I promised to offer free reads in this space, and I'm going to offer up a favorite story. This one never found a home with publishers, but remains a story that I'm proud of. I'll talk a lot about the characters in later posts, and more, I'm sure, about why I am offering this one. But for now, we'll start with a blurb and a cover.

The One That Feels
Thommas Ashforthe should never have met his ex Brian at the club. Never able to refuse Brian’s pleas, Thommas enters the Realm to seek out the lost spirit of Brian’s dying boyfriend Jordan. The price of travel in that place of magic is steep and oaths spoken in the Realm cannot be broken. With time running out before Jordan’s body dies in the world of the Real, Thommas rushes through the Realm on a hopeless quest.

Nem is a prince of Zaharoth, and Thommas represents a hope of escape from the ruthless authority of his father. But when Nem binds Thommas with an oath as a price of passage through the forests of his homeland, can he dare to hope that the stranger from the Real will be truly bound by it? ​

My life has been a little crazy for the past two years. In the midst of writing and editing, my father-in-law became deathly ill two summers ago. I wish I could say that was hyperbole, but I'm afraid it's not. He declined quickly from the healthy man I'd come to know into a frail shell. We tried to do everything ourselves so that he could stay in his house, but it became too much. He was admitted to the hospital, and the cancer they found was inoperable. Hospitals, then nursing homes, then hospice. Mercifully it was quick and certain in a way that left my husband with few doubts about our choices. I wrote every post for my Steven's Heart blog tour from a vigil beside his bed in hospice.

Since his passing my life has been a whirlwind. We bought a new house. We endeavored to sell not just our own home but my husband's father's also. I missed the Dreamspinner Author retreat last year because I was in the midst of moving. This year I was determined to make it, and I did (There's this photographic evidence with Amy DiMartino, Charlie Chochet and Dani Maas). Authors are a frequently insular bunch, and I'm no exception. If it wasn't for Dani, I'm not sure I would have managed to actually meet anyone. The workshop was jam packed with goodness, time to make new friends and contacts, everything I needed to be energized. There was even a chance to pitch ideas to the editors and I'm really thrilled at the prospect of releasing something from Dreamspinner later this year.

Unfortunately, it also meant returning home to both the impending sale of our former home (and therefore desperate last minute cleaning, bargaining, and endless meetings with lawyers and realtors) and two days missed from work at the college in the midst of spring break housing (which I coordinate) and the implementation of a new housing assignments and lottery system (guess who is on the implementation team). Something had to give and the immediate something was my posts here. My plan was only to be a week late posting. All my good intentions were for naught, and obviously last weekend nothing new went up. 

I hope none of you are too disappointed at the delay, and I promise my next post will be the blurb and cover for the serial novel that we'll be discovering here on the blog over the next few months. 

As promised, the February issue of ARDOR includes musings on Valentine's Day. My own this year was spent finally getting the curtains in the new house hung. I did little else, as it was seriously cold here in New England -- record breaking in fact. I spent most of it worried for my puppy, who is not really a puppy anymore, but quite elderly and suffering from the cold.

The excerpt in this issue is from Gerry's Lion and speaks toward the title. Gerry's Lion is organized as glimpses of life for the characters centered around major holidays, and appropriately this one is pulled from Valentine's Day. The parts of this story are more sections than chapters, and I love the Valentine's Day section in particular. I get a lot of flak for Gerry taking a long time to let go of his partner and be open to a relationship with Leo, and I confess, I don't see it.  Gerry lost his husband and lover of over ten years. In what universe should that make finding love after his partner passes easy? It would be hard. It should be hard. I don't regret showing that difficulty for an instant -- in the end, I believe working through that loss with a partner is essential, hopeful, and powerfully important. Too often gay men are told that our love isn't real. Gerry's grief is a testament to how real it can be.

Ok, rant over, on to other exciting topics.

The new issue of ARDOR also contains a short, this one based on The Colors of Romance. I knew I wanted to do a Valentine's Day short from a Valentine's Day story, but I struggled a lot with a topic. Finally I settled on "The Shades of Romance" -- a story about TruClrs4vr, our mystery suitor. In the published story, TruClrs4vr comes across as, I hope, suave, romantic. He's a heroic figure, determined to woo Theo from despair and loneliness. But The Colors of Romance is a short story, and it suffers from the usual difficulties of characterization caused by brevity. The focus is so powerfully on Theo that TruClrs4vr can sometimes feel a little like one note. So with "The Shades of Romance," I tried to bring that focus onto our mystery suitor, make him live a little more. I hope I succeeded.

I definitely hope you'll check out the February issue of ARDOR (it's free), and tell me your thoughts.

Critical links:
You can always find the current issue of ARDOR at my website.
Gerry's Lion is available in paperback and ebook from Dreamspinner Press.
The Colors of Romance is available in ebook format from Dreamspinner Press.

One of the difficult parts about writing love stories is that you can't aim for the target. The heart goes the direction it wants, and because of that, the path characters take to get there is often a meandering one. It goes slow when as a writer you want it to go fast. It speeds by when you're begging the characters to slow down. I love that about writing, because I've learned that the characters are the ones in control. And that's splendid -- because when I let the characters loose, they thrive and grow and they live, so magnificently that they can make me cry, and they do.

So where are they meandering and how and what do I think that means? Let's find out together. A blog is practically a requirement for authors today, but I hope I can make this one worth an occasional visit. Unlike my newsletter with its fancy formatting and strict length provisions, my thoughts here will be less guarded, more raw. Sometimes they may be angry or excited in the ways the carefully placed words of the newsletter cannot be.  In my newsletter I explore the characters you've seen or will see soon. Here you'll also get to see the characters half-formed, and the stories as they become. 

I'm going to share a story here. I'm going to do it slowly, and if you read, patiently, you'll get the whole story. And if you're impatient, and you want it NOW... well, once I get far enough into it, I may offer an opportunity for that too. For now, as I get this beast moving, I'll be sharing twice a month for the story. And I'll post a couple more times a month about other things. Sometimes that will be a thought on current events; others it may be about a writing triumph or failure. And yes, there's sure to be a bit of promotion now and then, not just of my stuff, but of stories, beautiful stories -- the ones I love and maybe sometimes the ones I hate too, because people's taste is always different. 

Next week ARDOR, my formal newsletter, comes out with its February issue. I'm still writing the content (furiously, because it needs to get formatted as well as written!), but you can be sure that love and dating and Valentine's Day will all be covered. And there will be a short in that issue as well, connected to something that has already been written. While the editorial content is still being finalized, I do have the cover for the issue, and I wanted to share it with you, because it inspired me. Maybe it will inspire you as well. Enjoy, and I'll talk to you all next week!*

*Yes, I mean talk. If you comment I will always try to answer! Books are one way communication, but this doesn't have to be... it can be a dialogue, if you want it to be.