Tanya Chris's Blog, page 3

New free story: Before

Before there was Casey and Brooks, before there was Syed and Dashiell, before there was Garrett and Aayan, there was Jamie and Syed. This is the story of how Jamie met Syed and the scene that started at all.

If you’ve read the Ever After series, then you know how Syed and Jamie’s relationship ends. If you haven’t read it but plan to, I recommend you read Before last, even though it’s a prequel.

Happy Birthday to Omega Returned

Who doesn’t love a good M/M/M? Well, all right, some people don’t. But I do.

There are two challenges in writing a romance with more than two love interests. One is giving everyone their own personality, not allowing them to blend together. Writing alpha/beta/omega makes that fairly simple because everyone has a predefined place and personality. But the other challenge—making sure everyone gets equal happiness in the end—becomes more difficult.

As I sat down to write Omega Returned, I was concerned about falling into the trap where the omega ends up with all the love and attention. Owen is a pitiful thing at the start of the book. Both Fortis, the alpha, and Keesh, the beta, are devoted to taking care of him. And the physical connection between alphas and omegas is a strong one in my Omega Reimagined universe, almost impossible to ignore. All of which made the link between Fortis and Owen the easiest leg of the triangle to forge.

It was Keesh I worried about. Keesh is the most likable of the three —a standup guy who looks after his friends and is kind to everyone. Readers would need to believe his ending was every bit as happy as the other two. He couldn’t just be the guy doing the cooking at the end. So I made him a switch, basically. He can be toppy with Owen but a hungry bottom for Fortis. He can live outside the caste system. He can have it all.

Omega Returned is the most standalone of all the titles in this series, so if you like M/M/M and you’re looking for a place to jump in, give it a try and let me know if you’re satisfied that Keesh got everything he wanted and deserved.

New free story: Not High, Not Lonesome

Tanner is two years clean and sober, which definitely calls for a celebration, but this celebration isn’t going the way Joe expected it to. Pytor’s pushing his buttons, goading him into submitting to the youngest of their triad so Tanner can enjoy a spot in the middle of the train. Meanwhile Pyotr’s orchestrating the whole thing, as usual. But Joe discovers how much there is to enjoy about whatever combination the three of them get up to.

Happy Birthday to Omega Reimagined volume 1

I already did origin stories for the three books included in Omega Reimagined volume 1: Omega Reclaimed, Omega Revealed, and Omega Released. If you want to read those posts, just click the links. So this is a different sort of Happy Birthday post. Omega Reimagined volume 1 is being born again—on platforms other than Amazon.

I started my publishing career on Amazon. It’s where I buy the books I read, and Amazon makes it easy for indies to publish with them. The Kindle Unlimited program, in particular, was a draw. When I published my very first book, Deep Under, I didn’t expect anyone to buy it. Why would they? How would they even notice it was there? And for the most part, no one did buy it. But people read it. In searching for new M/M books on KU, they found it, tried it, and sometimes even liked it. That’s the beauty of KU, of course, and I’ll be forever indebted to it for bringing me my initial readership.

But the evil of KU is that it’s exclusive. Regardless of how you may feel about Amazon’s almost-monopoly on all things retail and the way they treat their workers in order to save customers a few pennies, when it comes to KU, they don’t just have an almost-monopoly, they have a explicit, rigidly enforced monopoly. If your book is enrolled in KU, you can’t publish it in an ebook format elsewhere. At all. Anywhere.

For various reasons, I’m at a point of wanting my books to be available elsewhere, even though I know going wide is more likely to lose me money than make me money. So I’ve started pulling my books out of KU and publishing them on B&N, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, etc. And funnily enough, the books have done exactly what I expected Deep Under to do all those years ago—absolutely nothing.

Oh well. I have quite a few of them out there now if you want to buy from someone other than Amazon, and today Omega Reclaimed, the first book in Omega Reimagined volume 1 is live on sites other than Amazon. The other two will be published over the next month. Perhaps now a B&N reader will discover my little wolves and enjoy them.

If you’re one of my loyal KU readers, don’t worry! I still plan to put my books into KU for at least one 90-day period when they first come out. So grab them when they’re new, and if there are any on my backlist you haven’t gotten to yet, now’s the time.

Playing with Safewords

In order for a BDSM scene to qualify as safe, sane, and consensual (known as SSC), the sub needs a way to opt out, which is typically handled via a safeword. You probably know the stoplights colors—red for stop, yellow for slow down or pause, green for good. They’re so ubiquitous you could almost believe they’re required, but there are other options.

Sometimes a sub has a personal, possibly silly, safeword like “fried green tomatoes.” There are also non-verbal safewords. For example, if the sub is in a position where they can’t talk, they might be given a bell to ring or on object to drop or told to tap on the Dom’s thigh. But I like to play with variations that go beyond the standards. Here are some of the ways I’ve used safewords—or an apparent lack of them—in my books.

Deep Under: in the first BDSM scene, Jack is ordered not to speak. He tries to tell Maddox what his safeword is, and Maddox tells him the next word Jack says is his safeword. If other words, if Jack talks, the scene will end. Funnily enough, more than one reader perceived this as Jack not having a safeword, but he has the entire dictionary. He can say literally anything to stop the scene. I liked the way this made Maddox seem cruel and uncaring without actually putting Jack in danger, plus Maddox has reasons for not wanting to hear from Jack at that point.

Aftercare: when Aayan is fretting about his lack of experience playing the Dom role and whether he did anything to Garrett the night before that was out of line, one of the things that worries him is that they didn’t establish a safeword. Garrett tells him they don’t need one because, for him, no means no. I think we sometimes forget that no is an option. The purpose of a safeword is to allow the sub to scream and complain and say no without having the scene stop, which some subs want to do. But a sub who doesn’t enjoy that dynamic doesn’t need a formal safeword. They can simply express how they’re feeling and expect the Dom to listen.

Trained: my T. M. Chris pen name gets way deeper into dubcon than my Tanya Chris pen name, and Trained is one of my more dubcon titles, but Dalin does have a safeword. It can be easy to miss because it’s never described as a safeword, but Thoros tells Dalin on multiple occasions that he can stop what’s happening by saying please. Dalin is just too stubborn to say please because that would mean “losing.”

Tamed: Jake has a safeword when he and Eduardo are playing for fun, but he doesn’t one have for their discipline sessions. What he does have is the simple option of standing up. He’s not restrained, and he’s bigger than Eduardo. In fact, we see him halt the action multiple times in the earlier scenes, and Eduardo never makes any physical attempt to bring Jake back. Jake returns of his own accord. Jake doesn’t need a way to call red because no one is playacting. They’ve agreed on a punishment and Eduardo merely waits for Jake to submit to it. But Jake could always walk out the door instead!

My latest T. M. Chris release, Schooled, follows along the lines of Tamed. No safeword is ever discussed, but at the end of the book we see Kelvin decide he’s had enough and stand up, at which point we realize he’s had that option all along. Of course Kelvin was enjoying being spanked far too much for that.

SSC isn’t the only ethical way to practice BDSM either. There’s also something call RACK, which stands for Risk Aware Consensual Kink. In RACK, sex partners generally agree what’s permissible before the scene starts—understanding what the risks are—and from there the scene might proceed without any option for the sub to end it. This is obviously a more risky way to play, but some kinksters prefer to have the choice taken from them. The lack of an out is part of their kink.

You don’t see many BDSM books using RACK instead of SSC. One I know of is Risk Aware by Amelia C. Gormley, which is about a submissive hemophiliac. I’d love to hear about other books that use RACK or that play with safewords in interesting ways, like For Real by Alexis Hall, in which Laurie doesn’t want to use a safeword because having one didn’t stop his last Dom from hurting him.

If you’ve got a rec, drop a comment.

Now available: Heat Race

Heat Race is now available at Amazon for $3.99/eligible for KU.

It’s been two hundred years since alphas could knot and omegas could get pregnant, since anyone has shifted. Today’s hybrids are more human than wolf, but there’s one tradition they’ve retained from their animal ancestry: the heat race. With omegas in short supply, the annual heat race is every alpha’s chance to catch and claim an omega.

Jack Henry stands at the starting line, undecided. He could conspire to be caught by his best friend and childhood sweetheart, Elias, but would Elias be alpha enough for him? Maybe he’d prefer to be claimed by Saul, the huge and handsome alpha he’s always had a crush on. Then Jasper shows up—a stranger dressed in leather who emits such strong alpha vibes Jack Henry is ready to give himself up before the race even begins. But Jasper’s an unknown entity, whose confidence might be indicative of a desire to control.

Jack Henry can’t decide, and so he runs, turning his fate over to fate itself as he’s pursued by all three of his suitors plus the one alpha he can’t abide—Lon, a violent and regressive man who won’t take no for an answer. Jack Henry is going to need more than one alpha to keep him safe. And to keep him satisfied.

During a long night of danger and triumph, the Treehouse Pack is formed. But beyond the heat race lies an uncertain future. Jack Henry, Elias, Saul, and Jasper might each face their own insecurities, fight their own fights, and find their place in the pack as they navigate uncharted waters together. Because it turns out that legendary abilities like knotting, shifting, and child bearing might be more than just relics of the past.

Heat Race is a full-length M/M/M/M reverse harem omegaverse story, separate from the Omega Reimagined world.

Heat Race Trailer

Here’s a fun thing I made—a trailer for Heat Race, my new M/M/M/M reverse harem story. Enjoy!

New free story: Under/Over

Jack’s new Prince Albert piercing means six weeks of recovery before he can come again. It also means Maddox has six weeks to come up with a devious plan for how to use it. Can you say predicament bondage? Read for free online or subscribe to my newsletter for the password to download in mobi or epub for offline viewing.

My Zombie Preparedness Scorecard

Civil war isn’t a joking matter, so we joke about the zombie apocalypse instead. And life has been interesting enough this last year that I do wonder. How would my survival skills stack up?

Things I would fail at:



Fighting. I can be pretty vicious, don’t get me wrong. When you’re a teenage girl, boys try to throw you into the pool. I think we’re supposed to accept this as an unalterable fact of life, and no doubt some girls enjoy being manhandled into a pool, but I was neither pleased nor accepting of this act of bullying. I used to fight. In free-form wrestling, especially when my opponent doesn’t want to actually hurt me, I’m fierce. But, alas, I have to admit that I have zero experience with any kind of weapon or upright combat. I can’t throw a punch or a spear or aim a gun any better than I can aim a pool cue. And I would probably scream every time a gun went off because I have an unsuppressible startle reflex.Hoarding. The pandemic was my first experience with stock-piling food. I live in Connecticut, where our disasters rarely last longer than twenty-fours. One October, we had a freak early snowstorm that resulted in a massive and prolonged power outage. Not only did residences lose power, so did businesses, including gas stations. It was a bit like living on the frontier. I think it lasted five days. Before that, I’d never filled up my gas tank or bought bread and milk before a snowstorm, and I didn’t actually change my ways after. Because that was a once-in-a-lifetime anomaly, right? For the pandemic, I did some stockpiling, but once stores returned to normal, I made a considered decision. Did I want to live in a state of perpetual almost-emergency? I did not. Hence, we’re back to having a week’s worth of food on hand at best. Bartering. My skills—-writing, tech support, project management—-aren’t going to be in great demand during the zombie apocalypse. Tech skills could be useful during a modern day civil war, but mine are outdated and not black-hat enough. I worked for corporations where we did things “right.” I never learned to hack. I also don’t know plumbing or car repair or any other useful trade beyond very basic DIY.



Things I’d be okay at:



Homesteading. I’m not a gourmet cook, and I don’t currently have a garden, but I can sew. I even have a sewing machine down in the basement. I can also crochet (if there was somehow yarn?), and the fact that my cooking isn’t gourmet would probably be an advantage. Speed. I’m nowhere near as fast a runner as I used to be, but as runners often joke, “You don’t have to be faster than the bear. You only have to be faster than your friend.” I could outrun a lot of people, especially if there was any distance involved, but most young men would be able to catch me in a short dash.MacGyvering. I’m smart and inventive and I can use tools, though not exceptionally well. If a substitute for a key item needed to be invented or created, I’d have ideas but maybe not always the wherewithal to carry them out. Fortunately, my partner would excel in this arena, and our basement and garage are filled with a ridiculous amount of… shit. We don’t hoard food, but we hoard bits of wire and string. I think we’d do all right here.



Things I’d excel at:



Making do. I’m a low maintenance person in terms of needing fancy clothes or food or just about anything. My partner often says, “If I’m not allergic to it, I figure I can eat it,” and I’m with him on that. I can force down anything—even bugs if that’s what it came to. I don’t have any allergies, and I don’t need to take any regular medications (no fault to people who do, but it would be an issue during the apocalypse). I can get by with whatever’s available.Suffering. Sometimes things just suck and you have to keep moving anyway. You’re tired or in pain or hungry or thirsty or sad or all of the above. Do you give up or go on? I learned how to suffer thanks to long distance running. I used to do ultra-marathons—trail races of more than 26 miles—and you aren’t going to finish an ultra-marathon without suffering. You aren’t even going to start one, frankly, because the training itself is a form of suffering. I’ve often wondered why I put myself through these voluntary ordeals, but there’s a tremendous satisfaction that comes from pushing past the insistent desire to quit. You feel the pain and fatigue, but you don’t give in to it.Adaptability. Related to both of the above and the most important skill of all, in my opinion. Of course, adaptability would be moot if I didn’t survive to adapt, so my lack of weapons and my empty pantry might do me in before I got to this point, but if I survived, I would thrive. My biggest aid here is my faith, developed through working the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. I have a Higher Power who will see me through whatever situation I find myself in, such that I don’t need to stress too much about what the situation will be. I heard this in a meeting the other day, and I love it. “Fear says ‘what if?’ Faith says ‘even if’.”

All my assets are soft skills, but they might be the most important ones, because we don’t know what’s coming. You can’t fight climate change with a gun. You can’t survive an epidemic by knowing how to fix a toilet. But you can improve your chances of surviving an epidemic by putting on a mask and staying home, which are examples of making do, suffering, and adapting. Can’t eat out? Okay, I won’t. Elastic is making my ear hurt after nine hours in a mask while traveling by plane? The mask stays on anyway. Simple things, but they’re the ones that’ll save my life.

And that bit about finding a way to be okay? That’s the key. 2020 has been a shitty cap to four years of uncertainty and fear. I’m not convinced it’s all going to fade away in January, but whether it does or not, I’ll soldier on. And I won’t be any more miserable than necessary doing it.

Coming soon: Heat Race

Heat Race is now available for pre-order. It releases on December 8th and will cost $3.99 to buy/eligible for KU.

It’s been two hundred years since alphas could knot and omegas could get pregnant, since anyone has shifted. Today’s hybrids are more human than wolf, but there’s one tradition they’ve retained from their animal ancestry: the heat race. With omegas in short supply, the annual heat race is every alpha’s chance to catch and claim an omega.

Jack Henry stands at the starting line, undecided. He could conspire to be caught by his best friend and childhood sweetheart, Elias, but would Elias be alpha enough for him? Maybe he’d prefer to be claimed by Saul, the huge and handsome alpha he’s always had a crush on. Then Jasper shows up—a stranger dressed in leather who emits such strong alpha vibes Jack Henry is ready to give himself up before the race even begins. But Jasper’s an unknown entity, whose confidence might be indicative of a desire to control.

Jack Henry can’t decide, and so he runs, turning his fate over to fate itself as he’s pursued by all three of his suitors plus the one alpha he can’t abide—Lon, a violent and regressive man who won’t take no for an answer. Jack Henry is going to need more than one alpha to keep him safe. And to keep him satisfied.

During a long night of danger and triumph, the Treehouse Pack is formed. But beyond the heat race lies an uncertain future. Jack Henry, Elias, Saul, and Jasper might each face their own insecurities, fight their own fights, and find their place in the pack as they navigate uncharted waters together. Because it turns out that legendary abilities like knotting, shifting, and child bearing might be more than just relics of the past.

Heat Race is a full-length M/M/M/M reverse harem omegaverse story, separate from the Omega Reimagined world.