It's out!

Chippewa Publishing have now released Elfmeet as a single-story e-book for the princely sum of $2. For your dose of gay elves, go here:

Elfmeet - Chippewa Publishing

I'll be on holiday next week so it'll be a few days until I update this again.

Another 'vine' success :)

If you like short, fun, dialogue-only stories, keep your eyes open early next month. Torquere Press will be featuring Checkmate, a flash m/m story with a Halloween theme, on the front cover of their Fresh Off the Vine newsletter, due out 3 October. Happy reading, and Happy Halloween!

Elfmeet released very soon

Chippewa Publishing will be releasing Elfmeet on Friday 23 September as an e-book! The cover artwork is just gorgeous.

Yes, another one...

I've started a new novel. Yup, another one, and no, I still haven't finished the last one. LOL.

But it's looking ever more likely that we'll be moving house soon, and it's going to break my heart because I just love my current home. So I started thinking about the things we do for our partners, and the things we have to give up for love, and I wondered whether it's always the best thing, or whether it stores up problems for later on. And lo and behold! another novel was born. I've made some changes to the basic concept in order to protect the guilty. *grins*. We'll be moving from a big city to a small provincial town but in the novel the main character does it the other way round, leaving behind the cottage he bought with a bequest from his grandmother and moving to the big, crowded, dirty, noisy city to be with his lover.

I won't spoil the surprise by saying what happens next, but suffice it to say that love doesn't necessarily conquer all. I'm calling it 'Give Me to Drink Mandragora' which hopefully suggests its dark mood as well as hinting at the problems caused by uprooting.

I've only done part of the first chapter so far but I'm hoping to get further with it before we go off on holiday at the end of the week.

Concentration, or lack of it

Isn't it weird? Give me a whole day to myself, without interruptions, and I can't write a thing. But today, with the decorators in, hammering, humping ladders about, demanding cups of tea and generally getting in the way, I sat down and made slow but steady progress on the cricketing story.

Partly I guess I was inspired by the England cricket team winning the Ashes yesterday. Partly I told myself I needed to finish something for the anthology and simply got my head down. Either way I added over a thousand words and am relatively pleased with the way it's coming along. 'War and Peace' it is not *grins* but it's a lighthearted romp and I'm hoping it will at least be different from all the baseball, basketball and US football stories that'll probably be sent in.

Another one away

I've sold another story - Torquere Press have taken 'Salad Days' for their January 2006 newsletter which is great news! This is the story I challenged myself to write to try and kickstart my writing again, so it's particularly pleasing to have had it accepted somewhere. Ideally I'd have liked it to come out a little sooner but that's the first space they have available, which is fair enough. And beggars can't really be choosers. LOL

All-new keyrings

Forbidden Fruit has keyrings for readers to win! Each issue we'll be giving away a free keyring with the Forbidden Fruit artwork and logo, for contests and the like. This issue, play 'hunt the penguin' to win one! See http://www.forbiddenfruitzine.com/news.htm for more information - and here's a pic of the keyrings to whet your appetite!

The Kitchen Sink

I've been thinking about the possibility of getting a few of my stories together for another anthology, called the Kitchen Sink. I realised the other day that I already have two or three stories on a similar theme, set in the kitchen or around chores and mishaps at home. All are quite short and very light-hearted and I reckon if I could write another ten or so it would make an entertaining theme for a collection.

I'm going to add the story about the fennel (see below!) and have just started scribbling something about socks in the wash. It'll be a challenge to see how many new ideas I can come up with. :)

Noticeboard

I don't always have a story in each issue of Forbidden Fruit these days - we get so many other great submissions that I don't need to! But I was rather tempted this time because the next issue (Jan '06) will have a theme of 'communication' which sounded like a lot of fun. I've written a 'story' in the form of notices left pinned to a board - and thanks to the wonders of html, I've even been able to make it look like a noticeboard!! Not sure yet if we'll actually use it for the issue - it depends how many other stories we get in as well. But it sure was fun to set up and write!

Forbidden Fruit

It's that time of the year again - early September and time for a brand new issue of Forbidden Fruit. This new issue marks a series of new beginnings for the magazine - a new editorial team, a new team of regular contributors for both art and fiction, a new non fiction section and two new serialised stories on the fiction section - not to mention the Gay Zombie Penguins! Please see the News page for further details - and don't forget to check out our extended content while you're at it!

Here's the link for those of you who don't already have us bookmarked:
http://www.forbiddenfruitzine.com/

Finally...

I actually managed to sit down and write something late last night - and not just 'something', but a whole short story from start to finish. Not that it was up to much *grins* but I was beginning to despair of ever writing more than a paragraph at a time. I realised that it had been so long since I genuinely wrote anything that I was getting stale, so I tried the old challenge of picking three words at random from a dictionary and writing a story that includes them all. I ended up with 'hurdle', 'solve' and 'fennel'. o.O But I managed to invent something, and it even made sense!!

Here's a snippet from the start, with the fennel. The other words come later, honestly. *grins*

[snippet removed as story now accepted for publication]

The Couch Critic

My friend Gina has a new review site out where she posts articles she's had published as well as reviews of tv shows and books. It's entertaining, it's called One Couch Critic and it's at http://thecouchcritic.blogspot.com/, so why not check it out?

Win a book!

A copy of my book One Degree of Separation is being given away by Erotic Romance Reviews for Women (http://www.errw.bravehost.com/home.html) as part of their Super Sexy September launch. Pop over to their site, join up to the ERRW Gossip Corner yahoo group (where readers and writers alike can chat and swap notes) and you can take part in contests all this month and win yourself free books and other prizes. Including, of course, One Degree. :)