Anna Butler's Blog, page 42

All the Ls: Love, Loss, Laughter, Lust… and Lily

I’m delighted to welcome author Lily Blunt to the blog today. Lily’s an amazingly creative person, who hasn’t only been writing away busily and publishing in anthologies, one of which is being published tomorrow by Wayward Ink Press, but has also been making the promotional videos for Wayward Ink to support the anthologies’ release. I am stunned by how talented and skilled she is, and so glad she agreed to come along to tell us about the anthology, her story and how you can join the launch party tomorrow and win stunning prizes.

Check out that video.  I know whose advice I’m going to be asking as Shield gets published…

Over to you, Lily!

 

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Many thanks for inviting me to write a post for your blog, Anna.

My short story, Service with a Smile, will appear in the Lust section of Wayward Ink‘s second anthology, Love, Loss, Laughter and Lust due to be released TOMORROW, Friday June 20th.

Ty Roderick and Asher Hawk from Cockyboys provided the initial inspiration for the story. At the time of writing the original story they hadn’t filmed a video together and this story arose out of my expectations for their future scene. Coincidentally, soon after I wrote my story, Helix Studios released a video featuring Jacob Dixon and Matthew Keading in a changing room in a sportswear shop. Several months later, after receiving a request to summit a story to one of Wayward Ink’s anthologies, I dusted the story down and added more to it, changing the names of the characters to Terry and Ash.

I was thrilled to be invited by Lily Velden from Wayward Ink Publishing to submit a story to one of their first publications and also delighted later to be requested to make the trailer videos for each of them. I wish Lily and Andrew Gordon all the best with their new venture. It must be a nerve-wracking experience in a rapidly growing market. The Bollocks! anthology has been a runaway success, reaching the number 1 slot on Amazon UK gay anthologies not once but twice in the week after its release.

 

Excerpt from ‘Service with a Smile’

Terry caught sight of his reflection in the shop window and smoothed down his wind-blown hair. He glanced up and down,slowly checking over his appearance. A smile grazed his mouth. Pleased he’d chosen a tight-fitting white T-shirt to exhibit his firm torso, his dark eyes shifted to the clothing displayed on the other side of the glass. A pale blue shirt instantly caught his eye, as did a cream-colored shirt with a dusky paisley print. He knew both would suit his tanned complexion.

Terry could certainly do with a new shirt for the party later that evening, but that wasn’t the reason he was standing in front of the designer boutique. A flutter of excitement rippled through his belly and down to his groin, making his cock throb in anticipation. It wasn’t the clothing that had this effect upon him, but the thought of a particular sales assistant inside the shop.

It was late on Saturday afternoon, and the shop would be closing within the next half hour. He didn’t have much time to make his move. Terry hoped he’d timed his entrance just right. Peering beyond the male mannequins poised in the window, he searched out his intended target.

Terry noticed two men about to leave so he moved toward the door.  As it opened, an old-fashioned bell jangled overhead and the two men left the premises. They offered him a genuine smile. One of them winked at Terry, who returned the gesture. Terry watched them head down the street, walking hand in hand, for a few seconds before crossing over the threshold. A smile spread across his handsome face because he now knew only one member of the staff remained to man the shop until it closed at half past five. The one guy he wanted the chance to be alone with. The one guy he lusted after. Ash.

ANTHOLOGY ‘BLURB’

We’ve all loved. We’ve all laughed.

Sadly, we’ve also probably all known loss in one form or another.

And, yes, we at Wayward Ink are sure we’ve all experienced lust!

In Love, Loss, Laughter & Lust, you’ll experience one or more of the “L”s as we take you on a roller coaster of emotions.

Whether you like to sigh over the sweet, cry for the broken-hearted, enjoy a good laugh, or get a little hot and bothered; there’s something for everyone in this collection.

Stories include:

LOVE

His Prince Wore Pink Stilettos by Julie Lynn Hayes
Invisible by Taylin Clavelli

LOSS

Hearts by Anyta Sunday
A Closed Door by Andrew Q. Gordon
Sleepwalking by Taylin Clavelli

LAUGHTER

Life According to Buddy by Lily Velden

LUST

Service with a Smile by Lily G. Blunt
Hunter or Hunted? by Lily Velden

 

 

Check out the book trailer I made for the anthology:

 

PARTY PARTY PARTY!!!!
And to celebrate the release on 20th June, you’re invited to join the release day party. It will run for 24 hours to allow all the authors in the anthology a chance to spend time chatting with readers and fans.  I will be there on Friday evening UK time. There will be giveaways throughout the day, so stop by and join in the festivities.

Click here to join the party

 

And finally, pre-order Love, Loss, Laughter and Lust from Wayward Ink Publishing

Whose Is That Throbbing Member? – Writing His & His Sex Scenes

If there’s one thing I think Dreamspinner does well, it’s their anthologies (and not just because I’ve had a couple of short stories published that way). The anthologies show the range and styles of a dozen different writers, each giving their own slant on the anthology’s theme, and through them I’ve made many a delighted discovery and put someone on my ‘must read more’ list.

Today I am thrilled to host fellow writer Megan Reddaway, who is most definitely on that list after I read her contribution to Dreamspinner’s latest anthology, Not Quite Shakespeare.  Megan’s story, Wrong Number, is laugh out loud funny, with a wry and self-aware narrator, and is written in first person PoV. That intrigues me a lot, since how *do* you write sex scenes in first person and not have the character giving away all his most intimate secrets?!

Here’s Megan to talk to us about it, and as a treat she’s given us an excerpt to whet our appetites for more.  Welcome, Megan, and over to you!

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Whose Is That Throbbing Member? – Writing His & His Sex Scenes

Megan Reddaway

Anna’s invited me here to talk about my story ‘Wrong Number’ in the Dreamspinner anthology ‘Not Quite Shakespeare’, released earlier this month. ‘Wrong Number’ is a M/M rom-com with a main character, Connor, who messes up big time when he selects the wrong name from the contacts on his phone and says things to his boss, Gary Bayes, that he thought he was saying to his best friend.

‘Wrong Number’ is written in the first person, with Connor telling the story from his own point of view. As Anna said, that can be interesting or even problematic, especially when the couple end up in bed. How does the writer set the tone of a first person sex scene so it’s intimate, without over-sharing?

In one way, writing in the first person is easier: you don’t have the pronoun tangles that can make M/M (and F/F) stories sound so clunky. This can be a huge bonus in a sex scene where it’s not always obvious who is doing what to whom. For example, take these sentences from ‘Wrong Number’:

“Then his tongue slipped out of my hole, and his hard wet cock pulled out of my mouth. He reached across and grabbed something from beside the bed – a condom, lube. I started to turn over, but he pressed my shoulder down. He wanted me on my back…”

If I’d written that in the third person, I hate to think how many times I’d have had to repeat their names to make it clear whose body parts were whose. Artful sentence structure can sometimes be a solution, but readers don’t like having to read things two or three times to figure out the grammar. Nor do they like impersonal epithets (‘the blond’, ‘the other guy’, etc), which distance them from the characters.

In the first person, we can use ‘I’ and ‘he’ and it’s all so much simpler … unless of course we’ve decided to introduce our characters to the joys of a threesome or ménage, when we’ll be back to tearing out our hair and envying those traditional het romance writers who have one ‘he’ and one ‘she’ and no pronoun issues at all.

We also have the advantage of the character’s voice, to ground us. If I keep myself firmly in my main character’s head, I’m not so likely to fall too far into either of the extremities that await the unwary sex scene writer: euphemisms so vague that the reader has no idea what’s going on, or so much anatomical detail that it sounds like a medical procedure.

But a story in the first person is always biased, and this can be a danger, especially for romance writers. The reader of a romance wants to get close to both characters, not just one, and this is more difficult to achieve when it’s all from one guy’s point of view. We’re so much in the head and heart of one character, his partner can seem distant.

I think first person sex scenes work best if they focus on the other guy and what he’s doing. We may be looking through the eyes of character A, but what we’re looking at is character B. That way, the main character doesn’t seem self-obsessed (another danger with first person narratives) and the reader has a chance to get close to the second character. We can move into the relationship between the two of them, by having the main character focus on his partner much more intensely than when they were dressed and walking around.

Sex changes a relationship – especially the first time for a new couple. It’s a big deal. As writers, we have the opportunity to deepen the emotional connection between the couple through what they say and do during sex. It’s a challenge, but it’s also a lot of fun!

 

Megan Reddaway lives in England and has been writing irregularly since she was a child. She’s had many jobs including secretary, driver, flower-seller and waitress, and now makes a precarious living from freelance non-fiction writing. Catch up with Megan at her website: http://meganreddaway.com or on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/megan.reddaway.9

Not Quite Shakespeare is available from Dreamspinner Press at http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=5104

 

Excerpt from ‘Wrong Number’

I’d a few drinks, to be honest. I’d had a few drinks, and I got home, and the cramped little studio flat in Croydon where I lived looked exactly the same as when I went out. Of course that was a good thing, really, because if the place looked a lot different, it could only be due to a burglary, flood, fire, unannounced landlord visit, or similar disaster. But there’s something so depressing about coming home and finding everything the same. Especially when you’re simply longing for your flat to contain another living creature such as a boyfriend, or at least a cat.

My landlord didn’t allow cats, or I’d have had one. There was no clause forbidding boyfriends, but unfortunately you can’t just grab the cutest-looking stray man from the nearest gay bar, take him home, feed him twice a day, and expect him to love you for it. All I had was pictures, of both cats and men. It wasn’t the same.

So I decided to call my best friend, Gavin. I knew he’d be awake and alone, because I’d only said goodbye to him ten minutes ago outside East Croydon station. I sat on the edge of my bed and opened the address book on my phone.

“I need to get fucked,” I complained as soon as the call was answered. “I want to feel cock plunging into me. I want to worship a big warm dick. I want to lick it all over and get it all wet and rock hard then take it in my arse, take it in deep and get fucked so hard I’m screaming!”

Then what was supposed to happen was that Gavin would be like, “Oh petal, I know, isn’t it awful to have nothing but silicone to play with at the end of the night, where have all the gorgeous hunks gone?”

Instead there was a short silence, and a dry voice that was definitely not Gavin’s said, “Well, Connor, this is unexpected.”

For a moment I was paralysed. Then I pulled the phone away from my ear and stared at it. Where it should have said “Gavin,” it said “Gary Bayes.”

“Oh my God,” I breathed.

Friday the Thirteenth – Lucky as *hell*!

Most people are superstitious about Friday 13th. Me, not so much, but then yesterday was such a day of real good luck that I’d be a fool to go looking for trouble. From now on, I shall embrace Fridays 13th with fervour and passion.

To start with, it was a rare day out for D and I. Since my mother came to live with us, our time together has been less easy to arrange but since she’s at my sister’s until tomorrow, D and I ran away from home for the day. It was nice. It was nice just to be alone together (not counting Molly the dog there, of course) and wander around talking when we wanted and being silent when we wanted, and being selfish enough to revel in it just being us two and, for a few hours, not having to worry about anyone or anything else.

We decided to go to Helmswell for the day. We go once a year to wander around the biggest antiques centre in the country. Oh, I wasn’t buying yesterday. Just wandering. You have that fact fixed in your noggin? Because really, I was not buying.

Helmswell is up in Lincolnshire, and is an old WW2 airbase. Lincolnshire, being flat, is peppered with airbases. En route, we passed RAF Scampton, where the Red Arrows are based. They’re the best aerobatic display team in the world, and they decided to have a practice just as we drove past. Free airshow, people! D was thrilled. He’s always had a thing about aeroplanes – his father was the official film maker/photographer for Ferranti’s, the defence contractors, and throughout D’s childhood flew in, filmed and photographed lots of aircraft. That passion for planes rubbed off on D. He was a very happy man as we watched them. Very happy. And the Lord knows, they are spectacular.

Now then, you remember I wasn’t buying anything, right? You had that fact fixed and immutable? Except I ran across this Carltonware “Tea for Two” set. I collect Carltonware embossed floral china (see a couple of posts down for the full collection). This one is buttercup. Not my favourite pattern, but pretty and colourful. “I do not think it is very pretty, but I thought I might as well buy it as not.” – bonus points for identifying the quote! It was *sinfully* cheap. Really, really cheap. About a third of what I would have expected. Yup. That cheap. Had to buy the set, right? Stupid not to.

And then came the best bit.

We got home, started supper cooking and I hauled out the iPad to check my emails. The day before I’d sent a query letter and a sample of the first Shield novel to a publisher. They replied while I was out gawking at the Red Arrows and buying china.

They want Shield. The whole series of five books.

They. Want. Shield.

I had reconciled myself to not finding a home for it. It’s not romance and that can be hard to sell, and I was sure I’d end up self-publishing it. And, of course, every time I go back and reread it, I tut at the errors and think its flat and boring and derivative and no wonder people don’t want to buy it. It sows seeds of doubt, believe me, when you’re looking for a home for your books.

But the publisher came back very fast and was very complimentary in the email. They liked it. They want it. They want to publish the whole series.

I am still grinning and smirking and all round floating on air.

The luck ran out when it came to the Eurolottery, sadly, but still. I love Friday 13th. Luckiest day in the almanac.

They. Want. Shield.

Grins at you all very happily.

UK LGBT Writers Meet

It is a *huge* mistake to catch a chest infection (thanks, Mum!) the week before you go off to Bristol to enjoy a weekend in the company of fellow writers and readers of LGBT fiction. Huge. It means that you hack and cough your way through the day and, come the evening’s entertainment, you manage to last out the drag queen (gosh, what a figure and a fabulous frock) but don’t make it through dessert and the Songbirds. Which, you know, sucks balls the size of planets. Not least because dessert was chocolate torte.

Ill health and mad coughing aside, it was a really great two days.  I met up with old friend and fellow writer Sarah Granger, whom I hadn’t seen for far too many years and was horrified delighted to see that she has worn a great deal better than I have. And I was also delighted to meet writer Megan Reddaway who has a deliciously funny story, Wrong Number, in the new Dreamspinner Not Quite Shakespeare anthology. I’m hoping to entice Megan here to tell us a little bit about it.  Watch this space.  No photos of the three of us, sadly, because we’re all introverted geeks and clutched our pearls – or rather, our white ‘no photographs please!’ lanyards – every time a camera hove into view.

I spent a half-hour on the first morning helping to fill the swagbags. There was a really inventive range of things on offer from my fellow authors. I only brought pens. Admittedly, we’re talking nicely swish US pens that you can’t get over here, but I was blown away by the stuff other people came up with. Tiny little tubes of Love Hearts were popular (with me too! I’d forgotten how sweet they were), but the palm for inventive sweets goes to Clare London for the slices from a stick of rock with her name running through it. That was neat. As for the less gastronomic offerings,  I particularly liked the rainbow lei, the tiny bottle of bubbles with a blower (remember those?!) and I’m now set up with pens for the next year and with little organza favour bags which will make great lavender sachets for my undies drawer. A great haul, as you can see – points upward to photograph where it’s all piled in artful confusion – and I’m still sorting over it and cooing over the pretties now I have them at home. It has me thinking very hard about swag for next year, when I hope to have Gilded Scarab to promote. I’ve been looking hard for about 150 faience scarabs at a price that won’t break the bank. Although given the way that the LGBT weekend keeps growing in numbers, I’d better think about 200 scarabs. And one golden one for a speshul prize.

(Short pause while I hunted out the little bottle of bubble mixture and blew bubbles all over my computer monitor and the dog. The monitor was indifferent. Molly snorted and tried to eat her bubbles. But then… dog. They try to eat everything.)

There was a full programme of panels and discussions, starting with, well, the starting words for a range of novels, read by their authors. The differences in styles, moods and approaches were fun but the basic message was very clear. Grab the reader in the first 150 words.

I wasn’t involved, of course, but here’s the opening words of Gilded Scarab – at least in the first draft. It needs tightening up, of course: Whenever someone asks me how I came to own the finest coffeehouse in London—and they do, since far too many people mistake their curiosity for a right to know everyone else’s business—they get my most charming smile. I know it’s charming because I practice it every morning in my shaving mirror. It’s devastating. And even more effective without the shaving soap.

Grins. Dear Rafe.

One brilliant panel was the one on marketing, because it made me go all  about this website. Points waaaayyyy up there to the pretty header. Does that say science fiction writer to you? Uh-huh. Me neither. Time to do some rethinking about that. But the really most usefullest panel of all was on contracts. I am hoping they write that one up, because KJ Charles, who chaired it, is shit hot on on knowing what to look out for and ask for. And rather acidly funny, too.

I didn’t have anything for the book fair, although I hope to have both Shield and Scarab for next year.The darling Sarah Granger did, though, and offered to give space to my table banner for FlashWired. She was the one who told me about the banners and she had one done for her own wonderful Minor Inconvenience. Don’t they look smart?

Really a great weekend and I’m only cross that I felt that I’d been hit by a bus throughout it. Next year I’ll definitely be doing some prophylactic self-medicating to keep the bugs at bay. A few stiff cocktails should do it.

 

And we’re off…

I’ve had a couple of weeks off from writing. I needed a break after finishing Gilded Scarab before I start the hard edit of it to kick it into shape. So I gave the house a spring clean instead – which was folly of the worst kind. Carltonware is lovely stuff, my pretties, but not when you have over 200 pieces of it crowded onto shelves in your living room that hadn’t been dusted since sometime prior to Noah’s Flood. I have spent a week clambering up and down the stepladder and have hand washed every single one of those darn pots. It all gleams and glimmers now it’s clean and dust free but my heart is sinking with the knowledge that I’ll have to do it all again in a few months and at least *try* to keep things clean in the interim. Perhaps I can put a weekly cleaner down as a business expense? After all, if I’m cleaning china, I ain’t writing. Legit, do you think? Worth thinking about, anyway.

The edit of Gilded Scarab will start in a couple of weeks when my wonderful betas and crit group have digested the whole thing and sent me back their comments. I don’t think it’s in bad shape right now, but it will benefit from being tightened up and sharpened.  While I wait for their “Ach, Anna, what were you thinking here?” and “Good lord, girl, you can’t have him doing *that*!”, I’ve been going over the first rough draft of the third Shield story, and transferring it to Scrivener to start work on it. I’ve chunked it up into rough chapters and tomorrow, when I’ve done some beta-ing for a fandom friend – I’m going to start on it.

Does it matter, do you think, that the chapters are uneven lengths? Anything from 6 pages to 14. Would it annoy you as a reader?  What do you do when the breaks in action/ PoV/ dialogue say “Here. Stop the chapter here.” when really it means that this chapter is going to be ten pages long and the one before it, where Flynn was angsting all over the space ship (grins) was only 5 and a half? Do you listen to the story and break it there or do you shoehorn material in to try and keep the chapters of an even length. Do tell me.

 

 

Anyhow, while you think about your answer, here’s a picture of Matt Bomer, who is the perfect Bennet.

You know, personally I don’t care how long the chapter is as long as he’s in it.

Blog Hops are the greatest fun

Thank you, everyone who participated in the blog hop. I had a great time reading the other participants’ blogs and talking to those of you who commented here. I hope you all enjoyed it and found it touching/amusing/ thoughtful/challenging/instructive…

I promised a giveaway of FlashWired to  one commentator, and my lovely husband has just drawn a name from the little brown carrier bag that held yesterday’s treat from the coffeeshop… Rissa, I’ll be in touch today by email.

Thank you everyone!  It was lovely meeting you all.

One for all, and all… well you know the rest

I can’t say I ever really got into the Three Musketeers except for hey! swords and hats with cool feathers.  But today’s the sort of day where their motto is on my mind a lot.  Today is International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia, and I’m proud to take part in the blog-hop to support it.

When I was growing up, I had my eyes opened by radical feminists. People like Germaine Greer taught us to look at society and its expectations as (sometimes subtle, often overt, always deeply entrenched) ploys to keep women as second class citizens, as not good enough to be men and have a man’s privileges. They showed us that misogyny was the warp and weft of our society. I thought that here was someone, a small group of someones, who had found a voice for us, who spoke for us with wit and biting, incisive intelligence.

I grew up in an exciting time, socially. Women had refused to go back into their little (and belittled) roles after the war, education was evening up, the Pill meant that a woman’s sexuality didn’t have to be suppressed for fear of pregnancy, we had pay equality locked into legislation. Sure it’s not perfect—there are still glass ceilings, women are still judged on appearance, there are still huge gaps in career achievements and lifetime earnings—but we really are light years ahead of our mothers’ experience.

I *owe* those women who fought and argued and struggled to lift all of us up in their wake. I truly owe them.

So, imagine my reaction when so many those feminist icons of my early adulthood turned out to be raging transphobes. Rarely homophobic, oddly (at least, not openly) but definitely transphobic. They treated trans men and women as some sort of subversive attempt to destroy feminism. This is Greer, on male to female transgender:

“Nowadays we are all likely to meet people who think they are women, have women’s names, and feminine clothes and lots of eyeshadow, who seem to us to be some kind of ghastly parody, though it isn’t polite to say so. We pretend that all the people passing for female really are. Other delusions may be challenged, but not a man’s delusion that he is female.”

Dunno about you, but that makes me feel pretty sick. When she writes ‘us’ and ‘we’, she sure as hell isn’t speaking for me. She’s stopped speaking for me. Her voice isn’t my voice. That biting incisive intelligence is conspicuous by its absence. Bitter hate has taken its place.

No. Not my voice.

This is my voice.

The bottom line, for me, in all our struggles for equality—for women, for gay people, for trans people, for the undecided, for the asexual, for the queer, for black, for white, for every colour in between, for the able-bodied and those who aren’t, for every darn person who breathes on this endangered planet of ours—is simply this:

It’s about all of us.

You can’t pick and choose. No really, you can’t. It’s not about rights, equality and liberation just for one bit of our society but about ALL our rights. If misogyny is in the warp and weft, the threads are homophobia, transphobia, racism, ableism. If, as a cis woman, I expect all  civil, societal and human rights and responsibilities, then that same principle applies to everyone.

And here’s another true thing:

It’s not a competition.

There isn’t a finite amount of “equality” out there in the world. If I win equality of pay, for example, it doesn’t mean I’ve used up the entire pot so there’s nothing left over when it comes to dishing out access to services for people with disabilities. My right to feel safe in our streets doesn’t mean that I’ve used up all the “feeling safe” bit of the societal pot so that there’s nothing left over for the transgendered and all I can do is shrug and say “Sorry. Too bad. Feminists needed it most.” It it sure as hell isn’t a case of my suffering and my experience is worse than yours, buster, so stop that damned whining.

The freedom/equality/liberation pot is infinite. So should the struggle be.

I’ve said this once before on this blog, but I’ll say it again. If the rights of one group are threatened and denied, then all our rights are at risk of being threatened and denied. The people who would deny rights to gay people and the transgendered? They don’t like women much either and they’re the ones leading the fight against hard-won reproductive freedoms by denying birth control and restricting abortions. The fight ain’t over yet, folks.

We’re all in this together. People matter, not their sexual orientation or their gender, their colour or race or their physical or mental abilities. Just their humanity matters. Fighting for one bit is useless. Fight for all. Be a Musketeer.

So, Stephanie, I never did tell you this when we worked together because it was never an issue and to even mention it would make it one, but it never bothered me at all that you used the ladies loo even though you hadn’t yet had your final operation. Not a problem. You identified as female. You are female. Still thriving, I hope, and I’m sorry we lost touch as we moved on to different jobs.

And Germaine? I owe you so much for helping me understand how I’ve been shaped by society, and for paving the way for the advances women have made, but I gotta tell you something. This equality shtick you’ve been espousing all these years? You’re doing it all wrong.

Ask Stephanie.

132 writers and bloggers have joined the blog hop and you can find a list of them and links to their blogs by clicking THIS LINK 

Enjoy the blog hop. There are lots of cool prizes on offer from the participants and you’ll get to read a myriad of views and experiences that will, I promise, enrich your day.

Comments left here on this post will enter you in a giveaway for my novella, FlashWired. Leave your email address in your comment if you’d like to enter the giveaway. When the blog hop ends on May 24, I’ll stick a pin in the list of names to choose one, and send you the ebook.

Have a great day. All for one, remember.

Hitting a century

I’m not really a cricket fan, you understand, but there really isn’t anything else to call this blog post. My hundredth. And it couldn’t have timed itself better if I’d planned it.

I just typed “The End”.

My lovely absorbing amazing story about Rafe Lancaster’s passion for coffee and for Ned Winter has just come to an end. In the last week I’ve been running across rooftops and fossicking about ventilation shafts in the sub-sub-basement of the Britannic Imperium museum, and it just ended with a very sweet scene in which the Lancaster Luck finally gets its arse into gear and brings my boys together in Rafe’s bedroom.  I am delighted, energised, tired and oddly sad to have finished it. How can we manage to be so many conflicting emotions about writing?  I dunno.

Of course, when I say ‘finished’, what I mean is that I’ve done the first draft.  Now my lovely Crit group and my American betas will crawl all over it and tell me where I have to cut and prune and generally be quite savage to get the text tight and right and hopefully down a few thousand words—because my little 18k novella that I started with has grown somewhat in the telling.

But oh, it’s done. It’s done.

Rejoice and mourn with me, because ten minutes ago, I just typed “The End”.  The saddest and gladdest words in the writer’s lexicon.

 

A Minor Inconvenience – but a major triumph!

Good friend and fellow writer Sarah Granger continues her virtual book tour with the wonderful A Minor Inconvenience, a scintillating firecracker of a Regency romance that involves breeches. And more to the point, that involves the lack of breeches. That is definitely something to be commended.

Duty, honor, propriety…all fall in the face of love.

Captain Hugh Fanshawe returned from the Peninsular War with a leg that no longer works properly, thanks to a French musket ball. Now his fight against Napoleon is reduced to quiet, lonely days compiling paperwork at Horse Guards headquarters.

His evenings are spent dutifully escorting his mother and sister to stifling social engagements, where his lameness renders him an object of pity and distaste. But his orderly, restricted life is thrown into sudden disarray with the arrival of Colonel Theo Lindsay…

A Minor Inconvenience is that rare bird: an historical romance where the worldbuilding and the language are both pitch perfect; the wit is bright and the heroes charming. By the end of page one, you are in London with the hero, a London thrumming with all the excitement of the Napoleonic War. Not to mention the Season, Almacks, balls and routs. Oh, and those breeches. And the lack thereof.

When I reviewed the book on Goodreads, I said: “Sarah Granger has the style and language down pat, and a deft hand with plot and characters, crafting a story with light wit and sparkle on the surface and deep emotion underneath… I used to work right beside Horse Guards, by the way, in the Old Admiralty building. Sadly, I have to say there was a distressing lack of breeches, but not a lack of breeches in a *good* way, if you see what I mean. When this book loses its breeches, it’s in a very good way. The writing is beautiful, some of the wry, clever speeches laugh-out-loud funny, and throughout the whole there is such a sense of time and place that you forget that this mundane world of ours isn’t one of breeches and Almacks, Vauxhall gardens and opera dancers.”

VISIT the book tour page to win prizes, including a free copy of Sarah’s previous book, The Unforgiving Minute which is set in the world of Wimbledon and the US Open. No breeches, but shorty shorts and knees…

READ ON for an exclusive extract to whet your appetite for those items of male apparel upon which I appear to be fixated: Some hours later, Hugh was established comfortably in Theo’s sitting room, reading The Times. They had arisen rather late and enjoyed a relaxed breakfast before perusing the day’s newspapers, which had been laid out awaiting them. Apparently Theo took a copy of each of the newspapers instead of reading just one, as Hugh was wont to do. Hugh was clad in what he knew Murray would bewail as the ruins of his shirt, pantaloons and stockings from the previous night, as well as one of Theo’s dressing gowns, a magnificent creation of frogged gold-and-crimson brocaded silk. Theo, resplendent in a gown of quilted blue satin, was deep in another newspaper.

“For God’s sake!”

Hugh looked up from The Times to see Theo tossing his copy of The Daily Chronicle aside. He sounded, and looked, extremely irritated. “What’s wrong?”

“Damned newspapers and damned leaks. Would you believe somebody has supplied to that wretched publication a copy of one of Wellington’s circulars? I grant he is an ill-tempered martinet at times, but they twist things to make him sound a prating fool into the bargain.”

Perhaps it was as well Theo was not in London often, for it was depressingly common to read that sort of thing in the newspaper. People didn’t hesitate to use military matters for political gain, regardless of whether or not they had any comprehension of those matters.

“There’s no way of tracing the leak?” Hugh asked, though he thought he already knew the answer.

“None. The document was only for the commanding officers, but of course copies will have reached the regimental files. You know as well as I the number of people who have access to those.”

Hugh did indeed.

“Next we see, they will be publishing the revised route of the Monmouth Light reinforcements,” Theo grumbled.

“No. Even the newspapers would not risk military defeat for political gain.”

Theo snorted. “Some days I can’t decide whether such innocence in you is charming or dangerous,” he said, sounding ill-tempered still. He stood up suddenly, picked up the newspaper and cast it onto the fire. “That’s the best place for it. Now, what shall we do today, Captain Fanshawe? Taylor tells me it is temperate enough to make a ride in the Park a pleasure rather than a madcap excursion.”

“I no longer ride,” Hugh confessed awkwardly.

Theo stared at him. “Why? Your knee bends, after a fashion, and your thigh grips—extremely well, if my memory is to be trusted—and I know for a fact there is absolutely nothing wrong with your seat.”

Hugh blushed at the images conjured by Theo’s words even as he tried to wrest his mind back to the matter in hand. “I daresay I could manage, but I can’t see how to mount.”

“We shall have to resolve that situation,” Theo declared. “You can’t be in London in the Season and not make your appearance in the Park. More importantly, you can’t desert me to make my appearance there alone and be besieged by matchmaking harpies. Come along, Hugh—your heroism is required.”

And before Hugh knew entirely what he was doing, he found himself fully dressed in last night’s clothes and sent on his way to his lodgings in Ryder Street so he might shave and change into clothes suitable for riding before meeting Theo at the mews.

 

You know, I’m not going to count the number of times I’ve used the word ‘breeches’ in this post. I think the total might appal even me.

The Writer’s Guide to Page Numbering

I’m writing a book. I’ve got the page numbers done.

Steven Wright

You have to be brave to venture onto Facebook these days. I got tagged for a rolling meme blog post by my friend and fellow writer Sarah Madison.The idea is that I answer four questions about my writing and tag three more fellow writers—well, in my case, two—who pass on the torch in their turn.

Sarah is the author of the wonderful, evocative, powerful Boys of Summer which has attracted rave reviews over the last year – and quite rightly, too! And I’ve been so lucky to help with the beta-ing process for Walk A Mile, the first of two planned sequels to her book Unspeakable Words, in which telepathy meets the FBI meets the hunt for a serial killer. The estimated release date is sometime in Sept-Oct 2014, so put that on your wish list for Christmas. You’ll love it.

This blog post is her fault.

 

What am I working on?

I have two pots on the boil at the moment.

(i) Taking Shield

The first two books of the Taking Shield series (Gyrfalcon and Heart Scarab) are out in the big bad world looking for someone willing to take them on. I’ve just started revising the rough draft of book 3, working title Makepeace (although that may become The Chains of Their Sins). The final two books Day of Wrath and The Field of Reeds will follow in the next 18 months or so.

The Shield series is a single story arc, rather than five books that are about the same characters, which means it will have to be read in sequence for it to make sense. I can only hope that people will want to stick with it all the way! In a universe where an alternate Earth has been dead and gone for more than 7000 years, Albion, its last colony, is fighting  in a last-ditch battle not to follow suit. Over the Taking Shield arc, Bennet (Shield Captain, warrior, strategist, archaeologist, gay) learns what humanity’s enemies—and his own people—will do to win the war and he’ll learn that sometimes he won’t be able to tell friend from foe. Set against that, his relationship with his partner Joss unravels messily under the impact on Bennet’s life of Fleet Lieutenant Flynn.

(i) The Gilded Scarab

The steampunk/coffee house/ m-m romance novel is almost at the stage where I can type “The End” and then start polishing it up and editing – I’m writing the (hopefully, thrilling!) climax this week, where our heroes battle evil-doing in the basements of the British Museum. With luck, I’ll have typed those two little three-lettered words by Friday.

Gilded Scarab has turned out to have the most charming hero, Captain Rafe Lancaster, late of Her Britannic Majesty’s Imperial Aerocorps, who is invalided out of the service after being injured during the Second Boer War, and arrives back in Londinium in late 1899 with no career, not very much money, and no idea about what he wants to do for the rest of his life. A coffee house and an aristocratic Aegyptologist appear to be the answer to that question.

In a society ruled by an elite oligarchy of powerful families (the Convocation Houses), Rafe has to navigate House politics, eke out his pennies because of chronic genteel hard-up-edness, cope with jealous lovers, learn to make good coffee and fend off assassination attempts before he can find love and happiness with Aegyptologist Ned Winter. As Rafe himself says, it’s all because of the scarab.

How does my work differ from others in my genre

Well, the issue is one of definition, because Shield in particular is an example of what you may describe as “genre slippage”, sitting somewhere between SF and m/m. The series is traditional science fiction and the main protagonist is gay. There are two main story themes, intertwining with each other: the war against the Maess and Shield Captain Bennet’s efforts to prevent the destruction of humanity, and, set against that, his relationships with Joss, Flynn and, indeed, his father.

It doesn’t fit neatly into one genre. Yes, Bennet infiltrates Maess bases and shoot his laser a lot (grins), but his relationships and how his life changes, how he changes, get equal billing. But equally, it isn’t what’s become the norm for m/m romance either: there are very few sex scenes, the relationship isn’t full and centre stage, that the Maess war and everything Bennet has to do there is on a par, in narrative terms, with the slow unfolding of his relationship with Flynn. In short, the fact Bennet and Flynn are gay is integral to the story, not the reason for it.

I like to think of Shield as a story where the hero is gay and it just isn’t a big deal. Gay Lit, maybe? A small step toward a place where we just write about people, and not worry about who they sleep with, anyway.

Why do I write what I do?

I dunno. Why is the sky blue? I think the glib, not-too-philosophically-deep answer is that these are the stories that are in me right now, and these are the people who want me to write about them.

I know there’s always some controversy about women writing m/m romance, but the people who come and whisper their tales in my ear, whose eager hands clutch at my arm and whose smiles are there when I turn to them… they’re men and they love other men. To deny them that, to force them into being people they aren’t, would be to deny them life. Bennet would not be Bennet if I made him Benita, and gave him breasts—and believe me, when I look at how un-commercial Shield is, I have considered making him feminine and mainstreaming the series. I just can’t do that.

I write what I must.

How does my writing process work?

Not smoothly enough!  I usually start with a what if… what if I took the standard ‘meet in a coffee shop’ scenario, but set it in 1900 Londinium where the British Imperium still rules half the world, airships powered by luminferous aether fill the skies, and my heroes are an ex-aeronaut with bad eyesight and a rich archaeologist?

I do a basic broad outline, a framework to hang the story on. It will be something like “Rafe crashes and his eyes are affected, get him back to Londonium. House hostel. Encounter with Edward Fairfax at upmarket molly house, Margrethe’s. A bit of sex. Finds the coffee house – meets Mr. Pearse and Sir Tane. Meets Daniel Meredith. More sex. Christmas at Stravaigor House. Eye surgeon. Garrads – sell jewels. Buy coffee house. Daniel’s reaction. Edward’s return = Ned Winter. Fight. Ned and Rafe learn to be friends. Wedding. Peter back from China? Fallout of them finding Ned is First Heir Gallowglass…” and so on. While some of this may be tentatively assigned to chapters, its really very flexible and things get moved around a lot. Basically, I know the destination, but diversions en route are perfectly fine.

Before I write a word, the story has to have a title that means something to the plot and people, and to the world I’m building. Sometimes the title shifts, but mostly I end with the one I started with. And when that’s fixed, I have to find pictures. You know how people say they’re a ‘words person’ or a ‘visuals person’? I’m both. I have to find images of people who can ‘be’ Rafe and Ned in my imagination, or will be Bennet and Flynn; and then all the world-building pictures need to be sourced and, you know, you sit there thinking “Oh thank you, God, for inventing Pinterest! Thank you!” And from those pictures come story headers, or composite pictures with quotes from the text that I just happen to find a little bit inspiring. I probably spend a good day or two at the beginning sorting out the images. I find it incredibly exciting to see a picture and squeal “Oh, it’s Bennet! That’s Bennet!” and it sends me rushing back to the writing, refreshed.

(Matt Bomer, if you’re wondering. He’s so Bennet, it’s scary.)

I research a lot and I push all that into world building notes. Shield and Scarab each have a folder full of pictures and ‘notes to self’. Every single Fleet dreadnought in Shield is named in that folder, even if there’s only ever half of them mentioned in the story. I have notes on the Convocation Houses in Gilded Scarab and which of the Minor Houses are allied to them, and again only about half are ever mentioned. The folders have pictures and character notes, timelines, glossaries on steampunk terms or coffee making, a list of campaign and bravery medals for Shield, a history of Harrads… Bottom line, I’m a geek. I like background *stuff*.

Finally I start writing. I recently switched to using Scrivener and love it. It’s perfect for focusing on a chapter at a time and stops me from the old compulsive thing I had about going right back to page one every time I opened up a document and rereading and tinkering what I’d already done, rather than forging on and slapping the words down for editing later. It’s a great programme. And it amuses me no end that one of the people in Gilded Scarab is The Scrivener.

Life and art, people. They’re the same thing.

 My lovely writing assistant

And I should acknowledge Molly, who likes to keep me company while I write. Molly in ‘her’ chair in a corner of my study:

She is a shameless exhibitionist. And contortionist.

 

Now to hand on the baton to two luminaries of the M/M romance world, not only writers I would love to emulate because I love their books,  but all round good-eggs and nice people. I really can’t wait to see their answers to the questions, to find out a little more about what makes them tick.

Kate Aaron is a successful, best-selling writer of m/m fiction, and also writes one of my favourite blogs where she is always both thoughtful and thought-provoking. Kate’s new book, The Dead Past,  is set in the austerities of post-War Britain. When Hugo Wainwright finds a body and Tommy Granger is suspected, can Hugo unmask the murderer and prove the innocence of the man he’s falling for, or are the deadly consequences of Tommy’s past about to catch up to him and separate the two men forever?

Find it and her other bestsellers at Kate’s Amazon page.

 

 

Writer Lily Blunt‘s “The Perfect Size For You” was the shout-out story in the Take It Like A Man anthology  from Torquere Press. She has another short story, Service with a Smile,  in the Love, Loss, Laughter and Lust anthology from new publishers Wayward Ink in June.

Find these and her other bitter-sweet stories at Lily’s Amazon page.

 

 

Kate and Lily will post their responses to the questions on 12 May. Tune in to see what they have to say about how they approach their craft.