If you follow me on twitter, you may remember a while back me talking about how I wanted to write a story in which the MC accidentally falls in love with twins, while failing to realise that they have been seeing two different people. Well ladies and gentlemen (and variations thereupon, of course) it turns out that particular threat was not idle!
Presenting Double Take:
The unofficial tagline is still “Oops! I’m Dating Twins!”
I am absolutely in love with this cover. ^o^ It’s by Aisha, who never ceases to amaze me. It fits the story in a million little ways, and it’s gorgeous to boot.
I don’t have a blurb or a release date yet, but I couldn’t wait to share the cover. This story was so much fun to write. It’s tropey, a little bit angsty, and a lot smutty (spoiler: the love triangle is resolved the in only acceptable way imho), and it has a genderqueer main character!
It’s part of LT3’s Trans Geek Out collection, so it’ll be available to purchase individually, as part of a bundle, or in a print anthology. I’m super excited!
This morning I was sitting in bed drinking tea and reading through Twitter, as I do, and I came across this post by Chuck Wendig talking about self-promotion, followed by this tweet by Sara Megibow: “#1 mistake I see in publicity campaigns is blog mania the month of book release and crickets two months later.”
I realised that I’m totally guilty of this, as I haven’t posted a blog post in the two months since my book came out. “I want to write a blog post,” I lamented to the bf. “But I have nothing to write about.”
“Well,” he said, “why don’t you take pictures of the cat posing with your books and post that?”
So, without further adieu, my cat, Sapphira, who liked posing with my books so much that she sat on one of them.
Sapphira sitting on The Fairy Gift
Every third generation, on the eve of his eighteenth birthday, the eldest son is blessed with a fairy’s gift. His entire life, Marcus has been told that he is that fortunate son, and he has waited with mixed feelings for the day to arrive.
On the eve of his eighteenth birthday, he is indeed visited by a fairy. But that fairy is a stunning man, nothing like what Marcus expected, and the only thing more shocking is the gift he bestows. A quiet, ordinary young man, Marcus suddenly finds himself blessed with the gift of Seduction.
It is a gift that will lead him down all new roads, into dangers and worlds he never predicted. It will lead him to a place he never thought to be, and to someone who is far more than meets the eye…
Ebook: $4.99
Paperback: $11.99
Word Count: 50,000 Buy Link Amazon
Sapphira posing with Ink & Flowers
About to lose his apartment, and desperate to avoid having to move in with his horrendous relatives, shy art student Luke impulsively agrees to a deal from hell: sex with a man he doesn’t know in exchange for a couch to sleep on.
His new “roommate” Cooper is everything that Luke hates: crude, uncouth, and covered in tattoos, not to mention openly gay. Luke has all but resigned himself to a miserable fate when it turns out Cooper might want something a little different than he expected.
Ebook: $4.99
Paperback: $11.99
Wordcount: 41,000 Buy Link Amazon
She was also interested in my copy of my friend Alex Powell‘s book Rangers Over Regulus!
As you can see
Liberty is a vampire living on a space station where those who seek to avoid the government always land, and spends his days working for the assassin who runs the place. Life is as peaceful as a colony of thugs at the edge of civilization can get. Then a Ranger shows up…
Ink & Flowers is officially available for purchase! Release day is always exciting. ^-^ Click here to read an excerpt and here to read a lovely review from Prism Book Alliance.
The other thing that’s up today is the first part of To Summon Nightmares, my supernatural trans* romance that is currently running as a serial with Less Than Three Press:
Three years ago, Cohen Brandwein was “Ireland’s Favorite Daughter”, a popular teenage author and internet celebrity. But ever since he came out publicly as trans, the media’s treatment of him has been less than golden, and these days, Cohen is desperate for escape.
When he inherits an old house in the country, Cohen sees it as a perfect opportunity to escape the press and work on his new book. What he doesn’t count on is becoming embroiled in a small town murder mystery and falling for the primary suspect, a man whose reality makes Cohen’s fantasy books seem like child’s play…
So, to give a bit more info than the blurb does, Cohen meets Niall, a man who has been imprisoned by an organisation called the Guild for the last five years. The Guild are studying Niall and his (now-ex) boyfriend Jacky because of the powerful magic they acquired in a demon summoning gone wrong. Niall and Jacky are now on the run from the Guild, and pursued by a witch. Niall doesn’t want to be recaptured by the Guild, but he also doesn’t want Jacky to go through with his plan to summon something even worse than a demon in order to punish the people who have wronged him (spoiler: Jacky’s gone off the deep end a bit.)
In the middle of all this is Cohen, who just wants to get on with working on his new book in peace. But it wouldn’t be much of an adventure if I let that happen.
It’ll be updating every two weeks, available to anyone who has a serial subscription (which, btw, gives you access to all sorts of goodies. Check out LT3’s current serials here.)
The first chapter is available to read free though. Check it out!
It’ll also be coming out in ebook and print later this year. ^-^
One more thing! There are still a few active giveaways on Goodreads:
So Ink & Flowers comes out with Less Than Three Press in less than a week, and I thought I’d write a short blog post to talk about the inspiration behind it. I try to constantly experiment and trying new things in my writing, and Ink & Flowers is basically an amalgamation of a bunch of different things that I thought were cool and wanted to try. So without further adieu, here’s a some the things that inspired me to write Ink & Flowers!
Image courtesy of moggara12 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
1. I love cute little flower shops and flowers (my favourite task at my grocery store job is wrapping flowers) and I wanted to write a character who worked in one. I also love tattoos, and wanted to write a character who has lots of them (I only have two so far because I’m poor, but I want tons eventually, and have researched a fair bit about them.)
2. I felt that in my earlier stories the character development tended to suffer because I spent too much time focusing on the supernatural elements. I wanted to write a story that was all about the characters, and to avoid getting caught up in anything else, I made it contemporary, and set it in a Canadian city similar to mine. I wanted to write a story that wasn’t about defeating an evil villain or saving the world. Just about characters: making mistakes, learning from them, making decisions and moving forward.
3. I wanted to try writing characters that were extremely flawed and unlikable a the beginning and see if I could turn it around to make them sympathetic by the end. I was also interested in the trope used a lot in erotica of someone being coerced into sex in exchange for money or a place to stay and ending up liking it. I wanted too see how that would play out if I wrote it completely realistically. What kind of person would be desperate enough to agree to that, I wondered. And what kind of person would make such an offer? Could they deal with the fallout of their actions, and redeem themselves by the end of the story?
4. Every story has a little bit of the author in it, but when I was writing Ink & Flowers, I found myself drawing from a lot of personal experience. Coming out, dealing with overbearing and insidiously controlling family, all while suffering from anxiety are all things I have direct experience with, and they coloured Luke’s experience as well. This isn’t to say that the characters are (more than loosely) based on anyone I actually know, but it made it into a very personal story for me. It also means that it’s a very queer narrative, and I hope that it will be most enjoyed and identified with by other people who have come out and faced homophobia in their families as well.
Also, there is mansex. Although it’s delayed a little from where one might have expected it to happen based on the blurb. A strange thing happens every time I start writing a book, I think “Wow, you know, I don’t think these characters are going to have on-page sex. This is going to be my first novel without sex in it!” And then the characters get to know each other a little bit, and that all goes out the window. But it’s okay, because I like writing sex scenes. 😉
Thanks for reading!
About to lose his apartment, and desperate to avoid having to move in with his horrendous relatives, shy art student Luke impulsively agrees to a deal from hell: sex with a man he doesn’t know in exchange for a couch to sleep on.
His new “roommate” Cooper is everything that Luke hates: crude, uncouth, and covered in tattoos, not to mention openly gay. Luke has all but resigned himself to a miserable fate when it turns out Cooper might want something a little different than he expected.
About to lose his apartment, and desperate to avoid having to move in with his horrendous relatives, shy art student Luke impulsively agrees to a deal from hell: sex with a man he doesn’t know in exchange for a couch to sleep on.
His new “roommate” Cooper is everything that Luke hates: crude, uncouth, and covered in tattoos, not to mention openly gay. Luke has all but resigned himself to a miserable fate when it turns out Cooper might want something a little different than he expected.
Ink & Flowers is coming out June 4th!
Wordcount: 40,000
Pairing: m/m
Ebook price: $4.99
J.K. Pendragon 