Accomplished in 2013

After taking much of 2012 off, I started back in on writing in 2013 to try and get up to steam. It was a slow process, but I think I'm back in a groove somewhat, finding my rhythm as I concentrate on writing the stories and characters that are important to me. All but one of them came out with Amber Allure as well as all being m/m, but that's going to change up in the year to come. I ended up having seven solo titles and one collaboration with Rick R. Reed.

My lone non-AQP title came from Liquid Silver. A Simple Charm is a sweet historical romance about a carny who shows up in a small Indiana town and falls for a local boy who has real magic. It's one of the most gentle stories I wrote all year, with some of my best prose, I think. It makes me a little sad that this didn't get the bigger audience I think it deserves, but I always knew a sweet historical with paranormal overtones would be a hard sell for most m/m readers.

One of my first titles this year at Amber Allure was The Low Between, a 50s noir story about an ex-cop and the young actor who get caught up in murders that have nothing to do with them. I have a real soft spot for this time period, and there just isn't enough out there, especially in the m/m world. It was tough getting back into plotting, but I was happy with how this turned out.

After reading so much steampunk that focused too much on the tech and not enough on the characters, I decided to try my hand at my own version. The result was Iron Eyes. While one of my leads was a brilliant engineer from 20s Hollywood, I deliberately focused on the story they had to tell, the journey of finding a new solution to help a little blind girl see. I'm really proud of this one, plus Cap and Hector's chemistry went off the charts for me.

After noir and steampunk, I decided to dip my toes in sci-fi. Thus, Aria of the Eclipse was born. I've never created an alien species all on my own before (I've done it as part of the Jamie Craig team), so coming up with Dek was my real challenge in this. He needed to be otherworldly enough to warrant the genre, and yet relatable enough for the readers to connect with. I think, hands down, this is the most romantic story I published all year.


I collaborated with the talented Rick R. Reed on an epistolic short about two men separated by life choices, in a time when being gay wasn't nearly as accepted. Family Obligations still makes me cry when I re-read it, for everything they had to endure as well as for the lives they actually lead.

I stayed in the contemporary zone with my sweet romance, The Hearts of Yesteryear. While it's very comedic in tone, the subject matter is not. It's about a man in his seventies who ran away from his small town after his best friend and the boy he loved chose the military over him. John has to go back to that town and confront his past. To this day, I still want to see this as a sitcom. I think John and Frank would be terrifically funny as a gay senior citizen couple, with Corrine, John's personal assistant, there for back-up. Hey, a girl can dream, can't she?

Things sobered up for me with my next contemporary. The Unbeaten Track is about an insomniac who is still haunted by the loss of his high school sweetheart, a victim of homophobic violence. I chose to do this one in first person, mostly because it's so much about being in Sean's head. The reader needed to be there with him as he made his choices, and hopefully come out the other side better for the knowing.

Last but not least, came Threshold. This took me back to my vampire roots, about a hurt vampire on the run who holes up in an out of the way motel. Falling for him was Max, an ex-soldier who is desperately looking for meaning in his life. The connection between these two sizzled from the start. Of all the titles I released this year, this one, for me, is by far the hottest.

2014 is going to see me branching out some. For instance, I have an m/m/f menage called Enthralled in Silver coming out with Ellora's Cave, and I'm hoping to have more. There are two stories in the final stages to come out at Amber Allure, Boundless and What the Heart Thinks, and more I'm scheduled to do there. All good things!

New review for The Unbeaten Track

I got a lovely surprise over the weekend, a review from Love Romances for my short, The Unbeaten Track. She called it compelling, but the best part was that the reviewer really seemed to get what I was trying to do with it. It's a character piece more than anything else, and she responded to Judah and Sean exactly as I hoped.

It's always a gift when that happens. When authors put stories out into the world, they take on a new life. People bring their own experiences and expectations to reading our work, and we have absolutely zero control over how they will respond to it beyond ensuring that it's as technically polished as possible. There's nothing wrong with that, of course. Certainly, I as a reader have responded to books in different ways than some of my best friends. That's what makes us all so unique.

But from a writer's point of view, it's sometimes hard to see, especially if actions or intents get misinterpreted. The urge to explain to the reader, "No, this is what I meant, see?" is almost always there. In order to respect the reader and the subsequent opinions that are formed, we have to keep our mouths shut. It's out of our hands, and frankly, none of our business. I wouldn't want my favorite authors telling me what to think, so why on earth would I do the same to people to read my work?

Which is all a tangent and has absolutely nothing to do with Helen's review at Love Romances, except that I finished reading what she had to say about The Unbeaten Track with a huge smile on my face. Reviews like that are a reminder of why I do what I do. She complimented me on how real both men and their world seem, which is almost always my primary goal.

She got it. So to her I say, thank you so much!

Chance to win entire pax collection

Today over at the Amber Pax blog, I blogged about my contribution, The Unbeaten Track. Find out why I wrote thousands of words that never made it into the story, as well as read one of the letters.

Also, anybody who leaves a comment on any of the posts this week has a chance to win to all five stories in the All Aboard pax collection. So what've you got to lose?

Weekend news

My short The Unbeaten Track is now available for sale at Amber Allure!

In non-writing news, yesterday I had breakfast in San Francisco with a college friend I haven't seen in twenty years. He's recently been making a driving tour of the country, reconnecting with people, and he's on the west coast for the final leg of his trip. We were both in the theater department and performed together, but I remember him most for being a director and assistant director. He cast me in his production of Les Belles Soeurs in what was one of my most challenging roles ever. It was also my last role in the area before life moved me on.

Anyway, we had recently reconnected on Facebook, and yesterday's breakfast was a two-hour extension of that. It's always weird how other people see your life. He paid me a great compliment in telling me how much better I looked now than I did in college, which I attribute to being happy. I wasn't back then. My early to mid twenties pretty much sucked. Theater and performing was my only place of joy then.

But the place I'm in now...it's not what I imagined the last time I saw him. I don't think anybody can predict where they'll be accurately. And I think we spend too much time trying to make things static and perfect when that's not what life is all about.

I'm reminded of a Faith Baldwin quote: Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations. Change will happen whether we want it to or not. That's the nature of life. Our happiness can hinge on our ability to embrace the change. If we resist, we have to be prepared to live with the consequences, but if we go with the flow--or even better, create the change ourselves (frankly, my husband is a master at this; when he wants something, he begins sculpting and influencing the world around him until he gets it)--we can release the fears and anxieties that might hold us back.

It's funny because I'm a very obsessive person who needs to be in control in a lot of different areas of my life. I make spreadsheets for everything, I'm obsessive about time management, and the list goes on. But I have had a ton of change in my adult life. Change I've sought, change I've welcomed. Until I moved to California, I had never managed to live at a single address as an adult for longer than 20 months at a time. In that fifteen-year period, I had twenty-one different places I called home. I changed continents twice within six years. I did so willingly and often eagerly. Now that my kids are in middle school, we don't do that anymore, but my husband and I have already started talking about what happens in seven years when both kids are out of high school, where we might want to live, what we might want to experience.

Yesterday, my college friend was telling me about the various times in his life, and he reached a period in his late twenties when he was making good money and had lost a lot of weight so he went a little crazy on the dating scene. He almost seemed apologetic when he told me, so I interrupted right then and said, "Good for you. You were young, you had the means, so why not have fun?"

This is the only ride we get. We might as well make the most of it.

Over at the Amber Pax Blog

I have a new release coming out this Sunday at Amber Allure, a short in the All Aboard pax. To read more about it, head over to the Amber Pax Blog, where there's a blurb and an excerpt posted today.

The Unbeaten Track

One of the projects I was working so hard to get done has already come back to me in edits, believe it or not. It's for the upcoming train pax, coming out on October 20.

I went back to first person POV for it, because it's the kind of intimate story that really demands it. Man, I really do love writing in that perspective.

Here's the blurb:

Insomniac Sean Diaz spends his nights riding the subway around Manhattan, ignoring the people he might encounter, getting lost in the rhythms of the train so he’s exhausted enough to sleep once he gets home. A hallucination about his dead high school boyfriend turns it into an obsession, but when Sean sees him a second time, he nearly falls apart.

That’s how Judah Morey finds him. Concern prompts conversation, which in turn sparks friendship. When Judah invites Sean back to his place, Sean decides to take a chance for the first time in nearly a decade. Dating is new territory for him, but he thinks he’s ready for it. He just needs to figure out how to let go of the past so he can take that step into his future…