One of the busiest groups I’m on in Yahoo is the Love Romances Cafe group, which seems to have a million members. (I won’t link directly because it is an adults-only group. Check out their blog instead.) There is always a party going on. It’s probably one of the best free marketing tools this lazy…
Read More Love Romances Cafe swag! (adult content advisory)What if you killed someone, then fell in love with them? Vera Nazarian’s amazing fantasy Cobweb Bride has just been released in print and Kindle, and already has broken the Amazon 4-digit sales barrier. Not only that, it has garnered some sweet reviews. Here’s what Black Gate has to say: “…her just-released novel, Cobweb Bride,…
Read More Cobweb Bride release newsDepending on which online outlet got there first, today and tomorrow (July 23 & 24) mark the one-year anniversary of my debut novel Moro’s Price, from Loose Id LLC. I still can’t look at the cover without getting a small jolt of startled unfamiliarity: “Wait – that’s mine!” I can’t look at the buy links…
Read More A year of being Really PublishedI write about things that cannot possibly exist in this universe, as passionately as if they did. I make art that directly references myths, folktales, and alternative beliefs that I do not believe in. And then I sell that art to people who, presumably, do. They and I have one certain link: our appreciation for…
Read More Little rituals and mind-mapsI was going to name this one ‘Male Objectification’, but that’s wrong. For one thing, it follows the standard practice of somehow ignoring bi and trans* issues, in favor of a strict dichotomy of ‘straight’ vs. ‘homosexual’. The truth of human experience, and thus the grist for writers’ extrapolations thereof, is rarely that simple. I’ve…
Read More Objects of Desire, or Girl Cooties, Part 3 (adult content advisory)A little signal boost for some fellow AbsoluteWrite.com authors. Kate Lowell is interviewed today on Top2Bottom Reviews, where she dishes about life as a Canadian pony wrangler…and some great new books in her future. SA Meade has a free M/M sweet romance story up on Goodreads today: ‘That Good Earth’, a historical set around WWI.…
Read More An interview, a free story, and new releasesI’ve talked about this before, but not in so much detail. By now we’ve all seen the ‘girl cooties’ issue from the POV of the old guard of male Science Fiction and Fantasy authors. The old guard was about ‘business as usual’. Their opponents argued that female characters were marginalized for decades. That female authors…
Read More Love By Any Name, or Girl Cooties, Part 2 (adult content advisory)The more new releases the better, from my friends at AbsoluteWrite.com. This installment is the M/M novella by Charley Descoteaux, now available from Dreamspinner Press. Blurb: Neil Sedwick expects to spend his vacation in a sleepy tourist trap mourning his late partner’s death. Instead, he puts his recently acquired CPR certificate to use and saves…
Read More Directing Traffic, by Charley Descoteaux (adult content advisory)Hey, have you heard the one about the Ancient Egyptian statue that moves by itself? This, courtesy of an alert from a friend of mine and an io9 article. Basically, the 10-inch-tall statue of Neb-Sanu is slowly spinning around on its glass shelf over many hours – but only in daylight, and in a perfect…
Read More Creepy Science Is Still ScienceVery soon, the United States Supreme Court will hand down at least two decisions on marriage equality and gay rights in this nation. I’m not even going to try to second-guess SCOTUS. Gay rights do not directly affect my life. I’m straight, and happily so. But since I have gay friends and I write gay fiction…
Read More Rainbow Nation…on Goodreads, of Moro’s Price, this time from LisaT of the Attention is Arbitrary blog. We’d first touched bases during a blog hop for our mutual friend Anna Zabo. Lisa had this to open with: “This is one wild and very deep ride. I love a good sci-fi and this delivered, but I have to…
Read More Another great review…Form Rejections: Back in the pre-internet days, when I was a callow newbie, I assigned monumental significance to every form rejection letter I received. At one level I was right: I’d had the courage to query in the first place. But then I mistook that action as requiring an equal gesture from the universe. At…
Read More Rejection letters, or Anything but ‘Yes’ is still ‘No’We knew this was coming, when he announced in April that his gall bladder cancer was terminal. We had chances to say farewell via his blog and other online outlets. But I am no less subdued for expecting this, and no less thankful that I discovered Banks’ writing many years ago while he was alive.…
Read More RIP, Iain BanksOkay, that’s not a truly fair title. Being an asshole is no more a function of being old or young, of any social or economic class, or of any gender you care to list. We all have regrettable moments. But in the case of Mike Resnick and Barry N. Malzberg, a recent editorial (and its…
Read More Girl Cooties, or Old Men Behaving BadlyFinish what you start, Crane. This will mean absolutely nothing to most readers, since it’s meant more as a reminder to me. I have so many writing and art projects that when I scribbled them down on the studio whiteboard, the list made me a little queasy. But if I acknowledge them in public, I’ll…
Read More Projects happenNobody is a perfect, right-out-of-the-gate writer. We get into this vocation/avocation to tell stories, and that means learning the tools of the trade: spelling, grammar, structure, character, plot, worldbuilding. Notice how I put worldbuilding, a great love of mine, dead last? That’s because in the long run, it’s the least important of our tools. It…
Read More Why we all need beta readers and editorsWARNING: Adult Content ahead. Why? Really? Did you not read the header on this blog? I write smut that is only sometimes uplifted by things like angsty plot development and good characterization. I associate with other authors who do the same. Sometimes, we even share our writing, smutty or not. So if graphic M/M sex…
Read More Jess Buffett interview, NSFWOkay, so some part of my brain got this hop mixed with another, and earnestly thought it ran through the end of the month. (Scratches head.) This stuff happens. We’re ending things on a great note, over at Azalea Moone’s blog. She’s interviewing our one-and-only L.A. Witt, an incredibly talented and prolific erotic romance writer…
Read More The 16th and Final Day of the Absolutely Erotic blog hopOne, I’m not that great at it, which bugs my sense of vanity something fierce. Two, to my immense chagrin, I’m not doing art for anything that will make me money or satisfy a contract obligation. Which sucks, but sometimes you just have to let the creativity monster off its leash for a while. This…
Read More I should not be doing art (that Loki pic people keep asking for)Okay, okay, I’m a little late. I was writing today, and we all know how that can make someone lose track of time. (Wags eyebrows for vaudeville effect.) It was a good writing day. Today’s hop takes us to Erin Lark’s blog, and an interview with Azalea Moone. Moone’s new M/M vampire novel A Rogue’s…
Read More Day 15 of the Absolutely Erotic blog hop