Summer is Just Around the Corner

It looks like I'll be busy in June. Between Friends will go live sometime in that month, I'm not sure of the exact date. Beside that, my novella/novel Hanging Loose is scheduled to be published by Loose ID on June sixth. It's a light romance set in sunny Los Angeles -- Venice Beach to be exact. The narrator is Nate, who graduated with an art degree, back in the Midwest, moved to Cali, and is just drifting around till he meets sexy blond surfer. At which point things get complicated, as you might expect.

It's a commonly held belief that authors consider their creations as their babies, but I'm afraid my motherly instincts are lacking. I just want this kid to fly the coop and get its own life. Yeah, I'm fond of the little bastard, but I have other babies to worry about now. I'm currently working on two longer stories. One is a kinky romance/suspense between a slutty twink and a gruff bear with a big secret. (No, he doesn't have kids -- it' not that kind of secret.) I'm at 28,000 words and it probably will be at least 40,000, maybe even 50,000. The other story is a college sex romp with a lot of colorful characters. I barely started it, so it stands at a measly 2,500 words, and it has to be at least 18,000.

And that gets me to my next point: It's hard to tell sometimes if a story is a novel or a novella. The rules vary from publisher to publisher. The minimum word count for novel can be anywhere between 35,000 (Loose Id) and 60,000 (Dreamspinner, Samhain) words. Some smaller publisher set the bar even lower at 30,000 words. Hanging Loose is 37,000.