Update update update

I'm sure it's no surprise that I suck at updates by this point. :3

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CONS

Yaoi-con was fantastic, and I have a lovely, lovely tattoo to show for that trip to CA.



It hurt, of course, both more and less than I thought it would. IDK why I assumed every stab of the needle would hurt the same, duh of course not. Things I did not know: it itches like a mother fucker and it loses a layer of inked skin. Seriously, why does no one talk about the itching? Because holy mother of god, did it itch. (Did I mention it was a tiny bit itchy? :3) Also, you're supposed to not wear constricting/rough stuff over it (a.k.a., jeans) and I totally planned ahead and packed mostly ... jeans. >_>

GRL was next, which was cool in some ways and utterly frustrating in others. The peeps we met were the highlight, ffs. Putting faces to names and just hanging out with peeps was totally awesome. ^__^ Hopefully the frustrating parts will smooth out in future years as the con is around longer.

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BOOKS

Private Dicks: Undercovers is out! ^__^ I love this anthology, no lie. There are some super awesome stories in here, and you should definitely check them out when you get a chance. Everything from contemp to paranormal to knights (::coughMegancough::) to sci-fi (me? WTF?).




With a Touch is my contribution to the Halloween Rentboys collection that comes out tomorrow. It's fantasy, as per usual, and is a cute little short about a man who's trying to find a missing person of magical means, and finds much more than that.



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I think that's it? IDK, I thought I had more. We'll go with it.

Halloween rentboy

This one is fighting me ATM, but I'm hoping I can kick its ass shortly. Had a nap, will distract myself further with Teen Wolf if that doesn't end up helping. But for now, here is the start of my possible Halloween rentboy story.

Oooh, and I have edits for Burning Bonds to do too. IDK if that's a good or bad distraction, though. :3

Updates!

So, first up, a warning. Alas, my day job is going HYPER OH MY GOD CONFERENCE IN THREE WEEKS OH MY GOD PANIC mode. By which I mean, that's me, while my boss and everyone else goes, 'it's cool, no worries, it'll work out.' I don't have my test environment! My person hasn't even done a practice because we don't have a test environment!!!!

Um.

What this means is that I'm working the day job a lot the next two point five weeks and therefore will be even more absent and scatterbrained and weird. (That's the warning. :3) Feel free to pester me into submission if I manage to accidentally ignore you.

Writing things!

LT3 released Bad Moon Rising yesterday. Today. Recently. What's today? Um, but I have a short story in this anthology, called The Were Curse, and I may have mentioned it. ^__^ It's werewolves with a magical spell origin! Also, Megan has totally promised to write Dominic's story, so you should all pester her for that. /going to get dead



I'm pretty sure I mentioned Bestiary recently, but here is the link to the product page for reference.

I have also finished my Kiss Me at Midnight story. It's ridiculous and awesome.

Megan totes roped me into writing a Halloween rentboy story, too, by which I mean she came up with the idea and didn't even hint I should do it b/c she didn't want me to stress b/c she's nice like that. I had so much goddamn trouble coming up with an idea that stuck, that I almost gave up. Seriously, started like SIX stories, all of them boring and cliche and boring and one that was a repeat (almost identical) to the KMAM story. It was tragic. Then I thought of a vague idea on Monday and managed to write 4k on it and IDK what's going on, but it's working so I'm going with it. ^__^

Elsewise, on my list is a rockstar story for Rocking Hard, a fantasy story for If You're Reading This ..., Stolen Hearts Part Two (tentatively titled "Heart Repair"), a silly superhero story, the sequel and prequel to Playing with Shadows, and a fairy tale remake of Snow White. Because I'm not enough of a headless chicken as is. ^__~

Post subjects always stump me

So, way, way, way back in LT3's very first anthology (That Famous Happy End), I wrote a story about an IT geek and his vampire QA tech. Said vampire QA tech had a snarky, assholish older brother. Said snarky, assholish older brother was promptly claimed by Megan (or uh, shoved at her when she said he should have a story). She wrote his story for our the Bad Moon Rising anthology.

She also wrote a drabble for him that she can now post 'cause her Bad Moon Rising story is done its serial run. ^__^ It is here, and you should check it out.


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If you like super heroes, check out Katey Hawthorne's birthday post, where she's giving away a copy of the paperback that contains two of her super hero short stories.


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Bestiary! It's coming soon! I have a lovely little short story that's totally over the top adorable in it. This is a link to the Goodreads page, because I'm still working on getting them up on the LT3 site. There's 19 of them! Which is equal parts \o/ and /o\

The charms and elixirs crafted by the fae are highly prized and notoriously difficult to obtain. The fae charms Fihr sells at his stall are lucrative business, but he would happily throw it all away to have a chance with Satu, the beautiful faerie who makes the charms. When he catches Satu trying to run away, terrified of his betrothed, Fihr throws all caution aside, determined to help Satu no matter what it takes.

Megan commissioned awesome awesome internal images and done up some lovely covers as well. ^__^ Seriously, this collection is going to be awesome.

KMAM

So, aside from plague (viral bronchitis, yay! they gave me hydrocodone to kill it o_O;;), I have been working on my story for LT3's Kiss Me at Midnight anthology, for which the deadline is the end of the month. It's a cute little story about a mage and a thief who is trying to steal from said mage, but neither of them has the motivation the other suspects. ^__^

Porn!

Click here for my Day of Porn contribution! Characters are from To Get to You, but it is definitely not necessary to have read said story to understand what is going on here (spoiler: porn).

Day of Porn

July 16 is Day of Porn. It's basically what the name says, just a day for writers/readers to put aside their more serious fic and indulge in shameless porn. <-- I stole that mostly from Sam's LJ post b/c I'm feeling spectacularly lazy tonight. Sam is doing the hosting of the event on her LJ. Check out the organizing post for the very short list of details. Another post will go up on July 16 for everyone to post links/stories so they're in one place and easily accessible. ^__^

Which leads me to the second bout of my laziness. :3 Suggestions*?

*Disclaimers: Original only, past or new characters okay, no guarantee your prompt will be chosen, porn is guaranteed (maybe).

Free Read! Playing with Shadows

My Love is Always Write story is now up at the M/M romance group on Goodreads! ^__^


Corin is nearly done with his term amongst the priests. In a matter of months, he'll be able to return home and leave his miserably days in the temple behind him. He's tired of lazy priests, and tired of stories of demon shadows that move of their volition.

Then Corin starts to see things, and the priests begin to act strangle, and he begins to wonder … is he losing his mind, or are the shadows more than they seem?

This story was written for the Love is Always Write event at the M/M Romance Group on GoodReads. It was written for Tori, inspired by the author letter she wrote.

You can either join the group to read this story (click the cover image to get there), as well as over a hundred other free M/M stories, or download a copy of the ebook using the following links:


PDF | ePub | Mobi

Lucky 7 Meme

I blame Megan. Everything can be blamed on Megan.

RULES -
Go to page 7 or 77 in your current manuscript
Go to line 7
Post on your blog or Facebook page the next 7 lines, or sentences, as they are – no cheating
Tag 7 other authors to do the same.

WIP - Untitled demon hunting magic fantasy story (this is a working title. :3) This might be 8 lines. I'm counting the dialogue as sentence, however, b/c I can't count. :3

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It had definitely been the source of the blast. The door had been blown off its hinges, and it lay crookedly across the hallway. The door was smoking, but not on fire, though judging from the smoke billowing from the room, something was.

The guard Noah has left to keep people out was standing outside the room, on the far side of the fallen door. "I'm sorry. He said—"

Noah didn't bother to listen to the man's excuses, ducking into the room instead. The cot was … disintegrated, nothing but the support beams and a few frayed, smoldering bits of rope littering the floor where it had stood.

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Uh... tagging. I'm going to cop out on that and say, consider yourselves tagged if you like. But no more than 7 of you! You'll probably have to coordinate that somehow. Good luck. :3

Bards vs. Minstrels

When I was younger, I read a lot of Mercedes Lackey, particularly the Valdemar series. I was a huge sucker for those, though I was never a fan of the way the Last Herald Mage series turned out. I was a sucker for happily-ever-afters by then. :3

One thing always stuck with me, from the third of the Last Herald Mage books, I believe. In the series, there are Bards (capital B) and minstrels. Capital B Bards are epic story tellers, who tell stories that, through magic, pull the listeners in, so that they're part of the world and are living the stories. It's epic, it's fantastic, and it's draining, for both the Bards and their listeners. Minstrels don't have that magic. When they play their ballads and songs, it's just music, nothing magical about it.

The line that I remember most (not verbatim, alas, I fail at verbatim), but a minstrel character was bemoaning that he wasn't a Bard, so what was the use of bothering to learn music at all? The reply was this: always enjoying the big, powerful, always moving, magical performances is wearing. It takes an emotional toll, and people can't handle always experiencing the wrenching, moving, and emotional performances. Minstrels were important too -- not just as a break, but to remind people that not everything has to be over the top and driving.

I've always related with that, with regards to my writing. I'm not a Bard, capital B. I'm a minstrel, writing stories that are decent, but don't move people to great lengths. People enjoy my stories, but don't go crazy over them, and that's okay. I enjoy writing, and I like that people enjoy reading my work, even if it's not the sort of writing that leaves lasting impressions and inspires people to fan art and fanfiction and the like.

And here's the caveat. Most of the time, I'm okay with this. I'm always working harder, trying harder, more complicated storylines. I like writing, and I try not to let the negatives outweigh the positives. Lately, however, it seems more and more like I'm writing into a vacuum. As though, if I stopped writing, only a handful of people would mourn the loss. I think it's a combination of a handful of critical reviews and a lack of hearing anything otherwise. (Apparently, my writing style sucks ass? IDK. I need to stop using 'though,' though. :3)

I want to clarify at this point that (1) I'm not going to stop writing and (2) I'm not begging for people to placate my ego. I'm going to keep writing. I'm really enjoying the series I'm working on at the moment, and readers never should feel obligated to pet or coax the authors they read into writing more.

My reason for posting this is mostly a reminder to myself. I don't have to be great. I don't have to be perfect. As long as I enjoy what I'm writing, that's good enough. I'm not a writer who draws people in, who gives them over the top, epic, fantastical experiences, and that's OK. People still read me, look forward to reading me, and not everything has to be epic and heart-rending. I'm a minstrel, not a Capital B Bard, and that fills its own role and has its own rewards and pleasures.