The Rebuilding Year

I wanted to put out a little advance notice about a book of mine that will release on March 6, 2012 from Samhain books. This story, The Rebuilding Year, is a contemporary m/m romance with just a hint of a mystery in it. I've enjoyed writing it, and I even enjoyed several rounds of editing it. Which is unusual (since I usually dislike doing editing) and I hope means that it will appeal to readers as well.

This book is coming from Samhain Publishing. I had previously worked only with MLR Press, and I love my MLR editor's style and the way an author has so much control over the process with them. But I had extra manuscripts floating around and I decided to try out another publisher. Samhain has also been good to work with, although quite different.

With MLR, I pretty much determine the timing of book releases by how fast I work (well, along with however fast or slow my editor is, and how many rounds she wants with it.) When she and I decide a book is done, it goes to proofing. Then it comes out in ebook release as soon as the formatting is done, with the paperback a couple of weeks later. This means no hard deadlines (Yay!) and no long wait for my work to appear (double yay!) but little advance warning and opportunity for publicity.

With Samhain, they gave me the release date along with the book contract. It was six months out, so not a tight deadline. But it was set before editing even began. And they had deadlines for the edits as we worked through them. Surprisingly early deadlines - the book is now completely proofed and ready, other than the cover, with release still almost three months away. Different styles of doing the same job. They also gave me a paperback release date of February 2013, FYI. Hopefully most of my readers like ebooks.

Samhain also has a professional blurb writer and tag-line editor. I'm torn between liking having those parts done for me (writing short is not my forte) and the loss of control feeling of having someone else's words selling my book to readers. I've decided to go for "Oh good, I don't have to agonize over those." I like to look on the bright side.

Since this one is now done, I thought I would share some bits of it over the next couple of months, hopefully to pique interest. Today I'll post the blurb for the story. Excerpts will follow. I'm new to the building-up-publicity thing. (I'm used to "here's the cover and the blurb and it will be out next week.") Hopefully you will enjoy a few advance glimpses of The Rebuilding Year here and on some guest blog spots to come.

The Rebuilding Year - Blurb

A few excruciating minutes pinned in a burning building cost Ryan Ward his
job as a firefighter, the easy camaraderie of his coworkers, his girlfriend, and
damn near cost him his left leg. Giving up, though, isn’t an option. Compared to the alternative, choosing a new profession, going back to school, and renting a room from the college groundskeeper are simple.
Until he realizes he’s falling in love with his housemate, and things take a
turn for the complicated.


John Barrett knows about loss. After moving twice to stay in touch with his kids, he could only watch as his ex-wife whisked them away to California. Offering Ryan a room seems better than rattling around the empty house, but as casual friendship moves to something more, and a firestorm of emotions ignites, the big old house feels like tight quarters.


It’s nothing they can’t learn to navigate, though. But when dead bodies start
turning up on campus—and one of the guys is a suspect—their first taste of real love could go up in smoke.


So that's a glimpse of things to come. Now I have to decide what to excerpt. Decisions, decisions... There are a lot of things involved in this becoming a writer business, beyond just putting the words on paper.