'Nathan Burgoine's Blog, page 26

Short Stories 366:331 — “Homestead for the Holidays,” by Alex Jane

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This was an adorable friends-to-lovers short story that brought the anthology as a whole to a close, and was a lovely note to end on. Jane introduces us to CJ and Jace, two college roommates in their final year, heading out to CJ’s family “cabin” (more like a cluster of buildings, though rustic to say the least) together for the holidays. Jace is whole-heartedly in love with CJ, and is trying his best to get through the last few months they’ll have together, especially since he’s got even more on his plate since his homophobic and racist parents have officially crossed the line with him, and he’s looking at a future without them.

The Christmas magic kicks in with unexpected snow, the two of them getting the whole evening to themselves instead of being joined by CJ’s large family, and—of course—some admissions, some declarations, and then some feelings. This is a lovely little story, and while at one point it does brush on the whole “But they’re your family!” thing I’ve talked about way, way too many times by now, it doesn’t force the issue, nor does Jace change his mind, which I really appreciated as a kicked-to-the-curb fellow.

Basically, this was a feel-good with some snogging and a happy-for-now that feels very much like a “but don’t worry, we’re really talking forever” in disguise, and I adored CJ’s ongoing rambling admissions and just how many people—not including, y’know, Jace—were already in the know about just how CJ felt all along. It’s adorable.

By the time I closed Gifts for the Season, I found a quartet of stories I enjoyed, and I want to take a moment to point out that it’s a charity anthology and a good cause, so I don’t regret the purchase, but if there’s a singular flaw in this anthology it’s that most of the stories aren’t stories, exactly, but brief revisits with characters from previously published novels, and my experience reading them was mostly feeling disconnected with not enough of an idea of who the characters were, as the authors assumed readership would come into the tale pre-loaded with that knowledge. So, I can’t really recommend the anthology in and of itself as a whole on its own merit, but as a charity donation, the four stories I’ll be mentioning felt worthwhile.

“Handmade Holidays” — Available (Again!) for Pre-Order

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At nineteen, Nick is alone for the holidays and facing reality: this is how it will be from now on. Refusing to give up completely, Nick buys a Christmas tree, and then realizes he has no ornaments. A bare tree and an empty apartment aren’t a great start, but a visit from his friend Haruto is just the ticket to get him through this first, worst, Christmas. A box of candy canes and a hastily folded paper crane might not be the best ornaments, but it’s a place to start.

A year later, Nick has realized he’s not the only one with nowhere to go, and he hosts his first “Christmas for the Misfit Toys.” Haruto brings Nick an ornament for Nick’s tree, and a tradition—and a new family—is born. As years go by, Nick, Haruto, and their friends face love, betrayal, life, and death. Every ornament on Nick’s tree is another year, another story, and another chance at the one thing Nick has wanted since the start: someone who’d share more than the holidays with him.

Of course, Nick might have already missed his shot at the one, and it might be too late. Still, after fifteen Christmases, Nick is ready to risk it all for the best present yet.

I mentioned a while back how “Handmade Holidays” was getting a new cover to match the wonderful Inkspiral Covers of my other Village novellas, “Faux Ho Ho” and “Village Fool.” And as of yesterday? The design is unveiled! Isn’t it freaking awesome?

That’s Ru and Nick there in the window, and outside on the ledge? Wee little Celine, Ru’s black cat. Oh, and if you really look, you can see a merman lifeguard ornament on the tree. And those strings of lights? Take a glance at the other novellas. Basically, I’m sitting here vibrating my way through the chair with joy, is what I’m saying.

Now, this is a re-issue, not a new novella. I did do a tiny bit of housekeeping with the novella (fixing a couple of typos and inconsistencies), and I also tweaked a scene or three, but if you already have the original NineStar edition of “Handmade Holidays”? This isn’t a new story. I want to be clear.

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Inkspiral also did a brilliant series of little artistries on the inside of the novella, too. Each chapter begins with a Christmas Tree, and as the story progresses, the trees change the way they do in the story. So, for example, that tree there? That’s the chapter one tree: when Nick’s only ornament is Ru’s folded paper crane, and some candy canes. When Inkspiral showed me his idea for the putting in the Christmas trees, I reacted like any author would: I burst into tears.

Anyway. This new version of “Handmade Holidays” will be popping into existence next Tuesday (December 1st, 2020), and if you’ve not nabbed it before, you can pre-order it now, at your choice of e-tailer. I’ve submitted it to every site I can, and that link will populate all the e-tail sites as it becomes available.

Short Stories 366:330 — “Legacy of Love,” by Savannah J. Frierson

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I feel like I need to start off this discussion with a declaration that the heroine of this story should be sainted on the basis of cooking racks and racks of baked goods in the middle of southern June heat alone, but that she also finds a way to forgive the hero of this second-chance romance from Love All Year: A Holidays Anthology? I mean, the woman is amazing, okay?

Okay, that said, the set-up for this story is heavy on the sadness and angst at first: the death of a grandmother who organized Juneteenth, and her grandson and his childhood friend-slash-one-that-got-away-because-he-was-a-feeble-excuse-of-a-human-being-to-her living together in her home while they try to put on a Juneteenth that’s at least a fitting tribute to her. Oh, and she’s pregnant because at some point in their grief they gave into the temptation of comfort and used expired condoms. As set-ups go, there’s a lot happening here, and she’s got more than enough reasons on her plate to just walk but she doesn’t.

Did I mention she’s a saint?

This is a romance, so of course we know where things are heading, but the journey in this one did have me wondering about all the hows of it all, and most especially I think I appreciated how both the protagonists were in the later-in-life phase. He’d married, and divorced. She’d left, and started a solid career. They’re adults, and their flame-out of youth still stings, but it’s through a lens, and the two of them have more than enough here-and-now baggage, too. I rooted for these two, and ended this one with a smile.

Short Stories 366:329 — “Even Villains Have Standards,” by Kelly Goodman

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Okay, this story has my favourite set-up of the entire Powered Up! An Earth Prime Anthology. We meet Velocipede, a speedster villain, as she waits with another villain (who is here from a parallel universe) for two more villains to arrive because she wants to offer them a job to work together. Teaming up as villains isn’t necessarily any of their particular fortés, and none of them are remotely willing to even consider it, especially when Velocipede points out the mission came from, well… the good guys. But she manages to get them to look inside the folder in question, and at a glance, they’re all in.

I don’t want to ruin the reason—which is the core tenet of the story—but the interplay between the four villains (Velocipede is a trans woman, Blackbird is Black, and the other two are a gay couple who seem to be on-again and off-again with alarming regularity between doing crimes) is just perfect, and more to the point, this lovely shade of queerness that you don’t often get to see. It’s like the embodiment of “be gay, do crimes!” but dressed up in superheroics—pardon me, supervillainy—and then brought to a real-world place at just the right moment for the reveal.

I really, really can’t praise Goodman enough for this story, which rests so completely on characters rather than any specific moments of action in the plot. It was the perfect story on a perfect day in my case, too, when the news about something far too related was in play, so a little bit of fictionalized comeuppance was just the thing.

Rear Admiral — Available Now!

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Ten Days.

Russ is on a deadline. Okay, so nobody else knows about it, but the thing is, he and the ‘Rear Admiral’ (the crowning glory of the High Seas Anal Pleasure Set) are at a standoff, and he’s running out of time to achieve his goal before he meets the real-world inspiration for the toy face-to-face.

Eleven Inches.

The thing is? The ‘Rear Admiral,’ like everything else about Matteo Rossi—a.k.a. the former Dom Masters—is big. A wine tasting party, some snooty friends, and a brief interlude on a balcony later, and Russ and Matt have an actual conversation. A conversation that opens the door to something bigger.

One Chance.

Can one average nurse and his way-more-than-average crush make it work? Russ figures there’s one way to find out: go big or go home.

Books2Read link.

So, I released a short(ish) story today, and I feel like I need to backtrack a bit to even explain where this one came from. Quite a few years ago, I was asked if I’d write an erotica piece for an anthology, and I love writing queer short stories, as y’all know. I pondered, trying to think of a character or a setting or a spark to get the story growing in my head, and the idea struck via some incredible online discussions I was reading re: sex work (specifically porn stars) and basically I had a lightbulb moment for an idea, and ran with it.

And ran. And ran. And ran. In the end, over nine-thousand words worth of running. More, originally. What I wrote was a novelette (a cute term, if you’ve never heard it, for stories in the 7k to 17k or 20k, depending on who you ask). Novelettes are also a great way to write something that won’t fit in any anthology call what-so-ever, because they’re too bloody big.

Given the plot of Rear Admiral, the irony of that isn’t lost on me.

When I blew the tendons in my arm, writing new projects was basically a no-go for months, but I realized I was up to taking short amounts of time with projects that I’d already worked on (or completed) from the trunk, and thus, this one came back out to play. I polished it, hired an editor, asked the brilliant Inkspiral Design to come up with something cheeky-but-also-amusing (because it’s an awkward and funny erotica story, or at least, I hope it reads that way), and boy-howdy did they deliver.

Anyway. Since I’ve been working on relaunching things, and it means I needed to get my butt in the self-pub game and learn the ropes, this was another way to dip my toe in, and it was fun from start to finish. And, as always, for the eagle-eyed, there are a few Easter Eggs in this one connecting it to other stories that came before.

The links to various e-platforms will show up at that link, and more stores will appear as the story loads on those platforms. And with that? Onward!

Short Stories 366:328 — “Lonesome Charlie Johnstone’s Strange Boon,” by Jason Sharp

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More than a couple of the stories in Masked Mosaic: Canadian Super Stories touch on the gold rush, but I think this one, from Jason Sharp, struck me as the one that really took the gold rush and made it intrinsic to the tale. We meet a man, Charlie, who has finally had a bit of luck and found some gold, treating himself to a little celebration. Right off the bat, Sharp’s story makes it clear that the whole “community” around the gold seekers has formed to do one thing: take their gold. A haircut, a drink at the saloon, dinner, even a dance with a lady, it’s all got a price, and the price is artificially high, given the lack of options. And that’s where the crux of the narrative takes hold.

Charlie isn’t a particularly educated man, but he’s worked hard, he’s done everything he was told he’d need to do, and he’s finally gotten a bit ahead. But when the local dancing girl he’d like to share a dance with dismisses his offered gold as not enough and takes the opportunity to humiliate him in front of everyone, Charlie storms off back to his site to try to find some version of “enough.” Enough for the dance? Enough for respect? Enough to actually come out on top in a community determined to take whatever it can? It’s not clear—but he’s in the wrong frame of mind, doesn’t take care of himself, and would likely have died except for discovering something, something that bonds to him and changes him, and puts him in a unique position for vengeance.

This isn’t by any means a heroic story, though given the way everyone around the gold miners is trying to separate them from their hard-won profit, there are few-to-no innocents involved. So when Charlie demands a cut of the gold, respect, and that dance he’s owed—and threatens to use his new abilities otherwise—he’s by no means a good guy, but at the same time I found myself invested in him at least breaking up the unfair systems around him. Sharp doesn’t allow such a clean and neat ending (and the story is better for it), instead ending the tale in a further position of unsteady—and likely bloody—comeuppance still to come.

Short Stories 366:237 — “A Navy SEAL for Christmas,” by Zoe York

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We all know I’m a sucker for a winter anthology, and I’m also a sucker for Zoe York, so when I saw Winter Love was available—for free, no less, by signing up to the author newsletters (Go do that! I’ll wait!)—and included a Zoe York novella, “A Navy SEAL for Christmas,” well, I mean, I’m no fool. Click. Okay, so first off I want to talk about the set-up, because we do two things here that I adore: first, we have someone who just had a relationship implode (his girlfriend and his roommate were hooking up) who has realized neither of those relationships were actually all that good and he needs to wise up or something, and then second, we have the person who is facing down the holidays alone, and has decided to let herself loose in some way (in this case, the math teacher who has decided to take life drawing classes, as she misses her connection to art).

Then we mix and stir. And oh, how Zoe mixes and stirs. First, the guy in question is a SEAL between missions and his friend who has posed for live art classes before suggests he give it a go, since he’s free and all. Then the teacher arrives in the class and they have an immediate sizzle-spark-sweat (which is awkward for the naked guy in the middle of the room who totally needs to not, y’know, reveal any obvious, uh, attraction). More, it turns out the new apartment he needs (because of the roommate thing, earlier) lands him as her neighbour. It’s basically like Christmas has conspired to deliver an itch and a scratch and could they just open their presents, please?

This is a super-low angst, but super-high sizzle tale, and I liked the thing that made them slow down and not immediately jump into each other’s beds as a genuine concern for the teacher (it’s a completely valid reason, and I really appreciated the weight York gave to it). The side-characters were just enough to make them both feel connected to larger wholes, and you can tell this is part of a connected universe York has explored in other books, but at no point does it feel incomplete on its own. I love reading novellas like this.

Oh! And because I’m a fanboy, I reached out and asked Zoe if she’d let me in on where the idea for this one came from, and check it out:

I’m a big fan of Jennifer Lynn Barnes’ Writing For Your Id theory (which I heard in a recorded audio of her presentation at RWA18 in Denver), which I don’t want to reduce to a single sentence, but the essence of it is: too often, we strip out all the stuff we really, really like from our stories, when really, we should be adding in more of those id-button-pushing elements instead. This story is a mash-up of so many things on my id list: teacher protagonists, being alone for a holiday, crushing on a neighbour, fantasy characters come to life, ordinary people creating art, teasing siblings, and making do with what is at hand.

—Zoe York

Short Stories 366:326 — “Hustle & Bustle,” by Maggie Cummings

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I’m back with All I Want for Christmas again this week, with the second of the three women-loving-women holiday romance novellas, and this time it’s Maggie Cummings taking us to December in New York and oh, I was there. We meet Hannah Monroe, who is in the city just for a couple of weeks to try to build up some customers with a pop-up shop in the winter holiday market. She’s flying mostly solo—her partner in business has family in the city (and is pregnant) so she’s imagining most of her evenings alone in her father’s apartment (she saw him briefly before he left with her stepmother for their own holiday trip). Still, it doesn’t matter: she’s here to help nudge her business up a notch, and she doesn’t need any distractions from that.

Enter a distraction, in the form of NYPD beat cop Toby Beckett, assigned to said market, and who Hannah quite literally bumps into. There might be chemistry, but Hannah definitely resists: the last sort of person she wants to connect with is a police officer, and she’s not going to give up on her ideals, regardless of how beautiful the officer in question is. Her business partner isn’t one to let a match-making opportunity slip, though, and a few well-placed nudges and Hannah starts to learn a bit more about Toby, which includes (among other wonderful qualities) Toby’s conflicted relationship with her job and the limits it puts on her doing what she’d really like to do, which has a lot more to do with making a difference and connecting with people than ruining lives by punishing the wrong people. I really, really appreciated the characterization of Toby here, and as more and more is revealed about Toby’s past and trajectory, I was right there alongside Hannah. I was worried about a police officer heroine when I started reading, but by the end of the tale, Cummings seals a denouement with the two characters that put my misgivings completely to rest in an unambiguous way.

Like last week’s novella, this one is similarly low-angst, with most of the issue between the two being borne of timelines and distance: Hannah is here for a few weeks, and then she’ll head back home, which is a two hour distance from New York. It’s a big enough hurdle to give both characters pause (even without the whole Toby’s-a-cop thing) but as their feelings develop, you see them go into problem-solving mode fairly quickly, without the true Black Moment edge you tend to get in full length romance. This is another reason I love novellas so much: generally speaking, it’s a kinder, gentler ride and you know you’re in for the prose equivalent of a hug. The Christmas Cheer and facets of New York sprinkled alongside this one are like wonderful ribbons on top.

I reached out to Maggie Cummings to ask her for some insight into where the idea for “Hustle & Bustle” came from, and she had this to say:

First, I wrote it last February/March (2019), really right before the world exploded. I bring that up because so many things I detail in this story will be so different this year and perhaps even for the foreseeable future. Let me explain…

I’m from NY and I live about 10 miles outside NYC. While I hate the cold and winter in general, I do love Christmastime in New York City. It’s super cliché but it really is magical and it’s the only time I don’t mind being outside in the frigid temps. I can’t even tell you how much I truly love it. And I realize how lucky I am to get to experience it firsthand so I tried very hard to capture the spirit of the season in this novella. So I told a love story that’s unfolding in the midst of all this cliché NYC holiday stuff—the tree at Rockefeller Center, Central Park, the windows on Fifth Avenue, pop up holiday markets, etc.

That’s basically it! I just hope the story help put folx in the holiday spirit and makes them smile, because life and the world is hard right now!

— Maggie Cummings

Short Stories 366:325 — “Sugar and Spice,” by Eli Wray

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Okay, this story basically wins the award for adorable awkwardness for the year. Everyone else can go home. Good game, good game. Okay, I jest, but I don’t jest, because Mason and Natalie are freaking adorable, and the whole set-up of “Sugar and Spice” is just so holiday-awkward-queer-cute-relatable that I was doing the cringe-swoon thing I can only explain to other queer people because it’s got that healthy dose of “do they even potentially like me?” that goes lightyears beyond the usual “but do they like me?” and just trust me, the feelings are dialled up so perfectly to the nth here.

Back to the set-up. Mason is baking gluten-free cookies because they know Natalie eats gluten-free. However, Mason has not done this before, and they’re quickly realizing it’s not the story of thing they can just bang out all quick-like. So they when Natalie arrives and sees what’s going on, they kind of panic and admit they’re baking cookies for…a friend…and then Natalie is helping them make the cookies they want to give her and… GAH.

I also loved the transition in this story from so very cute and sweet and adorable into sizzle—it’ll be a go-to example now of how “cute” or “sweet” isn’t the opposite of “heat” or “sizzle.” Once the feelings are sorted out (and with such a gentle, wonderful progression thereof), the other, uh, feelings, come into play and Wray delivers said heat and sizzle with aplomb. For a short tale, this one packs in an entire journey, and managed to deftly admit some of the less-wonderful realities of queer holidays without losing any of the joy of its own narrative. I loved everything about this.

Short Stories 366:324 — “Driving Home for Christmas,” by Annabelle Jacobs

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This story has a solid set-up from the get-go, and doesn’t waste time with getting underway. We meet a fellow who spoke up at the wrong time with his on-again, off-again boyfriend who is not great. He proves just how not-great by dumping him at a service station and driving off without him, leaving the fellow stranded with twenty quid and no real ideas for how he’s going to get home. Which is when his former best mate—who he hasn’t spoken with for months—gets to show up at said worst time ever and offer him the ride home he needs (but really doesn’t want).

In the car, we get the backstory: they had a fumbling kiss, the best-mate sent a pretty cold text the next morning, and that’s why it’s been four months of nothing, but we also learn there’s more to it than that by quite a bit. Add in sudden snow, only one room at the Inn (and, of course, a variation of “only one bed”), a snowball fight ending in a tussle, and stir, and you’ve got yourself a cute, quick, romantic little holiday story.

Jacobs adds just enough charm to this one, and just enough of a snarl of miscommunication in their past to make the pacing work. Better, once the two start talking, the revelations happen pretty quickly. Nothing is dragged out, is what I’m saying, and as a short story the end result is just what you’d expect from the label on the tin, and sweet because of it.

By the time I closed Gifts for the Season, I found a quartet of stories I enjoyed, and I want to take a moment to point out that it’s a charity anthology and a good cause, so I don’t regret the purchase, but if there’s a singular flaw in this anthology it’s that most of the stories aren’t stories, exactly, but brief revisits with characters from previously published novels, and my experience reading them was mostly feeling disconnected with not enough of an idea of who the characters were, as the authors assumed readership would come into the tale pre-loaded with that knowledge. So, I can’t really recommend the anthology in and of itself as a whole on its own merit, but as a charity donation, the four stories I’ll be mentioning felt worthwhile.