Josh Lanyon's Blog, page 68

Advent Calendar - Day Three

Today I'm sharing an (I think) amusing holiday picture with you. This one is by Olga Angelloz licensed thru Shutterstock.

The first person to comment below gets to choose any ebook title from my backlist. You can also gift the title to someone else, if you so choose.

Advent Calendar Day 2 - Excerpt

Today's excerpt is from The Dickens With Love. This is probably my most popular holiday story. When I wrote it, I was trying to -- first and foremost -- write something that wasn't a mystery and didn't have a cop in it. ;-)  But also that captured the themes and motifs of a Dickens Christmas story. If you know your Dickens, you'll understand why this story works so well with readers -- right down to the apparently Catch-22 ending.

There is a holiday coda for it right here.

Today I am giving away three copies of The Dickens With Love to the three randomly chosen readers who can come up with the titles of three or more Dickens' Christmas stories. Three three three. Get it?


BLURB:
Three years ago, a scandal cost antiquarian “book hunter” James Winter everything that mattered to him: his job, his lover and his self-respect. But now the rich and unscrupulous Mr. Stephanopoulos has a proposition. A previously unpublished Christmas book by Charles Dickens has turned up in the hands of an English chemistry professor by the name of Sedgwick Crisparkle. Mr. S. wants that book at any price, and he needs James to get it for him. There’s just one catch. James can’t tell the nutty professor who the buyer is.
Actually, two catches. The nutty Professor Crisparkle turns out to be totally gorgeous—and on the prowl. Faster than you can say, “Old Saint Nick,” James is mixing business with pleasure…and in real danger of forgetting that this is just a holiday romance.
Excerpt:

The Hotel Del Monte sat on twelve lushly wooded acres in the middle of some of the most expensive real estate in Southern California. The hotel’s secluded location and small size, the rambling, pink stucco Spanish style ninety-two-room complex and its tranquil and luxuriant gardens full of trees, ornamental ponds and fragrant flowers made it one of the most romantic settings in Los Angeles. No long, anonymous corridors lined with room numbers. Most guest rooms and suites had private entrances and opened directly onto the hotel’s gardens. If I was a guy in the market for a honeymoon, Hotel Del Monte would be my first choice.
I asked at the front desk for Room 103 and then headed out through the ancient sycamores and tree ferns. I crossed a small arched red and gold bridge from where I could see the graceful bell tower on the other side of the small lake where the swans were taking shelter. The rain pattered on the leaves of the lemon and orange trees lining the cobbled path, glittered on the petals of the rose bushes. It smelled good, like walking in the woods. The city seemed very far away.
I found Room 103 without too much trouble, ducking into the stone alcove and knocking on the door. Rain dripped musically from the eaves and ran down the back of my neck.
I shivered. I needed a raincoat, but with only about fifteen to twenty days of rain a year, there were better things to spend one’s pennies on. Like books. There was a 1924 edition of Gertrude Chandler Warner’s The Box-Car Children I had my eye on for this year’s Christmas present to myself.
The hotel room door swung abruptly open. An unsmiling, dark-haired man stood framed against an elegant background of pale cabbage roses and ivy. He was about forty. Tall, rawboned, lean. He wore faded jeans, a cream-colored sweater over a white tee shirt, and horn-rimmed glasses that made him look like a bookish angel.
“James Winter?” he inquired, looking me over like he’d caught me cheating on my chemistry quiz.
“Professor Crisparkle?”
My surprise must have been obvious. “Is there a problem?” he returned sternly.
“No. Not at all.”
The problem was he was gorgeous. It was a no-nonsense brand of gorgeousness, though. Far from detracting from his dark, grave good looks, the glasses accentuated them.
I smiled my very best smile—despite the rain trickling down the back of my neck—and offered my hand. After a hesitation, he shook it.
His grip was firm, his palm and fingers smooth but not clammy or soft. An academic, but not one of the ones who never left his ivory tower.
No wedding ring.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you.” I meant it. I was sort of nonplussed at how much I meant it.
“Come in,” Crisparkle replied, moving aside.
I stepped inside the room which was cozily warm and smelled indefinably expensive, a combination of fine linens, fresh coffee and cut flowers. A fire burned cheerily in the fireplace. The remains of the professor’s lunch were on a tray on the low table before the sage velvet sofa. Soothing classical piano played off the laptop next to his lunch tray.
Corey and I had stayed at the Hotel Del Monte on our one year anniversary. The rooms were all furnished in romantic country-French décor—each unique but with the famous signature touches of Alicante marble, vintage silk or chenille upholstery, and original artwork. It was the best weekend of my life—or maybe it seemed that way in contrast to the following week, which was when my entire world had shattered.
“You must have brought the rainy weather with you.” I smiled again, not bothering to analyze why I was displaying such uncharacteristic cordiality. “Have you seen much of the city since you’ve been here?”
“The book is on the desk.” Crisparkle nodded at the writing desk near the white French doors leading out to a private patio.
Not one for chitchat, was he? Maybe it was an English thing. In any case, I lost all interest in rude Professor Crisparkle. The only thing in that room for me now was the faded red leather book lying on the polished desktop. As I approached the writing table my heart was banging so hard I thought I might be having my first ever panic attack.
A book. Not a manuscript. I’d been thinking that Crisparkle and Mr. S. were playing fast and loose with their terminology, but no. It was a bound book. All the more unlikely, then, that this could be the real thing. Hard enough to believe a manuscript had been lost, let alone an entire print run. Impossible, in fact. And yet, as I reached for the thin volume, finely bound in red Morocco leather, I noted that my hand was shaking. Well, scratch a cynic and you’ll find a disappointed idealist.
I drew back as I realized that I was in danger of dripping on the desk.
“Could I borrow a towel?” I asked.
Crisparkle gave me a funny look, and then disappeared into the bathroom.
I took a moment to remind myself of all the possibilities of any such appraisal. The novel might be the real thing, but it was more likely to be a forgery. It might be a modern forgery or it might be a contemporary forgery. Knowing which would depend partially on discovering the book’s provenance—the documented or authenticated history of its ownership—of which I so far knew nothing.
The professor reappeared with a peach-colored plush towel and I scrubbed my face and hair, tossed the towel to the fireplace hearth and sat down at the desk. I still didn’t touch the book, simply gazing at the gold lettering on the front cover. Miss Anjaley Couttssurrounded in gold-stamped holly and ivy.
That wouldn’t be the title. So the book was a gift and Miss Coutts was the recipient. Why was that name familiar? Who was Miss Anjaley Coutts? Not Mrs. Dickens or a sister-in-law. Not a daughter. Not an alias of Dickens’ mistress, the actress Ellen Ternan, because he didn’t meet her until 1857. Who then?
“It doesn’t bite,” Professor Crisparkle said sardonically, and I realized that I’d been sitting there for more than a minute, unmoving, staring at the cover.
I threw him a quick, distracted look, and then delicately edged the book around to examine its spine. Gold lettering read The Christmas Cake / Dickens / MDCCCXLVII.
The Christmas cake?
I carefully opened the book and turned the flyleaf. On the frontispiece was a hand-colored etching of a truly sumptuous cake—topped by a sly, smiling mouse with crumbs on her whiskers. I looked at the title page: another smaller illustration of an elderly man and woman who appeared, to my wondering eye, to be getting sloshed on the Christmas punch. And the words The Christmas Cake in a familiar, faded hand that most people only viewed through glass.
I turned the page and stared, feeling decidedly light-headed, at the first sentence. Our story begins with a fallen star. But the star is not the story.
I was vaguely aware that Professor Crisparkle spoke to me, but I didn’t hear what he said, and I didn’t care. I was absorbing—devouring—the words with my eyes.
Roofed with the ragged ermine of a newly-fallen snow glittering by starlight, the Doctor’s old-fashioned house loomed grey-white through the snow-fringed branches of the trees, a quaint iron lantern, which was picturesque by day and luminous and cheerful by night, hanging within the square, white-pillared portico to one side. That the many-paned window on the right framed the snow-white head of Mrs. Dimpledolly, the Doctor’s wife, the old Doctor himself was comfortably aware—for his kindly eyes missed nothing, so it was that he spied the falling…
I read for some time before I finally raised my head. I no longer saw the hotel room. I don’t think I even saw the book or the handwritten pages anymore. I was seeing benevolent old Doctor Dimpledolly and his amiable missus as they opened their home to a coachload of strangers stranded on Christmas Eve.
“Satisfied?” Professor Crisparkle asked dryly.
I snapped back to awareness, blinking up at him, dimly taking in the details of elegant nose, long eyelashes, soft dark hair…I couldn’t tell what color his eyes were behind the horn-rims. That mercurial shade of light brown that looked green in certain light and gold in other. He seemed so awfully stern, so awfully strict, reminding me of an uptight schoolmaster. But that was right, wasn’t it? He taught chemistry like Mr. Redlaw, the professor of chemistry in The Haunted Man.
As I stared at him, it occurred to me that Professor Crisparkle didn’t like me much.
Didn’t like me at all.
Why? Not that I was universally beloved—hardly—but what had I done to earn such instant dislike from an out-of-towner?
I said slowly. “It looks…very promising.” My voice nearly gave out. Promising? Who was I kidding? I knew, knew in my bones, this was the real thing. I said more solidly, “I’d have to examine it more closely, of course. To be absolutely sure.”
He gazed at me with an expression of utter contempt.
No, I wasn’t misreading him. I repeated uncertainly, “I’d like to spend a little more time—”
“I’m sure you would.”
Color heated my face at that dry, ironic tone—and I wasn’t quite sure why. I said evenly, “It certainly looks authentic, but you never know.”
“You don’t, do you?”
Again: barely concealed scorn. Too obvious by now to politely ignore.
“Is there a problem?” I asked.
“There is no mysterious client, is there?”
“I didn’t say he was mysterious, but of course there’s a client.”
“What is the name of your client?”
“I’ve already told you he wishes to remain anonymous.”
Crisparkle said, looking me straight in the eyes, “After we spoke on the phone, Mr. Winter, I did a bit of checking up on you with your colleagues in the ABAA. You have quite an interesting—and not entirely admirable—past.”
I’m not sure why that struck home the way it did. I’d certainly heard worse, but hearing it from Crisparkle—knowing the stories he would have heard about me—was, quite simply, humiliating. I managed to say, “There are two sides to every story, Mr. Crisparkle.”
He didn’t answer.
After a painfully long pause, I said, “I take it you’ve decided not to permit me further access to the book?”
He said, as though it gave him great satisfaction, “You take it correctly, Mr. Winter.”
So why the hell had he permitted me up here to look at it at all? Curiosity? Or had I blown my one and only chance when I pretended not to know for sure that the book was genuine?
I wanted to shout out, it’s not fair. But when was life ever fair? Instead, I expelled a long, shaky breath and managed to keep from saying all the furious, foolish things that wouldn’t help my cause anyway. I could hardly bear to take a final glance at the book. Leaving it lying there in the shadows of reflected rain and firelight, knowing I would never see or hold it again, was like physical pain. I felt it in my core of my body like a physiological reaction to grief. I felt ill. I felt like crying.
Rising, I began gathering my things. Surprisingly, my hands were quite steady now.
I dragged on my coat, still damp with the earlier walk in the rain. All the while Crisparkle stood there watching me in an icy silence like a head butler waiting to expel a grubby tradesman.
I went to the door of his suite and he followed me, still unspeaking. I had my hand on the knob when my anger overtook me, and I turned to face him.
“Not that it’s any of your goddamned business, but I had nothing to do with Louis Strauss’s forgeries, let alone murder. I was never accused or even implicated in any wrongdoing. I merely had the misfortune of working for Strauss. So did several other book hunters. The difference is, they didn’t stay in the business. I stayed because this is my passion and my life.”
“Ah, I see,” he said mockingly. “Why, then, do you suppose so many people say the unflattering things they do about you?”
“Because I was too good at my job. And I was…arrogant. Nearly as arrogant as you.”
His expression altered infinitesimally right before I quietly, carefully, shut his hotel room door.

Buy it at Amazon
It's in audio too!

The Tricksy Josh Lanyon Advent Calendar 2014

I had a kind of crazy idea that I would do a sort of Advent Calendar on my blog this year. I would like to fill it with codas, of course, but I don't know that will happen just because I have done so much writing this year already (three full-length novels and two novellas -- that's quite a productive year).

But my idea is to allow us to interact and have fun here -- and also to give something away each day. On the days that I do manage to write codas, that will be the giveaway. :-) 

Anyway, the object of the game is interaction and engagement. It's the holidays, after all!

So today's kick-off post is for my British friends -- and those of you who shop through Audible.UK. I have several audio download codes for Audible.UK and I am giving them away to 4 randomly selected readers who share a British or European holiday tradition with me.

Post in the comment section below. :-)

 

Happy Thanksgiving! Five Things You're Grateful For.

Oh sure, I know a lot of you don't celebrate Thanksgiving or don't celebrate it this time of year. And yes, I know there are problems with this particular holiday. But for me Thanksgiving is about taking the time to celebrate all that is good and right with my life. I don't know about you, but most of the time I am focused on all that is not right -- and what I need to do to change that. I can be so focused on what has to be fixed that I forget to notice all that is perfectly good just as it is.


There's nothing wrong with taking the time to acknowledge -- to celebrate -- that there is much to be thankful for.


Here are five things I'm thankful for:


1 - Another year spent with my family. My parents are old enough now that I'm particularly happy to see them at every holiday table. And my nieces and nephews are getting to an age where they may well choose to spend holidays with friends or -- eventually -- new family. So I treasure these last holidays while we are still in stasis.


2 - Having enough -- more than enough -- to eat. I wish this could be true for everyone.


3 - Good wine shared with good friends.


4 - The fact that I am still passionate about writing. I love my job. And I know how fortunate I am to be able to say so.


5 - The Film Preservation Society. It's important work and I'm so glad people have undertaken this cause. Because the protection and preservation of art is no small thing to a society.


What are you thankful for this autumn? What do you have to be grateful for?

Lost in Translation

I received some excellent news today. The Japanese edition of Fatal Shadows is going into a second print run.


Meanwhile Fair Game was picked up by Harlequin Mondari, the largest romance publisher in Italy as their first foray into male-male fiction. One of my German publishers (I have two) is about to pitch A Dangerous Thing to their acquisitions committee -- which sounds like the German edition of Fatal Shadows must be doing reasonably well. My other Italian publisher (I guess I have two of those as well?) sent the cover art for Out of the Blue. And I'm about to list the Spanish edition of A Dangerous Thing on Amazon.


Se Habla Espanol! Only we don't. And therein lies the rub.


There’s a lot going on with translations right now -- translation and audio are suddenly hotly contested rights in contract negotiations -- more because of where the book market is heading (a global direction) than where it is right at the moment. We can all see the trend.  It's a small world after all.

Not all of my forays into translation have been successful. Dutch was a disaster. And I've sold less than ten copies of either of my Finnish translations. And zero of my sole Portuguese translation. Spanish has not been a great success, but then again the free Spanish edition of The French Have a Word for it had hundreds of downloads. So.

As I look at the results...the Finnish translations did not have publisher support behind them and I do think that makes a difference. Then again, the Dutch translations were through a publisher but frankly, they might as well have gone through a pirate site. The Portuguese translation was through a new company called Babelcube.  It operates on a business model similar to that of ACX (the Amazon company that produces DIY audio books). You don't pay for the translation up front, you split the profits on a sliding scale with the translator and Babelcube. Bablecube lists the work in a number of venues -- some of which the author could access but some which the author probably couldn't (at least without a fair bit of research and effort).

It's an ingenious idea, but there are inherent difficulties: no quality control, no production oversight, and no real promotional or marketing support.

It is enormously exciting to reach new readers -- is there a greater test of the universality of a story than putting it into another language and seeing how it holds up? But there is also the problem of not being able to converse with these readers, not knowing how or where to market to them. I don't speak Japanese, Finnish, Italian, Spanish, German, French (okay, a little tiny bit of French), Portuguese or Dutch. I've received wonderful support from Italian bloggers and from Japanese writers and readers. Spanish readers seem very enthusiastic, so we'll see what happens when this next book
comes out.

One disconcerting thing is every single translation -- whether through a huge publisher or a hired freelancer at some point gets slammed for the quality of the translation. I'm not exaggerating.  Can translation be subjective? I don't know.

I know that translators are generally underpaid and underappreciated.

I also know that so far translations have not been enormously lucrative for me. Some of them are more lucrative than I expected, but I am not getting rich off any of them. And in some cases, the translations have not even paid for the cover art and formatting. But then I am not Dan Brown or Nora Roberts and I'm not expecting those kinds of results. I'm basically just laying the groundwork for the future global book market. I noticed years ago I was getting letters from readers all around the world, and that's the beauty of the digital age. Now these readers can enjoy my work in their native language. Or maybe more to the point, recommend the books to their friends and family who do not read English?

Anyway, what do you think? If English is not your first language, how important is it to you to read the books in your first language? If English is not your first language, how did you discover my work? Or the male-male genre for that matter?
 

You Say You Want an Evolution

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve mostly been working on “Baby, it’s Cold,” my story for the Comfort and Joyholiday anthology I’m doing with LB Gregg, Harper Fox and Joanna Chambers. As much as I love writing Christmas stories, it’s been slow going.

Partly it’s slow going because there’s so much going on right now in my non-writing life, but part of it is simply that I was trying to force an idea that wasn’t quite right.

Ideas come to me in bits and pieces. A particular character, a particular dilemma, a certain relationship dynamic…but sometimes not even that much. Sometimes the spark is just a scene or the way a song makes me feel. I’m not sure you can really analyze the creative drive -- or maybe what I mean is, the analysis can drain the magic out of the flash of inspiration.

I got the idea for “Baby, it’s Cold” from a brief article I read about hiring a chef for the holidays. I thought that would be a very fun thing -- although the idea of a professional chef trying to make sense of my kitchen? Madness. But fiction isn’t reality.

Initially the idea seemed straightforward. Someone would hire a chef for the holidays. I could picture my chef: tough, tattooed, pierced…not your normal TV chef. Did he maybe have a prison record? Hmm. Rocky. Yes, I would name him Rocky.

So who would hire Rocky? Someone with money, obviously. Someone throwing a party? And what would their conflict be?

This was the problem. Jesse would hire Rocky. I knew what Jesse looked like because he was inspired by Johanna Ollila’s cover art months ago. But though I knew what Jesse looked like…I had no sense of Jesse. Why was he hiring a chef? And how would this tie into the anthology theme of being housebound for the holidays?

I decided that Jesse worked for an actor who was throwing a Christmas Eve party. Jesse was organizing everything because he was this actor’s PA, but at one time they had been lovers…

Hmm. That just might...no.
Already I could feel it starting to go off the rails. But I persisted. So…Jesse was still working for this selfish asshole actor because…because…he had written a script and this guy was going to produce it so he could star in it and that would be Jesse’s big break so he was putting up with the indignity of staying on and working for his ex.

Okay. And Jesse was coming down with a cold so he would be sort of feverish and acting out of character.

Ugh.

Convoluted. Artificial. Book people with book dilemmas.


So a week went by and I kept trying to imagine the dialog but it Just. Wasn’t. Happening.

I didn’t like Jesse continuing to work for this jerk who was using him, and I couldn’t see what the attraction would be for Rocky. And why would a snooty actor -- or his wishy-washy PA -- hire someone as street as Rocky?

Another week.

I turned to the research. What would Rocky cook? Maybe that would give me a hint.

Well, heck. Rocky could cook anything, that wasn’t terribly interesting.

No, what would be interesting would be trying to cook for someone like Rocky. Because Rocky was a perfectionist, critical, a bit arrogant. And if the scrambled eggs weren't right, he'd tell you.

And all at once I had it. Jesseturns up at Rocky’s hideaway cabin to cook a romantic Christmas Eve dinner for two. Except Rocky isn’t expecting Jesse because he and Jesse aren’t together anymore. And Jesse can’t cook. And Rocky’s current boyfriend also shows up...

I like it. It's funny. Nutty in a romantic comedy kind of way. There's natural conflict. The idea has evolved, changed, and now we just might have a story. I'll keep you posted.







   

  

Fair Play Launch

Fair Play goes live on Monday, so this blog is a tiny bit premature, but oh well! The launch parties are at Goodreads and my Facebook Fan Page, and once again there is a glittering array of presents and giveaways to celebrate the new story. I cannot get over the generosity of my readers.


Plus a little something special. I'm taking part in Amber Kell's annual birthday party, and my contribution this year was a little "birthday" snippet with Elliot and Tucker. You can read that here -- just scroll down the page a bit.


Meanwhile, you can order Fair Play at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, iTunes and of course directly from Carina Press.


Fifty years ago, Roland Mills belonged to a violent activist group. Now, someone is willing to kill to prevent him from publishing his memoirs.


When ex-FBI agent Elliot Mills is called out to examine the charred ruins of his childhood home, he quickly identifies the fire for what it is—arson. A knee injury may have forced Elliot out of the Bureau, but it’s not going to stop him from bringing the man who wants his father dead to justice.


Agent Tucker Lance is still working to find the serial killer who’s obsessed with Elliot and can’t bear the thought of his lover putting himself in additional danger. Straightlaced Tucker has never agreed with radical Roland on much—“opposing political viewpoints” is an understatement—but they’re united on this: Elliot needs to leave the case alone. Now.


Tucker would do nearly anything for the man he loves, but he won’t be used to gain Elliot access to the FBI’s resources. When the past comes back to play and everything both men had known to be true is questioned, their fragile relationship is left hanging in the balance.

Talk to the Hand!

No, don't talk to the hand. Talk to me. I'm blogging over at Queer Romance blog today.


If you're somehow not aware of this month-long conversation and celebration of Queer Romance, you're missing out on some genuinely insightful posts -- and a whole lot of interesting discussion from a variety of writers. Some of the posts have been thought-provoking, some have been entertaining, and some will break your heart.


So what are you waiting for?

Happy Halloween!

Stay spooky and stay safe! ;-)

Book Trailer for FAIR PLAY

I've been sharing this on social media, but it would be remiss of me not to share here as well. So for your viewing enjoyment: FAIR PLAY the movie.

Okay, the movie-like book trailer. ;-)

Setting up house with his new lover was tricky before arson landed his former radical father in the guest bedroom. Now ex-FBI agent Elliot Mills has to figure out who is willing to kill to keep Roland's memoirs from being published.

Or, as they used to say in the day, Bring it home, Daddy-O.