S.P. Wayne's Blog: STUFF IS HAPPENING, page 22

City Wolf, preview two

Because, SPOILER ALERT: Axton eventually does make it over to Leander’s place in LA. I mean, there wouldn’t be a sequel without that. It’s not a big spoiler, you guys.

“Shameless hussy.”

While Leander was in the shower, Axton was busy brooding. He was pacing in the living room, weaving past the tables and couches, wearing grooves into the open areas, sometimes pausing to scowl out the windows.

“Did you pack a nice shirt?” Leander asked, popping just his head out from the bedroom door.

“Nicer,” Axton said, “Than, like. T shirts and flannel?”

“A little,” Leander said, “Flannel’s fine, though. Charming.”

“You’re only saying that because you wear flannel in the fall,” Axton said.

“Lumberjack chic,” Leander agreed, “Do you want to borrow a shirt?”

“No,” Axton said, giving him a dubious look.

“Not in this size, Jesus,” Leander said, gesturing at himself, “I have a few from when I was smaller.”

“I doubt it,” Axton said.

“Are you nervous about dinner?” Leander asked.

Axton went back to pacing.

Leander grinned and retreated.

Distantly, Axton heard the shower turn back on.

Thirty seconds later, Leander popped out, grabbed him by the arms, and dragged him into the shower. Axton resisted manfully for all of one breath, and then they made out wildly under hot running water.

Leander bit at his bottom lip, pulling it before letting it softly snap back. Axton dug his fingers into Leander’s shoulders, thrusting against Leander’s thigh.

“None of that,” Leander chided, as if he hadn’t been doing the same and more just a moment ago, “This is a functional shower.”

“My _dick_ has a function,” Axton said, but the trash talk was half hearted, because he blushed.

Leander bit down on Axton’s shoulder to stifle his laugh.

“That was the cutest thing,” Leander said, when he surfaced for air, “That I’ve heard in my life.”

“I should get an A for effort,” Axton said, as Leander reached beyond him and picked up a shampoo bottle, “I’m not vulgar by nature.”

“Like me, you mean?” Leander asked.

“Yeah,” Axton agreed, and then he added with a straight face, “Shameless hussy.”

Leander cooed at him in delight and started lathering up his hair. His strong fingers massaged Axton’s scalp.

“I can listen to your compliments all night, handsome,” he said.

“Are you washing my hair,” Axton asked, despairing of getting shower sex, “Is this really happening?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Leander said, “If you recall.”

“That was different,” Axton said, “I was half conscious and still thought you’d punch me if you knew I liked you.”

“I wouldn’t have,” Leander murmured, really working up a good lather. “Even if I hadn’t reciprocated.”

“So just so we’re clear,” Axton said mournfully, “Is sex out of the picture right now?”

“Uh huh,” Leander said, “We’re on a schedule.”

Axton sighed.

City Wolf, preview One

Here’s the opening. The book starts, of course, a couple of months where the first left off, at Axton’s home base in his cozy cabin in the Montana wilderness. Axton is sweetly neurotic, as ever.

Relief coursed through Axton as he looked at it. Good. Excellent. The phone rang again. Axton stared at his thumbs. How did—was it—there, yes, that was how to push the talk button.

“Werewolves don’t really do air travel,” Axton announced. This statement was greeted by silence, because he was standing in the middle of his empty cabin. Axton was rehearsing. He decided to try for a more confident tone, and braced himself to try again:

“Werewolves. We don’t really do air travel.”  He paused. Was that good? Was the phrasing okay? _Do air travel_ sounded sort of—pretentious? Spoiled. High maintenance. Something like that.  Werewolves, in the main, were certainly not high maintenance. Axton in particular thought of himself as many things, with “a cheap date” chief amongst them. He would try again.

“Werewolves,” Axton said, striving for a more conciliatory tone. “Do not enjoy traveling by plane.” No, that was too stuffy—professorial, almost. It sounded ridiculous.

“Werewolves,” Axton started, trying to be more casual, “We don’t groove with planes, you know?”

God.

Who said groove anymore? What did that even mean? Was he saying that werewolves didn’t dance on airplanes? Of course they didn’t. Jesus. Axton closed his eyes, embarrassed even in a room by himself, and sighed angrily.

There were only a few hours to go until his planned phone call with his sort-of-maybe boyfriend, and Axton had to figure out how to gracefully turn down plane tickets.

“I’m doomed,” he informed the empty room. “Completely doomed.”

++

A thousand miles away from Axton, the very human Leander Avilez glanced at a clock, adjusted his cufflinks, and went back to composing a legal brief.

++

After a lonely and reclusive decade, Axton had finally made a friend—true, that friend was human, and thus forbidden by which the rules Axton had been raised by.  But after a natural disaster or two, and blizzards both emotional and metrological, Leander had become more than a friend. Leander was his lover. Leander was both human and male and thus doubly forbidden, and beyond that, he also knew about Axton’s lycanthropy: he was forbidden three times over.

Oh, well. Axton had been exiled from werewolf society ten years prior to even meeting Leander. That was convenient. For the first time in his life, Axton had something to feel cheerful about when he considered his packless and reclusive existence.

The only other bonus to Axton’s half feral hermitude was his land, which he had much more of than he would have had he still been affiliated with a pack. He was the sole werewolf in at least a hundred solid miles of wilderness, master of his wild and untamed domain, undisputed steward of his territory that he could tend and shape as he saw fit.

Axton spent a lot of time rescuing a colony of feral cats from rising floodwaters every spring.

Hopefully Leander wouldn’t make fun of him if he found out. If he found out. If he ever came back. If he wasn’t so irritated by Axton’s fear of planes that they broke up. If they could _even_ break up, given that maybe they weren’t actually dating, because it wasn’t like they’d ever really had an official conversation about it—

“Fuck this,” Axton said, as if he had to voice it out loud for it to count. He glanced at the windows, judging the position of the sun by the angle of the sunlight filtering in. Was there time? Surely, he had some time. He shucked off his sweater. The shift was done before it hit the floor, Axton landing on his big paws with hardly a sound.

The werewolf lept out the front door.

++

By the time Axton pranced away from chasing some foxes away from his cat colony, it was dusk. The sun was setting, the sky was beautiful, and—

Axton pricked up his ears.

And his phone was ringing, _shit_.

A mad dash back to the cabin followed, and thanks to Axton’s speed and Leander’s persistence, the phone was ringing anew. It did Axton no good, though—he was so keyed up from his run that he couldn’t easily change back to human. He was going to miss his phone call! _Again_. Axton paced back and forth, impatient and agitated, then hopping around on three legs as he anxiously chewed the fur off of his back leg. He broke off every now and then to let loose with a sharp, short howl of frustration, like he was yelling at the phone to hold on. Of course, the phone stopped ringing.

Axton slumped down on the floor in despair. These things did not happen to other werewolves. They did not. He was sure of it.

Five minutes later he finally hit whatever internal switch did the trick, and now Axton was a flustered naked human on the floor. Getting up with a slight wince—he had chewed into his leg more than he’d thought—Axton went and picked up the phone. What was the number? God, he hated the fogginess that persisted for a few minutes after changing shape. Number, number, what was…

The phone rang in his hand.

Relief coursed through Axton as he looked at it. Good. Excellent. The phone rang again. Axton stared at his thumbs. How did—was it—there, yes, that was how to push the talk button.

“Hi,” he said, shyly, happily.

“I am going to buy you a wrist watch,” Leander said immediately, without preamble, “I am going to buy you four wrist watches and tie one to each of your furry legs, but not before I set alarms on them so that when it’s phone call time, all four watches beep at you while you’re busy chasing rabbits.”

Also, I should probably admit that the only reason I am here, prodding myself into doing this...

Also, I should probably admit that the only reason I am here, prodding myself into doing this (instead of hiding until completion, like the world is a T-Rex in Jurassic Park and no one will notice my lateness if I just stay quiet) is that one whole person reblogged my post about how I was going to post my preview. I am a creature motivated by social pressures, you guys.

So let’s get this out of the way: City Wolf (aka Winter Wolf 2: 2 Winter and 2 Wolfier) is...

So let’s get this out of the way: City Wolf (aka Winter Wolf 2: 2 Winter and 2 Wolfier) is going to be released a little behind schedule. How much behind schedule? Like, two months. Three, tops, if the editor I pick is slow. The trilogy will still be done before the year is out, with the third book (Running Wolf, aka Winter Wolf 3: WOLFIEST) coming out in Winter instead of Summer. 

Why? Basically, because I failed to quit my day job at what would have been a good time and got sucked into a schedule I didn’t really like, at a location I didn’t like, which I knew was going to put me behind. I refused to admit to myself that my initial assessment was correct, and so here I am, off schedule (but less broke than I planned on being). Also, I went a baller awesome trip to Spain to hang out with my Dad, who, as y’all know from his mention in my acknowledgements, is a really cool and supportive dude. SPAIN TRIP 2013: NO REGRETS. Excuse me, let’s try that again: #NOREGRETS

Also, I really need to blog here more, or just link to the more fangirly account I use more often. At first, I didn’t want to do this.

“What about PROFESSIONALISM?!” part of me gasped.

Bitch, please. No one thinks you’re professional after listening to you talk for five minutes. Clever, yes. Educated, even, yes. Emotive, sure. Sensitive, even, sometimes, maybe. Sexy? At the best of times. Funny? Eh. It’s good to have goals, babe. Professional? Not even when you’re dressed in solid black pantyhose and high heels and talking about how you almost did your taxes on time, kind of.

All the advice you can get on self pub, or going into business for yourself, or doing anything says: be concerned with branding. Make a brand.

But what the fuck does that mean? And so I, like so many others, stay silent rather than fuck that up. Because the Brand is Important, everyone tells you. The Brand is what Sells. You can hear the capital letters as they speak.

So here, after months of slowly building panic and hushed hesitance turning into inaction, is my branding:

I’m one of you. I have all kinds of deadlines and I need to sweep my floors and too many people depend on me and really most days I just want to sleep and drink coffee, regardless of whether that makes sense or not. I am constantly trying out new skin care routines and missing phone calls and forgetting people’s birthdays. I like sexy people doing sexy things, and sometimes those people are spooky people like werewolves or whatever, and I look at everyone and everything around me and I ascribe feelings. 

Because feelings are stories.

The werewolf fell in love with a human, and then it was complicated. The coffee filter yearns for the mug and never touches it. The dog wants to be friends with the cat, but the cat is uninterested. The girl down the street has a crush on the guy on the top floor of the building, but she doesn’t even know his name. The guy on the top floor has no time for crushes because he wishes to avenge the death of his mother. The girl’s best friend has a crush on her boyfriend, but he’s still in the closet so no one can know. The moon yearns for the sea. The sea yearns for the moon, but not as much as she yearns for the tide. The sea mingles with the river, and no one can stop her.

And so on, and so on.

Because feelings are stories. You see?

That’s all for now. The City Wolf teaser will be posted within the next hour.

xoxo, babes.

dorodraws:Young Avengers bookmarks for AE.It’s is...

dorodraws:

Young Avengers bookmarks for AE.

It’s is the BEST SUPERHERO TEAM IN EXISTENCE, YOU GUYS. The bruiser is a super strong LATINA in a punky jacket and short shorts, the young lovers are two cute gay dudes, and the white girl on the team is banging hilariously cocky funny space boy. I only wish America Chavez had been drawn a little more muscular here—the official art lately actually has her with these amazing big muscle thighs.

Latinas in punky jackets that go around punching stuff REPRESENT!

Let me sing you the song of my people. It involves lifting heavy things, cursing liberally, punching stuff, and wearing hoop earrings. I love you, America Chavez! I AM YOU.

dreamlandscape:Bird Woman Falls, Montana

dreamlandscape:

Bird Woman Falls, Montana

I am still alive! And writing! As proof of this, the first chapter of Winter Wolf 2 will be posted...

I am still alive! And writing! As proof of this, the first chapter of Winter Wolf 2 will be posted tomorrow. Except it’s not called Winter Wolf 2, because that would be kind of tacky in a book. It is called City Wolf.

Photo

Will Graham: made of sad dog eyes.

Will Graham: made of sad dog eyes.

I have a new love

Wait, no, Hannibal Lecter is an old love by now. And so is Mads Mikkelsen.

TWO GREAT TASTES.