Guest Blogger ~ Stormy Glenn

My guest today is Stormy Glenn. The reason? Well, heck, cowboys, werewolves and M/M??
Do you need to ask? But in case you do, here are Stormy's reasons

Hmmm…Werewolves, Cowboys, and M/M?
Okay, let’s talk about werewolves. I just love the general idea of werewolves and seem to be somewhat obsessed with writing about them right now. First off, they have "mates" that they know on sight, smell, or whatever. Just kind of cuts down on the crap. There’s no blind dates, etc. You just know. The great part of that is you can usually jump right in to the good stuff without having to go through the whole "gee, do I like you" stuff…unless you’re human and have just been mated by a werewolf. That could cause some problems…at least we can hope.

There is also the problem of finding a mate but that usually works it out somehow, for at least one of the characters in the book, sometimes more. And, depending on how I write the story, they are mated for life. I think that is extra cool. The second part of my love for werewolves is the dominant alpha male. Hot! Hot! Hot! There is just nothing like an alpha male. They’re dominant, possessive, and sexy. What more could you want? Besides, I usually try to have my alpha males "mated" to someone that makes their life very interesting. In Full Moon Mating, the werewolf in this story falls in love with a guy that doesn't speak but has some unusual abilities that make his life very interesting.

I’m presently working on the third installment of the Tri Omega Mates series right now, called Hidden Desires. Caleb is the alpha of Hunter Pack. He finds himself mated to Micah, who could really care less that he is the alpha. Micah is human. He’s never even heard about werewolves until he’s mated to one. When he tells Caleb they need to go talk, Caleb reminds Micah that he is the alpha of his pack. Micah’s response? "I’m happy for you, now let’s go talk." Caleb’s status means nothing to him. For Caleb, having been the alpha of his pack for so long, Micah’s attitude is very unusual to him and he is totally unprepared with how to deal with it, or Micah. Tends to create some interesting situations.

Werewolves, cowboys, and M/M together?
I like writing about the story behind men falling in love, especially when the men in question are werewolves. If they’re cowboys, that’s even hotter! Having fallen in love with men in cowboy boots as a teenager, I believe that there is nothing sexier than a man in cowboy boots…two or three men in cowboy boots is even better. Then, if you add the alpha male aspect? Is there anything better? I’ve always associated sexy men with cowboy boots…a man could be dressed in a gunny sack and still be sexy as long as he is wearing cowboy boots. Hence, the cowboys…I REALLy like cowboys.

As for the M/M aspect…I never started out to write M/M novels. It just happened that way. Now, I find that I read as much M/M as I write. I love the dynamics behind two men falling in love…three is even better. In my experience, men tend to be rather possessive, especially if they are alpha males. It doesn’t matter whether they are gay or straight. It just is. If you add a third person to the relationship, it makes for some very interesting, and often humours situations. I think I tend to write stories where there is at least one alpha male type, if not two, and then someone that would be considered not so dominant. However, I find that the ones that are considered more submissive are actually the ones that hold the relationship together. However, my more "submissive" characters tend to be little spitfires too. The combination is great!

My Books
I spend a lot of time writing…sometimes I think too much, but I love it, every aspect of it. I love the ability to create entire worlds and cultures. I can do pretty much anything, write pretty much anything. Take "The Katzman’s Mate" for example. This is an entire planetary system…new worlds, new cultures, new life forms. There’s even a guy with blue skin. The sky, or planetary system in this case, is the limit. I never really know what I am going to write until I write it. I also don't write a book to fit a particluar genre. I write the book, then decide where it fits. I just recently finished a series about a group of special ops soldiers that have special "abilities" who each find love, either together or with others. There are sveral differnt genres here...M/F/M, M/M, M/F, and M/M/M. I have three more books planned for this series so who knows where its going to go. Like I said, I never know what I'm going to write until I write it, sometimes not even paragraph to paragraph. I let the characters guide me.

I have another series that I researched and created for a year before I started writing. The "Warriors of Akasha" is still a WIP. I spent so much time on this series because of the detail involved with creating this entire culture, from the Blood Rhyte Ceremony to the tattoo’s that each warrior receive when he/she is mated. I even have an entire dictionary that I created for reference when writing the stories. I hope to have this series released in a few months. I want to get at least two of the books done before then, then I’ll finish the other three that I have planned…and maybe more.

Tri Omega Mates is my first series. A Tri Omega is a special type of omega that needs two mates to keep him grounded and safe. Without two mates, he will die. As such, all of the books in this series are M/M/M menage.

1. Secret Desires – released October 20th from Siren Publishing
2. Forbidden Desires – Due December 29th from Siren Publishing
3. Hidden Desires – Due February from Siren Publishing
4. #4 unnamed as of yet – release date sometime in 2009.

Wolf Creek Pack is my next series. This series totally unconnected with the Tri Omega Mates series. They are not even the same type of werewolf…different mating rituals, packs, cultures, physical forms. The first book in this series is Full Moon Mating. It is due for release in June 2009. I presently have four sequels in progress.

My Lupine Lover is a stand-alone novel (due for release May 2009 by Siren Publishing) but it is connected to the Tri Omega Mates series. It was not added under that series name simply because it is not a M/M/M menage. Only a M/M story…sorry. However, if you enjoy the Tri Omega Mates series, I would suggest this book also.

I never meant for either of these series to actually be a series. I actually wrote the first books to each, Secret Desires and Full Moon Mating, with no intention of them being a series. However, after I wrote them, their characters were just so alive, and I loved the werewolf idea so much, that I just continued. Besides, the minor characters in each book kept bugging me for their own books, so…

To go totally off on a different tangent is my M/M futuristic book, The Katzman’s Mate, due for release in March 2009 from Siren Publishing. No werewolves, no cowboys, but I kept the dominant, possessive, sexy male. Chellak Rai is just a cat… or Katzman. I wanted to write about an alpha male that didn't look totally human... he has a light coating of fur, pointed ears, a face that is not altogther human looking, a great scense of smell and hearing...and sexy as can be. He's also the displaced heir to an entire world and he just found his mate.

I have several more books due for release or WIP’s. I think I’m working on like, seventeen books right now. I don’t believe in writer’s block. I f I get stuck, I just move on to another story until I can go back. To find out more about me and my books, release dates, book trailers, etc, please visit me. There are several places to find me…
My web site: www.stormyglenn.com
My blog: http://stormyglenn.blogspot.com
Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/stormyglenn
Book Trailers: http://www.youtube.com/user/stormyglenn
Siren Publishing: http://www.sirenpublishing.com/stormyglenn/
Buy my books at Siren-Bookstrand: http://www.bookstrand.com/authors/stormyglenn/
M/M Romance Readers & Writers http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MMRomancereadersandWriters/
I love to hear from readers so stop by and drop me a line… stormyglenn@hotmail.com

CONTEST
I'll be offering a free copy of my eBook, Secret Desires, this month. On Nov. 30th, I will choose a winner from all replies. You need to answer one question for me. The most interesting answer will win. And you have the rest of the month to answer so answer as many times as you like. The best answer wins!
Author's Question: why do we write in genres that we do?
Reader's Question: why do we read the genres that we do?
Just visit the Novel Sisterhood Retreat at Coffee Time Romance & More and leave your answer to enter. Please do not email me your answer.

Guest Blogger ~ Angela Fiddler

Writer's block -- dealing with problems in the beginning of a novel before they turn into huge problems at the end

I love writing. Writing rocks. Writing, when everything is going well, is about the best feeling in the world. I have a loving wife who supports me and who understands that 'Can't talk. Writing' is a perfectly good excuse when the hard questions, such as 'did you unload the dishwasher' or 'shall we go visit your folks this weekend' come up. In short, writing is the most awesomest awesome, awesome thing that a single person can do in public, private, or with pets in the room. Go writing!

Unless you can't write. The words don't come and the cursor seems to mock you with its empty, useless blinking. Or worse, you live on a ground floor, your windows are painted closed, or you've signed some sort of ridiculous rental or condominium by-law agreement that made you swear you weren't going to throw whatever you use to write out the window. Then what?

I know there are dozens and dozens of books and websites out there on how to deal with writer's block, but these are things that work for me. I'm not going to lie to you. Some of the treatments I talk about are worse than the cure. I've cut, and cut drastically the first/middle/last 20,000 words of something I was working on, and although I cut and pasted it into a new document, I knew, in my heart, that there was either nothing in those words to salvage, or that those words only fit in the piece one way, with the characters in only one mental state, and though I said I'd go through and pick apart cute turns of phrasing, I never have. Because amputation is amputation, and anything sewn back on after it's been cut off is bound to go evil, as any science fiction or horror writer will tell you. (Your mileage may vary on that last 'going evil' part.)

So here is what works for me when I'm either the one writing, or I'm critiquing for a friend whose story is going nowhere.

Did I begin at the beginning?

This is the petering out problem. A great, cracking story has begun, fantastic characters are introduced, and a great world is built up around them and…nothing. It may go a page, it may go twenty, but then there's the feeling of 'and now what' and you don't have a single clue as to what that what is supposed to be. From all the work I've critiqued, I can normally tell a great story that has petered out has failed because the story did not begin at the right spot. Especially for fantasy and science fiction, the desire is to start it either after a great battle has finished (for both science fiction and fantasy) or as the intrepid hero is off to the castle to meet Y about problem X (for most often fantasy, but substitute 'home base to get new orders,' for 'castle' and it works for science fiction, too). More to the point, as the reader of these failed beginnings, I get the sense time and time again it's either began far too early before the action has begun, or too late for the reader to either (A) care about the characters about to be thrown under a bus or (B) way after the epic whatever had happened.
I always ask myself, at what point do things change to the point where if nothing is done, the world ends, and what where my main characters doing immediately before that? (In erotic fiction, that answer should be fairly obvious, btw)

Am I loving the Bacon Guys?

There's a brilliant scene in Season 1 of Stargate Atlantis. It's just two guys, talking about how bacon is the food that makes other food worth eating. And you can't help but nod with the wisdom behind that, religious or vegetarian objections aside. Bacon *is* the food that makes other food worth eating! These two, nameless, uniformed men speak the truth! You love the bacon guys. Go bacon guys! Then Koyla comes through the gate and shoots them both. And seriously, you just met the bacon guys, and they're dead, but you *care*. It's an awesome scene. If the action starts before your reader loves your characters, even just a little, they're going to have a hard time connecting with them as horrible things are being thrown at them.

Am I too afraid something may not be explained?

Back story is important. It adds a dimension to the characters, a history that can be hinted at, and conflict between characters that can be eluded at or ignored with tragic consequences. And I'm all about the tragic consequences.

However, back story doesn't usually belong in the front of a story. As much as the author cries that the reader won't understand their prose if the reader doesn't understand that Bad Guy X did Action Y to main character Z in the very first scene, or that if it's not explained how the main character got to the action of the start of the book, then reader isn't going to understand.

The author shouldn't be afraid that their readers isn't going to trust them. I mean there is a limit of how much mysterious mystery you can cram in (I'm looking at you, Lost), but there's a fair bit of tension you can have. Most readers are more likely turn the page to find out why rather than give up in disgust because everything is not instantly explained. Critique groups are partly to blame for this, because the moment they get to something that isn't completely explained in a neat package, some people feel compelled to ask for more exposition. In commercial fiction there is a trust that the author will get to the dark looks between the dreaded Count and his beautiful Ward eventually. As long as you know you'll get to it, eventually, don't let a critique partner demand to know more information than they really ought to have. Don't interrupt the flow of what is happening now to talk about what happened last week/month/century.

The first chapter has to do three things. It has to introduce an interesting character, in an interesting world, with an interesting problem he or she has to either solve, or fail miserably at solving, by the end of the book. Everything else can wait.

Why am I using today as a starting point?

It should be clear, to you, if not immediately to the reader why you have started the novel the day, of all the days in the character's life. What causes the change that makes the character suddenly need to get involved outside their day to day lives to fight the greater good? It helps if there is a personal as well as global reason, and helps even more if their motivation doesn't come down to just 'money' 'family' or 'trying not to die'. Sadly, we all need money, we all should think family is important, and we're all, even crossing the street at the cross-walk, trying not to die. What makes your character more unique than that?

What happens if the character fails?

This may not have to be dealt with in the first chapter. But soon, the reader has to know what will happen if your character stops fighting. If he or she throws up their hands, says, "Bugger this, I'm going back home to my farm/my town/Alpha Centauri" there has to be dire consequences. How does the world end? This question may not work when dealing with a contemporary romance, but in science fiction and fantasy, it is of upmost importance.

And if they can quit and walk away, it's a huge failing of:

Where's my tension?

No, really, where is it? Tension is needed, even from page one. If you've ever seen pictures of slush piles, or hear editors talk about slush burning parties, there is no hope for a story that starts getting good in chapter 4. Sad, tragic, not the way they did it in the old days, but true. Back story, as it is in the back and not in the present, pretty much guarantees that the main character, if he or she is in it, will survive. There goes your tension.

And there has to be a buildup of tension. The characters rarely can still be solving the same problems in chapter thirty as they are in chapter one. The characters, by their own actions, have to struggle to fix the problem, even if their attempts have just made the situation worse. Your bad guy is out there, stirring the pot, and it's not enough that your characters just react to what is thrown at them. They have to try to get ahead of the ball and start making changes themselves, for better or for worse. The stakes have to get higher, the personal involvement the characters feel needs to get deeper, and if they give up, their world has to end or change so badly, it might as well have ended.

Okay, I have all that. And I'm still vacuuming my cat. Now what?

Checklist time!

◊ Do you have the right main character? Is he/she/it going to be the character who has the most to gain, the most to lose, and is most at odds with the message of the book. If no, a book can be done from the outsider point of view, but it's very hard to pull off well when the greatest emotion is reported, but not shown. While working on Castoffs, my first erotica novel, there was a blond thug in it that had to bring the main character from place A to place B. I decided he needed a name, called him Vision, and Vision stole the next four books right from under the main character's nose. In the second book, I needed a name for Vision'sdriver, a character I had no plans for at all. I called him Hanz. The vampire series is now the Vision and Hanz show. I'm just saying.
◊ Is your world too big? Do you have a cast of thousands already and you've not gotten past the first chapter? Eliminate as many duplicate point of view characters as possible. Remember any more than a couple characters introduced on a page are too many characters for the readers to keep straight.
◊ An antagonist that does not just kick children and steal candy from puppies is a rare, valuable thing. What is he doing to make sure the good guys don't just waltz in and take over? Why is he being antagonistic in the first place? Does he have a legitimate gripe against your main character? The more real he is as a character, the more he will be remembered.
◊ Is the startling point, the point that changes everything and gets the story rolling happening off screen? And if it is off screen…why? Drag the action onto the page, get your characters in the thick of things for their emotional involvement, and then have them deal with the consequences as things spiral out of control.
◊ Take away the easy outs. Make the characters work. Eliminate any character that only exists to go to the main character to tell or give them stuff. Knowledge has to be hard won. I'm the first to admit that it is rough to have painted the characters into the proverbial corner, but it's even tougher to make readers care about characters that never have to suffer or earn what they're given.
◊ If a chapter/scene/section isn't working, switch it up. Switch point of views. Switch motivations. Switch the outcome of the scene itself. If that doesn't help ask yourself why you need that scene to begin with. If you need to cut, cut swiftly. It will hurt less. Go back to the point in the story where you know deep down that you've backed the wrong horse or gone on the wrong tangent and begin again. For me, it's amazing how listening to the little voice in the back of the head telling you that the scene isn't working can save so much effort. It is almost impossible to recover a scene that feels like it was forced out.
◊ Trust yourself. If you are bored with a scene, ask yourself why. Be honest. I find this especially useful when I've written things out long hand to be dictated or transcribed into text, or I'm reading it over in a draft stage. If I'm bored with a section, or if it goes nowhere or nothing happens, I'm more likely to skip it or work on it then and there so it becomes important, things change, or it goes somewhere. These nowhere scenes and nobody characters can change the book in a whole new way you hadn't even thought of, connecting a bunch of random scenes that had come at the beginning to make it seem like you had that very thought in your head the whole time. Go with it.


I don't plan my novels. I may break out the odd post-it note to work out a tricky scene, but I'm very fluid when it comes do what happens next. I trust my intelligent characters to react intelligently to the problem they're dealing with. Whatever you do, as long as it works for you, is fantastic. But a good solid base can carry a novel through the muddle in the middle right through to the end, and a bad beginning can sink a story before it even had a chance to get good.

So, what's your surefire way to unblock writer's block?

Angela's website: www.angelafiddler.com
Angela's Loose Id titles can be found here
Angela's ManLoveRomance Press are available here

Guest Blogger ~ Laura Baumbach

New Characters to New Worlds—even new or *improved* body parts!
Writing in the sci-fi genre

That’s what you can achieve when you write sci-fi.
Hello. My name is Laura Baumbach. I’m an author and publisher of M/M erotic romance. I write for several publishers including MLR Press, Aspen Mountain Press, Samhain, Changeling, LooseId, Torquere, and Forbidden Publications. I written in several different sub-genres such as paranormal-vampires, werewolves and ghosts, suspense, contemporary, crime drama, thrillers and my current fixation - science fiction.
This month I'm spending all my time that isn't taken up by my family or my business writing my latest novel GENETIC SNARE. This one is the second in my sci-fi DETAILS series. The first on was the 2007 EPPIE finalist DETAILS OF THE HUNT.
This series came about when I took a challenge off the Sci-Fi Channel's website to write a story using the theme of pirate treasure and outer space. I thought it would be fun to change around the traditional story and make the pirate the treasure. I realize there are modern day pirates, and will probably be pirates in the future, but when I think about them I imagine the swashbuckling, cunning buccaneers of the 18th century.
But then came the challenge of how to incorporate an 18th century earth pirate into a futuristic space tale. Obviously, I needed to add time travel elements to my story, remembering that anything I did couldn't affect the time line continuum in the process of telling my story.
I didn't want the travel to be a common occurrence either. I wanted the talent to be restricted to an ethical few. So I created a race of warriors that had the ability to time jump. These beings, six to seven foot tall, gray skinned, muscle bound, slightly reptilian looking, fierce warriors, would have learned over time to keep the source of their talent secret, and to use the ability for the benefit of not only themselves but other races. Thus was born my time traveling alien bounty hunters, the Oracan.
The Oracan accept petitions for hunts from anyone, anywhere in the universe. The one requirement is that the hunt must have some type of altruistic goal, a benefit for more than just personal gain. They procure anything from inanimate objects to people. Those Oracans that choose to become Hunter have a high moral code to go with their extreme physical skill and warrior upbringing. Think navy seals/secret agents on massive growth hormones and steroids. *lol*
My Oracan hero is named Talos. Mr. Tall, Gray and Stoic. High moral fiber, strict rules of conduct and an attitude that comes from knowing he can take any male in the room on and win without even trying. I mean, Oracan cultural ritual practices eating the hearts of their fallen enemies. Tough guys personified. And this one learned to speak English from watching ancient Earth gangster films from the 1930's an 40's. When he calls a woman a 'dame' he's not referring to any type of British title. *g*
Once I had my 'big guy' I had to create my 'small guy'. This is a dynamic I love to write. It may not be your thing, but it is definitely mine. I like the physical contrasts, making imbalance of power dynamic. I like showing that my 'little guy' can be just as tough and manly as the 'big guy', and in some cases like in MEXICAN HEAT, even more stoic or scrappy than his partner.
Aidan Maymon was born out of this dynamic. I wanted my pirate to be young in keeping with the short life expectancies in the 18th century, cunning and quick-witted as he would need to be to survive the times and be captain of a buccaneer ship, and brave enough to stand up to the worse of the immoral criminals that made up a fair share of the seafaring men. Quick with his sword and a creative curse, Aidan has a core of fair play and goodness wrapped in a survivor's thick, clever, conniving hide. And he's an excellent pickpocket. *g*
And the marvelous, wondrous thing about writing sci-fi is that you have the flexibility to combine two such radically unique characters in one story and still make it work. As long the author creates a believable world and sticks to their own rules through the novel or series, anything they can imagine is possible. Which s how I ended up with an 18th century pirate pairing with a 6th century alien bounty hunter for adventure and love.
I'm continuing the adventures of Talos and Aidan in the series with GENETIC SNARE. I have a total of seven books planned, one per year. Originally it was written as a two-hour buddy flick movie script for a TV pilot with an additional six episodes. The script won a couple of minor awards but never went anywhere. The cost of producing a sci-fi movie was a big stumbling block.
But I love the characters and didn't want them to go to waste. So I moved that buddy flick relationship over the line to lovers and rewrote the story a bit to develop that relationship into a M/M erotic romance. Since that was were I was inclined to take it when I wrote the mainstream version, it wasn't a difficult task. The end result earned DETAILS OF THE HUNT a nod as a 2007 EPPIE finalist for best GLBT novel.
No where but in sci-fi do I find the freedom to be as unorthodox as my imagination can be. And trust me, my imagination can run a lot of wild places, some of them maybe even in my upcoming December release (hopefully) GENETIC SNARE!
Pirates, aliens, bounty hunters, mating rituals, combats rituals, murder, mayhem and LOTS of steamy, and uniquely alien-endowed lovemaking in this one. My muse was looking for an unrestrained run.

Alex Beecroft ~ Writing the Historical Ghost Story

From that title you'd suppose I was some kind of expert on historical ghost stories, but that's very far from the truth. My qualifications to talk on the subject are that I have written one historical ghost story – 'The Wages of Sin', due to come out in time for Halloween 2009 in an anthology by ManLove Romance Press. But I very much enjoyed the process, to the extent that I'm hoping to write more. So, if you thought of this as 'writing the historical ghost story – for complete beginners', that would be more like it.

Although this was my first ghost story, I started out from a background of writing historical novels set in the 18th Century. So I already had a lot of historical information about the setting on hand, and a good idea where to go to find more.

I figured that if I was writing a historical novel about brewers, I would research into how brewing was done in the 18th Century and see if any ideas were sparked by the techniques or attitudes of the time towards brewing. So why should ghosts be any different?

I started off with an overview of how ghosts have been perceived throughout history:

http://library.thinkquest.org/05aug/00689/Pages/historyghosts.html

http://www.paralumun.com/ghosts.htm

http://www.discoverychannel.co.uk/paranormal/spirit_world/history/index.shtml

Those and many more websites, and a couple of books on the subject, seemed unanimous that ghosts linger in the world because of something left undone. Either an injustice done towards the person when they were alive, which they remain to avenge, or an injustice the ghost did to another, which they need somebody to right for them before they can move on. That, or the person's burial rites were not completed properly – they were buried in unconsecrated ground, or without the correct sacrifices etc.

This early conception of ghosts as being people who had a good reason to linger – people who were trying to put something right – carried on into the 18th Century. Once I'd got an overview, I concentrated on reading about the most famous ghost of the era – the Cock Lane ghost.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cock_Lane_ghost

http://www.forteantimes.com/reviews/books/68/the_cock_lane_ghost.html



This ghost, which claimed to be the murdered wife of a man who had subsequently re-married and lived in a small lodging house in Cock Lane, was heard by hundreds of people in London. It became a bit of a fashion to go and listen to it answering questions by the famous 'one knock or two' method.

Eventually the 'ghost' was unmasked by a team of investigators, including Samuel Johnson of Dictionary fame. The knocks were being faked by the young daughter of the man's landlord.

What's most scary about this story is the way a whole family united in an attempt to get their lodger lynched by the mob for a murder he didn't actually commit. The ghost itself was a bit of a fairground sideshow.

But again, what's notable is that once the ghost identified itself as the lodger's first wife, everyone assumed that she must have returned in order to gain justice for herself. A ghost was assumed to be proof positive of murder.

Which, of course, makes it easy to tie a ghost story into a murder-mystery. What violent deed in the past created the ghost? How does that tie in with the events in the present? Who will see the ghost, and what will they need to do to right the wrong and allow the ghost to move on?

In the course of reviewing the evidence about ghosts through history, I came across a lot of 'real life stories' which were spine chilling, and quite a few – like the Cock Lane ghost – which were only scary from a perspective of human psychology. So naturally I paid a lot of attention to the elements of the scary ones, to see what was working on me and what wasn't. I soon decided that I found poltergeists, which can move objects and therefore harm you, more scary than the classic ghost which just walks along a corridor on windy nights. So I made mine a poltergeist.

I also came across some delightful evidence of early vampires. I wasn't sure whether vampires were around in the 18th Century, but it turns out that one of the things the 18th Century did for us was to introduce the Western world to the concept of the vampire.

http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/Vampire_-_Eighteenth_century_vampire_controversy/id/5570895

These were not your modern suave and sexy (even glittery) vampires, but the blood-sucking walking corpses of legend. As with the Cock Lane ghost in London, so many people believed these creatures existed that there was public hysteria in Prussia over them. Eventually official investigators were sent to make a scientific inquiry into whether vampires existed or not, and the investigation reported that they did not.


Newspaper reports spread the information all over Europe, so I feel no shame at making Jasper - one of my heroes – into an early 18th Century vampire hunter. But that's something for a different story, I hope!

Bend in the Road ~ Update and Blurb

Well, we now have a title for my 2009 work coming out from ManLoveRomance Press. - Bend in the Road. And a Blurb (unedited). Here it is:
BEND IN THE ROAD, set in Eastern Europe in the 1880s, introduces us to two couples that find safe havens in the insular world of a traveling Yiddish theater troupe. IN THE LION'S DEN introduces us to Daniel Bercovich, a young man in the first throes of finding his identity. Can the man he comes to love accept a new side to him?
Yuval Smolenski finds more than the inspiration for his music, he finds something everlasting in FROM STAGE TO STAGE. These Jewish men in love must deal not only with the stigma of that love but also fear the rise of anti-Semitism. Can their love survive all the forces that surround them?
Well, what do you think?

Guest Blogger ~ Jason Edding, a new star!

JB: I'd like to thank ManLoveRomance Press debut author Jason Edding for joining me at The Sweet Flag today. Jason is the author of Dark Robe Heart: Dark Robe Society 1 part of the two author anthology, Space Escapes with Angela Fiddler. So, Jason, first, let's get the nittygritty out of the way, tell us a little about yourself.

JE: Thank you Jeanne for having me today. I was born in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. My family is fairly large. I have nine brothers and sisters, and while we still lived on the Cape, we had a virtual farm of animals living with us. Cats, dogs, a skunk, rabbits, a snake, a turtle and I'm not sure, but possibly one or two other wild animals. I was too young to remember all of these critters, because when I was four we moved to Maine. I started reading when I was pretty young and we moved around a lot, so books became very important to me.

JB: Can you tell us about the premise of your story? Since the title says Dark Robe Heart: Dark Robe Society 1 I'd suspect we'll be seeing another story in the series. Will this be a stand alone or do you envision doing it as another novella with one of MLR Press's wonderful cadre of authors?
JE: Jack Harrow is a clone who has escaped to find his own life. At first he thinks all he wants is to get away from it, but he realizes he wants to destroy the Dark Robe Society and end their total domination of the world. They are the world leaders. They control the military, and in fact there is nothing they don't control. He meets Edge Fland who has been sent to kill him and return with something Jack has that the Dark Robes want.
Yes, Dark Robe Heart is book one. When this story came to me, I envisioned a huge world and I keep telling a friend of mine, 'this story could go on forever.' I am currently working on the sequel. The title is Dark Robe Edges and will have not only Jack and Edge returning, but two new heroes: Alton Tees and Toren Mir. This story will tell how they go against the Dark Robes and their leader, the Hierarch Ernst Venderhem... As of yet whether it will be a novella or stand alone is up in the air. LOL

JB: Do you think you might incorporate your love of cats in your stories? I know this might sound a bit weird, but when we got our little kitties earlier this year, I wound up putting a cat in a sequel I was working on.
JE: I have another story on the back burner involving vampires and a young book collector, who just so happens to have a cat who has the same name as my kitty, so yes, I have every intention of having lots of cats in my stories. I have to plug them now and then. LOL

JB: Did you find your love of astronomy made it easier to write a story that takes place in space?

JE: I found that my love of astronomy spurred me on to write sci-fi. I have countless astronomy books and I'm always searching for more information. The universe is so vast and we'll never know it all. I've found the Hubble images of the universe to be thought provoking. And every time astronomers find a new planet out there, it's exciting! So, to answer your question, yes, it certainly helped me write.

JB: An author can choose the genres in which they write. What led you to write not only a sci/fi story, but one with gay characters?
JE: Hmm, writing sci-fi and gay romance. Well, I've always found it fun and interesting to write gay erotica. To write a love story between two men is something I've always wanted to do. To have them in a sci-fi, space, futuristic environment at the same time is just icing on the cake. Besides, it's really so much fun to create the passion.

JB: What's on the horizon for you? Will you be doing any stories not in the Dark Robe world?
JE: On my horizons. Well, I have the vampire novella/novel that I'm working on from time to time, and I've got an idea for a totally new sci-fi story that may or may not take place on the planet Saturn. I've always wanted to write a fantasy novel, but no plans for one yet. Those won't be in the Dark Robe world. However, in my mind, the Dark Robe world may be here for a long, long time.

JB: Now for something totally frivolous: What are your favorite scifi shows or films and if you could, what two heroes do you think would make a hot couple?
JE: Favorite tv shows? Hmm, I love Battlestar Galactica. I mean, I froth over it. The new version. Omg, what a fantastic show! Also I watch M*A*S*H five days a week. My mom and I would watch it together, and she has passed away. It's one of my ways of remembering her and her laughter. Two heroes that would make a hot couple... oh boy. Han Solo and Luke Skywalker. LOL That's my dream couple. I'd love to know what readers think.
Thank you Jeanne, this has been a great time for me.

JB: You're quite welcome. I always love having guys visit The Sweet Flag!

EXCERPT:
Jack shrugged. "When one show stops, another begins soon after."

"Shit, I'm living in here." Edge guzzled his liquor, until only half still remained.

"I found a contact with the information we need," Jack told him, fingering his bottle.

Edge leaned close. "Yeah? Where?" He looked around the dim joint.

"The owner. Don't worry about that part, the less you know for now, the better," Jack replied quickly.

Edge smiled at Jack and shrugged. "Too many secrets spoil the fun, Jack."

Jack placed his hand on Edge's. "I'm glad you liked the show, because they've already picked the next two guys to fuck."

Edge clanked his bottle against Jack's. "Good, I'm not even close to being satisfied. That young guy had a hot cock and a sweet ass; I'm surprised he's down here." He threw his head back and stretched to the ceiling. "Hot ass...wonder if I could get him out of here and to our bed."

Jack nodded slowly. "That young guy has probably been bought and sold more times than you've pissed on the ground," Jack told him. Edge had told him he liked to be one with nature, back on Earth. Jack had wished he had been there to see it, but hearing it was the next best thing.

"Good, there'll be a new show soon." Then he added, "Part of the deal I made was that the next two men to go into that cubicle to fuck will be you and me." Jack grinned, but he was frowning behind the mask.

"What?" Edge's mouth dropped open and he let his bottle drop, spilling half of its contents across the table and his lap.

Copyright 2008 Jason Edding

Jules Jones ~ The British are coming!

Morning (or evening) to everyone, and thanks to Jeanne for inviting me. Jeanne's suggested that I talk about some of my stories, so I thought I'd do a slightly different version of that old favourite, "where do you get your ideas from?" But if anyone's got general questions or comments about any of my books and stories, go ahead.

I write cross-genre romance, and while I'm published by a romance house (Loose Id), I started on the science fiction and fantasy side. I've been a speculative fiction reader since I was old enough to read, but I got started writing fiction about twelve years ago, when I discovered fanfiction -- specifically, fanfiction for an old sf show on the BBC. It was dark and political and had some fascinating characters and world-building, and it left a lot of loose threads waiting to be picked up by fan writers who wanted to explore that world.

When I started getting ideas for stories with original characters, they were by and large speculative fiction -- science fiction and fantasy. But they were speculative fiction about relationships between people, stories that reflected some of the books I'd loved best as a reader. Not always romantic or sexual relationships, but very much about people learning to make things work between them. So it's not a surprise that the first stories I sold were cross-genre erotic romance, and that's continued to be a strong strand in my output. But as I keep writing, I keep exploring different aspects of my chosen genres. Each book is a learning experience, a chance to develop new skills and techniques.

My books range across a variety of styles of SF&F. The Syndicate, my first full-length book (and Loose Id's first m/m title) is slapstick comedy about geeks in space. It's silly, over the top, and was enormous fun to write. It's also, in the third book in the series, a gay inspirational romance. At the time Alex and I wrote volume 3, theAnglican communion was having a family fight over the acceptance of gay church members, and I wanted to show a future where it was no longer an issue. So there are a lot of anachronistic jokes about potential culture clashes at a mixed Anglican-Methodist wedding, and not a mention of the fact that it's two men getting married.

The Buildup series, Mindscan and Pulling Strings (and maybe one day I'll break the writer's block on the third book) is dark space opera with strong political undertones. It's essentially looking at some of the same themes that attracted me to writing in the first place, only with my own characters and stories rather than with someone else's universe. And, of course, a romantic couple in each book who manage to win their way to an ending that's at least happy for now, with hopefor the future.

I had a change of pace and shift of genre with the Spindrift stories.These books are fantasy, a reworking of British and Irish mythology in a modern setting. I took the legend of the silkies, the fairy people who live as seals but can shed their sealskin to appear human, and wrote a story of silkies in the present day -- a people who are dying out as the magic fades away, but who remain yet, hidden amongst human friends in a Scottish fishing village.

One of the staples of silkie mythology is the silkie woman whose skin is stolen so that she cannot return to seal form, forcing her to remain on land as wife to a human man. But my stranded silkie is a man, his skin stolen in mistake for his sister's, in a community where such theft has not been known in generations; and the refuge he finds while his friends look for his lost skin is with another man, a stranger to the village who finds himself trusted with its greatest secret. On the surface it's lighter in tone than Buildup and much more slice-of-life, and there's a much more unequivocal HEA ending for the central couple, but it's also a look at the problems faced by people who want or need to live in two worlds. You can see a more detailed discussion of where this and some similarly themed short stories came from in a blog post I wrote to answer a piece of fanmail: http://julesjones.livejournal.com/273475.html

I stayed with shapeshifters in a contemporary world when I wrote my next book, Dolphin Dreams, but this was another development in my writing range -- it was the first time I wrote a menage a trois romance. That was an interesting thing to handle, as I needed to develop a balanced relationship where nobody felt like a spare part brought in to make up the numbers. Writing it was also interesting from another perspective, as when I started researching real dolphin biology and social behaviour to do my world-building, I found a lot of nifty stuff that fitted neatly into how I wanted the story to go. Sometimes you get lucky this way, and your research gives you even more ideas for the book.

And after that I moved out of sf&F altogether, with my take on that classic romance plot, the tycoon/secretary. In Lord and Master, my tycoon and secretary are both openly gay men, and with more in common than their gender and sexual orientation. What separates them is a gap in age and experience, the tycoon a self-made millionaire in his forties who's built up his own engineering consultancy firm, his secretary the newly-qualified young scientist he's just hired as his research assistant -- a man much like himself twenty years earlier.

This started as a very short erotica story about a young man who got involved in a friends-with-benefits affair with his older boss, but then fell in love and has no idea if his feelings are reciprocated. But as sometimes happens, I then wanted to write more about the characters -- how they got into that situation, and what happened next. And in the two years the story had been in submission to various anthologies, the UK Civil Partnership legislation had passed through parliament. That was an interesting plot hook to base the story around, all by itself. But I wanted something more for the conflict in the story, and so as I developed the book, something else crept in -- the downside to the creativity that had made Steven successful in business...

The next completely new book I work on will be an urban fantasy. It started as so many of my stories have -- a single scene, a sudden mental image of characters doing something, and the need to know how they got there and what happened next. In this case, a protagonist who has befriended a local homeless man is asked to help a mutual acquaintance who has been badly beaten -- and discovers that the reason they've asked him for help rather than going to the police is that there are dragonfly wings under that long shapeless coat the man always wears. _Someone_ has collared and bound a fairy, in 21st century inner London. I've got about 15,000 words so far, although I set it aside for a while to work on more material in the Lord and Master series.

And that's the theme that runs through much of my writing. It covers a broad range of sub-genres, and more than one genre, but it's largely character-driven. One of my sf writer friends says that writing is chasing your characters up a tree and throwing rocks at them to see what they do -- and that does describe a lot of my writing. I hope it's as interesting to read as it is to write.

Main website: http://www.julesjones.com/

Free stories: http://julesjones.com/fiction/downloads.html

Blog: http://julesjones.livejournal.com/