Racheline Maltese's Blog, page 21
July 17, 2015
RainbowCon sales!
Various publishers we work with are providing discounts on our titles now through Sunday July 19, 2015 to celebrate RainbowCon.
Here are the deals:
Order any of our Torquere Press ebooks directly from Torquere and get 25% off using code rainbowcon2015. This includes all the books in our Love in Los Angeles series and a number of short stories, novelettes, and anthologies.
Meanwhile, both books in our Love’s Labours series are now 30% off at Dreamspinner Press (no code needed). Midsummer is available to read now for $2.79. You can also pre-order the sequel (Twelfth Night) for $2.79 (it’ll be available for download on August 12, 2015).
Here at RainbowCon, we’ll have paperbacks of the LiLA books, Best Gay Romance 2015, and Bitten by Moonlight for sale in the dealers room. The dealer’s room is open to the public – you do not have to be registered for the con!
The same is true for our readings and signings during the con (you do have to be registered to attend panels and events). You can get our full schedule here: http://avian30.com/2015/06/27/rainbowcon-come-meet-us-in-tampa/
RainbowCon is taking place at the Westshore Holiday Inn ( 700 N Westshore Blvd, Tampa, FL 33609). More information on the event: http://www.rainbowconference.org/Default.aspx
“Off-Kilter” and Plaid Nights now available!
Whole Anthology:
In Plaid Nights, men in kilts are as varied as they are hot. Whether they’re caber tossers, rugby players, Highland warriors, country dancers, or time-traveling vampires, they’re up for surprises and sexy good times.
Rob Rosen starts us off with humor in “Tossing It.” Contemporary men discover love in unexpected places in “Whiskey and Want” by Megan McFerren, “Some Like It Scot” by Julia Talbot, “Perfect Working Order” by Elizabeth Coldwell, and “Off-Kilter” by Racheline Maltese & Erin McRae. We get a taste of the paranormal in “Sir WW” by Angelique Voisen, “Feumaidh Mi Ruith (I Have to Run)” by Missouri Dalton, and “Kilt in the Closet” by Logan Zachary. And we’re treated to forbidden love in historicals “Hunting for a Highlander” by Lila Mathews, “A Time to Heal” by Anna Mansel, and “As Fair Art Thou, My Bonny Lad” by McKay.
In these stories, some tartan-clad men wear their kilts in the “traditional manner,” while others are less daring. But all find love, and of course, a happy ending—especially at night, when the plaid comes off.
Amazon ebook: http://www.amazon.com/Plaid-Nights-Anthology-Julia-Talbot-ebook/dp/B01109TCUS / Paperback available soon.
Torquere: http://www.torquerebooks.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=4430
“Off-Kilter” as a standalone story:
When Eric attends a Scottish Country Dance class with his friend Amara to help her hook up with her crush-of-the-month, the computer science grad student instead finds himself lusting after their very patient dance instructor, Rob. While Eric swears he’s not just interested in how great Rob’s legs look in a kilt, that doesn’t stop him from scoping out Rob’s Facebook page and following him to the local Highland Games in hopes of scoring a date.
(FYI, despite the sexy sexy antho cover this story is PG-13. LIKE MY MOM CAN READ THIS ONE).
Amazon ebook: http://www.amazon.com/Off-Kilter-Racheline-Maltese-ebook/dp/B011Q8HS9A/
Torquere: http://www.torquerebooks.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=96&products_id=4443
But, wait, wait, there’s more!
To celebrate me & Erin being at RainbowCon this weekend you can get 25% off any of our titles when purchased from the Torquere site if you use code rainbowcon2015 now through Sunday July 19, 2015.
July 16, 2015
The Appeal of May/December and summer romance
The May/December trope is one that Racheline and I keep coming back to. Sometimes, it happens almost accidentally; as cowriters, we are sixteen years apart in age, and having characters with a large age gap between them lets there be a character we each relate to. Sometimes, we do it more deliberately: We’re interested in how people navigate power dynamics within relationships, and how a couple navigates disparities in age, experience, and expectations.
In Midsummer, the May/December relationship between John and Michael is a little different than other age-difference stories we’ve written, because it is also a gay-for-you romance. Michael — who is twenty-five — has been out and proud since he was in high school. Forty-two-year-old John, on the other hand, has never found himself attracted to men until he falls in love and lust with Michael. He insists that his attraction for Michael isn’t some sort of mid-life crisis; although he totally gets why his friends accuse them of that.
As much as we enjoy writing May/December for the fun of watching a character teach another something awesome in bed, we also enjoy the negotiation and conflict that arise when two characters are so far apart in age. And in Midsummer, the gay-for-you dynamic interacts with the May/December dynamic in ways we really enjoy. On the one hand, John is seventeen years older than Michael, and has a great deal of experience with life, the world, and relationships. On the other hand, John is very new to being a part of the gay community, and has to learn how to navigate questions of his own outness.
July 15, 2015
Summerstock: Fantasy vs Reality
Midsummer is an M/M May/December gay-for-you summer romance, set at a summer stock production of deep in the Virginia woods. Racheline and I often write stories about how stuff works behind the scenes, so we’re particularly excited about this backstage story.
Summer stock companies more or less like Theater in the Woods — the fictional theater troupe Midsummer – exist all over the U.S. And as in our other backstage stories, in Midsummer we’ve tried to hew the line between the dictates of drama and story, and how stuff really works, in the real world.
To some extent summerstock really is, as various characters describe it in the book, theater camp for grownups. Productions are usually Equity shows that provide opportunities for emerging artists to earn a salary and recently turned professional artists to earn their Equity cards. Often, well-known actors will participate in summerstock productions at big-name theaters in order to improve their reputation as a serious actor or just get back on the stage. Their presence can be a big draw for these small theaters.
Ultimately, a summerstock company consists of a few dozen people — the exact number depends on the size of the production and relevant support staff — semi-trapped together for a season, often in very close and, at times, unideal accommodations. They live in theater housing, eat together, work together and, when the rehearsal and set-building is over for the day, play together.
July 14, 2015
Location, Location, Location
In most of our books, Racheline and I set the action in real, tangible places. Often, we write with Google Maps open in one tab and Wikipedia in another, double-checking street names and population demographics. For Midsummer, our process was a bit different. We didn’t pick a real, specific location, but we can wave our hand vaguely at a map.
Midsummer is a contemporary romance, but there are also paranormal elements in it, including a protagonist who may or may not be a changeling. With that in mind, we don’t want The Theater in the Woods to be a place that we can point to on a map; we want our characters — and the readers — to be immersed in a place that interacts with a world not quite our own.
I was sixteen the first time I travelled to Virginia, for a family vacation. It was so hot the temperature difference between sunlight and shade was dramatic. It was so humid, mist formed over creeks and streams. And all the plant life looked slightly alien — the trees were almost like what we had at home, but not quite. And then five years ago, my partner and I moved just outside Washington, D.C. Now, we spend summer weekends — the ones that aren’t too miserably hot and humid to venture outside — rambling around the woods and fields near our house.
When Racheline and I first started working on Midsummer (Love’s Labours Book 1 – Twelfth Night, Book 2, also from Dreamspinner, is coming out this fall), we ran through a couple of different options as to where we wanted to set it. Wherever it was, we wanted the Theater in the Woods — the summerstock theater where the story is set — to have trees. The magic and mystery of the woods is vitally important to the story, especially the character Michael. We also considered Vermont (Where I’ve also attended summerstock Shakespeare productions) Washington State.
July 13, 2015
Midsummer interview with Tempeste O’Riley
Tempeste was kind enough to interview us on her blog about Midsummer. We had a ton of fun talking about our books and our process.
What makes your stories different from other authors out there?
Everything we’ve written to date is in the present tense, and there’s always a reason for it, whether that’s because we want our books to have an energy similar to reading a screen play (Love in Los Angeles) or because our heroes have tragedies in their pasts and can only be happy in the present (Love’s Labours).
Do you ever suffer from writer’s block? If so, what do you do to get past it?
Raise the stakes! If we’re stuck, it’s usually because the stakes aren’t high enough.
I was asked this recently and would love to find out your take on it… If your writing was translated, which would be your preference: TV, movie, play, or Broadway?
Those are all spaces that at least one of us has written for to some degree. We have TV and film projects together and Racheline has written plays and books for musicals. This story probably lends itself best to TV. It’s a bit Slings and Arrows with a mysterious love story under it.
Does your family know what you write, and if so, how did they react when you first told them what and how explicit your writing would be?
We both write under our real names. Racheline’s parents don’t read her work, either in or out of the romance and erotica space, by long-standing agreement. Erin’s parents have been enthusiastic about many of our titles. Her mom sends her concerned emails about the Love in Los Angeles characters.
Have you ever met someone in real life, or a stranger, that you turned into a MC?
Everyone is a potential character. Everyone.
July 12, 2015
So Racheline used to be a dominatrix
In the early 2000s I worked as a dominatrix for about 18 months. Doing the work as a pro didn’t really suit me, but I did learn a tremendous amount about myself, my kink, and other people and their desires during that time. One of the things that I witnessed a lot when I did that job was a rivalry between people who had a personal background in the scene prior to taking the job, and those who didn’t. Those who did, like me, spent a lot of time bragging about how they never did anything to their clients they hadn’t experienced themselves, even though this wasn’t always true. And while some people say this is the only responsible way to play (never do something to someone else you haven’t experienced yourself), that’s simply not true. Among other things, anatomy and personal wiring often make this impossible.
July 11, 2015
Personal connections to the BDSM culture
When I suggested writing Room 1024 to Erin, I thought it would be easy. After all, I’m intimately familiar with both BDSM activities and culture, and, despite being a chick, had a lot of mentors in the gay leather scene growing up. All we had to do was come up with a plot and people and structure and I could make itbreathe.
But, instead, I found that as we crafted the story, everything about it started to scrape me raw. There were personal losses and history that I wanted to keep private. And there was also an awareness of the somewhat large gap between BDSM culture as it is lived and BDSM culture as we like to fantasize about it in media. It was so important to get the story right for the imaginary people it was about while also wanting to get it right for readers.
I’d like to think we’ve done that, but I also think it means Room 1024 is unusual. Yes, it has kinky sex, attractive men who like to say sir, and rules about BDSM decorum. But is also has people negotiating the structures of their mundane lives, which don’t go away even when spending a week in a playground of leather and parties.
July 10, 2015
New to BDSM? Room 1024 might be just the book for you
My cowriter, Racheline Maltese, has a lot of first-hand experience in and around the BDSM community. I, on the other hand, have exactly zero. Which meant that, while we were writing Room 1024, she spent a lot of time sending me links and telling me stories, and I spent a lot of time sending her emails that often just ended with “Helllllllp?”
Our wildly disparate levels of familiarity with BDSM isn’t the only reason Room 1024 is a good story for people who are new to BDSM, but it’s one of them. Yes, it’s a story that has a lot of trappings of the BDSM community — collars and flogger, yes — but those are really just the details.
July 9, 2015
Room 1024 and the Pleasure of Process
Today Erin & I are celebrating the release of Room 1024 our novelette set at a gay men’s leather conference. Promoting this story is a little weird — if we lead with “responsible non-monogamy” that leaves out some key elements of the story people might like to know about in advance; if we lead with “fisting!” that undersells just how much of the story is about talking and negotiation and relationships.
We write a lot of stories that feature non-monogamy, and as writers who straddle the gay romance and gay lit spaces, that can be a little challenging. But at core, what Erin and I love are process stories. How do you take the moving pieces of your life — whether that’s a high pressure job and an intense relationship; or whether that’s multiple relationships — and make that work.
