Clancy Nacht's Blog, page 9

Argentinian red

A couple of weeks ago I abandoned a struggle I was having with an Argentinian bottle of red wine mid pull. The cork was halfway out and I simply lacked the upper body strength and dedication to daydrinking that it took to make the cork budge further. The cork was halfway out and my Rabbit wine bottle opener could no longer make the critical connection to the top of the bottle. It was stuck. Argentinian bottle of red wine sat on my counter, mocking me.

Until today.

While I have other things to do that preclude me day drinking, while I was heating up my Lean Cuisine and tearing up boxes to flatten for recycling, I felt pretty invincible.

I grabbed the bottle and my Rabbit and went out to the couch. I wrapped my newly shaved (and only slightly bleeding knee) legs around the bottle and went to war.

I am not the sort of person who yells out at movies, or says much of anything unless someone is there to listen. But after finding reserves of strength in hands and arms that forced that Rabbit to take that damn bottle, the cork popped and I said, I kid you not, out loud, to no one but the cats, “TAKE THAT YOU FUCKING ARGENTINIAN RED! I AM MOTHERFUCKING HERCULES!”

It was so loud, the cats ran off and hid.

But, you know, I fucking win.

Filed under: about clancy, feels Tagged: daydrinking, red red wine, wine

I shot first

It was a fifth grade elementary school “dance” party, celebrating our graduation from elementary school to middle school the next year, when Derek O. called me mercurial.

I was fucking shocked. I mean, Derek and I had our differences in the past. He didn’t feel like I should’ve been put on Patrol guard (the solemn duty not unlike taking the black where you make sure other gradeschoolers aren’t sprinting to class.) It was available only to the Gifted and Talented students and based on grades. He felt my grades weren’t sufficient. But whatever, bitch. I risked the lice-infested helmet of orange and wore the sash. I stopped some third graders fucking COLD.

Anyway. Mercurial.

Derek O. moved into a house that capped the street I lived on. It was one of the handful of two-stories in the neighborhood and had stood uninhabited so long there were ghost stories. When he moved in, everyone was fucking terrified. Well. Everyone. I talked to him because I’ve never believed in ghosts in a meaningful way. And, you know, he was pokeable.

We played all sorts of games, most popular for two third graders was apparently lip synching to popular music on the radio. When a song that we didn’t like came on, we’d vamp like photographers were taking our pictures.

Sometimes his younger brother would join us in our games. Sometimes, we’d play with Chris C. up the street, a young man that everyone called a FAG. That word wasn’t part of my vocabulary, so I had no idea what it was implying, but whatever. He had the best Star Wars toys and when we were of a mood, we’d all play Star Wars.

Here’s where it gets funny and sad in retrospect. Look, I wasn’t the kind of girl who didn’t have girlfriends. I did. I had boyfriends, too. I was a game playing omnivore. But one thing I resented was ALWAYS HAVING TO BE MOTHERFUCKING PRINCESS LEIA.

I argued that Han Solo was simply a hero archetype in which I better fit, as a chaotic rogue, although being in the third grade, I didn’t articulate it quite that well.

But no. I was Leia, because other girls didn’t want to play with a FAG. And I didn’t know what a FAG was, but if I had, I would’ve argued part of the downside of being Leia was that Chris C. would try to pin me down and kiss me. He was always Luke, so later, this was all fucked up on about ten thousand levels. But whatever.

Derek O. had to move away. He went to Japan for a couple of years. His mother died of cancer. When he returned, it was to a much better neighborhood than mine and we never talked. Until this party.

I was doing my thing. Look, a lot of people hated me for myriad and sundry reasons. I stabbed a kid. I was super mouthy. But I was still gifted and talented, so when he called me mercurial, I knew what it meant and I felt incredibly betrayed.

Like what? Why? I’m not the one moving to Japan and returning to not talk to my BFF like AT ALL.

I was the bitch sitting on the bus, passing Chris C. in one of the last weeks he lived on our block, huddled on the curb, sobbing and feeling the stab of guilt and pain that I’d just… you know, by omission let that kid get bullied.

And you know, maybe I never explained some of that shit. I’d never articulated that it wasn’t actually FUN for me to play the girl in their Star Wars fantasies, where they fought over who got to kiss me. That it wasn’t flattering, and that I just wanted to make saucy jokes at Chewbacca.

I wasn’t so much mercurial as uncommunicative until I’d HAD. IT. OFFICIALLY.

I wish I could say that I’ve grown out of this. But no. It’s like, everything’s fine until HULK FUCKING SMASH. I guess that makes me seem mercurial. But to me, I’m the same as I ever was, I just may have seen more shit than others paid attention to.

Chris C? His parents fought a lot. I think he was abused. He was a sweet kid. Sometimes, in the dark of night, I cry for how I treated him, even if he was kind of rapey about kisses.

Mercurial? I can see it.

Filed under: about clancy Tagged: han solo, mercurial, misspent youth, mood

The WASPs is available now!

Blake Brooks’s life is not going as planned. His wife kicked him out to move the nanny in, and his father disinherited him. The only haven he has left is his old boarding school buddy, Tyrone Edwards. It turns out Tyrone has a room all ready, clothes picked out, and and a place in his life reserved for Blake and his daughter Bitsy, whom they both adore.

Tyrone has always played it straight, even in boarding school when everyone was experimenting. Now he’s giving Blake mixed messages: affection and teasing one minute, fobbing Blake off on a gay co-worker the next. Is Blake succumbing to wishful thinking, or has Tyrone been holding out for Blake?

The WASPs is exclusively available on Amazon via my new Eine Kleine Press imprint! It’s also available through Kindle Unlimited, so get in and get reading!

Also, please sign up for my mailing list for exclusive content!

Filed under: books, eine kleine press, m/m, promo, published, writing Tagged: m/m, marketing, novel, promo, the WASPS, thursday euclid, writing

Pre-order The WASPs today!

Our re-release of The WASPs will be available in 2 days exclusively through Amazon. It was originally published through Dreamspinner Press, but the rights reverted and now we have re-edited it and recovered it and we can now offer it for a lower price PLUS it will be part of Kindle Unlimited!

I still really love this story and was so excited when it came out. It’s one of the first few novels that Thursday Euclid and I wrote as a team and while it’s quirky, I still enjoy it’s jokey play at an updated Jane Austen novel, but also much, much steamier.

It’s been off the market for a few months while we tinkered (and worked diligently on our vampire series which just got picked up at Loose Id) and we’re so excited to bring back The WASPs.

Blake Brooks’s life is not going as planned. His wife kicked him out to move the nanny in, and his father disinherited him. The only haven he has left is his old boarding school buddy, Tyrone Edwards. It turns out Tyrone has a room all ready, clothes picked out, and and a place in his life reserved for Blake and his daughter Bitsy, whom they both adore.

Tyrone has always played it straight, even in boarding school when everyone was experimenting. Now he’s giving Blake mixed messages: affection and teasing one minute, fobbing Blake off on a gay co-worker the next. Is Blake succumbing to wishful thinking, or has Tyrone been holding out for Blake?

Buy The WASPs
Filed under: books, eine kleine press, m/m Tagged: cute boys, humor, m/m, preorder, the WASPS

How is she though?

It feels strange to say, but it’s probably frequently true all around, but my mom having stage 4 cancer has brought us closer. At least, as close as I get to people in some ways.

I’ve written and deleted more blog posts about her in the past year than I can even think about. She is… as is a Clancy sort of trait… very stubborn. And for the past few years since my dad passed, she’s been very into alternative medicine, mostly driven by a sort of, kind of, not really boyfriend she had who was one of those quack Chiropractors who say things like, “Your childhood misery is why your gall bladder is irritated and I can fix that if you soak your feet in this expensive bath.”

And look, whatever gets you through the day. I found his approach irritating because he was taking money from people who were sick to sell them a bill of goods. But whatever. It’s their money and they’re grown ass adults. Sometimes a positive feeling is better than anything Big Pharma can brew up, and if people felt like they were getting their money’s worth, fine. I can’t say I loved it, but it wasn’t really any of my business.

Except that… my mom was pretty desperate to flash LED lights in my face to heal me of my migraines. Or sell me on expensive vitamins I was just going to piss out. She would buy them, so she wasn’t trying to scam me. She was just, you know, trying to help… in possibly the most exasperating way possible.

Anyone with long term illness can tell you that most caring people will try to heal you. They will offer everything from what worked for their great aunt to something they read online. I mostly take it in stride. People aren’t offering remedies to be dicks, they’re genuinely nice people who aren’t trying to sell you anything, usually. They just want to help.

But dear god, does it get old.

Anyway, my mom, with the desperation of a born again evangelical, tried to push every home remedy from colloidal silver, to foot baths, to some weird pair of glasses with lights in that flashed in some sort of sequence that was supposed to “program” your brain back into some natural order. That gave me a migraine.

Now she is on her more or less final path of this life, stage 4 cancer is a hell of a diagnosis to hear. She has 8 brothers and sisters and many friends. She had to tell her story to a lot of people and the reactions ran the gamut. My best friend at the time died at age 30 on stage 4 cancer. We had many frank discussions about how she felt, so I had some ideas at least on what NOT to say, but I’ll be honest, “How much processed food were you eating? Oh, you made yourself sick with that,” wasn’t among them.

It was something that, at the time, had occurred to my mom. Now that she’s on the other end of that, she’s realizing how horrible it is to hear. I wasn’t the only one my mom was trying to push the unwanted medical attention on, and believe me, I get a bit of the schadenfreude they’re experiencing. It’s not nice, but I get it. We’re just human, and she could get kind of nasty about things without meaning to.

When we were talking, I steeled myself to accept whatever therapy she was going to want to pursue. She told me she went with the chemo because she felt I’d push her toward that anyway. It genuinely surprised her when I told her that I would support her in whatever treatment she chose.

I’m relieved she’s going the traditional chemo route. But, I also know it can be really rough and that for some people it becomes a quality of life issue.

I have to say, now that she’s dropped pushing that alternative medicine stuff on me, she’s pleasant to talk to again. I’m sad that it took this to get there with her again, but I’m glad that I’m someone she can call when she is tired of being lectured to by friends and family.

I could get morbid about it and remind myself that these could be the very last conversations we ever have in this life, but that’s always been true. Cancer can be a fixed point, a definite period at the end of the sentence, but it’s not the only one.

This is the part in the mom blog where I tell everyone to call their moms, but fuck that. I don’t know you or your life. There are ten thousand reasons why calling your mom may not be appropriate for you. If you need a call to action at the end of all of this,try to find the up side of the shit life throws at you. My mom has cancer. It sucks. But now that some of the bullshit’s been dropped, we’re communicating better.

Filed under: about clancy Tagged: cancer, mom, personal

Soundtrack for Gemini

This is a lot more of an aggressive soundtrack than I often write or edit with. Got some Rage Against the Machine and Alice in Chains as well as Snow Patrol and Spiritualized. I’ve listened to it a few times today already, it’s got a lot of good brood and upbeat anger that you’d expect with a sexy political thriller.

Gemini was such a fun book to write and a challenge to edit, trying to pull all the elements together. The sex is super hot, the politics ripped from the headlines, and the setting in Houston made for a steamy thriller.

Cass Manning is a serial monogamist, grad student, and identical twin to Paul, a drug-addicted prostitute. Fleeing his unfaithful boyfriend, Cass returns to Houston after years away only to be drawn into danger before he’s out of the airport.

When Paul dies under suspicious circumstances, Cass must rely on one of Paul’s clients, Kilo, a mercenary willing to protect Cass in exchange for favors. Together they have a chance to bring justice to the corrupt heart of Texas’s political power structure, but Kilo’s mysterious past may tear him from Cass when he needs him most. Even if they outlive their untouchable adversaries, how does a polite academic find lasting love with a soldier of fortune?

Available now

Loose Id
Amazon
All Romance eBooks
Barnes & Noble

Filed under: books, Loose Id, m/m, promo, soundtrack Tagged: gemini, m/m, thriller

Soundtrack for Pride and Justice

Music is very important to me while I write and edit. Sometimes I leave the television on, but it’s usually music that inspires a mood and keeps me on track to the end of a scene. I group those songs into playlists for myself and now I’m sharing my soundtrack for Pride and Justice.

This isn’t all of the music that inspired me, and, I will say that the music is a lot more somber than the story is. I like mellow music, though. A previous officemate said that I listened to a lot of music to get high to. What can I say? I’m a mellow gal.

If nothing else, maybe you’ll find some tunes you didn’t know or revisit some old ones you had forgotten.

More about Pride and Justice:

A percentage of the earth’s population has transformed into surprisingly functional zombies who returned to work the next morning as if they weren’t undead monstrosities. Justice Kinkead, officer in an elite zombie fighting force, gets called out when good zombies go bad, putting down the brain cravers and safeguarding the new economy. After several of his partners succumb to unfortunate deaths, Justice figures he’ll go it alone…until he’s assigned a mysterious and sexy new partner, Merlin Pride, who seems to know more about the zombies’ origins than he’s letting on.

Merlin also seems to sense that Justice needs a good screw, but it’s complicated: Justice still lives with his undead ex-boyfriend. Can Justice make peace with his past? And if he does, should he take a chance on a man who may have something to do with destroying civilization as they knew it?

Length:Novel

Genre:LGBTTQ, Fantasy & Paranormal

Cover Artist:P. L. Nunn

Buy now

On Amazon: Pride and Justice

On All Romance eBooks

Filed under: books, Loose Id, m/m, writing Tagged: inspiration, m/m, music, pride and justice, sountrack, writing

Behind the scenes: Pride & Justice

Thursday Euclid talks to me about my inspirations and wacky world view that helped concoct the m/m paranormal action romance Pride and Justice

Listen here:

http://traffic.libsyn.com/makeminemanlove/behindTheBookPrideAndJustice.mp3

Or you can download it (right click and save)

Buy the book at Loose Id

Filed under: feels, Loose Id, m/m, podcast, promo, writing Tagged: inspiration, m/m, podcast, pride and justice, thursday euclid

Grab your copy of Pride & Justice

A percentage of the earth’s population has transformed into surprisingly functional zombies who returned to work the next morning as if they weren’t undead monstrosities. Justice Kinkead, officer in an elite zombie fighting force, gets called out when good zombies go bad, putting down the brain cravers and safeguarding the new economy. After several of his partners succumb to unfortunate deaths, Justice figures he’ll go it alone…until he’s assigned a mysterious and sexy new partner, Merlin Pride, who seems to know more about the zombies’ origins than he’s letting on.

Merlin also seems to sense that Justice needs a good screw, but it’s complicated: Justice still lives with his undead ex-boyfriend. Can Justice make peace with his past? And if he does, should he take a chance on a man who may have something to do with destroying civilization as they knew it?

Length:Novel

Genre:LGBTTQ, Fantasy & Paranormal

Cover Artist:P. L. Nunn

Buy now

On Amazon: Pride and Justice

On All Romance eBooks

Filed under: books, Loose Id, m/m, writing Tagged: loose id, m/m, magic, magic boys, pride & justice, zombies

Grab your copy of Pride & Justice

A percentage of the earth’s population has transformed into surprisingly functional zombies who returned to work the next morning as if they weren’t undead monstrosities. Justice Kinkead, officer in an elite zombie fighting force, gets called out when good zombies go bad, putting down the brain cravers and safeguarding the new economy. After several of his partners succumb to unfortunate deaths, Justice figures he’ll go it alone…until he’s assigned a mysterious and sexy new partner, Merlin Pride, who seems to know more about the zombies’ origins than he’s letting on.

Merlin also seems to sense that Justice needs a good screw, but it’s complicated: Justice still lives with his undead ex-boyfriend. Can Justice make peace with his past? And if he does, should he take a chance on a man who may have something to do with destroying civilization as they knew it?

Length:Novel

Genre:LGBTTQ, Fantasy & Paranormal

Cover Artist:P. L. Nunn

Buy now
Filed under: books, Loose Id, m/m, writing Tagged: loose id, m/m, magic, magic boys, pride & justice, zombies