Wednesday, August 29, 2012

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.

Friday, August 24, 2012

Valid

I swear, I tried to post while I was on vacation. I did! Because as we were waiting to board our flight, this guy struck up a conversation with me. This incredibly hot guy. Who seemed completely charmed by my kids. Who kept glancing at my cleavage.

I told you all about it, I swear -- I wrote for like forty-five minutes while my kids were painting t-shirts or something, and then when I hit the Publish button... it turned out that the flaky resort wifi had dumped me, and Blogger had failed to save even a single word of the post. So it's gone, and after that I didn't really have the heart to try again. But I'm back! And hopefully ready to start writing again. We'll see how it goes.

***

But let me tell you what happened yesterday! Yesterday, while I was going through my vacation photos and posting them on Flickr, the doorbell rang.

By the time I got to the door, the delivery guy was gone, but waiting for me... was my print copy of Masks Off! I got to hold an actual print, dead-tree book in my hot little hands that has my name in it! And words that I wrote! I don't know that it makes me any more of a "real" author than the e-books I've already published, but it feels like some kind of validation.

***

So I was talking to my therapist yesterday, and I said something disparaging about the Day Job, and she frowned and checked her notes and said, "Oh! Right! For some reason, I had it in my head that you were a full-time writer!"

That was pretty cool, too.

I'm going out dancing with friends tonight; maybe I'll take along a few of my "author" cards and introduce myself as an erotic romance writer/editor. It's definitely a better conversation starter than "QA manager".

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Release Day: Masks Off!

It's release day for Masks Off! from Torquere Press, which includes my short story, "What You Are"! Damn, but I love that cover!


I had to write an ultra-short blurb for my story to include with the book blurb, but if it were a standalone story, here's how its blurb would read:

Cory has been hiding in a double closet since he was fourteen years old -- both as a gay, and as a shifter, going to great lengths to avoid being outdoors when the moonlight might touch him, and to pretend his longing for Leon, with whom he shares a slow elevator several days a week, is one-sided. But one night at a masquerade ball changes all that when a devastatingly appealing man in a leopard mask sweeps Cory off his feet, then knocks the world out from under him with a single whisper: I know what you are.

It's currently available at the Torquere bookstore, and should be up by the end of the day at the usual distributors (Amazon, AllRomanceEbooks, etc.). It will also (soon) be available in print! I'll update links as they become available! Pass the word and check it out!

Update: It's gone live at AllRomanceEBooks! (9:00am)

Update: And it's finally gone live at Amazon.Com. (9:30pm)