given Mal his own key. No fanfare or grand gesture. He’d simply pressed the spare key to the cottage into Mal’s hand and told him to let himself in, any time. He might have laid too much stress on those last two words.

Green fingers

I really don't have green fingers. I can kill a plant with a single glance.

But today I thought I should give it a go. So I'm channelling my inner Rick. Hopefully I can keep them alive more than a few days.

Don't know who Rick is? He's one of the MCs of my short story Resonance, and he's a gardener cum handyman.

His story will be continued in Resistance where you can find out how his relationship with Mal develops.

Resonance is regularly free at ARe or 99p at Amazon.

Resistance will be released in early July. Watch out for a cover reveal coming up in the next few weeks. I've added it to Goodreads for those of you who like to log prospective reads there.

And I'll keep you updated on the state of the flowers :)

Rainbow Snippets 21/22 May

Rainbow Snippets is a Facebook Group that invites authors to post 6 sentences of their work each weekend. It can be from anything you like, your current WIP, a recent release, the golden oldie that even you had forgotten you had written, or just a scrap of an idea (as long as it has 6 coherent sentences). Nothing of your own work worth mentioning? How about a 6 sentence review of your favourite LGBTQ+ story.

With the first round of edits finished on Resistance I thought we'd have another clip of Rick and Mal. Here's the start of Chapter Two. Whatever had Rick worried, they seemed to be over it.

“Here?” Mal choked out.
Rick pushed his body up against the wall and spread his arms. He felt the pull on his waistband give a little and the pinch in his balls lessened just enough to be enjoyable rather than painful.
“Here.” Mal repeated, in a tone that implied it had been his intention all along. The warmth returned to Rick’s back and Mal’s voice came from right behind Rick’s ear this time, all hesitancy gone. “On the stairs.”

;)

Fiction Friday

Let's recap. My main reading challenge at the moment is to attempt to read a book by every author attending the UK Meet this year.


Best thing to do is start at the beginning or I'll just end up picking my favourites again.

A is for Abigail Roux. Yes, *sigh* I still have the whole of the Cut and Run series to read but I don't have time for that with this challenge needing to be completed by September! So I picked The Gravedigger's Brawl. I expected this story to be historical for some reason. I think it was the cover that gave me that impression. As such I was irrationally disappointed when I realised it was a contemporary.

Then I moved on to an anthology and successfully killed two birds with one stone. 'Seems a bit harsh.' Okay, I ticked Alina Popescu and Lily G Blunt off the list by reading Encore, a Wayward Ink anthology about musicals. A good collection of ten short stories based on or set around the world of musicals. My favourite story of the bunch was A Man who Measures Up, about an AmDram production of Rocky Horror. My review for the whole anthology is here.

Lone Wolf (Bluewater Bay #4) by Aleksandr Voinov & L.A. Witt. True I had no need to read this story for the challenge, I have read enough by both these authors, but I couldn't resist. Also it was my next story up in the Bluewater Bay series, so it made a tiny bit of headway in the forever ongoing 'finish all the series you've started' challenge. The writer problem/fandom issues made this story. Some of it felt so familiar.

The Best Corpse for the Job (Lindenshaw Mysteries #1) by Charlie Cochrane, Excellent mystery of the cosy variety with added romance and a distinctly British feel.

I've not just been reading UK Meet stories though.

I once swore I'd never read shifter stories. I lied. Now there are some that I absolutely love. True they are generally quirky or different rather than traditional shifter stories. This one is different.
Wolf, WY by AF Henley. Beautifully written and visual book with an interesting look at pack dynamics from an outsiders POV. Loved this.

And I've literally just finished this one.

Hexbreaker (Hexworld #1) by Jordan L. Hawk. Excellent historical with a magic twist. You don't have to have read The 13th Hex to read this but why would you want to miss out on that short story gem. Book 2 please...

Rainbow Snippet 14/15 May

Rainbow Snippets is a Facebook Group that invites authors to post 6 sentences of their work each weekend. It can be from anything you like, your current WIP, a recent release, the golden oldie that even you had forgotten you had written, or just a scrap of an idea (as long as it has 6 coherent sentences). Nothing of your own work worth mentioning? How about a 6 sentence review of your favourite LGBTQ+ story.

I've finally remembered to post a Rainbow Snippet. Seemed appropriate to pick the opening lines of Resistance since it has just been sent off to the editor's for spit 'n' polish. All, some of none of these words may make the final cut. So grab 'em while they're still around.

Resistance is the follow up story to Resonance. Six weeks later...

A smile can always be heard in your voice.

He could almost hear his mum uttering those words of wisdom—just nine of many in her repertoire—and for a moment Rick wished his parents still lived in the village. That he didn’t need to travel halfway around the world for a hug from his mum.

Not that she’d entertain his chiping for more than a moment before he got a bannicking. She’d always listened to his complaints, would offer advice where necessary, but stupidity would be followed by a whack upside his head or being chased off with the yard brush. He smiled at the memories the thought conjured up. No, his mum would provide no help in this situation. 

Fiction Friday

It's been a while since I've done one of these so I had to go back and see where I'd got to. in my recommendations. When I finished the ABC challenge I said I'd be going on to author's attending the UK Meet this year.

I started with a UK Meet author but not one I needed to read for the challenge as I have read plenty of her previous work. But I've been waiting for this story since I read A Twist and Two Balls and the rest of the series.
Double Scoop by Clare London. - Finally Lee and Patrick's story. But it still takes a little help from there friends to get their heads out of their arses. Stubborn boys!

I followed that up with a couple of Jane Davitt freebies from AO3. Couched as a Question and The Patient Professor were both formerly short stories published by Torquere and now out of print and made available for free by the author.

Another freebie was It Happened in Vegas. An anthology from five of the authors attending the Romantic Times convention in Vegas. My favourite story in the bunch was Super Juicy by BA Tortuga and Julia Talbot but I'll attach my GR review here because I had a mini rant about the last story in the book which you can chose to read or ignore. I'll leave it up to you.

I'll wrap up for this post before it gets too long with two thoroughly engaging reads.

The High King's Golden Tongue by Megan Derr. It appears gay fantasy is fast become one of my genres of the year. Another smashing addition in the genre as you would expect from Ms Derr. Low in sex, but full of passion, plot and interesting side characters. Damn if I don't have to wait until July for the sequel.

And look away now if fanfiction isn't your thing because I'm gonna rec you one.

The Gemini Affair by manic_intent. Man from UNCLE. The film not the TV show. Slow burn. Carries on from where the film left off. I devoured this fic. Loved it.

I'll catch up with the rest of my current reads next Friday when hopefully I can bring myself right back up to date.

Puffless

I've been fairly quiet on the blogging front.

I blame campnano.

I've worked out that when I put myself under the pressure of aiming for a monthly target and attempting to get words down every day, then other things have to suffer.  Unfortunately the first thing that goes is the blogging.

I try not to feel guilty about this. I know I can't reasonably do everything that I want to. But trying to switch off that guilty worry that you're not doing enough is harder than you’d think. Everywhere you look people are telling you that the only way to sell your book is to get out there and sell yourself on social media. Hah! I’ll happily tell you all about other authors’ books that I've enjoyed but I'm no good at selling myself. My own trumpet remains well and truly puffless.

But I digress. Campnano took place in April and I aspired to write 40k of Smudge’s story. Considering I’m lucky to hit 20k in a month this was a huge task that I set myself. I’m really chuffed that by the 30th of April I was 6 words shy of 32K and well over 75% of my target. And Smudge’s story (the sequel to Resonance’s sequel--confused yet?) now has all its scenes, in varying degrees of completion. Unfortunately they were also written out of order so I now have to fill in the blanks and jiggle everything into its rightful place in the story and hope that the continuity works. I'm thinking another month to tidy this story up and ready to go to the betas.

I should have some news on Resistance, the sequel to Resonance and the continuation of Rick and Mal's story, later on this month.

In the meantime I need to work out when I last posted a Fiction Friday post and what I've read since then (I warn you one of my recs will be fan fiction!).