Teaser Thursday - Blowjob Sneak Peek!

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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!

Friday the 13th Blog Hop Stop - Win a Kindle!

*waves at all the blog hoppers*

Given the theme of today's hop, I almost did something horror-related, but in the end decided to post a preview of mine and Cat Grant's upcoming pair of novels releasing this spring, Power Play: Resistance and Power Play: Awakening. (Which, who knows, might horrify some of you after all ;-p) If you scroll down to the previous entry, you can see the first of our ridiculously amazing cover art, custom-painted courtesy of Riptide Publishing. And if you click beneath the jump, you'll see, well, something distinctly not safe for work. And also, of course, the link to the next blog in the hop, which you'll need to make your way to the entry form for the day's big prize--a shiny new Kindle! (If a little guy-on-guy kink play isn't your thing, scroll down past the excerpt to find the next hop link.)

Clickety clickety!

Guest Blog: Paradise 21 with Aubrie Dionne

Evening, folks! Today we've got a guest author, Aubrie Dionne, who's here to share an excerpt from her new sci-fi romance from Entangled Publishing, Paradise 21. As always, let's start with a blurb and cover art.

 Aries has lived her entire life aboard mankind’s last hope, the New Dawn, a spaceship traveling toward a planet where humanity can begin anew—a planet that won’t be reached in Aries’ lifetime. As one of the last genetically desirable women in the universe, she must marry her designated genetic match and produce the next generation for this centuries-long voyage.

But Aries has other plans.

When her desperate escape from the New Dawn strands her on a desert planet, Aries discovers the rumors about pirates—humans who escaped Earth before its demise—are true. Handsome, genetically imperfect Striker possesses the freedom Aries envies, and the two connect on a level she never thought possible. But pursued by her match from above and hunted by the planet’s native inhabitants, Aries quickly learns her freedom will come at a hefty price.

The life of the man she loves.

Sound interesting? Check out the excerpt and video trailer, beneath the jump.

Crescendo Sneak Peek #6

It seems like all I've talked about the last week or so is the weather, so it's time for something fun, yeah? How about a little Crescendo excerpt? The entire first chapter is available on my website and at Storm Moon Press (where you can still pre-order at 20% off, yay!), so I thought I'd give you a peek of what comes immediately after.

First, a quick (*sigh*) weather-related update for those who've been asking: Floodwaters have mostly receded. Repairs are going well, though I think a new species of  hyper-intelligent mold in my basement has just discovered fire and the wheel. Irritatingly, utilities decided to shut off a bit over two days ago and have barely done much in the way of coming back on. Even the phone's been out. I'm sneaking on now in a rare moment of up-time and praying that everything stays on for good this time.

Now then, back to a nice fat 1500-word excerpt from Crescendo. Please note this may not match the version you see in the final text (in other words, this is still mid-edit, though it's certainly clean enough for public consumption.) All the, er, fun? Beneath the jump.

Crescendo Deleted Scene

Good morning, folks! Edits on Crescendo continue (have you pre-ordered your copy yet? /shameless plug), and a recent edit had me cutting an entire three-page scene. It was a wise, wise cut (I mean, nothing happens in this scene but a whole lotta navel gazing), but still, seemed a shame to waste it. So, my deleted scene, let me show you it.

Beneath the jump, for first-draft sloppiness and potential spoilers. (I mean, I don't terribly think so? We all already know it was Colonel Mustard in the conservatory with the candlestick, after all. But better safe than sorry, I suppose.)

A View of the Cutting-room Floor

Morning, folks! I'm still banging away at Crescendo edits, and a big part of the editing process is to "kill your darlings." I've been doing a lot of that with Crescendo; a first draft, for me at least, is almost always overwritten because so much of it is exploratory. Rather than condemn these passages to the darkness of deletion, I thought I'd save some to share with you. So, here's one that won't ever make it into the final story.

The road sloped gently upward, toward the third wall and the Second Ward beyond it a league or so distant. Beyond that, at the top of the rise, Ayden could just make out the parapets atop the final wall and the spired roof of the castle keep.

Their caravan halted at the heavily-guarded third wall, and Ayden watched with wary interest as a captain spotted the ambassador and rushed his fellows into opening the gate. They were afraid of this man, and if their actions weren’t enough to confirm it, their songs certainly were.

After three weeks on the road with him, Ayden couldn’t blame them.

The air in the Second Ward was sweet with broad gardens and autumn leaves, stately terraced homes of brick and stone set wall to wall but well back from the cobbled road. ‘Twas sweet relief to be among the relative quiet—fewer songs pressing in against his mind-ear, fewer threats against which to hold himself ready. He spotted no idlers on the (clean) streets; the men were about their business, the children surely at their lessons, the women no doubt home where these humans so single-mindedly thought they belonged.

Yet he knew the sense of security here was false. A few powerful men were no less dangerous than an armed mob. 

And ooh, if you haven't seen it yet, the whole first chapter of Crescendo is up now at the publisher's site!

Have a lovely weekend, folks!

Read Crescendo Chapter 1!

Happy Monday, folks! It's a particularly exciting day for me, because today is the first time a long and fully-edited sneak peek of Crescendo is going up on the interwebs. The entire first chapter, in fact. Almost 3500 words. I'm so excited I can't even wait the 23 minutes until it's officially Monday. Ah well, it's Monday in Europe, right? :D

You can find the first chapter at my publisher's book page for Crescendo. Wait--don't go quite yet! Let me tell you about a second exciting thing first: Crescendo pre-orders start today, and there is ten kinds of awesome going down with that. The ten kinds of awesome, let me show u them:

1. For one thing, everyone who pre-orders gets 20% off--you pay $7.99 instead of $9.99 for the ebook, $11.99 instead of $14.99 for the paperback (plus free domestic shipping!), and $14.39 instead of $17.99 for the print + ebook bundle (plus free domestic shipping). I'm not sure how long that special will last, so if you've been waiting for Crescendo, definitely take advantage of it while it's still there.

2. Awesome Point #2 is that folks who pre-order get to download their book a full two days before the "street date"--October 5 instead of October 7.

3. Awesome Point #3 is raffle prizes! Each copy you pre-order gets you entered into a drawing for--get this--a free first-gen Nook pre-loaded with my entire back catalog! A second lucky winner will get signed copies of both Counterpoint and Crescendo, and a third lucky winner will get an autographed print of the gorgeous Crescendo cover art.

Okay, so it turns out there are only three kinds of awesome, but I think they're awesome enough to count for 3.33 points of awesome each, no?

Anyway, off I go, dancing giddily away to wrap up edits. I hope you'll go off to Storm Moon Press and read the first chapter of Crescendo. And I hope it's everything you've all been waiting for :D

. . . Oh, who are we kidding. We both knew I couldn't get through a whole blog post without a picture of Michael Fassbender. So, my present to you. Look, it even unwraps itself!

(Now go! Read Crescendo!)

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.

Crescendo Sneak Peek #5: Jewish Mothers Are Everywhere ;-)

I'm coming down to the home stretch on Crescendo (at Goodreads here). This time next week, I hope to be able to report to you all that I'm done with it. In the meanwhile, I'm very focused on writing and not so much on blogging, so I thought I'd share another short excerpt with you. As always, beware spoilers. And Jewish mothers, whom of course I love dearly (Hi, mom!), even if the Big Bad Elven Soldier thinks maybe his is worrying a little too much :-D

Six-hundred hot-off-the-keyboard words, beneath the jump.

Crescendo Sneak Peek #4

Good morning, folks! Hope you all had a lovely weekend. Mine was spent mostly in the world of Crescendo, and I'm happy to report that for the first time, I can look into the not-too-distant future and see the end of this story. If I had to guess, I'd say I've got ten to fifteen thousand words left to write. I may actually get it done by the end of the month :-D

Since I'm still very much in head-down / ass-in-chair mode trying to finish this novel, I don't have too much spare time, so I thought I'd share with you all a short excerpt from a bit of Crescendo I wrote today. That's beneath the jump. But first, one quick bit of news:

I'm all giddy about having finally figured out how to send a newsletter! So, my first-ever newsletter went out on Friday night. If you'd like to get in on the fun, you can read it here (the link is at the bottom of the page), and subscribe to future ones if you'd like. There was a big fat exclusive excerpt from Break and Enter in there, and I gave away an autographed copy of Counterpoint to one lucky subscriber. I'll have an exclusive excerpt and a giveaway in the next newsletter too, so don't miss your chance to win!

And now today's Crescendo excerpt, beneath the jump. Also, a random hottie (SFW) for the heck of it. Because you can never have too many random hotties.

Crescendo Sneak Peek #3

My scheduled guest couldn't make it today, so I thought I'd share a bit of my WIP with you all. It's hitting the 70,000-word mark today and will hopefully be wrapped up nice and tidy by the end of the month (or my editor will make me scrub toilets, yikes!). I've basically been eating, sleeping. and breathing Crescendo these last several weeks, and I'm very excited about it lately. I hope you will be too :-)

Before I get to the excerpt, just a few quick bits of administrava:

• It's not too late to enter the drawing for a free print copy of Sublime. Just pop on over to my last blog entry and leave a comment with your thoughts on the subject of pricing, which I discussed in the entry. I'll draw a winner on Friday. If you're having trouble leaving a comment (some people have mentioned this), just drop me an email or contact me via my website comment form instead.
  
  
• Storm Moon Press has added one more awesome incentive to pre-order Where He Belongs: you'll get to download the book a full 48 hours before the official release date! Of course you'll still be entered in the drawing for all the cool prizes too, so go, order! It's only $1.99 :-)
  
  
• Counterpoint is at last for sale as a Barnes and Noble Nook book, horray!
  
  
• The Anchored trade paperback is currently on sale at Amazon for $12.75. I don't know how long that sale will last--the last one disappeared in less than a day--so if you're interested and have been waiting for the price to drop, now's the time.

And now what you came for, beneath the jump.

Master Class: BDSM Sneak Peek

Happy Monday, all! I'm totally bouncy today because I've just finished edits on Master Class, a contemporary M/M BDSM novella(ette) I wrote a while back and subbed to Carina Press. Master Class is the story of how Devon ("Sir") and Nicky--the stars of Sublime: Collected Shorts--first meet and start to fall for each other. And it is smokin' hot.

The headless torsos of Sir (back) and Nicky (front).

Alas, Carina was looking for romance with erotic elements, and Master Class is very much erotica with romantic elements, so in the end, despite their brilliant editorial feedback, they just weren't the right fit for this story. When I realized that, I put Master Class away for a while to focus on Crescendo, figuring I'd decide what to do with it later, but the BDSM bug bit me earlier this week and demanded I decide what to do with it right now. And when the muse calls, you damn well better listen.


So . . . I just wrapped up edits tonight, and I think I've decided where I'll be submitting it. The story is definitely better than it was last week, and it's also about a thousand words longer, though still just a quick tasty bite at 16,400 words (about 50 pages). Hopefully I'll have good news for you all soon. In the meanwhile, here's a sneak peek of Master Class, beneath the jump. It is definitely on the NSFW side. And don't be too alarmed by Devon's, er, vigor--Nicky is the sluttiest of pain sluts I've ever met :-)

NSFW Sneak Peek: Crescendo, Book II of Song of the Fallen

I've been promising a new sneak peek from Crescendo for a while, and since I've been teasing so long, I thought I'd make amends with an extremely NSFW little excerpt. Enjoy!

He was at full arms again, standing so tall he hurt. Ayden, gods have mercy, reached round behind him and found Freyrík with his hand, wrapped calloused fingers round the root of Freyrík’s cock and pulled. His eyes never left Freyrík’s, but a smile grew within them to match the one curling his lips, playful and deadly serious all apiece. He tugged hard on the silk round Freyrík’s wrists, stretching him near to discomfort, but even that strain seemed transformed somehow by the work of Ayden’s other hand, by the elf’s devilish grin, and he wanted more of it, struggled back and made Ayden work for it, force him, match him strain for strain.

Freyrík lost, of course. He could hold onto nothing in Ayden’s hands. Didn’t want to, anyway.

And gods, but those hands were talented. Ayden worked him with all his considerable skill and finesse, fingers gripping, squeezing, sliding, twisting, forcing Freyrík to the barest edge and holding him there—a deathblow pulled at the last instant, confident and steady.

And absolutely maddening.

Ayden wound the loose end of the silk round his hand, once, twice, stretching Freyrík so tight his belly pulled. And his cock twinged. Strained, eager. ‘Twas almost as if the silk were wrapped round his manhood and not his wrists.

Ayden’s smile faded from his lips but never left his eyes, which remained affixed to Freyrík’s own as if by tidal force. “Will you beg me,” he asked—said, really, as if he already knew the answer.

Freyrík licked dry lips and nodded. “If you wish it.”

Ayden leaned in, and his lips met Freyrík’s own with softness utterly striking in its contrast to all that had come before it. A sweet sweep of tongue against tongue, a gentle press of lips, less exploratory than savory, no more claiming than a parting caress.

“I do not,” he whispered against Freyrík’s lips, and then his hand was out behind him again, seeking and finding Freyrík’s manhood (straining quite helpfully toward Ayden’s grasping fingers), and with firm, deliberate strokes and murmured endearments against his skin, Ayden brought him to shuddering completion.

Break and Enter Finds a Home! :D :D :D

Excellent news, folks! Break and Enter, the M/M cyberpunk novella I co-wrote with the fantabulous Aleksandr Voinov (of Special Forces fame), has been accepted at Samhain Publishing! We're shooting for a Dec 2011 release, and I suspect I'll be doing a lot of bouncing off the walls between now and then.

For those who are curious about the submission process, or at the submission stage for their own stories, or who just want to see what Break and Enter is about, here's the query letter we sent to Samhain (minus the biographical paragraph):

Major Victor “Cyke” Kellermann is on the run for a crime he didn’t— well, okay, did commit, but at least he didn’t realize it at the time. Cyke’s a good guy, you see: a security expert, a “white hat hacker” for hire. He’s also more teched out than the Bionic Man, even if the army did leave him to his ailing ’ware when they abandoned him three years ago.

Cyke’s latest series of break-ins-for-hire are proving  . . . difficult. Sentinel Tech’s security measures are top of the line, and though Cyke has no trouble getting in, he keeps tripping up on the getting out part. The cops hounding his ass aren’t helping matters, either. Why haven’t his employers told them he’s legal and called off the dogs? Cyke can see only one reason: someone’s stealing SenTech’s data for real and setting Cyke up to take the fall. 

Fortunately there’s Bear, a paramedic-cum-tech phreak fascinated by the mysterious stranger and his even more mysterious ’ware. Bear scrapes Cyke off the sidewalk after more than one brutal SenTech cyberattack. When Cyke is injured and out of options after a disastrous third break-in, he stumbles onto Bear’s doorstep. Cyke hasn’t trusted another man in years, hasn’t felt desire for one in even longer, and Bear’s none too thrilled about harboring an alleged fugitive. But the more time they spend together, the more they realize that each is exactly what the other needs. Together, they might just clear Cyke’s name and expose the ugly secrets of a company whose business is locking secrets away.

You can read a bit more about Break and Enter in an earlier blog post, here, along with a sneak preview of the novella. And because I'm feeling excited and celebratory and can't wait to share Bear and Cyke with you all, here's another sneak peek, beneath the jump.

Crescendo Sneak Peek & Writing Contest

Morning, folks!

Did you all catch that Crescendo excerpt at the bottom of my bullet-pointed list of hilarity (well, to me, anyway) about my vacation? What's that? No? *izshocked* Well, that's okay, because here's another one below the jump.

Also, be sure to join us here on Saturday the 26th to participate in a very creative guest post by Indigo Skye (author of Uniform Behavior and Her Captive Muse). She's got some writing prompts for you all, and there'll be two winners: one on my blog and one on hers. You'll definitely want to check that out, along with some other fun upcoming events.

But for now, another Crescendo sneak peek, beneath the jump.

Crescendo Sneak Peek #2

I think I've finally hit my stride on Crescendo. The words have really been flowing the last couple days, so I thought it might be fun to share some with you this morning. Fair warning: I am a bad, bad character-mommy. You've probably all noticed this already, but I tend to break my toys, and now is no different. My family tells me this is why we can't have nice things ;-) But I promise I'll kiss it and make it all better by the end, for whatever that's worth.

So, excerpt beneath the cut. Before I launch into the sneak peek, one quick note you folks may find useful. It turns out that, on rare occasion, Groupon.com actually offers something useful. Who'd have thunk it? I don't mean to sound like an infomercial, but today's discount in my area was pretty epic for book-lovers: $10 for $20 worth of credit at Barnes and Noble--either in-store or online. So if you own a Nook, or like to hold a paper book in your hands, it kind of doesn't get any better than this: http://gr.pn/ezlID1.

But back to topic, here's today's Crescendo sneak peek, beneath the jump. And if you want to see more exclusive sneak peeks, be sure to sign up for my monthly newsletter (the first one will be going out on March 1ish), where I will exclusively preview whole scenes.

Crescendo Sneak Peek!

Morning, folks! As I'm currently neck deep in the Counterpoint sequel (Crescendo: Book II of Song of the Fallen) and trying very hard to stay that way, I thought I'd share a little sneak peek with all of you today. It's part thanks for sticking with me when I know that ending drove most of you crazy (and some of you, apparently, to plush-toy homicide), and part self-motivation to keep on the straight-and-narrow with this one.

You see, there are these boxers in the Belonging universe who keep trying to punch their way out of my head and onto the page, and I keep telling them they have to wait because I've got this other thing I need to do first. Sharing said thing with you lovely folks helps to keep me motivated, focused, and excited about it, and hopefully it'll excite you all a little too :D Even though it's just a teeeeeeeeeny snippet.

So anyway, today's Crescendo sneak peek is beneath the jump. This scene is very close to the beginning of the book, right when they arrive at High Court. The Aegis has given orders to bring Rik to one place in the castle, and Ayden to a different place. The boys are understandably nervous about being separated.

And if you didn't see yesterday's post about Kari Gregg's scrumptuous new release, What Rough Beast, or go leave a comment to enter yourselves in the drawing for a free copy of it, then definitely go do that as soon as you're done here :-)