Lovers Gonna Love
Next week, Shifter’s Dance, my sweet and sexy Wiccan Haus novella, will be unleashed on y’all, so to celebrate, I am giving away two copies to facebook fans! Head on over to facebook, “Like” my page, and then tag yourself somewhere on the cover image to enter!
Enter on this Facebook photo 🙂
Hi everyone! Today I’m happy to introduce a recent release by my fellow Musa Publishing author, Sara Daniel!
Finally Ever After: Zane’s Art
by Sara Daniel
Early this year when Musa posted a submissions call for a series called Finally Ever After, I jumped at the opportunity. The stories were to be short, happily ever romances about lovers who have loved each other and lost. Now, they have a second chance to create the happy ending they didn’t get the first time.
I love characters with a past history, especially in a short word count. They have instant attraction and long-standing unresolved conflict—the perfect elements for a fast-paced, emotion-packed read. Zane’s Art had all these things coupled with a strong present conflict. The story flowed out of me so fast I knew it was meant to be!
Here’s little from Zane’s Art for your reading pleasure.
A high school art teacher must choose between her students and the artist she never stopped loving.
High school art teacher Julianne Truman’s last chance to save her beloved art department from budget cuts is to sell the old sketches that her former boyfriend—and now famous artist—Zane DeMonde drew for her. But is she prepared to let go of his artwork and the last traces of him in her life?
Desperate to save his artistic reputation from the exposure of his early works, Zane returns to the home town he wanted to forget. He accuses Julianne of profiting from his success and demands she take his art off the market and cancel the auction.
Their high school attraction flares back to life, forcing Julianne to choose between the students who count on her and the man she never stopped loving.
EXCERPT:
“Cancel the auction.”
Julianne Truman’s head snapped around at the hard male voice. The stapler fell from her hand and cracked open on the floor, as she caught sight of the extraordinary face that went with the voice. Her knees shook as she climbed down the ladder. She hadn’t faced Zane DeMonde in nearly fifteen years. At one time she’d believed he’d be part of every single day of her future.
“Zane, I didn’t expect you to come.” She stepped toward him. His black hair was a little shorter than the last time she’d seen him, but at shoulder length it was still far longer than most men’s. Gone were the black hoodie and ripped jeans of his youth. Now he wore chinos and a sharply pressed blue button-down shirt, open at the neck.
The dark storms in his cobalt blue eyes were exactly the same as the day he’d walked away from her. “Cancel the auction. The sketches and painting are not for sale.”
She swallowed. “I own them. If I choose to sell them, that’s my business.” And it was breaking her heart to part with the only piece of him that she’d been able to hang onto all these years.
“When they have my name on them and you’re getting rich off me, it’s my business.”
Getting rich was so far from the truth Julianne would have laughed if her chest weren’t so tight. “It’s an honor to have you back in town.” At least her students would think so. Her brother would likely burst an artery. And she—well, she couldn’t even begin to process the mix of emotions she was feeling. “Do you have a minute to talk? I can explain what’s going on.”
“I know what’s going on.”
She hoped he couldn’t hear how hard her heart was hammering or sense how desperately she longed to wrap her arms around him and pick up where they left off fifteen years ago, as if he’d never left her. “Then you know that the arts are at the bottom of the school district’s priority list. To have supplies for the classroom, to restore the school mural, to give my students a chance to explore different mediums, the art program needs an alternate source of funding.”
“You’re the Dentonville High art teacher?”
She couldn’t help feeling defensive at his derisive tone. “Yes, and I love my job.”
“Do you? Or have you never moved beyond your high school life?”
To learn more about Sara Daniel and her work, please visit her website and blog. Stay connected on Sara’s Facebook page and her Sara Shafer page.
Remember, Sara is also only a tweet away.
Hi everyone, V here. I’m very excited to introduce guest author Laura Hardgrave today! Laura’s book Captive by the Fog was released on Friday by Musa’s GLBT imprint Erato. I invited her here today to talk about “Aliens, dreams, and lesbians–Oh my!”
Jotting Down Dreams about Aliens
Dreams are important for writers. Dreams are the reason we write, the reason we yearn to get our messages out into the wide, open world, and the reason we hope our characters resonate in the hearts of our readers. Whether your dream is to simply share a vision, make a reader laugh and cry at the same time, or leave behind a legacy of words, us writers all share something in common—we’re all dreamers.
As such, literal dreams often voice powerful messages to us. Nighttime dreams are born from this wonderful, zany mix of our unconscious thoughts, our everyday lives, and an odd blending of both past events and hopeful futures.
I’ve always loved trying to remember my nightly dreams, even as a child. I used to try and write them down in the morning, which sometimes worked, sometimes didn’t. There’s something almost magical about opening one sleep-covered eye to the world and languishing in the feeling of your mind lounging in that other world your brain came up with while you were snoozing. That secondary world slips away ridiculously fast unless we write the dream down, and that’s also pretty magical when you stop and think about it.
Captive by the Fog, my debut novel that was released by Musa Publishing October 26th, was originally based off a dream I had. I’m not ashamed to admit it. I dreamt about an alien invasion, and about being held captive by a species that refused to show itself to my dream’s narrator. It woke me up out of a sound sleep, my heart beating something fierce. Shivers rode down my spine. It was then that I knew I needed to stumble over to the computer and write that sucker down.
My dream’s narrator was terrified, but also hopeful, and busy basking in the sight of a young woman she met while held captive. The two fell in love and sought solace away from the situation’s dire circumstances within each other. It all sounds cheesy as I write about it now, but there was something very powerful in the dream’s message—love really can strike at any time. There’s always a way out, a way up, and a way through that darkened tunnel.
Some details needed to be untangled, naturally, but this is the case with most ideas derived from dreams. Dreams can be pretty wild, and that’s half the fun in using them as creative inspirations. I would have never even considered writing a story about aliens previous to this dream, because aliens always seemed kind of cliché. Eh. My dream didn’t care. Be damned with clichés, it seemed to say. So I took its advice—and wrote Captive.
Speaking of dreams, there’s one other point that needs be hit on. Captive is modern day science fiction—but yet, its central love story is a lesbian love story. Is it lesbian fiction? Yes. Is it a pure lesbian romance? Not exactly, but romantic elements are present. The world needs more queer speculative fiction, and with this debut novel, I intend on helping change that. That’s one of my dreams.
V: Agreed! Thanks for visiting today Laura, and come back anytime! 🙂
Captive by the Fog by Laura Hardgrave
Captive by the Fog
Laura Hardgrave
Tagline:
In order to survive, a prisoner must confront the darkness or crumble with the world around her.
Blurb:
Sam is caught in a life she can’t escape as the caretaker for her terminally ill homophobic father, but what she wants more than anything is to find the courage to escape and live her own life.
One fog-filled evening, Sam, her father, and a group of strangers are captured by beings from another world. Held prisoner by this mysterious race, the band struggles to hold on to the hope of freedom.
As Sam finds herself unexpectedly falling into a leadership role, she also falls for the shy smile of fellow prisoner Kisana. But as freedom continues to slip beyond the reach of their prison, the group must find the strength to carry on, maintain their humanity, and most of all—survive.
Excerpt:
I needed a better look. I headed into the living room and to the front door. To my surprise, the door was wide open and the couch empty. I sprinted out the door and found my father sprawled out on the ground, half of his body on the sidewalk, the other half on the stairs.
“Dad!” I yelled, “What the hell are you doing? What’d you do, fall off the stairs?” I bent down to help him up, and then realized he wasn’t looking in my direction. He was frozen in place, staring directly at the sky. I followed his gaze, and I too, froze. My heart leapt inside my chest, scrambling to escape.
A huge, metallic, disc-shaped object hovered in the foggy darkness above the grass of a nearby park. Round portholes on the sides emitted silver beams of light that screamed soundlessly into the fog. Three large metal beams extended from the base and onto the ground. Landing pads. I didn’t see a door. Yet.
My breath caught in my throat. My vision almost glazed over, and I had an overwhelming desire to run and escape my body and what I was witnessing.
“I—it…c-can’t b-be…It’s…It’s a…UFO…” The words tumbled out of my mouth, rolling over themselves like a rock slide.
I averted my eyes from the object, and saw my neighbors all out on their front doorsteps. Their eyes and bodies were rigid as they stared up at the spacecraft. Some were in their robes and pajamas. One woman two doors down lay in the grass after having fainted, her hair in curlers.
Bruce still hadn’t moved or uttered a word. He swallowed hard and gave me a quick, terrified glance. His mouth gaped open as he attempted to find words. There were none to be found, and his jaw shook with tremors. His frail frame shuddered beneath my hands, and my insides felt just as shaky.
My gaze drifted back toward the spacecraft, almost in slow motion. My mind tried to force my body to look away as if I were watching a horror movie, and the zombie was about to jump out of the shadows. A garage door-sized hull opened on one side of the UFO, and a large, metallic cube floated out. It was about the size of an RV, but had no windows or wheels. Instead, it had discs on the bottom that emitted blue beams of light down toward the ground. It hovered in the air through the power of that light. A single huge, mechanical arm extended from the front, and next to the arm were two mechanical jaws clenched shut. It reminded me of a trash truck—only sterile, alien, glistening, and unquestionably life-threatening.
The door on the UFO snapped shut, and the smaller craft rotated toward us. It began to whirr, creating the revving noise I had heard. I could see what looked like a spotlight on the very front of the mechanical jaws. It twisted around and sent forward a bright beam of yellow light that cut through the fog like a knife slicing butter. The fog had little choice but to disappear in its path.
Laura Hardgrave
Laura Hardgrave writes science fiction and fantasy with a queer edge. Her current project is a four-part fantasy novel series involving the creation of life and magic, a GLBT host of characters, a talking rock, feline shifters, and lots of sake. She’s a bit of a self-proclaimed weirdo. By day, she’s also an MMORPG gaming journalist, avid gamer, reader, and animal lover.
Links:
Musa buy link:
http://musapublishing.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=9&products_id=425
Amazon link:
Site/blog:
http://laurahardgrave.blogspot.com/
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/laurahardgrave
Facebook:
A craft post about mating rituals. Oh my!
note: this post was originally written as a guest post on George Wilhite’s blog “Long Intervals of Horrible Sanity.”
Amazon: The Ushers Book One
When I began writing about the Ushers, I had vague ideas about the world-building aspect of the series. I knew I wanted to set the scene in contemporary America, and I had this vision in my head about about a private school campus in western Massachusetts that had been taken over by wolves in the 1970s, and the Amazon Compound was born. My characters look and dress like humans, talk like humans (except the Guides, they’re a little stuffy sometimes) and for the most part live in a dictatorial society. But, world-building in paranormal romance ends up involving more than just setting and clothing and customs.
As my hero, Jack, says to his mate, Bianca, “We aren’t human, why would we mate as if we were?”
In other words, somehow, with my werewolves, I had to create a mating ritual, something sacred to the species that would bind the two wolves together in something like a marriage. Now how does a girl who blushes at sexy scenes in R-rated movies go about creating a mating ritual between werewolves?
Step one: Pour a glass of wine. No, a bigger one. Pick up a pen and start doodling. Realize the doodles are slightly pornographic.
Blush. Burn them before spouse or children see them. Start typing on the computer, get distracted by Tumblr, Pinterest, and Twitter. See a photo of a man with a hairy chest, remember that werewolves are hairy and oh, yeah. Writing. Werewolf mating ritual. One last look at that hairy chest for inspiration. Okay.
Pour another glass of wine. Start thinking logistics. Do they need to be in a particular sexual position? No, don’t want to restrict the sexy-times for future books, though has potential for more potent dirty talk. Write a few lines of dirty dialogue. Blush. Delete. Okay, scratch the sexual position theory. Ceremonial words? Again with the talk. Love scenes are about action! Write a few lines of action. Blush, but keep them.
Now we’re getting somewhere, and the characters seem like they’re getting somewhere too, but how do we make it special, not cheesy, and still sexy? Back to Tumblr for more inspiration. Did you know Tumblr is like a cross between blogging, tweeting, and porn? See something on Tumblr that can’t be unseen. Oh. Blush. Exit browser and vow never to look at the internet again. Bleach brain.
Now. Where was I? Did I mention that my weres are feminists? Oh, dear. That lends a whole other dimension to this. What if the mating ritual is inherently tied to the male “claiming” the female, marking her in a way that other males will know she is his? How sort of barbaric and totally anti-feminist. Now, how do we get our alpha females to accept this? Well, they’ll have to do some claiming and marking of their own, won’t they?
Brain is now churning out all kinds of ideas and a mating ritual is being established.
Write it. Read it. Revise it.
Really, the most important thing is to remember that while the characters aren’t human, the readers are. They want a story that will resonate and feel authentic. So the sexy stuff needs to be that way too. If the characters are behaving—even in bed—in a way that is consistent with their goals, motivations, and conflict, the readers will understand and respond to that. Make the ritual serve the story, and it will all work out.
Hello everyone! After a somewhat rocky start this morning, I’m thrilled to be showcasing an upcoming book from Marci Boudreaux! Unforgettable You is due out November 23rd, so be sure to add it to your TBR list!
First, let’s take a look at her gorgeous cover, shall we?
Unforgettable You by Marci Boudreaux
Desperate to keep her ailing mother-in-law, Doreen, in the woman’s home, Carrie Gable agrees to board a handful of Hollywood’s most elite actors at the manor. Despite her resentment of the demands being placed upon her, she can’t help but be taken in by actor Will Walker.
Will, in a last-ditch effort to save his career, has agreed to a project he has no interest in. The more time he spends with his egotistical co-stars, the more drawn he is to Carrie. Long nights spent talking about the paths their lives have taken make him realize he’d rather have a simpler life, but his ties to L.A. aren’t as willing to let him go.
With the temptation of stardom pulling Will in one direction and the need to care for Doreen tugging Carrie in another, the couple struggle to hold onto the happiness they were missing until finding each other.
EXCERPT
“It must be heart-wrenching to see Doreen fading away like that,” Will said.
Carrie’s face sagged. “It isn’t easy.”
“It’s a lot of work trying to keep up with her.”
“Sometimes,” she said dismissively as she looked at the menu. She glanced at the clock again. “Well, I won’t be slow roasting chicken tonight, will I?”
“I’m worried about you.”
“About me?” she asked lightly. “Why?”
“This is a lot for one person to handle.”
“I’m fine.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because I am.”
“Carrie.” He coaxed gently.
Turning from the menu, she seemed to plea with her eyes. “What do you want me to say, Will?”
“You can start by telling me how you are doing.”
“How the hell do you think I’m doing?”
He took in the deep creases on her forehead and the puffiness of her eyes. “Not nearly as well as you’d like everyone to believe.”
“Falling apart is not an option right now.”
“Well, burying it isn’t either.”
Carrie opened her mouth as if to argue with him but, after a moment, she stepped back, putting space between them. He watched her pull out a Dutch oven and carry it to the sink to fill with water.
Moving to her side, he looked down at her. “Can you just talk to me? Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“What I’m thinking?” she asked. “I’ve spent the last two years pretending that my dead husband is at the grocery store,” she sat the pot on a burner, “returning insane purchases, picking her up from all over the county after she’s driven off to some place that no longer exists, if it ever did exist, but somehow it didn’t seem real until today.”
“The disease—”
“I know,” she said turning to look at him. “I know what it does. But I never really felt it. Pretending Mike is running errands, taking away her access to money, hiding the car keys, it all seemed so ordinary. Laundry? Check. Dishes? Check. Lie to Mama? Check.”
He saw fresh tears shimmering in her eyes before she turned toward the drawer where she’d hidden the knobs for the stove to prevent Mama from turning on the heat.
She tried several times to get the knob in place but it resisted her push, refused to fit. Cursing under her breath, Carrie slammed it down and turned to face him. “I’ve read the books, I’ve done the research, I’ve talked to support groups and doctors, but nothing they said could have possibly prepared me for that,” she said as the tears that had made her eyes shine fell down her cheeks. “Nothing could have prepared me for her not knowing who I am.”
“I’m sorry,” he whispered as he reached out to her. When he wrapped her in his arms, she leaned into him and buried her face in his chest. A sob escaped her causing her shoulders to shake and he soothed her by whispering softly and running his hand over her back.
And lastly, here’s a link to the trailer for Unforgettable You on YouTube:
Thanks Marci, for sharing your book with us today! I can’t wait to read it!
Want more Marci? Romance Author Marci Boudreaux