Guest Blog: Snog for Sommer

The talented and wonderful Lynn Townsend asked if I'd be willing to host her this week, and I have never been one to say no to anything Lynn wants!

***

Hey Elizabeth, thanks so much for having me here, I appreciate it. 

I'm participating in the Snogs for Sommer fund-raising drive and blog hop, and as a fan of both Sommer's work and my own, I thought I'd give you - and your reads - a head's up.

In support of Sommer Marsden, who's one of my personal erotica writing heroes - check out here (http://paidbytheweird.blogspot.com/2011/08/whats-your-name-little-girl.html) where I wrote about my first interaction with Sommer... (I didn't name names at the time, because I didn't want to be that weird, freaky, stalker girl. These days, I'm perfectly cool with being an avid Sommer Stalker... join the club, we'll get jackets.)

Anyway, Sommer is a dear friend and you can read all about the Snog hop and what we hope to do for Sommer...

I'm currently working on the third book of the Rainbow Connections series (Blues, book two, will be published in late March, 2015, which seems just about forever and a day away, doesn't it?) so I decided that I'd give out a little snippet of Blues for my fans to read while we raised support for Sommer, and what better to do as a give away, but to let people have a chance to read Blues early?

So, come on over to my blog (http://paidbytheweird.blogspot.com/2014/09/) and read the current kiss... and enter for a chance to win an Advanced Reader Copy of Blues.

In the meanwhile, here's a little kiss from Roll, book one.

* * * *

"I thought I heard you get up," Vin said, sliding up behind him and wrapping warm arms around Beau's stomach. "Hungry?"

Beau suppressed the urge to leap out of his own skin.

"Don't you people believe in leftovers?" Beau gestured at the industrial-sized appliance in annoyance, trying to calm his heart. He was certain that Vin could feel his heart throbbing erratically in his chest and not entirely certain what emotion it could be attributed to. Was he startled, guilty, or just excited to be up, in the dark of night, with a handsome man's arms around him?

Vin dropped a kiss lightly on Beau's shoulder, eliciting shivers. Beau let the door to the fridge slip shut and turned in Vin's embrace.

"Camilla takes it over to the homeless shelter, after dinner," Vin explained. "We always have more than we need."

Great. Add a heaping helping of feeling greedy to his already full plate of less than pleasant emotions. "You've missed out, babe," he said, "if you've never raided the fridge for a leftover turkey sandwich."

"I'm not missing out right now," Vin said. He nipped at Beau's ear. All of their own accord, Beau's arms went around his boyfriend, pulling him closer. Vin backed him up, braced against the cool steel of the fridge and gently, slowly, traced a line of kisses from Beau's ear to the corner of his mouth. The faint rasp of Vin's stubble against his upper lip drove Beau crazy.

Two thin layers -- Beau's sweatpants and Vin's silk pajamas -- weren't nearly enough to disguise the feel of Vin's erection pressed firmly against Beau's thigh. Beau slid his hands down Vin's naked back, relishing the satin flesh under his fingertips. Vin continued to tease Beau's mouth, delicate licks and nuzzles that didn't come close to slaking the growing need.

"Oh, would you kiss me already, for Christ's sake?" Beau demanded, grabbing a handful of Vin's unruly hair and pulling his mouth down.

Beau's stomach let out a gurgling complaint.

"How about I get you some pie before you wake up the house," Vin said, laughing. "I know where Camilla keeps her stash."

Beau warred with his two hungers. "Kiss, first," he said.

"Now there's a deal."

Fat Girls: Smut for Good

“Fat girls,” Christina said, “are great dates, if you’re not too squeamish. Contrary to popular assumption, it’s not expensive to take us to dinner, because we’re far too self- conscious to eat much when someone else is watching. And if you take us to do something active, you’re pretty well guaranteed to come out looking good by comparison.”

She withdrew as she spoke—a thinner person would have pulled their knees in to their chest, wrapped their arms around their shins—but Christina was too fat for that, so she just turned away. “We never ask if something looks good on us, or God forbid, whether you think we’re pretty, because we don’t know if it would be worse to know you were lying or to actually hear the truth.”

Of all the stories in Whetting the Appetite, this one may be the most brutally honest. It's also one of my favorites. You don't see a lot of fat girls in fiction at all, and certainly not in romance, but I think there should be more. We can't all be willowy and athletic, after all.

“I...don’t know,” she said, even though the image shone, bright as day, in her head, closing her throat with fear and longing.

“Now who’s lying?” Jackson said. He pinched her bottom, hard, and she squeaked in surprise. “Why won’t you tell me?” Christina closed her eyes and shook her head. “Too much to ask,” she whispered.

“Why? Because you’re not skinny?”

Miserably, Christina shrugged.

Jackson pulled her over onto her back, pinning her shoulders with his forearms as he frowned down into her tear- stained face. “What do skinny girls get to ask for that you can’t?” he demanded.

Christina turned her head. “If I tell you now, you’ll just feel obligated. I don’t want—”

“Chrissy.” Jackson dropped his forehead to her breastbone for a moment, the picture of defeat, then lifted it again. “What if, just this once, you let me feel a little obligated? You’re my girl; I think I should be obligated to try something that you want, once in a while.”

Christina was silent, trying to reconcile her desire to please and her embarrassment, to convince herself that she might be worthy of such a gift as her own desire.

In honor of Whetting's release and in conjunction with the Smut for Good: Curves Rule blog hop, I'm having a contest! Comment here to enter, go "like" my Facebook page or follow me on Twitter for additional entries, or let me know that you've donated to the Smut for Good cause (link below) for three additional entries. The contest will close on April 13th, winner(s) will be announced on the 16th. Prizes are yet to be determined, depending on the number of entries I see, but will include, at minimum, an ebook and a coupon code. Here are the blog hop details and links:

Smut for Good: Curves Rule is a blog hop with prizes galore to raise funds for Parkinson’s UK as this is Parkinson’s Awareness week. To find more curves, and seek out further prizes please visit http://smutters.co.uk/smut-for-good and if you can take a minute to please visit the Smut for Good: Curves Rule Just Giving Page at http://www.justgiving.com/curvesrule and donate whatever you can to help us reach our target of £100 to raise awareness of Parkinson’s and to support the charity Parkinson’s UK http://www.parkinsons.org.uk/ who help those with the disease learn to cope with the challenges, give out information and search for a cure.

Spicy Brains

I missed last week, too, I know. Here's the thing: September sucks.

I mean, it's great that it's starting to cool down again, and fall is pretty much my favorite time of year, but here's the thing... I have a Day Job. And at the Day Job, we mostly do government contract work. And mostly (currently, exclusively) for the US government.

The US government has a fiscal calendar that runs from October 1 through September 30 of the following year. I have no idea why, really, but it does. What that means is that the majority of our contracts end around the end of September, which means we (at the Day Job) have to wrap up the work (which is sometimes a bit of a scramble) and package it up and deliver it (which is always a scramble). And even the customers with contracts that aren't ending generally want a lot of reports and data packages around that time so they can include it in their end-of-year reports.

So pretty much all of September -- especially the last half of it -- are always slammed for me at the Day Job. Which has the effect of eating into everything else I do in a domino effect of exhaustion.

But! Yesterday I sent out two huge packages, and once it was done, the rest of the afternoon was fairly calm. And we're in hurry-up-and-wait mode on a couple more packages, so the next day or two look to be fairly quiet for me (not so much for others) and I thought: tonight, I will Be Productive!

My slush pile had gotten huge. I had -- no kidding -- more than 20 submissions for Torquere's Christmas short story line, so I waded into that and Got It Done. (If you are reading this and your story was rejected, let me say this: There were more than twenty stories, and there are only three release dates in December. There's no way I can handle more than nine or so of them in a month, and I agonized really hard over the choices. There's a good chance that if your story went through a couple of rounds of beta-reading and revision that it would be a solid contender for next year's Christmas collection.)

And then I did some crocheting, which doesn't sound particularly productive, but the piece I'm working on now has a hard deadline (it's a gift for a child's birthday that's in a couple of weeks), and then there's another piece in the queue that I've been commissioned to do, so that's going to be moderately urgent, as well.

And then... O Best Beloved... Then... I wrote.

See, earlier in the day, E. M. Lynley had put out a call for submissions that tickled a thought in my brain. It's a twisted fairy tale call, and I had this story idea a while back for re-imagining "The Gingerbread Man," but it had never quite gelled. I mentioned this on Facebook, and several friends concurred that I needed to write this. And then a bit later, while I was crocheting and turning the thought over in my head, I figured out what my opening hook was.

So I turned off the overhead lights and put the lamp on its dimmest setting. I lit a gingerbread-scented candle. I used Freedom to turn off my internet access for an hour, and Isolator to block out everything but my word processor. And I wrote for one hour. At the end of which I had just over 800 words. Wow. Considering how little writing I've been doing for the last few weeks, I'm very impressed with myself, honestly.

And now, as your reward for having waded through all that, a snippet from last night's writing!

***

Jonas remembered when he was fourteen, Dad had taken him aside, fidgety and uncomfortable, and Jonas had realized he was about to get The Talk. A couple of his friends had gotten The Talk from their dads already, and Jonas figured he already knew pretty much everything he needed to know from them -- plus there had been those films in Health Class that had managed to be simultaneously vague and gross -- but it was one of those things that everyone had to endure, like homework, or letting your aunts pinch your cheeks. So Jonah sat on his hands and studiously avoided meeting his father's eyes, waiting.

Only Dad hadn't really given him The Talk, not the way Jonas' friends' dads had given it. Dad had coughed a few times, cleared his throat and then coughed again, and finally said, "Look, son... There are things a young man just needs to learn for himself, and anything I try to tell you isn't going to do any good. So I'll just say this: a man acts responsibly, and with honor. You know what I'm trying to say, son?"

"Sure, Dad."

"Good. Then we're done-- Oh, one other thing. If you bring a girl back here to the house-- Well, I expect it's better than going out to the park and getting caught, but if you do, it's probably best if your mother doesn't know anything about it. Eh?"

By this point, Jonas' face had been aching with the force of his blush. He nodded quickly. "Yeah, sure, Dad."

(It wasn't until later that he had realized that he couldn't bring anyone to the house for anything more illicit than playing video games anyway, because he shared a room with John, and there was no threat or bribe on Earth that would be big enough to put a lock on the eight-year-old's mouth if he caught Jonas kissing a girl.)

Octopi and Lost Children

First up: winners of the crocheted octopus contest! Since I have two octopi finished, it only makes sense to have two winners. The fine random number generator at Random.Org selected Aidee and Katherine -- you guys please email me at liz (dot) brooks (at) gmail (dot) com and let me know what address you'd like me to mail them to!

***

After a few months of saving up my editing paychecks, I was finally able to buy myself a new iPad. It arrived last week, and I've spent several days happily playing, enjoying the brighter colors on the new screen, making Siri perform random tasks for me that would probably be easier to do myself, and poking through my old files and stuff as I reorganize.

I loaded up Pages (which is, at $10, the most expensive app I own, but worth every penny when the writing bug strikes) and as the iPad started uploading all the files to the cloud, it began shuffling their display order. Which brought to my attention some files I had completely forgotten about -- stories begun and then set aside or even abandoned.

For instance...

"Next Thursday Night" -- This is a project I keep meaning to go back to. It's about a pair of guys who have a sort of friends with benefits deal going, except they're not even really friends... until one of them is severely hurt in a homophobic hate crime, and they discover that maybe there's a little more than they'd thought about their arrangement of convenience. I put this on hold because I wanted to do some research on injuries and pain medications, but I never got around to it.

Mark woke, blearily. He was lying on a cot in a tiny space, made even smaller by the presence of the cop sitting next to him. The cop was indisputably hot, but as soon as Mark noticed that, his attention was immediately drawn to the burning pain in his groin. Mark had a sudden, vivid memory of a steel-toed boot arcing toward his privates; his balls tried to tighten and draw up, but they were already so swollen and bruised that the protective twitch served only to make Mark whimper with additional pain.

The sound drew the cop's attention. "Woke up, did you?"

"Between Cycles" -- a sort of cyberpunk story about characters from wildly different times and places meeting in a virtual reality.

Joel opened his eyes to dull nothingness, as if he stood in a void of unreflective grey, the world around him leached to the color of unprinted newspaper. Even the ground under his feet, if you could call it ground when there was nothing there. Had he taken some drug? He couldn't remember.

He couldn't remember much of anything, in fact. Just a few lines of poetry. And Terry. Of course he remembered Terry. But nothing else.

His heart began to race, but then suddenly the nothing around him hiccuped, and lurched, and Joel was standing in what looked like the countryside. Emerald grass swayed gently under a bright sun, mountains sulked on the horizon, and the sudden babble of a nearby brook served to underscore how silent it had been before. Far out, Joel thought. He still couldn't remember anything, but now that the world was back, he wasn't so worried.

An untitled piece about a woman who is mugged and the man who comes to her rescue, that at its core is about challenging stereotypes.

It was a white man who stole Mary Ellen's purse, completely counter to Grandma Owen's dire predictions. Not even a disheveled, homeless man or a gangbanging teenager, either, but a tall, handsome man in his thirties, wearing a button-down shirt and khakis, the sort of man Mary Ellen's mother was always nagging at her to date. She'd smiled at him as he passed her, and had even begun to wonder if she could contrive to stop him and talk to him, when suddenly he snatched her purse from her side and took off at a run.

Another untitled piece that's pretty thinly-veiled fanfic (and desperately, pathetically MarySue), but which actually has a nifty opening about time travel that should really be peeled out and used in a real, publishable story.

Another week or two later, we got some more ancient animals, and then some more, and by that time the language barrier was finally crossed, and what the future scientist told us was that the future end of the door had basically snapped backward like a rubber band, and was now closing in on its resting state of just leading to, you know, the now.

It wasn't long before our first human came through, some sort of aborigine. We'd been ready for him, sort of, but he wasn't ready for us. His brain snapped and he went crazy, and then later they reported that he was in custody and under sedation, but then his immune system collapsed under the weight of all our weird future germs and he died of pneumonia. It was sad, and after that, they tightened up security a lot more and were way more careful with the poor, unwitting time travelers who came through the rift.

"Taming the Dragon" -- My first attempt at writing BDSM, and it's all wrong, but I actually rather like the story itself. Maybe one of these days, I'll be able to recover the good parts.

"Good," Zhan said. "And how will you report the incident to Lord Pan?"

Wen Fai looked directly at Zhan. It was so quick that if Zhan had not been watching for it, he would have missed it, but it was enough to confirm his suspicions. "This one would not think to trouble the lord with such triviality, master."

"No? Not Lord Pan, then. But someone. It's why you're here."

"This one is here to serve you, master."

"Perhaps," Zhan allowed. "But your chief mission is to spy on me for the White Dragon."

Aspect

Recently, I was cleaning out some old folders and files, re-organizing and clearing away the cruft, and I found myself looking, once again, at a story I wrote some years ago called "Human Aspect".

Its original incarnation was actually sort of a fan-fic response to a novel that Lynn was writing, a high fantasy piece in a world of her own design. At one point in it, the main character meets, for the first time, his paternal grandmother -- a feisty old woman with once-red hair and an eyepatch, who had run away from her home village to be with her lover, a non-human from a race of shapechangers that most humans considered little better than brutal beasts. (Think orcs. But with shapechanging.)

It was a tantalizing bit of world-building, and I desperately wanted to know more about this old woman and even moreso, her lover -- why had he run away to be with her, if these shapechangers considered humans to be, essentially, prey?

And so I wrote this story about a shapechanger who could turn into ("Aspect") a mountain lion and his rival cousin and the human woman he became obsessed with. I pestered Lynn about it endlessly, forcing her to invent details she hadn't even considered so I could plug them in. I invented a lot of my own, as well, and when it was done... I had one of the best stories I'd ever written, actually.

Good enough that I really wanted to see it published. Of course, since Lynn was also seeking publication for her novel, and since fanfic is generally prohibited, I had to go back and change a lot of those details that I'd pried out of her into something else of my own devising, so it would still be my story.

And even then, finding a home for it was a challenge. It's high fantasy, half coming-of-age, half-romance, but it's rather dark, and the main character is, arguably, the bad guy. At least, right up until the end, anyway. It's not short enough to put in an anthology, but it's not long enough to make into a standalone novel. Very difficult to place. So I shelved it.

But when I stumbled across it again, I recalled that Torquere had opened up their Prizm (young adult) line to allow for m/f pairings in addition to LGBTQ ones, and every genre. So I took a chance and threw it over the fence... and they're going to take it!

In celebration, I offer a glimpse and a snippet:

The humans had not ventured deep into the forest or far from their settlement; by the time Dauch caught sight of them, the scents of tilled land and crowded livestock were thick in the air. Dauch crouched in the lower limbs of a nearby tree -- humans never looked up -- and watched.

They were two, a male and a female. The female seemed nervous, almost as if she could scent Dauch, though he was upwind and humans were all but noseblind. The male intrigued him -- perhaps a few years older than Dauch himself, he was short, but his shoulders rivaled Morah's for breadth. Their garments were absurdly restrictive, though the male's sleeves had been rolled up to display bulging, rippling muscle.

He could not understand their speech, though its tone was clear enough. The female was uneasy, and the male attempted to reassure her. He wheedled, the woman resisted. Dauch wondered why he didn't just strike her into submission.

But he kissed her instead. After a moment, the female gave in, relaxing into the male's embrace. Their scents grew warm and strong with desire. The female sank to the ground, and allowed the male to loosen her clothes.

Dauch watched, fascinated. Beneath her ridiculous clothes, the female was plump and smooth. Her limbs were sleek and strong, her hips set broad. Her scent fairly begged for a child to be planted under her copper-colored mound. Dauch could not understand how the male could be so close and not obey its call.

But the male only kissed her, again and again. Dauch's hands curled and uncurled. Even without scent, could he not see that it was time to mount? Not even dumb animals were so stupid!

The male lowered his mouth to suckle at her breast like a hairless babe. Dauch nearly snorted his contempt, but the female tossed her head and cried out like no nursing mother Dauch had ever seen. What peculiar human ritual was this? Dauch crawled further out on his branch, curious.

The branch nearly gave way under him, shifting with a loud crack! Dauch froze.

Taste Test

Well, I did tell you that I'd have a snippet for you this week. In fact, I have two! And for an odd twist of fate, they're both m/f pieces.

The first is from my latest submission, "The Dancing Princess", which is a (mild) BDSM story about what happens after the "happily ever after" ending of "The Twelve Dancing Princesses". Though my story has the soldier marrying the youngest, rather than eldest, daughter, and the Wikipedia summary fails to capture the version I grew up with, in which the invisible soldier uses branches from the magic trees to whip the princesses as they run past him on their way home, a detail which has always stuck with me as particularly strange -- but which sparked this story when I saw the anthology call. That said, here's a little taste:

Numbly, I let them lead me through the rituals and pageantry; I waved and smiled at the thronging crowd, I followed meekly to the church, I repeated my vows for the priest, I sipped from the cup of wine (why, why had I not stayed to watch the man drink his sleeping draught?).

It wasn't until the priest pronounced us husband and wife that I began to awaken. My new husband took me in his arms and I steeled myself for the touch of his lips. It was no chaste kiss he gave me, there on the steps of the altar. Soldier that he was, he thrust his tongue into my mouth like a battering ram, and before I could begin to understand this intrusion, it was gone and instead his teeth closed on my lower lip hard enough that I squeaked in surprise and the beginning of fear. When he released me, the look he gave me was possessive and dark, perhaps even cruel. My innards fluttered and shuddered at that look.

The feast was a blur. My husband's eyes were on me constantly (did he think I would try to flee? I had more dignity than that) but he spoke to me only once, to introduce an old woman of his acquaintance. She patted my hand, cackled wordlessly, and nodded to him as if sealing some marketplace bargain.

Despite the limp in his wounded leg, my soldier led me through the dance well enough. If he was lacking in the smooth gentility of the courtiers who had taught me or the hectic joy of my lost partners of the Realm, I must admit there was something in the coarse grip of his hands at my waist that offered up a dim echo of the excitement I'd once felt, following in my sisters' wakes as we hurried toward our pleasures.

Eventually, the festivities were done, and we were shut into the bridal suite for the consummation, the moment I had been dreading. Clever he might be, but he was a soldier, a brute. My lip still stung from the kiss with which he had wed me; I did not dare contemplate what sort of assault he would mount on my other, more tender, parts.

Aw, don't worry about her too much. It ends well. ;-)

My other snippet for you is from my prompt story for this week from the project I'm doing with Lynn. I've been rather lax on these stories, I admit -- our self-imposed deadline for each week's story is Wednesday, but lately I've been squeaking in under the deadline and posting my story to our Dropbox folder late Wednesday night, rather than having it ready to go Wednesday morning. But yesterday promised to be a little slow, so I called for some prompts on my Facebook page that morning. The day did not live up to its promise of slowness, but I squeaked out my prompt anyway, when I was in between tasks and waiting on someone else for something urgent.

I'm not posting the whole thing here -- it's best not to post whole things if you hope to see them published, which is what Lynn and I are after. But it's called "Carnival Corners" and here's a nibble:

The crowd was applauding -- the band had finished their set. Belatedly, Jason joined in, summoned a smile and shifted his gaze so that when Caroline looked up at him, she would not realize he had been imagining the taste of the skin at the nape of her neck. But then she did look at him, that half-amused smile she nearly always wore when they were together, and he swallowed hard, suddenly aware that "lost in her eyes" had never been a poet's fanciful turn of phrase but the truth, the honest to God truth.

"What should we do next?" she said, and tucked her arm casually through his. Jason shivered inwardly. Four months now, or was it four and a half? -- and it still rocked him to feel her warmth so close, her body pressed against his. It made him want more, made his cock stir and his blood fizz. He couldn't wait to be alone with her again, to taste her skin, to kiss away that teasing smirk, to make her gasp and moan and finally cry out in passion and then bury himself in her still-quivering flesh and sate his own increasingly hot desire in her...

She was watching him again, amused. Was it wonderful or terrible that she found him so transparent? Sure enough: "We can't do that here," she said. "They'd kick us out of the carnival. Besides, a little anticipation is good for you."

His balls were already aching, but he thought she enjoyed making him wait nearly as much as she liked the sex itself... and God help him, he was beginning to enjoy it, himself -- the flirtation, the knowing looks, the taunts. It was as much an aphrodisiac as any perfume or striptease. Still, not all the barbs had to be hers. He bent to murmur in her ear, "Too bad there isn't a Tunnel of Love. Imagine how much fun that could be."

Caroline laughed, but Jason thought he had struck a mark: she liked playing with fire, liked slipping her hand surreptitiously under the table to touch him, and if she could make him stutter in the middle of a sentence, so much the better. She chastised him if he groped her ass in public, but it was with a spark in her eyes and a smile on her lips.

I admit it's inspired -- a very little bit -- by my own recent dating. I haven't been to a carnival in years and I'm not nearly as bold as Caroline, here, but I do like to tease. And, in fact, to be teased in return.

Starring

Whoops, the Monday holiday slipped me up, and I almost forgot it was Wednesday! But not quite.

Last week, I'd been bitten hard by a story -- did it stick? It did, mostly. I had one night where I just wasn't feeling it, but the next night I rallied and managed to finish the story. Sent it off to Lynn for the quickest beta-read ever (but she still managed to ask why X had happened, and I'd explained that all in my head but somehow forgotten to move it to the actual story, so a million hugs to Lynn, the best beta reader EVAR), fixed the hole, and then shipped it off for submission.

It's called "The Sinner's Star". Here's the quick-and-dirty blurb more or less as I pitched it to the anthology editor: Five years ago, Dope's best friend, Rat, died as they were fleeing the scene of a crime they'd helped commit... or so he thought. But now Rat's turned up on Dope's doorstep with a .45 and a prison tat on his face -- and Dope's not sure which one he finds more frightening.

How'd you like another little taste? The first one was in last week's post, if you missed it. (Do recall these are both unedited; the final result, if they take the story, may be somewhat different.)

"Girls are fine. Fun. But there's no meaning. I've never fucked a woman and then wanted to do her again."

Rat moved, finally, straightening his spine and lifting his chin, though he still didn't turn to look at Dope. "And with men?" he asked, his voice so soft Dope had to strain to hear the words. "You ever keep a man around, after you've gone to bed with him?"

"Yeah," Dope said. "Yeah, sometimes. Had a few partners, the last year or so. Last one stuck around for almost six months."

Rat stiffened, and Dope knew he'd said the wrong thing, though fuck if he knew why. Rat jerked the door open before Dope could stop him. "Fuck you, Dope," he spat. "Just... fuck you!" He stalked down the dim hall.

Dope never did know when to keep his big damn mouth shut. He leaned out the doorway. "Wish you would!" he called. Rat might have twitched, but he didn't turn around. Dope had lost Rat, he realized suddenly, for the second time. Really lost him. And this time, he didn't even know why.

Sounds like true love to me... ;-)

And don't forget! This is Torquere's anniversary month, and they have a whole snootful of prizes to give away! Books and gift certificates and silly gift packages, all donated by Torquere authors (including me -- check out the complete list at http://www.torquerepress.com/anniversary/). Their grand prize, at the end of the month, is going to be a Kindle Fire, for petesake! And all you have to do to enter (...did anyone else just hear the strains of "Alice's Restaurant" start up there? And all ya gotta do to join... No? Just me? Ah, well.) ...All you have to do to enter is click on over to that page and enter your name, your email, and my name as referrer! No, really!

Getting Excited

This post is going up a bit late today, because I had a doctor's appointment this morning to make sure my lady-parts are all still healthy and functional.

That's supposed to be an annual checkup, and I've been good about it since my first one at age 16, but it sort of fell through the cracks in the last couple of years. But I figured if I was going to be thinking about dating again, I should make sure my parts were still in good working order, and that my IUD was still in place and all. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say-no-more.

It's been a fun week for me, with regard to writing. My story, "Squrk Squee", that I'd submitted to a collection of ultra-shorts, was rejected, but the editor asked if she couldn't hold on to it for use in another anthology she was pitching about sex on the job. It's still an ultra-short, though; I don't know if she's going to want me to flesh it out for the new antho, or what. We'll see, I guess. But it was nice to know that it was pushed out for considerations of space and prior commitments, not because she didn't like it.

Then on Thursday, I got a box with my author's print copy of Masks Off! That was exciting -- it's the first time I've actually seen my name in print! I spent pretty much the whole day Friday fondling the book, re-reading the back cover and then flipping to the start of my story to see my name there.

And Sunday night, I decided I'd see if I could get anything done on one of the several submission calls I've got in my "maybe" folder. I'd started a story a while back for Torquere's "Ink" call, but the story had gotten bogged down in its own details before it even reached the 1000-word mark; it was all telling rather than showing, and I was having trouble figuring out how to resurrect it. So instead, I decided to just start it over.

Before I went to bed that night, I was at 1200 words. Monday night, despite starting late because I had the kids, I wrote another 1400 words. And last night, I did another 1200. All that's left to do is the sex scene and the denouement. And a very quick edit, because it's due to Submissions by Saturday.

Want a taste? Of course you do...

The knock on his door was staccato and brief, the kind of knock that heralds only bad news. Still, Dope did not expect to open the door and find himself staring straight into the muzzle of a .45.

Dope had stared down more than a few barrels in his life -- he'd come up hard, and things had only served to make him harder over the last years -- but it wasn't the kind of thing a man ever got used to. At best, he learned to hide the reaction, the way his stomach flopped and his balls curled up tight and his throat suddenly went dry. Dope's reaction was pretty good by now. His jaw clenched and he rocked back on his heels, but he managed to avoid actually taking a step.

One thing he'd learned, last time he'd been in the joint, had been that it was a mistake to look at the killing end of a weapon pointed at you. You had to look at the man holding it. Look him in the eyes. Sometimes, if you were a big, mean-looking sonuvabitch, like Dope was, if you looked hard enough, it would make them back down. And if not... Well, it always showed in their eyes first, anyway, before they attacked.

Dope didn't figure any warning would be fast enough to matter, when the weapon was a gun instead of a prison shiv, but he looked up anyway, let his gaze follow that cold steel barrel to the hand holding it, along the arm, up the neck to the face. The face had a lot of scars, especially on the left side, which was so pitted and seamed as to be grotesque. But it was the eyes Dope looked for, eyes that were chocolate brown under the narrowed lids, cold as ice, pitiless as a crack whore on her last fix, and... familiar.

Meme'd!

BA Tortuga tagged me on the Lucky Seven meme!

Rules: Go to page 7 or 77 of your latest work. Read down to the seventh line and then online the next seven lines or sentences. Then head off and tag seven more writers.

I'm not sure if "latest work" means latest published, or current work-in-progress. So, with typical floppiness, I offer both!

From my latest publication, Assumption of Desire:

...karaoke night. No fewer than six tables had been pushed together in one corner, and they'd been liberally festooned with streamers and balloons. Half the balloons were long and phallic, though a few over the women's chairs had been cleverly twisted into yoni. Holding court over one end of the tables, fully decked out in sequins and feathers and glitter was -- of course -- Jesse.

Ah, Jesse, you scamp.

And from my latest WIP, working title "Taming the Dragon":

...who would want his daughters married to a man who might not give them sons?

It was a life of luxury and leisure, but it did little to calm the seething anger that haunted Zhan's breast. As he laid each night in the fine cotton and silk sheets of the wide bed, Wen Fai curled on his pallet nearby, Zhan could summon no sense of gratitude for his absent host, nor forgiveness for his father's betrayal.

***

One morning, as Zhan was studying a triad of short poems in praise of the Emperor's third wife, his contemplation of the subtle rhythm of the syllables was interrupted by a loud...

I note that my writing software has much wider margins than my published pieces, heh.

And finally, to tag onward! I choose: Lynn Townsend, JM Cartwright, Rowan McBride, and Chris Owen. And just because there's no reason to stay in-genre, I tag my favorite sci-fi/fantasy duo, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. And because it's good sometimes to reach for the unreachable stars, and also because, well, why not?... Neil Gaiman.

Snip'd!

First things first! Congratulations to Lynn for her release today of Blister Effect! Steampunk and werewolves -- she's pushing all the buttons! You should totally go enter her contest; it's got awesome stuff in it!

The Day Job is having a slow week, and my vacation balance is fairly comfortable, so I took some extra days off. I spent about half of yesterday at Panera writing and shipping the hot guys sitting next to me. (The one guy was wearing a rainbow bracelet and a pink ear stud; I don't think it was an entirely outrageous notion on my part.)

Which means that you get a snippet today!

Tae Chen was not present in the dining hall for the mid-day meal, Zhan noted with something like relief. He spent the meal chatting with several others, but lost the thread of conversation several times, victim to the distraction of his own thoughts and his hyperawareness of Wen Fai hovering nearby ostensibly awaiting his command, but also listening to every word and absorbing impressions of Zhan and the other heirs. What would be in that report? That Ma Jin was likable and easygoing, but not overburdened with intelligence? That Deng Sen's grasp of military tactics was formidable but that even the simplest political maneuverings escaped him?

That Li Zhan had pretensions of nobility, but was too easily distracted?

He stood abruptly, interrupting the conversation. "Excuse me," he said. "I am fatigued; I believe I will retire." He left the hall, aware of more than one set of eyes following him. He wondered how many of the others had heard about the incident with Tae Chen, and how they had interpreted it.

"Master?" Zhan looked up, startled to note he was already back in his apartments. Wen Fai knelt before him, his hands wringing together in distress. "Are you unwell, master? Shall this one fetch the physician?"

It's moving slowly -- I know where I want it to go, but I'm having trouble with focus. Alas, experience tells me that the best way to help my focus is to write more often. The more I do it, the tighter my focus gets -- and it fades away far too quickly when I let that discipline slack. It hardly seems fair.

Wrote!

It feels more like a victory than it should, that I wrote a little Monday night, and again for a couple of hours yesterday.

I didn't burn up any words-per-hour records, but I made some steady progress on a story that's been lying fallow for the better part of year now. I had a notion Monday evening in the shower for a way to revamp the story to make it flow a little better, and now I'm working on implementing that change. I've only written about a thousand new words, but I like the direction the story is taking.

The problem had been that my POV character, Zhan, is a man consumed with anger and resentment. I'd started it out as a light BDSM story, in fact, on the assumption that he would use that to work out some of his anger. But it wasn't working. He does like to be in control, but he's so very rigidly in control of himself that he wasn't releasing anything.

So I'd put the story on hiatus. It popped back up on Monday (in the shower, as I said, which is apparently where I do about 75% of my plot work) and I realized that there's a sort of game of let's-pretend going on that is preventing Zhan from taking the situation seriously. So either he needs to be fully deceived, or I need to strip it out and rework the approach.

Zhan waited while Wen Fai helped him out of his outer robe and hung it to air. He knelt on a cushion and allowed the slave to bring him a cup of wine, well-watered. Then, as Wen Fai was about to retreat to the discreet corner from which he customarily awaited Zhan's commands, Zhan stopped him. "Come here," Zhan said. He gestured to the cushion across from him. "Sit."

A certain satisfaction filled him as he saw Wen Fai hesitate. "I do not care to repeat myself," Zhan said quietly. Wen Fai bit his lip, but knelt where Zhan had indicated. "You may speak freely, for the moment," Zhan continued. "I wish for us to... converse."

Snippet - 2/22/12

I decided to go with the change I was thinking about. It's a horrible habit of mine, changing direction midstream like this, but I really do believe it will make for a better story.

As is evidenced by the fact that despite waffling around for a good while before getting started, I managed to whip out a good 750 words (about a page and a half) in the hour I spent working.

Zahir sal-Maysa rose from his sleepless bed well before the dawn and dressed as warmly as he could against the pre-dawn chill. He belted on his sword and put his favorite hunting knife through its accustomed loop. A bit of leather tied back his long hair, and he stamped his feet into his best boots. He hoped they would hold up; he was not permitted to take a horse with him into his exile.

Zahir was Ven'hedi; he had learned to cling to a pony's mane before he'd learned how to walk. He had maintained his countenance of calm when the elders had announced their decision, as his honor demanded, but his private heart had wailed like a woman in mourning. Could they not have permitted him a clean death?

Alas, it does mean that I'm going to have to completely revamp the combat scene. Again. But I think once that's done, I can stop re-writing and just get on with it.

Snippet, 2/20/12

So the mad science story is resting, so that I can come back to it in a week or so relatively fresh and rip it all to shreds in the name of making it better.

Which means that last night, I went back to the Ven'hedi story. Which also remains untitled. This is becoming a theme for me, lately. I didn't get an awful lot done, because I had to re-read what I'd done already to catch back up after two weeks of not touching it, and naturally fidgeting and edited while I was at it. But I'm back to where I'm just moving forward, finally, so maybe I'll be more productive later this week.

So, the snippet:

The leader caught Johann's eyes again. "I'll have your oath here, with both my people and yours for witness."

Johann's stomach clenched in alarm. He ignored it. "I just said--"

"What you had to say. I know. Now I will have a proper oath from you, before gods and men. On your knees."

Swallow the humiliation, Johann told himself. It's the only way you get out of this alive. Slowly, deliberately, he knelt. He waited for the raider to prompt him, but those bright green eyes only watched, measuring. Johann licked his lips. "Let the gods witness," he said, watching those eyes warily. "In exchange for the lives and freedom of these my countrymen, I give my bond to this, to--"

"Zahir sal-Maysa," the raider supplied.

"To Zahir sal-Maysa," Johann repeated, stumbling over the alien syllables only slightly. "For so long as I remain on Ven'hedi lands, I will not defy him in word or deed, within the limits of my abilities." He paused to draw a shaking breath. The others were watching, wide-eyed and mute. "Under the eyes and hand of Cor Our Father, I do swear."

Oh, Johann, dearheart, you have no idea what you've done...

Snippet, 2/15/12

I only wrote about 500 words last night, but I was pretty danged tired, so I'll take it. Besides, I may have actually finished the story. There's no sex scene, but I'm not sure it needs one. Much as I love a good steamy sex scene, there's nothing worse than a romance that shoehorns sex in where it isn't needed.

I'll give it a day or two to rest and then read through it and rewrite a good two-thirds of it and then see how I feel about it, though.

David was startled into a laugh. "That would be pretty damned pathetic," he admitted.

"Precisely. So stop it. But if you won't take the hint I gave you, I'll have to take the bull by the horns. Want to go get some dinner?"

Thump thump thump thump. "D-dinner?" David squeaked, barely audible over the pounding in his veins. "Like a, um. A date?"

I still don't have a title, though.

Snippet, 2/13/12

Well, I thought about just going to bed early again last night, but managed to poke out about 1100 words, so you get a slightly spicy little snippet for your Valentine's Day enjoyment!

"Carter, I, um." Damn it, there he went again. Carter's eyes were on his, electric blue and coming closer. "Did Joey need me for something?"

"No," Carter said. He came to a halt, already well within David's personal space. "I did."

"Oh, uh. Um. What can I do for you?" David tried to take a step back, but found himself blocked by the table.

Carter took a brief but deliberate breath. "You smell nice today," he said, those eyes still on David's. "New cologne?"

David swallowed hard. "No," he stammered. "I mean, it's not-- That is, I'm not wearing anything."

Carter's eyebrows rose, exactly like Doctor Tentacle delivering a particularly naughty line of double entendre, and David's heart thumped so hard he was sure Carter would be able to hear it. "I mean, I'm not wearing any cologne. Or any. Um. Scent."

Carter's smile was slow and satisfied and predatory, and David's dick twitched in his jeans. "Excellent," Carter purred.

I do believe this story is nearly done... ;-)

Snippet, 2/9/12

I wrote about 750 words last night. Not a blockbuster, but I was trying to forcibly steer things where I needed them to go, and that's never smooth sailing.

David's eyes were fastened on the cup of congealing ramen. "Is that-- I mean." He paused, drew a breath, and let it out in a huff. "If you don't mind, I'd like to go drown my humiliation in some tequila while I work on my resignation letter."

Carter barely stopped himself from snorting. Had he been this melodramatic when he was twenty-three? Probably even moreso, actually. "Why would you do that?"

Missed One!

Whoops, I missed out a snippet for you, didn't I? I did write on Monday night -- quite a lot, actually, at least for me. And then I wrote yesterday during the day, and I'd fully intended to write some more last night, but I had some dental work in the afternoon and by evening my face was too swollen and achey for me to even think about writing. Which made me grateful I'd written during the day -- I didn't have to write the whole day off as a loss.

But since I didn't give you a snippet from Monday, then I guess today you get two snippets. Lucky you! What I've been working on for the last couple of days is an as-yet unnamed contemporary about television and mad scientists.

"This actually looks like real science."

David looked pleased. "Well, some of them are, sort of. Joey said I could design the lab sets for the second half of the season, since my undergrad degree is in chemistry. He thought it would be a fun thing for the fans in the know to scrap together trivia about what kinds of experiments are in process. Maybe even throw in a few clues about the plot or something."

Carter shot David a look, his eyebrows raising. "Joey thought that?"

David blushed again. "Um. Well, he agreed when I said it might be fun and said if I wanted to do all the work, he wasn't going to stop me."

And a second one...

David's eyes were locked on Carter's, wide with emotion. "Wow," he breathed. "You're... I mean. This doesn't come through in interviews and stuff. This... passion. You're really intense."

"Sorry," Carter said. He looked aside, setting down the half-eaten noodles and trying to slow his breathing. "Yes. I can get a little--"

"Don't be sorry," David said. He reached across the space between them and put his hand on Carter's. Carter nearly expected an electric jolt, but David's hand was merely warm. "I like it."

That one's about halfway done, so I'm hoping I might manage to finish it by the end of the month. It's not due for a couple of months, though, so I've got some wiggle room. Feel free to speak up and let me know what you think!

Snippet, 2/1/12

I wrote a solid 1100 words last night, and I'm feeling really good about this story right now. Here, have a sample!

Johann pressed his advantage relentlessly. From behind him came the sounds of fighting -- the ring of steel meeting steel, shouts of effort and triumph and pain, creak of leather, crunch of boots on the ground. The scent of oil and sweat and blood filled his nostrils, and he let it carry him into a simpler time, before he had been shamed, when he had lived for this deadly dance.

I hate writing fights, but I don't think I did too badly on this one...