Gay Writers and Readers

Fugitive Colours by Erastes (Adult)

2011-10-31T12:32:00.004Z

Fugitive Colours

Erastes

Most things lessen with time. Time itself for one.There’s something slavishly-liberating about being unable to tell time or even noticethe change from day to night. The moments merely punctuated by the Chinesewater torture of the dripping of a tap I cannot see from here.

Funny how laughter is hush-muffled by stones that havenever heard it before. It’s like they’re on my side. There’s a thought. Perhapsthere is only so much horror that can be absorbed – even by granite, and theyhunger for more cheerful noises, take them in, swallow them whole.

I'll show you, listen: You see? The laugh is absorbedas if it never were. Watercolour and pastel tones on disappearing into nothingonto damp paper.

The stones themselves seem to shrink into theirmortar, timid graduate witnesses of the art of pain. They don’t want him to comeback down today. Me? I’m undecided, but that’s a secret the stones can’t betold.

The water knows. The water sounds too much like yesfor coincidence.

Time. Yes, I do remember time. Don't think I'veforgotten the before, because I haven't. I never will. It's just that it nolonger holds any interest for me, that bright, brilliant life, full of ticksand tocks, and shares and stocks. Rushing from shower to office to wine bar tooffice to wine bar—and all for what? Chasing the money, chasing the deal. Timewas never on my side, then.

On my side. Left side, right side upside downside.Doesn’t matter. All the same. All the same when he chooses his pallet with thecare of a maestro. All the same when he leaves purple fingerprints on fleshwhere only freckles remember the sun. There. And there. Those are older, or...Ithink so. It’s getting hard to tell. They bloom slowly, small round photographsof possession and I count down their arrival. They take about two hundred slowmeasured drips to show fully, but he’s always gone by then. You’d think, withthe pleasure I give him as he creates his finger-painting, that he’d stayaround to watch it blossom.

I understand though. He leaves a torch which burns forthe length of time it takes for his art to show itself. His art is not for him.It's for me.

It’s not the fruition of his work that inspires him.It’s his canvas. I’m his canvas. Hisinspiration. He calls me that. He’s never called me by my name. But he doesn’tthink of me as a name, and now, neither do I.

The skin is the truest canvas, he says. Unappreciatedin this day of blobs and cartoons and people who throw paint onto mere paperwith little understanding of what they create. Art takes a lifetime, he says.Art cannot be ripped early from a womb and thrown to the voyeurs, too new forappreciation.

In fact, he says, people have forgotten about art. Thelast true artists were the Inquisition.

He says.

I rejected all this at first, rejected his creativity,as a body rejects an alien object. I screamed, I damaged myself, attempting torip the bonds from my wrists, cried out every time I heard someone crossing thefloor above my head. On those days he didn't paint, but left me in my fire andfury, and like a wounded fox I would have tried to gnaw my hands from my armsto escape the trap I had landed myself in.

He was angry at the welts I made to my skin. And hepunished me with such gentle violence that I cried blood-soaked tears ofhumiliation. Even his anger holds such imagination, a mind that can make marvelsfrom the darkest implements. But he - unlike my ungrateful self – he has never scarred me; he is toocareful in his preparations, and oh, the reparations. Sometimes he spends hourspreparing me for a session with his steel palette, rubbing my skin with thefinest oils. Praising me for my erection, rewarding my emissions with the mostsubtle of delights. Nimble fingers that can prolong a pain or a pleasureindefinitely; depending on his style of the day.

I am treasured now; I am acquiescent. The jewel of hiscollection. The calmer I am, the gentler he is, and he prepares me, treats melike the masterpiece I will become.

Skin, he says, is the only canvas that recovers, thatcan be sketched upon with whatever tools the artist desires. Skin, he says, is the onlycanvas which can take a lifetime in the execution of a work of art.

So now he explains to me about the techniques, andnow, now all hope - all care - of rescue is gone, I listen to him. And he'sgrateful for that. As my blood drains onto the floor, he teaches . As he scoresmy flesh, crosshatching, with such exquisite care for me that he now uses aknife so razor-sharp I can barely feel it. Chroma:how the purity of the red is intensified when compared to the greyness of myskin as I near death. Chiaroscuro:the effect of light and shade, especially where strong tonal contrasts areused. He sorrows that he cannot show me the perfection I am become, and I kisshim, with lips blue with lack of pigment, and tell him how little it matters.

Now I know that it has to take time for a canvas totruly appreciate what art is being wrought upon it. A canvas is not born readyfor the painting. It has to be prepared. It has to be primed. It has to learnto accept what the artist creates.

And in the end, I think, skin is the only canvas thatforgives.

-------------------------------

www.erastes.com

Erastes is the penname of a female author living in Norfolk, UK. She has four novels and five novellas in print and her short stories have sold to places such as Gay Magazine, Bold Strokes Books, Alyson, and many more. Her latest novel Junction X is set in the suburban claustrophobia of England in 1962 and comes out this week. She is represented by Prof. J. Schiavone.

NEW RELEASE: Class Distinctions at 35% Off This Week Only!

2011-05-08T13:57:00.002+01:00

I'm pleased to announce my latest release, a romantic ebook short from Amber Allure (the GLBT imprint of Amber Quill Press) called "Class Distinctions."

This week only, the story is available for a 35% discount from the publisher for all ebook formats (for Kindle, choose .prc). Click here to get your copy.

"Class Distinctions" will be available soon for Amazon Kindle, Nook, and other ebook readers.

Here are the details for "Class Distinctions":

Kyle and Jonathan were perfect for each other, the two halves that, once together, made a whole. And then one snowy night just before Parents' Weekend on the campus of Hamilton University, Kyle drops a bomb: he's breaking up with Jonathan.

Class Distinctions follows the couple through the stormy (in more ways than one) night that ensues. Why has Kyle suddenly decided to throw away something so precious and good? The answers lie in their backgrounds, and will gradually come to light as a winter blizzard rages around the young couple. Their tortured paths bring them to the covered bridge where their love had come to life on a hot summer day. But will the warmth of that memory and the heat of the love they once shared be enough to outclass the storm, and more importantly, bring them back together?

Excerpt:
...He had come to the bridge almost without thinking about where he was going, but when he arrived there, he knew his feet had had a purpose in bringing him to this place. The snow swirled around him and pitted against his face like needles. He watched as the flakes vanished into the rushing water beneath him.

The bridge was a special place for Jonathan and him. It had been where they had shared their first kiss, back in August, shortly after they had met. The bridge had been a different place, almost of a different world, in August. The sun was bright, beating down relentlessly, bringing the temperature of the day into the mid-nineties. The air was thick, like a damp cloth thrown over one’s skin. Mosquitos hummed…and the leaves on the trees whispered whenever an all-too-infrequent breeze came along.

Jonathan had led him to this bridge, after they had spent the morning hiking the woods surrounding it. The two of them had forged a path along the creek that ran below it.

“You have to see this…it’s really cool.” Jonathan took my hand and led me through a copse of trees to a clearing. He gestured grandly as the vista opened up before us—the weathered bridge, with its stones and faded boards, rose up against the brilliant blue sky like an ancient treasure. On either end of it, weeping willows sagged in the heat.

There wasn’t a soul around us.

Jonathan took my hand in his own and the touch was electric, almost like a jolt, as it coursed through me. It was the very first time he’d touched me and I think that simple pressure of palm against palm and fingers intertwining let me know I was in love with this boy. It also opened the door to a hunger for thousands more touches from him, ones as simple as grabbing my hands and ones a lot more complex.

We fought our way up through cattails growing along the shoreline and further up the rise, brambles, but at last we reached the planks that would lead us inside the covered bridge. Its shade promised cool.

Jonathan pulled me into the darkness and turned to me, smiling. “Isn’t it something? I wonder how old it is?”

I looked in his robin’s egg blue eyes, amazed I could still make out their pale color even in the shade of the covered bridge. “It’s great. Thanks for bringing me here.” I let go of his hand so I could reach up and touch his face. “But it doesn’t compare to you, to just being here with you.”

I leaned down then and kissed him. Even though he had taken my hand, I wasn’t sure until that moment that Jonathan was even gay. We had started the morning as buddies, classmates, fellow students at Hamilton University on our way out on a hot Saturday for a hike. But when he lifted his face and parted his lips slightly to meet me, I knew not only that he was gay, but also that my feelings were reciprocated.

And that filled me with an inexpressible joy.

The kiss lingered for what seemed to me like a half hour, but was really only a minute or two. My tongue probed the inside of his mouth, which tasted sweet, slightly of cinnamon. He reached up and laid his hand on the back of my damp neck to twine in my curls and pull me closer to him. Our sweaty bodies meshed.

It was a moment of pure, undiluted happiness. It was a moment I would never forget...

Click here to get your copy.

Mere Mortals--Inspiration and execution!

2011-04-27T15:15:00.006+01:00

Mere Mortals by Erastes - a Victorian Gothic Novel set on the Norfolk Broads.

''An unsettling tale of loss, obsession and mystery, set on the bleak Norfolk Broads. Definitely one I'd recommend.'' --Donald Hardy, author of Lovers' Knot

Orphaned Crispin Thorne has been taken as ward by Philip Smallwood, a man he's never met, and is transplanted from his private school to Smallwood s house on an island on the beautiful but coldly remote, Horsey Mere in Norfolk. Upon his arrival, he finds that he's not the only young man given a fresh start. Myles Graham, and Jude Middleton are there before him, and as their benefactor is away, they soon form alliances and friendships, as they speculate on why they ve been given this new life. Who is Philip Smallwood? Why has he given them such a fabulous new life? What secrets does the house hold and what is it that the Doctor seems to know?

Buy from amazon - available as a paper or ebook

I’m lucky enough to live in one of the most beautiful (Ok, I’m a little biased) areas of the British Isles—which isn’t short of beautiful places, let’s be honest! It’s the Norfolk Broads, a series of ancient man-made lakes and rivers in the north east of the county. It is believed that the Romans started the digging when they were here, and later in the Medieval period, a huge peat digging business was in operation. Since then the cuttings have filled in with fresh water and it forms one of the most important wetland habitats in the UK. As well as being perfect for novelists. There are surprisingly few books set here, actually.

When I was first looking for a location for my latest novel I knew I wanted somewhere beautiful, remote and mysterious, and my first thought was for Dartmoor or Exmoor—literary favourite haunts for such books as Lorna Doone, Hound of the Baskervilles, and many others, but then I thought that really moors had been done to death. They always seemed to be the first choice for anyone writing a gothic novel—the lonely house on the moorland for example. I knew I needed a house where there could be a sense of isolation, somewhere the protagonists couldn’t easily escape from. Obviously Dartmoor was good for that, with all those treacherous bogs but it wasn’t remote enough.

Then I stupidly realised that Iived a stone’s throw from one of the most isolated, mysterious and beautiful places which would be perfect for my purposes. All I had to do was invent an island on one of the Norfolk Broads, which I did—on Horsey Mere—and Mere Mortals leapt into life complete with a natty slightly punning title.

I found it perfect. It has its own treacherous bogs. Ancient landscapes, and a few surviving windpumps (which look just like windmills but were once used to pump away the excess water to prevent flooding) which tower over the brackish water. For a young man coming from a rather cloistered upbringing of preparatory schools it must have seemed an alien landscape indeed.

Part of what I wanted to explore with this book was the Victorian way of making life incredibly cheap. Books like The Water Babies and Oliver Twist highlighted the abuses of chimney sweeps and orphans and led to reforms, and I wanted to shed some light there too. These days with social services and child protection, it’s unthinkable that a man could walk into a school or orphanage and say “I’ll have that one and that one for my chimney sweeping business” but that’s exactly what happened.

The three young men in Mere Mortals are orphans who have been disgraced for homosexual activity at their schools and all were in danger of finding themselves on the streets. Fate intervened in the person of Philip Smallwood who takes them off their school’s hands, saves them all from scandal and whisks them off to Norfolk to his remote house on an island.

They would simply, have dropped off the map at this point. The schools wouldn’t have cared tuppence what had happened to them once they were rid of them and would certainly not follow up to ensure they were being well cared for. Whatever Philip had planned for them few people would know, or care. Even if Philip were to turn out to be the worst kind of serial murderer, and his neighbours asked “what happened to those boys who were staying with you?” he could answer “Oh, they ran off—ungrateful brats,” or “They are down in London for a time” and again, no one would know or much care.

I hope that I’ve managed to instil some of this sang-froid of society into the book—thank goodness things are much better now—and if you want to know what Philip truly plans for Crispin, Myles and Jude—you’ll have to read Mere Mortals to find out! Or visit the area and see where it all happens!

Erastes writes gay historicals, in many different eras from the English Civil War to the 1960s. A Lambda short-lister, she's the proud owner of "Speak Its Name" the only review site that concentrates on gay historical fiction. She's been published by Harlequin (Carina) and Running Press as well as many well-respected small presses. Her next novel is "The Muffled Drum" (set during the Austro Prussian War) and will be out in July 2011. It's full of soldiers, horses, angsty love, drawers and many many buttons.

A Dignified Review of an Undignified Book: DIGNITY TAKES A HOLIDAY

2011-03-21T13:05:00.000Z

I woke up this morning to a wonderful review of my "very different" "offbeat" romance, Dignity Takes a Holiday. Writing the book and submitting it, I knew that Dignity was something very unusual for me, a book that readers would either "get" or not...and I was prepared for the possibility that it was the kind of effort that would either be loved or hated, with very little in between.

And that is being borne out now in the reviews its getting and comments from readers. Jerry Wheeler, at Out in Print Reviews, gets that too. I like that he understood I took a chance and "stretched" to write a book that, even for me, is very far from what I would usually write (it's been compared more than once to John Waters, and I think that's apt).

Anyway, Mr. Wheeler says, in part: "Reed goes far out on a limb here, writing slapstick farce instead of his usual taut suspense and horror thrillers. Writers who take themselves into unfamiliar territory are to be applauded. The chances they take, whether successful or not, bespeak a willingness to grow beyond what their audience expects of them and that experience is usually reflected in a deepening—a re-dimensioning (I love making jargon up)—of whatever genre they’re better known for when they return to it.

"But that’s not what you want to hear, is it? You want to know if it’s any good.

The answer is a qualified ‘yes.’ Qualified because Dignity Takes a Holiday is purposefully over the top and that alone may put some readers off. The abuse Helen dishes out is so severe and the situations Peter finds himself in are so outrageous that you may find yourself reading with a grimace instead of a grin. Funny, yes—hysterical at times. But painfully so.

"However, this is all set-up for the ending, which (and this is typically Reed) puts the preceding events into context and reveals the heartfelt relationship underlying the farce..."
Read the whole review here.

SYNOPSIS
Pete Thickwhistle doesn't live what one might call a charmed life. At age forty-seven, he's a flamboyant gay man who believes no one knows he's gay, still living at home with his harpy of a mother. Worse, he's still a virgin, longing to find just the right man to make his life complete. Pete's an upbeat kind of guy, yet he's never learned that the answer to his motto "What could possibly go wrong?" is always: "Everything."

Pete's road to love and happiness is full of potholes, yet he never tires of searching, despite job losses, weight battles, clothing faux pas, and disastrous vacations, parties, and dating debacles. Pete is the ultimate underdog living a television situation comedy, one named Dignity Takes a Holiday.

Buy Dignity Takes a Holiday from Dreamspinner Press here.

Buy Dignity Takes a Holiday from Dreamspinner Press from the Amazon Kindle store here.

Once in a Blue Moon, You Win an Award

2011-03-13T13:35:00.001Z

I'm very pleased to announce that my werewolf chiller/love story, The Blue Moon Cafe, won the 2011 EPIC e-Book Award last night in the best horror erotic romance category. Unfortunately, I was not on hand at the awards in Richmond, VA to accept the award, but I'm still really jazzed that the book was recognized.

The EPIC eBook Awards (formerly EPPIES) have been given annually since the first EPIC conference in 2000 to recognize outstanding achievement in e-publishing. EPIC eBook Awards entries are judged by volunteers, with the largest percentage of EPIC eBook Awards Judges being active EPIC Members. Guest judges, all of whom are either published authors or publishing professionals, may be used as alternate judges at the EPIC eBook Awards Committee discretion. After the first round of judging the works of the finalists are sent to second panel of judges and winners are selected.

Here's a little taste of what The Blue Moon Cafe is all about:

Someone—or something—is killing Seattle’s gay men.

A creature moves through the darkest night, lit only by the full moon, taking them, one by one, from the rain city’s gay gathering areas.

Someone—or something—is falling in love with Thad Matthews.

Against a backdrop of horror and fear, young Thad finds his first true love in the most unlikely of places—a new Italian restaurant called The Blue Moon Cafe. Sam is everything Thad has ever dreamed of in a man: compassionate, giving, handsome, and with brown eyes Thad feels he could sink into. And Sam can cook! But as the pair’s love begins to grow, so do the questions and uncertainties, the main one being, why do Sam’s unexplained disappearances always coincide with the full moon?

Prepare yourself for a unique blend of dark suspense and erotic romance with The Blue Moon Cafe, written by the author Unzipped magazine called, “the Stephen King of gay horror.” You’re guaranteed an unforgettable reading experience, one that skillfully blends the hottest romance with the most chilling terror...

To read an excerpt and make your own reservation at The Blue Moon Cafe, click here.

NEW RELEASE How I Met My Man

2011-02-27T14:16:00.002Z

For one week only, Amber Allure is offering my latest release, How I Met My Man, at a 35% discount (that's only $3.25). The ebook is available in all popular formats, including Kindle-ready (Mobi/prc). Get your copy of How I Met My Man here.

This story blends my passion for marrying dark suspense with romance...

How I Met My Man
ISBN-13: 978-1-61124-070-2
Genres: Gay / Contemporary / Suspense / Thriller
Heat Level: 2
Length: Novella (18k words)
New Release 35% Discount (One Week Only)

BLURB
How a guy meets his man can happen in a dozen different ways: online, at a bar, through friends, at a masquerade party...or even at the scene of a murder...

The road to love is seldom straight, and for Stephen Embert, that road couldn't possibly be more crooked. First, he arrives home to find an anonymous card in his mailbox that says, "I've been inside your house," then comes the midnight home invasion. But Stephen forgets these disturbing occurrences a month later when he attends a masquerade party and hopes to finally meet Mr. Right.

But who is the stranger in black with the disturbing emotionless mask following him? And why does the stranger always get in the way of Stephen hooking up with Jeffrey, the angelic and nearly naked leather hunk, who wants nothing more than to get Stephen alone for some romance? Appearances are not always what they seem, and discovering true love can sometimes be a matter of life and death.

EXCERPT
...The sexual tension in the room was palpable. In one corner, a pair of guys was making out, staying just shy of actual penetration, but their mouths were locked onto each other like they were ready to eat other’s faces. Their bodies, clothed in little more than denim and latex, were grinding into one another as if they were desperate to merge into one human being. I saw many flirtatious glances that I knew, before the night was over, could erupt into something akin to the guys in the corner, or maybe even full-on sex. Remember, Tabby had a scrupulously maintained playroom and, at some point, most of the revelers would wander into it.

I also saw a lot of guys simply having a good time, blowing off steam, dancing, talking to each other, laughing. Tabby had set up Night of the Living Dead to play on his huge plasma screen and several guys watched it absent-mindedly. Even I thought it was interesting how the film and the techno music went together in an eerie way.

I was sort of drifting off into my own little world, mesmerized by the zombies on the screen, when my easy buzz got interrupted. No, it got crushed, slammed to the floor, stomped into little pieces.

All because a new guest had joined the party.

You know that bartender? The one that I thought was just about the most gorgeous hunk of masculinity upon which I had ever laid eyes? Forget him. This new guy made him looked like someone on a par with, I don’t know, Andy Dick, maybe?

When I saw him come into the party and remove his coat, I truly think my adrenalin surged. I felt faint. And let me tell you, honey, I thought that feeling faint at the sight of a hunky man was the exclusive device of writers of bad romances.

But it really did happen. It happened to me.

Apparently, it happened to several other people—maybe most of them—at the party as well. A hush fell over the party and a multitude of heads tried to discreetly swivel toward the newcomer. It almost seemed like an invisible hand turned down the volume on the music, too.

He was glorious. Perfect. An unrivaled specimen of masculinity almost too beautiful to live. He stood about six two and his body was lean, tightly defined, and covered with satiny olive flesh that begged to be touched, if only you could find yourself worthy. His muscles spoke of quiet strength; they were there, visible, but had none of the pumped-up overkill of a gym rat who spent far too much time working on his body (and perhaps far too much money on steroids). He had a thick shock of black hair sticking up from the top of his head, while the sides and back of his head were shaved close. A silver hoop dangled from one ear. Surveying the party, he revealed eyes so dark the pupils were lost within the irises. I felt as though if I were to tumble into those eyes, I could die happy. His lashes—the only feminine thing about him—were long and thick. His lips full and kissable. His face was chiseled, with a very fetching cleft in the middle of his chin. That touchable skin? It was almost hairless, save for thick, coarse dark hair on his forearms and calves.

And, of course, there was a lovely treasure trail leading down, across his flat stomach, and into the black leather briefs he wore as part of his costume.

His costume was simple and inspired. He wore three things: the black leather bikini briefs, a pair of combat boots, and a plain leather harness to the back of which were attached two small wings—jet black and crafted from feathers.

He looked like an angel—but one that would quickly lead you to Hell. You would not protest.

My heart beat a little faster...

Get your copy of How I Met My Man here.

New Cover for HOMECOMING, Coming in March from Dreamspinner Press

2011-02-23T17:45:00.002Z

One of the most exciting things about this business is when you get to see, for the first time, the cover of one of your own works of fiction. You've put your "baby" in the hands of an artist/graphic designer and entrusted him or her to put the most compelling and marketable "face" on your story.

Artist Paul Richmond pleased me beyond measure with the cover for Homecoming (releases March 17, Dreamspinner Press). His depiction of the two main characters and the Chicago el platform setting perfectly conveny the theme and mood of the story without giving too much away.

I hope you like the cover as much as I do. Give me some feedback below, if you'd like.

Here's a little taste of what Homecoming is about:
After losing his partner Toby, Chase faces a long, painful road back to life and love. At first, he doesn’t see how he can go on, but then Chase and Toby’s old friend Mike cajoles him into returning to Chicago for the annual International Mr. Leather Competition. There Chase revisits a world of hot, casual sex that he had forgotten existed, meets a friend who cares more for him than he ever realized, and discovers the possibility that he might yet find his way home.

The Blue Moon Cafe Wins for Best Paranormal in 2010 Rainbow Awards for Excellence

2011-02-18T15:57:00.002Z

I'm pleased to announce that my werewolf thriller, The Blue Moon Cafe, has taken first place in the paranormal category in the 2010 Rainbow Awards for Excellence.

Here's the full list of categories and winners.

Here's what The Blue Moon Cafe is about:
Someone—or something—is killing Seattle’s gay men.

A creature moves through the darkest night, lit only by the full moon, taking them, one by one, from the rain city’s gay gathering areas.

Someone—or something—is falling in love with Thad Matthews.

Against a backdrop of horror and fear, young Thad finds his first true love in the most unlikely of places—a new Italian restaurant called The Blue Moon Cafe. Sam is everything Thad has ever dreamed of in a man: compassionate, giving, handsome, and with brown eyes Thad feels he could sink into. And Sam can cook! But as the pair’s love begins to grow, so do the questions and uncertainties, the main one being, why do Sam’s unexplained disappearances always coincide with the full moon?

Prepare yourself for a unique blend of dark suspense and erotic romance with The Blue Moon Cafe, written by the author Unzipped magazine called, “the Stephen King of gay horror.” You’re guaranteed an unforgettable reading experience, one that skillfully blends the hottest romance with the most chilling terror...

And here's a little taste:
Sam and Thad lay on their backs, breathless. Thad spoke first, but only after several minutes had passed, long enough for him to process what had just happened and to allow his respiration to return to a somewhat normal pace. “That was amazing. I’m no Mary Poppins, but I can honestly say I don’t know when it’s been that good for me.” Thad let out a long, quivering breath. “You’re right; you are an animal.”

Sam laughed and the sound was comforting, here in the pale, silvery light from a waning moon outside. Thad snuggled into the crook between Sam’s chest and arm, resting his head on the fur that blanketed Sam’s chest. This, he thought, surprising himself, is just about as good as the sex.

“I just go with my instincts.” Sam stroked Thad’s hair gently. “If that makes me an animal, then I’m guilty as charged.” He moved slightly away from Thad. “Don’t kill me, but do you mind if I have a cigarette? I can go outside if you want.”

Thad shook his head, grinning. “A smoke after sex. That’s so cliché. But go ahead. Normally, I wouldn’t allow it, but I’ll make an exception for you…Sam.” Thad liked how the name felt on his tongue.

“Grazie.” Sam turned to sit up and grope in his pants pocket, bringing out a pack of Marlboro Reds and a lighter. He leaned back against the headboard and lit up. The room filled with the acrid stench of burning tobacco and paper and instead of being repelled as he normally would be, Thad moved close to Sam again, taking up his newly claimed spot on the man’s chest. He stared up at him, watching him smoke. Lazily, he traced circles in the hairy mat covering Sam’s chest. His fingers stopped when he caught sight of a design on Sam’s left pectoral, something he had hadn’t noticed in the dim light or perhaps because it was all but hidden by the forest of hair. Thad got up on one elbow.

“You have a tattoo?”

In the dark, Sam nodded. “I’ve had it for years, way before tattoos were all the rage like they are these days.”

“Especially here in Seattle.” Thad often wondered if there was some requirement that all citizens of Seattle must have at least one tattoo. “What’s it of?” Thad strained to make out the design’s contours in the dim light and couldn’t.

Sam leaned forward to switch on the bedside lamp. Thad squinted at the sudden light source, then directed his gaze down at the muscled chest before him. “What is it?” Thad traced the design with his fingers, lowering his head to peer more closely at it. He nipped at Sam’s nipple and Sam laughed.

“It’s Lupa, the she-wolf who suckled Romulus and Remus, the twins who founded Rome in mythology. Cool, no?” Sam flexed his chest so the wolf seemed to move. Two cherubic twin boys below the figure suckled at her teats.

“It’s kind of weird. But it suits you.” Thad reached over Sam to turn off the light again. “What brought you to America?”

Did Thad detect a slight stiffening when he asked the question?...

And here's where you can get a copy (either paperback or digital).

NEW RELEASE Speed Demon

2011-01-30T13:54:00.001Z

Today my twisted little short, Speed Demon, releases from Amber Allure (the GLBT imprint of Amber Quill Press). This is opposed to my twisted little shorts, which I will be washing out in the sink this afternoon, but I digress.

For one week only, if you purchase Speed Demon direct from Amber Allure, you can get it at their 35% off new release discount, and can take it home for the very tidy price of just $1.95 (and yes, Kindle owners, this applies to you as well--just choose the .prc version and it will work perfectly on your Kindle; it will be available soon in the Kindle store, but probably not at this price).

Here's what Speed Demon is about:
Jealousy can be such an ugly emotion, but can it drive one to kill?

Jake is in love with Cayce, an older, best-selling author who thinks of him only as a friend. Cayce is enthralled—as is everyone else—with Garland, a gorgeous waif of a boy, famous for his eccentric clothes and an unparalleled desire to be at the center of attention. Constantly.

Jake’s discovery of something as mundane as a few over-the-counter sleeping pills pulls Speed Demon into a story of thwarted love, of a twisted triangle, and just maybe, a tale of crime and revenge from beyond the grave...

And here's a little taste of what you're in for:
...Jake never intended to kill the boy.

I know because he told me. Murder was never on his mind—never had been. What reason would he have to lie?

After all, even if it wasn't his intention, he did kill Garland. Nothing can change that.

Death doesn’t really concern itself with details like intention, you know? Regardless of whether one means to end a life or not, when someone ends up dead, it’s truly the end of the road, which is a fitting pun if you read on.

Now, if he had intended to kill this lost boy… Well, then, the murder would have been a thing of beauty—perfect in its execution, freeing the murderer from even the slightest suspicion. The kid’s death looked to everyone like an accident and, I suppose, in its own freakish way, it was.

Because, as I said, he never intended to kill him. It was the accident of poor judgment, fueled by jealousy, which caused the other accident that would end the boy’s life.

Oh, this is getting confusing! I’m sure, dear reader, that if you have the patience—and the courage—to read on, you’ll discover how even accidents can be malicious, and death, sometimes, unavoidable.

The fact that the boy’s death was over me is flattering, even if I am sorry it happened. But, as I've been known to say, on many occasions, “It's all about me, me, me.”

And this story is no exception...

BUY Speed Demon (for only $1.95--this week only!).

Two Wonderful Reviews: TRICKS and OUT ON THE NET

2011-01-06T13:06:00.002Z

When it rains, it pours. As a resident of Seattle, I know what I'm talking about. However, I digress. I woke up today to not one, but two, wonderful reviews of my two latest works.

Doug Starr at Dark Diva Reviews gave my coming-out novella Out on the Net, five stars and named it a recommended read. Doug said:

"...one of the most clever stories I have read in quite some time...At once poignant and humorous...a story which pulls at the heart strings, transcends sexuality and gender, and resonates within the hearts of anyone who has discovered something about themselves later in life..."

Read the whole Dark Divas review here.

And George Seaton, at Out in Print Queer Book Reviews, had this to say about my stripper-bar set love story, Tricks:

"This is a love story. This is a story that explores the darkest depths of mendacity and greed that feed off the dreams of a young man yearning for a break against the hard knocks life has handed him. This is a story of two men from disparate realms of experience who, in the end, find their saving graces in the simple gift of love, of caring perhaps more for the other than they do for themselves."

Read the whole Out in Print review here.

My gratitude to the publications and reviewers, George Seaton and Doug Starr. You both made my day!

Buy Out on the Net.

Buy Tricks.

The Blue Moon Cafe Gets Honorable Mention in the Rainbow Awards

2010-12-12T13:54:00.002Z

Congratulations to all the winners and honorable mentions in Elisa Rolle’s 2010 LGBT Rainbow Awards. The contest is held annually by Italian reviewer Elisa Rolle to recognize outstanding achievement in GLBT romance.

One of the things that sets the Rainbow Awards apart is that there are no entry fees. No one is paid for judging. It's simply about making note of the best stories this year.

I'm proud to say that my werewolf book, The Blue Moon Cafe, was given an honorable mention in the Paranormal/Horror Category.

Find the full list here.

So I Wrote a Romance Called TRICKS

2010-11-04T13:17:00.001Z

My latest novel is now available. Read to the end to find out how you can win your own free, signed copy of Tricks, delivered right to your door personally...by me...in a leather jock strap. Well, that last part isn't true, but I do ship first class.

This book is different.

Yes, boys and girls, this is my first full-length gay romance, an endearing little opposites-attract tale about a male stripper in a sleazy gay bar in Chicago's Boystown and the nerd who falls for him. Those of you in Chicago might recognize the bar that inspired me.

"What are you? Getting soft? A love story...really?" You might be wondering. Well, Tricks does have my own distinctive and dark touches, so I hope you'll give the book a chance and see how I make a gay love story wholly my own.

Here's the synopsis from the back cover:
Tricks can mean many things: sex partners, deceptions, even magic. In Rick R. Reed searing love story, it means all three.

Arliss is a gorgeous young dancer at Tricks, the hottest club in Chicago's Boystown. Sean is the classic nerd, out of place in Tricks, but nursing his wounds from a recent break-up. When the two spy each other, magic blooms.

But this opposites-attract tale does not run smooth. What happens when Arliss is approached by one of the biggest porn producers in the business? Can he make his dreams of stardom come true without throwing away the only real love he's ever known? And will this question even matter if the mysterious producers realize their dark intentions?

And here's a little taste:
Arliss had everything he needed right in front of him for that night's performance-hardhat, check, steel-toed boots, check, tool belt, check, black mesh thong with pouch for his rather prodigious endowment, big check. Yes, Arliss was just about ready for his turn on the stage at Tricks, located in Chicago's infamous Boystown neighborhood, at its epicenter on the corner of Belmont and Halsted. He also had before him a tall tumbler of Stoli vodka with just a whisper of cranberry juice cocktail in it for color, and a half-empty pack of Marlboro Ultralights. The latter two items helped the twenty-one-year-old calm himself before a performance, and the vodka in particular went a long way toward reducing backstage jitters.

He lit up a cigarette and regarded himself through the smoke. The lights in the crowded dressing room, which he shared with the other eight or so exotic dancers, were unforgiving. Fluorescent did little to hide any imperfections like rings under the eyes, reddened noses from too much partying, and, for those on their way out of the club, track marks on the arms. But Arliss didn't have to worry about signs of drug abuse showing up on his person. He had learned to just say no a long time ago, in a manner that he preferred not to dredge up, at least not now, when he was trying to put himself in a cheerful, high-energy mode.

The face that looked back at him was young, handsome, and vital. Arliss had a shock of white blond hair that stuck up in a manner reminiscent of rocker Billy Idol back in his glory days, before Arliss was even born. Both ears sported piercings-from one a single razor blade, cast in sterling, dangled; from the other, three hoops crawled up the side of his ear, growing smaller as they ascended. Arliss had full lips, sharp cheekbones, a cleft in his chin, and the most piercing ice blue eyes in the Midwest (or so he had been told). The only thing that marred his nearly perfect face was a gap between his front teeth, which he comforted himself by saying that the space gave him character. Cigarette clenched between his teeth, he struggled into his costume, ending by stuffing his dick into the pouch that protruded from his black thong. His member stuck out in such a way that invited grasping hands, which is what Arliss wanted, as long as there was cash in those hands to stuff the thong even more fully.

Attired in a costume that would make the construction worker from the Village People look demure, Arliss turned in front of the mirror to ensure he was the perfect fantasy specimen of pornographic machismo. He was grateful he had added the angel wing tattoo to his back and the snakes that twisted around each bicep. And the one on his chest, the tiny heart with the name "Helena" in it, always brought a lump to his throat-or a splash of bile to the back of it, depending on his mood and how forgiving he felt.

But now was not the time for being sentimental! Arliss was glad for the tattoos because they added a bit of manliness to his six-foot-two inch frame that held only 160 pounds in weight. He was what the older men at Tricks referred to as a twink and, thankfully, was a desirable commodity in some circles.
He set the cigarette down in a tin ashtray and took a swig of vodka. He could feel as much as hear the heavy bass of the techno music playing in the bar and knew that Antonio, a Puerto Rican dude with a shaved head and heavy stubble, was probably just about finished with his set, which meant his boxing ensemble cluttered the small stage.

Arliss would come out, dance briefly and flirtatiously with Antonio, and then have the stage to himself. He didn't know how he did it, night after night, but somehow he managed. He had always been the shyest boy in Ruskin, Florida, where he had grown up. If they could see me now... Well, if they could see me now, they'd probably still call me a fag and try to beat the crap out of me. Once again, my dear, now is not the time for sentimentality. He took another swig of vodka, draining the glass and feeling the warmth of the liquor as it spread through his chest and extremities. Show time!

Arliss hurried to the door that separated the cramped dressing room from the bar proper. Tricks didn't really have a stage, although the dancers liked to think of the bar upon which they danced as one. It was Friday night and, from the burble of conversation beneath the pounding beat, sounded as though they had a good crowd. He sucked in a breath, looked down at his perfectly smooth pale skin and six-pack abs and told himself he was gorgeous.

"Don't forget to smile, Toots! You always look like some gloomy Gus out there!" Leave it to Emmett Myers, owner of Tricks and Arliss' boss, to try and unsettle him just before he went on stage.

Arliss flashed the man a big, Farrah Fawcett smile. If the prissy older man with the pencil moustache recognized it as fake, he gave no indication.

"There! That's what they like to see! For heaven's sakes, you have to remember that if they think you're having a good time, they'll have a good time. And a good time means more money for all of us."

Arliss listened as the song wound down, morphing into yet another bass beat that signaled him it was time to stride out through the door, amble across the crowded room, ignore the covert feels and pinches he got as he made his way to the bar, and climb up on it to join Antonio in front of the crowd.

This moment, just before he went out, was always almost surreal. He felt as though he became someone else when he opened that door, or more properly, that his everyday world changed when he opened it. It was kind of like when Dorothy opened the door when she touched down in Oz and saw the color-filled Munchkinland, but instead of munchkins, his world was populated with bitter old queens, alcoholics, and trolls trying to put some oomph into their libidos by staring at boys young enough to be their sons.

"Get out there, gorgeous! Shake your groove thing!" Emmett cackled and placed a hand on Arliss' back to propel him forward. Just as much to get the hand off his back as to get to the stage, Arliss threw open the door, plastered on a big smile, threw his shoulders back and strode through the crowd, keeping his eye on the narrow strip of bar that would, for the next fifteen minutes, be his stage.

And yes, here is how you can win a copy in three easy steps:
1. Leave a comment, along with an e-mail address so I can get in touch with you if you win.
2. Help me spread the word about Tricks. Retweet or post news of Tricks and today's blog on your Twitter or Facebook account or just drop your reader friends an e-mail about it. This part is honor system but I will be spot checking.
3. Subscribe to this blog, using the link on the right.

Note: To enter the contest, you must do so at my official blog at http://rickrreedreality.blogspot.com/
Do not enter on Amazon, Goodreads, or Facebook.

I will announce the winner on Sunday morning.

Don't want to wait? Click on Tricks anywhere in this blog and it will take you to the publisher's website, where you can buy an e-copy direct from them or be linked to Amazon to purchase the paperback. Or buy a Kindle version here.

Five Tombstones for THE BLUE MOON CAFE!

2010-08-16T14:03:00.001+01:00

Paranormal review site Bitten by Books gives THE BLUE MOON CAFE five tombstones and calls it a "luscious dark chiller" and "a deliciously horrifying adventure."

Read the whole review here.

Synopsis

Someone—or something—is killing Seattle’s gay men.

A creature moves through the darkest night, lit only by the full moon, taking them, one by one, from the rainy city’s gay gathering areas.

Someone—or something—is falling in love with Thad Matthews.

Against a backdrop of horror and fear, young Thad finds his first true love in the most unlikely of places—a new Italian restaurant called The Blue Moon Cafe. Sam is everything Thad has ever dreamed of in a man: compassionate, giving, handsome, and with brown eyes Thad feels he could sink into. And Sam can cook! But as the pair’s love begins to grow, so do the questions and uncertainties, the main one being, why do Sam’s unexplained disappearances always coincide with the full moon?

Get your copy here.

NEW RELEASE: ON THE EDGE A Collection of Gay Erotic Romance from Rick R. Reed!

2010-07-28T01:15:00.004+01:00

I'm proud to announce the release of my collection, On the Edge from Amber Allure (the LGBT imprint of Amber Quill Press). This book is especially for you if you're one of those people who just doesn't cotton to the idea of an e-book and prefers the look, smell, and experience of a real print book. On the Edge collects eight of my stories that were previously only available in electronic format before. Check out the descriptions of each story below (titles are hyperlinked so you can go to their original publisher page, where you can read excerpts, see reviews, and a more detailed synopsis).

Get your copy of On the Edge from Amazon here.

Synopsis
In Rick R. Reed’s haunting, mesmerizing, suspenseful, and romantic world, his gay male characters live on the edge, often literally as well as figuratively. In this new collection, you’ll take a wild ride with some of literature’s most unforgettable characters. Along the way, you’ll be moved—to tears, to laughter, to uneasiness, and sometimes, to arousal. As Bette Davis once said, “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.”

Previously available only in electronic format, these eight stories of Gay Erotica and Romance have now been combined for a paperback edition! Included are the tales...

Superstar  A story about promises made, promises broken, and dreams unfulfilled. Yet ultimately, it’s about realizing that love can come along when one least expects it—and in the unlikeliest of places.

Through The Closet Door  A tale that brings to painful life the consequences of coming out of the closet when you’re married. Gregory’s mask is slipping, pulled down by the allure of a handsome neighbor and the demands of a desire that only gets louder the more he tries to quiet it.

Riding The El At Midnight  When the gorgeous and twisted Mark boards a northbound el train, he is looking for love in all the wrong places. Finding Julio aboard that same train, Mark thinks, is the answer to his dreams. But are his dreams nightmares?

Fugue  Slip into the dungeon playroom of a master and his boy. But in the boy’s mind, a dream state takes him places the master could not imagine...places where the established order turns upside down.

Incubus  Two men, one predator, and a violent crime equal a journey into hellish nightmare territory. This tale merges horror with a tragic love story and the result is...chilling.

Man-Amorphosis  I awoke one morning from uneasy dreams to find my penis had transformed itself into a vagina... Thus begins the story of a very unusual day...

No Place Like Home  Trannies and Psychos and Bears...oh my! Burl discovers—in a hilariously bizarre quest—that there really is no place like home.

Pottery Peter  One long hot summer. Three gorgeous men. And a burning triangle set down in the middle of a factory filled with sweaty men with bulging biceps.

Forest of Corpses

2010-06-30T05:24:00.000+01:00

Spider

Nobody died today.

That's a good day in my books, but I knew it wouldn't last.

Westside had a major hard on for Eastside. War was brewing. Fideo and his WS crew shot up the East Beach, then a week later, on Memorial Day, did the same at a market on Anacapa Street. That time their aim had improved. They dropped two Eastside bangers and a ten-year-old boy out buying milk for his grandmother. Both OGs made it. The kid didn't. Chalk it up to collateral damage from the drug war.
We canvassed the market and caught a couple of witnesses who saw the whole thing. So we nailed Fideo along with two members of his posse, and tossed their cholo butts in jail. Fideo lawyered up with a good uptown legal beagle, but still sat in lockup, no bail. Then another drive-by took out witness one. Suddenly our only remaining witness "made a mistake." The paperwork wasn't dry before the scrotes were back in the hood and the witness was in hiding. Fideo rode with his ese through his hood, crowing how he beat 5-0. His street creds firmly embellished by his latest exploits, he was back, and he was stronger.

And took up his business of dealing drugs, death and taxes without losing a night's sleep.

Miguel, my new partner, snapped his frustration. "How can we stop these people if no one will testify against them?"

I shrugged. "It bites, I agree. But look at it from their side. Hard to testify from a pine box."

"God will take care of them."

"Right." I rolled my eyes, making sure he couldn't see the gesture. "I'm sure Mr. Gillespie's family feel the same way." Gillespie had been witness number one, a businessman leaving a wife and two young kids behind. He told me when I interviewed him the first time he had to talk. That it wasn't right that these men could terrorize a neighborhood and get away with it. What kind of example did that set for his kids? Well, I guess his kids learned a valuable lesson there. But probably not the one their old man wanted to give. We had gone to Gillespie's funeral yesterday, per department regulations. Not surprising, no one from Westside showed or sent their condolences. Not that there was much we could have done if they had. As usual, we had no proof that put any Westside banger anywhere near the vicinity of Gillespie's untimely death. What we had were two bullets from a 9 mil that couldn't be tied to any other crimes. A clean gun for a clean hit.

There was a time when my frustration level would have surpassed Miguel's. Those days are long gone. First thing you learn on the job, leave it at the station. Taking it home with you is the surest way to give yourself high blood pressure and a date with your own duty weapon, or your cardiologist.

There was a time I used to share my world with dead people. The homicides I couldn't solve would follow me home and make me hold them in my memory. The more brutal they were, the more they clung to me, needing closure I couldn't give them.

Then Jason burst into my life, unasked and unlooked for. I hooked him up and tossed his ass in jail for the murder of a man it turned out he'd never met. A lot of people would have flipped me the bird for what I did, but Jason wasn't like that. There wasn't a vengeful bone in his perfect body. Instead, once he was released from jail, we'd gone out to dinner, ended up back at my place with my dick up his ass, and my heart in his hands. I realized then I never wanted to let this guy go. It took me months to be able to admit my feelings to myself, let alone to Jason. Then, I damn near fucked what we had up permanently when my petty jealousy turned me into a dangerous fool. It probably would have served me right if Jay had told me to fuck off when I got up the nerve to follow him to Los Angeles. He didn't, and here we are, two months later, sharing a bed and a bath, and hopefully, a future.

Sometimes my dead people still come around to stalk my dreams, but now there's an anchor to hold onto when I wake up in a cold sweat, with my heart pounding and my mouth dry with unspoken fear; there to whisper soothing words, not press me for explanations I was loathe to give anyone. Even for Jason I didn't show weakness.

He gave me back my life. So why can't I give him the one thing he wants? Because I'm a fucking coward who's afraid of losing control again? Afraid? Fuck that. Alexander Spider isn't afraid of anything. Or anyone.

The morning after Gillespie's funeral I got up before Jason. Dressing after my shower, I stood over our bed, studying him while I buttoned my shirt. Sometime during the night he had kicked his covers off exposing his delicious butt, and all I had to do was reach out and stroke the peach soft skin. I knew my touch would instantly wake him up, and I had no trouble imagining those sleepy eyes falling on me and that slow, sexy smile he only gave to me. We'd both been too tired last night to do anything but fall into bed. There was nothing sleepy about my body now. My dick pressed painfully against my briefs and I shifted, trying to ease the sudden constriction.

I knew he didn't have any classes until ten, so unlike me, he didn't have to get up at this God-forsaken hour. For one hot minute I almost gave in, ready to tumble him over onto his stomach and spread his legs, no questions, no words. It would take me two seconds to pull my cock out, another two to be inside him. It would be rough, but rough didn't bother Jason. Neither did the bareback sex we now indulged in since our last tests had given us both clean slates. Just the thought of my naked dick inside him made my balls ache and tighten. I knew he'd submit to me willingly, hell, eagerly, but a part of me always held back. When I was tempted to let go, like I knew he wanted, all I could do was see him hanging from my straps, barely conscious as I punished him for a sin he never committed. I had done us both harm that night. I was still paying for it.

I let my hand fall to my side, then with a muttered curse, spun around and left the room, carefully shutting the door behind me. Tonight, I'd make sure I wasn't too tired when we went to bed. Then I'd do it right. Something we'd both remember in a good way.

As usual, I beat Miguel in on Monday morning. I guess Bible study kept him up at night. I barely glanced at my newly assigned, wet-behind-the-ears partner when he arrived, and still managed to think black thoughts. Though I kept telling myself my former partner, now boss, Nancy Pickard hadn't deliberately assigned Miguel Dominguez, savior of sinners and sodomites alike, to me for some do-him-good-reason or, God forbid, do-me-good reason. She would never be so cruel. So far I'd kept him at arm's length, and he seemed content to read his Bible to himself during coffee breaks. But ever since we had been assigned as a team, there had been a growing furrow between his eyes that deepened every day. His brown eyes had a decidedly hornet-mad look, as though he wondered just what that brown stuff was he had landed in, and how much longer he'd have to put up with it. I'll give him one thing, he was too professional to voice his feelings aloud. Which is about the only thing that made me think this partnership might work. I didn't want to get into a pissing contest with the guy, but I was the boss here, and he'd better not challenge that.

I pulled a nine-day-old blue crime book out from under a stack of files folders and unfiled reports, and opened it to the first page. I tapped my booted foot on the scuffed linoleum floor while I studied the chrono report, which included the transcript of the original 9-1-1 call. The call that had brought out the first uniformed cops early one morning nine days ago, and marked the beginning of our, so far fruitless investigation, that had come in at oh-four-fifteen. An hysterical woman, later ID'd as Rebecca Long, had called from Milpas Market, reporting shots fired.

I flipped through the CR, the one I put together from the reports I had collected from everyone involved in the case, from the first responder who had answered the original 9-1-1 call, to the second one that had come in last night.

First officers on the scene after that first call, a rookie and his training officer, had discovered a cooling corpse in the back stall of an East Beach rest stop, where the homeless often hung out during the day. It was the first call Miguel and I had gone on together. Our third homicide to date. It was our first unsolved. The other two were down as closed, but with no convictions in sight, not very satisfactory. Not exactly an auspicious beginning.

I flipped the page. A booking photo of the old, dead black man, from a previous arrest for vagrancy, stared up at me, showing serious signs of the chronic alcohol abuse and malnutrition that marked him even then as one of the multitude of Santa Barbara's homeless. So what had possessed someone to put a pair of slugs into a man who had nothing and whose biggest offense was probably his hygiene – or lack of it? I'd probably never know what was behind this senseless killing. But I'd be happy tossing the mutt who was responsible into Pelican Bay for the duration of his miserable life.

Of course I had to find the guy first. And the problem with crimes that had no obvious motive, was there were also no obvious suspects.

I dragged a yellow legal pad over and dug a Bic out of the chipped coffee mug I used as a pen caddy. Chewing on the already battered end, and tapping my restless foot on the floor, I read through report after report, studying the crime scene photos and scene sketches, notes I had jotted, notes from Miguel and everyone we had interviewed. Finally I scanned the twenty-page autopsy report, trying to niggle out the one overlooked detail that would give me the lead I needed to clear this case. It wasn't there. Or maybe my mind couldn't focus.

Against my wishes, it kept going back to this morning's missed opportunity. I had met Jason seven months ago. After a rocky beginning, we had become lovers and, I thought, friends. Then a couple of months ago we'd taken the next step and moved in together, something I hadn't done with anyone in over five years. Something I gather Jason had never done. We were still feeling our way around that. Still in the honeymoon phase, I guess you could say. I only had to remember this morning to bring that home. I couldn't remember a time or a person who had made me feel the way Jason did. Sometimes that made me nervous. I had one failed marriage behind me. I wasn't sure I was ready for another one, even with someone as perfect as Jason Zachary. I also knew there was no way I was ready to send him away. By this time I sported a low grade, painful erection as I thought about the sounds he made with my prick down his throat, or pumping up his ass. I shifted in my chair, trying to give space to my swelling dick. I tried to concentrate on the words and images in front of me, using the tip of the pen to guide my wandering eyes over the pages of the murder book, and the excruciatingly detailed coroner's report. Hard to believe more detail could go into a man's death than he'd ever earned in his life.

My efforts to forget Jason weren't working. They rarely did.

I squinted and stared harder, as though I could force some meaning to come from the combination of words in front of me. A shadow fell between me and the nearest light source. Even before I looked up, I knew who it was.

I glared over my glasses at Lieutenant Nancy Pickard, my boss and ex-partner.

"You ever consider getting reading glasses there, Detective? Or maybe bifocals?"

"I don't need no fucking bifocals," I snapped, since the same thought had been going through my head. But that would mean admitting I was getting old, and I wasn't ready to go there. I was barely thirty-three—hardly old, right? "Did you want something, Lieutenant?"

"What are you looking at?" She leaned over to study the pages of the murder book. I leaned away from her, my arms crossed over my chest. "Which one is this?" she asked.

"The Isaac Simpson case."

"The homeless guy in the john?"

"That's the one."

"Any new thoughts on it?"

I braced my booted feet on the floor and unfolded my arms to lean toward her. "No." I tapped my chewed up pen on the page we were both staring at, the one that detailed the autopsy report for the hapless Simpson. "This might give us something." I pointed to the recording of the 9-1-1 call. "Not sure what this is yet." I filled her in on the circumstances of the call.

"Let's hear it."

I signaled Miguel to come around and join us. Once he was standing behind Nancy, I punched the on button. A scratchy smoker's voice barely identifiable as female came out of the speakers. The voice was low and indistinct. I'd have to send it down to the lab to see what they could do with the quality. But for now all three of us strained to make out the mumbled words.

"They're the devil, Momo. He didn't have to die. It wasn't right. He promises he stop them." The voice went off muttering and mumbling into incoherence. Then, "Stop them." A wail like a thousand cats being tortured made me wince and pull back. Nancy did the same. Only Miguel didn't react. His eyes narrowed when they met mine.

"Who is Momo?" he asked.

"The victim?" I said. "Isaac Simpson? Her invisible playmate?"

"Any idea who the caller was?" Nancy asked.

I shook my head. "Call came from a payphone near Milpas Market. Maybe another witness? I was going to head out there this morning." I threw another look at Miguel, who watched me without blinking. He nodded once, then spun around and returned to his desk. "You and me," I said across our desk.

Nancy looked pleased. "See that I get a report ASAP."

Since I doubted anyone higher up was breathing down her neck on this DB, this had to be personal. Face it, Mr. Isaac Simpson would barely register on any one radar in city hall. I knew for a fact none of the local news media had gone beyond a mention of the homicide on their back pages. Simpson, one of the homeless nobodies, came and went in the city's awareness.

"Will do," I said, more determined, like Nancy, to find the man's killer. I don't like it when people die in my city. I like it less when no one seems to notice, or care, about their passing.

"Well, I hate to be the one to say it, but don't get locked too tight into this one. How many others are you working on?"

I glanced over at Miguel, who I knew was still watching us and listening in on our little tête-à-tête, like any good partner would. So I directed my next question at him. "How many we on now, Miguel? Total."

"Eleven, including that one. Most ag-assaults, four rapes, one attempted rape. A failed drive-by. Only three homicides – our two drive-bys and this one."

"You wish it was more?"

"No!" He looked furious as though my question disgusted him. It was the strongest emotion I'd seen from him since we'd been partnered. He threw his hands up as if pushing me away. "How can you say that?"

"Just wondering." I threw Nancy a look and found her frowning at me. Okay, baiting my new partner wasn't cool. "I'm going to keep looking at this one for now. It is our only active homicide."

"Just don't neglect your other cases, okay?"

"We wouldn't dream of it, would we?" I directed that to Miguel.

"No, we won't, sir. We'll take care of all our cases, Lieutenant."

Nancy looked amused. "Carry on, then."

She returned to her office and shut the door. Nancy practiced an open door policy most of the time, but when it was time do the political dance with her bosses, she kept the rest of us out of the loop. For which I was very thankful. That was her game. Not mine. I threw a shrewd glance at Miguel, who watched me with that hawk-like gaze of his that looked a lot like the one I used. I wasn't too sure about the loyalties of my newest partner.

In fact, I was beginning to suspect he was a very political animal, with about as much loyalty as one, which was going to make an interesting partnership in the weeks and months ahead. How much could I trust the guy?

Nancy came out of her office. She bent down and spoke briefly to Miguel, who nodded and picked up his phone. She came around to my desk, looking pensive. She leaned toward me, her feet planted wide. Her look was grim. Had she figured out what I was thinking? Sometimes I swore my newest boss was a mind reader. Not a pleasant thought.

She jerked her head at her office. "Can we talk?"

I followed her in and watched pensively as she shut the door.

"Something up, Lieutenant?"

"You could say that," she said, then fell silent. She stared at the stack of papers on her desk beside the phone that could connect her to every division and half of the city's emergency services, if the need arose.

I waited, standing at parade rest. Watched her scribble a signature on a form and shove the paper into her out basket. I waited some more. Finally I glanced at my watch. It was nearly four-thirty.

Even though I swore she wasn't looking at me, she saw where my eyes went. She instantly straightened. "Got a hot date, Spiderman?"

"Jesus, didn't I ask you not to call me that?"

She fiddled with the papers on her desk, shuffling them in some order that didn't mean anything to me, but must have been important to her. She put them back down decisively. "And don't I usually ignore you?"

I knew Jason would be getting home from UCSB soon, and would be getting supper on in anticipation of my arrival. He might be getting something else on too, like the skin-tight leather pants I had recently purchased for his last birthday, along with some other gear, so maybe I was going home to a hot date. Not that I'd ever tell her that. There are definitely some things your boss should not know.

"What I've got is an empty stomach," I said to fill the silence and keep her talking. "And I have a yen to fill it."

"Gotcha. I just got off the phone with the University. They're looking for a guest lecturer to give a series on crime scene processing for their first year criminal justice students. They asked me to see if any of my men might be interested."

"And you thought of me? Why?"

"Since Robertson retired, you're my most experienced detective. There's Paige, but he's more of a gang expert. These people want an all around investigative pro. I agreed to find someone. Plus, I thought it would be good PR for us."

It never hurt to have someone in the public sector look positively on our little corner of the world. I could see where her devious mind was going. But did I want to follow it?

"Me, teach?" I thought about it and frowned. "Me?"

"You're personable, behind that stone wall you put up to keep us all out. And you're professional. Both good qualities. Besides," she grinned, relaxing into the Nancy I had partnered with for so many years before her promotion, "Don't you want to influence the next crop of LEOs?"

"Uh..."

"Good. I'll let them know you'll meet with their department head tomorrow to plan out your curriculum. I'm sure she has some ideas she wants to run by you."

"Oh does she? Lucky me." I knew it was a done deal and sighed. I guess I was going to be a teacher. "God help us all."

I was thoughtful on my way home. It wasn't something I would have sought out, but now that it was in my lap, so to speak, I was intrigued by the idea of teaching.

By the time I pulled into the drive behind Jason's Honda, there was a bounce in my step. Jason was in the kitchen, putting the finishing touches on chicken mole, grilled potatoes and asparagus. My boy had gotten a lot more adventuresome in the kitchen of late. I patted the soft mound of my belly and knew I was going to have to do something about that. Maybe start spending more time at the station gym, or join Jason on his numerous walks through the back hills above our place.

I came up behind him, took a moment to admire his trim ass encased in hot black leather, remembering what it had looked like this morning, and slipped my hand between his legs. I grabbed his balls at the same time as I pressed my lips on his neck. He smelled of herbs and apple and tasted just as good. A pulse jumped like a skittering mouse under my lips, and I licked him.

He jumped and spun around, holding a potholder in one hand, his face suffused with a flush.

"Alex! I didn't hear you."

"Good." I hauled him against my chest and went in for another taste. My own pulse thundered as our tongues tangled in a deeply satisfying kiss. We were both breathing hard when I broke away. "So, when are you going to feed me, boy?"

"Twenty minutes."

I swatted his butt. "Good. Time enough for a shower."

Dinner was excellent, as I'd come to expect. Jason had selected a fine Syrah for our dinner wine. We both had one glass. I no longer overindulged; a promise I had made to myself and Jason in the aftermath of that violent explosion fueled by jealousy and alcohol. It was hard enough controlling the jealousy, I didn't dare add booze to the mix anymore. Jason always followed my lead in everything we did.

I spent most of the meal with a swollen dick pressed against my thigh. The remainder of the evening we lounged on the leather sofa in front of the TV, watching Lauren Bacall films. Jason nestled, half asleep under my arm, his hand firmly planted between my legs as Bacall and Bogart found their way in a hostile world.

Over a Mexicali beer I ordered him to get, I told him about my offer.

"You're going to be a teacher?"

"Tweed jacket, corn cob pipe and all."

He grinned up at me from the shelter of my arms. "Sexy professor."

"You think?"

"I know." He outlined the shape of my swelling dick though my jeans. "When do you start?"

"I go talk to someone tomorrow. I guess I'll find out then."

"I think you'd be a good teacher." He withdrew his hand and sat up. Then he dropped his first bombshell of the evening. "I'd like us to take a vacation. I'd say we both have lots to celebrate."

I had visions of Vegas or Hawaii. Sun, sand, a little gambling, hot sex. We'd never gone anywhere together. Then he dropped his second bombshell.

"I'd like to go camping. Hiking in the Rafael Wilderness area."

Hiking? Wilderness? That sounded ominous. The wildest thing I'd ever done was at the police softball game years ago between the Santa Barbara PD and the fire guys, where a few of us smuggled in flasks of whiskey, sneaking them behind the outfield bleachers, where we traded war stories between innings.

He seemed to sense my unease. I could see the eagerness on his face, the need to convince me. He really wanted this. Was I going to give it to him? "You're always telling me you want to get more active. It's great exercise."

"Yes, I suppose it is."

"Trust me. It'll be fun."

Anyone else said that and I'd scoff. I knew better than to trust anyone. But this was Jason. He looked so damned earnest. I considered what it would mean to agree. I still had doubt, so I said, "Well, I might consider it."

"At least try it for a week." His eyes were fixed on me. He only dropped his gaze when I frowned. He chewed on his lower lip.

"A week, huh? How about a weekend?"

"Weekend's not long enough to do any real hiking. We need a week at least. What can it hurt?"

At least he hadn't suggested an ocean cruise, knowing how I felt about water. I frowned. Idly, my free hand traced the outline of his ear under his shaggy hair. "Let me think about it."

He knew better than to argue with me.

"Sure," he said. His soft, sexy eyes lasered into mine. "Bed?"

We didn't make it that far. We rarely did.

Forest of Corpses

Fall Into the Night

2010-06-11T06:44:00.001+01:00

My latest novel, a science fiction is an epic adventure, featuring Captain Terik u Selhdun, commander of the Necomancer. Selhdun has known darkness all of his life. Captain of the Necromancer, the ruler of Tiamat, his ancestral home, he is coerced into taking a small group of scientists in search of the legendary birthplace of humanity. Earth -- Terra -- was lost to history during the Exodus. From the beginning trouble dogs the expedition, from a failed assassination attempt to the manipulations of a despotic Suzerain and a brutal Navy Admiral who have no intention of letting Selhdun or his mission succeed.

An excerpt:

Fall Into The Night is an epic science fiction, a journey of discovery. Here two parties who will embark on that journey meet for the first time. The Cyxers are from a matriarchal society. Everything on their planet is deadly. They live in isolation on the planet Cyx, trapped in a world they can't fix and they can't leave, hoping some day to have the means to terraform the poisonous world into someplace livable.

EXCERPT:

The tropical sky was a cloudless blue that hurt Lyssra’s eyes. She let the press of the crowd move her along the broad walkway, and tried to keep Ilesha and Benin in sight. Only when the mass dispersed and the flat walk cleared was she able to catch up to them.

Ilesha and Benin hugged the shade and she saw Ilesha rub her arms where the sun touched her. Goose bumps crowded her own skin where the heated breeze brushed against it. She had to keep reminding herself this wasn’t Cyx. The air didn’t hold anything harmful.

Groundcars and freight trams moved along orderly roads around the base of the massive Ladder that dropped from the sky. Crowds filled the grounds, spilling out of fashionable shops and restaurants that Lyssra knew were beyond her meager purse.

No matter how harmless she knew it was, the sun on her exposed skin made her want to find a shielded building to hide in. She could tell by their soft muttering that Benin and Ilesha shared her uneasiness.

She scanned the crowds. Selhdun had said he would meet them at the dirtside hotel called the Ambassador near the Ladder. She watched a group of children pass, a trio of laughing caretakers struggling to maintain order among the half dozen boys and girls. The children’s high-pitched voices filled the soft tropical air.

She heard one of them squeal, "Oh, look, Theanna, a butterfly. Can we catch it and take it back with us? "

Lyssra looked around. The hotel should be here. The sign was high enough to see over the head of the oversized man who was just climbing out of a small, three-wheeled vehicle.

A piercing scream sent a bolt of pure adrenaline through Lyssra. Spinning around, she got Ilesha’s elbow in the chest, knocking the breath out of her lungs. Ilesha batted at her when Lyssra tried to pin her arms to her side. The younger woman’s panic was contagious; Lyssra heard the high-pitched voices of children yelling nearby.

"Ilesha!"

Ilesha screamed again, and this time Lyssra saw the source of her terror. Something fluttered through the air over the children huddled beneath the protective embrace of their caretakers. It moved over their bare heads back toward Lyssra.

One of the children reached for it. Her caretaker pulled her back, hustling the group away from the Cyxers, and the multi-colored menace.

"Butterfly..." the girl said.

With a shudder Lyssra jumped back, slamming into Ilesha, the two of them going down in a heap of curses and swinging arms.

Cat-quick, Ilesha rolled and came up in a crouch, holding her carryon in front of her as she tore it open and pulled out the short-bladed knife she used in her herbal preparations. She lunged for the attacking creature, connecting instead with a man’s muscular chest. Lyssra sat up in time to see him push Ilesha to the ground and press his booted foot down on her wrist, trapping her knife arm on the hard ground.

Ilesha’s scream of rage could probably have been heard on Cyx.

Lyssra faced the newcomer. It was the oversized man she had seen earlier. He was well over two meters and heavy muscled. He raised his hairless head and met her gaze. His eyes were the oddest silver gray, reptilian in their coldness. He stared at her, ignoring the woman under his boot.

"Tell her to let it go, or I will break her arm," he said. "And if that does not stop her, I will break her neck." He spoke with an oddly accented voice.

"Who are you?" Lyssra said, looking around at the throng of faces taking in the bizarre tableau. Even the children stared; one little girl around Eleda’s age had her thumb firmly parked in her mouth while she solemnly watched. "What did you think we were doing?" she whispered to him, knowing more was going on here than she understood.

"Tell her to let it go," he said.

Lyssra watched the crowd move back as though some force pushed them. She watched a troop of whip-thin armed men she recognized as the cloned type owned by wealthy royal families pour into the gap the crowd left.

"Ilesha, do as he says," Lyssra hissed, never taking her eyes off the guards.

Ilesha released a torrent of curses that curdled the air. The outline of the giant’s boot pressed into the flesh of her wrist.

"Ilesha!"

"Pakal, let her up," another man spoke. "It’s pretty obvious she’s no assassin."

A man sat alone in the three-wheeled vehicle. Lyssra couldn’t help notice the raised tattoo on the side of his head that meant he was a Hegemon pilot, with the neurological implant linking him to a Jumpship’s computerized brain. The nearest guards formed a protective shield around him as he climbed slowly out of the vehicle. Even the bedraggled Cyxers were enclosed in the potentially deadly human ring. The man they guarded wore a sardonic half-smile on his dark, aristocratic face; and, with a sinking sensation, she began to realize just who he was.

"Ilesha." Lyssra watched her sister climb to her feet. She had to salvage something of this fiasco. "For God’s sake, give me that knife."

Lyssra heard a child sobbing loudly. When Ilesha hesitated and opened her mouth to protest, Lyssra wrenched the knife from her and would have jammed it into her own carryon but the big man’s fingers closed over her arm.

"I will take that."

Lyssra had no choice but to release the knife. She rubbed at the numb flesh of her arm when he released her.

The man in the three-wheeler never took his gaze off Ilesha, and Lyssra nearly groaned aloud. Ilesha looked back at him and tilted her head, as though taking his measure. Benin tried to put his arm around her, but he might as well have been hugging wood; Ilesha ignored him.

"What were you doing with that knife?" the stranger said to Ilesha. "You don’t look like a suicide case."

"We were being attacked..." Ilesha watched the creature that had triggered the whole thing flit away toward a bed of glossy white Ishtar’s blooms. The children and their caretakers, Lyssra noticed, were gone. Ilesha’s scowl deepened. "What the hell is that, anyway?"

"That was a butterfly," Selhdun said. "Very dangerous creatures, butterflies. You never know what they might do."

Ilesha frowned. "Why do you let them fly around then?"

Lyssra saw something pass over Selhdun’s face. He was struggling not to laugh. Unfortunately, Ilesha saw it, too.

"You’re making fun of me, aren’t you? Butterflies aren’t dangerous at all." Ilesha clenched her hands into fists. "Who the hell are you?"

"Prince Terik u Selhdun, Ogema of Tiamat, Lord of the Realm." Despite being seated, he gave the impression of bowing and clicking his heels. "And you are the delegation from Cyx?"

NEW Release! SLUGGO SNARES A VAMPIRE

2010-04-04T14:56:00.001+01:00

My latest e-book short, the funny, eerie, creepy, and slightly romantic Sluggo Snares a Vampire has just hit the shelves! This week only, my publisher is offering it at 35% off...so here's your chance to have a small taste of my work for only $1.95.

Buy Sluggo Snares a Vampire here.

Synopsis
When Sluggo cruises online chat rooms, he isn’t looking for a hook-up, he’s looking for love. But love has a way of being elusive, especially when you’re not being honest. Presenting himself as “Sir Raven,” Sluggo promises his chat room cohorts he is the “master of the night.”

And then he meets someone who challenges him—someone who claims the title, “master of the night” as his own. TepesAllure’s enigmatic and flirtatious messages to Sluggo start out as fun banter, but quickly turn to eerie disquiet.

How does TepesAllure know so much about Sluggo life? How can he know—without even a picture to go on—what Sluggo looks like? And what’s all this about an age numbering in the centuries and a curious taste for blood?

Has Sluggo snared a vampire? Or has the vampire snared him? As the night unfolds, so do the advances of TepesAllure...and even when Sluggo tries to escape, he finds that getting out is not nearly as easy as getting in.

But to make their online connection real, TepesAllure needs Sluggo to invite him in. Will Sluggo succumb to Tepes’ allure? And will the man of his dreams turn out to be a nightmare?

Excerpt
...“Honesty is my strong suit, my little lamb. I think you’d agree I look pretty good for my age, which happens to number in the centuries. Think Brad Pitt in Interview with the Vampire. Think elegance and grace. And don’t worry about gym-toned bodies and steroid-enhanced pecs, thank you very much.”

Sluggo’s hungry mind conjured up the image: this fabulous creature at his keyboard, alone in some city apartment (a high rise, where the lights of Chicago’s skyscrapers were interrupted only by the dark void that was Lake Michigan). He realized suddenly how easy it had been to sucker in these online men who found themselves one hand between their legs while the other caressed the keyboard, as Sluggo played up to their fantasies, becoming God’s gift to homos and the devil’s Tantalus to straight women. He wanted to believe it was some strange and evilly alluring Brad Pitt at the other end of their electronic connection. But what was this strange business about being centuries old?

He typed: “Methinks you’re a little too enraptured with horror cinema.”

“Horror cinema has got nothing on me, my little bespectacled piglet. Horror cinema has managed to get so few of my traditions right as to be truly laughable. But there has been one tradition, rule if you will, they’ve always succeeded in getting correct.”

Sluggo rubbed his arms. There seemed to be a sudden, odd chill in the room. He glanced at the window and saw the black night pressing against it, almost as if it was something solid and alive. He shook his head, realizing he was being silly, and made a note to check the thermostat. He returned to the keyboard, wondering about the “horror movie tradition” Tepes had mentioned. “And what would that be?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

Sluggo rolled his eyes. Of course, you can’t. That’s because there is no such tradition. “You’re quite the mystery man, aren’t you?”

“You couldn’t even begin to guess.”

Suddenly, Sluggo’s spine stiffened as another shiver washed over him. But this was no chill as the result of the temperature in the apartment lowering because of a thermostat. No, this one—Sluggo could swear—had the feel of icy fingers caressing, just barely grazing the raised bumps of his spine, like long fingernails moving down his back...

Buy Sluggo Snares a Vampire here.

Rave From RAINBOW REVIEWS for THE BLUE MOON CAFE

2010-03-21T14:29:00.001Z

Hi All,

Woke up to a great 4-star review this morning from Rainbow Reviews for my gay werewolf love story, THE BLUE MOON CAFE. In part, the review said:

"...Not only will the suspense keep the readers enthralled, but the author’s ability to bring across the terror in such vivid detail is sure to remind readers of authors like King and Koontz...."

Read the whole review here.

Check out an excerpt and get your copy here (print version should be out this week).

SYNOPSIS

Someone -- or something -- is killing Seattle’s gay men.

A creature moves through the darkest night, lit only by the full moon, taking them, one by one, from the rain city’s gay gathering areas.

Someone -- or something -- is falling in love with Thad Matthews.

Against a backdrop of horror and fear, young Thad finds his first true love in the most unlikely of places ~ a new Italian restaurant called the Blue Moon Cafe. Sam is everything Thad has ever dreamed of in a man: compassionate, giving, handsome, and with brown eyes Thad feels he could sink into. And Sam can cook! But as the pair’s love begins to grow, so do the questions and uncertainties, the main one being, why do Sam’s unexplained disappearances always coincide with the full moon?

Sneak Preview of My M/M Werewolf Tale, THE BLUE MOON CAFE

2010-02-20T14:38:00.000Z

The Blue Moon Cafe will make its debut March 7! I'm really excited about this book for several reasons:

1. It's my first werewolf novel. For 20 years, I have been writing horror, or some variation thereof, but have yet to explore this territory.

2. It's a horror story combined with a romance. More and more, my stories are taking on a romantic edge. I think that The Blue Moon Cafe combines the paranormal and romance in a way that will satisfy readers of both genres.

3. It's my first full-length novel set in my relatively new hometown of Seattle. Seattle is a great location for a werewolf book, especially a gay one...it's got a huge gay population, tremendous natural beauty, and is surrounded by mountains and forests. Hey, it's a perfect home for today's cosmopolitan werewolf.

4. It has a brilliant cover. Cover designer Trace Edward Zaber has done it again and come up with a face for my book that's not only beautiful, but compelling. Trace managed to encapsulate exactly what I wanted to get across: that this was a horror story, yes, but at its heart, it's a love story. It's a book that I hope will make a reader's heart race for many reasons.

The Blue Moon Café releases on March 7, 2010 in ebook format, with the paperback version to follow approximately two weeks later. To read the first chapter, e-mail me at jimmyfels@gmail.com and I will send it to you.

What The Blue Moon Cafe is about:

Someone—or something—is killing Seattle’s gay men.

A creature moves through the darkest night, lit only by the full moon, taking them, one by one, from the rain city’s gay gathering areas.

Someone—or something—is falling in love with Thad Matthews.

Against a backdrop of horror and fear, young Thad finds his first true love in the most unlikely of places—a new Italian restaurant called The Blue Moon Café. Sam is everything Thad has ever dreamed of in a man: compassionate, giving, handsome, and with brown eyes Thad feels he could sink into…and he can cook! But as the pair’s love begins to grow, so do the questions and uncertainties, the main one being: Why do Sam’s unexplained disappearances always coincide with the full moon?

Prepare yourself for a unique blend of horror and erotic romance with The Blue Moon Café, written by the author Unzipped magazine called, “the Stephen King of gay horror.” You’re guaranteed an unforgettable reading experience, one that skillfully blends the hottest romance with the most chilling terror…

Exclusive Excerpt
There are roads going nowhere. Huge ramps and posts holding them up that lead toward the sky, as if aliens had built them for take-off strips. They almost glow, grayish, in the shimmering light of the full moon. Surrounding them are trees, grasses, growing wild in a riot around a lily pad-flecked canal. The wind, cold this September night, rustles through the tree tops, making a sound like whispering and sending the weakest of the leaves, harbingers of fall, down to the ground.

It would be pitch and even though he has dark-adapted eyes, it would be difficult to see were it not for the moon tonight, which is glorious, a pale-faced imitator of the sun. Everything, here in the Washington Park Arboretum, is cloaked with a veil of silver. Night has become a kind of day, one that exists in black and white. The pale light and the ability to actually see along the path has brought out many wanderers in the woods. They—all of them men, all of them solitary—make restless circuits of the trails going through the woods and along the canal. They stop here and there, where a bent tree or a copse of bushes provide a kind of shelter, looking for another soul who will elevate them from their loneliness for a few minutes. Some have succeeded—condom wrappers and condoms themselves, used, litter the ground and some even hang from branches.

He also hunts…but not for the same thing. While they search for the warmth of sexual connection, hungry for the taste of cum, he looks for the coldness of destruction and the taste of blood. He lifts his snout to test the cool air and is rewarded with the smell of at least a dozen men, traversing the trails that cut through the woods of the park. He has slipped through the shadows, watching as the men exchange silent signals with one another, couple, then separate, to wander back to the parking lot. Some of them hurry, with their heads hung low, as if ashamed of what they have done. Others, shameless, walk jauntily back to their cars of their homes in the neighborhoods bordering the park, satisfied with their release.

Disgusting.

The creature pads along a trail, waiting for one of the men to break free of the others, to follow a trail perhaps down to the canal’s edge, to separate from the pack. It is the ones who stay by themselves, perhaps the ones too fearful to actually do what they came here for, that he wants. Vulnerable. Alone.
He is quick and sure when he attacks. There will be no screams to alert the others. There won’t even be a scuffle. There will be only death and feasting, silent and sure, gliding in on one of these men, unsuspecting, like a shadow. The element of surprise has always been his trump and his calling card. His stealth and razor sharp fangs will ensure a quick demise, painless for only a second or two, until blood and flesh is rendered and offered up to him like a gift.

He revels in the anticipation of the kill. He will satisfy his own ferocious hunger, in his belly for certain, but also for the elusive taste of justice. These men deserve to have something bad happen to them. Look at them! In a public place, looking to sate their perverted desires, to connect with strangers in a way that should be reserved for private, for time alone with a creature one loves and bears some commitment to…

He is an old-fashioned monster. He feels no remorse for what he is about to do. In its own way, he knows that his hunting and killing is for the common good, eradicating those who foul the world with heedless desire and warped attractions.

He pads along a trail and hops jauntily along the wooden surface of a small bridge, making not a sound. Ahead, one has separated far enough from the pack that the beast thinks he may have a chance, especially if the man is foolish enough to duck into a cluster of foliage which will shields dark couplings from passersby as close as a few feet away. He knows his al fresco meal will be over within seconds. It’s not the length of the meal that defines its quality.

From a few feet away, he pants, licking his chops, and watches the man. He is tall, clad in a pair of tight fitting jeans, boots, and a dark T-shirt, much too lightweight for this chilly night, but perfect for showing off biceps that have been pumped unnaturally large and a chest that spans super-hero width. The monster is certain that such physical dimensions make the man a desirable candidate, a kind of trophy or reward. But his bulging muscles and cocky walk are all for show; he knows there is no strength to back them up. He will be just as easy to bring down as all the rest. And like all the rest, he will not even make a sound.

He will go for the neck first.

Nominated for Best Author of 2009

2010-02-11T17:51:00.001Z

Thanks to the good taste of the folks at LoveRomances Cafe I have been nominated as the Best GBLT Author 2009. I'm very flattered by the nomination and honored to be in the incredible company of the other authors who made the nominated list.

If you're of the mind I deserve to win, why, thank you very much. I urge you to make your opinion known before the deadline of February 23.

To vote, simply e-mail dawn_roberto@yahoo.com with "LRC's "BEST OF 2009" Awards" in the subject line. If this is not in the subject it will not be counted. You are to vote from the nominee list on your pick. The list will be up in our loop files under "LRC Best of award nominees 2009". Voting rules are here. You’ll need to be logged into the LRC loop to read this message. Any entries received after the deadline will NOT be counted and automatically deleted.

NEW COVER for TALES FROM THE SEXUAL UNDERGROUND

2010-02-08T16:17:00.001Z

Tales from the Underground, my new collection of erotic fiction and non-fiction from MLR Press, is getting close to coming out...fingers crossed for March, but for sure in April. Check out the wonderful cover from artist Deana Jamroz.

FROM THE BACK COVER

I wanted to write about people who were not just out, but out there, people who lived their sexual lives in ways most of us could only imagine…and for whom the flavor vanilla had absolutely no appeal. I interviewed porn stars, prostitutes, self-proclaimed sex pigs, and delved into bizarre sexual practices. It was eye-opening, arousing, and a lot of fun (but never, never good clean fun). I also include here my favorite dirty stories. They all explore a side of life that exists not in the twilight zone, but in my favorite destination…the sexual underground.

EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT
Fill it to the Rim…Ask your mother, or any of your straight friends, to use the word “rim” in a sentence as a verb and they may be hard pressed to come up with a response. Oh sure, Mom might say, “Grandma’s lovely mixing bowl was rimmed in fleur-de-lis.” But for the most part, your straight friends probably think of the word rim as a noun.

But ask your gay brethren and you’ll come up with an entirely different response. The rim of their favorite coffee cup is probably the last thing to come to their filthy little minds when that particular three-letter word arises in conversation. “Rimming” or “tossing a salad” are just a couple of metaphors for the act known less delicately as “eating butt” or for those of a more clinical semantic bent, analingus.

But how safe is putting your tongue where the sun don’t shine? Once again, I will reiterate my claim, before I go any further, that I am not a doctor, nor have I ever even played one on TV, so what I say here should not be construed as medical advice. It’s only the results of my own feeble research into the topic that I present here, so take it with a grain of salt…or a shot of penicillin…or a hepatitis vaccination. Which brings me to my first point: hepatitis. Other than winding up with a shit-eating grin, your biggest risk when it comes to rimming is contracting hepatitis, A or B, maybe even C. Face it, butt munchers, the easiest way to get hepatitis is through fecal matter and you’re bound to come into contact with some if you go sticking your nose (and your mouth) in a loved one’s butthole, however tight, pink, hairy or beautiful that little rosebud may be. The good news here is that you can allay many of your worries by visiting your doctor and getting yourself vaccinated against the dreaded virus(es). Then you can munch away with abandon, bearing in mind that you have not been vaccinated against other nasty little critters you could pick up this way, like parasites. As with most any gestures of affection, you must weigh the risks and benefits of any such display and decide what is right for you. Keeping your nose out of others’ business is your decision, as an educated consumer.

You may be wondering about that old bugaboo we hear so much about these days: HIV. From what I’ve learned, rimming is not all that likely to give you the dreaded virus, provided you have a healthy mouth (no cuts, sores, blisters, icky gums, etc.) and he has a clean ass free from any sores, rips or cuts. We won’t even get into felching here.

I guess when it comes to tossing a salad, cleaning the kitchen, or whatever fanciful term you choose to dress up your taste for butt with, the key words are common sense and caution.

So, dear ones, I close with two clichés: bottoms up! And bon appetit!

DEADLY VISION Now Available in E-Book

2010-01-27T13:41:00.002Z

For all of you Kindle and other e-book readers out there, I am pleased to announce my print novel, Deadly Vision is now available in a brand new e-book edition from Bristlecone Pine Press.

Click here to get your copy.

Synopsis
What If You Suddenly Became Psychic and Could Stop Two Cold-Blooded Killers?

What if...No One Believed You?

Small-town single mom Cass D'Angelo's life changes when a thunderstorm sweeps into her small Ohio River town. Cass must venture out in it to hunt for her son, seven-year-old Max. Lightning strikes a tree near her and a branch to the head knocks her unconscious. When Cass awakens a couple days later, she sees into the deepest secrets of those around her. Worse, some teenage girls have gone missing, and Cass sees their grisly fates. The discovery opens the door to a whole new life. The police are suspicious. The press wants to make her a celebrity. And the killers are desperate to know how she found their carefully concealed grave. Cass finds an ally in Dani Westwood, a local reporter. The two women begin to probe into the disappearances/murders and start to forge a romance. When Cass's little boy, Max, disappears, Cass must race against the clock to find him...before it's too late.

Reviews

From Gregg Olsen, New York Times Best-Selling Author

Horror fiction's most original voice knows how to spin a tale that makes a reader double check the door locks and windows. It is at once smart and twisted.

From Victor J. Banis, author of Longhorns

Rick R. Reed moves to the head of the graveyard with this bone-chilling story of a reluctant psychic, a pair of maniacal killers, and the slaughter of innocence. Fiendishly good!

Excerpt

The Summitville Paper was nothing much. It never had been—reporting on the lives of some 15,000 citizens filled usually no more than twenty or thirty pages. The national news occupied the front page and maybe continued on to the second. The remainder was taken up by advertising, editorials about such things as high school activities and earth-shattering decisions like whether local merchants should continue to stay open late on Thursday nights, and reporting who had gotten married, divorced, arrested, been involved in automobile accidents, or admitted to the emergency room of Summitville City Hospital. There was a comics page and a crossword puzzle, sometimes a syndicated movie review. If someone wanted something meatier, they purchased the Pittsburgh paper.

But still, Cass was more than a little intrigued when a nurse’s aide brought her that morning’s edition. It had obviously already been read, clumsily folded, the crossword puzzle attempted. But Cass could count on one hand the number of times she had been celebrated enough to make its pages: her birth, when she had been on the homecoming court in high school (a Carrie-like fluke...Cass had already been deep into her first crush on another girl and hadn’t even known why she had accepted Tommy Nevins’ invitation), when she had given birth to Max, and when she had sprained her ankle and had been admitted to the emergency room.

And here she was on the front page. There was no picture, but the headline was identification enough. Cass had assumed that when people got hit so hard in the head it knocked them unconscious for hours, they eventually died. But, obviously, that wasn’t true, because here she was, feeling better, actually, with every passing moment. The article gave credit to quick action by the Summitville Fire Department in saving the “local woman’s” life.

“We were on the scene immediately,” paramedic John Fore was quoted as saying, “and were able to restore the woman’s breathing within a couple of minutes.” Cass smiled, thank God for that. She went on to read how she had been rushed to the hospital and was now in stable condition.

Cass was just about to put the paper aside when another article caught her eye. “Teenager Reported Missing,” by Dani Westwood. It wasn’t so much the headline that got her attention, but the picture of the young girl beneath it. Pretty. Long blonde hair. And disturbingly familiar.

Even though Summitville was a small town, the girl’s name, Lucy Plant, didn’t ring any bells. Perhaps Cass had waited on her at the Elite, the diner where she worked. But still, no specific recollection came back. Cass couldn’t visualize the girl sitting at the counter, nor at one of the booths.

And yet she looked so familiar, as if she were someone Cass was friends with, or even a relative.

Cass scanned the story. The girl had been reported missing by her mother yesterday afternoon, just before the storm that had caused such a turn in Cass’s own life.

There were no clues. The girl, at least according to her mother, could not possibly have been a runaway. “Lucy’s a good girl,” Karen Plant had told Summitville police officer Myron Briggs. “She wouldn’t even go down the block to visit a friend without telling me first.”

The last time anyone had seen Lucy Plant was when her mother looked outside the living room window. Lucy had been playing with her Barbie dolls on the front lawn.

Cass closed her eyes. She remembered, suddenly, the storm coming, and not knowing where Max was. She sympathized with the girl’s mother and the panic she must have felt when she couldn’t locate her daughter.

A ceiling fan. Beneath her closed lids, Cass saw a ceiling fan. She didn’t know why. She didn’t own one herself, and the one in her parents’ living room was an entirely different model from this one, which was white, with a plain globe. Her parents’ fan had four frosted-glass light fixtures and faux wood blades.

Cass kept her eyes closed, watching the ceiling fan whirl, its blades blurring and becoming singular: there was something wrong with the fan. It didn’t work quite right.

Cass felt nauseated and opened her eyes. Her face was glazed with sweat. Her stomach churned and she was afraid she would vomit. Why was seeing a ceiling fan so disturbing? Or was this some sort of aftershock, an effect of her accident in the woods near her house?

Cass didn’t think so.

She glanced down at the face of Lucy Plant and sucked in some air. “Oh my God,” she whispered, “she’s dead.”

The smell of the Ohio River, fishy and damp, suddenly came to her, even though her hospital windows were hermetically sealed and the river was a good four or five blocks away. Why had she said Lucy was dead?

What did she know about it?

She closed her eyes again and saw a blinking light: red.

What did it mean?

Part of her wanted to close her eyes again, to see if more of the vision would come to her; part of her dreaded ever closing her eyes again. Where was this coming from? It’s just aftereffects, Cass, she told herself. You suffered a blow to your head, brain-jarring. That’s all.

She lay back on the pillows. When she closed her eyes again, she saw the blinking red light and a shadowy figure behind it: a woman’s head. The image, for no objective reason, was horrifying.

Cass sat up in bed, heart pounding. “No,” she said loudly, then whispered, “no.”

She forced herself to breathe deeply. She looked down at Lucy Plant’s calm, smiling face again: the straight blonde hair, the kind someone more romantically inclined would refer to as “flaxen.” The wide eyes, too big for her little-girl face, but which would someday be beautiful. The dusting of freckles across the bridge of her nose. The chipped front tooth.

Cass felt her eyes brim with tears, a lump in her throat. “So innocent,” she whispered, rocking back and forth in the bed, unaware that she was even moving. “So innocent. What a waste.” She smelled the river again, and when she closed her eyes once more, she had another vision: the brown murky water of the Ohio River, its tree-lined shores and...and...

Cass bit her lip so hard she tasted blood.

A freshly dug grave.

Cass opened her eyes and batted at her own face, as if she could physically remove the odd imagery. She didn’t want to see these things. It was like a dream, a nightmare, but she wasn’t sleeping.

The images were so vivid—the knowledge so certain.

Lucy Plant wasn’t coming back.

Her gaze fell upon a line of type in the news story about the girl’s disappearance. Her mother was making a plea. “Please, if anyone knows anything about my daughter...if anyone has seen her, please, please, let us know. All we want is to know that she’s safe. No. All that we want is for her to be home again, where she belongs. Her little brother misses her. I miss her. Her father...we all do. Please, if you know anything about our girl, come forward.”

And Cass wondered what she should do. She visualized herself down at Summitville police headquarters, telling them she knew something about the girl’s disappearance. “Yes, I had a vision. The girl is dead and she’s buried near the river. I saw a ceiling fan and a blinking red light, like on a video camera.”

She would be treated with understanding and pity. Scorn and laughter behind her back. The police would call some mental hospital in Pittsburgh.

But what could she do?

She did know something about Lucy Plant. She was sure of it. She wished she didn’t, but there it was.

Cass flung the newspaper to the floor and forced herself to look out the window, where the tree-covered hills of West Virginia stared dumbly back at her, much as they stared dumbly at the shallow grave Cass was certain this poor young girl was buried in.

Footsteps. A child.

Cass sighed with relief. Max.

“I wanna see Mama!” he yelled.

And her mother was telling him to slow down.

It was the real world. Cass wondered if she’d ever be part of it again.

Snappy new cover for ON THE EDGE!

2010-01-25T15:59:00.003Z

I woke up this morning to the cover for On the Edge, my forthcoming (summer 2010) collection of gay erotic romance. As always, cover designer at Amber Allure, Trace Edward Zaber, has done an amazing, eye-catching job. The book will be a trade paperback and will contain eight of my hottest, and most romantic tales, previously only available in e-book format:

Incubus
Riding the El at Midnight
Pottery Peter
Through the Closet Door
Fugue
MANamorphosis
No Place Like Home
Superstar

Leave me a comment below and let me know what you think!

Shooting Your Child

2010-01-17T14:40:00.002Z

Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot
it.
- Truman Capote

A statement like that makes a reasonable person gasp. The idea of "taking a child out in the back yard and shooting it" is such an arresting and shocking image that it takes one's breath away.

But if you're a writer--or anyone who creates--you might understand. First off, to say that Capote had a flair for the dramatic would be an understatement. In life as well as in his writing, he loved to push buttons, which is probably why he's remembered as much for who he was as much as for what he wrote. But Capote's point, about the sadness and loss a creative person feels at the end of a project is a lot like a death. A death that you bring about by your own hand.

I understand the quote because I feel a sense of loss and despair when I write the words, "the end." For me, who rarely writes a series, it is as if I have effectively killed off my characters. More prosaic people in my life think I'm crazy when I say that my characters come to life for me when I'm writing a book and that they often surprise me with what they do or say. Other writers--for the most part--understand.

For me, writing a book is all about taking a journey with the characters I have created. In the course of that trip, I nurture them. I love them (even the bad ones...and as many parents might attest, sometimes you love the bad ones the most). I don't always see it as me giving them life, but them giving something to me--surprises, emotions, a better understanding of not only them, but myself. They become dear to me, real to me.

When I finished my novel Deadly Vision, I asked my friend Mary, who was an early reader of the book, to give me her opinion on it. In the course of our conversation, I told Mary about that sense of loss I felt now that my characters' journeys were over and how much I missed them. She laughed and said that maybe I should "host a tea party" for my "little friends." She didn't quite get it. Or maybe she did. One of the best tests of friendships is sometimes the ability to be mean with each other and get away with it. But I digress.

The point is, when I get to the end of a book, it's not a cause for celebration, it's an occasion for mourning. Because, to use Capote's rather melodramatic analogy, I have taken my offspring out in the backyard and shot them. They are gone and for me, they won't be back. Once a work is published, I never reread it. And maybe that's why, because when I'm done, I'm done. And those people I came to know so well are gone forever, like dead loved ones. It's bittersweet to revisit their world.

Call me fickle, but after a suitable period of mourning, I find comfort in the arms of new friends, new characters and seldom look back on those I've shot. Heartless bastard.

THE BLUE MOON CAFE Gets a New Cover

2009-12-31T13:29:00.001Z

It's always with some trepidation that I approach what a cover artist has come up with for a book of mine. After all, this is the face of my baby. I want it to be beautiful. I also want it to be compelling because I know it's a big, fat lie when people say, "Don't judge a book by its cover." In whatever context they mean it, they can and do. The cover helps sell a book almost, if not as much, as what's on the interior.

With the cover artist I work with at Amber Quill Press, Trace Edward Zaber, I am not as afraid when I get that e-mail telling me a cover design is ready. Trace is a great cover artist and I am usually over the moon with what he comes up with for my work. We've worked together on enough books that I hardly have to give him much suggestion or direction on what I hope to see. We're in sync.

The cover for my upcoming novel, The Blue Moon Cafe, is no exception. Trace managed to encapsulate exactly what I wanted to get across: that this was a horror story, yes, but at its heart, it's a love story. It's a book that I hope will make a reader's heart race for many reasons.

And it's appropriate that I'm sharing this with you today, because tonight is a blue moon, the first in a decade.

I'd love to know what you think of the cover. Please feel free to let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

What The Blue Moon Cafe is about:

Someone—or something—is killing Seattle’s gay men.

A Stellar Review for SUPERSTAR

2009-12-08T14:51:00.001Z

Rainbow Reviews gave a stellar review of my rock star love story, SUPERSTAR, on their site recently.

In part, they said:

"'This July day is a stunning one, clear, sunny, low humidity and a temperature in the mid 70s ... It's a lovely day to commit suicide.' This statement is a wonderful scene setter. Such deft phrasing is maintained throughout this short story, making it a joy to read...This was a most thought-provoking story, rich in emotion and humanity. I expected it to be mostly depressing, but, although it had its sad moments, the tale was uplifting. I know it will remain long in my memory."

Read the rest of the review here.

Read an excerpt and a synopsis and get your copy here.

On Writing and Its Stigmatisms

2009-12-02T22:53:00.002Z

Not too long ago, I had a conversation with someone in a different country and the question of occupations arose. "I'm a writer," I replied. The response was a bit of a shock to me: "That's not a real job." What he meant was "that's not a job with a W-2, regular biweekly paychecks, and some security". It reminded me of something my mother once said. Upon telling her aunt she wanted to be a writer, she was told, "Why, that's a great idea! All you have to do is sit there and type up something and get paid for it!"

Both extremes have their points... yet neither gives you a true picture of what being a writer really is. it's grueling research, back-story writing, drafting, and a billion other things... all penciled into regular life with the hopes that someone, somewhere will recognize it as "worthy of publication" and hand you over a meager farthing for your toils. Unless you're a Stephen King, you're lucky to make minimum wage.

Let's face it. Writing is hard work (though maybe not physically) and while many people wish to do it, few follow through with the daunting task of finishing a book. No matter what your topic or genre, it's rough out there. Critics can be downright cold-hearted. Being a nobody can land you in front of a dozen padlocked doors. You're the new kid in school, trying to find a few pals and a click that accepts you.

From my own experience, being a nonfiction writer comes with its own set of stigmas and opinions. There are those who feel you're not a "real writer". After all, you're just regurgitating someone else's work, right? Well, not exactly. You're researching like a fiend, pulling together resources and information to create an original work without saying what others already have. But unlike fiction, you have to check, double check, and triple check your sources, separating opinion from concrete truth. All this and it has to be in your own words. Believe me, it can be a nightmare.

The hardest pill for me to swallow was opening up the first copy of my book, Queer Hauntings, and seeing "Compiled by Ken Summers" glaring back at me. Compiled? Is that how some people view nonfiction? You're just gathering someone else's work and tossing it into your own binding? I can't count how many booksellers I had to talk to and explain that I wasn't the editor. Each chapter was my own work, not copied verbatim from elsewhere. After slaving away on a breakneck three-month deadline, I wanted people to know that a lot of hard work went into my first "official" book (I say that because, I self-published a small book of local interest prior to finding an actual publisher for a book of wider interest).

For all writers, fiction and nonfiction, our work is our baby. We put everything into what we create and send it out into the world, hoping that it can walk on its own two feet and someone will appreciate what we did. It's a branch of our own self, a piece of who we are. We might get a little sensitive at the words and criticisms we hear, but it comes from being that protective parent. No one wants a product of their labors to be torn apart, nitpicked, or belittled. Still, it comes with the territory.

So, is it worth it? Is venturing forth to write the next novel or biography a wise idea given the strong probability that there will be negativity to endure? Without a doubt, yes. Bad comes with good in every aspect of life. For every jibe, there's a pat on the back waiting. Just a simple "thank you" from a reader at a book signing can make all the not-so-pleasant obstacles seem unimportant. A wise person once told me, "Don't let the music die within you." Good books are only written when the creators have the courage to take the leap and let their words be heard.

SUPERSTAR Releases Today!

2009-11-15T13:03:00.001Z

Everything I write affects me emotionally. But there are some stories that do this more than others. Superstar is one such story. Based on the unrequited-groupie-love-song that both Karen Carpenter and Bette Midler made famous, Superstar is a rarity for me: a pure love story about a young man falling for a cad of a rock star.

He told him he loved him. He told him he'd be back.

It's also about the resiliency of life and love and how both can surprise us at the most unlikely of times.

It's the first story I've written that's set in my new home, Seattle and you'll get glimpses of the beauty of the city and the Pacific Northwest as you join my main character on the 180-foot high Aurora Bridge, also known as the "suicide bridge." It's here where Superstar begins and ends as my main character, Leon, reminisces about his love for a grungy rock superstar before taking a fatal plunge. But someone is waiting and watching, and suicides don't always go off as planned...

Hope you'll check out the story, available only in ebook. You can pick up a copy here.

Synopsis
When Leon first saw him singing in a dive bar, he was mesmerized. But he didn’t know he’d be going home with the dangerously sexy lead singer that night. He couldn’t have predicted he’d fall in love. But then, Leon never expected his love to be reciprocated. Yet the hot singer with the gravely voice told Leon he loved him; told him he’d come back.

So, why, three years after that fateful night, is Leon perched at the edge of a bridge, ready to make a fatal leap?

Superstar is the story of a groupie and the rock star he loves. It’s the tale of a man on the edge, both literally and figuratively...and it’s a timeless story of love found and lost lost, all set to a driving rock beat.

Superstar is about promises made, promises broken, and dreams unfulfilled. And, ultimately, it’s about realizing that love can come along when one least expects it—and in the unlikeliest of places...

Excerpt
...I closed Olive’s that night. It wasn’t so much the crowd, or the beer, or even the cute allegedly straight boy in the cargo shorts and Cold Play T-shirt who made eyes at me throughout the night.

No. It was you.

And your music. Back then, you were just the lead singer in a band called Voiles and I was mesmerized by both your look and your sound. A bass guitar and a drummer backed you up, and if I passed either of them on the street today, I would not recognize them. For me, you stood all alone on that tiny plywood stage with a black curtain behind you. When that incredible, melodic, craggy voice emerged, it was as if the physical confines of the room disappeared. I could see only you…and what a view that was. Your tousled auburn hair, streaked through with gold, practically obscured your face. Your rail-thin body, packed into skinny jeans and a Ramones T-shirt, was like some post punk boy’s fantasy. And when you jerked your head to get the hair out of your face, the motion revealed a chiseled face, dark chocolate eyes, and a look that seemed both faraway and incredibly sad.

It made me want to take you in my arms.

I suppose that’s the effect you were after. I hate to think that the mournful gaze and the counter-culture, retro rock star clothes were calculated, just another part of the act as much as the microphone on its stand, the drum kit, the lights, the amps, the electrical cords.

I hate to think that.

But it wasn’t just your look that caught me, entrapping me in a snare that I would find impossible to free myself from for the next three years. It was your song. Your sad, sad song. Your voice was that of a man who had smoked two packs of cigarettes a day for decades: scarred, veering on raspy. It was the voice of a man much older than your years, which appeared to number in the twenties. You were the love child of Leonard Cohen and Rufus Wainwright.

Your lyrics, coal black, smoldered around age-old topics like lost love, loneliness, alienation, and an inability to find home. Cheery stuff.

It had me sobbing into my beer most of the night.

And when I wasn’t sobbing, I was imagining what you’d look like naked.

There was a curious combination pulsing inside me that night: lust, despair, hunger…

But I never had any real hopes that I would actually be meeting you that night. No idea that I would actually see what the wiry body under those clothes looked like. No clue that I would come to know the feel of those swollen lips on my own...

Get your copy of Superstar here.

Trannies and Psychos and Bears...Oh My!

2009-11-08T14:20:00.001Z

Hey Kids!

Just wanted to let you know that my ebook short, NO PLACE LIKE HOME, is out today and yours for only $2.25. It's a gay romance twist on THE WIZARD OF OZ and, like me, is a little different.

And when you visit the AmberAllure site today (November 8) only, you'll find that my EPPIE-Award winning novel ORIENTATION, is the daily deal...75% off the regular price!

Synopsis

Burl is horny. And his lover, AJ, is in the kind of sleep that approaches comatose. What’s a boy to do? In the middle of the night, Burl slips away from the house he shares with AJ, looking for just a little release for his pent-up passion. AJ won’t mind; after all, he says he doesn’t care where Burl gets his tires pumped, as long as he gets to ride.

But what Burl finds in straying from his own backyard is not quite the kind of excitement he had in mind. From boxer-shorted bears, to men who aren’t quite what they seem, to homicidal ebony gods, Burl doesn’t know quite what to make of the bizarre world outside...and the people in it. From the snow-capped peaks of the Adirondack Mountains (and the Sodom Sin Mountain Ski Resort), to the dangerous streets of the lower east side of Manhattan, Burl discovers that it isn’t always easy—or safe—when you go looking for love in all the wrong places.

What lessons does Burl learn on his quest? Does he discover, really, that there’s no place like home? There’s only one way to find out—start reading!

Check out more details and get your copy here: http://www.amberquill.com/AmberAllure/NoPlaceLikeHome.html

Exclusive Excerpt from My Werewolf Novel, THE BLUE MOON CAFE

2009-11-01T13:44:00.001Z

I have written lots of horror, lots of stuff about vampires, serial killers, ghosts and things that go bump in the night. I have never written a werewolf story.

Until now.

I am hard at work on a new book called The Blue Moon Cafe. Set in my current home, Seattle, it's part horror, part romance, part erotica, and all can't-put-it-down. I hope it will be a draw not only for readers who like my horror, but for ones who like a good love story as well.

Here's a little taste. I hope you'll leave a comment and let me know what you think. Intrigued? Want to read more?

He’s hungry. He eyes a full moon above him through a caul of blood red. Its light is like the illumination of the sun: warming and energizing, heightening his senses. He sees with all of his senses and smell predominates. Before him, the streets of Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood stand out in sharp detail, silvery and shimmering from the moon’s light. Crisp; easy to track. And in the air, everywhere, are scents: the smell of beer, cigarette smoke, the pale fishy tang of Elliot Bay to the west, car exhaust. But what underlies all of this is sheer bliss—he lifts his snout to savor it: the smell of human flesh…and blood. Blood pulsing in the bodies of hundreds of carousers out for a Friday night revel, coursing in and out of bars, heedless and unwary, celebrating the beginning of the weekend. Their heat, movement, voices, and—most of all—aromas give him a paradoxically hungry and deliciously tingling feeling of anticipation deep in the pit of his gut.

His leathery black nose quivers, pulling the scent inside him, where he can savor it. His pale gray-furred ears point up to the moon, alert, listening for the sound of one alone, one that’s ripe. He wants to howl, but knows that such displays will draw attention to him as he sits, panting, in an alley behind a Vietnamese restaurant, shuttered for the night. Already a pair of men clad in jeans and tight T-shirts have wandered by and peered into the shadows the alley provides for him, wondering about him.

“Jesus!” One of them said. “Would you look at that? What is that? Some kind of dog? It’s huge!”

His friend had leaned over, further into the alley, far enough for the creature to catch the scent of the man’s sweat underlying the cologne with which he polluted himself. It had made his mouth water, his stomach growl, eager to pounce… But he knows he must be patient. The night affords plenty of time to hunt. Reward must always be balanced by a careful calculation of risk.

“Yeah, dude. I think it’s a German Shepherd…or a Husky. Somethin’ like that. Come on, let’s get to the Cuff.”

“I thought we were going to Neighbours.”

“The Cuff has hotter guys.”

The men had hurried off, unaware of how appetizing they were, how close they edged to their own demise. He licks his chops and stares up at the moon as a cloud passed over, partially obscuring its radiance.

But he has time to wait. Time to let the scents, sounds, and sights of the lively August night ramp up his hunger, his need, making the resulting feast all that much more succulent. There are practical reasons too for his patience. In the wee small hours of the morning (as the song went), there would be fewer witnesses to his impromptu al fresco supper of flesh and blood. The few people out—his prey—were more likely to be intoxicated and careless of heading down an alley just like the one in which he now crouched, waiting, every sense on alert.

Intoxicated…before dawn crept up over the Cascade Mountains, he knew that would be what he would feel. That, and a sense of utter satisfaction.

He circled a few times and lay down beside a Dumpster.

***

He has dozed off. When he awakens, the air is cooler and the night is quieter. The sounds of traffic, laughter, and voices have diminished to almost nothing. The rush of wind ruffles his fur as he gets to all fours, raising his snout to test the air.

Yes. There are humans close by. Two of them. He smells their perspiration and beneath that, their blood. Their warmth rides to him like a delicious current on the night breeze. He stands quietly, heart rate quickening, muscles tensing, tracking them. They are just outside the alley in which he waits and they are making noises, not talking. But there are definite sounds. He moves forward, silent on black paws, to the alley’s mouth. What is going in, a darkened doorway, is the sound of some kind of human mating. There are grunts, groans, and sighs. He sniffs, calculating: there are two men, one of them older, not as healthy, one young, vigorous.

Boldly, he trots out of the alley and crosses the street to watch from between two parked cars. The men do not even notice, they are so absorbed in what they’re doing and he’s so full of stealth that he might as well be a shadow gliding through the night.

The pair occupies the doorway of a storefront, cloaked in shadow. Human eyes, passing by, would not even register their existence. But he can see them: the younger one, the healthy one, the one he for whom he is already licking his chops, stands before the older one, jeans pushed down to his knees. His shirt is pulled up over his shoulders and behind his neck, exposing exquisite musculature and a constellation of inked skin. Throwing his head back, he whispers rapidly how “fuckin’ good” it all feels, while the older man kneels in front of him, his head bobbing up and down at his crotch.

The act takes fewer than ten minutes. The scent of sweat and semen hang in the air. The older man rises, looks around himself and stuffs himself back inside his pants and zips. He glances around again, although the creature can’t imagine why; there’s no one else to witness anything, and takes his wallet out. He digs in it, pulls out a few bills, and hands it to the younger man, the one with the shaved head, the bulging muscles, and the tattoos. The younger man snatches the money away and smiles. “Thanks.” He stuffs the money into his jeans pocket.

The older man begins to walk away and the younger one grabs his arm. “No kiss goodbye?”

They both laugh. The older man pecks the younger on his mouth. At the same time, the younger man pulls him closer as if to embrace him and reaches back, smoothly pulling the wallet from the older man’s pants. The other man, unaware, hurries off into the night, toward downtown.

“Muscles” counts the money, chuckling, then rifles through the wallet. He hears him whisper, “What story will you make up for wifey about how you lost your wallet?” He throws back his head and laughs out loud at the thought. He pulls the remaining cash from the wallet, extracts a couple of credit cards, and tosses the wallet to the ground.

The monster takes him in with all of his senses. He’s perfect.

He tracks him through the streets, uphill. He is beginning to question whether luck will be on his side when his prey ducks into an alley. He follows, amused that, after all these blocks, he has never once noticed the creature behind him. He watches as he pulls out his dick and sprays a bright yellow stream on the brick wall before him. He can smell the piss, ammonia-like, but it’s part of the man's essence and his heat. Mixed in with the smell of it is also the scent of his semen, left over from his prior business transaction.

Drool runs from the creature's mouth. He can wait no longer. He pounces, and without a howl, without a growl, without even a bark, he is upon him.

Tearing.

The man doesn’t even have time to scream.

Blood and Mint Chocolates made round 2 of the Rainbow Awards voting!

2009-10-20T23:41:00.000+01:00

Round 2 of the Rainbow Awards voting is still going on! Blood and Mint Chocolates and other works are up:

http://elisa-rolle.livejournal.com/822605.html

Love & Magic,
Adrianne

MUTE WITNESS Now Available

2009-10-19T13:54:00.001+01:00

Just wanted to share the exciting news that my latest novel, Mute Witness, is now available in both paperback and ebook formats.

Mute Witness is a special book to me because, although it's a thriller with paranormal elements, it grew out of a very personal trauma: the fear of losing my son during my divorce several years ago simply because I was gay.

Purchase ebook.
Purchase paperback.
Purchase Kindle version.

Here's what Mute Witness is about:

Sean and Austin have the perfect life. Their new relationship is only made more joyous by weekend visits from Sean’s eight-year-old son, Jason.

And then their perfect world shatters.

Jason is missing.

When the boy turns up days later, he has been horribly abused and has lost the power to speak. Small town minds turn to the boy’s gay father and his lover as the likely culprits.

Sean and Austin struggle to maintain their relationship amid the innuendo and the very real threat that Sean will, at the very least, lose the son he loves. Meanwhile, the real villain is much closer to home, intent on ensuring the boy’s muteness is permanent.

To whet your interest, here's the first few pages:

    It was one of their rare lazy evenings. Summer, and the evening air was fresh and clean after an afternoon thunderstorm, with just a hint of a breeze. Normally, Sean and Austin were so busy that if they weren’t trying to change something about the little Cape Cod on the Ohio River they had bought a year before (adding a deck, putting in a new kitchen, stripping away years of white paint from the woodwork downstairs), they were too tired to do anything but crawl into bed and pass out, usually before eleven o’clock. Lovemaking, since they had bought the money- and time-sucking house, had become relegated to weekend afternoons and the occasional early morning.
    But today, Thursday, had been an easy one. Austin had called into work, the Benson Pottery, where he was a caster and taken a mental health day. Things had just been too damn busy lately and he needed the break. Waiting until Saturday was out of the question. Sunday seemed farther away than the next millennium.
    Sean, a reporter for The Evening View, the local thrice-weekly compilation of ads sandwiched in with a little editorial, had had the day off. The couple had spent the day in Pittsburgh, at the Andy Warhol museum, then had an early dinner at The Grand Concourse (the best Paella on the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers), beat the brutal thunderstorm home, made love (acrobatically, in the kitchen, atop a Butcher’s block), and now the two were curled up in front of the TV. Sean had rented Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and, after a bowl of Jamaican and a couple of vodka and tonics, the two were teary-eyed with laughter.
    Sean looked over at his younger boyfriend and thought how lucky he was to have found Austin, especially in a town the size of Summitville, where the population hovered just above ten thousand. Even better, Austin was his fantasy man, with a broad, beefy body that his mother and her friends would have called strapping, sandy blond hair, and the bluest eyes he had ever seen. When Sean had first met him, he thought Austin’s eyes had to be fake: enhanced by those tinted contacts that never looked real. But he found quickly that the young man was simply blessed with arresting eyes to go along with his broad shoulders, dimpled chin, and infectious smile. He wore that smile right now, coming down from a fit of inappropriate laughter after hearing Elizabeth Taylor tell Richard Burton, “I’d divorce you if I thought you were alive.”
    A sick sense of humor was yet another thing the pair had in common.
It was what they both would have agreed was a perfect day. Well, Sean might have had one more item to add to the “perfection” list. Having his son, Jason, around for at least part of the time would have been all it would have taken to make the day ideal, but these days, Jason was for the weekends only.
In any case, this was close enough to nirvana. He closed his eyes and let his head loll back on Austin’s shoulder.
    Sean was just thinking about slowly undressing Austin and then leading him into the bedroom for round two when the phone rang. Its chirp startled both of them out of the cocoon of warmth that had surrounded them, a cocoon built from good sex, supreme relaxation, and the afore-mentioned Jamaican weed.
Austin: sleepily from under Sean’s arm on the couch, “Don’t get it. Please don’t get it. Just let the machine pick up. I don’t want to talk to anyone. And I don’t want you to, neither.” Sean eyed the little answering machine next to the cordless, wondering when they would enter the 21st century and use voice mail like everyone else. But, unlike voice mail, the machine did allow them to screen calls and for two men who appreciated their privacy, this feature had voice mail beat all to hell.
    Sean let the phone ring its customary four rings, although his tendency would have been to answer it. But if this would make Austin happy, then he was willing to do it. Especially since he had things in mind for Austin that did not involve the telephone. Things that would erase their fatigue and perhaps keep them up the better part of the night. Sean grinned.
    On the fourth ring, Sean pressed the pause button on the remote control and sat up straighter to listen.
    “Whatever it is, it can wait,” Austin whispered in Sean’s ear, flicking his earlobe with his tongue and giving his crotch a playful squeeze.
    And then the moment shattered.
    Shelley’s voice, almost unfamiliar under the veneer of tension that made it higher, quicker, came through. Shelley and Sean had been married once upon a time and their union had produced Jason, the best little boy in the world. As soon as Sean heard Shelley’s voice he thought of his son, who shared his dark hair, green eyes, wiry frame, and his fascination with stories.
    “Sean? Sean, I hope you’re there. This is important. Please pick up.” There was a slight pause. “It’s about Jason. He...”
    Before she could say anything else, Sean sprinted for the phone in the entryway. “Shelley? Sorry, I was...”
    “Jason is missing.”
    “What?”
    And then Sean heard her begin to sob and the relaxation in all of his muscles vanished, replaced by a tightness that felt like steel bands snapping taut across his muscles. Blood rushed in his ears; his heart began to pound. A queasy nausea rose up in his gut.
    “Jason never came home tonight,” Shelley sobbed. “I don’t know where he is. Please say he’s with you.”
    Sean sat down on the little oak chair in front of the desk. Well, collapsed into the chair was more like it. “Shelley, I’m sorry, but he’s not here. Don’t you think I would have called if he had come here? How long’s he been gone?” Sean rubbed the back of his neck, his mouth curiously dry. He glanced out the window at the complete darkness.    “I went to work at six and he wasn’t home yet.” She blew out a sigh. “But, you know, we just thought he was horsing around in the woods or something and lost track of time. Then I called Paul and...”
    “Wait a minute, Shelley. It’s a quarter ‘til eleven.”
    “I know. I know.”
    “Why didn’t you call sooner? You mean to tell me you’re just starting to look? Christ, he’s eight years old.”
    “I thought he would’ve come home while I was on my shift. Paul was here and he fell asleep and...”
    “Paul. Great.” Sean rubbed his sweaty palms against his thighs.
    “Please Sean, it’s not the time. I fucked up. Okay? Now that we’ve got that out of the way, I need some help finding our son.”
    She was right. In spite of the thoughts running through his head, most of them centering around how he and Austin would have been better parents, but the courts couldn’t see that, all they could see was a little boy growing up under the wings of two queers, Sean knew she was right.
    This was an emergency.

Purchase ebook.
Purchase paperback.
Purchase Kindle version.

Dark Scribe Gives BASHED a Great Review

2009-10-18T13:46:00.001+01:00

I'll consider Dark Scribe magazine's review of my gay hate-crime novel, Bashed, an early Halloween present. I was thrilled to get a thoughtful thumbs-up from what is fast-becoming a very respected horror publication, with up to 6,000 unique visitors monthly.

Reviewer T.E. Lyons said, "Reed is an established brand — perhaps the most reliable contemporary author for thrillers that cross over between the gay fiction market and speculative fiction..."

Read the rest of the review here.

Purchase Bashed paperback
Purchase Bashed ebook

MUTE WITNESS Sneak Preview

2009-10-02T14:16:00.001+01:00

My latest full-length novel, Mute Witness, will debut this month in both e-book and trade paperback formats. It's a serious one, but ultimately hopeful and redemptive. I wanted to give you a sneak preview...

Synopsis

Sean and Austin have the perfect life. Their new relationship is only made more joyous by weekend visits from Sean’s eight-year-old son, Jason.

And then their perfect world shatters.

Jason is missing.

When the boy turns up days later, he has been horribly abused and has lost the power to speak. Small town minds turn to the boy’s gay father and his lover as the likely culprits. Sean and Austin struggle to maintain their relationship amid the innuendo and the very real threat that Sean will, at the very least, lose the son he loves. Meanwhile, the real villain is much closer to home, intent on ensuring the boy’s muteness is permanent.

Preview (from Chapter One)

It was what they both would have agreed was a perfect day. Well, Sean might have had one more item to add to the “perfection” list. Having his son, Jason, around for at least part of the time would have been all it would have taken to make the day ideal, but these days, Jason was for the weekends only.
In any case, this was close enough to nirvana. He closed his eyes and let his head loll back on Austin’s shoulder.

Sean was just thinking about slowly undressing Austin and then leading him into the bedroom for round two when the phone rang. Its chirp startled both of them out of the cocoon of warmth that had surrounded them, a cocoon built from good sex, supreme relaxation, and the afore-mentioned Jamaican weed.

Austin: sleepily from under Sean’s arm on the couch, “Don’t get it. Please don’t get it. Just let the machine pick up. I don’t want to talk to anyone. And I don’t want you to, neither.” Sean eyed the little answering machine next to the cordless, wondering when they would enter the 21st century and use voice mail like everyone else. But, unlike voice mail, the machine did allow them to screen calls and for two men who appreciated their privacy, this feature had voice mail beat all to hell.

Sean let the phone ring its customary four rings, although his tendency would have been to answer it. But if this would make Austin happy, then he was willing to do it. Especially since he had things in mind for Austin that did not involve the telephone. Things that would erase their fatigue and perhaps keep them up the better part of the night. Sean grinned.

On the fourth ring, Sean pressed the pause button on the remote control and sat up straighter to listen.

“Whatever it is, it can wait,” Austin whispered in Sean’s ear, flicking his earlobe with his tongue and giving his crotch a playful squeeze.

And then the moment shattered.

Shelley’s voice, almost unfamiliar under the veneer of tension that made it higher, quicker, came through. Shelley and Sean had been married once upon a time and their union had produced Jason, the best little boy in the world. As soon as Sean heard Shelley’s voice he thought of his son, who shared his dark hair, green eyes, wiry frame, and his fascination with stories.

“Sean? Sean, I hope you’re there. This is important. Please pick up.” There was a slight pause. “It’s about Jason. He...”

Before she could say anything else, Sean sprinted for the phone in the entryway. “Shelley? Sorry, I was...”

“Jason is missing.”

“What?”

And then Sean heard her begin to sob and the relaxation in all of his muscles vanished, replaced by a tightness that felt like steel bands snapping taut across his muscles. Blood rushed in his ears; his heart began to pound. A queasy nausea rose up in his gut.

“Jason never came home tonight,” Shelley sobbed. “I don’t know where he is. Please say he’s with you.”

Sean sat down on the little oak chair in front of the desk. Well, collapsed into the chair was more like it. “Shelley, I’m sorry, but he’s not here. Don’t you think I would have called if he had come here? How long’s he been gone?” Sean rubbed the back of his neck, his mouth curiously dry. He glanced out the window at the complete darkness.

“I went to work at six and he wasn’t home yet.” She blew out a sigh. “But, you know, we just thought he was horsing around in the woods or something and lost track of time. Then I called Paul and...”

“Wait a minute, Shelley. It’s a quarter ‘til eleven.”

“I know. I know.”

“Why didn’t you call sooner? You mean to tell me you’re just starting to look? Christ, he’s eight years old.”

“I thought he would’ve come home while I was on my shift. Paul was here and he fell asleep and...”

“Paul. Great.” Sean rubbed his sweaty palms against his thighs.

“Please Sean, it’s not the time. I fucked up. Okay? Now that we’ve got that out of the way, I need some help finding our son.”

She was right. In spite of the thoughts running through his head, most of them centering around how he and Austin would have been better parents, but the courts couldn’t see that, all they could see was a little boy growing up under the wings of two queers, Sean knew she was right.

This was an emergency.

Mute Witness will be out later this month.

Last chance to enter to win a print copy of Immortal Fire with Dawn of the Seraphs!

2009-10-01T16:42:00.001+01:00

Here's an interview with me and a chance to win the Immortal Fire anthology in PRINT! This is the last week to enter!

http://ddrreviews.blogspot.com/2009/09/wicked-wednesday_30.html

That's right, folks...Dawn of the Seraphs, an m/m paranormal/sci-fi/erotic romance will be made available in print in the Immortal Fire anthology on Amazon.com!

Details on how to enter to win are at the bottom of the interview. Good luck!

More information on Dawn of the Seraphs is in the interview plus here:

http://www.adriannebrennan.com/dawnoftheseraphs.html

Many fabulous, highly talented authors are represented in this anthology and it looks to be a real winner! :D

Love & Magic,
Adrianne

New Cover for the Upcoming MUTE WITNESS

2009-09-10T19:24:00.001+01:00

My next full-length novel, Mute Witness, should be out later this year from MLR Press. I have recently been working with the cover art to put a face on this very serious story (probably one of the most serious I've written to date) and we have finally decided on a concept.

Covers are one of the most trying and difficult parts of writing a book, even if you have no input into the design yourself. That old chestnut, "you can't judge a book by its cover" is probably one of the wrongest things I've ever heard. People can, and do, judge books by their covers...and people and other things too. We see with our eyes and this is how we form our first impressions. So if a book doesn't make that critical first impression on you, you will probably pass it by. And if a book has a simply dazzling cover, you may be more intrigued about the book than if it was fronted by a mediocre cover.

I hope the cover for Mute Witness makes a good first impression. I'd love it if you'd leave a comment below and let me know what you think.

Here's the back cover copy (which is also really cool, maybe even cooler than the front, since it's just the back of the boy's head). Read it and see if you think the cover does the storyline justice.

I hope you won't stay mute (groan!) on whether this cover would inspire you to check out the book inside.

Back cover copy:

Sean and Austin have the perfect life. Their new relationship is only made more joyous by weekend visits from Sean’s eight-year-old son, Jason.

And then their perfect world shatters.

Jason is missing.

When the boy turns up days later, he has been horribly abused and has lost the power to speak. Small town minds turn to the boy’s gay father and his lover as the likely culprits.

Sean and Austin struggle to maintain their relationship amid the innuendo and the very real threat that Sean will, at the very least, lose the son he loves. Meanwhile, the real villain is much closer to home, intent on ensuring the boy’s muteness is permanent.

Mute Witness should be out in late fall.

My Latest Additions to the Kindle Store

2009-08-09T00:15:00.001+01:00

Bad author! Bad! I haven't been paying close enough attention to which of my e-books have been added to Amazon's Kindle store and discovered just today that there are five new titles that are now there that hadn't been there when I last checked. They include a very silly story about a man waking up to find his outie had been replaced with an innie (and we are not talking belly buttons, my dears!); a poignant coming out story about a married man's painful realization; a young adult horror novel; a highly erotically-charged tale about the levels of consciousness in a dominant/submissive relationship; and a sexy, Twilight Zone type tale that gives a new twist to the old saw: be careful what you wish for.

Can you match the stories above to their blurbs below? If you can, e-mail me at horrorauthor@gmail.com and I will give you a free download of one of the stories above, suitable for your Kindle.

How I Became Sexually Irresistible
The old saw holds true: Be careful what you wish for...

Cliche though the words are, Arthur Bland should have heeded their advice. When he comes across a magic, genie-containing lava lamp in a thrift store, his one wish is to be sexually irresistible. When his wish comes true, it leads at first to a wonderful fulfillment of his most cherished erotic desires. Plain Arthur can now have anyone whom he wants...and at the beginning, the wish granted seems like a blessing.

Until the wish granted turns into a curse.

When he meets the woman of his dreams, Arthur discovers that sometimes being sexually irresistible is not enough. Worse, being sexually irresistible and being lovable can be two very different things...
BUY your copy.

MAN-amorphosis
"4.25 STARS!...one of the funniest books I have ever read. Who knew horror writer Rick R. Reed had such a delicious, wonderful, side splitting sense of humor?...This is one of the most unusual, imaginative and refreshing books that I have read in a long time. Rick Reed is a master story teller and he doesn't spare the details in this romp in the park as he recounts Rickie's adventure on the other side of the sheets. MAN-AMORPHOSIS is going to rock your socks and maybe other articles of clothing because this author does not skimp on the fun. Buy this book ... it will more than tickle your funny bone."--Jessewave, Reviews By Jessewave
BUY your copy.

Through the Closet Door
"4.5 STARS!...a heartbreakingly emotional story about a man at a crossroads in his life...an incredible story, a powerful look at the difficulty that surrounds coming out of the closet when deeply entrenched in a straight life...Reed has written a phenomenal look at a coming out process that is the definition of emotional. With excellent characters and a tightly woven story, Reed has written a poignant and affecting story that is a must read."--Emily, Rainbow Reviews
BUY your copy

Fugue
"5 STARS!...an exceptional story that pulled me in from the very beginning. It is filled with such detail that it sends the reader's senses on a wild ride...This story has stuck with me since I read it, and I look forward to reading it again and again. There is so much hidden under the surface, and each reading will no doubt reveal yet another aspect of its perfection. I also personally loved the fact that the story was set in Chicago, and the details and comments Reed makes along the way will be fun for those familiar with the city. This was the first story I have read from Reed and I will most definitely be reading his other stories. I highly recommend Fugue for readers looking for a story that is unique and intense!"--Emily, Rainbow Reviews
BUY your copy

Dead End Street
"...Reed is able to create just the perfect amount of icy fingers up the reader's spine without the gore of some horror novels or movies. The characters are well-drawn and believable, and the plot and subplots are good and scary. Move over, R. L. Stine. It looks like Rick R. Reed may be the next new horror writer for young readers for this century. (Because I enjoyed this book so much, I'm going to track down his adult horror fiction and dip into some of those.)"--Janie Franz, MyShelf.com
BUY your copy

GLBT Authors get Revolutionary Online Community!

2009-06-29T17:33:00.005+01:00

“Identifies Revolutionary Online Community as Vision of Veteran Glbt Author. For first time, Writers, Artists, Publishers Unite in Retail Environment Independent of Traditional Bookselling Industry.”

For_Immediate_Release:

(Free-Press-Release.com) June 25, 2009 –

Adelaide, South Australia – June 25, 2009 Bestselling gay author Mel Keegan has masterminded a web-based cohesive organization combining the skills of writers, publishers, editors, agents, reviewers and artists in the GLBT community to provide an unprecedented public access portal to independent- and small-publisher titles. GLBT Bookshelf is an online resource designed to counter the perceived discriminatory practices of major players in the book retail scene.

Frustrated by the infamous “AmazonFail” fiasco of early 2009, in which the online retail giant was suspected of attempting to deny GLBT literature the benefits of its promotional systems, Keegan conceived of an online community in which all such systems were circumvented…Read the full Press Release here!

Now Out in Paperback! M4M

2009-06-25T17:16:00.001+01:00

My new paperback collection, M4M is now available from Amber Allure (the GLBT imprint of Amber Quill Press). The book combines my best-selling, happily-ever-after romantic comedy stories, VGL Male Seeks Same and NEG UB2, both previously available only as ebooks. M4M combines them in a nifty paperback edition, perfect for summer beach reading. This edition is ideal for those of you who might want to see how a horror writer does romance (apparently, surprisingly well, because the two stories above sold almost better than anything I've written!) but who don't want to go the e-book route.

To get your copy, go here or here.

Synopsis:
Two great stories. One great love. Get between the covers with Ethan and Brian, the men whose hearts connected online and offline in the best-selling VGL Male Seeks Same. Follow them on their continuing journey in NEG UB2, where a shocking health diagnosis derails the couple’s blissful romance and teaches them both a lot about acceptance, forgiveness, and faith...especially when it comes to love.

Previously available only in electronic format, these twin novellas of gay erotic romance have now been combined for a paperback edition!

Reviews of VGL Male Seeks Same

"5 Stars!...Rick R. Reed has a wonderful sense of humour and timing. His characterization of Ethan was superb. This is the first story I have read by Rick R. Reed and if this is at all representative of his writing he'll become an auto buy for me. His timing is superb, his prose is exceptional and his characterizations are to die for. I was totally invested in Ethan and I felt every slight, imagined or real, that he experienced. Parts of this story were so poignant as Ethan looked at his life stretching before him with no one to share it that I could feel his pain...Buy this book."--Jessewave, Reviews By Jessewave

"5 Divas!...A Recommended Read!...Could easily be made into a movie...Deeply erotic, satisfying...The crisp dialogue and brutally honest portrayal of two lonely men, who at heart really are very good looking, is a story for all romance lovers…not just fans of gay romantic fiction. It's a story to be treasured, in all its intimate splendor."--AJ Llewellyn, Dark Diva Reviews

Reviews of NEG UB2

"...One of the best aspects of Reed’s book is his unpredictability. Nothing is sacred and every possible topic can be tackled. Here the author takes the happy ever after ending from his first book and turns it on its head when one of the characters is suddenly HIV positive. From the panic at his initial diagnosis to understanding medication and costs, this emotional story shows the scary and realistic aspects often overlooked when HIV changes someone’s life. Well written with an intensity to the prose, this wonderful story shows the positive and negative elements associated with the first brush of HIV while showing it’s not the death sentence it used to be and happy endings are still possible."--Kassa, Manic Readers

"There's no protection from Reed's quick wit and ability to craft a winning and thoroughly enthralling love story."--Shawn Decker, AIDS activist, speaker, and author of My Pet Virus

Pottery Peter Get Its First Review

2009-06-20T13:46:00.001+01:00

That first review is always the one that takes your breath away...just a little. Will they love it? Hate it? Fortunately, Elisa Rolle, a very insightful and respected gay fiction reviewer from Italy, seems to like what I've done with my little erotic story, Pottery Peter.

Elisa said:

"I have the idea that there are two Rick R. Reed out there; one that tends toward the horror side when he writes long novels, and one that prefers hot and dirty erotica when he writes short stories. Then I know that he is the same person since, long or short, his characters are always deep, with a background and a future, even if their story lasts only 30 pages...."

Read the rest of the review here.

Purchase Pottery Peter (it's just a short, so can easily be read on a computer as well as all popular ebook readers, including Kindle).

Win A FREE Copy of POTTERY PETER

2009-06-18T13:50:00.001+01:00

Hey Kids!

The filthiest, funnest story on the block this week is my foray into hot, sweaty, industrial-sized sex, Pottery Peter. It's so hot that I really am unable to post an excerpt here, for fear of burning up this blog.

Pottery Peter is a story that's somewhat autobiographical, inspired by two of my college summers spent working at Hall China, one of the oldest and best industrial potteries in the US. Just how much inspiration I got from working there, I'll leave to your imagination.

Unlike Pottery Peter, which leaves virtually nothing to the imagination.

To win your free download of the story (PDF format), all you have to do is:

1. Become a follower of this blog (see area at right); I check, so make sure you do this step.
2. Leave a comment below, preferably something saucy.

That's it! And if you can't wait for the contest to end, you can get your own Pottery Peter here for the bargain price of $2.25 (it's just a short story, after all).

And about that filthy excerpt, check it out here.

Here's a little bit about the story, to whet your appetite for Peter:

Josh, between his freshman and sophomore years of college, gets a job at the pottery, a place where sweaty men dressed in sleeveless T-shirts, with biceps glistening and bulging, hoist heavy molds and liquid clay.

For Josh, it’s an eye-opening summer, building his own muscles and falling in love for the very first time. But falling in love is never uncomplicated, especially when two hot men have caught Josh’s eye. Which one of them will claim Josh’s virgin territory? Will it be Dale, the heavy-metal blond God with the tattoos and rough demeanor? Or will Kevin, Josh’s beefy, red-haired Irish boss, steal his heart, along with a few other parts further south?

Come along for a ride during one long, hot summer where the job benefits for an aroused young man are way more than what Human Resources promised!

10 Things a Guy Doesn't Want to Find in Your Room

2009-03-27T14:50:00.001Z

By A.J. Llewellyn

Lemondrop ran an interesting item this week about the 10 things a guy doesn't want to find in your room. It's a semi-cool list and I agree with many of them - such as condom wrappers in the trash, dozens of stuffed animals in the room, photos with your ex and, the bible on the nightstand but I can do better than this.
As a gay man who hears it from both sides - both the scary things my mates find and the embarrassing things women confess they do, so in the interest of romance (hey I write romances, remember) I'd like to present my top 1o things A Guy Doesn't Want to Find in Your Room:
10. Forget the condom wrappers...what about the used condoms? Eeeww!
9. More than a few macabre photos of horrific things such as lynchings. My mate Tony saw these in a woman's bedroom. She said it was research, but he took my advice and ran for the frickin' hills.
8. Sharp, lethal objects mounted and lovingly displayed on the walls
7. Empty booze bottles spilling out of the waste basket
6. Unflushed 'floaters' in your toilet
5. Anything to do with 'The Secret' such as those stupid million dollar checks made out to yourself posted on your wall and 'intention boards' with the word 'husband' pasted on it
4. Canned hunting photos of you and some poor, drugged, dazed endangered critter
3. The Encyclopedia of Auto erotic Asphyxiation as bedtime reading next to a roll of duct tape (this actually happened)
2. A gigantic boat-sized dildo that's um...obviously been used. If you know what I mean...
1. My boyfriend Herve. He's mine. MINE!

What about you? What don't YOU want to see in a guy/girl's room?

Aloha oe,

A.J.

IM Goes Academic

2009-03-23T14:53:00.001Z

I was recently amazed to be contacted by a PhD candidate, asking if he could interview me about my online hook-up serial killer novel, IM, for his dissertation. Not that the book isn't study-worthy, I had just never thought of it that way. So when D. Travers Scott contacted me, I had to look over my shoulder to make sure he wasn't talking to someone else. Maybe he got me by mistake. Weren't PhD dissertations supposed to be centering around people like James Joyce or Dickens?

Once I got over the initial shock, I found that Mr. Scott (hopefully soon-to-be Dr. Scott) was interested in IM because of its links to the Internet and modern technology as part of modern-day storytelling.

And, by the way, D. Travers Scott is an excellent writer in his own right, author of the acclaimed One of These Things is Not Like the Other. You should check out one of his websites here or here for more information about him and his writing.

Anyway, I thought our little dissertation interview was a fascinating process. I hope you do too, since it gives you insight into the book as well as the creative process.

DTS: So, to start, I was wondering if you could tell me how the idea came about to center a murder mystery around online dating/hookup sites?

RRR: I started writing IM a long time ago (when I was single) and I would be lying if I said I didn’t avail myself of online hook-up sites. After a while, two things amazed me: the sheer number of guys hooking up (either inviting strangers into their homes or vice versa) and the fact that we all casually dismissed the danger this anonymous way of meeting was putting us in. I know I am not the only gay man to invite a stranger into my home. And I began thinking, as all writers do at one point or another, what if… What if that hot guy you were inviting over was a killer? I started thinking how easy it would be for that killer and how simple it would be to commit an almost perfect crime: there would be no real life links to the deceased, you were invited in to your victim’s home, he often would put himself in a vulnerable and defenseless position…and on from there. Online hookups could be a perfect scenario for a sadistic killer. I just went from there.

DTS: What technology themes are there in any of your other works?

RRR: I use technology quite a lot in my work, probably starting with an early short story, “Online” in the vampire anthology The Darkest Thirst, about an unwitting woman who invites a vampire into her home via an online lesbian chat room. Vampires, according to legend, need to be invited in by their victims. The Internet is also an important part of my novella, VGL Male Seeks Same, a light romantic comedy about a man creating an online persona to find a man, and its sequel NEG UB2, where the same character from VGL Male is diagnosed HIV positive and discovers the online bias now against him. Blogging plays an important role in that story. I think the Internet as a community is here to stay, and growing.

DTS: How is Timothy Bright different from your other villains? Were there any aspects of his character that you emphasized or de-emphasized to 'fit' with his use of the web and messaging? That is, did you have any ideas about what sort of killer would be an online killer?

RRR: I don’t think I really consciously thought about Timothy being an online killer. I wanted to make him very innocuous looking, which is why I made him slight and blond, sort of elfin. I thought it was creepier to have someone who looked like the antithesis of evil cast as a monster. His appearance does come up throughout the book, though, and he lies often about what he looks like when he’s online (he never posts a photo), making himself beefier and manlier. The interesting thing, I thought, was how many of his victims ignored this disparity when he showed up at their door.

DTS: There seemed to be a few references to alcohol and substance abuse in the book. Was this an intentional theme?

RRR: From my own experience with these sites, “party and play” is a very common factor on almost every one I’ve encountered. I just thought it was realistic to have some of the characters using party drugs to enhance their experience.

DTS: What impact do you feel the Internet and modern communications technology has had on the gay community? For example, some people applaud how it empowers rural queer kids to find community, others say it has isolated us, weakening community ties and public meeting places like bars or leather events.

RRR: I think the world is constantly changing, whether that’s positive or negative is up to interpretation. As I said above, this way of connecting and communicating with others is here to stay and will probably continue to grow and make further inroads into all of our lives. I would need a good crystal ball to know how this will affect humanity and the ways we interact. It’s a kind of evolution and only time will tell what its benefits and downfalls are.

DTS: Telecom companies often advertise with phrases like, "stay always connected." How do you feel about this idea of being connected, given that your online presence lets you connect with readers, but you also have a novel about connecting to killers?

RRR: The Internet has been a wonderful way for me to reach out to readers that hitherto would have been unavailable to me. I am old enough to remember that one of the few promotional routes available to me were book signings or conventions, where I reached relatively few people. The Internet, and social networking, has exploded, and although there’s a lot of “noise,” I think I reach many more people than I used to before it was around. As with anything else in life, this way of connecting has its dangers and potential for abuse.

DTS: The initial victims presented in the book -- I'm thinking of the first kills especially but then also somewhat with Mark, the close call -- seemed like somewhat flawed people. They seemed vain, superficial, reckless, and/or closeted (particularly in contrast to Ed and Peter). Was this intentional? Were you intending any kind of commentary in that about aspects of urban gay men or culture? Or about the kind of men who would use hookup sites regularly?

RRR: To be quite honest, no. I think a lot of my writing flows from my subconscious and what you say about these characters make sense and while I wouldn’t say it was wrong, I would be the first to admit that my only intention was creating real people who are often flawed…and many of the adjectives you used above. I will say that I think hookup sites are used by all different sorts of men for all different sorts of reasons and to blanket characterize the group as a whole would be ridiculous.

DTS: If you had to sum up the moral or lesson of IM, what would that be?

To realize that the Internet can often be a lot of smoke and mirrors and even if you think you know with whom you’re hooking up, use caution. Meet first in a public place. Tell someone you trust where you’re going if you’re meeting up with someone. There are no guarantees for either bad or good resulting from Internet interaction, but there are precautions that might help tip the scales in your favor.

To purchase IM in trade paperback go here.

To purchase IM as an ebook, go here (for Kindle) or here (for other ebook formats).

"Not Even My Husband Knows!" The Secrets of Erotica Writers

2009-03-14T15:29:00.001Z

Last weekend, when I was in Las Vegas at Epicon, the big annual gathering of electronic publishing professionals, I had the pleasure of meeting many others of my ilk: namely those of us who toil a good part of our lives away in solitude writing stories that we hope will entertain, inform, and provoke thoughts and emotions.

One woman I met at the Thursday night party seemed a cheerful sort. She came right up to me and began telling me about all the erotica she writes and publishes. She's quite a name among erotica e-book readers. But then she said something that surprised me: "Nobody knows I write erotica. Even my best friends and my family don't know. Not even my husband knows!" She laughed and I laughed with her, but then I was thinking, "But aren't you proud of what you do? Why would you spend all the effort and time on something that no one near and dear to you even knows you do?" I assume family and friends know at least that she's a writer and have just not delved into the subject matter of her work...or perhaps they don't know at all. Later in the conference, a male erotica writer confided that he needed to keep his identity as a writer of erotica separate from his real life because he also coached Little League baseball. He didn't think writing erotica would go over too well with the parents of the kids he coached. And I think he may have something there, though I think some of the kids might think it's way cool.

But the coach did make me begin to understand this need for anonymity the successful writer I met on Thursday felt she needed. And that was brought home to me the other day when I had lunch with a friend here in Seattle. I was telling him about Epicon and the people I'd met and happened to bring up that I'd met several people who wrote erotica.

He grinned and sort of rolled his eyes and said, "You mean porn?"

Now, this isn't the first time I have heard of erotica being equated with porn, but I did have a flash of further understanding about why someone would choose a nom de plume under which to publish their erotic writing. I don't think my friend's assertion was all that uncommon. I did try to explain that there was a difference, but found it hard to do. I think, the short answer would be that erotica uses sex as a way to bring out emotional themes and to propel a story, whereas porn is there purely for the sake of titillation. Porn does not need character development, a plot, or any commentary on the human condition. It's unfettered, one-handed reading. Nothing wrong with that, in my mind, if that's what you're in the mood for and no one's getting hurt. But all this talk at the conference about being "in the closet" as an erotica writer made me wonder how many others out there automatically think "porn" when they hear "erotica."

I am not above writing the occasional porno story. But the two book covers above, the first for Fugue and the second for MANamorphosis, demonstrate stories that are all about sex, but I don't think are porn. Fugue, in particular, is quite graphic, XXX-rated, yet I think,in the end, it's a story about power in a relationship and the varying ways we experience love...and it's themes like that, I think, that differentiate erotica from porn.

What do you think? For you, what separates erotica from porn? Really, I wanna know. Please leave me a comment below.

ORIENTATION Called "Love Story with a Sense of Mysticism"

2009-02-28T14:49:00.003Z

It's rare you find such a thoughtful reviewer of books, someone who has really taken the time to not only read a book and report on its contents, comment on pacing, plot, and characterization, but goes the extra mile and really considers what's between the lines.

Such is the case with reviewer Jay Hartman and his insightful, and positive, review of my reincarnation love story, Orientation on his informative and entertaining website, Untreed Reads. Jay said:

"Absolutely a don’t-miss read. Fans of films such as Crash and other stories where characters are drawn together under seemingly unlikely circumstances will gobble this story up. The incredibly well-written prose is coupled with dynamic characters who are three-dimensional, vivid, engaging and interesting...an amazing snapshot of pain, love, fall from grace and redemption among a small group of people doing their best to survive the sadness and terrors of everyday living. This is not so much a ghost story or horror story as a love story with a sense of mysticism about it. A thoroughly enjoyable read."

Read the rest of the review here.

For an excerpt and e-book and trade paperback purchasing options, go here.

The 'AWA

2009-02-15T19:02:00.004Z

By A. J. Llewellyn

Anyone who reads my books will tell you about my painstaking attention to detail since my stories are all set in the Hawaiian Islands. I like to introduce ancient lore as well as current places for couples to eat, drink and be er…merry (I am including the hot sex here).

Anyway, an interesting thing happened to me in Honolulu yesterday. I have discovered Kava or as the locals call it, ‘Awa and in all the research I have done, the ancient Hawaiians loved to sip this stuff. Enough of it makes you quite euphoric…well…two bowls is supposed to be the bomb.
What they should really tell you is two bowls will get you bombed. My mate Tony, his lover Antonio, my dad, his girlfriend and I decided to whizz by my new discovery, The Cove, and partake before our Valentine’s Day celebration last night.

I don’t know why we were all so giddy, but I have noticed my friends and family have a tendency to pooh-pooh my new discoveries. Nobody believed me about the ‘Awa so we drove down to Diamond Head and we each bought a bowlful.

Now, I was about to celebrate Valentine’s Day…me and two couples. Of course l welcomed the idea of being euphoric and otherwise sublimely…snuckered…since my own partner is across the country. I just didn’t dig the idea they all thought I was full of shit.

But I digress.

We crammed into the place that caters to a very hippyish clientele who all looked mighty jolly. Lord knows how many pints of the stuff they all sucked down…but judging by the weird art on the walls and the pseudo fashionable music they were listening to…they’d imbibed buckets of the stuff.

Our cute waitress served up ‘Awa in coconut shell bowls. Like I had told my posse, it tastes like dirt and is very very cold. It is not a drink to be savored. The Cove is only one of two places on the entire island that serves ‘Awa and we all tried to be properly awed by the occasion.
I felt the same way I did the other day when I tried one…a tang on the back of the throat, numb lips…followed by…nothing.

We all took our waitress’s advice and ordered a second bowl each. She advised drinking it quickly. We chugged down a second bowl and left the place arguing.

We drove to our dinner in Waikiki at the glorious House Without a Key at the fabulous Halekulani where the arguments continued. You’re not supposed to drink on top of ‘Awa…it can apparently make you sick. Since I was the designated driver, I stuck to water, but the men in my family are damned showoffs. They ordered drinks and ten minutes into our night on the town…complete inertia hit us all.

I don’t remember the music or the show…well…embarrassing moments I do recall. I don’t know who ordered pasta and fish for everyone or more bread and crackers…but I remember seeing Tony crawling on his knees to pinch an extra basket of home-baked potato chips from the bus boys’ station. Antonio and I sang a pretty embarrassing version of Tiny Bubbles - whilst Greek dancing. I was hammered, but good.

An ‘Awa high is not like booze or pot (yes of course I’ve bloody tried it). You feel completely relaxed and at peace. You love everybody and everything tastes so good…damn those missionaries for robbing ordinary folk of a bloody good time!

It seemed to me since I didn’t drink alcohol and I was the only one still awake that I should still be the designated driver. I was feeling very mellow after dinner and a couple of cups of coffee. We all remarked ‘Awa was excellent…then we got into the car.

Hey, you ever seen the episode of I Love Lucy - one of the ‘on the way to Hollywood’ episodes - where she takes the wheel as Ricky, Ethel and Fred snooze and she drives for hours, winding up in the same spot?

I am here to tell you it is possible. Oh, yes, I drove away from the hotel at 8.30 and somehow managed to arrive back there at 10.02pm!

Nobody could believe it. Least of all me. I know this evening will go down in our personal family history as a classic A.J. escapade and will not make me look very good in years to come, but I look at it this way. I just got a slice of invaluable research that will go into my next book. Nothing
I experience goes to waste…it just breaks my heart that I will have to wait until I return to Hawaii to try my next bowl of ‘Awa…

Aloha oe,

A.J.

Through the Closet Door Makes Number Seven

2009-02-04T15:32:00.001Z

Even a jaded old fart like myself gets all excited when I make a bestseller list, so I just about peed my pants with joy when I saw that my latest story, Through the Closet Door had made number seven on the January bestsellers for Amber Allure.

Part of my excitement (well, most of it, actually...who am I tryin' to kid?) comes from the fact that the story is reaching readers. But honestly, the other part is thrilled that there's such a positive response to such a personal story. Although Through the Closet Door is not autobiographical, the emotions and situation are. I went through what Gregory did: falling in love with and marrying a lovely woman at a young age and then coming to terms with my homosexuality. In a perfect world, I would have done the second thing first and then maybe I wouldn't have hurt other people. But hindsight, as they say, is 20/20...and another part of me is very grateful I had those seven good years of marriage and the wonderful son those years produced.

In Through the Closet Door, Gregory is just realizing he has to be who he is...and I know what a painful journey that can be. His journey isn't finished yet, though. I am planning at least one more part--and a couple of surprises--for these characters.

Here's the synopsis for Through the Closet Door:

Gregory has all the pieces in place: youth, good looks, a beautiful wife, a job he loves as an elementary school teacher, a quiet house on the beach...

So why is Gregory so miserable? Why is he unable to control his lingering gaze on his neighbor, Jake, the handsome truck driver who lives just down the way from him? Why does Gregory spend his private time keeping a secret journal that details fantasies and memories of him locked in embraces with other men?

It's summer, and the peaceful lake belies the turmoil in Gregory's heart. His wife wants to start a family, while Gregory wants to start something with Jake, but doesn't dare.

Rick R. Reed's heartbreaking new story brings to painful life the consequences of coming out of the closet when you're married and no one in the world but you knows the secrets you harbor. Gregory's mask is slipping, pulled down by the allure of a handsome neighbor and the demands of a desire that gets only louder the more he tries to quiet it.

Climbing out of the closet is never easy...but it's even more difficult when doing so might shatter the lives of those around you...

Now, won't you help a poor writer out and keep it on the bestseller list for February too? Is that asking too much?

Buy Through the Closet Door.

Ma Ma Loa

2009-02-01T18:51:00.002Z

By A.J. Llewellyn

I rarely blog about my books and I never post excerpts in blogs, especially shared blogs. I put a lot of thought and effort into each and every blog, but since I am once again preparing to head to Hawaii in a few days, I felt it was important to talk about my new book Ma Ma Loa which was published by eXtasy Books today.
No, I am not going to post an excerpt and violate my own rules…but I do want to mention what inspired the idea. It’s one which has stayed with me since my visit to Hawaii last Spring when I went to the old Chinese cemetery in the Manoa Valley on the outskirts of Honolulu.
I was very depressed. One of my best friends had lost a painful battle with cancer. My beloved cat of fifteen years had also passed and my latest relationship was in trouble. I was feeling overwhelmed. I have no idea why I drove to the cemetery since I’d never been into it and whenever I went past it, I got chicken skin (goosebumps).
But I sat in my overheated rental car, pondering my next life move when I saw this procession of very old Chinese men and women emerging from brand new, shiny cars with brightly colored paper and plastic sacks full of…who knew what and the writer in me just had to find out.
Being a white guy, I thought I might have trouble blending in…but they didn’t seem surprised that a volunteer had shown up. I am a big volunteer in life. I give a lot of my time to an animal rescue group, my local library and a homeless shelter. This particular gig though was one which particularly intrigued me.
These old men and women were there to clean the graves of the Baby Section. I cannot describe the mingled sensation of loss and hope as they cleaned off the offerings left on graves - some over 200 years old. These were not their ancestors, but the graves of children otherwise forgotten on the island. They were the offspring of plantation workers brought to the islands under horrendous conditions, longterm contracts and a lot of local hostility.
The ring leader of the volunteers was an 82 year old woman with one tooth left in her head and an abundance of energry that would exhaust Serena Williams. Her name was Marianne.
She told me they came to tend the children once a month. They bring them flowers and candies. I was not allowed to set food inside the cemetery until I left a candy at the gates. I swear I heard the ghosts of those children as I stepped forward. And I sensed their excitement. I have always been attracted to the dead since my mother died when I was six. I suppose now I think of it, since I cannot visit her grave in Sydney, Australia, I am drawn to cemeteries as a way of connecting with her.
This experience though was something else…the Chinese men and women insisted that taking care of the dead is essential, since they watch over us. They left red papers and cloths on many of the graves, fruit, rice cakes, bao…and for the children, tons and tons of candy.
Marianne, liuke most who have suffered loss, knew I was hurting.
She came over and placed her hand on my chest. “You will see. You will grow another heart,” she said.
And she was right. I went back to Manoa at Christmastime and found a few of the old folk still there, attending Marianne’s funeral. It broke my heart to know she died, but I felt it was no mistake I’d arrived on this day…her send-off to the hereafter.
I like to think all her children were waiting for her, to reward her with playtime and laughter for never forgetting them.
Next weekend, I will go back and let her know she inspired Ma Ma Loa. That she lives on. And that her humble, unique way of giving back has inspired a light in me.

Aloha oe,
A.J.

MANamorphosis Gets New Cover!

2009-01-21T19:20:00.002Z

I just got up this morning to find an e-mail with the cover (by the talented Trace Edward Zaber) for my next release from Amber Allure (the GLBT arm of Amber Quill Press) and I am thrilled with it on so many levels. Not to mention that it's a delicious piece of eye-candy, but it also perfectly encapsulates what the story is about (and it is a short story, published in e-book form.

The story begins:

I awoke one morning from uneasy dreams to find my penis had transformed itself into a vagina…

And here's basically what it's about (which is why the cover is so clever and thoughtful):

Thus begins the story of a very unusual day in the life of Rick, one utterly baffled gay man. After the shock wears off about his new, compelling, and completely different genitalia, this promiscuous, fun-loving gay man wonders how he can take advantage of his bizarre new gift.

Bagging a straight man is the first thing that comes to mind. Well, actually bagging whole battalions of straight men spring to mind.

There's only one problem: while he now has his very own love taco, he has none of the customary toppings to go with it. Enter Pete Thickwhistle, friend and drag artist extraordinaire. Pete quickly sets about making his friend's appearance go from butch man to convincing female as fast as you can say “Max Factor.”

Rick, now Rickie, sets off on his quest for yards and yards of straight man flesh. Little did he know that what awaited him was not his lust’s desire, but his heart’s. Rickie finds that when you got out looking just for sex, you may end up with something a lot more substantial…

And finally, here's a little taste to whet your appetite. Although the cover man might be a lot more tempting when you think about taste, I hope you'll give the book a try when it comes out around Valentine's Day.

It wasn’t long before my doorbell was ringing. And no, that’s not a euphemism for another orgasm, although I did linger over my new toy for a while longer lying in bed, managing to come a couple more times before arising. That was just one of the attributes of my glorious acquisition: I could come again and again without worrying about silly notions like erections and refractory periods. I had also showered. Under the pulsating spray, I experienced yet another orgasm as I loofahed myself down there; the marriage of a rough sponge and clitoris would have had me climbing the tiled walls of my tub enclosure, had they not been as slippery as my now spanking clean pleasure portal. And who knew the “massage” setting on my showerhead could produce such divine results? What had I done without this portal to pleasure before? It seemed like with each passing moment, it revealed yet another wonder to me.

I reluctantly dragged myself from the shower and dressed in T-shirt and jeans that were now curiously flat in the crotch. Barefoot, I padded out of my room to answer the door.

Awaiting me downstairs was my friend, and sometimes woman, Pete Thickwhistle. The masculine sounding moniker, with its allusions to penises and girth, belied his given name. Pete, with his willowy frame, and mane of blond tresses, didn’t need much to look like a female, but that didn’t stop him from gilding the lily. That sissy could layer on so much make-up it took a sandblaster to get it all off. I had no intentions of letting him go Tammy Faye Baker—God rest her soul—on my face.

“Good morning, Miss Mary Sunshine!” Pete chirped and I thought, you don’t know the half of it, sister. I stepped back to admit Pete, who was wearing pin striped bell bottoms, platform shoes, a satin blouse unbuttoned almost the naval and a tasteful Hermes scarf wound around his Audrey Hepburn neck in the fashion of a cravat. Behind him trailed the scent of Chanel No. 5.

I led him to the living room, made sure he was sitting, and explained what had happened overnight.

“You’re shittin’ me?” Pete said, suddenly not sounding very feminine at all. He cocked his head at me, an incredulous smirk affixed to a face so closely shaved I wondered for a moment if he waxed it.

So I dropped my jeans and showed him.

Around the Rim

2009-01-08T13:46:00.002Z

By Rick R Reed

Ask your mother, or any of your straight friends, to use the word “rim” in a sentence as a verb and they may be hard pressed to come up with a response. Oh sure, Mom might say, “Grandma’s lovely mixing bowl was *rimmed* in *fleur-de-lis*.” But for the most part, your straight friends probably think of the word rim as a noun.

But ask your gay brethren and you’ll come up with an entirely different response. The rim of their favorite coffee cup is probably the last thing to come to their filthy little minds when that particular three-letter word arises in conversation. “Rimming” or “tossing a salad” are just a couple of metaphors for the act known less delicately as “eating butt” or for those of a more clinical semantic bent, analingus.

But how safe is putting your tongue where the sun don’t shine? Once again, I will reiterate my claim, before I go any further, that I am not a doctor, nor have I ever even played one on TV, so what I say here should not be construed as medical advice. It’s only the results of my own feeble research into the topic that I present here, so take it with a grain of salt…or a shot of penicillin…or a hepatitis vaccination. Which brings me to my first point: hepatitis. Other than winding up with a shit-eating grin, your biggest risk when it comes to rimming is contracting hepatitis, A or B, maybe even C. Face it, butt munchers, the easiest way to get hepatitis is through fecal matter and you’re bound to come into contact with some if you go sticking your nose (and your mouth) in a loved one’s butthole, however tight, pink, hairy or beautiful that little rosebud may be. The good news here is that you can allay many of your worries by visiting your doctor and getting yourself vaccinated against the dreaded virus. Then you can munch away with abandon, bearing in mind that you have NOT been vaccinated against other nasty little critters you could pick up this way, like parasites. As with most any gestures of affection, you must weigh the risks and benefits of any such display and decide what is right for you. Keeping your nose out of others’ business is your decision, as an educated consumer.

You may be wondering about that old bugaboo we hear so much about these days: HIV. From what I’ve learned, rimming is not all that likely to give you the dreaded virus, provided you have a healthy mouth (no cuts, sores, blisters, icky gums, etc.) and he has a clean ass free from any sores, rips or cuts. We won’t even get into FELCHING here.

So, dear ones, I close with two cliches: bottoms up! And *bon appetit*!

(This post originally appeared on Jessewave's Blog on a matter of "burning gay questions")

I Do! An Anthology in Support of Marriage Equality

2009-01-06T19:10:00.002Z

edited by Kris Jacen

Who says money can't buy love? Or equality?

A little cash will get you these twenty remarkable tales of love and passion by top international writers of GLBT romance such as Lee Rowan, Alex Beecroft, Erastes and Fiona Glass.

100% of the proceeds from each copy goes to the Lambda Legal Fund to aid their marriage equality fight against California's Proposition 8.

"I Do! An Anthology in Support of Marriage Equality" is available right now in e-book from www.allromancebooks.com and www.mobipocket.com, with the print version coming January 21st from MLR Press (www.mlrpress.com).

It's a great way to make sure your romance supports ours.

"There's surely something here for every taste: man on man and woman on woman; fantasy and funny and sizzling and sweet. Swans and Snow Queens and salty sailors and slithering serpents, oh my! French Legionnaires do it in the mud; little girls grow up married from childhood, and first timers discover the magic ..." --Victor J. Banis author of The Man from C.A.M.P., Lola Dances and Deadly Nightshade

"Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue: twenty tales, funny, sweet, erotic, poignant – from some of the best and brightest writers in GLBT romance. Never has support for a good cause been more delicious, more delectable than in this generous helping of life – and love – affirming stories." -- Josh Lanyon author of the Adrien English Mystery Series and Man, Oh Man! Writing M/M for Kinks and Ca$h

To be or not to be...Straight, Bisexual, Queer, or Gay, What is to question?

2009-01-03T20:29:00.004Z

By Bryl Tyne

As a writer of a variety of genres and avid reader of mostly gay or male/male fiction, I receive puzzling looks and even more puzzling questions. “Why” being the most common. To which I reply, “Uh, because I like it.” Duh! Besides, the fact that I empathize is truly no ones business but my own. And yet, I am cornered for explanation more often than I care to recall.

Why is it so difficult for people to accept differences? I intend that question for everyone, from every side of the fence and every lifestyle. For as many who fail to acknowledge individualism, just as many in our own community don't recognize or refuse to accept the ascension of the new Queer.

For all the reasons, ways, and justifications that exist to be, as many encompass the laws of attraction if not more. Is anyone qualified to judge? I know only that I am not.

Not everyone fits into a box or a mold. In fact, most do not. In light of the much ado about the Spectrum of labels, Mark David Gerson, inspirational speaker, artist, life/spiritual mentor, writing coach, editorial consultant, and author of The Voice of the Muse: Answering the Call to Write & The Moonquest: A True Fantasy, gave me permission to repost his latest blog entry:

Coming Out (Again) for Christmas

Friday, January 2 ~ Albuquerque, New Mexico

It's December 14 and I'm at the New Mexico Gay Men's Chorus's "Come Out for Christmas" concert with my friend Kathleen. It's our second year attending this event together and although this year's show is not nearly as good as last year's, there's something about being here this time that feels inexplicably right.

After the concert, Kathleen and I are chatting about this and that at a nearby Starbucks when I ask her, "Have I ever told you my 'gay story'?"

If you've been following this blog for a few years, you'll have read various versions of the story. What I told Kathleen was this:

For the first 20 years of my adult life, I lived as a gay man. Yet, as I awakened to my spirituality, I felt called to stop identifying myself as gay -- or straight. Rather, I began to see myself as a sexual being open to all possibilities. Still, I was somewhat surprised when, a few years later in Sedona, AZ, I fell in love with a woman.

When I told my gay friends that I was getting married (a sort of reverse coming-out), I explained that I had fallen in love with a wonderful spirit who just happened to occupy a female physique. From that place of love and passion, I said, gender and orientation were irrelevant and anything was possible. And it was.

Yet as profound, intimate and wonderful as our relationship was, it ended six and half years later, for reasons unrelated to sexuality.

In the four years since, I've often revisited the sexual orientation question. "Am I gay again?" I would ask in meditation. The answer was always, "Nothing has changed. Don't label yourself. Be open to all possibilities." Even though my primary physical attraction remained toward men, I honored that counsel and refused to categorize myself.

Something changed when I returned to Albuquerque in November after 40 days on the road. It was as though after 15 years of traveling in the spiritual realms, I had crash-landed back on earth and was reconnecting with the 38-year-old I had been before my spiritual awakening.

Suddenly, people from my past resurfaced, as did work opportunities disturbingly similar to those I hadn't pursued in 16 years. And at the very physical (read "earthly") job my financial situation pushed me into last month, I have been "Mark." Only friends and family from years back know me as Mark. To most everyone else I'm "Mark David."

I was starting to believe that I was living my own version of the infamous dream season of the 1980s Dallas TV series and that I would wake up and discover that nothing of the past decade and a half had really occurred.

Of course it all did, and I have a beautiful nine-year-old daughter (and all of you) as proof. What I have been experiencing, rather, is a giant turn of the spiral I wrote about in Everything Old Is New Again, a "full circle" far more comprehensive than any I remember having lived.

In spiritual terms, it's time to take all I have experienced on my spiritual journey and bring it down to earth -- into the practical, into the physical...to reconnect who I was with who I am now.

"Perhaps," as I wrote so presciently in The MoonQuest, "it is time...to allow the boy I was to touch the man I have become..."

When I leave Starbucks that Sunday evening, having shared my story with Kathleen, I feel the same kind of rush I felt 24 years earlier when I began coming out as a gay man to straight friends. I feel as though a tremendous burden has been lifted from me. I feel lighter.

Four days later, I go to see Milk, the film story of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in the US, who was assassinated in 1978 by a fellow San Francisco city supervisor.

The movie is brilliant, compelling and moving (as is Sean Penn's portrayal of the title role) and I find myself wiping away tears at frequent intervals.

It's compelling for another, more personal reason: the film's time frame covers the period of my coming out, and the gay activism it portrays is a bolder version of my activism in the Montreal of the mid- to late '70s. It's like watching my own life play out before me.

I leave the theater in an altered state and when I got into the car, I begin to sob uncontrollably. I sit there -- crying, heaving, releasing -- for 20 minutes. And when the tears stop I see that I have come full circle, that I have allowed the Mark I was to touch the Mark David I have become, that as open as I remain to the infinite realm of possibilities in life, I am a gay man. Again.

Even as I share this story with close friends in the days that follow, I'm not sure what to do with this realization. Is it appropriate to come out a third time? Is it necessary to be as openly gay at 54 as I was at 24 and 34? Does it even matter anymore to anyone but me?

This morning, in the midst of an interview with Joan Sotkin on her Prosperity Place radio show, I realize that it does matter. And I realize why.

During the show, Joan shares her spiritual coming out story and reveals how difficult it had been to let her spirituality have a place in her coaching work. And I note how vulnerable I felt putting out my most recent blog post, All That Matters Is That I'm Writing.

As we're talking, I remember how important it is to be vulnerable, how healing it is to share our truth and our stories out into the world. I remember, too, how much of my work is about helping give people permission to do those very things by doing them myself.

That's largely what this blog has been about. That's largely what Harvey Milk's message was about. He insisted that we must be who we are out in the world, and it's a message that's as valid today as it was 30 years ago -- whoever we are, whatever our orientation.

I realize, too, this morning that like Joan we all have many parts to ourselves and that each of these is more potent and transformational when operating as part of a oneness. When we fragment ourselves -- being spiritual only with our spiritual friends, gay only with our gay friends, Jewish only with our Jewish friends, vegetarian only with our vegetarian friends, Democrats only with our Democrat friends -- we cheat the world and ourselves of the strength, power and paradox of the human soul.

Each of us is a unit within which lives unparalleled diversity. Only when we can be at peace with that diversity within ourselves will we be at peace with that same diversity in others. And only then will we see peace in the world.

That peace begins in me. That peace begins in you. And it begins with me honoring all of who I am by integrating all of who I am into all that I do. One of the ways I achieve that integration is by being open and vulnerable with you, by letting you see more of me than I might always prefer you to see in the hopes that you will be inspired to share all of you with others.

Tikkun olam is a phrase in the Jewish tradition that translates from the Hebrew as "healing the world." That healing begins when I open my heart to myself so that I can see who I am. It grows when I open my heart to you and let you see who I am. It grows further when you do the same.

Won't you open your heart and share your light -- all of it -- with a world so desperate for healing? Won't you come out of hiding and be?

What parts of yourself are you hiding from yourself?

What parts of yourself have you hidden from the world?

Where can you integrate more of who you are into what you do?

Where can you be more open to others' diversity?

Where can you be more open to your own?

Won't you share some of who you are here?

Photos: #1 Gay Santa from The Austin Chronicle; #2 me and my daughter, Guinevere; #3 Book cover for The MoonQuest, designed by Angela Farley; #3 Poster for the movie Milk, starring Sean Penn; #4 Hebrew lettering for "tikkun olam"

80% Straight

2008-12-23T17:32:00.004Z

By A.J. Llewellyn

Waikiki is famous for being very gay-friendly. Honolulu county, which incorporates Waikiki pushed hard for Hawaii to be the first US state to advocate gay marriage and very nearly did so until the Supreme Court overruled the flood of marriages that took place here in 1999.

And now, Waikiki, the gay hub of Hawaii continues to rule the area all the way east from Diamond Head’s Queen’s Surf (named for royalty and a fabled restaurant that vanished along with other Hawaiian staples like Liberty House thanks to the tide of change) to the east and as far west as Eaton Square.

Eaton Square I learned is for serious gay activity – a full-on sex club called PA10 with live sex shows and other naughty stuff…in fact I modeled my sex club in the short story Midnight at Morning’s in the Sanguinary Seductions Anthology on PA10…but I digress.

There’s Max’s, a gay bath house and men only workout club…but try finding a place to buy a gay book.
Go ahead. Try!

I didn’t want to believe it, but I can report after three full days on the frontline that it is disheartening to find that not one single solitary gay-friendly book store exists in the "gay hub" of the islands.

My mate Tony (he of the dithering sexual orientation) told me about a place called 80% Straight an alleged gay book and gift store. After a quick lunch at Murphy’s, the Irish pub in Chinatown (I kid you not) I made my way there yesterday after being rebuffed almost every place I took my paperback copies of my gay erotic romance Phantom Lover and accompanying promo materials. The guys at Hula’s Lei Stand and Bar the most popular gay bar in Waikiki pointed me in the direction of 80% Straight up the road apiece on Kapahulu Avenue.
Oh it’s gay all right. Spanking and fetish magazines galore but the guy at the register was firm in his rejection of “Gay Lidderachure.”

He insisted, “We got out of the book business. It just doesn’t sell.” He admired the cover art of Phantom Lover and my new one Phantom Lover II and suggested I try Borders and Barnes and Noble…who were reluctant to take on new gay books because they said...They Don't Sell.
They suggested I try Aaxtion Bookstore, an adult ‘sex emporium’ I er…immortalized in my gay comedy romance A Vampire in Waikiki.

Aaxtion was interested until they realized the books are gay erotic romance…not straight.In a town known to be so gay friendly that once upon a time gay husbands were considered a class unto themselves…mahu, when mahu was not a derogatory term, it feels almost surreal.
It seems with the passage of time, we gays don’t bloody read!

We apparently like to get drunk, get laid, get massages, we like to slobber over festish rags…but we couldn’t possibly want to read a book!

I am determined to open a bookstore in Honolulu and am more determined than ever that it will have a huge gay and lesbian section. I walked back to my car, parked about nine miles away from 80% Straight and pondered how on earth such a tolerant city edged out things like books.

To be fair, it’s not just impossible to find gay books. Book stores period, are few and far between. There are books in the ubiquitous ABC stores and even the supermarket chain Foodland and I have checked the stock in all of them.

Mostly children’s books, tour guides and, to my surprise and delight paperback reprints of Jack London’s Hawaiian stories and Gavan Daws’s books.

There are some quirky choices too in some of the high end hotel shops: the hot local author is Chip Hughes, a professor at University of Hawaii in Manoa. His series The Surfing Detective, like all the other books are locally published. I have no idea how they are selling.

My mate Tony and I walked in and out of one ABC store after another. The exact same stock is in each one. One particular store owner even denied having any books until I pointed out the same selection of books I’ve been seeing everywhere.

“Bah!” he exclaimed. “You want bettah fo' buy some T-shirts?”

Not anytime soon, pops.

So now, I have left copies of my books with two small independent book sellers, including Native Books which is a truly beautiful store.

As I trudged the streets of my soon-to-be-island home I pondered the mere name 80% Straight. I told my dad what happened when I called him on my cell phone.

“Oh, AJ,” he said, sounding distressed. “Either the remaining 20 per cent jumped back in the bloody closet or you just found your calling.”

Maybe he’s right. I squared my shoulders, marched the rest of the way to my car…it ain’t over until the fat lady’s sung a big fat, glorious aria, baby!

Aloha oe,

A.J.

The Long Bi Bye?

2008-12-18T16:51:00.005Z

by Craig Burke

I am less about labels than most anyone I know. Now that is not necessarily such a noble thing – it might just be that I am that simplistic, but at any rate I try not to compartmentalize people. I attempt to not think of one as my black friend, or my lesbian friend or my tall, skinny friend but rather as just a friend. But with that said, I admit that when it comes to the issue of sexual orientation, I am bisexual. Now while one might consider me to be a bisexual, I consider myself to be a person attracted to given males and/or females.

The quibble over definitions notwithstanding, proclaiming to either be bisexual, or to be bisexually oriented often does present problems. In the 'heterosexual world' (there's one of those nasty ole labels there) at worst a bisexual is thought of as being perverted, an abomination, and all the other things certain religious evangelicals reserve for those different than themselves, and at best the bisexual is thought of as someone whom is experimenting, attempting to decide what to be when 'grown up'. (By the way 'grown up' is a concept which may be beyond my grasp.) Meanwhile in the 'gay world' (sounds like a wonderful section of an enlightened Disney theme park) those of us who will admit to being bisexually oriented are often looked on with just as much scorn as being someone who is either afraid or ashamed to commit all the way and admit they are truly gay.

Being a fan of irony, I find it fascinating that some of those gays who for so long in our history have been the target of prejudice and misconception would turn around and apply the same judgments and convoluted reasoning to the bisexuals as had been applied to them for so many years. I can't tell you how many times I have heard a gay person state in some form or other that the true bisexual does not even exist! (This while they look you in the eye.) Apparently a bisexual is just afraid somehow (in this day and age of some enlightenment?) to admit to being gay. Maybe some gays are frustrated that they can not 'out' bisexuals as bisexuals are already half out anyway. But is a gay person telling a bisexual that they do not truly know what they think or feel any different than a heterosexual person telling a gay they are not really gay – they just merely haven't learned yet to deal with an individual of another gender.

And perhaps bisexuals are thought to be obtuse and therefore not able to make a choice as we (there I go identifying myself with a label again) are often thought to be shallow. How many times have I heard, “How can a bisexual ever be trusted?” Now I am giving the benefit of a doubt and assuming that means in the context of a relationship and not just a general concept that bisexuals are not to be trusted in any area or endeavor. Lots of heterosexuals cheat in a relationship and lots of gays cheat in a relationship, and yes, lots of bisexuals do as well, but to state that bisexuals are somehow more likely to be unfaithful is patently ridiculous. Some state that if a bisexual man (for example) is in a relationship with a woman he is going to be 'tempted' by attractive men. Well yes and he can as equally be 'tempted' by attractive women can't he? Some will go on to state that that is precisely the point – that a bisexual has the whole playing field by which to be 'enticed'. While this is true, it only takes one enticement or temptation for a straight, gay or bisexual to be unfaithful.

Which brings me to the point of being (admittedly) bisexual and (allegedly) a writer. So am I a bisexual writer? Well in the sense that I have just stated that I am both it does, but it most surely does not identify me as a writer of bisexual fiction (however see below). There are countless labels that can be placed on me. For example, I am male, tall and skinny, blond, and Scots-Irish to name a few. So should I be known as 'that writer who writes masculine, tall and skinny, blond Scots-Irish books?' I think not! I am a writer who writes about people, plain and simple. Some of them are straight and some of them are gay and some of them are even (horrors!) bisexual.

However, this all does bring me to the point that there is a dearth of good, positive bisexual fiction. I believe there is a market for fiction portraying bisexual characters and that that market has a lot of growth potential. I am excited and humbled that I have been asked by the very far-sighted and broad-minded publisher of Loveyoudivine Alterotica to help create and to anchor a bisexual line called The Best of Both Worlds. I am currently busy writing what is planned as the first of a trilogy of westerns set in the 1880s in the Texas panhandle. This trilogy will be the saga of three characters – a beautiful young woman who inherits a ranch when her brother is murdered, an older sheriff who is intent on seing justice done and a very young cowboy who is there for both of them. The first novel is tentatively titled Palo Duro, (which is Spanish for hard stick, which was used to describe the mesquite trees that were plentiful). While the tone of it will be appropriately 'hot' it is definitely story driven, dealing not only with all the standard western plot lines of good versus evil, but also dealing with the complications of three people whom all genuinely come to care deeply for one another and how their choices can be difficult and can carry long term consequences. While it may not be a happily-ever-after story it is nevertheless about people caring and finding what happiness they can – in other words kind of like real life.

Someone Else’s Family

2008-12-12T17:24:00.002Z

Current mood: contemplative

Category: Life

On Monday morning, Don Yun Yoon, a Korean immigrant to the United States, left his home in San Diego to go to work. Inside his house were his beautiful wife Young Mi, his 15-month-old daughter Grace, his two-month-old daughter Rachel and his visiting mother in law Suk Im Kim. Three hours later, inexplicable horror occurred.

A marine corps fighter plane from a nearby base, returned from an off-shore training mission. The pilot lost control of the plane clipping the trees above the family home before plunging right into it, killing everyone inside.

In a matter of seconds, Don Yun Yoon lost three generations of his family and has no clue how to go on. As devastating as his loss is, I was impressed and frankly amazed when he stood in tears outside the wreckage of what was once his American Dream and stated that he doesn't blame the pilot, who survived the catastrophe.

My first thoughts were - forgive me for this - he can't be American, he has to be an immigrant. if he was American he'd be lawyered up with some high-profile celeb lawyer who'd already be on the Today Show hollering for Ju$tice.

Don Yun Yoon stood on the street where he lived and spread out his hands. "I don't have any hard feelings. He [the pilot] did everything he could."

His bewildered gaze traversed the wreckage of his crushed life. He said he didn't know how he could cope with the loss of his family. "Please tell me how to do it." His voice cracked. "I don't know what to do."

My heart went out to him and in that moment, I remembered a tragic incident in my family. My Uncle Peter was married to one of the sweetest most wonderful women I ever met. Her name was Helen and when my own mother died when I was six, she fluttered around me and my brothers, always making sure we were included at family functions. They had a beautiful 10-year-old daughter Theoni, who I remember as being both angelic and tough to beat at Vigaro (the Australian street version of cricket).

Helen and Theoni were sitting at a bus stop bench one morning waiting for the bus when a drunken driver did the unthinkable. He veered off the road and slammed straight into my aunt and my cousin, killing them. I did not see much of my uncle after that. He was not a broken man. He was a wraith.

A few years ago, when I was back in Australia for a vacation, I looked him up. He'd long ago given up the family home, given up on life and he was a thin, unhappy soul just waiting to die. He wasn't particularly interested in talking to me, but there is, among those who have experienced deep tragedy, a kind of connectedness. It's a belonging to a club you have no wish to be a member of, but fate's decided you belong to.

After almost giving up on having any type of decent conversation with my Uncle Peter, he suddenly asked me if I think about my mother. "Every day," I said. "I miss her every day." He nodded. He understood.

"What happened to me," he said, looking traumatized as he revisited the past, "Is something so horrendous you couldn't wish it on someone else's family."

These two remarkable men have been dealt vicious blows by life, blows that will forever mar them. I have no doubt Don Yun Yoon feels the same way as my Uncle Pete, but as I watched Mr. Yoon on TV surrounded by his sister, brother and family pastor, I felt certain his future is less hollow, that he will be able to talk about his feelings.

These are different times and I hope the people close to him will encourage him to talk, to help him keep the faith and give him strength. I don't wish this had happened to someone else's family. I wish it hadn't happened at all. I'd like these cruel mysteries of life to be explained, but until that day happens, I can only hope and pray that there is some good, valid reason God makes these decisions. I do believe in the Rainbow Bridge, where our loved ones are waiting for us. I know my Uncle Pete believes in it too.

In the meantime, the inexplicable has occurred. As one of Mr. Yoon's tearful neighbors told reporters, "I can't get over that a family has perished. A young, beautiful family."

Aloha oe,

A.J.
Currently listening : Ka Hikina O Ka Hau (The Coming of the Snow)

Release date: By 2006-12-12

A Brick in the Wall

2008-12-09T09:00:00.001Z

by Dorien Grey

Every incident in our life is a brick in the wall of who we are, and it is interesting, especially for a writer, to stop to examine them carefully every now and then.

On going through my A World Ago blog (http://www.doriengrey.blogspot.com) , a compilation of letters written to my parents while I was in the Navy so very long ago, I realized that there is one letter missing, and since it dealt with one of the more memorable incidents of my checkered military career—my very reluctant trip to a Naples brothel—, I really can't let the story pass.

So, come with me back in time once more, back to my days aboard the great grey hulk of the grand old aircraft carrier U.S.S. Ticonderoga, anchored in the Bay of Naples.

I was somehow "elected"…how or by whom is lost in the mists of memory…to accompany three of my shipmates from the Commissary Department to go ashore and find a location for our Division Christmas party. (I know there is a letter in the blog dealing with the party itself.)

Upon getting off the liberty boat and beyond the guarded perimeter of Fleet Landing, we were immediately surrounded by the hundreds of always-present "guides" eager to assist American sailors find various forms of wholesome entertainment. We somehow settled on one to whom we explained our mission: to find a restaurant to host our party. He packed us all in a cab and headed off up into the hills to a place he had in mind—one from which he obviously received a hefty fee for bringing in business and, after half an hour or so, we'd made arrangements for the party.

On the way back into the city, the guide asked if we would like to make the acquaintance of some "beautiful women" he knew of.

I'd anticipated—and dreaded—something like this ever since we got off the ship, since I was with three red-blooded heterosexual sailors. "Sure!" my buddies agreed enthusiastically. I just sat there, wishing I could somehow open the door and throw myself into oncoming traffic. But I was trapped.

Our guide gave directions to the taxi driver, who took us God-knows-where, and pulled up in front of the door to a house which was indistinguishable from the solid row of identical buildings which stretched off endlessly in both directions. The guide urged us out of the taxi, which then took off, leaving us…and particularly me…on a strange street in a strange part of a strange city.

I was numb with dread. There was no way in hell I was going to join in the coming festivities, but to let my shipmates know I would rather shoot myself than engage in heterosexual sex could result in something I could not even bring myself to contemplate: being exposed as a "queer", thrown off the ship in disgrace, given a dishonorable discharge and shaming my parents and relatives…being gay in the Navy was (and is) definitely not a good thing.

But back to the story. The guide knocked on the door, which was opened by a typical, drably-dressed Italian woman anywhere from 40 to 60 years old, who looked us over without reaction and stepped back allowing us to enter. We found ourselves in a medium-sized room I assumed to be a combination living room and parlor. I don't recall seeing any indication that there were other rooms, but I'm sure there were. In the center of the room was a large, heavy wooden table on which the woman had been ironing clothes.

There was a plain sofa against one wall, and on the opposite wall a rocking chair in which sat an old man, rocking back and forth, smoking a pipe, and paying us not the slightest bit of attention. A young boy about nine years old played with some sort of toy on the floor. After looking up briefly, he, too, ignored us.

The guide urged us to sit on the sofa as the woman returned to her ironing. She had not spoken, and did not speak, a single word. When we were seated, the guide told us he would go round up the girls and bring them back, and without another word, he left.

And there I sat, surrounded by three ravingly heterosexual United States sailors, one nine year old boy, one 40-60-year-old woman, and an old man in a rocking chair smoking a pipe.

Deathly silence. The boy played, the woman ironed, and the old man rocked and smoked. Some time later…I have no idea how much later, since my stomach was in my throat and I was fervently praying for death…our guide returned. He was followed in by six women of mixed ages and sizes, including, inexplicably, a dwarf.

They walked in the door, smiling at my shipmates (I, unlike J. Alfred Prufrock, neither knew nor cared if they smiled for me), and walked completely around the table, twice: merchandise on display. Our hostess ironed, the boy played, scooting out of the way to allow the girls to pass him, and the old man smoked and rocked, totally oblivious.

One by one my shipmates made their choice and got up and left. "How about you, Roge? Pick one." "I will," I said, lying through my teeth. "You go ahead." We agreed to meet back in front of the house in an hour.

After my three friends had left and I declined to make a selection from the remaining girls, they also left.

And there I sat. Alone. In Naples, Italy. In what was not a whorehouse but a staging area. Alone and utterly invisible to the woman ironing and the old man smoking and rocking. The young boy, however, showed some interest and soon came over to me, as though I were some endangered species in a zoo. We soon engaged ourselves in a game of "what's this?" exchanging English and Italian names for things like "nose" and "finger" and "shoes".

And the time passed. And passed. And passed. And finally, when I could stand it no longer, I got up and left and somehow made my way back to the ship.

The next day I ran into one of my companions on this little adventure. "Have a good time, Roge?" he asked, grinning.

"Great," I said. I lied.

******************

The above is an excerpt from Dorien Grey and Me (http://www.doriengreyandme.com)

(picture: The Fleet's In by Paul Cadmus.)

Beyond the Reef

2008-12-07T09:00:00.000Z

by AJ Llewellyn

Every writer has a book or story they cannot forget. It's that one screaming at them from the bottom drawer. The one that just didn't get it's shot...forgive me for boasting for just a moment, but I am still absorbing the news that I am an Eppie Awards Finalist for my gay erotic fiction novel, Beyond the Reef.

I love each every book I write, they are pieces of me. But Beyond the Reef is the biggest piece of all because it is my most personal story.

And I wrote it 15 years ago.

As I drove up the California coast yesterday to take my wonderful editor Heather and her sister Colleen to lunch to thank them for all their hard work at my Phantom Lover book signing last week, I thought about how far my book and my work has come. Beyond the Reef was a book that actually saved my life.

I was deeply depressed when I wrote it and Frank Truelove, the hero of the tale, a man born of rainbows kept me so focused on being happy that I forgot about being depressed. I wrote the book and found a lot of interest in it at the time, but I could not sell it.

The premise was simple: a lonely, chubby woman has a fantasy man so real to her and so obviously fictional to her friends and family, she's as shocked as they are when he materializes in her shower one day. He is her perfect man. He knows everything about her...and he just won't go away.

I had a kick-ass agent, a hot premise and people told me, a good book but although I almost sold it several times, even had an early draft optioned as a screenplay - it languished. And then the book withered on the vine.

Earlier this year, I took out my old manuscript and I realized the genesis of the tale was still workable. Then I "ate a piece of crazy pie" as my wonderful friend, author Stephani Hecht would say and completely changed it.

I turned what had been a straight romance into gay erotic romance and that is honestly when the book came to life.

When I originally wrote it, nobody in Hollywood was writing gay stories. Not for public consumption, anyway. Like everybody else, I was trying to write mainstream. I was going for "high concept" as the marketing people like to say.

I wrote it from a woman's point of view and Frank was still Frank but once I dropped the veil and wrote it from my own perspective, it changed.

My publisher Tina Haveman of eXtasy Books snapped it up. Martine Jardin's cover art for the book was gorgeous.

And now, I am stunned to find myself in the company of five amazing authors in the GLBT category. The divine Cat Grant, Angela Benedetti, Kimberley Gardner, Tory Temple and Rick R. Reed. I fully expect Rick to win, but I don't care. Beyond the Reef was not only published, it was a best selling novel, it has received some of the sweetest reviews of my writing career. And now it's up for an Eppie.

I received a beautiful email from Rick yesterday and it touched me when he said how happy he was to be going head to head with me in this race.

I wrote back, "I'll take you any way I can get you, Rick!" I'm sure he rolled his eyes. We often exchange emails and he remains one of my very favorite authors to interview for Dark Diva Reviews. I enjoy his humor and his brilliance, though how such a nice man writes such scary, creepy, twisted thrillers constantly amazes me.

No...today, I will not think about the sheer genius of his book Orientation which is in a class all by itself. I will just think about how far Beyond the Reef has come and I wonder if somewhere out there beyond a different reef...Goddess Pele is chuckling because sometimes, just sometimes, the last piece of fruit left on the tree is a juicy piece of fruit indeed.

Aloha oe,

A.J.

The Burnt Place

2008-12-05T12:01:00.000Z

By Victor J Banis

It was just a big old farmhouse that had been burned at some time in the past and never rebuilt. We moved there when I was 6, maybe 7. Eleven of us, plus mother and father. We moved there from The Streetcar. My younger brother (I was number 10) was born in The Streetcar. No, it wasn’t moving. It had been parked on an empty lot, and where the conductor once sat was a sort of stove made of bricks, that served for cooking and heating. There isn’t much room in a streetcar. Elbow to elbow, ego to ego. To stretch, you turned inward. What an enormous space the mind is.

The Burnt Place had lots of space. Outside, the fields and pastures, a creek, a barn and a spring house. Inside, charred beams. Stairs that went nowhere. Rooms without ceilings, one missing two walls. It had ghosts. We are a family of ghost-seers, believers in the intangible, dream pursuers. Book people, too, readers. Bibles and library books and borrowed books and comic books and school books. All those words. “Come play with us,” the laughing words cried, and a delighted little boy took them to his heart, splashed in the creek with them and cavorted in the woods and drowzed in the sunlit pasture, conspiring in their seduction. “There is a place, at the roof of the world,” the honeyed words whispered, “The wind at your back blows down from the high Himalayas and at your feet, in a vast, green valley lies the ancient kingdom of Chin. Come, let us take you there.”

A writer is born.

Dipping My Toes into the Electronic Pool

2008-12-03T12:01:00.001Z

By Rick Reed

Ebooks are a bit of a new phenomenon for me. I haven't quite been won over to reading them yet, but I have dabbled in writing them. See, with eBooks I have a little more freedom than with print books, which need to be approximately 60,000 to 70,000 words to make a print run feasible. Ebooks, being electronic, don't have that limitation. Writing an eBook allows me the freedom to bring to the world those stories that may be a little long for a print antho or magazine, but too short to be printed as a book you hold in your hands.

Case in point: my new release from Amber Allure (the GLBT division of Amber Quill Press). It's called FUGUE and it weighs in at a breathless 11,000 words, which means you can read it in one sitting quite easily, provided you don't get distracted. If books were subject to the movie's rating system, it would probably be given an NC-17 or maybe even a triple XXX. It covers bondage, torture, dungeons, whips, chains, hot wax, masks, and a whole lot more. You know, your standard wholesome Disney-type fare.

But is it art?

I like to think that even though the whole story is about sex, it's about a lot more. It's about the places people go in their minds to endure physical pain. It's about why some people are willing to become submissive to the point of letting themselves experience hurt and immobility...and what rewards such an experience can hold.

But mostly, it's about love between two men, and the not always sharply defined lines between master and slave.

I hope you'll give it a read. You can order it here.

To give you a little taste, here's a short excerpt:

...Shackles embrace my ankles, keeping me anchored to the cool, damp floor. This sense of immobility ratchets up the tension and anticipation, and these feelings war within me, causing tingles throughout my body in much the same way as the restraints holding me in place do. I ache for something to happen, yet know I am powerless to bring anything about. Patience is a virtue I have learned, honed in its tutelage now for several years.

Ever since I met my master. That man of mine. The one I love. The seer and deliverer of pain, of pleasure, of love…and discipline.

Waiting. Anticipation pulses like a drug, pounding and surging through my body, binding me more thoroughly than these cuffs, chains and shackles. The air against my naked body is especially cool, its dampness almost like a second presence, like an icy caress. Part of the chill comes from the fact that I am bereft of hair; earlier, he shaved me clean, right down to the hair that sprouts between the cheeks of my ass. He has clamped my nipples, and the bite of the steel hurts and, at the same time, keeps me in a constant state of arousal. My balls hurt as well; he has pulled them low with metal cuffs that twist around the top of the sac, gripping and tugging….a constant, dull ache.

This is true love.

Yet all this dull sensation of pain is but a prelude to the full symphony of hurt that's on its way. I keep my eyes shut tightly; a lazy smile moves across my lips, disappears.

Waiting. Anticipating. Almost overriding the pedestrian ache of my constraints is the roaring of my blood in my ears, the pounding of my heart, the quickening of my breath, all of these racing with each little noise I hear. My mouth is dry with want, with need. I almost ache to shout out into the murky light: "Hurry! Hurry! I almost can't bear you making me wait like this. The anticipation is too much. It's torture even I don't want. Hurry!"

But I don't dare. I keep my own counsel and stay mute. A good slave knows his place, knows when to groan, when to scream, when to whimper, and when to sigh. And now, in this waiting, is not the time.

Behind me, my master busies himself, arranging lashes on a table: cat o' nine tails, bullwhip, riding crop, and even a wooden paddle with holes drilled in its smooth oak surface that transports me back to junior high school. I remember being in seventh grade detention, the paddle whistling through the air, singing through those holes as the gym teacher, Mr. Wright, brought it down hard on my adolescent ass, not knowing that the pain he was delivering was also filling me with the most delicious pleasure, or that my dick was hard and dripping in my jeans. Had he known, would he have continued?

Would it have been a kind of pleasure for him, too? Thinking about such a prospect makes my dick hard even now.

My master comes up to stand behind me, firm touch of his hand on my chest, then moving away. His hands are warm and strong. I am his.

I smell the leather: deep, musky, manscent.

Leather aroma deepens as he pulls my head back and I close my eyes. Leather fills my senses until it's all that exists. My master slides the hood over my face, obliterating this dusky space where we will be together, making me his and his alone.

Darkness...

Order Fugue here.

--
Check out my most recent releases on Amazon:
Dead End Street: http://tinyurl.com/5mztwy
Orientation: http://tinyurl.com/5ntwyu
High Risk: http://tinyurl.com/39dror
Deadly Vision: http://tinyurl.com/3eygd4
In the Blood: http://tinyurl.com/5zwc8w
IM: http://tinyurl.com/32rsy4

Find me at:
http://www.rickrreed.com

Dating for the Single Writer

2008-12-01T12:35:00.002Z

By Alex Beecroft

I'm beginning to think that the process of getting new novel writing ideas is a bit like dating. Ideas are a bit like men. Some of them get introduced to you by other people and you make polite noises while thinking 'OMG! I couldn't spend five minutes in his company without trying to kill myself!'

Some are handsome and pleasant to be with and generally really nice. And you think 'well... yes... maybe', and turn the idea over in your head for a little and find out that yes, there's potential there. You could live with this idea for a time, and it wouldn't be too unpleasant. It has depths, you could possibly get a novel out of it. And yet that vital spark is missing. You like the idea but you don't have any chemistry with it.

That's the situation I was in with my idea for the novel I was going to write to follow up my Age of Sail novel, False Colors, which is coming out in April. I thought I could do a novel about an 18th Century Ascendancy family setting in Ireland, and the son falling in love with a young man of an ancient Gaelic family who is in one of the many proto-IRA movements of the time.

And it's a nice idea. It's got conflict, it's got that handsome 18th Century setting that I like so much, but for some reason it just didn't set my heart pounding.

Some ideas are gorgeous young heartbreakers who promise to show you a good time, and then leave you in chapter 5 in a compromised position with a long slog ahead and no support. Alas, the one I'm writing at the moment is showing all the signs of this. 'Boys of Summer' seemed to be such a heart-throb when I thought of the idea, but that was in August at the sea-side, when I was surrounded by tanned, lithe surfers. Now that I've brought it home, and it's winter time, I can't quite remember what I saw in it.

Though of course, it may be that the relationship is salvageable if I put enough work into it. If only there was a 'Muses Guidance Service' where you could go and talk these things out!

On the other hand, some ideas are the sort that you refuse to meet for a long time because you know they're not your thing. Then one day suddenly you see them across the room and go 'ooh....!' Your stomach tingles and you think 'ooh yes. Glamour. Enchantment. Potential. Chemistry.' There's no accounting for that 'love at first sight' flash of inspiration.

The problems come afterwards, when you discover that the 11th Century setting that looked so fine on a cursory glimpse is a time you know nothing about. That pairing you thought was so perfect would be really hard to justify in that context. And where would the conflict come from?

But if it's The Real Thing, the problems themselves become a challenge you enjoy conquering. The research that looked so formidable for the idea without a spark looks like a pleasure and an adventure instead.

Why, having specialised in the mid 18th Century, have I suddenly been swept off my feet by an idea from the 11th? I don't know. Possibly it will turn out to be another heartbreaker and leave me high and dry with 10,000 words and nowhere to go. But you have to take the chance, don't you?

Writing, like love, offers no guarantees that what you start will hold out to the end. But it would be so much worse not to start it at all.

Self-based Protagonists - Truth or Dare?

2008-11-30T17:25:00.004Z

In a recent BLOG, a question was raised concerning writing novels based on an author’s direct experience. The crux of the matter was whether an author could remain objective while presenting situations that they had personally lived through. Would an author gloss over darker detailed to obscure their own warts, dimming the truth by shining it up? On that BLOG, I gave a cursory answer that needs elaboration in light of my own direct-experience novel — Surviving an American Gulag.

Early drafts of Gulag were written in the first person, and although I assumed the name of Winslow Gibbs, I set out to express my thoughts directly to the reader through terse narrative — a narrative that I must admit was biased with a gay agenda. This is a case where the author has an axe to grind and does it at the expense of the reader’s enjoyment (it is a novel after all) and an overlay of themes that dull the senses to any compromise or rebuttal. I was marching through Georgia like Sherman, burning the world with my own opinions. I thought I was being objective. I presented myself as a fat slug, who went through an Army hell to survive, but in the end, I lost objectivity — that objectivity being the truth of novel authoring, which is to bend the truth for the sake of characterization and the reader’s pleasure.

In the case of Surviving an American Gulag, I decided to recast the work in the 3rd person and draw the self-based protagonist — Winslow Gibbs, as any character that emerges from my pen. As a result, Winslow observes and experiences far more than I ever did, and without all the gay preaching. "It is what it is." The work is about surviving, not victimization. It presents basic hurdles that all young American men need to face — questions of sexuality, patriotism, loyalty, companionship, and peer pressure. In the 3rd person, I found warts I never knew I had until now — forty years after the fact.

Ultimately, an author needs to distance themselves from personal experience to engage the reader. In my opinion, the creative process is hampered when the author develops a character from the inside out. I must enjoy my characters and the situations that beset them. If I can’t enjoy the landscape, how can I expect my reader to sign on for a really good read? As Private Avila says: "There are white lies, black lies and pink lies." Well, there’s a fourth lie — a highly crafted, premeditated one. It’s called — a novel. Happy reading.

Edward C. Patterson
visit me at Dancaster Creative

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1438247230 (Paperback)

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001BOST1G (Kindle)

Internalized Homophobia

2008-11-29T14:30:00.003Z

Many years ago, before I met the Jewish American Prince of Darkness and settled down with him, I had a single date with a clinically depressed psychologist named Abe. I remember talking with him about the book I was writing at the time, which became Mahu Fire.

I told him that the big early action in the book was a bomb going off at an event celebrating gay marriage, and that I was going to have my hero's best friend, Gunter, killed in the blast. I wanted Kimo to have a real motivation to solve the crime.

Abe was horrified. He kept insisting that it was my own internalized homophobia that made me want to kill off a gay character. No matter how much I argued about character development and plotting, he was adamant.

That was our only date, but it did make me reconsider killing off Gunter. I was thinking about Abe the other day because I'm working on the fifth book, and once again, Gunter has an important role to play.

I'm glad, now, that I didn't kill him off. But Abe's comment does make me wonder, sometimes, if I still have any remnants of that internalized homophobia. I know, for example, that my early dislike of effeminate men was rooted in my own issues-- if I was friendly with such a person, would others think I was "like that" too?

Today, I admire those guys, because they were the ones who could never hide who they were, and had to be strong just to be themselves. I've tried to give Kimo that admiration and respect as well.

And if you're out there, Abe, hope you're feeling better.

The Question of Bambi Stern - Symbol or Stereotype

2008-11-27T03:53:00.004Z

Lately, there has been some discussion on the character of Bambi Stern in my novel Cutting the Cheese. Bambi is a hefty Lesbian, who smokes cigars, wears a man's suit and fedora, and is motivated by cocktail weenies. She is also the president of the Gay & Lesbian Activists of New Birch and Sipsboro. The character has caused some anxiety (not to say, resentment) in some quarters of the Gay Community. Of course, the novel is my "bad boy" work, which goes out of its way to highlight many of the more outrageous foibles found in the Gay Social order. Without doubt, the various characters are based on people I met when I first emerged from the closet.

The community, being mapless otherwise, has created its own clue set for any newbie on the scene, who would need a pink compass for navigation otherwise. So, while some characters like Kelly Rodriguez, the snippy hustler or the even cringing Paddy can be received with wicked laughter, when some confront Bambi Stern, the portrayal cuts just too close to the bone. Harumph. Stereotypes. Truth be told, of all the characters in Cutting the Cheese, Bambi Stern is closest to the real life Lesbian she is based upon.

When I first came out of the closet and took up the mantle of Gay Activism, I was set to my first important task - cutting blocks of cheese into small cubes to be served at an executive board meeting. It was an important task, because it tapped into the heart of gossip and provided my first glimpse into the nelly, campy world. It scared the bejeebers out of me. Then I was comfronted by the president of the group, who roared with her bull-moose voice, slapped all the fairy backs and was famous for having made an entrance at a fabled party by strutting down a staircase wrapped in naught but cellophane. If I left Bambi Stern out of Cutting the Cheese, I might as well scrapped the book. Of course, while most readers find outrageous humor by looking in the mirror, some do not, and had even suggested I withdraw the work from review. One reviewer stated (code) "there were issues with this story that took away from my complete enjoyment." Such reaction only encourages me to step up to the plate and dish out some more. Thin skins beware.

The question here is "what is a stereotype?" I often wonder about this. Is a stereotype a cruel set of crude and rude attributes grafted on scapegoats to make them bigger targets, or are they a collection of traits that communities adopt for identity? It's a fine line, but having caroused at Gay Activist meetings and at the general mayhem of a Gay Pride celebration, my observations record that members of the gay community tend to slip into camp whenever they feel the need. It's the yellow brick road to our own private OZ. Therefore, Bambi Stern and her Edward G. Robinson cigar manner is a living, breathing reminder to my gay friends (and enemies) that we haven't cornered the market on self-righteousness. We need to be proud of identities no matter how much cellophane we wear. 'Nuff said? Not nearly.

Edward C. Patterson
Dancaster Creative
Cutting the Cheese

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1434893847 (paperback - $6.50)

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0010K2ER6 (Kindle - $3.12)

http://www.mobipocket.com/en/eBooks/BookDetails.asp?BookID=83901&Origine=4151 (Mobipocket - $3.99)

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/92 (Smashwords)

Men Need Romance Too

2008-11-25T19:36:00.007Z

Men Need Romance Too

by Erastes

When I first had the idea to write a gay historical romance I decided to do a bit of research to find out whether there was such a thing as gay romance (yes, but not much) and whether people would:

1. publish it
2. buy it
3. read it
4. like it

I wasn't sure of the answers, even though I did as much research as I could do.

I was told so many things and they all turned out to be wrong.

- That only women wrote it (wrong)
- That only women read it (wrong)
- That gay men wouldn't read a gay romance book by a woman writer. (wrong)
- That I'd never sell it (wrong)
- That there had been an attempt in the 1980's ("Gaywyck" by Vincent Virga) to kick-start such a genre (true)
- but it had fizzled out (wrong)

I had a gut feeling that that gay men would read gay romance as opposed to – or in addition to, gay porn. I read both - why not men? From my fanfiction days I knew that a lot of women liked it, but even there male writers were rare.

When I looked on the net I found one site "Romentics" established by two gay men, Scott and Scott, who were so disillusioned by the paucity of gay romance in the gay fiction world that they decided to start up their own publishing house, and it's doing pretty well, too, by the looks of it. I got in touch with them and they were very helpful. However, even they said that it was difficult to get the stuff accepted by the publishers.

From the first page of Romentics Website:

"Gay men may be more willing than ever to claim their inner Cinderella and read up on Prince Charming. Certainly, most people's everyday lives could use a little more charm and a lot more prince..."

So it was after Standish was released, and when I started to receive emails from male readers, I found they were more than happy to have some romance in their novel.

I punched the air, I felt so bloody amazing. I replied to them, and I voiced my concerns. I couldn't say "Are you gay?" because it seemed rude, although it also seemed rude for me to assume it, too, but I said that I was glad they'd like it, and that I was worried that men wouldn't read it.

"Are you KIDDING?" they said, whole heartedly. "Why wouldn't we read it?" One man, a member of a large internet book club said that he knew at least ten other men who were reading Standish and reading it slowly because they didn't want it to end.

I can understand this, not for any big headed reasons about my book, but merely for the point that the gay historical romance is a rare beastie.

I got talking to a tutor of creative writing - his son was gay - and he often bewailed the fact to his father that there were no gay romance books, no Mills & Boons, no Harlequins, no books where he could read - knowing that gay men like him could find love and end up happy ever after.

Going back a few years, gay "romance" seemed to be separated into distinct categories.

1. Porn (the one handed goodness from publishers like Starbooks)
2. e-books (Lots of it there, with an emphasis on fantasy)
3. High Literature (At Swim Two Boys, The Charioteer, Maurice, Wicked Angels etc)

Thank goodness for them all, say I.

.... But... There was nothing much to compare with "Love's Savage Splendour" or "His Faithful Heart" or whatever. No "formula" (and yes I hate that word too, even though I write romance) romances. There *are*, however a very few writers writing it, but so few of us that each book is snapped up and read voraciously by an eager audience of women who like gay romance, and gay men themselves. Then they wait (im)patiently for the next one to come out. They are active, they share books and recs, they post on Amazon to share their new finds. They are passionate, and there's not enough of it to satisfy their voracious appetites.

Slowly the publishers are catching on. Let's hope that trend continues. In this financial climate, we all need romance - not just the men!

Erastes
www.erastes.com

The Reluctant Muse

2008-11-21T09:52:00.003Z

The Reluctant Muse by Dorien Grey

I invited my muse over this morning to talk about selecting a topic for this blog entry. Normally, I don't need his—and yes, all my muses are male—help on what to talk about, but after having headed off in various directions only to have my eyes glaze over in less than a paragraph, I decided I could use a little help.

"You got a beer?" he asked.

"Its eleven o'clock in the morning," I pointed out.

"So?"

I got him his beer.

"Now, about today's blog," I began.

"Did you watch Lost the other night?" he asked, sitting on the couch and putting his feet up on the coffee table.

"Yeah," I said. "But I wasn't thinking about a possible blog topic when I watched. What do you suggest?"

"Nothing…I just wondered if you saw it. Good show. I still think Jack and Sawyer should run off together."

"You want me to write a blog about Jack and Sawyer getting it on?"

"There are worse topics."

"Well, I'm not sure anyone would be interested in reading about my erotic fantasies."

"So what do you want to write about?" he asked.

"That's why I called on you. You're the muse."

"You don't have to do a new blog every day."

"I know, but I hate to have someone take their valuable time to come to the site and not find anything new. I'm afraid they won't come back."

He took a deep swig of his beer and started flipping through a magazine. "You worry too much," he said.

"I was thinking of maybe doing one on the pets I've had through my life."

He glanced up from the magazine and raised an eyebrow. "Oh, there's a winner. I bet it'll end up with you getting all puddle-eyed, won't it?"

"Well, I'd hope not. But it's true they all died."

"Death's a bummer," he said.

"Yes, but it's a part of life. It's part of my life. It's part of everybody's life."

"So's a good laugh. You should try for that a little more often. Or at least a grin."

"I'm not Henny Youngman," I said.

He gave me a blank look. "Who's that?" he asked.

"Forget it," I said. "The point is, I can't think of a single thing to write about for tomorrow. You're my muse! Are you going to help me out with this blog or not?"

He finished his beer, stifled a belch, tossed the magazine back on the stack with the others, and got up, heading for the door. "I just did," he said. "See 'ya."

And with that he left.

Originally posted on Dorien's Blog HERE

Homage to that Old Chestnut - Moby Dick

2008-11-20T15:11:00.007Z

My first post to this lovely new Blogsite. Since this is about gay writers, and Herman Melville was tres gay, and since I have written a novel emulating his themes, I believe this is an appropriate tidbit.

Ever since I picked up Herman Melville’s tale of the Whale, that great leviathan of beauty and destruction, I have been struck by the sheer poetry of Moby Dick. It teams with detail, buoyed up by a natural elegance that truly makes it a literary treasure.

In my novel, Turning Idolater, the title of which comes from Melville’s work and intones the ability (or inability) to compromise, I blend unlikely elements using Melville’s basic theme that each life is a journey that needs to come to terms with earth’s organic unity. The sea is prominent in the work, but instead of Melvillian detail — nine hundred shades of white and every knot that can be tied for any reason, I developed the characters along a different course – a Dickens course. Smashing Dickensian characters into Melvillian amplitude gives the work a unique feel. Add to that the juxtaposition of romance and mystery, a good, old fashion whodunit (here a herring, there a herring – mostly red, but some a shade of pink), and the reader is provided with a memorable experience. The dichotomies are further maintained by placing the sleazy world of Internet porn beside the hoity-toity universe of literary circles.

Finding the balance between many diverse elements is the shell surrounding this nut, but at its heart is Melville and the sea. Young Philip Flaxen’s voyage across an uncharted ocean in a vessel that leaks like the Dickens and flags in bad weather provides the reader with a hero’s journey. Philip is taxed by the many anomalies that he cannot digest, yet somehow he remains afloat. In hindsight, I have achieved what I wanted to achieve. Besides my usual attention to the reader’s needs, I sought in Turning Idolater to fire up old Melville, who is sometimes more admired than read — to reach down and scrape off the Pequod’s barnacles — bring it ashore for a modern day inspection. I am happiest when a reader tells me, as they have, "Now that I have read about Philip and Tdye and Sprakie and Old Charlotte, I think I’ll pick up Moby Dick again and give it another try." For every chapter in Melville that drones on about the nine hundred shade of the color white, there are others that sing:

"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can."

It’s a fine clear day, mateys, and the dolphins are calling, the gulls leading the way. You only need to be Turning Idolater to see your way clear through this damp, drizzly November.

Edward C. Patterson - dancaster creative

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1440422109 (Paperback) http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001FWZ92Q (Kindle)