Category Archives: Young Adult

March 1, 2020 · 5:57 pm

Making a clean break

I’m sad to report I’ve had to break away from Dreamspinner Press. The publisher has been having financial difficulties for a while, and over the past year, authors haven’t been receiving their royalties—at least, not consistently. I still hold out hope that they’ll get things in order and return to being the reliable press they’ve been for most of the decade I’ve worked with them, but the hit they’ve taken to their reputation means it’s in my best interest to step away. The last book I had released through them (Small Town Sonata) sold very badly. It could be the book, of course, but there are a lot of factors to consider. Many readers are boycotting DSP books and a lot of review sites won’t review them.

This is not going to turn into a rant about how hurt I am or how betrayed I feel. I’ve been in the corporate world far too long to view this as anything more than a company that took too many risks and ended up suffering a serious shortfall in revenue. They tried to act as if everything was fine for a while, as most companies in this situation do, because if a company is honest about their finances falling apart, they start a mass exodus, which turns “financial trouble” into “bankruptcy” very quickly. I’ve seen it happen many times. I don’t like it, but it’s the way businesses tend to operate. Many authors feel they’ve had their royalties stolen. I don’t see it that way. I see it as my royalties haven’t been paid yet. I still expect to be paid, eventually. The only thing I feel about the situation is sad. I was with DSP for a long time, and my experiences publishing through them were generally very good.

My biggest concern right now is getting my books to readers. I’ve just pulled 20 novels and novellas from publication, which means a good percentage of the links in that side panel are now invalid. I plan on submitting my YA novels—Seidman and the Dreams of Fire and Gods trilogy—to agents. There’s no reason they can’t be published in the “mainstream” YA market. YA agents and publishers are starting to embrace LGBTQ characters.

I might submit some of my adult novels/novellas to other publishers, such as Beaten Track Publishing, since I have a book with co-author F.E. Feeley, Jr. coming out through them this spring. Most, I think, will be self-published. But that will take time. I have permission to use some of my cover art, but I’ll have to commission new covers for many stories.

In some cases, I might do a little rewriting. Readers almost unanimously hated a particular moment in We’re Both Straight, Right? so I think I’ll rework it. Similarly, the epilogue of Billy’s Bones was problematic.

For now, I’ll simply say, “Stay tuned…”

8 Comments

Filed under James Erich, Jamie Fessenden, Life, publishing, Romance, Writing, Young Adult

Tagged as Beaten Track Publishing, Dreamspinner Press, DSP, James Erich, jamie fessenden, publishing, self-publishing

February 1, 2019 · 4:53 pm

Writing advice, because that’s what we writers like to do

So my latest novel, Small Town Sonata, was contracted for publication by Dreamspinner Press, and I’m very happy. Hopefully, it signals the revving up of my writing career again.

So, in the spirit of that, and because someone asked about it in a Facebook group, I’ve decided to offer some Writing Advice (capitalized, to show how pompous… I mean “important” it is). Seriously, this is just some stuff I learned over the years. Take it or leave it, as you like. It’s less about writing than about some practical concerns.

I started writing in Middle School, reading articles in The Writer (which was a much better magazine then) and locking myself in my room after school to type. My mother bought me my first typewriter (personal computers were like $5,000 then), but with the door closed, the heat from the wood stove couldn’t reach me, so I had to bundle up in a blanket. Abe Lincoln would have been proud.

I still have all of that writing in a briefcase. Most of it is pretty bad. Writers often tend to start out thinking their prose needs to be Serious and Important (translation: flowery). That’s actually the worst thing for modern writers, unless you’re doing historical or literary fiction. (And even then, it’s probably not great.) So there are some story ideas I like in that pile, but I’d have to rewrite them all from scratch. But, hey, that period taught me a lot about how to write.

I wrote on and off over the years after that, but had difficulty finishing things. Eventually, I tried NaNoWriMo, and that allowed me to finish my first novel (Seidman), then another, and so on. Everything I wrote through NaNo was eventually published. (Finish what you write. An unfinished story is no good to anybody, and even one that isn’t 100% perfect has a better chance of being published than an brilliant, unfinished one.)

I write in Word and use Scrivener to keep my notes. (Tip: You can relocate the Scrivener directory to a folder in your Dropbox folder, so they’ll be backed up.) I tried writing in Scrivener a few times, but so far I’ve found it difficult. The problem I’ve had with Word is that it wants me to buy it on iPad, even though I own (=lease) it on my laptop. This has made it nearly impossible to use my iPad for writing, as I used to do.

In college, I composed electronic music, using a program called Personal Composer, which had a problem with frequent crashes (at that time). One night, after working on a piece for something like 5 or 6 hours (it was around 3am), I saved and it crashed. Because I’d only used ONE file the entire time, it got corrupted, and all my work was lost. I learned to create a NEW save, every time I work on something. My novels tend to have over a hundred save files, by the time I’m done.

For a while, I was working a corporate job, and using thumb drives to take my current working files back and forth between home and work (I didn’t have a laptop). I discovered two things about thumb drives:

They’re easy to lose. I had to completely rewrite an entire chapter once.
They’re unreliable. On several occasions, I saved files to a thumb drive, ejected, and discovered the files were not there. They weren’t anywhere – not on the drive, not on the computer, not even in temp files. This is when I started using Dropbox, and yes, they’ve had some problems with security, but they also keep backups of files, so when a file of mine was destroyed somehow (Virus? I don’t recall.), I was able to go to the Dropbox site and download it again.

Lastly, if you can’t get a publisher or agent to buy your novel, consider self-publishing it. I’ve read a bunch of articles which insist self-publishing is what Losers do, when their work isn’t good enough to be published by real publishers. They’re the equivalent of cavemen banging on rocks, angry that “cheaters” have discovered a box of matches.

Look, the fact is, self-publishing is relatively easy, and that’s led to the market being flooded with a lot of stuff I would have to call “poor-quality”… if I’m being kind. This, in turn, has led a lot of readers to assume our self-published work isn’t worth very much. Combined with Kindle Unlimited, authors are now forced to sell months of hard labor for pennies, if we want anyone at all to notice its existence. (Thank you, Amazon, for pulling the floor out from under aspiring authors.) This has led to more and more indie publishers throwing in the towel, so those that are left have been forced to close or severely restrict submissions.

Throw in the fact that, with so many people out of work, everyone seems to think writing might be a way to earn some income, and the end result is that traditional routes to being published, which were already difficult, are now extremely difficult. Good books, bad books, books written by the next Great American (or whatever country you’re from) Author… they’re all being rejected. It is not a sign of failure to self-publish.

Some books make the rounds between publishers for years — even decades. Do you have that kind of time? I’ve published over 30 novels and novellas between December 2010 and now — just over eight years. (Of course, I know authors with two or three times that output.) I may not be a brilliant author, but my work is being read. And that’s what needs to happen, if you want to earn anything writing.

What a lot of authors are doing, if they can, is publishing through publishers at the same time they self-publish. This is called hybrid publishing, and it has the advantage of getting your name out by association with the publisher, as well as convincing readers your stories, including the self-published stories, are professional quality. Going through a publisher can also help you make contacts with editors, cover artists, and others who can help you, when you self-publish.

And that’s a key thing: if you self-publish, you must hire a professional editor and a professional cover artist, and probably a formatter, as well. This shouldn’t break the bank, but it will likely cost a few hundred dollars. It will be worth it. Nothing screams “Crap!” like a homemade Photoshopped cover with free images everyone and his brother has used before. And if a reader skims the preview and sees typos and spelling errors on the first two pages, you’ve lost that reader forever.

But self-publishing has a much quicker turnaround than publishing houses. When I published my last Christmas novel, I finished it, had it edited, got a wonderful cover for it, and published it — all in the space of about a month and a half. I didn’t have a choice about going through a publisher, if I wanted it out by Christmas. Self-publishing also means a smaller chunk comes out of my royalties. This isn’t because publishers are swindlers, but simply because they have overhead costs.

Anyway, all this pontificating has worn me out. I’m gonna go take a nap.

I mean “write.” I’m gonna go write.

5 Comments

Filed under James Erich, Jamie Fessenden, Life, NaNoWriMo, New Release, publishing, Romance, Writing, Young Adult

Tagged as jamie fessenden, new release, publishing, self-publishing, writing

June 15, 2017 · 1:10 am

Guest Blog: J. Scott Coatsworth on “The Great North”

Where to Tell the Story

They say write what you know, but that’s always seemed like dubious advice to me.

As a writer of sci fi and fantasy, I often write tales set in distant or unknown locations – to date, these have included London; Althos; Avalon; Purgatory; Oberon and Titania; Forever; a half-drowned San Francisco; faery; Thompson Falls, Montana; and some imaginary village in northern Quebec, to name a few. More about that village in a moment.

Most of these places are imaginary, and the ones that aren’t are either places I’ve never been or real places that are far separated from our own time.

So when I planned to write a retelling of a Welsh myth, reset to a few hundred years in the future, I knew I needed to find the right place to tell the story, even if it was a place I’d never seen.

With climate change and warming a virtual certainty in our future, I decided it had to be somewhere in the North. I decided to try Canada, and pulled up Apple Maps to scan the terrain for someplace currently out in the wilds that might make a good setting for a future agrarian village. I started out near Vancouver and worked my way east.

When I saw this lake in Quebec, I knew I’d found my story’s setting:

That’s Lake Manicouga, formed in an ancient asteroid crater by a dam that sits at the far southern tip of the lake. It met all my criteria – In the far north, the site of something ancient and mysterious, and just a really cool place.

Turns out there’s a little highway that runs along the eastern side of the lake, which provided the perfect setting for my village of Manicougan (see what I did there?). And with a little more imagination (and research), I moved some of the plants and animals from farther south up to central and Northern Quebec, where the climate should be quite a bit warmer than it is now.

So it’s not really “write what you know.” It should really be “write what you can research. And then throw in a bit of fantasy to keep it interesting.” 🙂

—Scott

Blurb:

Dwyn is a young man in the small, isolated town of Manicouga, son of the Minstor, who is betrothed to marry Kessa in a few weeks’ time.

Mael is shepherding the remains of his own village from the north, chased out by a terrible storm that destroyed Land’s End.

Both are trying to find their way in a post-apocalyptic world. When the two meet, their love and attraction may change the course of history.

—————

The Great North was inspired by St. Dwynwen’s Day, also known as Welsh Valentines Day:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwynwen

Excerpt:

“We celebrate Dwyn’s Day as a testament to true love and sacrifice. It’s a remembrance of the way things were and the way they’ve come to be. In the end, let it be a reminder that every one of us has the power to change the course of events through love.”

—Dillon Cooper, New Gods and Monsters, Twenty years After Dwyn

The gray clouds scudded by overhead, blowing in quickly from the east.

Dwyn shivered and pulled on his woolen cap. It was cold out, unusual for so early in the fall. The rains had been heavy this season, the wettest in a generation, and Circle Lake was close to overflowing its banks. If he stretched to look over the rows of corn plants, he could see the waters lapping at the shore far below, as if hungry to consume his village of Manicouga.

His father had consulted the elders, some of whom had seen more than fifty summers, and everyone agreed things were changing. Whether that augured good or ill was anyone’s guess.

He shrugged and moved along the row of plants, breaking off ears of corn and throwing them into the jute sack that hung from his shoulder.

Ahead of him, two of his age-mates, Declan and Baia, were working their way down the next two rows.

Dwyn frowned. He got distracted easily, and he’d let the two of them get a jump on him. That wouldn’t do.

He redoubled his pace. He moved with focus and purpose, and soon he was closing the gap with his friends.

“Someone’s being chased by a lion,” Baia said with a laugh.

“Or a tiger.” Declan grinned, his nice smile only missing one tooth, lost to a fight with one of the Beckham brothers the year before.

Dwyn grinned. “Or a bear?” Dwyn only knew lions and tigers from the fairy tale his mother used to tell them, “The Girl and the Aus.” He had no idea what an Aus was, either.

Bears he knew. The hunters occasionally brought one home, and old Alesser had a five-line scar across his wrinkled face that he claimed came from one of the beasts.

A shout went up from ahead of them. Dwyn craned his neck to see what the ruckus was, but he couldn’t make out anything. “What’s going on?”

Declan, who was half a head taller, looked toward the commotion. “Hard to tell. Something down by the road.”

Dwyn laid down his sack carefully and ran up the hill to one of the old elms that dotted the field. He climbed into the tree, scurrying up through the leaves and branches until he had a clear view of the Old Road. It ran from up north to somewhere down south, maybe near the ruins of old Quebec if the merchant tales held any truth. Hardly anyone from Manicouga ever followed it, but occasionally traders would follow it to town, bringing exotic wares and news from the other villages that were scattered up and down its length.

They swore it went all the way down to the Heat, the great desert that had consumed much of the world after the Reckoning.

“What’s going on down there?” Baia called from below.

Dwyn tried to make sense of it. “There are three wagons coming down the pass. They’re loaded up with all sorts of things. They don’t look like traders though.”

The first of the horse-drawn wagons had just reached the field above the main township. It stopped, and someone hopped off to talk with the villagers who had gathered from the fields.

“We need to get down there,” Dwyn said, scrambling down the tree trunk. “Something’s happening.” Nothing new ever happened in Manicouga, and he wasn’t going to miss it.

He grabbed his sack and sprinted toward the Old Road, not waiting to see if Declan and Baia followed.

Buy Links Etc:

Mischief Corner Books: http://www.mischiefcornerbooks.com/store/p121/The_Great_North.html

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07172TL6H?ref_=pe_2427780_160035660

Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-great-north-j-scott-coatsworth/1126572845?ean=2940157258634

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-great-north

Smashwords: Coming Soon

iBooks: https://itun.es/us/ec62jb.l

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35182345-the-great-north

Author Bio:

Scott spends his time between the here and now and the what could be. Enticed into fantasy and sci fi by his mom at the tender age of nine, he devoured her Science Fiction Book Club library. But as he grew up, he wondered where all the people like him were in the books he was reading.

He decided that it was time to create the kinds of stories he couldn’t find at his local bookstore. If there weren’t gay characters in his favorite genres, he would remake them to his own ends.

His friends say Scott’s mind works a little differently – he sees relationships between things that others miss, and gets more done in a day than most folks manage in a week. He loves to transform traditional sci fi, fantasy, and contemporary worlds into something unexpected.

He runs both Queer Sci Fi and QueeRomance Ink with his husband Mark, sites that bring queer people together to promote and celebrate fiction that reflects their own lives.

Author Links:

Website: https://www.jscottcoatsworth.com

Facebook (personal): https://www.facebook.com/jscottcoatsworth

Facebook (author page): https://www.facebook.com/jscottcoatsworthauthor/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/jscoatsworth

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8392709.J_Scott_Coatsworth

QueeRomance Ink: https://www.queeromanceink.com/mbm-book-author/j-scott-coatsworth/

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/J.-Scott-Coatsworth/e/B011AFO4OQ

3 Comments

Filed under Blog Tour, Excerpt, Fantasy, gay, Guest Blogger, New Release, Romance, Young Adult

Tagged as fantasy, gay, guest blog, J. Scott Coatsworth, m/m, post-apocalyptic, St. Dwynwen's Day, The Great North, Welsh

April 14, 2016 · 11:45 am

Release Day! Thárros by C. Kennedy is out!

Θάρρος

Thárros. Greek. Meaning courage

Courage. n. /ˈkərij/

1. The ability to do something that frightens one.

2. Strength in the face of fear, pain, or grief.

~*~

Courage is resistance to fear,

mastery of fear,

not the absence of fear. ~Mark Twain

High school senior Michael Sattler leads a charmed life. Almost. He has great friends, parents who love him just the way he is, and he was a champion hurdler until someone took out his knee when they kidnapped his boyfriend. Yet, Michael is determined to make the USATF tryouts in spite of his injuries.

~*~

Christy Castle is Michael’s entire world. Healing from years of abuse, his abduction by a predator has left him hiding a new secret as he tries to start his life again. Together, Michael and Christy work to recover from their wounds in time to make prom and graduate high school. To complicate matters, Christy is astonished to learn a fellow victim from his native Greece has survived. Christy will stop at nothing to bring him to the US to keep him safe.

Tharros - Quote - I have your heartbeat in my ear again2 But the prosecution of Christy’s kidnapper looms large in their futures and the struggle to return to normal only worsens. Christy’s past continues to haunt them and, when the prosecution turns ugly and Christy’s new life is torn apart, only their unrelenting courage and determination can save them from the nightmare that threatens to destroy their future together.

Now available at Harmony Ink/Dreamspinner Press, Amazon US,

Amazon UK, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Omni Lit/All Romance eBooks!

Add Thárros to your Goodreads and BookLikes Lists!

Read Chapter One or Read en français

About Cody

Cody is an award-winning author who lives, most of the time, on the West Coast of the United States. Raised on the mean streets and back lots of Hollywood by a Yoda-look-alike grandfather, Cody doesn’t conform, doesn’t fit in, is epic awkward, and lives to perfect a deep-seated oppositional defiance disorder. In a constant state of fascination with the trivial, Cody contemplates such weighty questions as If time and space are curved, then where do all the straight people come from? When not writing, Cody can be found taming waves on western shores, pondering the nutritional value of sunsets, appreciating the much-maligned dandelion, unhooking guide ropes from stanchions, and marveling at all things ordinary. Among many other awards, Omorphi was a runner up in the 2014 Rainbow Awards, and Slaying Isidore’s Dragons was a finalist in the 2015 Rainbow Awards. Cody does respond to blog comments and emails because, after all, it is all about you, the reader.

Find Cody on Facebook, Twitter @CodyKAuthor, Pinterest,

Tumblr, Google+, Instagram, Ello, Goodreads, Medium,

Booklikes, and read a free serial story, Fairy

FOLLOW THE BOOK TOUR AND WIN SIGNED BOOKS!

1 Comment

Filed under Blog Tour, Contemporary, Drama, gay, Guest Blogger, Romance, Young Adult

Tagged as Cody Kennedy, guest blog, Omorphi, Tharros, YA

February 18, 2016 · 3:28 pm

Get my entire Dreams trilogy in one cheap bundle!

Dreams of Fire and Gods Bundle As some of you know, I occasionally publish Young Adult titles under the pseudonym James Erich. The best of these, in my opinion, is a trilogy of high fantasy novels set in the kingdom of Dasak, which is on the brink of civil war. At the same time the emperor and his regent in the east prepare for battle, another war is brewing—a war between the gods that threatens to completely destroy the kingdom and leave no survivors.

When these novels were first published, there was a long gap between books two and three, leaving readers hanging. But now Harmony Ink has now released the entire trilogy as one low-cost bundle! Get the entire saga for just $9.99!

A thousand years ago, two factions of gods, the Stronni and the Taaweh, nearly destroyed the Kingdom of Dasak by warring for the land and the frightened humans who lived there. Then suddenly the Taaweh vanished and the Stronni declared victory.

In the present day, tensions escalate between the emperor and his regent to the point of war, which will be nothing compared to the war that comes with the Taaweh’s return. Join the regent’s son and apprentice mage Sael and his vagabond lover Koreh as they dodge assassins, rescue the Taaweh queen, and take journeys through the underworld in their quest to save their world from being destroyed in another confrontation between the gods.

Buy Links:

Harmony Ink/Dreamspinner: http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=7517

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Dreams-Fire-Bundle-James-Erich-ebook/dp/B01BLKYT9A/

Excerpt:

“I SAID I was sorry,” Koreh repeated, exasperated.

“And I said I don’t care.”

Sael stood facing the fire with his undertunic held out to catch the heat. It wasn’t very modest, but he didn’t think Koreh could see anything from where he was standing. Geilin had grown tired of the argument and lay down to sleep after drinking his tea. The old man lay wrapped up in his cloak, facing away from the fire.

“I don’t really think you’re slow.”

“Now that Master Geilin’s told you I’m not.”

Koreh groaned in frustration. “Look. I don’t know how much training it takes to become a vönan—”

“A lot!”

“All right,” Koreh continued, “fine. But it just seemed to me that, after ten years of training, you’d be a little further along.”

Sael glared at him. Was this Koreh’s idea of an apology?

“As Master Geilin already told you,” he responded coolly, “I’m doing as well in my studies as any other tenth-year student. Better than most. I just can’t cast when I’m rushed. I have to concentrate.”

“So, you’re not rushed now. Let’s see you throw a fireball. Just a little one.”

“We’re supposed to be hiding, remember?” Sael snapped. “It’s bad enough we had to light a fire to dry off. If I start throwing fireballs around, they’ll be seen for leagues in all directions.”

Koreh’s derisive snort was the last straw. Sael turned and stalked over to the edge of the clearing. After searching the underbrush for a moment, he found what he was looking for—a sturdy branch about the length of a walking staff.

Koreh was watching him with a smirk on his face when he returned to the fire.

Trying to ignore him, Sael lifted the branch up over his head so it lay horizontally. Then with both hands gripping it firmly, he said, “Grab hold.”

“Huh?”

“I’ll show you something not even your Taaweh could do. Now grab on!”

Koreh hesitated only a moment before accepting whatever challenge Sael was offering him. He approached the boy, looking him dead in the eye before reaching up with one hand to grab the staff.

“Both hands,” Sael insisted, “and hold on tight.”

“Yes, little lord.” Koreh’s voice was mocking.

Sael frowned. “Hold on tight, or you’ll die. I mean it.”

“Fine. I’m holding on.”

The apprentice vönan closed his eyes and began chanting under his breath. It wasn’t easy, because in order for Koreh to grasp the staff, he had to press his body against Sael’s. And he was still naked. That was incredibly distracting, even with the linen undertunic separating their bodies. But the thought of further humiliation if he failed forced Sael to focus.

In the dark, with Druma obscured by clouds, Sael knew his power would be very limited. He could feel the magical energy he’d stored up during the day like a fire burning in his chest and head, but not nearly as hot as he often felt it—the pervasive fog had prevented him from drawing much power, even at midday. Still, it should be enough.

Sael chanted under his breath, ancient words given to men by the gods that simultaneously unlocked channels in the body for the energy to flow through and protected the body from the energy it channeled. This was one of the reasons the training of a vönan was such a slow, painstaking process—it took years to learn how to channel the energy safely before a master would dare allow his pupil to experiment with powerful spells. Every apprentice at the academy had heard horror stories of overzealous pupils bursting into flames. The stories may not all have been true, but the masters never bothered to contradict them.

When the chant ended, Sael opened his eyes to find Koreh watching him with apprehension. Clearly the magic of the Stronni still made him very uncomfortable. He looked as though he were about to say something when the staff suddenly jerked upward, lifting both young men off the ground.

Sael had been prepared for it, but Koreh panicked for a second, scrambling for a tighter grip.

Sael couldn’t help laughing as the staff came to a stop about ten feet above where they’d been standing. “Don’t fall.”

“I’m fine.” Koreh’s startled expression turned to one of defiance. “Is this all you had to show me? We’re barely off the ground.”
Suddenly he gasped as the staff flew upward again, this time coming to a stop just a short distance above the treetops. Koreh hooted in delight.

“Quiet!” Sael said under his breath, though he was secretly pleased. “You’ll wake Master Geilin.”

Koreh ignored him, laughing and twisting his head this way and that to take in the unusual vantage point. “Take us higher!”

“Hang on, then—tight!”

Now that the spell had been cast, it took little effort for Sael to control it, like turning the wick up on a lantern. He felt the energy flowing from his core increase and the two of them began to soar upwards. Higher and higher they climbed, until the light from the campfire seemed far, far below. Despite the night being overcast, the Eye cast a soft blue-gray light over everything, diffused through the clouds, and the gently waving treetops stretching off into the distance all around them seemed ethereal and beautiful.

He feared for a moment he’d overdone it. If Koreh lost his grip, Sael wasn’t sure he’d be able to save him from falling. But Koreh was laughing now like a young child being spun around in his father’s arms.

He was loving this and had dropped all pretense of superiority. When his eyes met Sael’s, Sael saw admiration in them for the first time. And he knew that he would do anything for that look.

But then he glanced past Koreh, and what he saw made his blood run cold. A vast number of tiny spots of light dotted the ground in the distance, hazy in the mist but still visible. They weren’t the lights of Mat’zovya—he could see those on the far side of the lake. These were just beyond, in the fields between the old city and the new. They had to be campfires.

Hundreds of them.

“We’re being followed!” he exclaimed.

“The Book of St. Cyprian” – Part of the “Bones” anthology

The second Gothika anthology is coming out today! This one is called Bones, and it features stories by Eli Easton, B.G. Thomas, Kim Fielding, and me, all based around the theme of voodoo.

Bones is 25% off from now until October 31st!

http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=5564

My story is called The Book of St. Cyprian and it’s a contemporary, somewhat lighthearted story about two teenage boys who bite off a little more than they can chew. The tone of this story is pretty much YA, so don’t expect lots of raunchy sex. Expect a horror story with a thread of sweet romance running through it.

Alejandro is the grandson of an old woman who runs a botanica—a shop that sells herbs, powders, and religious/magical supplies—in a largely Latino neighborhood in Manchester, NH. When his grandmother (whom he calls “Abuela” (“grandmother”)) sends him to New Orleans, where a friend has recently passed away, he rescues a number of items from the man’s botanica there to send back home.

One of the items he uncovers is a copy of El Gran Libro de San Cipriano—”The Great Book of St. Cyprian.” An old book of black magic, it was rumored to contain so much evil that to merely touch it endangered one’s soul. According to magical tradition, the book is sealed in a wooden box wrapped in a chain and padlocked shut.

Alejandro knows Abuela would never allow the book to be in her shop, or even in her home, so he sends it to his friend Matthew for safekeeping.

Matthew isn’t Latino, but he’s been living in the neighborhood since he was thirteen, and he and Alejandro are best friends. They would both like to be more than best friends, and that wouldn’t seem like much of a problem, since they’ve been out to each other for years. But it’s a big step to take, and one that has the potential to destroy their friendship.

So they just stay… friends….

Things come to a head when Matthew’s beloved pit bull pup, Spartacus, chews his way through the package Alejandro entrusted to his friend, unleashing a dark spirit that takes control of the animal.

At this point, I would like to assure everyone that I adore all dogs, including pit bulls. Spartacus is loosely based upon my friend Carmella’s pit bull, Neela, who is extremely mellow and affectionate. So this isn’t a story about how evil pit bulls are. It’s a story about how Alejandro and Matthew work together to save their little buddy.

Oh… and it’s also about how Abuela is not particularly amused by this mess her grandson caused.

Not at all….

An interview with Maliha in the novel Beloved Pilgrim

Today we’re featuring a new novel release by author Christopher Hawthorne Moss—Beloved Pilgrim, from Harmony Ink Press.

The blurb for the novel is at the bottom of the post, but first, and interview with one of the main characters: Maliha, the love interest of Elias.

Maliha is the daughter of a Turkish woman whose Greek lover had abandoned her. She used to live in a Turkish village but married a Turkish man named Yukop in an arranged marriage. Yukop has been away fighting alongside Kilij Arslan, and may be dead at this point. Maliha lives with her son Taceetin and her harridan mother-in-law in the street of the laundresses outside the city gates of Constantinople. There she is forced to work as an “entertainer” in Andronikos’ villa, serving the male guests of Andronikos.

Elias is enthralled by Maliha from the start but cannot reveal himself. When Maliha is fired for not fitting in, Elias goes to fetch her back. It is then that the kiss Maliha mentions below takes place. Maliha follows Elias back to the villa she, where she persuades Elias’s squire to let her into his room while he is bathing.

The rest is, as they say, historical fiction.

Interview:

Did you realize that the man you knew as Elias had a female body?

Not until we kissed at my husband’s mother’s hut. You see, I had raised my hands to push him back when I saw he meant to force me. My palms pressed on his breast, or should I say breasts. Even through his clothing I knew those were the breasts of a woman. That’s why I kissed him back.

You prefer women?

Yes. I discovered this when I was a younger girl and spent time with her at her home. We got up to all sorts of mischief, including in her bed. In my culture, such relations are overlooked, so long as we marry and have children. I was married and knew I had not at all liked the rough handling of my husband. When I felt Elias’s breasts it was such a wonderful memory

Then what did you think when Elias told you that he was a man in his heart and mind? Did you believe him?

My Elias would never lie to me.

Could he not have been mistaken?

That is not something one makes mistakes about. I trust him to tell the truth and also to know the truth.

So you were still attracted to him?

Oh yes, of course. I quickly stopped him from reading The Manly Zone reviews Gynexin, I told him I loved his woman’s body, but I had the companionship of a man in the same person. I have more than any woman such as I could ever hope for. And he is a man inside, I know, but he is a wise and good man. And he loves me and my little boy.

The Blurb for Beloved Pilgrim:

At the time of the earliest Crusades, young noblewoman Elisabeth longs to be the person she’s always known is hidden inside. When her twin brother perishes from a fever, Elisabeth takes his identity to live as a man, a knight. As Elias, he travels to the Holy Land, to adventure, passion, death, and a lesson that honor is sometimes found in unexpected places.

Elias must pass among knights and soldiers, survive furious battle, deadly privations, moral uncertainty, and treachery if he’ll have any chance of returning to his newfound love in the magnificent city of Constantinople.

A Harmony Ink Press Young Adult Title

2nd Edition

1st edition by Nan Hawthorne published by Shieldwall Books, February 2011

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Filed under Blog Tour, Historical, Interviews, New Release, Transgender, Young Adult

Tagged as Beloved Pilgrim, Christopher Hawthorne Moss, Elias, Harmony Ink Press, historical, interview, Maliha, trans, transgender, YA

October 5, 2013 · 11:24 pm

Finalists in the Rainbow Awards!

Both Billy’s Bones and By That Sin Fell the Angels are finalists in the Rainbow Awards this year! My YA fantasy novel, Dreams, also made the cut!

Unfortunately, we won’t find out who won until December, and the competition is steep. Click on the image to see the other finalists! I’m honored to be included among them.

In other news, I’ve signed a contract with Dreamspinner Press for my college romance Screw-Ups!

I’ve also submitted a steampunk novella called The Watchwork Man for an anthology, finished round two of edits on my Christmas story (The Healing Power of Eggnog) for the Dreamspinner 2013 Advent Calendar, and I have part three of the Dreams of Fire and Gods YA trilogy (Gods) coming out on October 17th!

It’s been a busy two weeks.

The Dogs of Cyberwar

I now find myself without a deadline for the first time since the summer began. So I’ll need to set some new ones. I’ve been re-reading what I’ve written for A Mote in the Eye — part two of the B.A.L.O.R. Cycle, my cyberpunk trilogy which began with The Dogs of Cyberwar. I’ve been promising to finish that forever, but other deadlines kept interfering. I’m liking what I’m reading, so I’m setting myself a deadline of October 31st to have at least A Mote in the Eye finished and the third section started. The story is, in my humble opinion, just too good to let it languish unread forever.

I’m also hoping to participate in NaNoWriMo this year. I have a murder mystery in my head that takes place on Mount Washington.

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Filed under Christmas, Cyberpunk, Drama, Fantasy, gay, Historical, Mystery, NaNoWriMo, Romance, SciFi, Victorian, Writing, Young Adult

Tagged as Billy's Bones, By That Sin Fell the Angels, cyberpunk, Dogs of Cyberwar, Dreams, Dreams of fire and Gods, finalist, Gods, James Erich, jamie fessenden, NaNoWriMo, Rainbow Awards

September 8, 2013 · 12:17 am

Guest Blog: Coming Out at 35 by Posy Roberts

Is there an ideal age to come out? I have a friend who watched her middle school son come out to his school a few years ago. In 1989, a classmate of mine waited until he left for college. I know adults who are still not out for one reason or another. Stonewall polled people and found younger people are coming out much earlier than their older counterparts did. There is no right answer, but there are certainly circumstances that make it harder for people.

Pretend you’re a bisexual man, and even at the age of thirty-five, no one knows this except for the boyfriend you dated in high school. Everyone thinks you’re straight. After all, you dated only women—as far as they know—married a wonderful one, had kids with her, and on the outside, everything seemed picture-perfect until you asked for a divorce. You ended up separating for the same reasons as many couples around, because after you had kids, you and your wife slowly fell out of love. So why would anyone think you were anything but straight?

Nothing drastic needs to change in your life just because you’re bisexual. Unless you fall in love with a man, the same man who stole your heart when you were a teen. He’s the one person you’ve never been able to get out of your head either.

Spark, book one in my North Star Trilogy, is about second chances at love with that special someone who got away. Kevin Magnus kept his bisexuality such a close secret because his father never would’ve approved of having a son who was in any way different. When Kevin left home for college, he dated women, and eventually Erin, the woman who would become his wife.

Now that Kevin has reconnected with Hugo Thorson, Kevin has a very new reality to face. How does he come out? And he will eventually have to come out, he realizes, especially after he sees how out Hugo is. There’s no putting Hugo back in any closet, and Kevin would never want that either. He loves this new, freer Hugo, but Kevin is reticent.

After essentially living the life of a straight man for years, how do you come out? Kevin really has no clue how to manage it. As a father, it means more than simply declaring that he’s bisexual. He has to think about how to explain this to his children. Starting to date a man could be confusing to them. And how will Erin handle the news? He’s concerned that his newly revealed sexuality might affect his custody of the kids. Beyond that, he has to consider how friends and family will take the news.

In my personal life, I have a teensy experience that pales in comparison to this, but it made me very empathetic to this experience. Just like a lot of bisexual people, I assumed I was straight until I was faced with my very evident attraction to another woman. It was years before I said anything to anyone, and by that time, I was married and had a kid. I’m still married, but that’s not to say that my husband’s mind didn’t dance around like molded Jell-O on a hot summer’s day when I told him. It took him a while to adjust. It was just that his perception of me had changed.

There are no easy answers, Kevin quickly realizes and he knows he needs to take time to get used to the reality that living as an openly bisexual man dating a man is a completely different experience than living as a closeted one. Hugo needs to be patient with this process as well, and it is a process that takes more than one book to resolve. Spark is just the beginning of that journey.

Here is an excerpt from Chapter 28 of Spark. You can read Chapter 1 here . This is the first time Kevin is coming out to a friend, even if his mouth gets away from him.

“I’m actually dating the guy he said all that shit to.” The words just mindlessly tumbled out of Kevin’s mouth in a rush, and he gripped his hair tightly until it hurt, mentally kicking himself for allowing his panic to get ahead of his logical thinking. But it was out there now.

“Oh man! That makes it about a hundred times worse.” No judgment. Nothing bad happened.

“Tell me about it. And I can’t get a hold of Hugo.”

“Shit. I’ll let you go so you can get to him.”

“Dena?” Kevin could hear worry straining those two syllables.

“What is it, Kevin?” She sounded concerned.

“Please promise me you won’t say anything to Erin?”

“Okay?”

“No. She doesn’t know I’m bisexual. No one does, and I’m not ready to say anything yet. I shouldn’t have said anything to you. I don’t know why I did. I’m not thinking straight.”

“Kevin, that’s your secret. If I’ve learned anything over the years from my brother, it’s that coming out has to happen when you’re ready, and it doesn’t happen all at once. Kevin?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m glad you felt comfortable enough with me to share that. I’m sure it wasn’t easy if this was the first time you’ve told anyone.”

Suddenly his quick call to make sure Mike got home was turning into a therapy session.

“I’ve known since I was sixteen. I was with Hugo in high school. He was my first boyfriend and my first.”

“And you’re back together? How romantic.”

Blurb:

In their small-town high school, Hugo and Kevin became closeted lovers who kept their secret even from parents. Hugo didn’t want to disappoint his terminally ill father, and Kevin’s controlling father would never tolerate a bisexual son. When college took them in different directions, they promised to reunite, but that didn’t happen for seventeen years.

By the time they meet again, Hugo has become an out-and-proud actor and director who occasionally performs in drag—a secret that has cost him in past relationships. Kevin, still closeted, has followed his father’s path and now, in the shadow of divorce, is striving to be a better father to his own children.

When Hugo and Kevin meet by chance at a party, the spark of attraction reignites, as does their genuine friendship. Rekindling a romance may mean Hugo must compromise the openness he values, but Kevin will need a patient partner as he adapts to living outside the closet. With such different lifestyles, the odds seem stacked against them, and Hugo fears that if his secret comes to light, it may drive Kevin away completely.

Posy’s Bio:

Posy Roberts lives in the land of 10,000 lakes (plus a few thousand more). But even with more shoreline than California, Florida, and Hawaii combined, Minnesota has snow—lots of it—and the six months of winter makes us “hearty folk,” or so the locals say. The rest of the year is heat and humidity with a little bit of cool weather we call spring and autumn, which lasts about a week.

She loves a clean house and she hates mold, that’s why she always contact the experts from Mold remediation atlanta, even if she can’t keep up with her daughter’s messes, and prefers foods that are enriched with meat, noodles, and cheese, or as we call it in Minnesota, hotdish. She also loves people, even though she has to spend considerable amounts of time away from them after helping to solve their interpersonal problems at her day job. Also one of the best ways to clean your house is with attic cleaning seattle.

Posy is married to a wonderful man who makes sure she eats while she documents the lives of her characters. She also has a remarkable daughter who helps her come up with character names. When she’s not writing, she enjoys karaoke, hiking with best buy montem hiking poles, and singing spontaneously about the mundane, just to make normal seem more interesting.

The first book that ever made me cry

I remember crying because of films, when I was young—Old Yeller, The Boy Who Talked to Badgers, The Yearling (I was a sucker for movies about animals). I was upset about Ben dying in Star Wars. But I don’t recall any novels that had any great emotional impact on me until A Separate Peace. And that one devastated me.

I think it was 1982, when I was a junior in high school. I was sitting in first period Latin class, bored and not particularly following the lesson (I flunked the class), so I started flipping through my English Literature textbook. I feel bad for kids who are forced to read A Separate Peace as an English assignment, because few novels survive that stigma. Who falls in love with something that they’ve been forced to read and write essays about? (Okay, I still love Lord of the Flies, despite this, but that’s the exception—not the rule.) I started reading and was immediately hooked.

And when I say hooked, I mean hooked. I couldn’t put it down. I kept reading through every single class I had that day. In art class, my teacher had to order me to close the book and concentrate on the assignment. Most teachers either didn’t notice me reading under the desk, or chose to ignore it. I continued reading on the bus ride home and then immediately ran up to my bedroom and finished the book. I’ve never read a novel of that length that quickly, before or since.

I was bawling by the end of the book. The ending destroyed me. I couldn’t fathom how Gene could still go on. What was wrong with him? I didn’t even want to leave my room to eat dinner. I just wanted to lay there in the dark and cry.

So I did the only thing I could think of to do: I picked the book up and began reading again from the beginning, where everything was peaceful and idyllic once more.

Why did A Separate Peace affect me so deeply? I’m still trying to figure that out. It’s definitely a good book. I re-read it again this week and still loved it, though the ending is merely sad now. I’ve read it too many times in the intervening years to be affected by it the same way I was thirty years ago. Now, I see it through the eyes of not only an adult, but also a writer. I can see that the prose is very good, if not particularly poetic. The story structure holds together well. And there is symbolism that flew over my head as a teenager. My biggest criticism would be that Leper’s descent into madness doesn’t feel at all realistic to me now. I’ve learned a bit more about mental illness in my adult life, and the way John Knowles portrayed it just didn’t feel right. But that’s a minor criticism. The characters are just as vividly painted as I remember them. I still fell in love with Finny.

And that’s a big part of it, of course. I fell in love with Finny. To me, even a couple years before I’d come to terms with my own homosexuality, A Separate Peace felt like a gay novel. I know the author, John Knowles, never intended that. It’s a novel about two teenage boys who have such an intense, close bond between them that they feel like extensions of each other. Gene’s struggle is, in a way, a battle with his own personal demons, manifested in Phineas. When Finny is absent, there is a scene in which Gene dresses in Finny’s clothes and in his mind transforms into Phineas for a short time, and this bond between them is referred to several times in the novel. But to me, that bond felt like the bond between two boys who were in love with each other, even if they never acted on it. Several times, the narrator (Gene) describes Finny’s handsome features and physical perfection in terms that might make a teenager uncomfortable these days, now that everyone suspects homo-eroticism in same-sex relationships. Things were different in the 1940s, of course. But even in the 1980s, I recall a friend’s father referring to the film Brian’s Song derogatorily as a “romance between a black guy and a white guy.” (This totally killed my friend’s interest in a film that he’d previously enjoyed watching several times.)

The day Gene and Finny spend together on the beach, sleeping side by side on the dunes, with Finny doting on Gene the whole time… that felt really romantic.

This is perhaps a common problem for gay teens—seeing homo-erotic overtones in books and films, where straight teens see just friendship. But then, of course, this disconnect often happens in their real lives. Why should fiction be any different?

So the book that made me cry was, in the final analysis, not really the book I was reading, but the book that was taking place in my heart and mind. And some of that passion now seems lacking, when I go back to re-read it. But it’s still a great book. And perhaps even a straight guy might cry reading it.

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Filed under Drama, gay, Life, Reviews, Writing, Young Adult

Tagged as A Separate Peace, book, gay, John Knowles, reading