Tempeste O'Riley's Blog, page 35

Designs of Desire: Now an AUDIOBOOK

Series: Desires Entwined, Book #1  

Genre: M/M Contemporary Romance

Length: Novel / 6 hours and 18 minutes

Publisher: Dreamspinner Press

Published: December 4th 2013

Artist James Bryant has forearm crutches in every color from rainbow for fun to sleek black for business. He even has a pair with more paint splatters than metal. After his family’s rejection and abuse from a man he thought loved him, James only just gets through the day by painting. He lives in constant fear that he’s not worthy of anything, let alone love.

As CEO of his company, Carrington Enterprises, Seth Burns is a take-charge kind of guy, and he is instantly smitten by the artist helping with his newest project. When he witnesses James suffer a panic attack, a protective instinct he never knew he had kicks in. He truly believes nothing is unobtainable—including James—if he’s willing to put in the time and effort.

James is shy and confused by Seth’s interest in him as a person. With Seth’s support, can he work through his fears to finally find the true love he deserves, or will someone finally land the crushing blow he won’t survive?

   

Happy Thanksgiving from all the Desires Entwined boys…

Thought I’d leave you my thanks and let you know a few of the things and people I’m thankful for everyday…

 

My family (mostly made up of friends)


My friends


My children (they have to be listed again, they’re that special to me ;c) )


The communities I’m a part of—religious, author, etc…)


My fans (you help me keep writing and working to give you more boys in love :c)  )

 

What are you thankful for today?

Guest Author Wednesdays ♥ Posy Roberts

Good morning all! Today I have a special guest for you, M/M author Posy Roberts. She’s here to share a little with us about Fusion, her newest release Fusion (one I can’t wait to dive into myself!) and to talk about the friendship between gay men and women. Please drop her a note below and take a moment to check out her wonderful stories!

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Posy Roberts lives in the land of 10,000 lakes (plus a few thousand more). But even with more shoreline than California, Florida, and Hawaii combined, Minnesota has snow—lots of it—and the six months of winter makes us “hearty folk.” The rest of the year is heat and humidity with a little bit of cool weather we call spring and autumn, which lasts about a week.

She loves a clean house, even if she can’t keep up with her daughter’s messes, and prefers foods that are enriched with meat, noodles, and cheese, or as we call it in Minnesota, hotdish. She also loves people, even though she has to spend considerable amounts of time away from them after helping to solve their interpersonal problems at her day job.

Posy is married to a wonderful man who makes sure she eats while she documents the lives of her characters. She also has a remarkable daughter who helps her come up with character names. When she’s not writing, she enjoys karaoke, hiking, and singing spontaneously about the mundane, just to make normal seem more interesting.

♥ Site ♥ Twitter ♥ Facebook ♥ Pintrest ♥ DSP ♥

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Lets Use the Word Friend

Throughout my life I’ve been friends with gay men. None were out when I was younger. That all happened after we graduated from high school or much later. Then as an adult, I met more gay men. Some had come out to their parents at a very young age, some kept it quiet at school, and one or two were out for all the world to see. I even know a young man who is out in his middle school today. It’s a very different world than it was even twenty five years ago. Except for one thing. Most of these men I’ve known have had very close friendships with women, like Hugo Thorson from my North Star Trilogy. Friends, not all those other words people use to try to describe these relationships, but I’ll let Hugo tell you more:

There were many ways the people in their lives tried to describe Summer and Hugo’s relationship. They called Summer Hugo’s fag hag, which they both hated. All that did was stick a quick label onto their complex relationship and turned it into something so much less than it was. She was more than a simplistic label to Hugo. She was like a best friend and a sister wrapped up in one. ~from Spark – Book 1 of North Star

That’s really what it is to me: simplification to make a relationship easier to define. But when a relationship is so offhandedly labeled like this, it is just as easily dismissed, and I don’t think these relationships can be thrown out in such a cavalier manner. At least not the relationship between Hugo and Summer throughout the North Star Trilogy. Many lovely words were shared with me about Summer after people read Spark. People really liked her, yet the words “meddling fag hag” are still tossed about in the world. Summer is always going to be Hugo’s best friend, and even as he and Kevin are trying to build a life together in Fusion, Kevin is very respectful of Hugo’s relationship with her. Summer and Hugo are thick as pea soup. The wonderful thing about Summer is that she forces Hugo to see not only his weaknesses, but she also helps him see his strengths. She’s not just a bitchy sidekick that makes jokes at the appropriate time. She’s an honest to god player in Hugo’s life. She understands him in ways his lover Kevin doesn’t, and she can be there for him when he feels like the earth is cracking beneath his feet.

In Fusion, the earth does crack for Hugo. He has to face some very harsh truths, not only about his relationship with Kevin, but also about himself. Summer is with him the entire journey, even when she’s not physically by his side. That’s the joy of a true best friend who knows your heart better than you do. Summer was a joy to write, and I feel lucky I was able to meet her. In Fusion, Hugo and Kevin’s relationship faces a chasm deep and wide. Do they build a bridge to be together or turn around a walk away?

 

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Fusion
North Star Trilogy, book 2

How do you tell your friends and family you’ve fallen in love with a man when they’ve only ever known you as straight? How do you explain to your kids that you loved their mother very much, but your new partner is your best friend from high school?

Kevin Magnus must figure it out while trying to build a relationship with Hugo Thorson, whose bigger than life, out-and-proud drag queen persona is simply too big to be contained in a closet—even for the time it takes Kevin to come up with an explanation for his kids and Erin, his soon-to-be ex-wife.

But Erin faces an even bigger obstacle—one that shakes the entire family to the core. When she unexpectedly turns to Hugo, they form a connection that forces Hugo to grow up and offers Kevin the chance to become the kind of father he wants to be. Despite the coming complications, they’ll all benefit from a fortunate side effect: it becomes clear that Hugo is very much a part of this unconventional family.

Dreamspinner Press

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Spark
North Star Trilogy, book 1

In their small-town high school, Hugo and Kevin became closeted lovers who kept their secret even from parents. Hugo didn’t want to disappoint his terminally ill father, and Kevin’s controlling father would never tolerate a bisexual son. When college took them in different directions, they promised to reunite, but that didn’t happen for seventeen years.

By the time they meet again, Hugo has become an out-and-proud actor and director who occasionally performs in drag—a secret that has cost him in past relationships. Kevin, still closeted, has followed his father’s path and now, in the shadow of divorce, is striving to be a better father to his own children.

When Hugo and Kevin meet by chance at a party, the spark of attraction reignites, as does their genuine friendship. Rekindling a romance may mean Hugo must compromise the openness he values, but Kevin will need a patient partner as he adapts to living outside the closet. With such different lifestyles, the odds seem stacked against them, and Hugo fears that if his secret comes to light, it may drive Kevin away completely.

Dreamspinner Press

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30% Off @ DSP

Series: Desires Entwined, Book #1  

Genre: M/M Contemporary Romance

Length: Novel / 200 pages

Publisher: Dreamspinner Press

Published: July 29th 2013

ISBN: 978-1-62798-005-0 (ebook)

ISBN: 978-1-62798-004-3 (paperback)

Artist James Bryant has forearm crutches in every color from rainbow for fun to sleek black for business. He even has a pair with more paint splatters than metal. After his family’s rejection and abuse from a man he thought loved him, James only just gets through the day by painting. He lives in constant fear that he’s not worthy of anything, let alone love.

As CEO of his company, Carrington Enterprises, Seth Burns is a take-charge kind of guy, and he is instantly smitten by the artist helping with his newest project. When he witnesses James suffer a panic attack, a protective instinct he never knew he had kicks in. He truly believes nothing is unobtainable—including James—if he’s willing to put in the time and effort.

James is shy and confused by Seth’s interest in him as a person. With Seth’s support, can he work through his fears to finally find the true love he deserves, or will someone finally land the crushing blow he won’t survive?

 
      

Transgender Day of Remembrance

Transgender Day of Remembrance

Wednesday, November 20, 2013 is the International Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR).

Saturday Spotlight – Tempeste O’Riley

 
Reblogged from

Welcome to IRM for the Saturday Spotlight. Up next is author Tempeste O’Riley with an interview and excerpts from her latest release.

BANNED 4 Life

When Blake was turned away from donating blood for his friend Emmy (who has sickle cell anemia) because he is gay, he and his partner Brett decided to do something about it. At first thought the FDA’s policy that bans gay men from donating blood appears to discriminate against a small minority of citizens. In reality it affects not just those targeted by the discrimination, but everyone who is in a time of need, desperate to receive a blood transfusion.

Banned4Life is more than a rights movement. It is a reminder that everyone can be affected by simple policies put forth by those who fear change. Those of us who have been touched by the message are donating blood, not just for all of those who are Banned4Life for being gay, but rather for the individuals who need the blood. The overwhelmingly positive message of Banned4Life not only encourages social equality, but saves lives as well.

Our mission is to raise awareness of the FDA’s policy that permanently bans gay men from donating blood. Together, we can bring an end to this discriminatory policy and save lives.

To get involved in this movement:

♥ BANNED4LIFE ♥ The Petition ♥ Twitter ♥ Facebook ♥ Blood Drive ♥

Honoring All Who Serve/d

Guest Author Wednesdays ♥ Jessica Skye Davies

Hello everyone! I’m ecstatic to have M/M author Jessica Skye Davies with me today. She shares a bit about two great stories and about the evil writing rules we authors are all told to follow. Please say hi and leave her a comment or two below.

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Jessica Skye Davies has been a writer since her first works were “published” in her grandparents’ living room and written in crayon. She is a lifelong native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she has been active in the community, including serving as library director on the executive board of a local GLBT community center. Outside of writing, Jessica has a wide range of interests and hobbies: from Mozart in a music hall to punk in pubs, from Shakespeare to Vonnegut, from salsa dancing the night away to afternoon coffee in the square to kicking back with a good movie. She loves meeting new people and exploring new places, always open to whatever elements might inspire her next writing project.

 

♥ Blog ♥  ♥ Facebook ♥  ♥ DSP ♥

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Breaking Writing Rules

Writers, particularly fairly new ones (or, should I say, those in the early stages of being “out” as a writer) typically hear a lot of “rules” about how to write (better?) Everyone’s likely heard the good old chestnuts, “Write what you know,” “Read more than you write,” amongst others.

Well, “malarkey,” I say! (And yes, I really do talk like that.)

Let’s do a little deconstructing, shall we?

Write what you know.

Readers, I ask you, do you think I have ever had a possessed doorstop trying to kill me? Or been kidnapped, drugged, and prostituted? Have I been the star photojournalist for a top-ranked travel periodical or run a hotel in Australian bush country? Let alone all three! No, I have not.

Now, I personally prefer to turn this sage advice on its side and say, “Know what you write.” Do your homework, put in the research, check things out. Ok, there’s probably not a lot you can say about “researching” possessed doorstops, but I knew the setting like the back of my hand, the feel of the community, and personality of the characters who call it home. When I wrote about Padrig’s struggles with HIV, it was because it’s a subject I’ve long been passionate about, to the point that I have done and continue to base my academic career on HIV-related issues. As for popping off to London and Daintree… think I can get that on the expense sheet?

Read more than you write.

Think so? Well, maybe you do if you haven’t got grad school, internships, and volunteer commitments. Or, if you will, a job, kids, family commitments. Whatever combination works for you. While lovely in theory, if you’re gonna do this writing thing amongst the rest of your work-life-school-family-community-sanity balance, you probably aren’t going to have time for sleep. Or food. Or air.

Here’s my advice: Can you read? Have you read? Do you like books? Job done. Now go write some. They might not even be all that good. But if you don’t write and write more and keep writing whenever you possibly can… it just isn’t going to go anywhere. For me, your voice is your most important thing in writing. And also, I don’t go for reading whatever is popular or new or just picking up books to have one on your nightstand. Have some taste! Cultivate your unique preferences in reading as well as your writing voice. It’s more than ok to be selective (too picky? Damn right I am!)

Dialogue in fiction should be reserved for the culminating moments and regarded as the spray into which the great wave of narrative breaks in curving toward the watcher on the shore. – Edith Wharton

WT-actual-F, Edith?

I even like some of old Wharty’s writing (well, “Xingu” was good satire). I’m tempted to think she was bipolar though, because this is a load of utter bollocks and reads like it as well. Dialogue and narrative are equals and as far as I’m concerned it doesn’t matter what ratios they are used in. It depends on the story (as does pretty much everything else – here, again, is that “voice” thing you’re going to need). Sometimes you hear that narrative should be almost entirely expunged and everything revealed through dialogue. Or, to use Edy’s terms, you ought to have a “tsunami” of dialogue poised to wipe out 100,000 coastal villages… with a nice, relaxing breeze of narrative to dry things out. Yeah, right. Go with your gut on this, as with most things.

Write drunk, edit sober.

Well, as much as I like the concept…. If you write sober, you’ll have a damn lot less to edit, and thus more time to get drunk (and recover, which takes longer the older you get. Yes, it does.) And, if you write sober and edit drunk, you’ll probably be too drunk to edit at all. And that’s for the best. Because while you might revise or rewrite what you’ve written, you should certainly not edit your own work. Believe this. You will read right through your grammatical errors and typos and you won’t see anything wrong with your prose unless you’re neurotic. Then again, you probably wouldn’t be a writer if you weren’t neurotic. Bit of a Catch-22 there.

You gotta give ‘em hope. – Harvey Milk

This is not particularly writing advice. It is life advice. And you know what? Harvey was right. You gotta give ‘em hope. You gotta give the readers hope, and, more importantly, you gotta give the characters hope. Something to hope for, something to hope on. No matter how dark it gets, let them have one tiny star up there in the blackness – and then let the clouds obscure it once in a while, just to twist the knife. Consider this excerpt from Sins of Another:

There are times when I space out and don’t know what’s going on around me at all. I don’t know that I’m being fucked in a loud, smoky nightclub. I don’t know that I’m anywhere at all. I haven’t passed out, but I just go off into nothingness. Sometimes Nick is there in that nothingness, reaching his hand out to me. I’m always too fucked up to take it.

As you can see here, I’ve given Padrig hope: he still “feels” Nick’s presence reaching out to him. And I’ve obscured it by making him too drugged to “reach” back. Why? Because I am a cold, heartless bitch. And that’s what you have to be too.

(And just because I have tell it – when I got the cover art drafts on Sins and saw the “hands reaching” I was floored because I hadn’t including anything about the above imagery in the spec sheet, but it is such a strong representation of Padrig’s state at that point in the story. Almost like it came through to someone who hadn’t even seen it. The broken cup of drugged tea… I hadn’t mentioned that either and there it was in a cover draft. Uncanny.)

Basically, all this is to say, in the words of Marcus from Sins: “Advice is a great thing, but sometimes you’re going to hear a lot of conflicting advice, and that’s when you need to go with your gut.”

Here’s a final thought. Know the rules. Not the advice, but the actual rules. I’m talking grammar stuff here. The difference between who and whom? I was out of high school before I finally learned that. But learn it I did. I didn’t say you can’t break those rules. My characters aren’t pedantic, they are people. When they talk, sometimes it’s in run-ons and with horrid syntax. And your narrative doesn’t have to sound stuck up and pedantic. If you are comfortable using proper grammar (no, you don’t have diagram a sentence) it will read naturally. Know the rules that you may break them.

That’s your grumpy old lady writer advice for this week. Now throw it all out the window and go write something.

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Sins of Another                

One morning Padrig Kennedy comes home to find his partner, Nick Glenfielding, in bed with another man. Shocked, hurt, and vulnerable, Padrig flees and meets a stranger who seems to offer comfort—but he force-feeds Padrig a steady diet of drugs and prostitution instead. When he finally surfaces from his hell, it’s to another system shock: he’s now HIV positive.

Nick descends into darkness as well. Devastated by losing Padrig, he finds no consolation in the legal career he doesn’t love and tries to find solace in alcohol, spending his days in an ever-deepening haze.

Padrig and Nick find each other again, but their relationship can never be the same. If they’re to stand any chance of a future together, they must do the improbable: make sense of the past and learn to cope with new burdens they’ll bear for life.

A Bittersweet Dreams title: It’s an unfortunate truth: love doesn’t always conquer all. Regardless of its strength, sometimes fate intervenes, tragedy strikes, or forces conspire against it. These stories of romance do not offer a traditional happy ending, but the strong and enduring love will still touch your heart and maybe move you to tears.

Dreamspinner Press

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Half the World Away

Photographer Dade Faber keeps hoping for assignments on a big city beat, but time and again he’s sent into the wild. This time, he’s half the world away from London shooting the Australian bush. When Dade is nearly attacked by a crocodile, it leads to a shouting match with Elliot Harris, who owns Dade’s hotel. Elliot is both hot and persuasive, and when he offers to play tour guide, Dade accepts. After a week spent mostly together in the bush, Dade begins to fall for Elliott. The attraction is mutual, and when circumstances lead both men to London, they find they have much in common. But can their romance bridge the 10,000 miles between London and the Australian bush?

Dreamspinner Press

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