A Heap of Free Gay Romance Stories with Hot Summer Days!

Yep, it's that time of year again! Roughly 130 of your favorite M/M romance authors have gotten together via the Goodreads M/M Romance group to take requests from readers and write stories of "coming out in love, being out in love, and committing out in love." All in the spirit of the M/M Romance slogan: Don't Read In the Closet.  

This is the second M/M Romance free reads project. You might remember the first from last December, when 25 authors got together to write stories for Stuff My Stocking (download it free at Goodreads or ARe). 

This year, we have roughly five times the fun, but the setup was the same: Readers used both a photo and a related text prompt to make requests to the writing community at large, and writers beat and clawed and scratched at each other to snatch up their favorites. (I lost out on three perfect photo prompts before I finally landed the one I ended up loving and writing.) 

Be sure to keep an eye on the Hot Summer Days thread all through July and August, where the mods will be posting twenty-thousand words' worth of new stories each and every day! Already-posted stories include reader favorites like Kim Dare and Jade Archer, and there are stories yet to come from AJ Llewellyn, KZ Snow, Aleks Voinov, Clare London, Amy Lane, Mark Alders, and over a hundred more! And, of course, me ;-)

Speaking of me, here's the photo prompt I picked:

I'm sure you'll be shocked--shocked!--to hear that when this photo went up, people actually came looking for me on Twitter to make sure I wouldn't miss it. Thank you to those folks--you know who you are :-D

And here's a little teaser of my story to come. I don't know when it's going up, so if you want to read the rest of it, you'll just have to check back in the Hot Summer Days thread and read through all those awesome free stories until mine comes up. A terrible hardship, I know. And no excuses about not belonging to Goodreads or the M/M Romance group--it's easy, fun, free, and as friendly as folks can possibly get.

But enough with the alliteration. Here's a page from Jungle Heat, below the jump.

Blood Feuds and Freelancing, Not Necessarily In that Order

Morning, my dearies! I've been a bad (and stomach-fluey) blogger this week, but I'm feeling better and hopefully right back into the swing of the Mon/Wed/Fri thing.

Since I missed a couple posts and have lots to share, let's break out the bullet points.

• The Rachel/Kari Blood Feud now has not only a website, but also a trailer. However, said trailer is about as fair and balanced as Fox News, so I suggest you stay away. Do not watch it. At all. Forget that I even mentioned it. Or linked to it. Or that it exists. Kari is mean. Boo. (Vote Anchored!)
  
• I'm writing a bazillion-part series (okay, more like five, I think) on Reena Jacobs's blog about the creative work that goes into self-publishing a book and how to go about evaluating and hiring folks to help you do things like developmental edit, copyedit, proofread, cover art, and interior layout. If you've ever thought about self-publishing your own work (or about hiring an editor to help you get something up to snuff for traditional publication), you'll want to check this out. If you have any questions about anything I've covered or not covered, feel free to leave them in the comments. Part I and Part II are already up. Part III comes out on Friday.
  
• In an effort to keep my ass in the chair long enough to get Crescendo: Book II of Song of the Fallen turned in under deadline, I've taken to writing bits of it live in a public Google document. For those of you who've never used gdocs, there's basically a chat box down one quarter of the screen and a document editor taking up the other three quarters. I've been inviting people in as viewers, not collaborators, so you can only type in the chat box, but while you're there you can watch me writing Crescendo in real time; the words show up on the page as if you were standing over my shoulder watching the screen while I type. Sometimes everything comes out nice and smooth and it's really fun to watch; other times, there are long pauses while I look things up or try to figure out where to go next. Often, there are hilarious conversations going on in the chat box. If you'd like to join in on this, email me at metarachel (at) gmail (dot) com and I'll invite you into the document. (Keep in mind that you'll be jumping in in the middle of whatever scene I'm working on at the time; the prior material is not posted.)
  
• Side note: I accidentally worked some light BDSM into Crescendo. I was as pleasantly surprised by it as Rik and Ayden were.
  
• If you've ever wondered why ebooks are sometimes priced higher than their paper counterparts, or why novel-length ebooks are generally between $6 and $10 from small e-pubs even though they're not physical, I got into a long conversation about it this evening over on the Kindle Smut group on Goodreads. You do need to be a member of KS to read that, but it's an open group (anyone can join with a single mouse-click), and also an awesome group. I've met some amazing friends, readers, and authors over there, and encourage everyone to check it out whether they're interested in the ebook price discussion or not. If you've an aversion to joining Goodreads or KS for whatever reason and still want to know about ebook pricing, let me know and maybe I'll make a blog post out of it in the near future.

Okay, I think that's enough for today. Thanks for waiting me out, folks, and I'll see you in gdocs!

New Free Book, New Page, and Vistaprint Is a Disease

Afternoon, folks! I'm retreating from my editing cave just long enough to assure you all I'm not dead yet, although after so long without good sleep, I'm starting to feel that way. (I think I sent my editor an email last night that said, in its entirety, "God you're awesome." And then something about magnets and shiny things. Too afraid to check my sent mail to find out.)

So, three quick things for your attention today:

One, there's a new free book in town, and It. Is. Awesome. The M/M Romance group over at Goodreads hosted a wonderful stocking-stuffer writing event in December. Readers got to write letters to santa based on any erotic photo they wanted. Writers got to read said letters (and gaze longingly at said photos) and pick one as a prompt for a short story. The result? Twenty-five (often hilarious) wishes for Santa, and twenty-five free short stories from some of your favorite gay erotic romance writers (M.J. O'Shea, A.J. Llewellyn, Serena Yates, Kim Dare, Mark Alders, and so many more!). The stories posted individually, one (and occasionally two) a day, but now you can find them all in a lovely little package, free for download in the format of your choice on Goodreads. I have a little free read in this book too, a BDSM fic called "Pony Up." You'll never guess what it's about ;-p

Next up, you'll notice I've been adding some new pages to my website. My Books (a list of, well, my books) and Coming Soon (a list of most of the projects I have in the works, sorted by their various stages of competion/publication) have been up there a few days now, as has the Anchored Blog Tour page, which is a hub for all the great activities and swag with schedules, links, prize pack details, etc. But the Upcoming Events page is new, so please, hop on over and have a look! It's a great way to keep abreast of blogs I'll be visiting and bloggers who will be visiting here, as well as the occasional giveaway or industry event. Also, $10 says it'll make you laugh* :-)

Last up, with new cover art in my greedy little hands, I hopped over to Vistaprint yesterday to order swag swag swag! I . . . may have gone a little overboard. I can't help it; it's a disease. You all will simply have to help me find homes for all this stuff by following the blog tour and winning it. Or not winning it and getting some anyway. Because, seriously, I may need to put an addition on the house to store it all. In fact, if you want a free magnet and an autographed Anchored cover flat (and who knows, maybe some other stuff too), just leave a comment on this post, and I'll mail it to you when my stuff arrives in a few weeks. 

Well, that's it for me, folks. Back into my editing cave. Until next time!

*Will you accept an unsigned third-party check? No? Okay, how about some swag? I'll have it leaking out my ears soon.