2011 Rainbow Awards: Stolen Hearts

Stolen Hearts won honorary mention in the Best Gay Fantasy category of the 2011 Rainbow Awards! I'm excited and baffled and excited and it's really awesome! ^____^

The reviewer had the following to say, too, which didn't help the flailing. ^__~

I really enjoyed this story. The world building was good, the characters were intriguing, and the conflict held my interest. --Cassandra

Megan's Midnight won top slot in the paranormal category, which is just fantastic, too! ^___^

I win at remembering things!

Except for the part where it's really the opposite. Not only did I forget to announce the story initially, but then I forgot to announce that it was available. So uh, ta-dah! To Get to You is now available from the LT3 Book Market! ^__^;; I hope everyone who reads, enjoys it! ^__^

Madison does not like Adam, not even a little bit. He’s a jerk in every sense of the word, and Madison wants nothing to do with him. But Madison can’t bring himself to simply leave a mage to suffer when it’s in his power to help—and as he is the only available fire mage on campus, he is literally the only one who can help Adam bind his negative energies.

It’s the kind of help he’d offer anyone; Adam the jerk is no exception. Once the spell is done, they can go their separate ways, and that will be the end of the matter. Right?

Just One Bite and To Get to You

Megan is in the final round!

Megan, my lovely roommate, is in the final round of AllRomance Ebooks Just One Bite fic competition! She's in the lead at the moment, but the story she's up against made an underdog leap to be the front-runner in the last round (seriously, the story was almost a hundred votes behind at one point, then voting went through the roof last night), so every vote definitely helps! If you have a moment, please read the stories and vote!

 

To Get to You

I think I completely forgot about announcing this, but my short story To Get to You is coming out next week (November 9). ^__^ It's a cute little fantasy-meets-college-boys story, written for London's birthday earlier this year. You can read an excerpt here. There's also a giveaway going on for it at the LT3 GoodReads group. ^__^

Madison does not like Adam, not even a little bit. He’s a jerk in every sense of the word, and Madison wants nothing to do with him. But Madison can’t bring himself to simply leave a mage to suffer when it’s in his power to help—and as he is the only available fire mage on campus, he is literally the only one who can help Adam bind his negative energies.

It’s the kind of help he’d offer anyone; Adam the jerk is no exception. Once the spell is done, they can go their separate ways, and that will be the end of the matter. Right?

Help, help, I'm drawing a blank / Slaying Dragons snippet

Drawing a huge blank on a premise for a Christmas story. I cannot for the life of me come up with an idea, so I'm asking for suggestions. ^__^ Any ideas, lovely flist? The only stipulation is that it has to be holiday themed, even if loosely so.

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I finished typing up my Vixen story the other day. ^__^;; Took me long enough, and I put up a snippet here, if anyone is interested in a silly slaying-dragons-and-being-badass short story. :3

That's all I got. Uh, also lots of editing. Oh, and Yaoi-con next week. I'm flying for the second time in my life, with the first plane switchover. That should be interesting. ^__^;;

New holiday look on LT3

If you haven't been on the LT3 site since Friday, you should definitely go check out the shiny new Halloween theme we're rocking! Megan made the new banner, and it's an awesome yellow / orange / spooky theme. I really like the way it turned out.

(That said, uh, if you notice anything weird--wrong color, poor placement of something, etc.--don't hesitate to let me know!)

We'll also be doing a Christmas theme and have plans for other holiday themes down the road, which should be a lot of fun.

Oh, and discounts! LT3 will be doing weekly discounts for Halloween: Midsummer, Vampires, Werewolves, and DwtD themed (uh, not in the order? Maybe in that order, I don't remember. :3).

Off to write now. Hopefully I will get this short story done this week, and will have something to show ya'll soon. ^__^

The Trouble with Magic is out!

The Trouble with Magic is now out! Congrats to lucky #42 Kathleen (the first Kathleen ^__~ and I swear that number was completely random), winner of the free copy. If you would like to buy a copy, you can do so in the LT3 Book Market! I hope ya'll enjoy. <333



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LT3 is doing some awesome stuff in October, including sales and giveaways and some awesome web stuff that I hope to do this weekend. ^__^ Keep an eye out, especially on the GoodReads group, if you happen to be a member. Megan is also doing a bunch of stuff on her website for the paltry occasion of her birthday (she's turning old ^__~), so keep an eye out there. Also, Yaoi-con is next month! /excited

*~*~*~*

The Fairy's Assistant, running in the LT3 Fairy Tale serial slot, completed this week! I really loved writing that story, and I hope ya'll enjoyed it too! It'll be available w/a serial subscription for a while yet, since we need a few more fairy tales before we can compile Volume 4 of the fairy tales (OMG, volume 4).

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I think that's all I've got. ^__^

Contest and Web Geekery

The Trouble with Magic Giveaway

This is just a reminder that the giveaway contest for a free copy of The Trouble with Magic is still open until next Tuesday, September 27. You can enter both the contest here on my website and the contest open in the GoodReads group; we'll just pick again for the second contest if the same person wins both. Good luck!

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Web Geekery

I love creating websites. ^__^ I'm not an expert, but I'm a pretty fair hand at it, if I do say so myself. (Humility, what?) One of my biggest stumbling blocks, though, is color. I'm good at basics; blue and orange are complimentary colors! No dark backgrounds and light text unless you like giving your readers eyestrain! But color schemes? I'm not so good. I'm especially bad at picking the perfect shades of colors to match a pretty header. It usually takes a bit of trial and error before I'm happy.

Usually I pick a color from the header and toss it in a color scheme generator (usually whichever one pops up in Google first). I also really like Kuler, which is an Adobe project, which has some really dynamic color selection tools. I totally burned my Sunday re-doing Megan's LJ layout, and I went to Kuler to find a color scheme to match her Halloween-y banner.

Only to find they've made a super awesome cool enhancement. You can upload an image--any image--and Kuler will automatically generate a color scheme based off that image! It worked really damn well with M's header image, though I haven't tried anything else, but it was really, really exciting for my color-challenged self. :3 Exciting enough I had to share. ^__^

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Other than web stuff, I'm diligently working on editing, not dying, editing, writing, keeping the kitties in line, cooking, writing, editing, cleaning, and breathing. All worthy endeavors.

Giveaway! The Trouble with Magic

It's about two weeks out, give or take a day or three, from the release date for The Trouble with Magic! There are two chances to score a free copy of this ebook: one at the Less Than Three Press Goodreads group (September Giveaway #2) and another here on the website (LJ peeps, click the link at the bottom of this post).

To enter, simply leave a comment on this post. You'll only be entered once (multiple comments won't get you multiple entries). The winner will be selected randomly on Tuesday, September 28 at 8:00 p.m. Eastern time. Please leave a valid email address so I can get in touch with you if you win. ^__^ Good luck!

The Trouble with Magic

A trinity of stories about magic, and all the trouble that arises when magic and emotion collide.

The Dragon Slayer—Tane has been banished to a remote village and bound there by magic. With nowhere else to go and nothing better to do, he has taken the village under his care and protects it by killing the dragons that plague the area. Then he meets a dragon that refuses to die properly, and brings with him a whole new set of problems.

Striking A Balance—Nikkai is long used to suffering for and because of his brother’s actions. Getting arrested for Tane’s crimes, however, is a bit much. In prison, however, he unexpectedly encounters someone else acquainted with his brother—a foreign man of unusual magic, who agrees to help him because of a debt owed to Tane. Alongside his new, intriguing companion, Nikkai breaks out of prison and sets off to speak with his brother.

Family Business—At last free of his debt of honor, Ashei returns home with his new lover at his side, reluctant but braced to reunited with the family he has not seen for a long time—a family that is furious with him for turning away from their life of crime.

Contests and kittens, oh my!

Writing news
Next week, LT3 is releasing a short story, Forest of Fenris by T.T. Kove. It's an awesome sweet, romantic fantasy story, and I completely recommend that you check it out. If you're interested in winning a free copy, check out the blog It's Raining Men for a giveaway contest. You can also check out the LT3 Goodreads group for another chance at a free copy. ^__^

Okay, I think that's enough links for now. ^__~

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Kitty news
Two weeks back, roommate Megan texted me asking "hypothetically... if we could get a kitten, what would you say?" There was a small litter of fluffy 4-5 week old kittens living in a storm drain outside her boss's mother's apartment complex. They'd been trying to catch them, since living in a storm drain does no one good, but were so far unsuccessful. About a week ago, mommy cat and the rest of the kittens disappeared (possibly, hopefully caught by other peeps trying for rescue), leaving one tiny gray fluffball that we picked up last Friday night.

We named him Bird and have gone about getting him fixed up with kitten foods and vet visits and antibiotics (OMG he hates so much) for his respiratory infection and resigned ourselves to a 5 cat household.

So tonight, I'm working my usual 10 hour day this week (ugh, conference, ugh) and then I hear Megan yelling my name.

Renames and restarts

I've been contemplating changing the domain name for my website for a while. I've had the name Nikerym in various forms since my fandom days, but people finding me through Less Than Three Press would be hard-pressed to connect the dots between Sasha L. Miller and Nikerym. I also debated a while on changing my LJ name, and decided that was probably a good idea as well. Everything is still connected; if you try to go to nikerym.com or nikerymis.livejournal.com, you'll be redirected to the new names. This won't last forever, so if you have bookmarks and or links, please to be updating. ^^

As part of the rename, I completely revamped my website. I like the colors and scheme a lot, and I've trimmed down the number of free reads on the site to the stories and ficbits that are complete and uh, not completely terrible to think about people reading. Everything else is still available on LJ or on Fictionpress and I have no plans for deleting any of it unless I rewrite. If you can't find anything, let me know and I will search it out for you.

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LT3 updates:

The Were Curse, my contribution to LT3's Bad Moon Rising serial anthology, will begin on September 13! It runs for five updates (through November 8). I've put up an excerpt here on the site, and I think there's more to it than I posted previously (but I can't remember because my brain fails at retention).

The Trouble with Magic, a compilation of three stories, will be released in the LT3 Book Market on September 28. LT3 will be giving away a free copy from the Less Than Three Press GoodReads Group. The giveaway post isn't up yet, but will be in a few weeks. I'll also be raffling off a copy here, so keep an eye out!