J is for Jana, Joshua, John, Jason and Jupiter. You might think I like J names looking at that list. I don’t know how true that is but I will say in the real world, my whole family has J names except me. Jana is my nom de plume, which oddly has become problematic with people being unable to differentiate between pen names (exceedingly common in the publishing world) and catfishing. I’ve blogged about this before so I have little else to say on that other than how I got the name. Jana, pronounced Yah-nah, was my great grandma from Croatia’s name before it was changed to Jenny. My parents considered it for me when I was born but thought it was too ethnic (which given my age was unfortunately a big deal then). I decided to take it for my pen name along with Denardo, the surname of one of my Italian Great grandmas. What would those ladies think of what I write? Given they were alive in the 1800s, probably not much I’m sad to say. I’d like to think they wouldn’t have cared. Jana originally started as my romance pen name both gay and het though I haven’t done het in a while. It’s morphing into the pen name I use for LGBT stories as I want very much to write non-romances.

Let’s talk about those other J names. Joshua I’ve already mentioned in this bloghop series. He’s the ecologist in my WIP These Haunted Hills. I don’t know much about him yet. He’s still introducing himself to me. I know he’s a steampunk fan both dress and music. He’s literally one big, cute fan boy who would think nothing of running around in the woods with a Harry Potter ball cap (but he always gets sorted into Slytherin poor thing). He loves ghost hunting with his best friend and maintains a website (I posted it a few days ago). He’s a blond blue eyed German extract sort (rather picturing the lead of the new MacGyver show). He is in geeky heaven being asked to escort Brendan to all the haunted areas as he’s an enormous fan of the man’s writing and later of the man himself. He’s passionate about the woods and the environment.

Jason is a vampire I created for a m/m romance (a Goodreads group) and he also lives in the Hocking Hills/Athens Ohio area (as do I). He’s from ancient Greece and is part of the Lucerna, a group that hunts down evil supernaturals. He’s the long-term lover of Faolan, a mage who heads up the local branch and he’s with the local police force (in this world the people know the supernatural exist and that the Lucerna is there to protect them). He and Faolan, in Triskelion, fall in lust with Derrek the twin to the local werewolf pack’s alpha. In this world vampires and werewolves don’t get along well so there’s plenty of snark and plenty of local color. I’ve done many shorts with them and would love to do long fiction with them. If anyone is interested in Triskelion let me know. It’s a free story but I don’t have it up on my website yet. If you’re a member of the m/m romance group on Goodreads you can read this story here.

John is in Peace in the Valley and he is the human half of a werewolf/human ‘rescue dog’ team. It’s a Christmas short for Dreamspinner Press’s Advent calendar. There is some search and rescuing, there’s a lot of sex and of course Christmas stuff. John, like Joshua is a giant geek (as am I, coincidence? I think not). This story could be an ad for the Think Geek company. You can find this one here.

Jupiter is from the story The Ghost of Jupiter and is the star ship in my space pirate story. It was another very fun story to write. Modified hybrid humanoids, evil scientists, sexy star ship captains, all the things I grew up loving. Unfortunately the anthology it was in Crossbones is out of print I believe. This is another story I need to get up on the website as a freebie.