My First Published Book

Aww . . .

I've been doing a massive paperwork cleanout -- desk drawers, file cabinets, folders tucked in chests and closets -- and came upon this copy of my first-ever book cover. (Yes, I was so proud and thrilled, I printed it out. :))

Issued by a tiny and now-defunct e-pub (through which, by the way, author Charlene Teglia published a popular Christmas story), Silvermist is a sweet m/f romance complete with secret baby and not-too-egregious head hopping. It's actually a rather lovely story -- angsty, but not overly so, and laced with humor. One reviewer said it touched her soul. I remember being on Cloud Nine for days after that.

The pseudonym? Umm, yeah. I didn't realize Kate Snow was also the name of a correspondent at one of the major television networks. Oops. So Kate became K.Z. when I transitioned to erotic romance.

Silvermist no longer exists, except on a disc and in my old hard drive. I suppose that's just as well. The royalties I made on this book barely bought me a few gallons of milk.    

Today, I am this . . .

Yes, a kind of shifter. (My hair used to be the color of the body; now it's moving toward the color of the face. Thank you, Father Time. Not.)

The delightful Tam Ames, whose blog is HERE, has asked me to be a guinea pig. She invited me to kick off her series of features on veteran m/m romance authors' backlists.

Now, don't cringe. Tam has limited her selection of titles to the first ten I published in the genre, and seven of those constitute series books. I answered some questions, too -- like the one involving the Hungarian engineering student who stole my . . .

Uh, no. The questions didn't get that personal. I wouldn't divulge such information anyway, in part out of deference to certain men's sensibilities.  

So stop by if you can. There's no reason everything old can't be new again!

The Resurrection of SATURDAY SNARK!

Thanks to Marie Sexton, a fun tradition is back: Saturday Snark, wherein m/m authors post snarky excerpts from their books. Click on the link to see what other writers have to offer!

Here's my contribution. It's from Merman, the still-in-progress sequel to my Dreamspinner steampunk novel, Mongrel.

* * * * *

An infernal red glow and rumble issued from Hardfor’s Ironworks. The perfect backdrop for our encounter, thought Clancy Marrowbone as his fangs descended, sharp and sleek as glass splinters. He pushed his companion against a blackened brick wall, wrapping them both in a winding sheet of smoke and shadow, and tried to remember the man’s name.

Hunger made coherent thought difficult. A sensory flood swamped Marrowbone’s stalled mind. The man worked in this district. Somewhere. He’d been celebrating the end of his shift at one of the nondescript lusheries that dotted these filthy streets. His name was ... was ...

Jack Root? Marrowbone smiled at the aptness if not the accuracy of it as he dropped a hand to the freight in the man’s trousers.

“Gods!” Grasping Marrowbone's head, Root expelled more than pronounced the word, adding a blast of liquor-scented breath to the alley’s pungent reek.

“Present and accounted for.” Pulling off the hat he always wore in the city, Marrowbone brushed his lips over the throb of a pulse in Root’s neck. “But only the wicked ones.”

He flirted with the blood he was about to draw, teased himself with it. Ignoring smears of soot and whisker stubble, he licked along a vessel and felt the rushing murmur of its stream.

Root fumbled with the front of his trousers. “Damn it, man, take it out!”

“Glad to oblige.”

A reverberant clang came from within the foundry. Sparks danced in the darkness. With a delicate pop, Marrowbone’s fangs pierced the coarse skin of Jack Root’s throat. His lips sealed around the punctures, and he sucked the blood out. 

The abrupt surge of warmth and pleasure was dizzying.

A factory whistle shrieked. Root groaned. Dimly, Marrowbone felt a viscous drizzle of semen down his hand. But whose semen, he wasn’t sure. That consequence of the encounter was secondary.     

Root’s large, booted feet slipped a little on the greasy cobblestones. Once he was sated, Marrowbone guided Root’s body down the wall. The back of his shirt sporadically caught on the bricks. Within a few seconds, he was resting safely on his backside.

After moistening his handkerchief with the scented water he always carried, Marrowbone wiped his mouth and again donned his hat, making certain his cascade of hair was tucked within it. He gazed down at his host and clucked in disapproval. “I’m afraid this is quite unacceptable.”

Root’s head lolled. His bent legs had flopped to either side. Not an attractive pose, granted, but not an uncommon one on a Saturday night. Being dead-drunk in an alley wouldn’t get Jack Root arrested.

However, his cock hanging out of his pants might do it.

Marrowbone dropped to a squat, ushered Root’s little soldier back into his barracks, and gave him a few good-night pats. “It’s been a pleasure, sir. Perhaps we’ll meet again.”

So Mitt Romney walks into a bar . . .

I wish. But no, he got his Wisconsin VP candidate through the usual Big Secret Pow-wows behind closed doors -- and not, like our Founding Fathers, the doors of a tavern.

I rarely discuss politics on my blog (actually, I'm sick to death of crippling partisan bullshit at all levels of government), but this development got me thinking.

Romney was, in many ways, canny about his choice. Ryan's already a national-level player, so he has plenty of political savvy. He's from America's Heartland, seems personable, and doesn't live in an ostentatious house, all of which make him appear more down-to-earth than his rich and robotic running mate. He's well spoken, young, and good looking. And his Catholicism will make him attractive to many Hispanic voters.

However, I still can't help but wonder how fundamentalist Christians, who make up an increasingly large and influential portion of the Right Wing, are really reacting in their heart of hearts to this ticket. Although they won't admit it publicly (at least not in this election year), fundies indeed consider the LDS a dangerous sect, and most of them despise the Roman Catholic Church. I've heard televangelists voice these attitudes time and time again, in no uncertain terms, and have read of born-again rancor against non-Protestants in countless publications. Seriously, these buggers are rigid in their beliefs.

So . . . are they more turned off by the heretical Mormon and his pope-loving pard, or by that damned homo-hugger of an incumbent? Who poses the bigger threat to Christian values?

And what about the vast middle class, those people who don't define themselves solely through their faith? Will they see through this conservative wet-dream team and get hip to the fact that corporations and obscenely wealthy individuals, always coddled by Republicans, do not have their best interests at heart? Will they remember that the Trickle-down Theory has already been debunked and in fact illustrated these song lyrics: "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer"? Will they quit assuming the whole shitty world economy is one man's fault and come to their senses?

I don't have any answers, but the presidential election -- not to mention Fox propagandists lifting their desks with their heretofore atrophied dicks -- should make for an interesting few months . . .

        

Play that funky music!

These instruments have struck my fancy. Thought I'd share.

Tubulum:



Laser Harp:



Halo Drum (and the musician is kinda cute, too!)



Glass Harp (I've known about this one for decades and even have a vinyl LP of glass harp music):

Updates

Xylophone, my contemporary that deals with the aftermath of childhood sexual abuse, is finished and now under submission. And that means . . .

I've finally returned to Merman, the sequel to Mongrel. (I apologize to those of you who've been waiting for that sequel!)

This brings up an interesting aspect of the writer's life: how some of us can work on multiple stories simultaneously and some of us can't.

I'm in the latter group. My head needs to be in a particular place for each book, and I'm wary of what could be called cross-contamination. This might not be a factor if I stuck with one subgenre and consistently employed the same voice, but I don't. I'm a jumper. So in order to maintain a specific tone, and keep characters true to themselves, I have to concentrate on one piece of fiction at a time.

How I envy writers who have anywhere from two to five WIPs going at once. That obviously makes for greater productivity. If there's some WIP-juggling secret I'm not aware of, I'd love to hear it!  

Social Media

It appears social media can be as much of a bane-mixed-with-boon experience for athletes and fans as for authors and readers. Read this article published by NPR (National Public Radio) News about some situations generated by the 2012 Olympics.

Clearly, it's time to get a life when you take either books or sports too seriously.

In Praise of Skillz!

As more and more titles flood the m/m romance genre, I realize how highly I value a certain commodity. It was something I used to take for granted.

Not anymore.

I'm currently reading a novel I've found kind of boring thus far. It's slow-moving and, already, a little too angsty for my tastes. And I'm not entirely sure why the narrator so quickly began obsessing about the other MC, who seems more worthy of suspicion than obsession. (Insta-hots I can easily buy. Insta-bonding, not so much.)

I have plenty of other fiction to read, including stories that contain much more action than this one and move along at a brisker pace. So, each time I catch myself getting impatient and skimming over paragraphs and pages, I turn to another file on my Kindle or one of the print books I have stashed in four rooms of the house.

The attempted diversion doesn't last long. Invariably, I'll come back to that tortoise of a novel.

Why?

Because it's so well-written. The draw is as simple yet as complicated as that. This author can write. Thousands of people apparently have tales to tell, but very few are natural wordsmiths. When someone comes along who's so marvelously at ease with the language, and shows such mastery of it, I'm entranced. Hooked. And doubly hooked when I get a few chuckles along the way.

Even when certain sections go on too long (like descriptive scene-setting for the sake of local color, internal monologues, background-info dumps), I still feel driven to proceed. Losing myself in flawless prose has become a luxury, because there's so little of it out there. Engaging stories and characters are fairly easy to find, but smooth, beautifully crafted sentences that are devoid of errors to boot? Uh . . . no. That's a rare and precious thing.

Now don't get me wrong. I don't need Faulkner's or Updike's level of expression to keep me satisfied. Hundreds of pieces of fiction have held my interest and proved enjoyable reads. I'm talking here about something other than a knack for storytelling.

I'd love to name the authors whom I consider verbal artists, but I won't go there. I haven't read the work of every writer in the genre -- far from it, in fact -- so I'd be leaving out many worthy names. I just wanted to applaud the genre's true craftsmen and let them know how much I appreciate their talent. They might not be prolific or super-popular, might not be the biggest moneymakers around, but they're gold to me.        

I'm at Chicks & Dicks today.

As part of C&D's Abuse Awareness Month, I'm over there today, discussing the issue of sexual molestation. Fact: homeless GLBTQ* youths are at particular risk. 

Please stop by.

The time has come, the Walrus said

. . . not to speak of many things.

Voicing one's opinions, although still a civil right in much of the world, has become a right fraught with risk. Especially if you're part of a fairly insular community.

Lip off, and you can run afoul of the Moral Majority (the definition of which differs from one segment of society to another; liberals have their Moral Majority as much as conservatives do). Or you can run afoul of a Mean Minority (a smaller group of people loaded with bad attitude). In short, you're bound to run afoul of somebody unless your sentiments are a rubber-stamp version of theirs/his/hers, unless your voice harmonizes with whatever chorus is dominant in your vicinity.

I envy bloggers who spout off about whatever is on their minds, without fear of repercussion. I envy their freedom to indulge in pungent commentary and irreverent humor and occasional quirky rants. But those of us who write and/or review books must tiptoe through the blogosphere.

It's the height of irony -- isn't it? -- when word lovers are wary of words.

That's the way it's become. For whatever reason, more and more bookpeople are taking themselves and each other very, very seriously. Step out of line, and you risk being browbeaten or cold-shouldered into a corner. (Don't ask me what or where the "line" is. Dicked if I know. I've seen so many lines over the years, related to so many different issues, I can't keep track of them and certainly can't anticipate their appearances.) Other authors far wiser than I -- and I'm not being facetious -- have either removed themselves completely from the Internet reading community or limited their presence to release announcements, promotional posts, answers to questions about their books, and similarly neutral stuff.

So, given Publishing World's current environment, I've decided to change my online color palette. It's the prudent thing to do. Sunny yellow is safe; beige is probably safer. And, as always, silence is golden. I'll be switching among the three.

It's time I expressed myself primarily through my fiction.

          

Creative Name-calling: a Rally Cry

Authors and readers need to hone their name-calling skills. It reflects poorly on us when spectators in the Coliseum of Controversy see the same overused epithets -- so tired they hardly pack a glancing touch, much less a wallop -- and the same meaningless amalgams of body parts, growths, fluids, and/or functions.

Troll, homophobe, idiot, hater, asshole, asshat, ass pimple, jerk, scumbag, bigot, troll, douche, douche bag, douche nozzle, sexist pig, misogynist, shamer, blamer, hypocrite, apologist, shit-stirrer, sack of shit, piece of shit, pus bucket, bottom feeder, fuckwad, troll, douche, TROLLDOUCHE SLIMY RESIDUE!

==========yawn=========

Come on, people, get creative! Start strutting your literary stuff! Any butt-garden dingleberry of an adolescent texter or MySpace gifaholic can toss out terms like the ones above (except maybe misogynist and apologist, although they've still been worn the hell out by book people). So how about:

Jungle rot at the heart of darkness!
Deformed sperm of a demon-spawned sperm whale!
Distillation of the stink at the Canterbury pilgrims' cracks and crotches!
Scarlet alphabet!
Embittered and aging Lolita!
Bestial wet-dream of Sancho Panza!
Blast of Bovary's arsenic breath!
Dirty, calloused finger of a Bradbury fireman!

See? It requires no effort, just a little thought. Your audiences would be so much more entertained -- and end up educated, to boot!