Rainbow Book Fair Recap

Last weekend, I attended the Rainbow Book Fair on behalf of Riptide Publishing. It was actually more fun this year than last year, which I didn't think was possible, so next year, if you find yourself able to make it down to NYC for the day, definitely do--you won't be sorry!

Lots of amazing things and amazing people, authors as well as readers. It's so wonderful to talk to folks, and especially interesting to connect with people who don't read ebooks or maybe even have computers, who come to the Fair to look for stories about people like themselves finding well-deserved happiness and love, to hear their joy and finding so many gems, to see people wheeling out whole suitcases full of reading material to last them until the next Fair. I seriously could gush about the RBF forever, so I'm just going to stop myself now and share some photos with you instead, beneath the jump. (As always, click to embiggen.)

Huge Sale at All Romance Ebooks Today Only!

Hello all! Just popping in to say ARe is holding a 50% rebate sale today only, site-wide. That means every one of my titles comes with a 50% rebate, and so does every one of Riptide's titles. Riptide titles are almost never discounted, so if you've been eyeballing one (or two, or ten ;-p) for a while now, today's your chance to pick it up at a rare discount.

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.

Happy Holidays!

To all you fabulous folks out there in the blogosphere--my friends, my colleagues, my editors, my co-authors, my business partners, and most of all my readers--I wish you all the joy in the world. Whatever you may or may not celebrate, whomever you may or may not celebrate it with, I hope you find the season restful and happy.

And if not, hey, hold out hope--at least the days are starting to get longer again ;-)

Back from Vacay with a New Book!

Greetings all! I'm home from a much-needed (but sadly working) vacation, and I even brought back with me a special souvenir head-cold. Knew I shouldn't have licked those poker chips . . .

On the plus side, the food was great, the weather was warm, the seas were . . . well, stormy, quite frankly, pretty much nonstop, but I do so love a very rocking boat when it isn't making me nauseous (which is about half the time), and the company was wonderful (I was traveling with my brand-spanking-new stepmother, who is as awesome as they come). And even though I had a big pile of edits to do for Riptide while I was away, doing them on a deck chair overlooking a tropical island is way better than my kitchen table.

So, I came home and I realized that I have a new book coming out in eight days--Break and Enter, co-written with Aleksandr Voinov and releasing from Samhain Publishing--and I haven't even begun to think about doing anything fun with it yet. I've been so busy with Riptide that I actually forgot. So, that underwear model on the cover? He's Major Victor "Cyke" Kellermann, and I have no idea what happened to his pants. I think Aleks and I will do a Find Cyke's Pants scavenger hunt and maybe give out a classic Nook I've had hanging around the house since the summer. Sound like fun?

Oh, and just a quick housekeeping note, as well: since Riptide Publishing has acquired Guiltless Pleasure Publishing, Counterpoint is now available for sale on the Riptide site, yay! Which means you can earn bonus bucks if you purchase it there (they'll be working soon, I promise :-p), and while none of the story's content has changed, it does have a shiny gorgeous new Riptide layout. Right now it's only available in PDF, but in about a week, it'll be available in Epub, Mobi, and HTML too, and all the copies on third-party sites like Amazon will switch over from the GPP layout to the RP layout.

And now, apropos of nothing, some eye candy of the kind you've all come to expect from me, beneath the jump. It involves cats and actor crushes and I think it's my new favorite thing ever.

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

Movie Reviews for Pervs: Shame

So this Friday, I went to see the new Steve McQueen / Michael Fassbender Movie, Shame, at the 2011 New York Film Festival. I was in excellent company: Cat Grant bought the tickets and treated myself, Liz Silver, and Damon Suede to the showing. And not that they're not awesome people, because they totally are, but did I mention Michael Fassbender and Steve McQueen were there? Because they were :D

I shall limit my fangirl squeeing, primarily because once Michael went through the photo call (which we were able to watch from about twenty feet away, but had to peek between the row of photographers), his handlers hustled him past the rope pretty quickly. He did try to sign autographs, but they told him he needed to introduce the movie. Ah well.

Speaking of introducing the movie, here's the blurb from IMDB:

In New York City, Brandon's carefully cultivated private life--which allows him to indulge his sexual addiction--is disrupted when his sister Cisssy arrives unannounced for an indefinite stay.

Basically, it's about an OCDish sex-addict who holds down a highly successful job in (I think?) an ad firm and suffers so deeply from his addiction that he jacks off in the bathroom at work, keeps porn on his work computer, brings prostitutes to his house, and randomly picks up women wherever he can find them. He's a miserable SOB, either in agony or numb pretty much all the time. The impression you get is that orgasm is the one moment in life when he is not in agony, and he chases it with the relentless desperation of someone who knows it's killing him but doesn't know how else to feel. His sister shows up and throws a serious wrench into his orderly life. Worse, she seems to make him think about all kinds of things he'd rather not think about every time he looks at her. She makes him face his present, too; when he starts having to hide around her, he seems to realize how fucked up he is, and starts trying to change.

So, on to the review. I want to (and will) treat this as a real review because the movie was pretty incredible in a lot of ways, but I'll be doing it within the framework of the Perv Score. For those new to Movie Reviews for Pervs, here's the four criteria by which films are judged:

1. Hotness of the star(s)
2. How often and how thoroughly the star(s) get nekkid
3. Severity of ass-kickings to which the star(s) are subjected
4. And, as something of an afterthought, whether or not the movie was actually any good

So, combined real and perv reviews, beneath the jump.

Monday Picspam & a Deal on Counterpoint

Yep, still crazy deadlines, which means more picspam for you :-) I'm doing a final sanity check on Aleks Voinov's absolutely FAN-FRIGGIN-TASTIC Belonging-verse novel Counterpunch tonight, and I'd forgotten between the spring and now just how much I loved it when he was writing it. Now that he's given it a good hard polish, it's even more amazing. (See for yourself--you can read an excerpt [and win a Kindle!] at the publisher's website.)

So, in celebration of that, I'm posting some hot hot boxers today a few non-copyrighted gifs and screencaps (other pictures likely belonged to someone and had no business being here in the first place, and have thus been deleted) beneath the jump.

Two quick notes before the picspam begins.

First, with the Crescendo release date looming close, my publishers have gotten together to offer both Counterpoint (the first book in the Song of the Fallen series) and Crescendo at 20% off when purchased directly through the publishers' websites. This is the cheapest it's ever been, so if you've been waiting to get it, now's a good time.

Second, OMG, the Riptide Publishing Grand Opening Celebration is just around the corner! See that shiny banner in my left sidebar? Click it! There's lots of exciting new stuff on the Riptide website and more to come, and our first stop on the party tour begins September 23 at Amara's Place with lots of fun and prizes and behind-the-scenes peeks at our first eight titles.

Okay, now picspam. And yep, I still managed to work in Fassavoy, and a bonus Til Schweiger! As always, click to embiggen.

Monday Picspam - Rope (NSFW)

Happy Monday, folks! (I know, I know, I shouldn't be this chipper on a Monday.) Everything's going along swimmingly; edits for Crescendo are on pace, and all the Riptide releases are making progress. Did you see all the new blurbs and cover art we've posted lately? There's some really lovely stuff there. Our web designer rolled out a test version of the web store this weekend too, which was mad exciting. Can't wait to share it with you all!

In the meanwhile, this busy bee has little time to blog, so I shall shower you with hoteness instead, nice and NSFW, beneath the jump. Today's theme is rope. (And somehow I've managed not to post a picture of Michael Fassbender; apologies in advance to fellow obsessives.) (Have removed some photos that probably belonged to folks. So you're left with, well, screencaps of Michael Fassbender. Surprise surprise ;-p) As always, click to embiggen.

The Weirdness Continues

Happy Friday, all! Alas, it's looking like a bit of a mess round these parts, as the eye of Hurricane Irene is forecast to, well, glare really hard right over my head. (Is anyone else surprised that, between the very rare northeast hurricane and the even rarer northeast earthquake, that nobody's yet found a way to blame God's wrath on teh gays or portend End Times? Doesn't that usually happen right about now?)

Anyway, long story short, the disaster folks are telling us to expect power outages for days and possibly even weeks. Since I don't have time to front-load my blog, I'm afraid it will go without updates for as long as I'm stuck without power/internet. An even more unfortunate side effect may be the delay of the Crescendo release by a couple weeks, since I'm supposed to be wrapping up edits in the next couple weeks and can't do that if my battery's dead. If it looks like the power situation is truly ominous, I'll try to get out of town, but where I live literally becomes an island when there's flooding and odds are good the roads will be closed for a while.

Don't worry about me, though--I'll be perfectly safe in my (sadly flood-prone) basement, reading my Kindle by candlelight as the storm blows by. Until . . . well, whenever! :-)

Authors After Dark Photo Recap

Afternoon, all! I'm finally recovered from the wild time that was Authors After Dark 2011 (or #AADPhilly for my tweeps out there), and now I come bearing photos. I also came home with fifteen(!!!) free books and two giant tote bags stuffed with swag. It was pretty insane.

I also have karaoke video, but Blogger is giving me fits, so I'll be putting that up on my facebook page instead.

Met lots of wonderful new-to-me authors and readers, and also finally met a great many of my GR, Twitter, and blog buddies who I'd never seen face to face before. All the fun, beneath the jump--click to embiggen.

Weekend Hotties!

Yup, one more day of hottie picspam. I'll get back to real blog posts on Monday, I promise. In the meanwhile, I'm sure you're all absolutely devastated by the alternative ;-)

So, a big pile of my latest two obsessions (and quite possibly my longest-running in many years for this flighty little bird of an-- Ooh, shiny!) beneath the jump.

(Come on, you didn't really think I could go a whole week without posting pictures of Fassavoy, did you?)

(Because, srsly u guise, u guise, srsly . . .

)

Shiny New Cover Art for a Shiny New Free Story!

Remember the M/M Romance Group's Hot Summer Days event I mentioned last week, full of free gay romance and erotica stories from some of your favorite authors in the genre? 

My story's not up yet (but coming soon, I'm told), but I do have some shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiny new cover art for it from the brilliant LC Chase (who also did the cover art for Sublime), and it's so lovely I couldn't wait to share it with you all.

Oh sniper, you mil-dotted your way right to my heart. . . . Wait, that's bad.

Have a lovely weekend folks!

 

Mid-week Hotties :D

Crescendo edits are due in about three weeks, and between that and the Seekrit Project (more on that soon!) I'm doing with Aleks Voinov and another lovely M/M writer, I'm a bit crunched for time. So of course that means picspam instead of a real blog post :D

I'm still on a total XMFC kick, so I bring you James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender being drop dead sexy, plus some fun animated gifs, beneath the jump.

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.

Release Day!

Yay, Where He Belongs is officially out today! It's up now on ARe and Amazon (but please consider buying it directly from the publisher if you're interested, as Amazon keeps 65% of the sale price :O !), and it's already gotten some lovely reviews: 4.75 stars at Reviews by Jessewave, 4 stars at Amara's Place, and 5 stars at Between the Covers. Does that mean I can say the critics are raving? ;-D

Anyway, it's just $1.99 and a great introduction to the Belonging universe, even if you haven't read Anchored. I'm popping into a bunch of blogs giving out free books and swag and talking about the Belonging 'verse and writing in general (I'm particularly amused by my stop at LC Chase's), so I hope you'll join me along the way. Don't forget to comment for a chance to win something at every stop!

In other news, I went to the Fantasy, Future, & Paranormal Gathering tonight at the RWA national convention. I was unable to attend the rest of the convention, but it was nice to jaunt into Manhattan and meet a whole bunch of new writers and editors, several of whom attended the Gathering in superhero costume (photos to come when I'm less exhausted). I also got to meet my writing buddy Kari Gregg in person for the first time tonight, which was most excellent. She and I met up with the electric Damon Suede after the Gathering and nursed drinks for almost three hours in a fabulous little restaurant staffed by gay male models (I shit you not). God, I love New York :D

And because it's apparently become A Thing I Do, let's wrap this up with your daily dose of Michael Fassbender, beneath the jump.

It's Unofficial Release Day--Let's Have a Party!

Yay! Today's the day everyone who pre-ordered Where He Belongs gets to download it--a full 48 hours before the official release date of July 1. (It's not too late to "pre-order," by the way; any orders placed today or tomorrow can be downloaded instantly and you'll still be entered in the nifty pre-order prize drawings.) I've downloaded my own copy onto my Kindle, and boy does it look snazzy. The folks over at Storm Moon Press did a gorgeous job.

To celebrate, I've started a little blog hop, visiting some of my favorite places and giving away free ebooks and swag. So far I've talked about "the prequel problem" at Kari Gregg's place (while Kari heinously insulted me, natch), and brought Daniel over to do a character interview at Amara's Place. And today I'll be at Well Read doing an interview with Jenre. What all three of these things have in common--aside, of course, from my winning personality and charm--is free stuff. Go, leave a comment on each post, and you'll be entered to win a copy of Anchored: Belonging (the precursor to Where He Belongs, although you don't need to have read Anchored to enjoy WHB) or some neat swag.

I'll be hopping around for the rest of the week giving stuff away too. You can find that schedule here.

And just because I haven't posted one of these in, oh, twelve hours (the horror!), let's end today's post with some Fassavoy, beneath the jump.

Where He Belongs Release Party (w/Prizes, Natch) Coming Up!

Happy Monday, folks! Where He Belongs will be releasing in just under two weeks, and I woke up today really feeling the excitement about that for the first time.

My gorgeous cover, let me show u it. Again, I know, but really, it's just that gorgeous :D (Click to embiggen for extra gorgeousness.)

I'll be doing a little mini release party for this, stopping at a few blogs/sites here and there over the next couple weeks. You can find me at:

June 24: Kari Gregg
June 28: Amara's Place, a.k.a. home of the Black Mamba :D
June 29: Well Read by Jenre
June 30: L.C. Chase
July 1: Taboo Indeed
July 2: Brita Addams
July 3: Marie Sexton
July 5 & 7: Reena Jacob's
July 7: Bryl Tyne
July 7: Amber Skyze

Hmm, maybe not so mini after all :-p Anyway, I'll be giving out a prize at every stop to one lucky commenter--some neat WHB swag, a free backlist book here and there--so be sure to visit all my lovely blog hosts. They're pretty awesome folks, so poke around their sites while you're there; you might discover a great many new authors to add to your TBR pile!

And now for the hard sell ;-) You can still pre-order Where He Belongs directly from the publisher for just $1.99 and get access to the book two full days before the official July 1 release date! Plus, each copy you pre-order gives you one entry into a raffle for some very cool prizes.

Okay, hard sell over. Let me make it up to you with some fan-service from McFassy. Because, let's face it, there's no such thing as too much of James McAvoy diving face-first into Michael Fassbender's lap.

        

Slasharific!

Yup, still wrapping up Crescendo. But I did take a brief break from writing this week to go see X-Men: First Class. And if you've seen it too, or if you hang with the M/M crowd on Twitter, then you know it probably should have been called "Charles and Erik Get a Room" :-p

So in honor of the slashiest not-actually-intended-to-be-gay movie of all time (heck, even James McAvoy thought Charles and Erik should "have sex and become married"), and given my unhealthy perfectly normal and understandable desire to kidnap and do unspeakable things to obsession with Michael Fassbender, I thought I'd engage in a little picspam some gifs of the finest order today. Oh, and also a fiction rec. If you want to read some smokin hot NSFW Charles/Erik action, you will find it here.

Photos beneath the jump.

Crescendo Cover Art and Super-sales!

Happy Memorial Day, folks! I've got such exciting things to share with you today that I'm caving in and putting Monday's post up several hours early.

First, it wouldn't be Memorial Day without a sale, and All Romance Ebooks is holding a crazy one. They're offering a 50% rebate (in store credit) on all purchases made on their site this weekend. Yes--every single book. And unlike the 50% off sales at Fictionwise, publishers and authors will still receive their full royalties on the purchases you make, so it's sweet for us as well as for you. Looking for some shopping ideas? You could purchase Counterpoint and use your rebate to get Anchored for just $0.95 ;-)

To help you take extra advantage of the sale there this weekend, I've put Sublime on sale for $1.97, which is already 36% off. After the rebate, it'll cost you just $.99! That's a two-thirds discount off the regular cover price.

Speaking of covers, let me show you the one for Crescendo: Book II of Song of the Fallen. I am so excited about this gorgeous work of art I could squeal. Er, have squealed. May yet be squealing for some time ;-D

You can click to embiggen that, but if you really want to enjoy Nathie's artistic talents in full size, then click to embiggen this full-spread one instead:

Sexy, huh? I don't know about you, but I can't wait until October 7, when I get to hold this shiny new paperback in my hands :-D