Chris Scully's Blog, page 5

Does size matter… when it comes to ebooks?

As a new writer it’s very difficult to break into an established market. The competition is stiff, and it’s even harder if what you are writing isn’t mainstream. The big publishing houses don’t seem to take risks anymore, at least not on new authors, and stick to what sells –just look at the current saturated mystery and romance markets. E-books open up a whole grassroots market for niche publishers and independent authors. Granted, as a reader you have to do your due diligence, because the very freedom that e-publishing offers, means anyone can write and publish. In addition to leveling the playing field, e-publishing opens up all sorts of exciting opportunities for new formats. Once you eliminate the constraints of expensive prints runs, publishers and authors are able to explore new non-traditional formats; not just short stories and novellas, but serials as well, and even integration with digital and visual arts.

In my online travels, I’ve read a number of comments by people who say they only read novel length fiction. I might have said that myself five years ago, mostly because there wasn’t the selection of shorter works out there. Now, I’m not so picky. For me as a reader, I don’t really care how long a work is as long as it is priced accordingly. Above all, I look for quality and value. As long as I get those I am happy. It doesn’t matter if it’s 10,000 words or 70,000. I’ve read short stories that made me cry, and long novels that bored me to tears. I’ve found authors who can bring a character to life in fifty pages, and others who couldn’t manage to do it in two hundred. So in addition to not judging a book by its cover, I try not to judge it by word count either.

As a writer, I like the flexibility that e-publishing gives me when it comes to length. A novel is tough. I tried and failed many times before I finally decided to stop worrying about the pressures of word count and work my way up to it. For me, in most cases the characters or story itself will determine the length. When I start, I have a sense of whether a story will be a short story, novella, or novel, but I don’t set out with a fixed word count in mind. I find that some stories just lend themselves to a shorter length. Sometimes you may have a great set of characters that you just want to share but who don’t deserve a full novel. Or maybe you want to give them a test run before you fully commit. I tend to think in vignettes or “snapshots”, and short stories are the perfect format for this. In the past, the only venue for these would have been short story collections or magazines; now they’re readily available for download right beside lengthy tomes. This is not to say that I don’t intend to finish a novel one day (believe me I am working on it). It’s always been my dream to write a novel. But in the meantime I know that if an idea pops into my head, I can run with it and not have to get hung up on the counter at the bottom of my screen.

When I’m writing, I generally use myself as my target audience—that may not always be a good thing, but I try to put myself in the reader’s shoes. I figure if I would read it, there has to be others like me out there, and for me, size doesn’t matter… as long as the author knows how to wield their words.

Let me know what you think. I’m really curious how other readers feel about this topic.

The Soundtrack of Our Lives

Music is forever; music should grow and mature with you, following you right on up until you die.  ~Paul Simon

I was updating my playlist last weekend and started to think about how music defines our lives, how one song can instantly take you back to a place, time or feeling. I recently found an old country song on YouTube that my dad played for us as kids; listening to it again transported me to the bunk bed at the cottage when my sister and I would request it to be played each night. It was a real tear jerker (Don’t Cry Joni by Conway Twitty) and, to a budding romance writer, still one of the most (tragic) romantic songs I’ve ever heard. That darned song still makes me cry thirty years on. I’m pretty sure it’s going to be the inspiration for a story at some point in the future.

Many writers talk about how they have a “soundtrack” they write to—a collection of music that seems to correspond to what they are writing and helps to inspire them. EL James even made a few bucks off it by selling a crossover CD of the music that inspired Fifty Shades of Grey. I’m the same way. Music is such a part of my life that of course it’s going to spill over into my writing. I’m a huge audiophile—my tastes range across all genres and time periods—and I’ve often thought that if I was stuck on a desert island I could do without books (because I can make up stories in my head) but I could never live without music.

So it’s no wonder that music often serves as an inspiration for me. Sometimes the song comes first, and the story builds around it. In my novella Fourth and Long, the characters dance to the song “Secret” by Heart. That becomes their theme song. I was going through an eighties phase at the time and as soon as I heard it, I knew I had to work it into a story. It seemed ideal for a Pretty in Pink style dance and bingo, I had the climax of my story.

Other times I will hear a song and immediately think of a character or story already percolating in my head. In those situations, I use the music more to put me in the mood—oftentimes as I’m listening I have a montage of the story running through my head as though I were directing a music video. I’ve been working hard on a historical novel set in the American mid-west and it has built up quite a playlist which includes of all things, Annie’s Song by John Denver, and Distance  and Arms  by Christina Perri.

Whether it’s just dumb luck or not, I’ve noticed that it’s the more melancholy stories that end up with a soundtrack. Even when there’s pop tunes involved, it’s still my sadder characters that I associate with them. For some reason the happier ones don’t need it (Adam and Joe in Inseparable, for example don’t have a song). So what is it that brings a story and a song together? It’s usually a combination of melody and lyrics that draw me to a song. Sad love songs are the best, because the more feeling behind them, the more it translates into my writing. If it makes me tear up then I know it’s going to work. But generally it’s still mostly serendipity; I don’t go looking for the right music–it finds me–but when that perfect match happens… it’s magic.

Sneak Peak and Happy PRIDE

June is PRIDE month in Toronto where I live. It culminates in the big parade at the end of the month. This year is particularly celebratory because it’s the tenth anniversary of the legalization of same-sex marriage in the province of Ontario. This week, the local newspaper had a lovely OpEd piece written by one of the men who was among the first to get married ten years ago. Check it out. It’s a short read but really captures the change in attitudes over the past decade. It’s one of those things that makes me proud to be a Canadian. I firmly believe that no matter what your personal opinion is on marriage–religious, civil or archaic institution–everyone deserves the right to have the option and ability to make that choice for themselves.

In the spirit of Pride, I am very happy to announce that Dreamspinner Press has picked up my first longer novella “When Adam Kissed Me” and will be publishing it in the November/ December time frame. I will, of course, post more details as I know them. From the title, you may have guessed that this is a continuation of “Inseparable” which was published last December and introduced best friends Adam and Joe. Inspired by the reception the first novella received, I was driven to write the rest of the story (or, well, at least the next phase), and spent January-March getting it down in print. The new novella is both a sequel and a prequel (how is that possible?? you’ll have to wait to see), but you don’t have to have read “Inseparable” in order to read “When Adam Kissed Me”. Below is a sneak peak. Enjoy and Happy Pride!

***

Nine weeks. That’s how long it had been since Adam kissed me on Christmas Eve and changed everything.

Nine and a half weeks, to be exact. Just like the movie—only without all the sex.

I blamed it all on my biological clock. Okay, so it’s usually only women you hear complaining about that sort of thing, but in the last few months, mine had kicked in and was ticking like a time bomb. The sad truth is, if I hadn’t been dwelling on my approaching thirtieth birthday, and starting the family I always wanted—difficult to do as long as I was still pining for my straight best friend Adam, and with no potential partner on the horizon—then I never would have made the decision to move out of the apartment we shared. And without that disastrous choice, Adam and I would never have fought for the first time in our lives, and Adam would never have been so upset that he stepped in front of that car. There would have been no agonizing wait in the hospital to find out if he would make it, no broken ribs, no concussion, and no temporary amnesia.

And Adam never would have kissed me. So yeah, it was a bit of a catch-22.

In a way it was like starting over. Not only for Adam, whose head injury meant he hadn’t remembered anything of his life at first, but for me as well. As the sheer terror of seeing Adam’s limp and bloodied body sprawled on the pavement slowly receded from my mind, and Adam’s memories returned, I understood that we’d been given a second chance to explore what we’d both wanted, but never had the courage to admit to each other.

I’d thought a lot about us in the days since Christmas. There was anger, sure, that he’d kept something so important secret for so long, but that was nothing compared to the giddy relief I experienced every time I looked at Adam. He’s alive, I’d think with a burst of joy, and that was all that mattered. The accident drove home the truth that I had been hiding from most of my life: I couldn’t live without him.

But moving from the safe realm of friendship to something more was difficult too, getting to know that side of Adam I had purposefully ignored for years. Adam, the man I wanted in my bed, versus Adam, the best friend and boy I grew up with. After nine weeks, I was still struggling to define our new relationship, so I found the comparison with Mickey Rourke’s eighties masterpiece ironic, since that movie was all about sex and so far I’d had none.

Nine long, glorious, torturous, frustrating weeks; every night I slept beside Adam, listening to the sound of his breathing, waking up every few hours to make sure he was still there. Sometimes I just watched him sleep. At first it hadn’t been so difficult keeping a hands-off policy. The man could barely walk without assistance—he certainly wasn’t up for anything more than some kissing and cuddling on the couch. I bought a small television and moved it into my room, and we spent the holidays lying in bed together watching movies. Except for the Adam nearly dying thing, it was the best Christmas I could remember.

I should have known that it couldn’t last.

Somebody up there hates me

Ever wonder if the Universe/Fate/deity of your choice likes to mess with your life just to see how you react? That’s a bit how I’m feeling right now. Here I am, still on a high from last year, full of so many ideas that I need a file to keep track of them, and ready to make this writing thing more than a hobby, when WHAM!, I’m a hit by some sort of repetitive stress injury. To be honest, I’ve been having problems with my hands off and on for several months, but this time it seems to be sticking around. So I’ve had to be careful about what I do and how I do it, and rather than give up writing I’ve had to get creative.

For one thing, I’ve been trying to write more in longhand rather than type which, for some reason, doesn’t bother me as much as keyboarding lately. This isn’t as easy as it seems. Although I always carry around a notebook to capture dialog, sentences, or phrases, as inspiration strikes, I haven’t written more than a paragraph by hand in at least 20 years. It’s tough to get back in the habit, not to mention slow. I am much faster when typing than I am writing by hand. It’s also not as easy to revise or write in a haphazard fashion, as I tend to do. I suppose it could be worse—I could be writing two hundred years ago with ink and quill.

The other thing I’ve been trying is voice recognition software. I am testing out Microsoft’s speech recognition tool that comes free with Windows right now with mixed results. In fact, this blog post was dictated entirely using speech recognition. There are a couple of challenges involved and not all of them are the tool’s fault. For me, speaking out loud has always been difficult. I have a disconnect between my mouth and my brain, and as soon as I start to speak I lose the rest of the sentence that was forming in my head. I am not a verbal storyteller, so just speaking aloud takes getting used to. So far, this tool isn’t bad for short things like emails and this post, but I have to work up to longer things like a novel. It really slows things down to have to carefully pronounce each word, not to mention getting into correction battles when the tool doesn’t understand you. I found two main technical issues that frustrate me: the first is the size of the voice buffer. It’s too small. It can handle short sentences but if you start to rattle on, it may truncate some of what you have said when you go to insert it. The second thing is the options that the tool presents if you happen to use unusual words or names. In my latest short story, both my characters have odd names—Emmett and Sky (which gets written as “Emmitt and sky”). It quickly becomes frustrating trying to correct the tool all the time. Sometimes I just give up, and for the purposes of dictation call them Dave and Joe, and then do a find and replace later. Overall, for a free tool it’s not bad. As I continue to use it, I learn new things and can hopefully “train” it a bit more. I understand there are better voice recognition tools out there for purchase, but I will hold off for now and see how this goes.

I suppose that anything I do will be slower than the way I was writing before; it’s about retraining myself, and as I continue to do these things, it will hopefully become easier and faster. The Universe won’t get me down this time!

Waiting for Christmas

I’m in a bit of an in-between stage right now, waiting to hear back from a publisher on a new novella I submitted. To distract myself, I have jumped into my next story, which is a Christmas one, intended for Dreamspinner’s Advent Calendar later this year. Christmas? In April? Believe it or not we just had a nasty ice/snow storm in Toronto last week so it’s not that hard to imagine it still being winter! The idea for this particular story came to me as I was finishing up my novella “When Adam Kissed Me” and just wouldn’t leave my head; sometimes I can shelve ideas and come back to them later, but this one actually kept intruding, which is a good sign. For me, inspiration comes in all sorts of forms; sometimes it’s a person, or a particular scene, or in the case of my Christmas story, simply a title. I am one of those writers who has to strike while the idea is hot and while I’m “in the mood”, so I have been quite busy lately and writing daily. It also keeps my mind off problems at work and the interminable waiting to find out the future of “When Adam Kissed Me”. Is writing my form of avoidance? Absolutely.

This by far, is the hardest part of the process for me–the waiting. No matter how good I think something is when I am writing it, as soon as it gets sent off for review or feedback, I am immediately plagued with doubts. What could I have done better? Will they like it? Is it too “sweet”? My inner critic starts to look for problems. As much I write for myself first, it still matters what others think when you’re putting it out there. Especially since each work feels like a little piece of me. I’m a bit of a perfectionist anyway, but, if you’re charging money for it, you certainly don’t want to let anyone down or make them feel cheated. The logical part of me says that it’s good to be a little nervous. As soon as you become complacent or cocky, you stop challenging yourself and trying as hard. I try to remember that. Writing, for me, has always been private, and until last year, something I didn’t really share; the whole point of doing so was to stretch myself out of my comfort zone so this is something I will have to get used to.

I am very excited about “When Adam Kissed Me”, no matter what happens; it’s the longest piece I have written so far, and my first unsolicited submission. For me it marks a turning point in my writing journey. I definitely intend to share more as soon as I know one way or the other. In the meantime, I’m heading back to a warm San Diego Christmas Eve, where two lonely men are waiting for me to match them up

How many ways can you say c**k?

I just finished writing my first full love scene for my new novella (more on that coming soon). So far, most of my writing has been work I felt was too short for a sex scene, as I prefer to build character first. Writing sex scenes is tricky, period—getting the tone right to match the rest of the story, making sure it doesn’t sound cheesy or clinical. Even major writers have a hard time—just see the bad sex awards for that. But as I’ve discovered, when you’re dealing with same sex partners it adds a whole other layer of complexity.

Pronouns

In a traditional m/f scene it’s pretty easy to tell who is doing what when using pronouns (he, she, his, hers) but as soon as you start referring to members of the same sex, the scene can quickly become confusing. He caressed his body. Who did what to whom? So in order to clarify things you have to start using names: Steve caressed Joe’s body. But an extended scene gets repetitive if you keep repeating this over and over again and it pulls the reader out of the moment. I now understand why so many m/m writers chose to write in the first person; of all the alternatives, this makes it the easiest to write sex scenes. I caressed his body—much simpler. Of course you still have to be creative not to repeat yourself over and over again.

Body parts

In a traditional m/f scene you have a variety of different body parts to describe—his and hers. But in a scene with people of the same sex you have double the body parts but only the same limited vocabulary to describe them (nouns and adjectives). There are only so many ways to refer to a penis. Yes I know there are dozens of euphemisms and slang variations, but really there are only a few terms that can be used in a modern, romantic context. Cock and dick are the most popular of course. Penis can sound clinical, member, prick and (heaven forbid) manhood, sound a little old fashioned and are fine for historicals, shaft is okay if used sparingly, repeated “erections” become annoying, “boner” is a no-go for anyone over thirty. See my point? And that’s just the nouns. When you start to add in the adjectives like thick, fat, flaring, glistening etc. you kind of have to divvy them up between your two characters.

I have a whole new respect for writers who are able to write natural sounding sex scenes and make it seem effortless. I know the next time I read a steamy scene I will be a little more appreciative of the hard work that went into it.

Romance and the 1%: What about the rest of us?

I recently finished TJ Klune’s Tell Me It’s Real, about an ordinary guy with body issues and the hottie who falls for him, and it made me think about something that has always bothered me with the romance genre—the obsession with physical perfection to an almost clichéd degree. I have been reading romance since… well, since I was able to sneak peeks at my grandmother’s Harlequins as a pre-teen, and I have seen the mainstream romance genre change over the years, but what is actually more surprising to me is how much it has not changed. Yes, we now have werewolves and vampires, and hotter sex, and more feisty, independent heroines, but for the most part the characters are still rich, young and attractive. Just browse the bookshelves in the romance section of any bookstore and you’ll see what I’m talking about. I know that there are writers trying to change this, but unfortunately they are still the minority.

I purposefully chose this book because of the premise. I adore “average Joe’s”. I’m tired of hunks with washboard abs and chiseled jaws which seem to make up the bulk of romance these days, so it was a refreshing change.  I love how the main character Paul ends up at Dunkin’ Donuts instead of the gym, and how right up front the author mocks the repetitive conventions found in so many m/m romances like the fact that “everyone has a ten-inch cock and big balls that can create semen by the bucketful”. Klune plays with stereotypes found in most romances. “Most of the time when you hear stories like the one you’re about to, the narrator is this perfect specimen of man, whether he knows it or not,” says Paul. How many times have we all read that—the wallflower who is really a beauty? Vince, the love interest is gorgeous, but a little dim, and kudos to Klune for never having him reassure Paul about his physical appearance or go on at length about Paul’s “inner beauty”. Vince is simply attracted to Paul, and that’s it.

As readers, our tastes for any genre evolve over time as we ourselves evolve, and I have pretty much given up reading mainstream romance these days. Maybe it’s a fact of getting older, or that my tolerance for bullshit is rapidly diminishing, but I start to gag when I read about yet another set of six-pack abs, and don’t get me started on all these Lords and Ladies running around historical romances.

Of all the possible criticisms levelled at Shades of Grey, my biggest one was the stereotyping of the characters—the thin, busty, beautiful, virgin (who of course doesn’t recognize her own beauty) and the handsome, enigmatic, rich man who runs a billion dollar corporation before the age of thirty (and without a college diploma). I gave up once Christian started buying Anastasia high-end cars as if it was a normal thing to do. Talk about your 1%!!! How can I possibly relate to those characters?

Let me take a minute to differentiate between erotica and romance; erotica, which is sex based, is by its very nature focused on physical appearance and that’s not likely to ever change. Some writers, like Anais Nin, manage to write amazing erotica without resorting to physically perfect characters, but most of the current market falls into the stereotypes. Romance on the other hand, is character and emotion focused, so I find it harder to understand why we don’t see more “ordinary” people represented in the genre. One doesn’t need to be a duke to fall in love—in fact, in most historical romance, the character’s peerage or pedigree doesn’t even contribute to the tension, so why is it even necessary? Can you tell I lean more toward Catherine Cookson than Barbara Cartland?

But it’s all part of the fantasy–escapism, some people would say. As a life-long romance reader I know that you have to suspend disbelief to some degree, but should we suspend it entirely? Maybe it all depends on one’s idea of “fantasy”. For me, the “fantasy” of romance has always been rooted in the reality; the chance that this could possibly happen, that two people could meet and fall in love. Of course attraction plays a huge part, but does it always have to be complete physical perfection? That seems so contrary to human experience. Killer abs do not form the basis for a lasting relationship. Attraction is subjective. Most people can tell you what attracted them to their partner, but it’s usually something very specific and often innocuous, like their eyes, their laugh, a nice smile, a pair of strong shoulders.

In 2013 is Christian Grey still our collective fantasy? Don’t we know by now that rich, powerful men are likely to cheat or trade up; that multi-billionaire CEOs are married to their jobs and rarely see their families; that until recently, nobles of any century never married for love?

One of the things I love most about independent publishers, self-publishing and the e-book revolution in general, is the opportunity to tell different stories, to write and read smaller, more intimate stories where characters don’t need to be defined by what sells the most. In my own writing, I try not to dwell too much on physical description—I like to provide a basic sketch (tall, short, thin, dark, fair etc.) and then let the reader’s imagination take over. My characters so far are pretty ordinary, boring even—people you or I might know. I truly believe that the mark of any good writer—no matter the genre—is  the ability to create believable, relate-able characters. They can be good looking, they can even be rich, but there has to be that hint of reality as well—at least for me. Maybe you can’t relate to their profession, or their situation, but there is something—perhaps just a thought, a hint of emotion, the way they treat their family—that makes them real to us readers. These are the characters I would like to see more of.

Excerpt: The Bodyguard’s Dilemma

Okay, I’m a bit late with this, but things have been kind of crazy at work and I haven’t felt like logging in. My new short story, The Bodyguard’s Dilemma will be released as part of Dreamspinner’s Snow on the Roof anthology on February 11, 2013. It’s about a conservative forty-something security specialist who falls for a former porn star.  Here is an excerpt from it:

****

“Jesus Christ, Logan, will you put that thing away? You’re worse than my daughter.” Don, my longtime friend and employer, slapped the two pints of Bud down on the table next to our half-eaten platter of wings and nachos. The foamy head cascaded over the top of the glass and dribbled onto the sticky, scarred surface.

With a guilty start, I slipped the phone back into its holster on my belt, embarrassed to have been caught once again checking for messages like a lovesick teenager. Desperation was not an attractive quality in a man turning forty-five in less than two hours. Why the hell wasn’t there some sort of age limit on infatuation?

“Sorry,” I said, finally loosening my tie and unbuttoning the collar of my dress shirt. “I just really thought he’d call.” I had only gotten back into town yesterday, having wrapped up a protection gig in Denver a day earlier than expected, so the fact that Tyler had not made the drive from San Diego to LA in Friday traffic for my birthday was one thing, but it was unusual not to hear from him at all. Beyond the disappointment, which I was really trying to ignore, worry had started creeping in. What if he’d been in an accident? Maybe he hadn’t paid his cell phone bill again. Or maybe he’s just found a new boyfriend and no longer has any time for an old guy like you, said the caustic voice in my head. Come to think of it, Tyler had been acting a bit strangely lately. I made a mental note to ask him about it when we met up in San Diego next weekend. “It’s just not like him. He usually texts me at least once a day.”

“I don’t fucking believe it. After all you’ve done for him, the kid forgets your birthday, breaks your heart, and you’re still worried about him. It’s Friday night. I’m sure he’s out getting laid, or high, or whatever gay porn stars do on Friday nights.”

“Former gay porn star,” I corrected. “And I believe the correct term these days is ‘model’.”

Don grunted.

“And for the record,” I continued, “he hasn’t broken my heart. We’re just… friends. No hearts involved.”

“Bullshit. I’ve raised two daughters. I’d know that mopey look anywhere.” Don raised his beer in salute. “Happy birthday, man.”

I hid behind my own sweating glass and concentrated on keeping my expression inscrutable. Don wasn’t too far off in his assessment, I acknowledged with somewhat bitter honesty. I must be slipping if he could read me so easily, or else I had become too used to pencil pusher Don and forgotten he had once been a crack investigator in his own right. When his successful private security firm took the case of infamous porn actor Tyler Hart three years ago, with me as the lead consultant, I hadn’t dreamed of ever falling for a man nearly twenty years my junior, let alone one who fucked on camera for a living. Arriving in San Diego to investigate the death threats Tyler had been receiving, and which the police weren’t taking very seriously, I had expected a high-maintenance diva, the sort of in-your-face queen I saw all too frequently the few times I hit the clubs; what I found instead was a polite, smart young man, mature beyond his years, who was struggling to find a new direction for his life. I was hooked from the start.

The attraction itself hadn’t surprised me—I had finally accepted my sexuality after the end of a fifteen-year marriage to my college sweetheart, and Tyler was undeniably gorgeous—but the strength of it had caught me off guard. I prided myself on being able to keep an objective distance from clients—it’s why I was so good at my job—but in Tyler, that mix of boy-next-door innocence and raw sexuality was an irresistible combination that overran my usual caution. No wonder he had been so successful in porn. He was every man’s fantasy.

“So….” Don had to lean across the table to be heard over the noise in the bar. The place was close to our office and packed for the start of the weekend. “Have you ever seen it?”

“What?”

“You know.” Don waggled his eyebrows lecherously. For a minute I thought he meant Tyler’s perfectly cut seven inch penis, or that amazing ass with the trademark heart tattoo on the right cheek, and a traitorous wave of heat washed over my face. That one night in Vegas, Tyler strutting around the hotel suite naked without an inch of modesty, was permanently burned into my brain. It had fueled most of my masturbatory fantasies for the past three years. “I mean he was kind of a hotshot, wasn’t he?” Don continued. “Won all sorts of awards.”

The porn, right. “Jesus, no,” I croaked. “He was a kid, Don, a kid. I can’t watch that shit.” I drained the rest of my beer, my throat suddenly dry and tight. He barely talked about it now, but the contents of Tyler’s thick file were still etched into my memory. Sixteen-years old and a runaway, Tyler had been tempted into porn by a much older boyfriend, essentially traded to some scumbag producer for a few grams of coke, and though he refused to identify himself as a victim, it still filled me with fury to think of grown men taking advantage of a naive teenager like that. I had never watched any of his videos, but I’d seen pictures of Tyler at that age; small and scrawny, he’d still looked like a baby to me. The thought of actually seeing that innocence corrupted made me either want to throw up or kill someone.

“Too bad.” Don shrugged his beefy shoulders. “I just wondered if he was worth all the hype. Another round?”

“Hell, yeah.” I didn’t often lose control, but tonight seemed like a good night to forget about my usual three drink limit, and if Don was paying, then I was definitely in. He gave me a sympathetic thump on the shoulder with a meaty paw before squeezing his bulk out of the booth and heading to the bar. The lump in my throat got bigger. Thank God for Don. If not for him I’d be spending my birthday alone… again. At least this time I was back in “HelLA”, as Tyler called it, and not on the road raiding the minibar in a lonely hotel room. I watched Don bully his way up to the bartender and smiled. Despite his gruff exterior, the man was all bark and no bite. We’d known each other for the better part of two decades; Don had been there through the shooting that left me deskbound, the depression that followed, and the drinking. When I finally quit the LAPD and got sober, he just handed me a case file and a plane ticket to New York—I’d been working for him ever since. One week I could be on the east coast interviewing employees and conducting routine background checks, and the next I would be clear across the country, providing armed protection to some rich bigwig. I loved it, and Don, the bastard, knew it.

The job saved me; it gave me something to believe in again, and God knows it had been a welcome distraction as I tried to rebuild my life. Even after Deb and I finally decided to call it quits, and I quietly came out of the closet, Don barely blinked, although for Christmas that year he gave me a huge dildo with a card that read “Practice makes perfect”. He was my rock. My fat, bald-headed, foulmouthed rock.

As soon as Don was out of sight, swallowed by the crowd around the bar, I pulled out my BlackBerry, even though it hadn’t so much as vibrated. I couldn’t help it. But there was nothing. My thumb hovered over Tyler’s number. Should I call him? Maybe just send him a quick text? I could almost hear Don’s voice in my head telling me to “man up,” so I ditched that idea and scrolled through some recent photos instead. The kid loved to take pictures—of himself mostly, but also of me when he could catch me off guard, or of the pet gecko he’d recently bought. Some, carefully selected, he Tweeted for his small following of loyal fans; most he sent directly to me. My e-mail was cluttered with them, but I could never bring myself to delete any. I stopped at one of my new favorites. Tyler’s still-boyish face smiled back at me, baseball cap askew, and, as always, I got that little kick in my stomach. I’d taken him to the Dodgers game two weeks ago during one of the rare breaks I had at home, and he looked so much more relaxed and happy than when I first met him three years ago. I liked to think I had played a small role in that.

“I take it the twink still hasn’t called,” Don said drily, placing a fresh draft and a shot of vodka in front of me.

Busted, I put the phone away. “I’m impressed. You’ve been reading the queer dictionary again, Don. Hey, why am I the only one drinking?”

“’Cause you’re the birthday boy. And I’m driving.”

I slammed back the shot, grimacing as it burned down my esophagus. Don tore off a corner of the paper coaster, using it to pick leftover chicken wings from his teeth as he gave me that look, the one people who’ve known you a long time feel they have the right to give you.

“Okay, what?”

“Just never thought I’d see the day—hard-ass Logan Chase, mooning over some pretty, young hustler.”

“I am not mooning. And who even says that anymore?”

“I’m old, man, sue me. You are too.”

“Yeah, thanks for the reminder.”

“Just telling you how it is.” Don belched, long and low.

“Nice. And he’s not a hustler.”

“Oh yeah? How many times have you covered his rent? You paid for his mom’s plane ticket—”

“Because it was my idea to see if he could patch things up with her. And he’s paid me back for everything. Trust me—if he was out to scam me, he could have done it a long time ago.” I scrubbed a hand over my bristly head, still unused to the texture of the military style cut. I’d recently discovered that if I kept my hair ruthlessly short, the silver at the temples was less noticeable, and I wouldn’t be mistaken for Tyler’s dad again if we went out. Once was more than enough, thank you very much. I forced that embarrassing, ego-destroying moment out of my mind and tried to concentrate on the conversation. “He won’t take charity. I had to practically force him to accept the acting lessons for his birthday last year.”

“This is my fault.” Don shook his head. “I should have known when I sent my sex-starved friend to rescue some hot twink in trouble that you’d end up falling for the kid.”

“You’re good, Don, but there’s no way you could have known that.”

“You’re a born protector, Logan. That’s what makes you the best. Defender of the weak and all that shit. You love to be needed—always looking out for everyone but yourself. Of course you’d fall for him.”

I stared down into the golden bubbles in my glass, but I knew from experience I wouldn’t find the answers I sought in there. Don didn’t understand my relationship with Tyler any more than I did. We weren’t lovers. We never even flirted. But on occasion, I’d felt the pulse of something deeper between us, and I didn’t think it was all just in my head. My feelings for Tyler were complicated; equal parts lust, admiration, and affection. And yes, a powerful need to protect him, even now.

Snow on the Roof is available for pre-order from Dreamspinner Press in either print or ebook format.

Coming soon: The Bodyguard’s Dilemma

My new short story, The Bodyguard’s Dilemma will be released as part of Dreamspinner’s Snow on the Roof anthology on February 11, 2013. I will post an excerpt shortly, but in the meantime here is a quick teaser:

Logan Chase has spent his life protecting people; first as an LAPD cop, then later in private security. When a routine job safeguarding infamous porn star Tyler Hart leaves him head over heels for the much younger man, Logan’s cautious nature is tested. But the delicious twink is hardly suitable relationship material, and, on his forty-fifth birthday, Logan is faced with a choice between what his head thinks is right and what his heart really wants.

I have to confess I am pretty proud of this short little story. From a purely technical standpoint, capturing the essences of my characters in under 10,000 words was a challenge, but one which I think I met. This is what I call a ‘moment in time’ story–that is, the reader is plopped down into the action without exposition, and, like an observer, gets to form their own opinions of the characters based on what they say or do. Sure there are some gaps, some questions left hanging and the inevitable “What happens next?”, but the whole intent, for me, was to distill the story down to its pure essentials.

Snow on the Roof is available for pre-order from Dreamspinner Press in either print or ebook format.

A look back and the year ahead

Generally I don’t make resolutions, but I had one New Year’s resolution for 2012: to be a published author by the time I turned 40 (that milestone happened in November!!!). I’ve always considered myself a writer, with the half full notebooks and head full of characters to prove it, but I’d never actually completed anything or showed it to anyone outside a few creative writing courses. It was time to bite the bullet I decided back in January 2012, and where better to start than with my obsession of the last few years — M/M romance?

Much to my surprise, Dreamspinner Press picked up not one, but two of my novellas: Fourth and Long in June, and Inseparable in December. It was such a thrill to receive that first check–the amount didn’t even matter–and the first email I got from a reader brought tears to my eyes. The creative juices have been flowing ever since; so much so, that with a full time job I find it hard to get things down on paper. I also made a deal with myself that if this whole writing thing started to work out and I decided to continue with it, that I would start a blog (another thing I hadn’t done before). So here we are

My plans for this blog specifically are to talk about what I’m working on, my writing process, and just generally things that inspire me. It will probably be pretty boring to begin with, but bear with me.

So what do I have planned for 2013? My short story “The Bodyguard’s Dilemma” will be part of Dreamspinner’s Snow on the Roof anthology in Feb. 2013 (I’ll talk more about this story in an upcoming post); I’m hoping to have a sequel to Inseparable (Joe’s story this time) ready by spring; and I desperately need to buckle down and finish the historical romance I’ve been lazily working on for the past year. I’ve got a couple of other ideas in the works as well, so if time permits I may start to work on those as well.

It’s a scary thing to do…throw your thoughts and characters out there and hope people like them. I get anxious every time I hit the Send button. So thank you to anyone who has taken the time to read and/ or review me. Wishing you all the best for 2013.