Up, Up, and Away

It's here! His Super Neighbor is now available at Evernight Publishing, Amazon, Bookstrand, and probably Barnes and Noble. I didn't look over there yet. Hope  Lon doesn't sue over his portrayal in the scene set at the comic book store. Sorry, dude. By the by, Curt really does have a Batman costume, and he looks damn good in it, too. Take that, all you would-be Caped Crusaders.

Cullen Braithwaite has two obsessions—a massive crush on Grant Guthrie, his handsome neighbor across the street, and drawing comic books. Grant has one obsession—protecting his ten-year-old nephew from his sister’s abusive ex. The two meet and romance blossoms. Then Cullen draws Grant into a comic book story, publicly exposing him to a dangerous stalker. With real-life evil closing in, one of them will have to learn to unleash his inner hero.

Be Warned: m/m sex

you can get it here


Excerpt:

The moment they stepped into the bedroom, Grant got hit with the double whammy of racing heart and racing brain. He wanted a clear head for this. He didn’t want Cullen thinking he considered him a casual fuck. The time had come to kick this single life shit to the curb and settle down with the right man. After that fanfuckingtastic blowjob, he’d been ready to propose right then and there, but what little remained of his rational brain urged caution. He didn’t want to move too fast or too recklessly, and maybe send Cullen screaming back across the street.

Then he looked down into Cullen’s eyes and all his fears disappeared. Their blue had darkened to a navy ring around his enormous pupils. And that voice he’d used in the living room, deep and dark and hoarse with passion—no, his man wasn’t going anywhere.

He had his shirt off and draped over a chair in the corner before he noticed Cullen still hovered in the doorway. Dammit. Grant didn’t want to lose the momentum they’d started in the other room. He’d better make a move before his dream date’s feet got any colder.

He returned to the doorway and slid his arms around Cullen’s waist. His lips blazed a nibbling trail down Cullen’s throat to his shirt collar. Seeing—and feeling—the effect his bare chest was having on the smaller man, Grant deliberately rubbed up against him. His fly was still open. To his surprise his cock was already showing signs of randy life again, in spite of its recent exertions. Perhaps it sensed Cullen’s, twitching behind the thin barrier of his slacks. Great heads thinking alike.

“I thought we were doing this,” he murmured against Cullen’s throat.

Cullen peered beyond his shoulder. “Your room. It’s … clean.”

“Yeah, I’m the neatnik in the family. Marti takes a more I’ll-get-to-it-when-I-get-to-it approach. Helps when you have a kid.”

“I’m not complaining,” Cullen said quickly. “I was expecting, I don’t know, a den of iniquity or something.”

“Seriously? My ten-year-old nephew stays here. Iniquity got kicked to the curb a while ago. On the other hand…” That spot just behind Cullen’s ear looked incredibly tempting. He leaned in to lick at it, and heard Cullen’s breath catch. “Rudy isn’t staying here tonight. I’d say some iniquity’s in order.”

By now Cullen was rubbing back—against his cheek, against his naked chest, especially against his crotch. The man was practically purring. Or was that a growl? Grant’s blood quickened with excitement, and his cock gave a definite leap. Here was his horny little slut-man from the living room, all wound up and ready to go. Those still waters of his ran deeper than the Marianas Trench, and Grant couldn’t wait to dive in.

“What are you still doing in your clothes?” he said roughly.

Cullen’s eyes were practically all pupil by now, and his voice had dropped into a Darth Vader register. “Waiting for you to take them off.”

Foreplay over. Let the games begin.

Hey, Kids! Comics!

My writing buddy J. J. Collins just got the cover art files for her latest M/M release, His Super Neighbor, due out either this week or next from Evernight Publishing. I'll be back to plug it once I have a release date.

As a fan of comic books growing up (and still a reader today), I have to say I loved this book. As a fan of Those Two Guys on That Show (we all know who I mean, don't we? ;D) I got a kick out of Jen's sly references, knowing she's also a fan of both them and comics. Personally, assuming the show ever goes off the air, I'd love to see it continue as a comic book, a la Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Comics have the advantage of no budgetary restrictions, and characters who don't age.

JJ asked me to mention this book was not written as a tribute to Stan Lee. The book had been completed, subbed, accepted, and was in the editing stages when the news of Stan's passing was made public. This book is a love letter to comics in general, and Stan loved comics as much if not more so than any of us, so feel free to consider it a huge thank you to Stan the Man if you choose. Excelsior!

Too Much of a Good Thing

Sometimes I hate my brain.

For the last couple of entries I’ve been talking about my efforts to write a closed romance series—seven books that follow sets of characters meeting up and falling in love while telling a single long story. I’ve already run into problems, chief among them my glacially slow writing pace—seriously, empires could rise and fall in the time it takes me to write a single 50,000 word novel—and the fact pantsers shouldn’t try to write a series, except for loosely related standalone books. If you can dig up Marion Zimmer Bradley’s essay on how the Darkover “series” evolved, you’ll understand what I’m talking about.

Anyway, I figured out I’d need seven books. I decided what would happen (in general terms) in each book, came up with titles and characters, decided on the overall storyline, and started writing Book 1. So far, so good.

Then the fun began. My bad guys are vampires; my good guys are a family dedicated to stopping them. I was at least three chapters in when Brain tossed inspiration my way: what if the woman, who’s supposed to fall for the two handsome heroes, comes from a family that sided with the vampires a hundred years ago? After all, vampires need human servants. Somebody has to be available during the day to pay bills, answer the phone, go to the grocery store, and above all make the house looked lived in so nobody goes poking around. The woman’s family served this purpose, and were all but wiped out, along with the vampires, because of it. By the heroes’ ancestors. Their family killed her family. That’ll put a crimp in the ol’ romantic plotline, wouldn’t you say? Ah, conflict. The lifeblood of fiction.

I decided to run with it. Which meant a total overall of Book 1’s plot, and I’d barely even started on it. I went back, redrafted Chapter 2—

And got stuck. Stopped dead in my tracks on a scene I’d already written. I knew where I was headed, but I just couldn’t make myself progress.

Here’s why: If you’ll check back to my previous post, you’ll see I actually decided on eight books—the seven in the main series, and a backup standalone I could maybe use as a springboard for another connected story arc, or as a placeholder between arcs. But I wouldn’t have to worry about that one for awhile, because the series was meant to go first.

Three guesses which book Brain wants to write. And Brain won’t take no for an answer.

It gets worse. Just for the hell of it, I wrote the opening to Book 8. I added a throwaway character who wasn’t supposed to last beyond Chapter 1. Think again, said Brain. Not only is the “throwaway” now a major player and vital to the resolution of the story, she may be getting her own book once the first series is done. I already know who she ends up with. Whether it still leads to another story arc, I have no idea at this point. All I know is, I have a whole other storyline that wants to get written right effin’ now, putting the original seven-book series on hold.

Brain is doing this deliberately. All this “creativity” is my subconscious throwing roadblocks in my way so I’ll end up not writing anything. It’s an insidious form of procrastination designed to screw me up.

Well, up yours, Brainy boy. I’ve got your number, and you lose. That former standalone Book 8 just became part of the main series. It’s Book 3 now. Book 8 will be the finale. Then I can start a new story with the former throwaway character, if I haven’t reduced myself to ash by then. Nobody ever said writing, or life, was easy.

Innocent, carefree non-writers ask, “Where do you get your ideas?” Mine come from a dark pit inside my subconscious, thrown at me by my own brain like boulders from a catapult, meant to shatter my castle walls so my resolve leaks out. Well, the joke’s on you. I’m writing this series and you can’t stop me. I just ha ve to write the books out of order. All eight, nine, or ten of them. Oy. Why didn’t I take Art in college?

Troubleshooting

In our last installment I talked about my decision to write a closed series with an overarcing story, which, for a pantser like me, amounts to hell on earth. I’ve mentioned some of the plot problems that have arisen already. Since I just started writing, I’m still at a stage where I can catch and correct these little glitches before they grow into plot holes. The one I’m going to talk about here was relatively easy to fix, and actually ended up solving a concern I had in regards to Book 7. Because it deals with breaking, or maybe just bending, the rules, I thought you other writers out there might want to hear about it.

Book 3 is going to feature a ménage—one woman, three men. That is, it was supposed to. Two of the brothers are fine, upstanding romance heroes, but the third is a total asshat. He’s what’s become known in the genre as an “alpha-hole.”

There’s no way my heroine, as I conceived her, is going to fall in love with this dickhead in the time allowed by the story. There’s no way that he, total jerk that he is, is going to change that fast, either.

At the same time I had what I thought was an unrelated problem looming in Book 7, the series finale. Books 1 through 6 are all the characters pairing off (or tripling or quadrupling off) with their respective destined lovers. Book 7 is the showdown with the bad guy, the culmination of the overarcing plot. No romance happens in that book; therefore, there’s no sex. The publisher requires sex. I thought I’d have to run a spate of scenes between all my established pairings the night before the big battle. Cliché plotting, but necessary.

Until I realized I could tie off two plots with one twist. All I have to do is bend the rules a bit.

Most romance books end with an HEA (happily ever after), with all participants committed to a lifetime together. But the HEA isn’t mandatory. There’s the alternative of the HFN (happily for now), where the lovers hang out but nobody gets married. In fact, I’ve got a Book 8 in the back of my mind, a stand-alone unrelated in plot to the rest of the series, that would absolutely have to have an HFN because neither party is ready to commit. It’s a Batman/Catwoman thing. HFN is acceptable, but the HEA is preferred.

A mix of the two settles everything. In Book 3, my FMC enters into a HFN ménage with the two decent brothers. Brother Asshat is left out in the cold. Over the next four books his story arc will play out as a subplot as he works to redeem himself in the woman’s eyes. He succeeds and is welcomed into the ménage in Book 7, before the final battle, in a scene I hope will satisfy the publisher. I can still have snapshot scenes with the other characters, but Brother Asshat’s story fills the requirement of a romance plot and makes the relationship an HEA. I can give him a scene alone with the woman, then add his brothers in, and it’ll all work thanks to the setup. Damn, I’m good.

I still don’t recommend pantsers try to write a series this way. This is plotter territory. On the other hand, it never hurts to stretch your writing muscles. Good luck.