Visiting Kinky Ever After Today

I know I've been soooooper quiet round these parts, but that's good news in a way, since quiet = busy. I'm wrapping up edits on Power Play: Awakening with Cat Grant (yeah, a bit uncomfortably down to the wire on that one, I know), and I've started a new project in the Belonging Verse. I'm only about 6,000 words into it so far, and I'm not quite sure what shape it's taking or where it's going, but it follows a freeman with a heavy load on his shoulders, and I'm pretty sure he'll be auctioning his virginity to pay the bills >:D

Anyway, more on that as it develops, but it may be a bit slow. In the meanwhile, Devon from Master Class is being interviewed today in the Kinky Kiss and Tell event. Wanna learn Nicky's weirdest habit? (It's pretty weird.) Go check it out! :-)

It's Party Time! Celebrate & Win a Nook!

Today's the official release day of Power Play: Resistance, the 90,000-word kinkapalooza (Part 1 of 2) I co-wrote with Cat Grant. To celebrate, we're going on a little blog tour round the interwebs, showering prizes at every stop. We'll be giving away backlist books and/or swag at each site we visit, and at the end of the tour, one lucky commenter will win a classic Nook pre-loaded with six titles from me and Cat.

Want to follow along? You can find us at:

April 9 - Joyfully Jay

April 10 - Jody Faltys

April 11 - Erotica for All

April 12 - Long and Short Reviews

April 13 - Amara's Place

April 14 - Dawn's Reading Nook

April 16 - All I Want and More

April 17 - Top to Bottom Reviews

Hope to see you there!

New Release, Woot! :D

And we're off! (A day early, even--horray for Riptide!) You can download it now at the Riptide site only (and at Amazon, B&N, ARe, etc. on Monday), and it still counts as a pre-release until 12 AM Monday morning, so it earns you an entry into Riptide's Free Books for a Year drawing, too :-)

Give me six months, and I'll give you the world.

Brandon McKinney has scraped and sacrificed for what little in life he’s ever had. Though it’s been fifteen years since he escaped his father’s abuse, the damage remains. Trust seems as far out of reach as his dream of becoming an architect, and though he’s come to accept being gay, he can’t deny the shame and confusion he feels at other urges—the deeply-repressed desire to submit.

Jonathan Watkins is a self-made Silicon Valley billionaire whose ex-wife took half his money and even more of his faith. Comfortable as a Dominant but wary of being hurt again, he resorts to anonymous pickups and occasional six-month contracts with subs seeking only a master, not a lover.

When a sizzling back-alley encounter cues Jonathan in to Brandon’s deep-seated submissive side, he makes the man an offer: Give me six months of your life, and I’ll open your eyes to a whole new world. Brandon doesn’t care about that; all he wants is the three million dollars Jonathan’s offering so he can buy the construction company he works for. But he soon learns that six months on his knees is no easy feat, and shame and pride may keep him from all he ever wanted—and all he never dreamed he had any right to have.

Join me and Cat Grant for exclusive excerpts, interviews, behind-the-scenes peeks, and—of course—prizes at the Power Play: Resistance Virtual Book Tour, April 9 through 18, 2012!

Cover Prettiez!

For mine and Cat Grant's second book in the Power Play series, Power Play: Awakening, releasing on June 11. Beneath the jump for mild raciness (well, okay, for shibari and a hint of butt). Click to embiggen. Trust me, you want to :-D

Win Tons of Prizes with the MFRW Leap Year Blog Hop!

Today is a rare occurrence round these parts for two reasons. For one, it's a leap year, and I'm celebrating with a lovely group of authors by joining in a blog hop and giving away some free books. I've put up all my first-in-series stuff: Counterpoint, Anchored, and Master Class, and you can win just by commenting on this post. There are lots of other great prizes to go around too, so be sure to visit all the other blogs on the hop!

My other rare occurrence is that I finished the first draft of a novel today--Power Play: Awakening, the sequel to Power Play: Resistance and the final novel in the two-book BDSM kinkapalooza that is the Power Play series. That happens more than once every four years, thank God, but not so much that it isn't worth a moment's celebration :-) So to my lovely co-author Cat Grant and to all you lovely readers out there, I say Yay! and Thank you for sticking it out with me. I wish I could celebrate by showing you cover pretties for PPA (to the left are some cover pretties for PPR, so you can see why I'm so anxious to see what our brilliant artist will come up with next!), but how about a brief snippet of sneak-preview smut, instead? :-D

Its, erm, pretty smutty--and also D/s; our poor sub is getting covered in clothespins--so, sneak peek beneath the jump. Before I cut to that, though, just a quick note that I'll be drawing the winner of the Nook from my Valentine's Day Spread the Love contest at the same time I draw the winner of the three free books for the Leap Year Blog Hop contest :-) Now then, smut beneath the jump!

Drop-dead Gorgeous New Cover Art!

Hello my lovelies! I have been sadly neglecting this little corner of the internets lately, and for that I apologize. But I assure you, it's because Fun Things Are Afoot. In other words, I've been writing. And writing, and writing, and writing. And also editing a lot, because, wow, the Little Publishing House That Could has taken off like a, well, runaway train, and it's full of happy readers and happy authors and just generally keeping all of us kind of insanely busy.

But the other thing that's been eating my time (and my brain) these days is--no, it's not zombies, Kari, shut up--a massive pair of contemporary BDSM novels I've been co-writing with the lovely Cat Grant, she of Once a Marine fame. The first book, Power Play: Resistance, clocks in at 90,000 words of crazy-hot vaguely dubconny nonstop kinkgasm, and is currently in edits for an anticipated Spring 2012 release (Aprilish, hopefully). The second book, Power Play: Awakening, is currently at 32,000 words and rising, just as kinktastic as Resistance, and also happens to feature a chapter-long cameo by Devon and Nicky of Master Class and SUBlime fame. We're aiming for a summer release for this one--the idea being not to keep you waiting more than a couple months between Book 1 and Book 2--so apologies in advance if things remain a little quiet on the blogging front.

Although, I will be back here in two days as part of a Friday the 13th Blog Hop where we'll be giving away a Kindle to one lucky commenter :D

Anyway, you're here for the Power Play: Resistance cover art. And boy is it a doozie. I think it may be my favorite yet. Of kind of anything ever, actually. It's beneath the jump. Don't forget to click to embiggen.

New Book in the Works

Happy Friday, folks! I'm thrilled to say that after all the time-eating (but wonderful!) craziness of Crescendo edits and launching fifteen books at once for Riptide, I have actually begun to write again.

O. M. G. does that feel great.

Last week I escaped the power outages in Jersey by fleeing to Cat Grant's place in lovely Monterey, CA. (See: this:)

And Cat and I have been hashing out the plot of a Big Kinky Book for a while now--a sort of grudgingly willing total power exchange situation between a rich experienced Dom who no longer believes anyone will ever want him for anything but his money and a struggling construction worker whose submissive side is buried so deeply he may or may not actually be submissive . . . but for the right incentive, he's willing to find out.

Cat and I have banged out almost 25,000 words on this already--close to 100 pages!--and we're just getting getting started on act 2. Looks like this'll turn out to be a nice meaty novel, and I'm so excited by it, our boys won't even let me sleep at night. They just keep whispering in my ear, "Hey, how about trying this with us?" or "Wouldn't [insert deliciously pervy thing here] be naughty and fun?" And of course I can never say no to my boys.

I have to fly home in half a week, but here's hoping that by then, we'll have gotten out another 10K of pure pervy play. At the rate we're going, we might even have this thing finished by the end of the year. Very exciting all around, and oh holy crap does it feel amazing to finally be doing what I should be doing again: putting fingers to keyboard and abusing the fuck out of hot hot men ;-p

Book Review: Counterpunch, by Aleks Voinov. 5 of 5 Stars

Apologies for the unexpected silence this week. I was in one of those "Snowtober" areas where the kids got an unexpected week off from school because three quarters of the state had no power. My solution to this was to pick up and fly to California to visit dear friend and fellow M/M author Cat Grant. I'll be hanging here for a couple weeks to catch up on sleep post-Riptide launch and get started on a big kinky book we're co-writing.

In the meanwhile, I wanted to post a mini-review on Aleksandr Voinov's new novel, Counterpunch, which released today. Full disclosure: I was a beta, and it's also set in my sandbox (this story is written in the same world as Anchored and Where He Belongs). That said, Aleks wrote such a beautiful novel I'm downright jealous of how well he handled my sandbox; he built a much prettier castle than I ever did!
Here's the blurb:

Fight like a man, or die like a slave.

Brooklyn Marshall used to be a policeman in London, with a wife and a promising future ahead of him. Then he accidentally killed a rioter whose father was a Member of Parliament and had him convicted of murder. To ease the burden on the overcrowded prison system, Brooklyn was sold into slavery rather than incarcerated. Now, he's the "Mean Machine", a boxer on the slave prizefighting circuit, pummelling other slaves for the entertainment of freemen and being rented out for the sexual service of his wealthier fans.

When Nathaniel Bishop purchases Brooklyn's services for a night, it seems like any other assignation. But the pair form an unexpected bond that grows into something more. Brooklyn hesitates to call it "love"—such things do not exist between freemen and slaves—but when Nathaniel reveals that he wants to help get Brooklyn's conviction overturned, he dares to hope. Then, an accident in the ring sends Brooklyn on the run, jeopardizing everything he has worked so hard to achieve and sending him into the most important fight of all—the fight for freedom.

This is classic Voinov at his finest: dark, gritty, morally ambiguous, dangerous, violent, and sexy as hell. All that plus a genuine romance! If you are a fan of any of these things, I cannot recommend this book strongly enough. When you're done with your first read, you'll want to read it again, and again, and again. Pure love.

Congratulations 2012 EPIC Finalists!

Every year, EPIC (the Electronic Publishing Industry Coalition) holds a major ebook award competition for the best of electronic publishing across a wide variety of genres. Their list of finalists just released, and I was absolutely delighted to see some familiar names on that shortlist.

So today, I'd like to offer a heartfelt congratulations to:

• My dear friend and Riptide First Wave author Cat Grant, who made the finals not once but twice in the Erotica category.
  
  
• Perennial laugh factory and Riptide First Wave author L.A. Witt, who also made the finals twice: once writing as L.A. Witt in the Contemporary Romance category, and once writing as Lauren Gallagher in the Erotica category.
  
  
• And the brilliantly talented artist Reese Dante (she of Riptide's Once a Marine cover) for eight (!!!) nominations for cover art across a number of categories.

Congratulations to all of you on your well-deserved recognition, and best of luck in the finals. We'll be rooting for you!

Film Festival Fun

This one's a quickie, folks. I'm still neck deep in Crescendo edits and the Riptide Publishing launch, but I found out today that thanks to the lovely Cat Grant, I'll actually be getting a teeny little mini-vacation in a little over a month: the two of us are taking a day trip into Manhattan to see Shame at the NY Film Festival!

I am dying of excitement about this, not so much for going to Manhattan (it's sort of right around the corner from me, and I lived there for a while so the sheen's worn off), but for getting to see the new Steve McQueen movie starring every last full-frontal inch of my favorite obsession. Despite the Oscar buzz already coming out of the Venice Film Festival for Shame, the contents of the movie (and the director's admirable unwillingness to sacrifice artistic vision for commercialism) make it unlikely it'll ever see US distribution outside the festival circuit.

Fortunately, we have tickets, so I get to spend one glorious day off from editing and writing and launching a business (which, admittedly, I am loving just about every second of) to stare at 90 minutes of this, a large portion of which I'm told involve no pants. (Click to embiggen. Trust me.)

Aw heck, one more because he's just so absurdly adorable. (And is it just me or does that totally look like a ligature mark on his wrist? Okay, yeah, it's probably just me, but a girl can dream, right?) The photo call at Venice, beneath the jump:

New Cover Art, and AAD Bound

Morning folks! I promised you on Monday that I'd tell you a little about Master Class, my new BDSM novella releasing with my new business venture, Riptide Publishing, this fall. I'm still waiting on the official blurb, but here's a rough rundown:

Nicky Avery is starring in the Broadway revival of Godspell, but he lacks the confidence and self-respect to look beyond a string of heartless one-night stands to fill his needs. A quick flogging, a rough fuck, he blows off steam and seeks a new whip-hand to manipulate next. He finds challenge but no satisfaction in such pseudo-domination and pain. Nobody's managed to master him, and he thinks that's just fine. But he simply doesn't know what he's missing.  

Devon Turner is a self-possessed film star and expert Dom who knows what he wants the moment he sees it, and what he wants is Nicky Avery. Nicky's clearly a broken boy, but Devon knows exactly how to put his new sub back together again. 

Yes, those are the boys from Sublime: Collected Shorts, finally getting their full-length story. Well, novella length :-)

Also, my gorgeous cover art by L.C. Chase, let me show you it. (Click to embiggen.)

The book is complete, so expect a blurb and some excerpts soon!

In the meanwhile, I'm heading off to Authors After Dark tomorrow morning, and I'll be there through Sunday. If you're hunting for an invitation to submit to Riptide, I'm amenable to being pitched. I'll be hosting a hospitality suite at 9am on Friday with the lovely Cat Grant, so that's a good time to find me.

Friday will be hot men picspam, and I'll be back on Monday with tales (and blackmail photos) from the con.

New Orleans Bound! :D

I'm very excited to tell you all that I'll be attending the GayRomLit Retreat in New Orleans on October 13 to 16! For a while there it was looking like I wouldn't be able to make it, but now I've made my reservation and booked my flight and will be cramming into a room with authors Cat Grant and EM Lynley, who graciously offered to share their space with me in the sold-out hotel.

I want to give a special shout-out to the event organizers here, because even though I missed author registration by a mile, they were wonderfully responsive to my desire to be involved as an author in the retreat and added my name to the Dine with an Author event. Five retreat-goers will be selected at random to share a meal with each participating author. For me that'll be lunch, since nobody wants to be anywhere near me before I've had my coffee in the morning :-) I'm planning to make up some exclusive swag for my dining pals, so, a question for all you lovely folks: if you were eating lunch with me and taking home some special swag at the end, what would make you happiest? Feel free to think out of the box here, though if you really would love something simple like a t-shirt or a mug or the like, I want to hear that too.

I'll also be doing something else at the event during downtime and after hours (NOT during any scheduled activities) that, at the moment, must remain Sooper Seekrit. But it'll be simple, fun, and as engaging as you'd care to make it. The Sooper Seekrit Activity will be co-sponsored by Aleksandr Voinov, who sadly will not be able to make it from London to NOLA to participate but who will most assuredly be there in spirit. I promise we won't keep you waiting too long . . . keep an eyeball or two peeled for more Sooper Seekrit Activity info in about two weeks.

In the meanwhile, if you're going to GayRomLit, drop a note in the comments. It's a pretty small event, so odds are good we'll all run into each other at some point throughout the weekend, but I'd love to know who's attending and who I might finally get a chance to meet :-)

See you then!