Rick R. Reed's Blog, page 77

New Interview at Sid Love

I had the pleasure on Thursday of being interviewed by m/m romance author, Sid Love. Check it out and see what kinds of things are percolating through my twisted little brain. Leave me an impertinent comment.

Read a lot. Write a lot. There are no short cuts. Not if you want to be any good, anyway.

Read the interview here. 

Guest Blog: "You Don't Want to be Known As a Gay Author" by Mark Allan Gunnells

You don’t want to be known as a gay author. 

I was told this by more than a few people in the biz when I first started publishing. I didn’t take much offense, as I understood what they were trying to say to me. At the time I was publishing mostly horror and fantasy fiction, and my publishers were worried that the typical heterosexual fan of those genres might be put off if they thought my stuff was excessively “gay” and might shy away from my stuff.

I understand it, but I don’t agree with it. As a gay man, I don’t shy away from stories that deal with heterosexual characters. My gay characters I think are relatable to any reader because I believe much of what humans encounter in life transcends things like sexuality, and there is a commonality that we all share. And that being said, I don’t believe you have to be able to directly relate to a character to enjoy that character. It’s sometimes fun and interesting to read about characters who lead lives drastically different from your own. Are there people out there who will refuse to read a book by a gay author no matter what said book is about? Sure, but I like to think they are becoming the minority.

In the end, the fears some of my publishers had turned out to be unfounded. My books didn’t blaze up the best seller’s list, but sales didn’t seem to be impeded by my use of gay characters. In fact, the primary audience for my books has been heterosexual horror fans. I even received some notes from readers that said they really appreciated the way I take typical horror scenarios and set-ups, and cast them with characters that are not usually represented in such fiction.

So being a gay author didn’t seem to hurt me with the straight audience.

And then came my newest published novel, THE EXCHANGE STUDENT. With this one, I’m stepping outside the horror/fantasy genre. The plot of the novel does have a sci-fi element, involving time travel, but at its core, the book is a love story between two young men. There have been love story elements in other books of mine, but this is the first one where that takes center stage. I had a blast writing it, and am very proud of the work.

But found myself unsure how to go about promoting it once it was published. I hope that some of the readers of my horror/fantasy books will follow along on this new journey, but I fear that the romance-heavy aspect may make some of them think twice. So I feel I may have before me the task of courting a whole new audience.

Which is exciting but also frightening. For pretty much the entire time I’ve been publishing, I’ve marketed to a predominately horror audience. I’m familiar with the message boards, the Facebook and Goodreads groups. I know certain reviewers for horror stories, and places I can guest blog. I had a whole system set in place for each new book.

And now I have to start from scratch. It is daunting…but as I said, is also kind of exciting. As an author I don’t want to become stagnant, don’t want my writing to become stale. I want to write different kinds of stories in different genres, to stretch myself, expand my literary horizons. Which means I must meet the challenge of promoting to different audiences depending on what I’m publishing.

And luckily I know folks like Rick who are generous enough to give me guidance, advice, and even the use of their blog. I’m finding new sites, new reviewers, new groups, and hope I will be able to reach a new audience for my work. Romance readers, gay readers…horror readers, straight readers…all are welcome.

You don’t want to be known as a gay author. 

I’m fine with it, as long as I’m known as a gay author with range.

THE EXCHANGE STUDENT can be purchased at:
Amazon
Barnes & Noble
AllRomance Ebooks
 

RAINING MEN Now Available for Pre-order

I'm happy to announce that my latest novel, Raining Men , is now available for pre-order at Dreamspinner Press. The book will be widely available on May 31, but for now, you can reserve your copy in ebook or paperback.

Pre-order paperback
Pre-order ebook

BLURB

Sequel to Chaser

The character you loved to hate in Chaser becomes the character you will simply love in Raining Men.

It’s been raining men for most of Bobby Nelson’s adult life. Normally, he wouldn’t have it any other way, but lately something’s missing. Now, he wants the deluge to slow to a single special drop. But is it even possible for Bobby to find “the one” after endless years of hooking up?

When Bobby’s father passes away, Bobby finally examines his rocky relationship with the man and how it might have contributed to his inability to find the love he yearns for. Guided by a sexy therapist, a Sex Addicts Anonymous group, a well-endowed Chihuahua named Johnny Wadd, and Bobby’s own cache of memories, Bobby takes a spiritual, sexual, and emotional journey to discover that life’s most satisfactory love connections lie in quality, not quantity. And when he’s ready to love not only himself but someone else, sex and love fit, at last, into one perfect package.

Audio Book Cover Reveal: IM

Lex Valentine has done a chilling and provocative new cover for the audio book version of IM, my chiller about a serial killer who preys on gay men via hook up sites. What do you think?

BLURB

The Internet Is the New Meat Market for Gay Men Now a Killer Is Turning the Meat Market into a Meat Wagon. 

One by one, he's killing them. Lurking in the digital underworld of Men4HookUpNow.com, he lures, seduces, charms, reaching out through instant messages to the unwary. He's just another guy.

They invite him over. He's just another trick. Harmless. They're dead wrong.

When the first bloody body surfaces, openly gay Chicago Police Department detective Ed Comparetto is called in to investigate. Sickened by the butchered mess of one of his brothers left on display in a bathtub, he seeks relief outside where the young man who discovered the body waits to tell him the story of how he found his friend. But who is this witness...and did he play a bigger part in the murder than he's letting on?

For Comparetto, this encounter with a witness is the beginning of a nightmare. Because this witness did more than just show up at the scene of the crime; he set the scene. And maybe, he's more than just a killer...maybe he's dead himself.

Comparetto is on a journey to discover the truth, a truth that he needs to discover before he loses his career, his boyfriend, his sanity...his life. Because in this killer's world, IM doesn't stand for instant message...it stands for instant murder.

A Day in the Life

My Boston terrier, Lily, and I at Seattle's Ravenna Park. For a lady who's going on ten, she's quite the energetic hiker.

My Serial Killer Thriller, OBSESSED is Now Available in Audiobook!

I am extremely pleased to announce that Obsessed , my horror/thriller novel about a man who believes he is a vampire preying on the citizens of Chicago, is now available as an audiobook on Amazon, Audible, and iTunes. Bestselling horror author Douglas Clegg said the book was, "A harrowing ride through cutting-edge psychological horror, this one's got a vicious bite. Rick R. Reed's Obsessed is a twisted nightmare." 

The book was narrated by Jack de Golia and cover art is by Lex Valentine.

What it's about:
"I kill, therefore I am...."

Voices slam through the corridor of his wounded mind. The words of his dead sister cry out. His parents' taunts fill the silent room where he sits and waits - waits for the murderous rage, filling him with strength, driving him to kill, to touch the cold flesh, taste the warm blood - to feel alive again....

A witness has seen him, but his killing only turns her on and now she wants to protect him. His wife suspects him, but the private detective she hired cannot stop him. Joe MacAree fears nothing - except that he may no longer be human. The thirst that drives him is relentless, moving deeper and deeper into his own shattering, private realm, where each murder is a delicious new gift of life, where revulsion is beauty, and the obsession will never let him go..

BUY
Amazon
Audible

Listen to a sample. Just click on the button beneath the cover art.

And--I am pleased to announce that, very soon, my novels,  IM, Bashed , and  Tricks  are all being produced as audiobooks. Love for their releases throughout the summer!

Cover Reveal: It's RAINING MEN!

Second only to the moment I hold a finished, published book in my hands for the first time is the moment when I first see my cover. My May release, Raining Men , has just gotten its "face" and I couldn't be more thrilled with it. It's sexy. Simple. Elegant. And, I hope, intriguing.

Mega congrats to Dreamspinner Press cover artist Anne Cain for her outstanding work on this.

Please let me know what you think. And watch for the book's release in a few weeks! Here's the blurb:

The character you loved to hate in Chaser becomes the character you will simply love in Raining Men

It’s been raining men for most of Bobby Nelson’s adult life. Normally, he wouldn’t have it any other way, but lately something’s missing. Now, he wants the deluge to slow to a single special drop. But is it even possible for Bobby to find “the one” after endless years of hooking up?

When Bobby’s father passes away, Bobby finally examines his rocky relationship with the man and how it might have contributed to his inability to find the love he yearns for. Guided by a sexy therapist, a Sex Addicts Anonymous group, a well-endowed Chihuahua named Johnny Wadd, and Bobby’s own cache of memories, Bobby takes a spiritual, sexual, and emotional journey to discover that life’s most satisfactory love connections lie in quality, not quantity.

And when he’s ready to love not only himself but someone else, sex and love fit, at last, into one perfect package.

Windy City Inspiration

Note: This post was originally featured on the site, Reviews by Jessewave on March 21, 2013. So I am in Chicago this week, away from what is now home (Seattle), but back in what, for many years, was home to me: the city of big shoulders, the Windy City. I lived here for more than sixteen years and this city, more than any other, is home to me—and more than that, it’s inspiration.That’s what I’m thinking about this morning: how places inspire us, both in writing and in life. Chicago for me is an inspiration I simply cannot get away from. Its mean streets, its gorgeous boulevards and skyline, its hard-working, but complicated people. For me, it’s always been easy to return to Chicago in my mind, which is maybe why I use it so often as a backdrop in my writing.Chicago is a major character in so many of my works. It’s in my serial killer thriller,  IM ; it’s the place my troubled character in my haunted house story  A Demon Inside  flees, it’s where my beloved gay couple meet their fate when a hate crime changes their lives forever in Bashed; it’s where my young stripper dances in  Tricks  and my star-crossed escort lovers meet in Rent ; it’s where my chubby-chaser romance,  Chaser,  takes place. It’s even the backdrop for my upcoming sequel to Chaser, John Hancock BuildingRaining Men.The city is in my blood. It’s easy to disappear within its grid-like streets, which end at its eastern side at the ever-changing moods and colors of Lake Michigan. I don’t even have to think about where things are happening when I write—because I simply return there in my imagination.Being here now, sitting here this morning in my friend’s apartment in the far-north neighborhood of Rogers Park, with the lake a couple of blocks over, I am wondering if there’s a special place that inspires other writers, or if there’s a special place that Historic Home on Astorconnects with readers on a deeper level.What’s that place for you? As a writer, is there a place you can go effortlessly in your imagination? As a reader, do you appreciate real places when you read a story, or do you prefer a more fantastic universe in which the stories you read are set? I hope you’ll give me some insight in the comments below.For me, though, Chicago will always be a kind of home. I am in Seattle now and have a great love for that gorgeous city, with its mountains and water (and my beloved family), but I wonder if I will ever loose myself from the bonds of Chicago, if it’s a place where, Lake vieweven if I never live here again, I will continue to return to in my imagination.Seattle is slowly creeping into my work.Raining Men is set in both Chicago and Seattle and I am getting almost as comfortable writing stories set there as here, but Chicago has an almost magical hold.I haven’t been here for five years, yet this week, walking Chicago streets and visiting old haunts, it’s almost as if I’ve never left.Tell me about your special place.All photos (c) 2013 by Rick R. Reed

Happy Earth Day! Celebrate with Dreamspinner Press!

Save across the board, including on my Dignity Takes a Holiday , Caregiver , Homecoming , and Chaser !

New 5-Star Review for my modern-day fairy tale BEAU AND THE BEAST

Just stumbled across this review of my modern-day fairy tale BEAU AND THE BEAST on Reviews by Jessewave. It made my day! In part, the reviewer said:

 "Truly, I just sighed with delighted happiness as I read. I happen to believe that we all need a sweet ending at times–an uncomplicated love story–a meeting of souls if you will and Beau and the Beast delivers it all with a well written tale of love and compassion..." 

Read the whole review here.

Buy your copy.

Blurb
Inspired by the timeless tale, "Beauty and the Beast," by Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont, Rick R. Reed has crafted a new fairy tale for our times that manages to be ethereal, romantic and ripped-from-the-headlines realistic.

Beau is a down-on-his-luck street artist living on the streets of Seattle, drawing portraits of tourists to make enough money to live hand-to-mouth. He has a knack for capturing his subjects very souls on paper. One rainy night, he is accosted by a group of fag-bashing thugs, intent on robbing him of his art supplies and humiliating Beau for who he is. Beau is beaten into unconsciousness...

...And awakens in a beautiful bedroom, his head bandaged and with no memory of how he got there. Outside his window pine trees and mountain vistas beckon.

Beau's tale grows even more mysterious when a large, muscular man begins bringing the injured Beau his food. The man says nothing--and wears a wolf mask. When he finally does speak, it's only to tell Beau to call him "Beast."

What secrets does the wolf mask hide? What do these two outsiders have in common? And will their odd circumstances bring them to the brink of love--or tear them apart? The answers lie in Rick R. Reed's haunting love story that reveals that beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder.

Genres: Gay / Contemporary / Fantasy / Fairy Tale