Welcome, welcome, step right up! Day 3 begins with Emily Veinglory interviewing Scarlet Day. Emily is a powerhouse erotic romance author, published through several houses – I know her for her great M/M fantasy novels. Scarlet’s made a name for sizzling shifter menages in vivid tropical settings. Check out the interview, then browse Scarlet’s book descriptions on Amazon and her various publishers.
Emily’s interview is here now.
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I’ve been reminded by all five of my vocal fans that merely posting links is a great community service, but they’d really rather see excerpts from Moro’s Price and Moro’s Shield. If any of you have been hanging out on Love Romances Cafe’s mail loop, you’ve seen many excerpts of the former. Until I can turn in the final mms for the latter, I’m limited to posting only art and very tiny teasers for Val & Moro’s continuing adventures.
But I do have some unrelated M/M novellas on the back burner, as well as lots of other projects. So you might see bits and pieces of them, too, over the next week or so.
To start things off, here is a glimpse of Moro’s Shield. Don’t hate me because it doesn’t directly feature Moro or Val. I love Doc’s character, and I have wicked, wicked plans for the poor man. As always, this segment may be different or missing in the final version:
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Doc Carson knew he dreamed. He knew the world he looked at no longer existed outside a memory of sunlit grass and flowers, of Ventana Township’s tree-bordered commons on a summer afternoon. Long tables were laden with food. Adults celebrated fine harvests and good offworld trading. Children ran and whooped, became tangled in kites, filched tablecloths, and each other.
In memory, he watched three children in particular. His Demetra, ten years old and a bossy handful. Wynne Ventana’s boy Jost, a year younger, who’d followed Demetra around since he’d learned to walk. She never seemed to notice him. And Merrick Dalgleish’s shy, black-haired Moro: at five, a child already too pretty for his own good. Just as well Merrick kept the boy shut away in their dark apartment, or under watchful eyes.
Demetra turned her back on Jost, then ostentatiously offered Moro her own clear glass bowl of ice cream. A forbidden third helping, but she’d managed it because she was Demetra. Moro looked startled at the gift, then stood on tiptoe and kissed Demetra’s cheek.
She looked triumphant. Her gaze slid toward Jost. Doc knew that look; she’d been giving it to everyone around her since she’d been a toddler. Look what I have, it said.
Poor Jost stood alone, his face still, his eyes showing hurt and hope under his messy brown bangs. Everyone ignored skinny Jost, the Ventana Holder’s son and heir, unless they wanted something from him.
Doc remembered the moment when Moro turned and smiled up at Jost, too. Then the younger boy grabbed a second clean spoon from a nearby table. He held out bowl and spoon to Jost.
Demetra glared at them, shook her chestnut hair, then stomped away. Doc watched her sneaking calculating looks over her shoulder. His child was no fool.
Everyone liked their rare glimpses of Moro. But when Moro paid attention to Jost, Doc guessed Demetra would, too. Jost was the Ventana heir. Demetra, bright and brave, was a freeborn leader of the next generation. Moro had wasted no time in building his alliances.
Pre-courtship negotiations on a frontier world, Doc thought tiredly. Moro was five, for Mara’s sake. Five, and already manipulating and charming everyone around him. Had his mother Anya done the same thing? If she had, she’d been infinitely more subtle.
And yet, Doc couldn’t be angry. Not at that little white face, even more luminous with laughter and joy. A lonely boy happy to be out in the sun, being paid attention to, making others happy.
“None o’them should be gettin’ that much sugar,” Doc grumbled.
“Easy, Doc,” said Wynne Ventana beside him, sweating in her threadbare brown and gold formal robes. “It’s a summer social. If I can put up with Jostie’s headache three hours from now, you can corral that girl-demon of yours.”
“Merrick’s boy is going to be the problem,” said Doc, slowly realizing the bright sunlight was dimming overhead.
“Naw,” said Wynne. “He’ll be fine. He’ll love both of them, you’ll see. If Merrick passes early, we’ve sealed Moro as a ward of Ventana Holding. Why not to the Ventana Family, too?” She broke off, coughing. When Doc looked at the tall, thin woman he saw hints of her early death, signs that hadn’t shown yet during the real social so many years past. A genetic disorder, easily treatable on the rich League apex worlds, lethal on isolated Ventana. “Let Jostie make an heir or two with Dema, and she and Moro can raise the wee ones right, if my curse comes to him,” Wynne said, an echo of the hard, practical conversation she and Doc had actually shared on that long-ago day.
A low, distant roar began to compete with the laughter and music. Bands of shadow swept over the commons.
“Doc, don’t look up,” said Wynne into his ear. “Look at me.”
He wanted to look up, to find the source of that rising thunder. Wynne’s frail hand caught his chin with surprising strength, and forced it down. Her narrow face and thinning gray-blonde hair were Wynne Ventana’s. But where her eyes had been loam brown, they now shone pale green with golden light flickering in the pupils.
“Doc, I’m so sorry,” said the woman who wasn’t Wynne Ventana. “I did a bad thing. I made a choice for you, because I knew you were alone and sad. I can give you a new life, but you’ll have to trust me.”
“I’ve heard that before,” said Doc, unable to keep bitterness from his voice. “What do I have to do now?” Summer was gone. Around him, people wore heavy coats, stood on winter-dry grass, and pointed upward. Doc shrugged out of the woman’s grip and lifted his gaze toward the shadow-barred sky.
Huge, elongated ships dropped vertically through the atmosphere, never slowing to land, their lower ends churning with vast rotating drills and plasma jets. Mining vessels. On a farm world that had few metals or valuable minerals. On the ships’ black and white flanks, Doc saw the platinum palm-tree symbol of Rio Sardis. He fell to his knees, as he had in the memory of the winter day Ventana began to die.
“Choose to live,” said the woman, her hand warm on Doc’s shoulder. “Even if you can’t forgive me, please live.”