Josh Lanyon's Blog, page 84

Christmas Coda 5

 
Elliot and Tucker from FAIR GAME
 
 
The stuffing in the sweet potato roulade was made with parmesan and cheddar cheese, crushed garlic, nut bread crumbs, sage and parsley. The moussaka was made with portobello mushrooms and seitan. There were Provencal stuffed tomatoes, buttermilk biscuits, and ginger-brandy cheesecake for dessert.  There was a lot of food. A lot of wonderful food.
What there was not, was a turkey.
But there was plenty to drink, and Elliot kept Tucker’s glass topped up – and his own.
Tucker was dealing manfully with the absence of turkey, stuffing, and mashed potatoes at Christmas dinner. But then Tucker had a turkey all prepped and ready to go into the oven when they got home to Goose Islandthat night.
Roland, who had also had his share of alcoholic beverages, was saying, “When you look at it that way, when you consider how much money is spent on stuff that people don’t want and don’t need, it makes sense to skip buying presents and just donate to the person’s charity of choice.”
Tucker drawled, “What charity were you thinking of donating to on my behalf?”
Roland stroked his beard thoughtfully. “Hmmm. I guess the NRA doesn’t really qualify as a charity, does it?”
Elliot laughed and popped a stuffed olive in his mouth. His two favorite people in the world and they couldn’t be more unlike each other.
Tucker glanced across the table. His blue eyes gleamed in his tanned, freckled face. He gave Elliot a slow, deliberate wink.
 
 

Christmas Coda 4

Ford and Jacob from HEART TROUBLE
 
 
 
It was a little white house on a quiet residential street.
Nothing to strike fear into a man’s heart.
Christmas lights were strung along the roof and through the neatly pruned trees, a large wreath with red ribbons and pine cones hung on the front door, solar candy cane lights lined the cement walk.
Bad things did not happen in houses that looked like that. I knew because I had grown up in a house like that. In fact, I should be walking into a house like that right now. My parent’s house in Cotati where my sisters and aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents would all be sitting down to Christmas dinner any minute. 
But instead I was sitting in my car outside a strange house. A house that belonged to the parents of my…boyfriend.
The boyfriend my parents and all the rest of my family didn’t know about because I hadn’t told them. And because I hadn’t told them, instead of going to home to spend Christmas with my own family, I was spending it with Jacob’s.
No. That wasn’t fair. I was having Christmas dinner with Jacob’s family because I wanted to spend Christmas with Jacob. And because it would be hard to do that at the home of my parents until I came out. So…Jacob’s family.
“We’d trade off anyway, right?” Jacob had been his usual kind, supportive self, finding excuses for me when he should have told me to grow a pair. “Next year we’ll go to your parents.”
Right.
A red VW pulled up and parked in front of the Hoyle house, and Rob, Jacob’s brother, got out and went around to open the passenger door for a dark-haired girl in a white rabbit fur coat. That would be Karin, Rob’s new girlfriend. Her family was back east, so this was her first Christmas with the Hoyles too.
I watched Rob and Karin walk up the candy cane lined walk. Karin was carrying a bottle of Blue Nun. I glanced at the bottle of Blue Nun on the seat beside me. They knocked on the front door, the door opened, and Jacob greeted them with a big, warm smile.
Just that little glimpse of him made my heart do a happy, little handspring.
It was worth it. Worth anything because if I didn’t love Jacob, I closer to it than I'd ever been in my life.
I watched him lean out the doorway and glance up and down the street before ducking back and closing the door.
I wondered why I was sitting in my car working myself into an anxiety attack when I could be saying hello to Jacob right now.
I could be kissing Jacob hello.
I got out of my car.
     
 
 
 
 
 
 

Holiday Photo

I decided (retroactively) on the day I wasn't doing codas, I'd share a particularly nice holiday photo -- just to keep that festive feeling going all month long.

The thing about photos -- and cover art -- is that a good one can actually inspire the desire to write, to create a story to match the photo. Plus visual images are powerful in their own right.

These are all licensed through Shutterstock. This particular offering is from Bruce Yeung. It's a particularly formal and rather intimidating Christmas dinner set up. I wonder how many of my characters would feel at home here and how many would feel at a complete loss.

Christmas Coda 3

Brett and Rafferty from THIS ROUGH MAGIC
 
 
Rafferty told himself he didn’t expect Brett to show.
Christmas Eve? Nah. There would be some swell Snob Hill party he was expected to attend or some wingding at the old plantation he’d feel it his duty to soldier through. And it wasn’t like Rafferty was ten years old and still believed in Santy Clause. It was a long time since he’d knelt by his cot praying for a pony or a long lost uncle. He was a big boy now and this was just another night in foggy old San Francisco. A little colder, a little darker than some—but Rafferty’d known colder and darker.

It was well after midnight when he poured a stiff drink, his second of the evening, and turned out the lights in the front of the house. He was lying in bed reading White Fangby Jack London when he heard the faint, familiar scratching at his bedroom window.

His heart sprang into life. He threw the book aside, unfolded from the bed, and shoved open the window. Brett stood in the alley. He grinned at Rafferty and held up a bottle of Dom Perignon.

“I thought I heard the click click click of reindeer hooves,” Rafferty drawled.

“Merry Christmas.” Brett handed over the champagne and climbed through window with considerable agility, given that he was wearing evening clothes beneath a dark ulster. The ulster had a Persian lamb collar, so Rafferty had guessed right. A night on the town for young Master Sheridan.

He shoved the window closed behind Brett, yanked the curtains shut. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

Brett gave him a level look, his eyes as green as spring. “I can leave if you’ve got other plans.”

“Of course I don’t have plans and of course I don’t want you to leave.” Rafferty took him in his arms. Brett’s eyes were shining and happy, his flushed face cold from the bitter night air. He tasted like champagne. 

“I got away as soon as I could."

“You should have told me you were coming. I’d have…” What? Fixed Brett a meal? He’d have had plenty to eat and plenty to drink wherever he’d been.

“I wasn’t sure I’d be able to make it. I didn’t want to disappoint you.”

Rafferty was touched—and embarrassed. He would have been disappointed, sure, though he’d like to think he was better at hiding his feelings. “I’m glad you made it.”

Brett treated him to one of those rare, unguarded smiles. Six months they’d been…whatever they were, and those smiles still made Rafferty’s breath catch in his throat.

“Did you have a nice evening?” he asked, and he genuinely hoped Brett had because there weren’t nearly enough nice evenings in Brett’s life.

“Not particularly.” Brett reached deep into his coat pocket and pulled out a small parcel, a flat blue box with a white ribbon.

“What’s this?” Rafferty took the box.

Brett shrugged out of his ulster and draped it over the bed post. The first time he’d done that, Rafferty had woken during the night and, thinking someone was looming over the bed, nearly shot the coat. “Open it,” Brett said, and turned his attention to the champagne.

Rafferty recognized that blue box and he wondered uneasily where the hell Brett had found the money to buy whatever was inside. Hopefully Brett and Kitty weren’t back to pawning family heirlooms.


By the time Rafferty had fumbled open the box, Brett had uncorked the champagne and poured it into the only two clean coffee cups left in the house.

“Hell.” Rafferty stared down at the gold pocket watch. He swallowed hard. “I got you a book.”

Brett laughed. “Did you? What book?”

Rafferty’s face felt hot. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but really what the hell had he been thinking? “Shakespeare’s sonnets.”

Brett laughed again, an indulgent chuckle. He had put his mug of champagne on the steamer trunk that served as Rafferty’s bedside table and was shedding his clothes with quick, unselfconscious grace. His skin was pale and smooth like warm marble. He said, “You’re a romantic, Neil.”

Maybe. He was Irish. It was pretty much the same thing.

Rafferty removed the pocket watch from the fancy box. It was a beauty. The nicest thing he’d ever had in his life. He glanced at Brett now climbing into his bed, and mentally corrected himself. The second nicest thing he’d ever had in his life.

“Thank you,” he said, and he wasn’t talking to Brett.
 
   
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Christmas Coda 2

Drew and Fraser from MUMMY DEAREST 
 
 
“What was that?”

“Thunder.”

“That didn’t sound like thunder to me.”

“It’s thunder.”

“We should have stayed at the monastery.”

“No we should not have.” Fraser’s hazel gaze met mine and I cleared my throat.

“Mm. Possibly not.” I was not about to let that smug look sit on his face one second longer than I had to. “Why do I let you talk me into these things?” My moan could barely be heard over the moan of the icy wind outside our tent. Our tent in the northern Nepal. You know: the Himalayas. Home to Meh-Teh. AKA the Yeti. AKA the Abominable Snowman.

Fraser grinned at me over the rim of his mug. His red-rimmed eyes sparkled in his ruddy, wind burned face. His teeth were white in the gold frame of his beard. “You always say that, but you know you love every minute.”

“Love every minute!” I spluttered.

“You have loved every minute of the past five years.”

“You’re starting to hallucinate. Move closer so we can conserve body heat.”

Not that we could really get any closer.

“Here.” Fraser held out the thermos and I let him top up my mug. “You have to admit, it’s a lot better than garden parties and the opera.”

“No I don’t.”

“I took you away from all that.”

“I’m not forgetting whose fault this is.”

“I saved you from a life of boredom.”

“I wasn’t all that bored.”

“Yes you were. And you’ll thank me for this in the end.”

“Which will be any minute now. They’ll find our mummified remains in an ice cavern. Beneath an avalanche.”

“Locked in each other’s arms.” Fraser continued to beam at me while I slurped my steaming cocoa. Not bad. The cocoa, I mean. Although the other was alright too.
In fact…

I took another cautious slurp and frowned suspiciously. “What’s in here?”

“Peppermint schnapps.”

“Schnapps? Are you trying to get me drunk?”
 
“Of course. Drunk and debauched.”

“Let’s just skip to the debauched part. The hangover isn’t so bad.”

He touched his plastic mug to mine. “Cheers, Drew. Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christ—” I nearly dropped my cup at the boom of sound bouncing off the mountains around us. Fraser's blazing look of joy told me all I needed to know. “Hey. That was not thunder!”
 
 
 
 

Christmas Coda 1

Perry and Nick from THE GHOST WORE YELLOW SOCKS
 
 
 
“You’ll like California.” Nick turned his head on the pillow and caught the shine of Perry’s eyes in the muted light, the gleam of his smile.

“I think so.” Perry sounded content. “I want to paint the beach.”

“There’s plenty of beach in California.”

“Yeah.”

They had dug the sheets out of the box Nick had packed a couple of hours earlier and made up the bed. Nick’s sleeping bag was unzipped spread out over them like a quilt. It was comfortable. Probably the most comfortable bed Nick could remember, though that had more to do with Perry lying next to him than clean sheets and a good mattress.

The snow, which had started falling while they were otherwise occupied, made a soothing shushing sound against the bedroom window.

“It’ll be good for you. California, I mean. The climate and everything.”

“Yep.” Perry still sounded supremely untroubled. Untroubled and young.

“You…don’t think you’ll be homesick?”

Perry chuckled. “Nope.” He wrapped his good arm around Nick’s waist and settled his head more comfortably on Nick’s shoulder. “It’s like my mom used to say. Home is where the heart is.”

Nick’s own heart seemed to swell with another surge of that unfamiliar emotion. He bent his head, his mouth seeking Perry’s, and Perry responded with that easy enthusiasm.

When their lips reluctantly parted he said astonishingly, “Don’t worry, Nick. I’ll be fine. We’ll be fine.”

“I know that,” Nick said gruffly.

“And I promise I won’t get in the way or disrupt your work.”

 “The hell you won’t.” Nick was smiling as his mouth found Perry’s once more.

Christmas Codas

So. I was thinking last week about various things -- the fact that I need to do some promo and the fact that I really really REALLY need to start writing again -- and an idea occurred to me that sort of kills two birds with one ink bottle.

Christmas codas.

I've come up with the idea of doing little codas -- maybe just a few sentences or maybe a whole scene (depending on my mood) for my various stories. The codas will be set on Christmas. Maybe they'll pick up where the story ended or maybe they'll pick up a few Christmases into the future. We shall see.

I'll do one every few days starting Monday, December 3rd, and I'll post them here on this blog. There's nothing to buy and nothing required of you -- it's a writing exercise for me and hopefully it's fun for both of us.

And perhaps there will be a few fun surprises along the way, but basically that's my plan for this blog in December.

Happy Holidays!

The Next Big Thing Blog Hop

Author Aisling Mancy was kind enough to tag me in the Next Big Thing blog hop. This amounts to me answering ten questions about whatever my next "big thing" is and then I tag five hapless victims other authors who perpetuate the blog hop to infinity and beyond.

Basically it's a way of finding out a little something about what your favorite authors are up to while being introduced to authors who might be new to you. You don't have to do anything and no one is giving anything away, so no pressure.

 1. What is the working title of your book?

Blood Red Butterfly

2. Where did the idea come from for the book?

I have a number of titles that were picked up for translation by the Japanese publisher Shinkoshan, and I thought it would be fun to write something that maybe supported that effort -- but also that gave me a chance to try something new. Something fun and challenging at the same time.

3. What is the genre of the book?

I'm calling it a "yaoi-hybrid." It's a crime story but despite machine guns and gangs and bludgeoned  old ladies, it's not what you would call a SERIOUS crime story. Most Japanese manga has a surreal feel to me, so that's what I'm trying to capture--without getting too far out there.

4. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

I'm really hoping Astro Boy is available. My people are talking to his people.

5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Despite falling in love with manga artist Kai Tashiro, Homicide Detective Ryo Miller is determined to break the alibi Kai is supplying his murderous boyfriend--even if it means breaking Kai with it.

6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency/publisher?

This one will come out through my Just Joshin imprint.

7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

Still working on it. It'll probably take about two weeks. It's not a terribly complicated story.

8. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Well, I know a number of m/m authors are experimenting with yaoi and shouen-ai, but I'm sorry to say I'm  so far unfamiliar with them. I am (reasonably) familiar with yaoi classics like Fake, Bronze, Kizuna, etc. Although I don't think my work really compares.

9. Who or what inspired you to write this book?

I'm always looking for a new angle, a new approach. Something fun for readers and fun for me too.

10. What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

Um...it's going to have a really nice cover?

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My tagged victims are Harper Fox, Kari Gregg, Joanna Chambers, LC Chase, and Josephine Myles. Don't forget to check out their wonderful work!

Blood Red Butterfly snippet

  A wee (unedited, unexpurgated) taste of the current work in progress. This is a novella, a yaoi-hybrid first conceived as a little story to support the Japanese translations of a couple of my works being released through Shinshokan.

The original artwork is by my young niece.

BLOOD RED BUTTERFLY



 “Bad news,” Hernandez said. “Your homicide suspect’s alibi just turned up.”“No way.” Ryo grabbed a paper towel and dabbed at the fleck of mustard on his navy silk tie. He shot Hernandez a look in the mirror over the bank of sinks in the john. “You’re kidding me.”Hernandez shook his head. He was not a kidder.“No. Way.” Now Ryo was angry. Still watching Hernandez in the mirror, he scrubbed ferociously at his tie. “Torres is not walking away from this. He popped the Martinezwoman and he’s going down for it. And no little chiquita--”Hernandez’ sour grin stopped him. “The alibi is male.”“Male?” Ryo stopped rubbing his tie. “You mean…?”“I mean you might even know him.” It was not a dig. Hernandez had been Ryo’s partner for a couple of years back when they were both street cops, and he knew a thing or two about Ryo’s personal life that Ryo didn’t generally share. “Might be something you can use. I don’t think the Sotels are an equal opportunity employer, you know what I mean?”Yeah, Ryo knew what he meant. As badly as he wanted Torres, he wasn’t sure he liked that idea. He’d prefer to break Torres’ alibi, which should be easy enough to do because Torres had murdered that old woman in cold blood. Nothing and nobody was going to convince Ryo otherwise. “You believe this punk’s credible?”Hernandez shrugged. “Torres used his one phone call to get this guy over here. See what you think. He’s sitting at your desk biting his nails as we speak.”Ryo curled his lip, double-checking he didn’t have a piece of lettuce between his teeth. He ignored the derisive sound Hernandez made. It wasn’t about looking good, though Ryo knew he looked good—on a scale of Russell Wong to Dean Cain, he fell comfortably in the middle of Yeah Baby!—it was about conveying bulletproof confidence and unassailable assurance. Attitude. It was half the game.He straightened his tie. “I don’t think this is going to take long.”Hernandez said nothing. The punk was still sitting in front of Ryo’s desk, though he had stopped biting his nails. Ryo had a quick impression of a slight and slouching boyish figure clad in jeans, a pair of chucks, and a gray hoodie. Across the noisy room someone slammed a file drawer and the kid flinched. Ryo smiled inwardly. Yeah, he’d smash this bogus alibi in less than twenty minutes and get back to building his slam dunk case against Mickey Torres. And this time Torres would not be getting off lightly because of his tender age and deprived childhood. This time he was going away forever. Or what counted as forever in the screwed up Los Angeles Countyjudicial system.The punk looked up and Ryo almost walked into a chair. A pale, pointed, delicately boned face, chestnut hair, wide dark eyes like a faun--assuming a faun was what Ryo thought it was. The Ice Princess.No fucking way. Mickey Torres’ alibi was the same guy who had three times blown off Ryo at Fubar, a gay club he used to frequent. In fact, the Ice Princess was the main reason Ryo had quit going to Fubar. A guy could only take so much rejection.So this little stuck-up femme dude had cold-shouldered Ryo, but was willing to offer his bony ass to Mickey Torres? Willing to supply gang banger Mickey Torres with an alibi for homicide? Ryo smiled unpleasantly, noisily dragging his chair out from behind his desk. “I’m Detective Miller. You have information for me Mr.…?”The Ice Princess jerked up straight. His face went whiter, his eyes went wider, but there was no recognition in his red-brown eyes. Just fear. Maybe the fear a lot of honest citizens seemed to feel dealing with the law. Maybe the fear of someone about to perjure himself to the police.“Tashiro. Kai Tashiro.” His voice was light and husky. A young voice. A young man. But not as young as Ryo had originally thought. Probably in his mid twenties. Twenty-three or twenty-four.“How can I help you, Mr. Tashiro?” Tashiro looked about as Japanese as the big-eyed androgynous figures in the manga Ryo’s little nieces loved so much. It was another point against him, though Ryo knew that wasn’t fair.Murder wasn’t fair.“I got a call from a fr—Mickey Torres. He said he’d been arrested and he needed me to—” a nervous swallow, “verify where he was three nights ago.”Ryo opened the long desk drawer, removed a file, and slammed the drawer closed harder than he had to. Tashiro gave another one of those little jumps. Ryo opened the file, read for a moment, and then studied the man on the other side of his desk.“Did Torres tell you what he was arrested for?”“Homicide.” Tashiro’s voice was almost inaudible.“That’s right.” Ryo shoved the file with the Martinezcrime scene photos across the desk. “He killed a seventy-year old woman by the name of Esther Martinez. Take a look at what he did to her. Take a good look.”Tashiro looked—he couldn’t avoid it—and closed his eyes. He opened them almost at once. “Mickey didn’t do that.”“Yep, he sure did. He strangled her and then he beat her head in for good measure and because he’s a fucking animal with no conscience and no self-control.” Ryo kept his tone cool and cordial, hoping nobody at the surrounding desks was listening too closely.Tashiro gave a shake of his head. “He was with me, Detective Miller.”Ryo took the file back. He considered his strategy. There were a couple of ways to play this. He hadn’t missed Tashiro hesitation using the word “friend” in regard to Torres.“Okay,” he said easily. “He was with you. From when to when exactly?”Tashiro was still wearing his the hood of his sweatshirt pulled up. It gave him a strangely monkish look. “From about eleven-thirty to seven-thirty the next morning.”“About eleven thirty? So is that eleven-fifteen, eleven-twenty, a quarter to twelve? You’re going to have to be precise about the time when you stand up in court and swear to it in front of a jury.”Tashiro’s eyes flickered, but he said, “When we left the bar, the clock on my car dashboard said eleven twenty-eight.”“And what bar was that?” Ryo pulled out his notebook and jotted down the times.“Fubar.”“Fubar. Hm. I think I’ve heard of it. Where’s that located exactly?”“Santa Monica Boulevard.”“That’s a gay bar, right?”Tashiro nodded, not meeting his eyes.Ryo put his pencil down. “Do you really not recognize me?”Tashiro looked up and his eyes went wider still. “Huh?”Ryo picked up his pencil. Made a sharp notation. “So you and Torres leave Fubar together at eleven twenty eight on Tuesday night. Then what happens?”“We drove to my place.”“Which is where?”“1409 Armacost Ave.”Ryo grunted. “Nice.” Very nice. Half a million nice. What the hell had the neighbors made of street scum Mickey Torres? And what the hell did Kai Tashiro do for a living that he could afford that kind of prime real estate? Nothing legal probably. “Then what? You guys sat around and played Chinese checkers all night?”Tashiro turned a shade of pink that would require some serious crosshatching in manga. “No. We had another drink and then we…went to bed.”“Went to bed? Oh yeah? Did you watch Letterman? Give each other backrubs? Tell spooky stories? I bet Torres has a few of those. Has he shared with you how he wound up in prison the first time?”Tashiro shook his head. “We…had sex.”“I didn’t catch that.”“We had sex.”“You fucked. Is that what you mean?”Tashiro’s look was murderous. Ryo smiled. He had a very white and charming smile and he knew how to use it for maximum annoyance. “So you’re gay?”“Obviously.”“No, no. We try not to make insensitive assumptions on the police force.  So you’re gay and I guess Torres is gay?”“I…” “That news is going to cause quite a stir with the home boys. Homosexuality is not popular with Torres’ gang. And I use the word gangdeliberately.”“Is that it?” Tashiro asked. “Are we done? Mickey was with me. I’ll swear to it in court if I have to. Can I go?”“You don’t want to wait around for Torres to be released?”Tashiro’s brows drew together in confusion that was at least partly dismay.“I’m kidding you,” Ryo said. “It’ll be hours before he’s out. Lots of paperwork involved. In the meantime, we need to get a little more background on you, Kai.”
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I hope to have this one out before the end of the year, but no promises!

Breathtaking Cinemascope and Stereophonic Sound

I've been a big fan of audio books for years, so when my own books started making it into audio I was excited. I don't quite know how to explain why it's such a thrill to hear someone else reading your work aloud, but it is. (It's also vastly uncomfortable hearing your sex scenes read aloud, but that's a whole other discussion.)

Three of my Carina Press books made it into audio. I listened to every minute of Fair Game and overall I thought it was a pretty decent production. It was the first time it was driven home to me that there might be legitimate different readings of my words. You would think that would be obvious, but no. I liked the voice of the narrator for Icecapade, but he pronounced Noel's name as "Noelle" and I couldn't get past the first minute. After that I kind of lost my taste for hearing my own work and when Lone Star went to audio, I never bothered to listen. I was afeared to hear those Texas accents.

Yet I continue to buy and listen to audio books, and you'd have to be oblivious not to notice audio is becoming a bigger and bigger deal in publishing. So all those years of readers asking if I would ever consider putting the Adrien English series into audio did not go unheeded. At the same time, I had no idea how I could make that happen.

But then along came ACX or the Audiobook Creation Exchange. And, in fact, here was the news bulletin Amazon released this week:

Exciting New Kindle and Audible Features Whispersync for Voice and Immersion Reading

You can use ACX to produce a digital audiobook version of your book, and to make your book eligible for the new Whispersync for Voice functionality which allows customers to switch seamlessly between reading a Kindle book and listening to the corresponding, professionally narrated audiobook across devices without losing their place. Audiobooks will also be eligible for the new Immersion Reading feature, which allows customers with the new Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD devices to listen to a professionally narrated audiobook from Audible as the text of the corresponding Kindle book is highlighted on the screen. When customers buy your Kindle book, they will be able to purchase your Whispersync for Voice-ready Audible audiobook at a special limited time discounted price.

You can earn royalties of up to 90% on your audiobook when it’s created and distributed using ACX. ACX was developed by Audible, an Amazon company, to help authors and publishers get their books into audio and gain access to the growing audience of audiobook listeners. ACX provides access to thousands of talented audiobook producers, actors and studios, available for hire for a fee or for a no-cost, royalty-sharing partnership. ACX also provides great distribution options across all of the leading audiobook retail channels. It’s free to try ACX. Click here for more information about ACX and these new features.

The best part of an enterprise like ACX is you to choose the right voice (which is paramount, I think) from a number of auditions. You set your budget and you can either split royalties or pay an hourly rate up front for the production. From the minute I stumbled across the site, I was excited by the possibilities.

Obviously I thought I would start out (very tentatively) with the AE series. Writing gay fiction, and erotic gay fiction at that, means I wasn't swamped with auditions, but to my delight I did eventually find a very talented narrator by the name of Chris Patton to narrate Fatal Shadows.

Of course everyone has their own idea of how Adrien sounds, but I really liked Chris's voice and I appreciated his professionalism. It seemed like it would be a good match, and so I figured that was that. If everything went well, Chris could do the whole series, and why shouldn't it go well? But if it didn't, I didn't want to commit any further.

 But I just couldn't help listening to other narrators and considering all my other titles and though I didn't want to over-invest in something that might flop big time, I found I just couldn't help listing something very different -- The Darkling Thrush -- just out of curiosity. It's a short work but it's a complicated work. All those lyrical descriptions, all those English and Scottish accents, all that Gaelic.

Well, I only got three auditions.  One backed out when he realized belatedly the project was for gay fiction. The other two auditions were good but one was just...the sound quality was a little iffy and the narrator didn't have a slew of credits, but something about his voice, his delivery just really captured the story -- and my attention. So I asked for a second audition and we communicated a bit and I decided to go with my gut.

Today I listened to the completed files for The Darkling Thrush as narrated by Max Miller and I have to say I. Love. This. Book. Or at least I love Max's reading of it (because holy moly there are a lot of continuity errors in that thing--and hearing the book read aloud really made that painfully clear)! 

But lingering resentment over sloppy copy and proof editng aside, I was chuckling all the way through the completed files, rarely wincing (although I still can't stand to hear my sex scenes read aloud), loving the different voices Max came up with. It made me want to write the sequel! I can't wait for people to hear this book.

Which doesn't change the fact that I have no idea whether it will pay for itself -- I have no idea whether Fatal Shadows will pay for itself -- although given that audio books are so much more affordable now, I feel pretty confident that having an audio backlist is going to be a good move.

Meanwhile, I've been continuing to get auditions for the remaining and still technically uncontracted Adrien books, and some of those voices were wonderful. I thought...well, what about some of these other standalones? What about Kit Holmes? I've got a LOT of books. What about those?

Oh yeah, I've got  the audio book bug now. I asked readers what books they'd most like to hear in audio after Adrien, and I started listing more projects and contacting narrators directly. It's exciting to control this piece of it -- to be able to pick the right voice and the right sensibility for my stories. It's a lot more complicated than just reading the book out loud. It feels like an added creative element to me, but maybe that's not how it seems to the narrator. All I can say is the right narrator brings something unique to the work, something that is all them -- and they become part of the book.

Of course the wrong narrator can wreck a book.

This audio thing is big. Big and getting bigger all the time. I've had a couple of other audio sites and audio production companies contact me directly -- and it's possible I'll try a couple of shorter works with them. ACX does a lot of things well, but their technical support leaves  A LOT to be desired. Plus I've been listening to narrators who aren't even on ACX.

This opens a whole new line of consideration. I like the voice of "Max Tatch" (the guy who narrated Icecapade and Lone Star) and I'd probably use him again, but he doesn't seem to exist. I'm guessing "Max Tatch" is a pseudonym. Also, I like the voice of Sean Crisden who's done a lot of m/m work for Dreamspinner, but as much as I like his voice, do I want my characters to have the same voice as all those other m/m books? Probably not.

But would that matter to readers? I have no idea.

Anyway, I got a little carried away and used up my entire audio book budget for the year (startling,  given that I started the year without such a thing as an "audio book budget") but the end result is there will be four audio books this year including Fatal Shadows, The Darkling Thrush, The Ghost Wore Yellow Socks (that will be Max Miller again -- it'll be fascinating to see what he does with such a different project) and Somebody Killed His Editor.

I settled on Kevin R. Free for the voice for Kit Holmes and we've already contracted the first two books in the series. I'm very excited about that. Kevin's voice is a little husky and he's got a great sense of comedic timing -- he sounds just like Kit Holmes to me. Which is to say that he doesn't sound like any of my other narrators, and that's one of the most exciting things. It's important to me that the characters all not sound alike, that they be just as unique as they felt to me while I was writing them.

Anyway, that's my adventures in audio so far.

What do you think about audio books? Which of my books would you like to see put into audio?