K is for Kept Tears. Hopefully I can get this uploaded this time as my first attempt to write this corrupted. However, nothing will stop me from telling everyone about my first novel. I still love this one to death and not just because it was my first. I got to pull a plethora of my favorite things together in this.

You got to meet Aaron, one of the protagonists in A is for… He’s a disabled veteran and as I said then, ever since I was a resident doctor at a series of V.A. hospitals I’ve wanted to have a character who incorporated some of the best and some of the worst of my former patients.

Aaron, like me, grew up outside of Pittsburgh in the country and through him I was able to showcase some of the fun things about Pittsburgh (and there are plenty of fun things there). Aaron is a geeky grad student who thinks he might be ready to date again, having come to some sort of peace with his amputated arm and rearranged life. When he spots Rhys at a steampunk party, he thinks he’s found the hottest guy there, a man so out of his league he couldn’t possibly have a shot. When Rhys proves him wrong, Aaron has to rethink the whole ‘I’m ready to date’ thing. With his best friend, Corinne prodding him on, Aaron steps out into the dating world and quickly is swept up with Rhys.

What he couldn’t possibly have imagined is Rhys is something out of the fantasy novels Aaron so loves. Before he knows it, Aaron has a wicked fey, Morcant, Rhys’s ex, after him. Elves, dullahans, fairies and nixes, all the things Aaron has loved as fiction prove to be all too real and potentially dangerous. Rhys is Tylwyth Teg, a crown prince of the fey and he is centuries old (heck even his children are all over a hundred). With a life that long there is baggage and this particularly baggage could be deadly. Morcant wants to make Rhys suffer and if Aaron has to die to achieve that, Morcant is thrilled to do it.

Urban fantasy and steampunk are some of my favorite things and it was fun weaving them into this. People seemed to enjoy the story and it was a Rainbow awards finalist. I’m never not going to be proud of this novel. I love Aaron and Rhys and would love to revisit their world.

If you want to learn more I’ll leave you with the blurb and where to find it. Also, check out Paul Richmond’s beautiful cover!

Blurb
Having left most of his arm and his self-confidence behind in the Afghanistan desert, young veteran Aaron Santori has enough on his plate learning to use his prosthetic arm. Attending graduate school at the University of Pittsburgh makes life both interesting and challenging. Mentally, he’s ill prepared for meeting Rhys Edwards, a young-adult novelist from Wales and everything Aaron could want in a man. Between the scars from the explosion and his PTSD, he’s reluctant to date. Ready or not, though, Aaron finds himself jumping into the deep end of the relationship waters.
What Aaron couldn’t possibly know is that Rhys isn’t human at all. As a prince of the Tylwyth Teg, Rhys is fae, with a list of enemies he’s accumulated over the past few centuries—among them a former lover, Morcant, who is back to make Rhys’s life miserable. An unwitting pawn in their Machiavellian fae politics, Aaron only knows he’s falling in love, never suspecting love might be his death sentence.

Find Kept Tears here.

H is for haunted. I am a huge fan of haunted houses, the Halloween kind and the real kind. I’ve been a haunted house actress and I’ve been an actual ghost hunter for decades, long before TAPS and company. It’s only natural that some of my stories feature hauntings.

I had a short story, Haunted in Dreamspinner’s anthology, Two Tickets to Paradise where the set of lovers are ghost hunters on a working vacation in Victoria, British Columbia. They spent the story chasing down the same ghosts I had when I was there. I admit it, I ghost tour almost any place I go.

It’s heavily the theme of my latest WIP novel, These Haunted Hills, set in the Hocking Hills near where I live. Joshua is an ecologist teaching in the area (probably at the university I do but I don’t think I’m ever going to mention it. Could just as easily be OU). He is an uber geek who ghost hunts and has a ghost website. I.e. he’s pretty much a combination of me and my friends. In fact, his web site IS one of steampunk buddy’s, Haunted Hocking. You can check out a ton of haunted sites and see his books there too.

The potential love interest in this novel is Brendan, sort of a J.K. Rowling type (i.e. wealthy author), who has lost his son. He’s giving up YA writing and wants to write a ghost story channeling Stephen King and Joe Hill. He is also looking for a psychic to contact his son.

Together they’re going to explore the haunted hills, including a hotel I based sort of on Holmes’s Chicago ‘murder house.’ But ghosts aren’t the only thing haunting this novel. Brendan is very obviously haunted by his son’s early death at the hands of cancer. He hasn’t been living, merely existing, for the last three years. His wife, while remaining his close friend, has divorced him and moved on. Brendan, who identifies as bisexual, finds himself coming alive again in the hills with Josh at his side.

So far in the Rainbow Snippets community on FB (scroll back in my blog to find posts), it’s being well received which is great. It’s my camp nano, also great. What’s not great, no time to write and no ability to concentrate. Here’s hoping something kicks free soon.

Haunted Hocking: Ash Cave

G is for Gareth. In this case Gareth Evans who is the druid professor in A Light in Winter. There is usually a little bit of the author in a character. There’s a healthy dose of me in Gareth. My current day job is one I share with Gareth, though being a professor in the states is a bit different than it would be in Wales. Like Gareth I’m a geek and I identify strongly with the old ways. I’m more of a pantheist interested in all belief systems to be honest but I’ve spent considerable time studying the druidic path. One of my favorite things about the druidic movement at the moment is the druid podcast with Damh the Bard (go check out his music!)

I had fun with him really. I lived vicariously through his romantic getaway (I did get to go to some of these sites when I was in Wales). Gareth and his significant other, Warun, are having a rough patch more related to work and having no time than anything else. Gareth decides to take Warun to Ynys Mon in the north of Wales to share a sacred site (to the druids) with him for the winter Solstice. In the meantime he plans a romantic trip working in a lot of their favorite things.

Before they even take off, Gareth visits Ianto Jones’s memorial in Cardiff (where his dad lives) because he’s that sort of geek. They visit castles and holy wells. They stay in a historic hotel and otherwise get a vacation I’d consider very romantic.

That’s when I was struck by the reality that what’s romantic to one person isn’t to another. One of the reviews I received on the story was ‘where’s the romance?’ Snort. I’m not upset by it. Romance really IS a subjective thing. To me it’s one of the most romantic of all my stories. It reminded me of why I don’t go on vacation with my brother and sister in law when they ask because their idea of what’s fun to do and mine are miles apart.

Gareth’s story is a non-traditional holiday story and that’s part of what I really like about him. If you’re interested in Gareth and his story, you can find it here.

E is for editing. I love writing most days. I’m not sure I have ever had a day that I’ve loved editing. Most of us look at our stories as our children and who wants to chop them to bits? Of course, editing is very important. Nothing I write would be half as good without editing. For me it’s a threefold process. I do my own editing but let’s be honest, I am often blind to my own mistakes. Seriously, I have no idea how I miss some of the things I do. Then again, I’m often shocked how much I miss coupled with my beta readers and the actual editors and I’m on like edit three and there is some huge clunker that slid by all of us.

If I’m the first fold, my beta readers are the second. I’ve been lucky to have a few good betas willing to put up with me. It would be nice to have a few more but finding a beta is almost as hard as finding a publisher. And fold number three would be those publishing house editors. I’ve been very lucky with my editors at the houses I’ve worked at. They’ve been tough but fair. Only once did I really feel like there was a serious disconnect between me and my editor (It was on a third draft which is usually just little bit of clean up and this new editor seemed to hate everything about that novella).

That is one thing about traditional publishing. You get an editor. You’re not hanging out there on your own. However, if you are, my advice, find a beta reader or join a local writers group (yes I know this can be fraught with danger. A bad group will damage you in ways you might not even see at first.) I’ve joined a lot of newsletters lately between insta-freebie and other giveaways that trade a story for signing up for the newsletter with an eye to future sales. (Another thing fraught with danger as I’ve more books than I could possibly read at this point).

I can’t even tell you how many self-pubbers I’ve seen saying in their newsletters ‘well I couldn’t afford an editor so I didn’t bother editing it and now all my reviews are whining about this novel needing editing.’ Honestly if you put that in your newsletter, I’m probably going to delete your freebie. (I mean, seriously even if it’s true you probably shouldn’t advertise that!) I’ve seen a variety of variations on this theme and it all traces back to not bothering with editing in the first place.

The other thing I’ve seen lately within these newsletters, people coming out with a new book every few weeks. I write. I’ve been writing for nearly 40 years. I know I personally can’t turn out quality work in just a few weeks. I might be able to write something in that time, witness nanowrimo but I would never send it out there that fast. I’m not sure I believe someone can write something in just a couple of weeks, get it edited and refined and out to us in the time frame I’m seeing with some of these. It’s made me hesitant to read anything by them.

But maybe that’s just me. I might not like editing but I know its value. If I’m putting it out there, it has been edited.

C is for con but the good kind. Anime, SF, Comi-cons! I’m a huge fan of the geeky conventions. I’ve been going to them for 30 years and frankly I’ll be cosplaying old women in years to come (Oh to have Lwaxana Troi’s figure…). I thought about how could I use this in my writing because fiction has to come from things I know about and care about if it’s going to be any good.

Years ago I wrote a story about two elves at an anime con, Sion and his blind son, Ioan which are updated versions of characters I’ve been writing for 20 years, mostly for my friends’ entertainment. Sion is an elfin prince, bisexual and has an affinity for humans. Roy is a detective who usually attends all things geek with his partner who was out sick for this con. At loose ends, Roy finds himself dressed as the partner to the character Sion is cosplaying. Needless to say they hit it off. Unfortunately for Roy, Sion is often a target for Dokkalfar assassins (the traditional enemy of the liosalfar like Sion.) Murders start happening at the con and Roy ends up in the crosshairs.

I put this story away for years after it didn’t make the cut for the original anthology I wrote it for. Heck, I don’t even remember what that was. This year ManLoveRomance had an anthology about the fey up for open call and they took the story. I don’t have details yet on when it’ll be out. Haven’t got the first round of edits yet but I’m excited.

I had started a few months back a novel set at a con but this one contemporary, another use for the abbreviation ‘con.’ I’m not a contemporary writer or reader. In fact I actively avoid reading it but that’s where publishing is going. That depresses me as it leaves me a lot less in the way of choices as a reader, not to mention as an author. I decided if contemporary is the wave of the near future (okay it’s always been popular. Maybe I should say the sad decline in genre sales…) then I should at least try it.

I had some ideas for the contemporary. I researched it. I started it. I set it aside. It’s going to take me time to write it because seriously, contemporary fiction doesn’t fire me up. I will have to take it in bites that I can get excited about and break it up with things that burn through me better than normal people doing normal things. The only thing worse than writing contemporary would be to write it badly, No one wants to read a boring story.

I think I might need to go to a con to fire me up.