F.N. Manning's Blog, page 7

New Fantasy Novel!

In an announcement I’m totally not late in making at all, I have a new book out. The novel Instalove is a gay paranormal romance set in a modern world where real magic exists.

Avery Ward is the main character. He’s an ordinary high schooler who lacks the magic all the witches and warlocks in his family wield. He thinks the supernatural world doesn’t involve him much until learns that a spell might be responsible for the best thing in his life.

The book also reached number one in one of its categories! Thanks so much to everybody who’s supported the novel so far.

I’ll share some scenes from the novel later, but I’m trying to do something new and stay on topic. And that topic is announcing the new book, yay! Yes, the ‘yay’ is included. Here’s the cover and description.

Can instant love truly last? Or will a witch’s spell lead to a broken heart?

Avery Ward doesn’t have magic powers. Get used to it. He has. Yes, his illusionist father can transport readers to beloved novels, and his sister can turn him into a toad when he hogs the bathroom. Avery prefers normal. As he nears his 4-month anniversary with boyfriend Chris, his regular life is looking pretty fantastic. Except according to his little sister, a spell she cast last week created his relationship.

All spells end sooner or later. So it’s better to steer clear of Chris and his sister until the dust settles. But when an evil wizard begins tormenting his high school, only the trio can stop him before anyone gets hurt…

To keep people safe and combat the fear taking over his school, Avery needs more than magic. He needs a miracle. If he succeeds, maybe he’ll receive a miracle of his own. Maybe he can keep Chris.

But when love and magic combine, how do you trust your heart?

Instalove is a gay romance novel about the power of ordinary magic and what it means to be the one who doesn’t fit in, even when fitting in means flying and performing spells like the rest of your family. While Avery appears in Black Cats and Bad Luck, that story focuses on different characters, so this book can be read on its own.

Grab your copy of this enchanting coming-of-age novel today to fall in Instalove!

silver lining

In One Big Decision, Ryan and Luke must figure out their plans for the future separately and together while enjoying the remaining days of senior year and having an amazing prom. How likely is this to go smoothly? Well with friends breaking up, graduation getting closer every day, and even a few secrets… Not very likely.

This is an excerpt where talks about the problem with storm clouds and silver linings. He isn’t a weatherman, or even concerned about an impending storm, this is naturally a metaphor for his life.

Ryan

The phrase ‘every storm cloud has a silver lining’ doesn’t make sense. While meteorology isn’t my area of expertise, a storm cloud is a storm cloud. Who cares about the lining? Even if a small sliver isn’t dark and stormy, the rest can still rain on your parade. And a storm cloud can still produce lightning. Or tornadoes.

A better positive phrase? Not every storm cloud has a tornado. My life was fortunately free of cyclical funnels of death from the sky.

Unfortunately, my life was so full of happiness, there were only regular clouds, no storms at all. Which meant an anti-silver lining had so many places to attach itself.

Pageant Moms Fighting Other Pageant Moms

For the final book in the One More Thing Series, the lovable losers of Lake Forest are headed to greener, gayer pastures as they graduate high school and move on to college. So One Big Decision deals with college decisions and discussions, which threatened to cause problems for me.

Technically, I think it’s okay to mention colleges in books? As I’m a small-time indie author, probably nobody would care if I used actual colleges. The rules for using real things in fiction is tricky, and sometimes TV shows are careful about that, but they also reach a much larger audience. By my understanding, you can use real brands and titles and whatnot as long as you’re using them fictitiously, which seems obvious in fiction but whatever.

So while I debated whether to use real schools or make some up, the answer occurred to me. Neither one! I could use code-names instead. That’s something I love about first person stories, the character tells the story, so the unreliable narrator can be even more inaccurate as they might want to tell the story incorrectly.

The following is how and why Ryan came up with nicknames for different institutions of higher education.

Ryan

Okay. Researching colleges and fantasizing about being at them? Actually a stress reliever during some of my less pleasant high school years. I loved higher education, I could talk higher education all day. I wasn’t going to be one of those people who said, ‘oh, I went to Harvard or Princeton’ only because I recognized that was obnoxious. I was saving all my obnoxious passes for other parts of my personality. But when bringing Luke into the mix, my brain freaked out and wanted to make the situation less scary.

So while we were contemplating life-changing, possibly relationship-breaking areas of the future, let’s spin it positively. Make it something awesome or at least weird so I wouldn’t mind thinking about it. Thus code-names like Pageant Moms Fighting Other Pageant Moms, Dancing Pineapples University, and T-Rexes with Longer Arms were born.

Other College Code-names

(Some appear in the book, others do not)

T-Rexes with Longer Arms Honey-badgersSpace Unicorns The University of Perfectly breaded chicken fingers with the right amount of dipping sauceSculpted Male Torso with Goldilocks Amount of Chest HairTap-dancing Walruses University

Prom

One of the big milestones at the end of high school is prom. It’s no different for the seniors in One Big Decision. Though Ryan and Luke have two promposals because they’re difficult like that. I’ll let Luke share his thoughts regarding his promposal.

Luke

Making decisions wasn’t always easy for me outside of the pitcher’s mound, and the length of time it took me to reach conclusions might be… slightly… longer than the time it took everyone else. My mom says some people are late bloomers in terms of physically maturing and others are late bloomers mentally. Hey, she was kinda insulting me, wasn’t she? Okay, I guess she had a point. But I wasn’t dumb really, I just took my time.

So, when asking my boyfriend to prom, Zach suggested I hire a focus group. Which sounded pricey and also he made the suggestion because he’s a dick, but it normally wouldn’t be a terrible idea. Except this time, I knew exactly what I wanted.

For my prom date: Ryan.

For my ask: some of his favorite things.

I also wanted him to look completely different. Okay, not completely. From the top of his unruly brown hair to his amber eyes bursting with life and down to his ridiculously freaking sexy long legs, which always seemed on display in months with nice weather, he looked good.

Except his shirt, which featured a giant picture of… a tacocat? Cat-taco? Yeah, half taco, half cat. Taco-cat. And today might be the warmest day yet this year, so he’d gotten into popsicles or something which stained his lips an artificial blue color.

Best Laid Plans

The road to where is paved with good intentions? Probably somewhere awesome. This is relevant to the quote I have to share with you today. As high school seniors, Ryan and Luke have been putting off discussing the future until they’re ready. This is supposed to save them from freaking out and causing a huge mess. Does it work? Maybe. But probably not.

In this excerpt from One Big Decision, Ryan is discussing what senior year means for him and his relationship.

In our relationship, panicking and freaking out has historically caused anything from a mild inconvenience to a cataclysmic event that ended the dinosaurs. When discussing the future, we decided not to start the chaos early. Not worrying about it until the time came was great, but it couldn’t last forever unfortunately.

Soon high school ended. College beckoned with its new opportunities and limitless potential. Living in this rural, fairly small community all my life, I’d probably been looking forward to college since grade school. The only opposite silver-lining was all the things that might happen to a high school relationship once high school ends…

These free stories and more are available in June for the...

These free stories and more are available in June for the Sweet and Steamy MM Romance giveaway. As the title says, these are all free M/M novels that are sweet, steamy, or both.

A feel-good gay romance. Also dogs! Shifters, hurt/comfort, and steam. Fluffy, sexy short story. Friends to lovers hockey romance. Magical thieves, hook ups, and betrayals.

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For the love of a good man

Ryan is a brainy overachiever. He imagines becoming a brilliant scientist who makes grand discoveries and is only a little mad. Being a mad scientist isn’t required for some chemists, doctors, and whatnot, but a little insanity is non-negotiable for Ryan. Here’s an excerpt where he talks about his plans and what he wants for his relationship with Luke. This possibly relates to how love, and a little insanity, can turn anyone into a fool.

The post is to celebrate the release of a new contemporary gay romance from me. One Big Decision is the hilarious and heartwarming final novel in the One More Thing series which follows a small-town couple as they navigate high school.

Ryan

I wanna do great things. I wanna discover answers to nature’s mysteries. Help people, save lives, be great. And I wanna be happy too. In the grand scheme? One man’s happiness is the least important concern. When you’re living it, it matters so much. The impossible dream is to have everything and love too, especially love.

So if you tell a few lies, burn a few bridges to get everything, you can still probably sleep at night. Even if it’s not right, you behaved poorly for the same reason geniuses turn into fools, kings lose their kingdoms, people with everything gratefully give it all away and accept nothing. For the love of a good man.

God, if I can just have this, if I can have him, I’ll never want anything else again. Yeah, it’s a lie. One more potent than a trick of the light because the kicker is, it’s real in the moment. It’s the only truth you know. For a little while.

What else could I do? I followed my heart.

The Romance Book Party is up and running right now throug...

The Romance Book Party is up and running right now through June. While it’s open to straight romances as well, there are a fair number of queer books available in Kindle Unlimited, so check it out!

Here’s some of the gay romance that grabbed my attention:

Gay Paranormal Romance Friends to lovers fake relationship M/M Paranormal Romance

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Sexuality is not a school subject

Luke wonders about his sexuality. Ryan wonder about Luke. Here’s a small deleted bit from One Little Lie.

Ryan

Luke’s favorite subjects in school were lunch and baseball, which weren’t even real subjects. Maybe Spanish was his most liked actual class… but that was because he could fall asleep during lessons. My favorite was science. It was a shame neither of us liked math; I wasn’t familiar with a formula to figure him out. He could be surprisingly thoughtful and empathetic sometimes and had no problem discussing something if I got upset.

Then there were other times when he closed off. He thought about labels a lot. I could tell, but I didn’t know what to do about it. He talked to me about lots of things, but I worried some barrier had gone up that I couldn’t see regarding this and I didn’t know how to break it down. There was an equation going on in his head and he was trying to figure it out on his own and that was stupid because he wasn’t good at math. Okay, math wasn’t my favorite subject either, but maybe I could help if he just told me about the problem.

Love & Spite, the best of both worlds

Ryan is a brainy overachiever with ivy league dreams. Luke is a bi athlete whose whole future is up in the air since he decided he’s not going to give up the first part for the second. Their love story is perfect for them, queer, overly competitive, snarky, and sweet.

But all good things must come to an end, right? Maybe.

It’s the end of senior year, and the odds are good they’ll be in different places for college. Ryan’s friends don’t want him to do anything rash that he’ll regret while he contemplates a long-distance relationship. So his friends are checking if they need to talk some sense into him in the scene down below from One Big Decision.

Ryan

“This is… a pep talk?” I asked.

“Um.” They faltered, glancing to each other unsurely. Pep? Not exactly their strength.

“Okay, not pep.” I tried again. “A crushing reality talk?”

They conferred silently, nodding. “Yeah, we’ve got this.”

They were both wearing dark clothes, looking vaguely like enforcers in some old-timey gangster movie thanks to Zach’s slicked back hair and Lydia’s general face and attitude.

“There’s no need,” I said, attempting to put myself out of my misery. “I understand. I can’t change my mind now just because Luke isn’t sure he can go to the same city. I need to think of my future and what’s best for me, not what’s best for my relationship. Right?”

That’s what they wanted to impart, albeit with more ‘dumbass,’ ‘moron,’ and ‘pathetic loser.’

“Uh. Yes.” They conferred silently again, suspicious and unsure. “This was easy,” Lydia admitted.

“I mean, I’m still convinced we’re living happily ever after and you especially,” I told Zach. “Can suck it because we’re so gonna be together, we so are. Not only do I want to be happy with Luke in general for love reasons, I also want the same for spite reasons, so double reasons.” I narrowed my eyes at him, challenging. “You just watch us, you—”

“Fine, you and Luke will be together forever and ever,” Lydia humored me, realizing I’d gotten carried away and forgot what we were talking about. “You’ll ride unicorns down the aisle to a wedding officiated by Tim Gunn and Bill Nye the Science Guy.”

“Weird combo,” I provided my opinion obligatorily. “I dig it.”

“Even in your happily ever after love story, you and Luke still go to college in different cities,” she finished the hypothetical. “Are you okay with that?”

“Yes,” I asserted immediately. “Maybe,” I amended when met with their disbelief and slightly evil faces. “Where I go to school is about me, not him. I know that.” I whispered, “Part of me wants to not know that.”

I wished I didn’t know. I wished for a lot of things.