Fang: Gothika is now available for preorder! (It will be released on October 15th, in time for Halloween!) This is a reunion of some of the authors of the Gothika anthologies originally edited by Eli Easton and myself (#5). Eli and I were joined by Sue Brown and Kim Fielding in this presentation of creepy vampire stories for the holidays!
TRICKLE OF BLOOD by Sue Brown
My vampire clan is dying. Human blood is too tainted to sustain us. On the brink of giving up, the last thing I expect to find is the saviour of my clan, a non-human. He is my mate.
I know I must ask the impossible of my mate. If he walks away my clan will die. I don’t know if I’ll be able to let him go if he says no. Do I give him that choice, or his body and blood mine to command?
A DARK HEALING by Eli Easton
The life of a healer is a lonely one. Feared by the local villagers for being both a healer and an albino, Darian lives alone and spends his days picking herbs, making remedies, and talking to his dead teacher. Then one day he finds a mysterious man in the woods who’s been shot through with an arrow. Darian takes the man, Locke, back to his little hut and tends him as best he can. Locke is a strange creature—at times imperious and at other times nearly feral. But he is stunningly beautiful, and, more importantly, he finds Darian beautiful and unique—like a white unicorn. The two lonely men take comfort in each other’s company, and they bond over the days of Locke’s healing. But when killings begin in the nearby village, Darian must face both the nature of the man he invited into his bed and the villager’s wrath.
THE QUARRY BOY by Jamie Fessenden
A visit from a fearful apparition has marked Josiah Crayne as the next to die. August Walker returns home to confront the ghosts of the past—not only his painful memories of a friend’s death, but also his own sexuality.
As August investigates the tragedy that’s befallen the Craynes, it may turn out to be too much for him to bear—especially when he begins to suspect this man marked for death could return his affections.
FARKAS by Kim Fielding
Lee Harker has never fit in anywhere. Not with his immigrant family in rural Nebraska, not on a Navy ship during World War II, and not in Los Angeles as associate in a law firm. But when he’s sent to a remote mansion to complete some paperwork for the reclusive Vincent Farkas, Lee encounters the most unsettling circumstances yet. Caught in a place where things truly do go bump in the night, he must face his fears—and his desires—and acknowledge his true nature.
I’ve been working on a novel for a while now—an adaptation of The Saga of the Jomsvikings, which was written in Old Icelandic in the 13th century. It tells of an elite band of viking warriors residing in the fortress of Jomsborg on the island of Jom. They were theoretically real, though it’s hard to say how much truth there is to the story. They appear in other sagas, including the ones I based my first YA novel Seidman on. But by then, they were in decline. They appear briefly at the battle of Svoldr, when King Olaf Tryggvason was defeated, but they quickly decided to sit the battle out.
Bragi is older than most of the men in the fortress, and he’s seen a lot of combat. He’s weary of the death he sees on the battlefield, but he’s a survivor and he takes pride in his skill with a blade. At Jomsborg, he’s given the opportunity to pass some of his knowledge of fighting techniques along to others and help keep them alive. The actor who most closely resembles him is Travis Fimmel from Vikings.
Asleif is young, and he has endured a lot of teasing over the years because of his feminine features, even after he grew to stand over his comrades. He’s skilled and cocky, and sees Bragi as a challenge. But he also senses a strong sexual undercurrent between them. Bragi is hesitant to pursue it, but Asleif gleefully chases after him, despite the danger of discovery. I found this picture online, which I believe is of Alexander Skarsgard, and despite the modern clothes and background, it perfectly represents the image I have of Asleif in my head.
Lincoln lived in a time period where it would not have been acceptable for him to come right out and say, “I’m in love with a man, and I’m going to marry him.” Likewise, nobody could have asked him, “Were you in love with Joshua Speed?” It simply wasn’t talked about. So if we’re forced to glean the truth from insufficient evidence and hearsay, don’t blame the LGBTQ community. (On a side note, I often hear the assertion that since “gay” didn’t mean the same thing back then, people couldn’t really be “gay.” I’m sure that would have been good news to the men and women who were imprisoned and killed throughout history for same-sex relationships. Look, there have always been people who preferred sex with others of their gender—or both genders. Always. What changed over time was the idea that this could form the core of a person’s life and identity.)
Ultimately, this isn’t really about Abraham Lincoln. It’s about all the historical figures where we have evidence indicating they may have been LGBTQ. Lincoln may or may not have had same-sex relationships. We’ll probably never know. But why on earth would we look at his history of close relationships with men, his fond letters to them, and the rumors surrounding his relationships, yet ignore all of that in favor of the assumption he couldn’t possibly have been gay or bisexual? Does that really make sense?
Colby needed a target who had a similar physical description to himself, and who was en route to the location on a fairly long journey, being transferred from another base—Murmansk. It was possible to travel by train between the two bases, but the trip took several days. This, of course, was in the days before information could be transferred easily over the Internet from one city to another, which would work to Colby’s advantage. He would have to have forged papers with his photo, but the Russian’s vital information—internal Soviet travel papers had a stamp across both the photo and the document, so simply replacing the photo would be an arduous task. As long as nobody in Sevmash had seen this man—Yuri Ivanovich Veselov—Colby should be able to get in and out. He just needed to kill Veselov on the train to Sevmash and step into his identity.
Train To Sevmash—Jamie Fessenden 
Jamie Fessenden's Blog 