S.L. Armstrong's Blog, page 16

“Angel Lost” Teaser

This one is the second dubious consent short K. and I ever wrote. It introduced the characters Jophiel–a captured angel–and Llirr, a fallen angel and prince of Hell. We gave them a hopeful ending, and we’ve tossed ideas back and forth to expand their story, so maybe… someday… they’ll get their ultimate HEA sort of ending, especially since we also have Michael and Lucifer’s story we want to tell in this world, too. You can find Angel Lost in the Love & Agony collection.

—

His arms ached, but they always did now. The shackles around his wrists rubbed his skin raw, but that had happened… years ago. Had it been years now? He couldn’t remember. A lot was hazy in his mind now. He looked around the room, his feet numb from him being on his knees since dawn. Dawn? Did the sun even shine in here? The small blessing was that he was made to kneel all day on the soft mattress of his captor… master. He blinked slowly, shifted, and the chains rattled, his arms kept up and out by his bonds. If he was alone, he might as well take the small opportunity to stretch.

He closed his eyes and spread his wings, the span overreaching the width of the bed. It felt so good to stretch them, the white of his feathers a little dingy. Oh, how he longed to sit in the sunlight and wash his wings in a fresh, cool brook. It was always warm here. He’d once thought it was a joke that hell was all flames and smoke and brimstone, but it seemed the angels had been wrong. Hell was Hell, and it was hot. It was too hot for him most days, but he’d grown accustomed to the discomfort, the near-constant sheen of sweat coating his body.

After a moment with his wings outstretched, the door to the chamber opened, and he quickly drew his wings in tight. Fear had left him so long ago, but his heart still raced every evening when his master returned. He ducked his head, hid his face behind his long, chestnut hair, a shudder racing down his spine as the heavy steps came closer and closer to the half-enclosed canopy bed where he waited, his wings rippling a little with uncertainty. Had his master seen his wings spread? Would he be beaten for it? Given to those who also served his master?

“Jophiel.”

His name. Jophiel closed his eyes, and his wings ached to open, to feel the kiss of the sun and the touch of the wind. Long, warm fingers slid up his bare thigh, over his hip, and traced the large tattoo that spread over a quarter of his buttock. His master’s mark. Llirr’s mark.

Llirr had caught him fair and square, too. He’d captured an angel using old demonic magics, and Jophiel had been his plaything since. Jophiel, though, couldn’t figure out if he hated Llirr. Sometimes, he was so very sure he did, but others, when he was sprawled over Llirr’s lap with the demon’s cock moving inside him, those sharp teeth in his flesh, pleasure coursing through him, hatred was hard to conjure inside him.

The hand cupped his hip, the fingers teasing the mark. “You had your wings spread,” Llirr purred. That tone told Jophiel all he needed to know.

He would be punished.

“I’m sorry,” Jophiel whispered. “They… just ached. I only wished to stretch them.”

“Perhaps it is time to cut them from your body.”

Jophiel had thought fear long past, but those words were like ice through his blood. His head snapped up, panic in his eyes as he stared at Llirr’s lovely face. The wide, black eyes, full lips, sharp cheekbones, and golden skin… Evil could be so beautiful. “Please, no… no, Master, please…” He could hear tears in his own voice, his eyes stinging. Could he still cry after all this time? “Not my wings.”

Llirr’s eyes examined him with such intensity that it made his cheeks flush even brighter, and he began trembling. Was Llirr really going to shear his wings off? His voice died out into a whimper, tears streaking down his face, falling to the soft, cotton sheets. He was about to start weeping in earnest when he saw something shift in Llirr’s face. Was it just his imagination? Were the tears obscuring his vision? He couldn’t bring his hands to his face to brush them away, so he just blinked several times, trying to clear his vision as Llirr drew closer to him. Closer and closer until all he could see were those calculating black eyes and wisps of white hair.

The Fantastical: Elves, Faeries, and Angels

Some of the first books I read were fantasy novels. I loved Tolkien, Lackey, and Lewis. I got lost in worlds of elves, dwarves, mages, talking animals, and brilliant scenery. As I turned to writing, it was the fantastical that drew me in. It’s where my heart lies, quite honestly. I may dabble with contemporaries and historicals and science fiction, but I have three main genres I will return to time and again: fantasy, paranormal, and horror. They were the genres that first captured my mind, and they haven’t let go.

Vampires, shifters, angels, devils, demons, elves, dragons, faeries, griffons, and everything else under the sun. I love them. The exceptional species that just dig into my brain and worm their way through my imagination. I’ve learned not to fight them.

A lot of writers and readers hold a lot of derision for those creatures, thinking them childish or overdone. I see conversation after conversation happen where readers sneer at ‘Tolkien-like elves’ or ‘romantic vampires’ or how uncomfortable they are with authors writing angels (because, you know, we’re preaching the Christian religion by having two hot men with wings fuck each other). It can be disheartening sometimes, but, for me, most times? It just makes me more determined to write these creatures – and write them well.

Angels

Let’s be honest, if you’re reading my fiction, you should know I’m not preaching the Christian agenda. I’m not Christian. I haven’t been since I was eight-years-old. I am, at most, an agnostic pagan that worships the world around us. When I write angels—or anything dealing with Christian mythos—it’s because something about them have grabbed hold, and it has little to do with Christianity.

Angels, when I write them, are the first creatures God created. They’re typically all male, as angels weren’t meant to breed. They’re a combination of human, bird, and Other, and that Other is what makes them angels. They were what God poured His love into, created without free will, sometimes created without souls, and they loved God without question. But, usually in my mythos, God then created humans. Humans that possessed free will and souls, and He loved them. Angels, feeling the loss of God’s favor, began to fight, to hate, and broke away from their bonds of choicelessness and took their spark of Divinity, their Grace, and waged war.

There is so much possibility for me with these mythological creatures! So much love and anger and hatred and angst. Then, the myth of Hell comes into play. And once you have Hell, you have fallen angels, demons, corrupted humans… oh, the possibilities are endless! It has nothing to do with Christianity and everything to do with the rich world of potential found in the fantastical world of myth. Honestly, if someone reads one of my angel pieces and thinks I’m preaching at them, I think that’s more their issue than mine.

Elves

Okay, so, Tolkien wrote about—more or less—an ageless race of creatures he called Elves. Great. I loved them. I enjoyed reading The Silmarillion and the HoME more than I liked reading The Hobbit or Lord of the Rings. But, to discount any elven character since is just silly. I don’t care if elves were originally bitchy, vicious little creatures who were ugly and enjoyed tormenting humanity. Guess what? Those aren’t my Elves, and I don’t have to follow traditional mythological origins to write them. Nor do I like having ‘Tolkien-like’ slapped onto my Elves as if I’ve ripped off his world. No. I didn’t.

My Elves are utterly ageless once they hit maturity. They are vulnerable to sickness. They have a hard time reproducing. Their infants and children have a high mortality rate. Oh, and they have MAGIC. Each Elven House possesses certain abilities, some more than others. They all look different. Each House has a different appearance. For instance, the Water Elves are tall, milky-skinned with white hair that’s threaded with blue. They have bright blue eyes that are spaced widely, fine features, and slightly pointed ears. The Wood Elves, on the other hand, are broad with golden skin, sable or golden hair, brown or green eyes, and are heavily muscled with long legs. Each House is different in appearance. Each House is different in ability.

And let’s not get into the slavery and civil war issues they deal with, or their gods who punish them each time the race does something incredibly stupid and offensive. I’ve put a lot of work into the world and its species, whereas Tolkien put a lot of work into languages, and then built the world to suit the languages he’d created.

So, yes, while the myth itself is about mean-spirited, ugly, frightening creatures, and Tolkien’s myth is about timeless, tired, grief-stricken creatures, mine are neither. They are what I’ve created them to be, and I love me a good Elf story.

Faeries

Right up there with elves, faeries get a bad rap, too. I blame Laurell K. Hamilton for this. It may not really be her fault, but I don’t much like her writing and think her popularity hollow, so I’ll lay the blame at her feet and her eye-rolling Merry Gentry series. Piss-poor writing and bad worldbuilding have landed faeries on a lot of readers’ Do Not Buy lists, but this saddens me. As with my Elves, I’ve spent a lot of time developing Otherworld and its inhabitants. I don’t know how expansive the world will be, but I have three series planned so far, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a couple one-off titles eventually followed.

Faeries are varied, and their world mysterious. It’s up to writers to take the myths and turn them into compelling, rousing fiction. I’m trying to do that with Otherworld, and I’ve read a couple of other books that have done this well. But, most of the time? It’s half-assed. It’s badly written. So, I understand people’s aversion to them when they’re nothing but sexed up assholes (though, sometimes, even that’s hot as hell in the hands of talented authors).

My faeries inhabit Otherworld, the world beside our own. It’s broken up into six realms: Solar Court, Lunar Court, The Wildes, The Isle of Apples, Tír na nÓg, and Mag Mell. It’s populated by aes sídhe, bean sídhe, púca, pixies, dryads, redcaps, and all manner of creatures. It’s a vast fantasy world, and when that world crosses over into ours, it’s also all sorts of amusing to me. Despite being told that faeries should be the cruel, cold, evil creatures of mythology (much like I am told about elves), I just don’t want to write them that way.

In the end, this is about fantasy, about romance, so I write the romanticized versions of my favorite creatures. My angels are not heartless warriors of God with one wing dripping blood. My elves are not mischievous creatures that will snatch a wandering child from the road and eat it. My faeries will not be playing stupid pranks on crotchety old men. (Admittedly, they will steal into a newborn’s nursery and swap a faerie for a human child, but this isn’t in Otherworld and is meant to be a much darker, crueler world and tale than Otherworld). And the parenthetical there is the key: the myths are fluid. Write it. Just write it. The audience will find it. Some people will bitch, some people will gush, but write what’s in your heart. That’s how I live my writing career. I write for me, and if you guys come along and enjoy the show, that’s just icing on the cake.

Recipe Monday: Peach Buckle

During the summer, peaches are beautifully in season. I like using fruit that’s in season, and peaches… mmm. When they are in season, there’s nothing else quite like them. The hard, golf-ball sized winter peaches are nothing like the huge, ripe peaches of summer. When they go on sale, I go mad buying them. I make baked items, jam, freeze them, anything I can to preserve that wonderful summer sweet-tart flavor I can’t get once August comes.

So, this year, to celebrate the opening of peach season, I made my peach buckle. Here’s the recipe.

Ingredients

Batter:

1C flour

1/4C brown sugar

1/4C white sugar

1tsp baking powder

1/2tsp cinnamon

1/4tsp salt

1/4tsp ground ginger (or less to taste)

1 egg

1C cream (or approx. 1 1/2 cups milk or half-and-half)

Mix dry ingredients, and set aside for now.

Peach Filling:

2lbs fresh peaches (frozen okay, but fresh is best)

1/4C flour

1/2tsp cinnamon

salt (pinch)

Optional: 1/4C brown sugar (taste your peaches and add sugar if they’re sour)

Preheat over to 350F.

In a large, deep pot (deep enough to submerge your peaches), bring enough water to cover your peaches up to a boil. Score your peaches by cutting a shallow ‘X’ into the tips/bottoms. This will make peeling the skin super easy later. When the water is at a boil, gently place your peaches in the water and boil gently for 30 seconds to 1 minute, depending on how hard your peaches are when you start. Remove from water into an ice bath (a bowl filled with water and a few glasses full of ice). Peel and partition your peaches into segments. Add flour, sugar, cinnamon, and salt to peaches in a bowl.

Grease a 9″ x 9″ pyrex/glass baking dish lightly with Pam. Spread peach mixture into the pan. Grab your dry ingredients from before and add eggs and cream. If you substitute milk or half-and-half for the cream, you’ll need less. You want your batter to end up the consistency of brownie batter (smooth but relatively thick). Pour the batter over the peach mixture in your pan. You may have some left over. Dust with a tablespoon of white or brown sugar.

Bake for 40 minutes. Batter crust should be brown and a little crackly. If you peel back the top, the batter should be moist but not wet (thick fudgy brownie). Cool 15 minutes before serving.

Another “An Angel’s Soul” Teaser

My other Love is Always Write event freebie, An Angel’s Soul, is due out this month, so I wanted offer one more sneak peek at it. This is about a guardian angel and his ward. I love angels. K. and I adore writing them. In fact, I have a blog post about angels due out on the 13th, so keep an eye out for that one.

Here’s your teaser!

***

“Do you remember what happened when angels and humans last coupled?”

Raziel sat up, his mind heavy with lingering slumber. His eyes scanned the room and fell upon an angel, bathed in Holy Light, standing near the windows, his wings outspread and arms crossed. He swallowed thickly, a flush creeping up his face. Raziel knew who had come to level judgment on him. “Chamuel.”

Chamuel smiled at him. “Do you remember, Raziel?”

“I remember.” Raziel glanced at Cole’s sleeping form, the human unaware of the angels’ conversation. He slipped from the bed, refusing to talk with Chamuel while holding his ward in his arms. “But he is no woman for me to seed and breed giants with. Where is the harm?”

“Where is the harm?” Chamuel shook his head. “Raziel, they are our charges. We watch over them. We do not kiss them. We do not couple with them. We do not prevent their deaths when the natural order says they are meant to die.”

Raziel’s wings shivered at the reprimand in those words. “If I am not supposed to intervene on my ward’s behalf to save him from himself, then what am I supposed to do? Watch him die when I could help?”

“There are limits to our calling.” Chamuel stepped closed, cupped Raziel’s cheek. “You have broken many rules, my friend, and you cannot escape punishment. Was it worth it? Was he worth it?”

Pain tore at Raziel’s heart, tears filling his eyes. He looked over his shoulder at Cole, and he remembered his whispered promise to the man before sleep had taken him. He couldn’t fight Heaven, though. Raziel didn’t want to leave, but Chamuel would make him. There wasn’t much choice. For angels, there was never any choice. He drank in the sight of Cole, and whispered, “Yes. It was worth it.”

The sound of fluttering wings filled the room, and then there was only the soft sounds of an apartment at night. The refrigerator kicked on, humming softly through the wall, and the toilet ran for a moment, filling its tank. The air conditioner clicked on, the unit nearly silent as it pumped cool air into the many rooms. Cole rolled over in bed, mumbling softly in his sleep as his hand reached for warmth he missed in his dreams, but the warmth was gone. The sheets were cool, the room empty but for its sole occupant, and even in his sleep, Cole knew something was missing.

World Creation & World-Building: Invaluable Steps In Writing

Several years ago, I began slowly piecing together a fantasy world. Like… epic fantasy world. I’ve shown readers bits and pieces of it through my writing. Egaea is massive. It’s just… it will be my life’s work. It spans a whole world, with multiple continents and many types of sentient life. This year, my plan is to finally work out the timeline of events so K. and I can begin truly working on the first book. Timeline of events is difficult, as there are two continents I need to do timelines for.

The creation process has been slow, but evolution usually is. It began with the Maith, a long-lived race of human-like creatures that possessed latent, untapped magic and lived on the continent of Sephryn. Only a few Maith—Leigheas and his triplet sons Justyn, Jevyn, and Jasyn, Bleidd, and Tavish—had the ability to tap into that magic. What they didn’t know was that there was a race of feral-Maith who had, thousands of years before, tapped into that magic, binding their spirits to that of animals. The first generation feral-Maith had only the slightest of animal features, but as they bred, those features became more pronounced. After the first generation, the feral-Maith didn’t bind their souls to animals because they had become half-animal themselves.

From there came the creation of Elves. Elves and Maith shared a common ancestor before the continents split. Elves were the long-lived race of magical beings. That magic also made them more prone to war. They live on the continent of Tridéa, and that land has been ripped apart by infighting and war. Originally, there were five Houses that ruled Tridéa: House of Fire, House of Life, House of Death, House of Air, and House of Earth. Through the events of the First Guild War, those five Houses fractured into eight Houses plus the non-affiliated City Guilds. It became the House of Fire, House of Water, House of Ice, House of Shadows, House of Spirits, House of Clouds, House of Earth, and House of Wood.

With the creation of the House and magic, we had to define that magic. We had to define House structure. We had to define laws and culture (such as religion, murder, slavery, and marriage). We had to define so much with the Elves that it made our heads spin. XD With the Elves, we had to go so far as to create the creation gods, their lands, their lesser gods, and whether or not they were active in the lives of their creations.

When we created the next race, the Varan, we kept it far more simple. The Varan are a snow-dwelling race that live off meat, some basic vegetables, and blood. Blood is their primary source of nutrition. Their continent is connected to another continent that houses Humans. Humans are a race the Varan hunt and capture, breed like cattle so their race can survive and thrive. They are humanoid, but are white skinned, pale-haired, and have red eyes. They while they can go out in the sunlight, they don’t particularly like to. They are night hunters, using the snow and darkness to their advantage. They are also the most bestial and primitive of our races.

Humans are human. XD We haven’t done much with them yet. There is also the continent where dragons and their humanoid masters live, but we haven’t developed them much yet. It’s a slow process, as I said, and each section and race needs as much thought and development as possible. The most detailed and real they are to K. and me, the more real they’ll be to our readers. And that’s the most important goal of world creation: believability and realism. While I want readers to suspend disbelief, I need them to do so in a nature, easy way. So, we endeavor to do that through thorough building of races, continents, and the world as a whole.

This is what I cannot stress enough to other authors: this it all through. Every aspect of your world, even if it’s a contemporary one. Readers notice when shit doesn’t make sense or things don’t add up right, so while it may be a pain the ass to do it, think it all through. Make sure the world and people you’re using to tell your story fit together in logical ways so people don’t wind up thinking you’re off your nut in a bad way. Will you necessarily use all your research and planning? No. But it’s good to have it.

So, don’t half-ass your world creation process. You’ll get called on it by someone, I promise.

(We even went so far as to find a geologist and a theoretical astrophysicist to discuss the geography and geological progression of the continents themselves, and the astrophysicist because Egaea has two moons and we needed to know what that would truly do to the world itself. XD We were thorough!)

Recipe Monday: Fried Goat Cheese and Apple Salad

Around these parts, there is one salad I can guarantee K. will eat. She’s not a fan of salads, you see, and she certainly doesn’t like much—if any—dressing on the salad she does eat. But, I have found a way to get her enthusiastic about salad as a meal. All it took was a sweet-ish dressing and fried goat cheese to do it.

This is an awesome fall or winter salad when you can get the mind-blowingly delicious Honeycrisp or Ambrosia apples, but during the spring and summer, Red Delicious is a decent stand in. The key is a crisp, sweet apple, so don’t get a Granny Smith or Golden Delicious.

This recipe serves four side salads or two entree salads.

Ingredients

1 bag spring mix salad

1 large apple (fall winter, Honeycrisp or Ambrosia; spring/summer, Red Delicious)

12oz goat cheese (I prefer Il de France brand)

1C panko bread crumbs

3 eggs whites, lightly beaten

1/2C walnuts

2TBSP apple juice or apple cider (in fall/winter, I exclusively use cider)

2TBSP apple cider vinegar

2TBSP oil (I use canola, but you can use whatever oil you like)

1/4tsp dry mustard

1tsp honey

salt and pepper to taste

2TSBP butter & 2TBSP oil for frying in

First tip: buy some unwaxed, unflavored dental floss. It makes cutting soft cheeses like goat cheese a breeze. Cut the log of goat cheese (which should be very chilled) into twelve disks. I tend to halve the log, halve each of those, and then third each of the four sections. It’s the way I’ve found to wind up with the most even sized disks.

Dip the disks into the egg white, and then the panko, setting the breaded disks on a plate. Freeze the disks 15-30 minutes. It makes frying them less tear-inducing.

In a large salad bowl, mix the apple juice/cider, vinegar, oil, mustard, honey, salt, and pepper. Taste it. ALWAYS taste your food. Make sure it has enough salt and pepper, that it’s not too sweet or too tart. Adjust it to your liking. Slice your apple into thin slices and toss in the dressing. Add your salad greens and toss everything together.

In a pan over medium-high heat, heat your butter and oil. Fry your goat cheese to a golden, crispy brown. I should take about a minute to a minute and a half on each side. Cook it too low a heat and you’ll end up with a melty, frustrating mess. Drain them on a paper towel.

Portion out your salad into four or two servings. Sprinkle walnuts on the salads. Add the goat cheese: three for side salads, six for entree salads. I tend to then pour any remaining dressing from the salad bowl onto the salads, but there usually isn’t much left after tossing the salad.

There you go! An awesomely delicious, light salad for any occasion.

Another “Jungle Law” Teaser

So, my Love is Always Write event story, Jungle Law, comes out this month. I won’t say when, since we’re not supposed to disclose the day, but it comes out this month. It was immensely fun to write in deep third person coming to love someone who spoke a different language than himself. Kaanan and Deshi had to come to a common language together, and even by the end of the story, they hadn’t reached a full vocabulary. In fact, by the end of the story, they were only beginning to use personal pronouns. XD

But, it was fun—if challenging—and I’m glad I participated. I know K. and I have a holiday short (though it isn’t holiday themed, only a freebie short we plan to release during the holidays) that’s based off the photo prompt Adara gave here. It’s bubbling in my head, waiting for the right to be written (as Mae has to be finished first), but we’ll post it sometime between Yule and Christmas. (I know someone ultimately chose it, but it was my first choice picture but couldn’t be claimed at the time, so I chose the one that became inspiration for Jungle Law instead. Doesn’t mean I can’t write the prompt one, too, for my own enjoyment!)

Right now, I have more teasing from Jungle Law for you!

***

One piece of the fruit led to another, and then another, but when he reached for the fourth, Deshi pulled it back before he could grasp it. He frowned and reached again, but Deshi chuckled and kept the slice of fruit just out of reach. “Open,” Deshi ordered softly, pointing to his mouth.

His frown deepened, but he did as Deshi said, opening his mouth a little. Deshi placed the fruit past his lips himself. It was a little awkward, and he didn’t understand the significance of such a ritual. The only time he had ever fed another was when his cubs were too young to feed themselves. He chuffed at Deshi. “Kaanan not weak like cub.”

Deshi’s cheeks turned a vibrant pink at that. “No. I see Kaanan,” Deshi breathed, gesturing to help add meaning to his words. His name was spoken with Deshi’s hands cupped outward at his forehead like feline ears. “Kaanan strong… smart… beautiful.”

Each word was given a motion, but the last one made no sense to him. He tilted his head, trying to understand. “What beautiful?”

He watched Deshi’s face flush up, and the scent of arousal pricked at his nose as Deshi motioned to different things around them. “Fire. Water. Sky. Kaanan beautiful.”

It was a compliment, then, one that obviously meant something special to Deshi. And Deshi was saying it not only about his human form, but about his natural feline form. He couldn’t help but purr at that, and when Deshi offered him another piece of fruit, and then bites of the fish from their roasting sticks, he allowed Deshi to place it into his mouth without a fuss. It was when Deshi’s fingers were replaced by Deshi’s lips that he finally tensed again, staring at his human companion.

Deshi pressed his fingers to his lips again. “Kiss.”

“Kiss.” He knew that caress of lips to lips. He’d had female mates in the past. There had even been two males in his long history of protecting this forest. None of them, though, had been part of a poacher’s party. Deshi had come with the humans who had intended to take the skins of his brethren. He shifted, frowning. “Killer. Came with killers of the cat,” he said. “Kill the beautiful.”

Horror filled the boy’s face. “No!” Deshi shook his head. “Killers bought me.”

He frowned, growled. Bought? What did bought mean? “Tell Kaanan.”

Deshi huffed. “Mother, Father, owed coin. They had no coin. They had me. Sold me to killers.”

Bartering he could understand. Debt owed and coin scarce. He remembered a distant winter when he’d gone into a village for supplies he’d been desperate for. He’d needed to give something in order to receive the supplies. What Deshi was saying, though, meant that the boy’s own parents had used Deshi as the coin to fulfill the debt owed. What debt was so great that parents would barter their own child to killers? “What debt?”

“Food.”

A child for food? “Food?”

“Food. Village starving. Needed food. Traded food for me.” Deshi tossed a stick into the fire. “Village had food then.”

Food for child. Probably with a promise that the child would be well taken care of. He growled. “Deshi worth more than food.”

Deshi flushed. “I am?”

He nodded. “Yes. Deshi smart. Quick.” He looked Deshi over, trying to see him with an eye for pleasure. “Pretty.”

“Pretty?” Deshi laughed, the sound pleased, amused. “Kaanan beautiful, Deshi pretty.”

“Yes,” he declared.

Epithets, Use Sparingly

I once had a reader tell me, after reading one of my short pieces, that I needed to use more epithets. I laughed to myself because that particular habit had been beaten out of me by other readers/reviewers who called me on using epithets. Now, for those of you who don’t know what an epithet is, it’s a small, descriptive phrased used to refer to a character without using their name or a pronoun. Such as ‘the blond’, ‘the vampire’, ‘the doctor’. For example:

Sean kissed Jerry with all the passion he had, and the dark-haired man opened up to him like a flower. It was amazing. He hadn’t known this was what he was missing. As Jerry pressed him into the bed, Sean parted his thighs to let the younger man settle against him.

Sometimes, this is perfectly acceptable. Using epithets sparingly can sometimes be a lovely, poetic way to add some spice to a scene that reads a little stiffly otherwise. But usually? It just reads like instead of two people making love or having a conversation, that there are actually half a dozen people in the scene in an odd tangle of limbs. I rarely use them anymore. I started out using them a lot (read Rachmaninoff sometime), but by the time I published Catalyst, I had kicked the habit.

Some editors don’t mind them. Some actually encourage the use of epithets. I don’t. I think using the names and pronouns unless absolutely necessary is the better choice. And if you do use epithets, make sure they make sense and that you’ve established the description you’re about to use. No point in saying ‘the red-head’ if you haven’t told your readers that your character has red hair.

Like most rules in writing, it can be broken. You just need to break it with style and skill. You need to know when to break it. You don’t want half your story to be epithets, but having some sprinkled here and there when appropriate is never a bad thing. Just be aware and be careful not to overdo it.

Recipe Monday: Raspberry & Vanilla Génoise Cake

I love cooking. I love baking. I do it often. One of the favorite cakes I make—and that never lasts long in the house or at family events—is my Raspberry & Vanilla Génoise Cake. It’s a recipe I’ve played with over the last seven months or so, one I absolutely love. It has so few ingredients, and it’s very simple if you have a little patience, and the payoff is delicious.

You will need to own a 10″x15″ jelly roll pan. There is no compromising on this. You need one. You will also need parchment paper and a very clean hand towel. I don’t know how this would go using a hand mixer or doing this all by hand as everything I tell you is done by using my antique, 1920s Kitchen-Aid.

Génoise Ingredients

3 large eggs

3 large egg yolks

Pinch salt

3/4 cup sugar

1/3 cup cake flour

1/3 cup cornstarch

1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract (I prefer this brand.)

There’s some doing to this. Preheat the oven to 400F. Using a cooking spray, coat the bottom of your jelly roll pan. Lay down a piece of parchment and cut to size. You want the parchment to fit snuggly or the cake might not turn out easily. You’ll then spray on top the parchment. This is the best way to ensure the cake will come out, and that it will separate easily from the parchment.

Set a medium saucepan with an inch of water in it on the stove and bring the water up to a simmer. You don’t want it boiling, and you won’t want your mixing bowl to touch that water. In the mixing bowl, mix eggs, yolks, salt, and sugar and set it on the simmering pot of water. Keep whisking it until it’s just above body temperature. I do this by letting the mixture drip from the whisk onto my finger. When it’s a little hot to my sense of touch, I know it’s ready.

Pull the bowl off the pot and set it in the machine. Using the whisk attachment, turn it on high and let it rip until the volume of the mixture has tripled and it ribbons when you pull the whisk out. (If you don’t know what ribboning is, take a look here, time mark 3:20.) This is sponge cake 101.

Mix the cake flour and cornstarch in a small bowl and then sift 1/3 of it into the batter. Fold the flour in gently. You need to fold this to ensure you keep the volume. Once most of that is incorporated, sift in another third. Fold it in. When that’s mostly in, sift in the final third. You must sift it. You must do it in thirds. Promptly pour the batter into the jelly roll pan, evening it out with an offset spatula. Pop it into the oven.

Now, in my oven, in Florida, I cook that cake for six minutes. Only six. I would say start checking it at five minutes. Use a toothpick. The moment it comes out clean, pull the cake. Some recipes call for baking this for fifteen minutes, and then people complain the cake is too dry to work with. Well, of course it is. You’ve overbaked it. Just five to seven minutes is enough.

Lay out your hand towel. You must work with the cake while it’s hot. Gently turn it out onto the hand towel. You need to work gently because you can crush the cake. Peel off the parchment, and then begin to roll the cake up from the short end with the towel rolling with it. Set the rolled up cake off to the side to completely cool.

Swiss Buttercream Ingredients

2 large egg whites

1/2 cup sugar

12 tablespoons butter (1 1/2 sticks), softened

1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract

In your very, very clean mixing bowl, combine the eggs whites and sugar. Set that over your pot of simmering water (that you have left over from the cake batter) and mix it until the egg whites are just above body temperature. Check it the same way you did for the cake batter. Once they’re hot, set them in the machine and attach your very, very clean whisk attachment and begin whisking on high.

This is very important: do not add your butter until that bowl, on the outside, is room temperature. If you add the butter into even barely warm whites, it will break the buttercream. It tends to take five to ten minutes for the mixture to cool down while the machine is going. Once it’s cool, begin adding your butter tablespoon by tablespoon. After all the butter is in, add the vanilla, and whisk it until it’s fluffy and perfect.

This won’t be very sweet, but the taste and texture are amazing.

Now, to fill.

Unroll your cake onto whatever serving platter you want. Remove the towel. Because it’s cooled in that rolled up position, it won’t crack when you roll it. Nifty, huh? I use about 4oz of quality, store-bought, seedless raspberry jam. Spread it all over the interior of the cake. Add as much of the buttercream as you like (I use about 3/4 of the buttercream in mine). Gently roll the cake back up, ending with the seam on the bottom. You can decorate with the remaining buttercream or dust with powdered sugar.

It keeps, under a cake dome, for about a week. >.> It never lasts a week around here. It makes eight normal portions or six generous portions. You can guess which side this household falls on.

Also, I have pictures for you of this cake that I’ve made!

“An Angel’s Soul” & “Jungle Law” Covers

I have some fun freebies coming out in June. They were written for the Love Is Always Write event over that the M/M Goodreads Reader group. People posted pictures and other people grabbed them as prompts. I picked a shifter prompt, and then K. picked an angel prompt. We thought to write them separately, but that was soon thrown out the window. XD We wrote them together, our beta Alex was awesome, and then the two betas Jen provided for the event were also great. I think they’re pretty damn good stories, too. They’ll be free. As soon as they’re posted to the group, they’ll go live on the SMP site, ARe, 1PFR, Smashwords, and Bookstrand. Free’s good, right?

An Angel’s Soul wound up 12,176 words, and Jungle Law clocked in at 11,140 words. We also had covers made by the awesome Dare Empire eMedia Productions (who does all of SMP’s stock image covers). So, now I want to share with you the covers and blurbs so you can look forward to them!

Cole had everything: a great education, his own company, money, and Daniel, his lover since college. But in gaining everything, he lost the one thing he’d been building that life for: Daniel. Now that Daniel has moved on, Cole is without direction or purpose. Turning to alcohol and drugs to fill the void left behind, Cole dives head first into a downward spiral, unaware that there is another who loves and cares for him.

As Cole’s guardian angel, Raziel has watched Cole since birth, and his love for his ward is deep and abiding. Witnessing Cole’s fraying life breaks Raziel’s heart, and when the thread that binds them together wavers during an overdose, Raziel breaks all the rules just to keep Cole alive. The consequences are unthinkable, but a life without Cole is a loss that Raziel simply can’t conceive. An angel’s soul was made to love, after all, and if he saves Cole, perhaps he can show Cole how the end of one great love doesn’t mean another waits patiently for him.

There is a rainforest in India that the wise poachers avoid. Few who venture in ever return, and those that do rarely come back all the way. The leopards in this forest have a protector who walks the worlds between leopard and man, but who calls the leopard kin and the human only enemy. When a frightened boy escapes from the latest hunting party to feel the protector’s wrath, he tracks the boy down, determined to leave no survivors. But when he comes fact-to-face with the exotic, defenseless boy, he cannot bring himself to end that life. Instead, what he has reviled for years becomes his constant companion. That is, until the humans dare to set foot in his forest once more.

There will be another teaser from each before it gets posted to the group, so keep an eye out for that!