Caitlin Ricci's Blog, page 14

Reminder- Catch me on Kool Queer Lit tomorrow!

This is just a quick reminded before I go back to writing All or Nothing. I will be on the Kool Queer Lit blog tomorrow talking about a few things close to me as well as Almost Paradise. Which is also dear to me. But it's not all just about getting people interested in my book. There's other stuff there too. So go check it out. It'll be up early tomorrow morning.

Taming the Lion Tamer

Taming the Lion Tamer now has a blurb and I signed the contract this morning so hopefully I'll have an estimated release date here pretty soon.

Taming the Lion Tamer (Draft Blurb)


Charlie thought it would be like any other Friday working as an animator. Then in walked Quinn and his rescued Asiatic Lion. For years Quinn has devoted his life to rescuing big cats so when an animation company offers him a donation in exchange for bringing one of the cats in to model he jumps on it.


Charlie's so nervous that he can barely look at Quinn, much less talk to him. Quinn is confident, friendly and too handsome for words. Charlie can't believe it when Quinn notices him, and then invites him up to the sanctuary for the weekend. He's enthralled and finds himself falling hard for the man his sister calls Sex God Quinn Fitzgerald.

Silver Shorts and All or Nothing

Silver Shorts Week 22 is now available for pre-order. My F/F story Afternoon Delight is in this one. It's free so go grab it.

Also, my M/M/M story, All or Nothing, is coming along nicely. It's going to end up being longer than the minimum 15k words but I don't feel that the minimum will allow me to really make the love story between the three of them believable. Especially when the two that have been in a long term relationship just found out that their house guest is a man and I'm over 6k words into it. I have until late July to get it right so we'll see. I've never written three characters quite like this and I've never considered writing M/M/M before this challenge. I'm enjoying the diversity of it, the difficulty in making sure that each character is unique and plausible and that their actions make sense within who they are. It's really a lot of fun.

Here's a bit of sexy happy to get us through the week...

Double Pleasure by vishstudio

Taming the Lion Tamer

I'm so very happy to announce that Taming the Lion Tamer has been accepted for publication with Silver Publishing. Yes! Yay! No date yet on when it will be coming out but it will be coming! This is my second book with Silver. Yay to the yay! Can't wait to get started on the pre-edits.

Bringing Kit to Life- Completed!

Alright, I held off on updates while the hop was going on so now to catch you all up.

I finished Bringing Kit to Life and I really like it. The ending is different than I thought it would be. But I'm happier with this ending than I think I would have been with my previous idea. So now it's going through it's edits before I submit it to Silver. Hopefully they like it. I haven't heard back about Taming the Lion Tamer or Man's Best Friend so I'm hoping that they like those too. Bringing Kit to Life was changed to Marked by Grief. It seemed to fit better as I was submitting it. Also, I submitted a short called Magically Delicious. It's a cute little story about a leprechaun and an American college student studying abroad in Ireland. That one went to Silver as well.

I'm also now active on Goodreads. I belong to a M/M group there along with a YA GBLT group.

Also, I've decided to have a YA blog since I will be submitting YA stories here in a few short weeks when Silver opens their YA group. My YA blog is yaauthorcaitlinricci.blogspot.com. I'll be moving my YA WIP update info to that site and I'll be using both blogs now.

Out of the Darkness (my MMM) is now at just over 4k words and going strong. The name will be changed but I'm happy that I'm so far ahead of schedule for something that isn't even due until July.

Winner of the Blog Hop!

Thank you Kimberly for leaving a comment during the HAH blog hop. I used Random.org and it rolled your number. Congratulations on winning an e-book copy of Almost Paradise set to be released June 16th. Thank you everyone for leaving comments, participating in the blog hop and speaking up against homophobia. You're all awesome.

Just a quick reminder!

I'm going to hold off on major updates of stories until after the Hop Against Homophobia is over. But make sure that you go to as many blogs as you can. The post to enter in is the one directly below this. Now go hop!

Hop Against Homophobia!

Hello and welcome to those newcomers for the Hop Against Homophobia! It's great to have you here and I hope that you come back and visit me again soon.


Dominated Love Slave by vishstudio
Now, on to the fun stuff. I guess I should start with why I write M/M romance and erotic romance. In my experience the simplest answer is usually the right one. So- I write because I enjoy it, I write M/M because I want to. I find guys that love guys to be hot. But more than that, I find all love to be amazingly beautiful. I write M/F, M/M and F/F romances, romance erotica and YA.

In this blog post though I'd like to talk about something very near and dear to me. It's my post, my blog and my chance to speak. So I'm going to go for it. I decided to get my bachelors degree in counseling because, like many others, I want to help people. But it's not enough just to help those people that come to you and ask for it, though having a listening ear and an open mind are ideal qualities to strive for. What I'm going to school for is to be a  school counselor, primarily middle school. Though high school was just as full of ups and downs for me. Mostly downs but we won't get into that right now. They were a rough few years.

But that's not really the point of all of this.

When I get done with this degree, and then finish my masters, I hope to enter a school district and become that "safe person" for young adults to talk to about, well, anything really. But I hope to be a visible, caring adult that they can come talk to about bullying, relationship violence and peer pressure. My main focus will be the GBLT community. Why? Because I think that these young people are woefully under represented and appreciated. And in a country where homosexual teens are bullied at ridiculously high numbers, often are kicked out of their homes for who they love and some even commit suicide because of these factors, that's just not okay. Not in the least. So hopefully I can be someone that they can view as  being in their corner, someone that has their back. Maybe at a time when they think that no one else in the world does.

In my classes we talk about suicide prevention. It's not a matter of  someone never committing suicide. That's not my job and I'm not there to make those choices for another person. My job will be to try to get you to stay here one more day. So my goal when I get this degree is to try to get that teen to try to make it through one more day. Whatever they need and whatever it takes. Just one more day. Because maybe after that day we can talk about the one after that.

By making GBLT issues specifically about homosexual people, it makes it a "them" issue, and then it leaves the responsibility of dealing with that issue up to the people that it effects most and leaving the rest of the world off the hook so to speak. The idea that someone is denied the right to marry who they want to or the ability to adopt children with the person that they love, should really be an everybody issue. It's the same thing when people claim that birth control is a "women's issue", when really, that should be an everybody issue as well. But that's getting off the point.

I work in healthcare which is primarily a female dominated field. The guys that I've worked with, most of them gay, have been some of the best co-workers I could have ever asked for. I had one co-worker, we'll call him B, that adopted three children with his partner. I remember one conversation that I had with him, when he asked me when my fiance and I were getting married, and I told him that we weren't sure. The date wasn't all that important to us since we've been living together for so long. Then he said something that has stuck with me to this day- the date matters when you can't pick one. And that nearly broke my heart that this man that cared about others so much, that loved his partner and that clearly loved him, that had three beautiful children, couldn't be a family in the legal eyes of the law.

And that's really all it is- a legal issue. Religion is its own thing which I will not be getting into right now. Whatever you believe in, that's your own personal decision and I'm not touching that with a pole of any length. But marriage, as it is, is just a legal contract that people far too often take for granted. I may be old fashioned, but I've always believed that marriage is forever. You marry someone that you love, in my case he's my best friend, and then you make it work the best you can. I'm not going into domestic violence, substance abuse and adultery. If you're in a relationship where you don't feel safe for whatever reason you need to get immediate help. At the end of this rather long post  I'll post a bunch of links that you may find helpful. Or at least informative. A good friend of mine posted this about her brother and his partner and her anger and frustration over why they can't get married.

If you managed to get through all of this- THANK YOU! You're awesome, wonderful and deserve hugs and large amounts of chocolate.

So here's more good stuff! About this contest. I'm giving away an e-book copy of my upcoming release, Almost Paradise. It's the first book in my Pine Hollow Wolves series. It's M/M romance and I absolutely love these characters. Hopefully you will too. It comes out June 16th which is Father's Day!

Short Blurb


Travis will do anything to keep his daughter safe, now that he finally has custody. Financially ruined, he cannot even afford food for himself most days. Could a stranger’s offer to dogsit be the solution Travis has been hoping for?


Long Blurb


Travis has done everything to keep his daughter safe. He's fought a long, hard battle with the courts to gain full custody and has finally found some breathing room. But that security comes at a heavy price.



Staying in a motel and living off his quickly dwindling savings is no way to raise a toddler, so when Liam steps into his life and offers him hundreds of dollars just to watch his dogs for a weekend, it almost seems too good to be true.


But when he finds out there is more to Liam than he ever thought, he has a hard decision to make. Can he and his daughter stay and be safe or will he need to leave?


To Enter The Contest!
Simply leave a comment to this blog post. You can respond to something I've talked about here, your own experiences with homophobia or whatever else you'd like to talk about. Please remember though- this is an open forum so please don't post anything that you will regret posting later. And also (and this is important) if you start posting hateful, homophobic or otherwise inappropriate comments they will be deleted and you will not be eligible to win the copy of my book. But really, if you are against men loving men, why would you want to win a copy of it? The winner will be chosen randomly from all eligible comments and will be notified on the 21st of May when the Hop Against Homophobia blog tour officially closes.

Important Links. I'm in the US so all links will be to US based agencies. If you need help finding assistance in your country, please let me know and I will do my best. Also, please remember that the Safe Place badge up there is not just something I put on my blog because I think it looks nice. Which it does. Having that Safe Place badge up there means not only do I have GBLT stories and pictures up here, but also that you can come talk to me about anything, regardless of what's going on in your life. I will listen and if I can't help you, I will do my best to find someone who can. As I'm not an official counselor yet, I can't give you therapy. Sorry. But I can listen and I've been told that I'm pretty good at that. So just remember that I'm here if you ever need someone to talk to.

Here's some links that may help too.
Gay-Straight Alliance Network
It Gets Better
Mathew Shepard Foundation
Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network
Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays
Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network
The Trevor Project
National Domestic Violence Hotline
Queer Secrets

If I have forgotten any organizations that need to be up here, please let me know. If you want to email me privately and want your GBLT story shared on this blog (you can be completely anonymous) please let me know at authorcaitlinricci@gmail.com.

And thanks again for reading all of this. Hopefully some of you connected in some part with what I said. And remember, comment for a chance to win my book! Lots of hugs and I look forward to talking with you all over the next few days. And please come back for more chances to win prizes, see videos of hot guys and keep up with all the latest from my books. Thank you!

Reminder about the blog hop tomorrow!

And don't forget- the Hop Against Homophobia blog tour starts tomorrow! Mark your calenders, your phones, your computers, whatever it is that you use to keep track of your life. Just make sure to visit as many of the hundreds of blogs that you can over the next few days!

Also, Week 20 of the Silver Shorts  is also officially out and now people can read it. So, if you haven't already, go pick it up (because it's FREE) and check out some new authors that you might not have seen before. Like Me! But no, seriously, there are some great short stories in there. Check it out. I've read my copy a few times now and I really like all of the stories. And plus, it's free. So what are you waiting for?

Welcome to the Masquerade

Week 23 of the Silver Shorts has been completed and submitted. Yay! It'll be out late May. For this one the prompt got me thinking about Travis and Liam from Almost Paradise. So the short is about these two lovely men. And Welcome to the Masquerade by Thousand Foot Krutch is the song I was listening to while I was writing it and also the title that I chose to give the story. Masquerade is also the name of the club but I'm not sure if I made that clear or not. If not I'll have to go back and revisit the club at some point and make that clear. Maybe with Evangeline and Theo's story in a few months. When I actually start writing it. :). Another kind of interesting thing about this short is that it ended up being 777 words. I thought it was funny.