News and Art

As always I have no excuse whatsoever for my long silence.

But! I do have a reason -- several reasons, in fact! -- for my abrupt return!

Item the First:
I entered a contest over on Tumblr (feel free to look me up, but be aware that I use my Tumblr account primarily to talk about fanfic and lust obsess over Marvel movies and comics). Where was I? Oh, yes: I entered a contest. And, somewhat surprisingly, won.

What I won was an art commission, and so after looking carefully at the artist's work, I asked her to make me a painting of Taisiya, the kitsune-like fox-demon from Foxfur. She sent it to me this week, and it's so gorgeous I actually, literally started crying when I saw it. (Click on the picture to embiggen.)

She does fantastic work, especially her animals, and if you're at all in the market for original art, please let me highly recommend popping over to her Tumblr page and shooting her a query.

Item the Second:
A Princess Bound was released last month, and is now available in both ebook and print formats! (That link goes to Amazon, but it's also available from other retailers.) Among a lot of really amazing stories, the collection contains my tale, "The Dancing Princess".

Item the Third:
Just last week, I signed a contract with Hot Ink Press for "(Why Don't You) Come Between Us", a m/m/m story that invaded my brain and demanded to be written. It's currently scheduled for publication in January 2015, so you'll be hearing more about that as the date draws nearer! For now, and briefly -- it's a story about polyamorous relationship negotiation. And also really hot sex, of course!

Whetting the Appetite

Whetting the Appetite is out! I'm deliriously excited -- this anthology has some really fantastic little stories in it!

Technically, it was released by the publisher on March 22 or 23, but it was only available at the publisher's site for the first week. Lynn and I did a Facebook release party on the 23rd -- which is why I posted all the postcards then. But now it's been released to distributors, yay! So let's post All The Links!

Publisher's link (also includes some exerpts): http://tinyurl.com/n9cy2uf
Amazon/Kindle: http://smarturl.it/BrooksTownsend
All Romance eBooks: http://tinyurl.com/lu8vbbc (your choice of format)
Barnes & Noble/Nook: http://tinyurl.com/kz2z2xx

Book trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zoei6y1AP4
Postcards:  http://everyworldneedslove.blogspot.com/2014/03/postcards-from-edge.html (each of the 44 cards includes an excerpt from its story! You can taste test the entire table of contents with these!)
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21792973-whetting-the-appetite

If you pick it up, please, please, please consider posting a rating or a review at Amazon or Goodreads or wherever you bought it; nothing, but nothing helps book sales as much as reviews. And Lynn and I would really love to sell enough copies of this to make it into a print edition!

Release Day: Foxfur!

Foxfur has arrived! I love this story -- I love its setting, I love its story, I love the characters, and I loved writing it.

Pleasure-slave Cheng takes no particular note of the red-haired woman when she purchases his services. But the morning after her departure, Cheng is taken into custody by the Emperor's own guards and brought before one of the rare and terrifying Chained Mages. Already frightened and confused, things go from bad to worse for Cheng when the mage reveals the demonic nature of the red-haired woman. Now not only Cheng's life, but the lives of everyone around him, depend on their finding the fox-demon as soon as possible.

As a Chained Mage, Jin is at best feared, and at worst, despised. But he can't allow his personal feelings to interfere with his mission, not even when his admiration for the slave deepens. In fact, Jin's love may result in a disaster. The fox-demon has placed a spell in Cheng, a spell designed to turn his sexual energy to a murderous ends, endangering himself and everyone around him. And worst of all, they're not the only hunters on the fox-demon's trail!

I've got some posts queued up for later today about my slightly obsessive worldbuilding and a little bit about how magic works in this world. I'll be bouncing around on a blog tour for much of the next week, as well, so make sure you've "liked" my Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/EveryWorldNeedsLove so you can grab those links as I get them!

Foxfur is available now at Torquere Press: http://www.torquerebooks.com

Release Day for Human Aspect!

Human Aspect is finally out!

Dauch has never doubted his clan's wisdom: Humans are fit only as prey and slaves to the shapechanging lochmari. Nor has he ever doubted his place in his clan: As the Warleader's son and heir, his only true rival is his despised cousin, Afel. But when, on the very cusp of manhood, he spies human lovers in the lochmari forest, he is suddenly faced with questions he had never thought to ask -- and a dangerous new infatuation. Dauch hopes to find a way to embarrass his rival and gain the woman he wants, but his anger and obsession will only pave the path to his doom unless he can learn something no lochmar has ever known before: how to love.

It's a novelette-length high fantasy coming-of-age story with shapeshifters and swords, magic and murder, romance (m/f) and rivalry. All that for only $2.99!  An excerpt from the beginning of the story can be found at: http://www.prizmbooks.com/samples/humanaspect.html

I'm incredibly happy to see this release. I love this story. Love it. I love protagonists who are deeply flawed but struggle to better themselves. I love magic and I love non-standard shapeshifters and I love digging into the psyche of the bad guy and I love feisty, fiery women. I love turning expectation on its ear.

And I love backstories. And that's how this one started -- Lynn wrote a novel (yet to be published, or I'd be shoving you in its direction as hard as I could). And there was a scene where the main character met his grandmother for the first time -- a fiesty ex-redhead with an eyepatch and the tantalizing hint of a story about his long-deceased, nonhuman grandfather. I wanted the rest of that story. Of her story. I demanded that Lynn give it to me, and she confessed that she really didn't know any more than what she'd already written.

So I wrote it. That was the first draft of Human Aspect. It's changed quite a bit since that first draft -- for one thing, I had to lift it out of Lynn's world and into another one in order to avoid the legal quagmires of copyright and fanfiction. That changed things sufficiently to necessitate rewriting several scenes entirely, and some heavy edits to others. But at its core, it's still a backstory about a feisty redhead and the monster she loved.

Pick it up today at: http://www.prizmbooks.com/zencart/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=66

(I haven't seen it show up on the distributor sites yet, but I'll edit this to include those links when I do, or you can check the sidebar.)

Edited to add: Amazon link - http://www.amazon.com/Human-Aspect-ebook/dp/B00DHNA8CC/

Zombie New Year!

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you all had amazing, fantastic holidays, filled with love and presents and beautiful things and fun, and I hope you continue to have all those things throughout the new year. I'm going to put up a post eventually about my resolutions, but today, I have to celebrate!

Today is release day for He Loves Me for My Brainsss, my zombie anthology! It's mine, in that I edited it. I actually did not write any of these stories, though I had a story notion ready to go in case I needed filler. But I didn't need filler, and that's good, because my story would have really had no place at all along with these, either in content or quality.

I know, one doesn't generally think of zombies and erotica together, but these stories make it work, I promise. And there's something for everyone! A little dark and scary? Done. Over-the-top camp and silly? Got it. Makes you think about the nature of human existence? Right here. I've got six stories here (well, five stories and one novella) and each one of them elicited a deep, visceral reaction from me when I read them, and I hope you'll give them a try, too. Here's the individual blurb rundown:

W.O.L. by Lynn Townsend: In a distant, post-apocalyptic future, walled populations are protected from the lazar hordes by the roaming Knights of the Red Cross. But when Knight Korin meets Doctor Avesy, he is forced to reconsider the sacrifices that every Knight must make and to wonder if the cure might not be worse than the disease.

The Domesticated Zombie by Rob Rosen: The Great Zombie War is finally over, leaving hordes of newly domesticated zombies. One such domestic, Jake, starts to show signs that he's not entirely dead, and Max, his owner, gets more than he bargained for in the process.

Fox Spirit by Alyx Shaw: Karl loves Kenny, even though he's never really understood Kenny's fondness for, and fascination with, foxes. But one stormy night, the oldest of their foxes dies. Kenny asks Karl to bury the old fox, but it's late and it's raining, and Karl decides to wait until morning...

Delicious Caleb by Damian Serbu: Could transforming into a zombie actually set you free? Living in the closet at a conservative college meant hiding his lust for men until his zombie state forced him to face reality and accept assistance and maybe more from his one-time (and very adorable) student, Caleb.

Violet by K.C. Morgan: Josh's world crumbled when he came out to his parents with disastrous results. Little did Josh know that the rest of the world was about to end, as well.

Two Guys Walk into an Apocalypse... by V.L. Locey: Paul and Gordon face off against zombies with only a cat named after a famous city, an old man with a fondness for Tennyson, and their love and killer wit as weapons.

These are fantastic stories, and I couldn't be more proud of this book if I'd written every word myself. It's available right now as an ebook (it's up at Torquere's store, but not at the distributor sites yet -- but I expect it to be up by the end of the day in all the usual places), and in a couple of weeks, it will be available from Amazon in print format!

The Sinner's Star - Release!

It's another release day! My story, "The Sinner's Star", is out in the anthology Ink from Torquere Press!

The anthology is about guys with tattoos -- yummy! -- and my story in particular is about Dope, an ex-con who thought his best friend, Rat, had died as they were fleeing a crime scene... right up until Rat shows up on his doorstep with a new tattoo, a lot of scars, a .45... and a grudge.

I really like this story. I'd had the notion for it almost as soon as the call for it came out, but I couldn't get the characters to gel, couldn't get them to go where I needed them to go. So I shrugged it off and put it away and went on with life. I came back to it about a month after my husband and I separated, only a week before the call deadline, and apparently the spark I'd been missing was a little extra anger to put me in touch with Rat, because once I started, the whole thing came boiling out all at once.

I do believe I promised you some release-day excerpts, did I not? This is the opening, not much changed since the taste I posted back at the end of August:

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 years -- but it wasn't the kind of thing a man ever got used to. At best, he'd learned to hide the reaction, the way his stomach flopped and his balls curled up tight and his throat suddenly went dry. Dope's outward 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, was 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 showed in their eyes first, 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 was looking for. These eyes were chocolate brown under the narrowed lids, cold as ice, pitiless as a crack whore on her last fix, and... familiar.

And another one, since you'd probably already read that back in August:

Rat smiled thinly. "You like my ink, Dope? Tats don't set well on scars, but my guy was one of the best." His free hand lifted, his thumb absently brushing over the design.

"God, Rat." Dope's throat was thick. "What the fuck did you do to earn a Sinner's Star?" A Sinner wasn't anyone you wanted to cross, if you were inside. Even the guards gave the Sinners a wide berth. Most of them were lifers, or the kind of repeat offenders who might leave, but you knew they'd be back inside of six months.

"None of your damn business, Dope," Rat snapped.

Amazon and B&N aren't showing the listing yet, but I'll update my assorted links when it shows up. In the meantime, the ebook is available at both Torquere's site and on All Romance Ebooks, and probably some other distributors quicker on their feet than Amazon and Barnes and Noble. And in a few weeks, it'll be available in print as well, from Amazon. I hope you enjoy it!

Duty and Desire: Release

Officially, Duty and Desire isn't released until next week, on the 13th, but the print version is already available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, and the Kindle/Nook versions are available for pre-order, so I figure I might as well jump up and show it off!

It's got a fantastic lineup of authors (including Lynn!) and it's been reviewed by freaking Publishers Weekly, who said:

...18 red-hot tales of men and women in uniform that range from WWII-era Russia to modern-day Afghanistan. While celebrating the valor, not to mention hotness, of those who serve their country, this anthology commendably covers darker issues, including post-traumatic stress syndrome and serious injuries, and love of all kinds, both straight and gay. ... This touching and realistic lineup is highly recommended.

How awesome is that, I ask you?!

So in celebration, how about a little excerpt from my story, "Dead On Her Feet"?

Jamie kept her eyes closed, even though the plane was descending and she couldn't sleep. Tired wasn't the word. Exhausted wasn't even the word. Dead on her feet came somewhere close. Non-essential travel, like finally coming home after two years in the God-forsaken desert, was slow. And frustrating. She'd caught a supply truck from her unit's camp that ran three hours into the city base, and then waited around for most of a day for a military transport plane that had room for her, which had flown eight hours to Germany. Then it was a bus to take her to the commercial airport in Munich, where not a single ticketing agent could be found who spoke English. She'd made do, though -- a soldier made do, even in some crazy backwater where a shovel-dug latrine was a luxury and female soldiers couldn't leave base without escort and even the kids you were there to help hated you for the uniform on your back.

But this was Germany, which was friendly and civilized and the only thing in the way was words. That was easy, even allowing for her being tired and discombobulated from travel already. She'd pulled out her Blackberry and loaded up an atlas and pointed and zoomed and pointed and zoomed until she'd finally made the crisply-dressed, ultra-polite young man understand her destination. Then it was commercial transport all the way, with its much more comfortable seats but its annoying security protocols (didn't they understand how goddamn hard it was to get in and out of combat boots?) and its annoyed civilians. Munich to London, London to New York, in and out of customs and security, retrieving and then re-checking her duffel every time she went through customs in a new country...

Thirty-four hours on the move, now, and counting, dead on her feet, but this was the last flight, and her ears were popping with the descent. Maybe another hour, now, and then she'd step out of the Atlanta airport into the lush thick humidity of proper Southern air, maybe even one of those summertime afternoon deluges and she would stand there and just let the rain soak her right to the skin. And then she'd take a bus a couple of hours down into Georgia, to a tiny little town that no one had ever heard of who hadn't been born there, and then it was only a couple of miles from the bus depot to Casey's mama's house. To Casey.

Eyes still closed, Jamie's hand stole up to her shirt pocket where she kept the most important things: her passport, and the receipts for all those planes and busses, and her ID cards, and the cash she'd drawn to pay for food... and the picture of her and Casey at his sister's wedding two years back. She'd looked ridiculous in that bridesmaid's dress with her fresh-from-basic close-cropped hair and those mannish muscles on her bare shoulders, but Casey had looked so very, very fine in that tux, and he'd pulled her close while they danced and told her she was the most beautiful woman there, and they'd snuck off down to the basement and almost not made it back in time to see the cake cut, and luckily the tux jacket had covered where she'd got lipstick on his cummerbund.

She didn't take it out, not here on the plane where everyone around her would be able to see her face, but she didn't need to. She'd looked at it so many times back in her sweltering bunk back at camp that she had it memorized. It was the image she called up in her mind's eye when she was trying to ignore hostile allies and murderous opponents, drinking two gallons of water a day just to keep her sweat glands from going into revolt, her teeth crunching on the nasty grey dust as she got into it yet again with those clowns from HQ who couldn't comprehend why shit kept breaking and she began to wonder if "back home" had ever even existed or if it had all been some kind of elaborate mirage or heatstroke hallucination.

I'll be the first to admit that this isn't the best story in the bunch -- it's a light, sweet aperitif or sorbet of a story; the other stories have more meat and spice and kick to them. Still, I quite like it. I like its rhythm, I like the way I managed to capture the way she's so tired she's babbling even in her head, and I like the little sparkles of humor and frustration that make it feel real to me.

And the other stories, with their meat and spice and kick, are even better. Go check it out!

Doctor Tentacle's Release

Carter Jenkins has been with the cult hit show, Power Man, for eight seasons now, amassing a small but dedicated following as Power Man's nefarious (if slightly campy) mad scientist nemesis, Doctor Tentacle. On screen, Doctor Tentacle and the hunky Power Man sizzle with an undercurrent of sexual tension, but when the cameras stop rolling, it's the quiet, geeky intern/gopher, David, that Carter wouldn't mind getting his tentacles on. There's something about David that's captured Carter's attention like no one else ever has -- is it simple chemistry, or is Carter about to encounter a real mad scientist?

***

That's what my blurb would be for "Doctor Tentacle and the Pheromone Incident" if there was space for it on the back of Weird Science, an anthology of mad scientist m/m romances from Torquere Press released today! Not only am I in the anthology, but "Doctor Tentacle" is the very first story in the book!

In celebration, let's have a nice big excerpt, shall we?

Sploosh! Power Man, strength sapped by the venom of the guardian giant squid, leapt through the moon pool to land on the decking.

Doctor Tentacle, ready for the appearance of his nemesis, triggered the release of a net. "Power Man! So nice of you to stop by!"

"Doctor Tentacle! I should have known you were behind this nefarious scheme." Power Man fought to free himself of the netting's tangles, but the more he struggled, the more it tightened. "You can tie me up as tight as you like," Power Man said, "but it won't do you any good."

"We'll see about that, Power Man," sneered the evil scientist. "You may feel differently after a few rounds with my Tentacles of Terror!"

"Two can play at that game, Doctor. Set one foot outside this cozy little bubble of yours, and you'll find yourself dancing with my Power Eel!"

"Cut! And scene!" yelled Joey. "Don't go too far!" He immediately hunched into conference with the camera crew, reviewing the scene to make sure they'd caught all the angles they needed.

Carter Jenkins, a.k.a. Doctor Tentacle, dropped his leering pose and offered a hand to help Lance Day, a.k.a. Power Man, up from the floor. "I must be twelve," Carter chuckled. "That 'Power Eel' line gets me every time."

Lance smirked. "Good thing you don't have to say the line. There's no way you'd be able to avoid camping it up even more."

"Too true," Carter sniggered. "God, I'm starving. How many more takes do you think --" He broke off to watch David, the new intern/gopher/researcher, dance nimbly over the cables and props strewn on the floor to offer the actors their water bottles. David was almost as hot as Lance, though in a wiry, geeky way, in contrast to Lance's all-American square jaw and sculpted muscles. And Carter was pretty sure that, unlike Carter's co-star, David wasn't straight. Carter smiled gratefully and squirted a long stream into his mouth, careful to avoid mussing his makeup, while David waited to take the bottles back.

Carter sighed -- it was hot, under all the lights and makeup -- and then drew another deep breath in surprise, because David smelled amazing. Carter didn't usually care for cologne; he had even talked Lance into using unscented deodorant whenever the script called for Power Man to have Doctor Tentacle in a headlock. But whatever David was wearing was going straight from Carter's nose to his groin, bypassing his brain completely. He'd always thought David's tousled student look was sexy, but suddenly he wanted nothing more than to shove the younger man into a dark corner -- or better yet, a well-lit bedroom -- and devour him. Holy fuck, Carter thought, and, Down, boy, we're still shooting. Then, with wry humor, Well, you wanted to add more sexual tension to your performance.

Joey was coming back from his conference with the camera crew. Carter handed the water bottle back to David as he tried to shake off the sexual daze and regain his focus. But his eyes met David's as he was mumbling his thanks and, Oh, shit, I am so fucked. Was he imagining the echoed desire he saw in David's warm brown gaze? Carter took another slow breath, luxuriating in David's scent.

Weird Science is available direct from Torquere and All Romance, and it should eventually show up on Amazon and the other usual distributors as well. It will also be available in print from Amazon, if you prefer physical books.

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)