Kaje Harper's Blog, page 11

Writing M/M/M relationships

When Changes Going On released, I had a guest spot on Joyfully Jay, but the weight of my awesome words (joke) crashed the site a few hours later. (Or maybe it was the ghost of Sheriff Kensington, the first murder victim.) Now Joyfully Jay is back up and running with all the great reviews and posts revived - and my post is now up up about writing M/M/M polyamory in "Changes Going On."

Read the post: https://joyfullyjay.com/2020/04/guest...

The paper book for this title is also now available on Amazon, for those who like to hold real books. https://www.amazon.com/Changes-Going-...

And the first book - Changes Coming Down - is now .99 on all vendors.

Changes Going On Released

"Changes Going On" - the sequel to Changes Coming Down - releases today. The books should be read in order, and I made book 1 Changes Coming Down just .99 at both Amazon and Smashwords, so you can meet Casey, Scott, and Will, as they begin to come out of the closet as a poly trio, while facing a murder mystery.

In Changes Going On - book 2 - these three men deal with a summer of media, mentorship, and murder, on their way to their HEA.

**minor spoilers for book 1 **

There's a reason Scott Edison came out as gay and poly on national TV— now no one can try to push him back into the closet. But as his men and his hockey team deal with the fallout from fans and paparazzi, moving forward isn't as easy as he'd hoped.

Will Rice was looking forward to a quiet summer, sharing the work with his guys and giving Scott a refuge from the spotlight. He's hired a couple of young ranch hands, and finally feels ready to give back some of the mentoring that turned his life around decades ago. But good fences won't be enough to keep trouble off the ranch.

Casey Barlow left the Sheriff's Department on his own terms, out and proud. But when the new sheriff is murdered— and Casey's one of the few with a watertight alibi— he's asked to investigate, and he can't resist. He's determined to solve the murder, and still take care of his men on the home front. Then one murder becomes two…

It's a summer of risks and challenges, and working together is the only way they'll make it through.

Buy links:
Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...
Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/Changes-Going-...

It doesn't seem to be up on other affiliates yet, but I will add links when they appear.

I hope readers enjoy watching these three very different men figure out their lives, deal with a mystery, and find love together.

Free and sale books

Books can be a comfort, and a refuge, in difficult times. Smashwords is having a big sale, from today through April 20th. Many books are free, or 30 or 60% off. Mobi is one of the often-available formats, and my books are in .mobi, pdf, and epub. Check out all the sale books. (my own SW link below)

I have 4 books I've made **free** there through the sale - "Sole Support", "Second Act", "Gift of the Goddess" (note a content warning for non-con) and "Love and Lint Rollers." (In addition to all my permanently free books)

I've also made "The Rebuilding Year" 60% off at SW only.

I've also marked three books down to .99 although you won't see the "sale" tags on them (because the price options didn't include .99) - just the new low price.

"Changes Coming Down" (Changes book 1), "The Family We Make" (Finding Family book 2, where book 1 is a perma-free novella) and "Tracefinder : Contact" (Tracefinder book 1) are all .99 for a month.

Smashwords page: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/vi...

I've marked those ones to .99 on Amazon too, and it looks like some of those price changes are going through now.

I want to wish all my readers safety, a steady heart, and hope, through the days and months to come.

Comfort reads for hard times

I'm blogging on Love Bytes today about comfort reads for hard times. I'd love to hear yours, here or on the post. <3 A huge thank you to the authors who write the books that sustain my soul on the tough days.

http://lovebytesreviews.com/2020/03/1...

More author giveaways

I'm hanging out on FB right now at JJ Harper's Birthday Bonanza - lots of authors, lots of ebook and gift card giveaways. I'm giving away several ebooks, including my Hidden Wolves werewolf stories and Tracefinder. Check it out.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/Harpe...

Elle Keaton and multi-author book giveaways

Yesterday Elle Keaton celebrated her 3-year bookiversary with a munti-author event on Facebook. (And yes, I was planning to post this yesterday, dammit.)

Anyway, there are a whole lot of book and gift card giveaways (including 9 winners for my books) and many are still open to comments today for the drawings. If you are on FB check it out here: (you will have to join her group)

https://www.facebook.com/groups/Highw...

A reading excerpt from Tracefinder: Contact

Author Angel Martinez very kindly gave my story a slot today in her Friday Reading Days, where she reads a small excerpt from the first book in my Tracefinder series. She does a great job with these readings - check it out (and her other Friday reads too.)

Two books in this series are out now, and the third is in editing for a spring release. Tracefinder : Contact has a tentative HFN ending, with a more solid HFN for book 2, and HEA coming in book 3.

And if you like spec fic (fantasy and SciFi) with heart and humor, check out Angel's books while you are at it. I particularly enjoy "Gravitational Attraction" and her "Offbeat Crimes" urban fantasy series.

https://angelmartinezauthor.weebly.co...

Burnout

I blogged on Love Bytes Reviews about the issue of burnout among genre authors in recent months and years.

http://lovebytesreviews.com/2020/01/1...

Flash fiction and giveaway

I have a guest post today on Joyfully Jay, with a brief flash fiction prequel to Changes Coming Down, and a chance to win an ebook copy. Meet Scott, Casey, and Will a couple of years before the opening of the main mystery story, and enter the drawing for the novel. Check it out.

https://joyfullyjay.com/2019/12/guest...

My Favorite Reads of 2019

Every year, I'm amazed and delighted by how many wonderful and different stories keep coming out, from familiar favorite authors and great new finds. The ten books I picked for this year's favorites list are a mix of my auto-buy authors and new-to-me writers who are now on my radar. Not all of these books are brand new releases, but I read them in 2019. All are books I reread at least once already.

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My very favorite for this year is Thrown Off the Ice by Taylor Fitzpatrick. This is not a romance as much as a love story— the funny, heart-breaking, poignant, gruff, sweet, devastating story of two men falling in love over 17 years. The end is bittersweet, but this account of two hockey players who take possession of each other's hearts, throughout everything life throws at them, isn't just a tearjerker. It's filled with humor and warmth (and heat) too. It's written in the matter-of-fact tone of a strong man facing up to the good, the bad, and the crazy, and Mike's voice carries it along. I adored Mike and Liam, together and apart. A Rainbow Award winner, and a 4-times reread to date.
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Runners-up in no particular order:

Sword Dance by A.J. Demas - A historical alternate-universe fantasy set in a world with echoes of the Ancient Romans/Greeks and Celts. Two men on opposite sides in battle save each other's lives, and then find themselves isolated together, long enough for attraction and a meeting of like minds to become something more. Adares has a very appealing mix of self-confidence, curiosity, and intelligence. Rus is also intelligent, more instinctive, from a society less formal and organized, but with its own kinds of power. For a brief moment they find happiness together that neither of them could have imagined. But they can't hide from the war forever, and what they have together doesn't translate to who they are when the world intrudes on their sanctuary. Great characters and world-building.
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The Sea Ain't Mine Alone by C.L. Beaumont - A returned Vietnam veteran tries to hide both the scars on his body and the scars on his soul from his time in the jungle, but not half as deep as he hides his attraction to men, even from himself. His wonderful best friend Rob was a stranger who came up to him one dark day and said, "Hey, you surf?" and the sport, the sea, Rob, and Rob's sweet girlfriend, are the things keeping Jimmy from drowning in his own head. If he has a crush on Rob, he's not admitting it to himself, and it can't go anywhere. Then one day Jimmy sees champion surfer Danny, in town for a competition, and everything he knows about himself has to change. An atmospheric, slow-burn, sports romance with a lot of period feel.
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Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid - This is a hot, hockey-player, enemies-to-lovers story, skipping forward through the years from a first fumbling encounter in Juniors, driven past anger and irritation by lust, through very occasional meetings for "just sex." Both men plan to break it off, next time, next year, soon... Both try to find other lovers. Both gradually realize that it's not just the sex they can't give up, but a touch, a look, a brief connection. I'm not generally a fan of books with such a high sex-content ratio in the first half of the book but in this case, not only was the sex well written and not overly drawn-out, but it was necessary to the story. Sex brings these men together over and over, and their relationship is slowly built in a hundred tiny moments woven into the sex, before one of them heads out the door.
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Hither, Page by Cat Sebastian - This story, a small-village cozy mystery set in the years after WWII, is quieter than Sebastian's Regency romances, bleaker, yet there's an undercurrent of emotion in it that hit me just right. James Sommers was a doctor in the British military in WWII, and after leaving the service, he's still haunted by all he saw and did. Leo Page was recruited into a black-ops type of service in his teens, before the war, and all he has ever known is intrigue, spycraft, assassination, and war. Leo is sent to James's small town by his covert ops boss to make the murder-mystery go away, whatever that takes, and he finds in James an honesty and decency he'd almost forgotten existed. But the era is not one kind to gay men, and murder is afoot.
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The Music of What Happens by Bill Konigsberg - I really enjoyed the banter between the two teen guys in this one, as they try to get a food truck off the ground as a source of income. I also loved the quiet moments when there was depth and pain lurking. Coming out is not a big issue here, which is great, as it leaves room for the other real issues these boys are coping with. Addressing things as tricky as consent, sexual assault, addiction, parental neglect and more is a challenge, and Konisberg hit a sweet spot for me, keeping it feeling real and nuanced, emotionally valid but not mined for angst. There are no cardboard villains here, and no one is perfect (although Max is a sweetheart.) The story is pretty well balanced, and while young love is real, it isn't a cure-all.
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Earth Fathers Are Weird by Lyn Gala - This was a fun, well-crafted SciFi romance with a biologically-plausible take on MPreg and tentacles, and inter-species romance. Lyn Gala really has a talent for imaginative plausibility, showcased in this lighter story. I liked human Max. He was optimistic, intelligent, adaptable, determined, and willing to roll with a series of big punches. The alien "Rick" was an interesting character, a creature of honor, honest and sympathetic without being too human in his outlook. I loved that the MPreg was biologically possible, and also not slavery or rape or seduction or feminizing, but a badly-translated job offer.
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Behind These Doors by Jude Lucens - The story of a gay journalist from humble origins, and a bisexual, polyamorous nobleman, working to fit a growing loving relationship into the minimal overlap of their lives in turn-of-the-century London. I really appreciated the historical grounding of this story, from the clothes and social mores, to the details of the women's suffrage movement and the strains of class differences. I also loved having strong female characters, an ace-spectrum character, and a polyamory where a new lover isn't a reason to devalue the old. The progression of the relationships felt realistic, and the obstacles valid. The ending wraps up a bit easily, with a couple of big obstacles swept away, but it was warm and sweet and didn't impose limits on love.
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Carved in Bone by Michael Nava - Michael Nava is one of my favorite gay mystery writers. I read the original series when it came out back in the 1980s and fell in love with Henry Rios, with his honor, his intelligence, his fierce need to find the truth and see justice done, his drinking, his flaws, his strained family past, and all the parts that make up this amazing, gay, Hispanic lawyer and crusader. So a new Henry Rios story after all this time is a gift. This book slots in after the first story in the series (The Little Death which has now been rewritten as Lay Your Sleeping Head ) - here we see Henry after he has hit bottom with his drinking and his losses, managing to finally get help.

There's both a good mystery, and the 1980s impact of AIDS in each of these books, particularly this one. We see gay men hit by disaster just as they were beginning to believe that their families and churches and authorities were wrong about gay being unnatural and evil. For some, the painful question becomes how do you purge an internalized shame and self-disgust from your soul, when God now seems to be striking down gay man after gay man with the most horrific suffering? When the more gay sex a guy has had, the higher his risk? When everything about this plague seems designed to confirm that gay men are miserable sinners unfit for love, undeserving of life? This book is lest-we-forget reading with a great character and plot to go with it, and I'd like to see young people read this for the immersive effect it has on understanding gay history. This could stand alone just fine, although I recommend the whole series, which has a romantic HEA in the last book.
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Spice & Vanilla by Kathrine Wyvern - a slow-building story that begins with 4 points of view. Di is a young woman who survived a severe accident, but lost her mobility, her fiance, her profession, and her beloved horse. In the isolation of her small cottage, her cat is her companion as she tries to rebuild. Hugh is a gay Dom who hides his heart away and tries to give his subs precisely what they need, without ever being vulnerable himself. Raphael is elegant, musical, both kind and exacting, bisexual and a sub. And Lucie... well Lucie is feminine for Lucifer and she's a kinky masochistic sub to Hugh, who works to indulge her, but she's far far more to Raphael, and eventually to herself as well. A genderqueer main character, in a story I at first didn't think would work, but eventually couldn't put down. A Rainbow Awards winner.
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I read many other good books this year, more than I had time to even review on Goodreads, but these ones stand out to me. If you have a best book you read this year (a 2019 release or not) please do mention it in the comments. I'm always looking to add good stuff to my (long) TBRs.

Best wishes for happy reading to you all in 2020.

- Kaje