Books

WIPpet Wednesday: Offerings, Part 2

Happy Wednesday! The school year is drawing to a close. Recitals the next two weekends, with final exams in between. I think there might be only 10 days or so left in the classroom. Yikes!

Meanwhile, I’ve finished a short story and edited it, and now I’m working on the rest of what will go in my “leftovers of Cat and Micah” collection for this summer. I’m hoping for a release date of July 12, which is also my 20th wedding anniversary.

Here is the second in a set of flash fiction, all of which start with “I brought you something.” In this one, Cat and Micah are on their (delayed due to work) honeymoon. Poor Cat was expecting hot monkey sex, but Micah’s been having a crisis of perfectionism.

WIPmath: 6/7/17 = 7 paragraphs for the 7th.

Cat had been sort of napping when Micah returned. He’d said he wanted to go out for a bit, and Cat was too tired to join him. So he’d slipped under the luxurious comforter in their upgraded room for a little sleep. It had turned into an internal debate on whether or not to relieve the tension. That conflict had remained unresolved when Cat drifted off into a restless state of half-sleep.

Micah startled him, and Cat sat bolt upright in the bed. Looking apologetic, Micah held up the bag. Cat couldn’t begin to imagine what was inside. It could’ve been anything from food—though he didn’t smell anything—to a snow globe of the Falls.

“Okay,” he said, extending a hand.

“Not yet.” Micah smiled, and something in it made Cat’s heart thump. “Um…can you…uh…” He watched Micah’s throat bob as he swallowed, and Cat had a pang of sympathy at seeing how nervous Micah was.

“Yes?” Cat ducked his head and peered up at Micah through his bangs. He knew the look got him every time.

“Get undressed?”

“You want me naked.” Now Cat curled his lip in a coy smile, and Micah nodded, his face red. “I believe I can do that.”

Like what you read? Be sure to check out the other entries and add your own. Just post a bit of your WIP, connect it to the date, and link up with us. Many thanks to Emily Witt for giving us this space. Happy reading and writing!

Rainbow Snippets: Under the Weather, part 1

Books, Fiction, Writing

Happy Saturday! I’m running really late posting because we spent yesterday at a nearby amusement park. My 13yo son plays saxophone in his school’s jazz band, and they were there competing yesterday. They won first place, and my son’s BFF got an award for outstanding soloist. He absolutely deserved it; he was incredible.

On to the snippet. I’m still posting bits of Nightsong until I have enough of something else to post. This week, we’re back with Nate. Here, he’s hooked up with an old flame. It’s more than 6 sentences, but it wouldn’t make sense otherwise.

Nate was almost too blissed-out to notice when Rocco’s phone rang. Through his sleepy haze, Nate felt motion next to him. He rolled over and admired the curve of Rocco’s ass as the sheet slipped to reveal it when he reached over to the nightstand.

“This is Rocco.” Pause. “Yes, that would be fine.” Pause. “I’m with a client right now, but I can set it up after my meeting.” His eyes flicked to Nate. “No, that’s not possible.” He covered the phone with his hand and whispered, “Be right back.”

He rose from the bed and stalked into the bathroom. For a moment, it was quiet, and then he heard Rocco’s muffled voice. He sounded angry, and Nate caught a few words like “let’s not do this now” and “we’ll discuss it later” and “it’s not a good time.”

Rainbow Snippets is a safe and welcoming space for LGBTQIA+ authors, readers, and bloggers to share 6 sentences each week from a work of fiction—published or in-progress—or a book recommendation. Feel free to join in!

Review: Frank at Heart by Pat Henshaw

Books, Reviews

Title: Frank At Heart

Author: Pat Henshaw

Series: Foothills Pride (#6)

Genre: Contemporary gay romance

Publisher: Dreamspinner Press

Publication date: May 31, 2017

ISBN: 9781635336313

ASIN: B072HWHXNV

Pages: 151

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34936542-frank-at-heart

Everything about thirty-five-year-old Stone Acres hardware store owner Frank McCord is old-fashioned—from his bow tie and overalls to the way he happily makes house calls to his dreams of lasting romance, true love, and marriage. Frank’s predecessors have run the store and been mainstays in the small California town for over a century. While genial Frank upholds tradition and earns the respect of friends and neighbors, he fears he’s too dull and old to attract a husband.

Then handsome thirty-six-year-old electronic games designer Christopher Darling and his fifteen-year-old son, Henry, come into his life. Christopher has everything Frank could want in a potential partner: charm, kindness, and compatibility. Also, he’s a terrific father to Henry. When their Stone Acres home turns out to be uninhabitable, Frank offers the Darlings temporary lodging in his ancestral farmhouse, where he and his tenant Emil reside. Since Emil thinks Frank is his, sparks fly. Suddenly, Frank’s monotonous life promises to explode with love and threatens to change him forever.

I’m always happy to see another installment in the Foothills Pride series. It’s one of my favorites. These are relatively short reads, low on heat but high on character growth. Even the town itself is a player on the stage. Every story stands alone, but there are always familiar faces and at least mentions of how everyone else is getting on since we last visited. It’s like sitting down on the porch with a friend to catch up on the latest news.

This time around, we have Frank, the owner of the town’s hardware store. He’s old-fashioned, a bit nerdy, and doesn’t believe he’s anyone’s type when it comes to love. But he’s a romantic, and he dreams of finding his true love.

I liked Frank from the first page, though I did have to laugh at his opinion of himself as “middle aged.” I don’t think I’d considered thirty-five all that old. On the other hand, Frank definitely has an air about him of being older than his calendar years suggest. He dresses the part of his grandfather, almost as though he’s trying to earn his approval from beyond the grave.

My favorite thing about Frank is his absolute honesty (his name is quite fitting, and I doubt that’s accidental, given his character traits and the title of the story). He knows and owns his struggles with anger and anxiety, and he knows who to go to for help. His friends have his back.

Christopher is, of course, just as “darling” as his surname implies. I loved his innocence and his desire to believe the best of people. I know the pain of being taken in by something I thought was the right thing to do, and I really felt for him.

I’m a sucker for books with teenagers, especially when they’re well-written. Henry is wonderful, and he’s exactly as you’d expect a smart kid his age to be. I love how the adults never talk down to him. In fact, Frank treats the handful of other teens who pass through with the same respect.

Emil is wickedly fun to dislike at first, and then he takes a somewhat darker turn that I wasn’t expecting. To be honest, I wondered from the blurb if Frank was going to have to choose between Emil and Christopher. I won’t spoil it, but in the end, I mostly just felt sad for Emil.

Perhaps my favorite thing about these books is that they are the way the world should work. Not merely happy endings but full of love, support, kindness, joy, and friendship all throughout. They’re the kind of uplifting stories we could use more of.

For a visit to a favorite town, characters who are easy to love, and a story with just a hint of a message, this gets 10/10 fountain pens.

Pat Henshaw, author of the Foothills Pride Stories, was born and raised in Nebraska where she promptly left the cold and snow after college, living at various times in Texas, Colorado, Northern Virginia, and Northern California. Pat enjoys travel, having visited Mexico, Canada, Europe, Nicaragua, Thailand, and Egypt, and Europe, including a cruise down the Danube. She now lives in Sacramento.

Now retired, Pat has spent her life surrounded by words: Teaching English composition at the junior college level; writing book reviews for newspapers, magazines, and websites; helping students find information as a librarian; and promoting PBS television programs.

Her triumphs are raising two incredible daughters who daily amaze her with their power and compassion. Fortunately, her incredibly supportive husband keeps her grounded in reality when she threatens to drift away while writing fiction.

Blog Tour: Sex in C Major by Matthew J. Metzger

Books, Featured, Fiction

About the Book

Title: Sex in C Major

Author: Matthew J. Metzger

Release Date: May 27th 2017

Genre: GLBT, BDSM, Interracial Romance

Find Sex in C Major on Goodreads

Synopsis

Stefan has … fantasies.

He knows chasing those fantasies is only going to end in disaster, but he can’t seem to stop his self-destructive spiral. He’s a transgender man struggling to come to terms with the intersection of his identity and his sexual fantasies as a submissive. He needs someone to take control before he loses it completely.

Daz can take control. He can teach Stefan everything there is to know about sex and submission, but for some reason, he can’t get inside Stefan’s head. Daz can stop Stefan’s self-destruction but not the fear that fuels it.

Stefan needs to know who he is before he can accept what he is. And it’s Yannis — Daz’s aromantic, asexual, stern, and sarcastic partner — who has the answer.

Purchase Links

Amazon US | Amazon UK | JMS Books | iBooks

Excerpt

Other people wanted vanilla sex and dating out of a hookup in a gay bar. But Stefan wanted— this. He wanted to jump from nothing to Daz bending him over the end of the bed and fucking him like he was nothing but a sex doll.

What was he doing?

And yet he kept walking, step by step by step towards the house. A jogger had to go around him; a car hooted angrily as he walked out in front of it. He didn’t care. The house was calling. The man inside was calling. The promise of his fantasies becoming real was calling.

And it was terrifying and stupid and utterly crazy… but Stefan just couldn’t say no.

At exactly eight fifteen, the terror enough to make him throw up and the arousal so intense he could barely walk, Stefan knocked on the door.

Footsteps.

A key in a lock.

Then the door was jerked open, and a hand fisted in Stefan’s coat and hauled him inside.

“Upstairs,” Daz said, slamming the door. “Now. Nobody sees you.”

Stefan scrambled to obey, almost running up the stairs, still in his coat and shoes. He was shoved back into the small bedroom from the night before, and the door slammed behind them.

“Strip,” Daz said.

About the Author

Matthew J. Metzger is a twenty-something British author of queer novels, primarily focusing on relationships, be they familial, platonic, sexual or romantic. He was dragged up in London, but currently lives in West Yorkshire, where he carves out a living in an office crunching numbers before going home to write books at night. Matthew particularly writes working-class queer life, and queer people who exist outside of the standard M/M romance fare written by and for well-educated, middle-class sensibilities. There be nasty words ahead, children. Better buckle up.

Social Media

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Patreon

Giveaway

Win ebook copies of Sex in C Major and What It Looks Like

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Tour Schedule

May 27th: Alpha Book Club | My Fiction Nook | Hearts on Fire Reviews

May 28th: Nerd Girl Official | Boy Meets Boy Reviews

May 29th: The Novel Approach | A L Boyd

May 3oth: A M Leibowitz

May 31st: Happily Ever Chapter

June 1st: MJs Book Blog and Reviews

June 2nd: Bonkers about Books | Joyfully Jay

June 5th: Kimmers’ Erotic Book Banter

June 6th: Making It Happen | Outrageous Heroes

June 7th: BFD Book Blog

June 8th: Triple A

June 9th: Love Bytes Reviews

June 12th: Stories That Make You Smile | Scattered Thoughts and Rogue Words

June 13th: Loving Without Limits | L M Brown

June 14th: All in One Place | Dawn’s Reading Nook

June 15th: Bayou Book Junkie

June 16th: Drops of Ink | Archaeolibrarian – I Dig Good Books!

Rainbow Snippets: Matchmaker, Matchmaker

Books, Fiction, Other Relationships, Writing

Happy Saturday! It’s almost the end of the school year. I can hardly believe that in a matter of weeks, my “baby” will have finished middle school. Since we’re in the final push before summer, this might be my last snippet for a while. I’ll have to see how things go due to a band competition and two recitals.

For today, I’m still snipping from Nightsong. Izzy and Val have now picked up their cargo (the dinosaur skeleton) from the creepy scientists and are on their way to the hospital with it. For some context, a yenta/yente is a busybody. Yente is the matchmaker from Fiddler on the Roof. (Nightsong has a lot of references to opera and musical theater.) And yep, Izzy has two moms who are a couple.

“Did you get a seriously weird vibe from those people?”

“Oh, yeah.”

She shuddered. “Should I have stayed in back with our ‘patient’?”

“Nah. I’m sure it’s fine. Long as I drive carefully and don’t go flying over a pothole or something.”

She shrugged. “You’re probably right. So, what were we talking about? Oh, yeah—my skills as a matchmaker.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Yente,” Izzy said with a snort. “You’re worse than my mothers.”

Review: Shards of History trilogy by Rebecca Roland

Books, Reviews

About the Books

Author: Rebecca Roland

Shards of History (#1)

August 21, 2012

World Weaver Press

340 pages

Goodreads

Feared and reviled, the fierce, winged creatures known as Jeguduns live in the cliffs surrounding the Taakwa valley. When Malia discovers an injured Jegudun in the valley, she risks everything — exile from the village, loss of her status as clan mother in training, even her life — to befriend and save the surprisingly intelligent creature. But all of that pales when she learns the truth: the threat to her people is bigger and more malicious than the Jeguduns. Lurking on the edge of the valley is an Outsider army seeking to plunder and destroy her people. It’s only a matter of time before the Outsiders find a way through the magic that protects the valley — a magic that can only be created by Taakwa and Jeguduns working together.

Fractured Days (#2)

June 9, 2015

World Weaver Press

330 pages

Goodreads

Malia returns home the hero of a war she can’t remember. The valley burning under the Maddion’s invasion, the fate of her late husband, the way she resolved the long-time distrust between the Taakwa people and the wolfish, winged Jegudun creatures–all of it has been erased from her memory. Malia hopes to resume training as her village’s next clan mother, but when the symbiotic magic that she and the Jeguduns used to repair the valley’s protective barrier starts to consume more and more of her mind, she’s faced with the threat of losing herself completely.

A powerful being known as “the changer” might hold the solution to her vanishing memories. But the Maddion’s new leader, Muvumo, also seeks the changer, hoping the being will cure them of the mysterious illness killing off his people. Meanwhile, Muvumo’s bride hopes the changer can bring about a new era, one in which she and the other Maddion women no longer need to hold onto their greatest secret.

Shattered Fates (#3)

May 23, 2017

World Weaver Press

296 pages

Goodreads

The magic barrier protecting the Taakwa from their enemies, the Maddion, is gone. Malia, who led the Taakwa against the Maddion in the Dragon War, must convince the magical being, the changer, to repair the barrier before the Maddion invade to take revenge on her people and the winged Jeguduns who also call the valley home, even if it means reversing the healing the changer wrought for her.

Chanwa, the wife of the Maddion leader, uses the disorder created by the changer to lead a coup against her husband in a desperate attempt to ensure she and the other Maddion women are treated as equals. Her life, and the future of every Maddion woman, depends on her success.

Both women know the only way to succeed is to come together in an unlikely alliance.

Reviews

Shards of History

This is a terrific beginning to the series. Although it does end with some loose threads, it can still be enjoyed as a complete story. The main plot of the book resolves by the conclusion.

The world-building here is excellent. While there are some longer descriptive passages, they pertain mostly to providing us a visual of the countryside, home life for Malia and her people, and the encampment of the Maddion. Nothing feels like too much or as though it’s there only for exposition. For the most part, everything is woven into the plot seamlessly. I enjoyed the vivid picture the author paints of the different cultures and people.

Malia is a wonderful hero. She isn’t without flaws, particularly her stubborn streak and her reluctance to ask for help. However, she is also brave, kind, and honest, and both her strengths and her weaknesses end up serving her well.

There’s a lot of death, but I love how it’s handled here. It doesn’t feel careless or for the sake of demonstrating violence. Instead, the characters are allowed their human moments of grief, even when the deceased is an enemy. In fact, that’s one of the things I particularly liked. The Maddion are a brutal, patriarchal society, and yet even within that the characters are not flat villains. Through the eyes of Kushtrim, we see both his desire to help his people and the brutality of the methods he’s chosen to do so.

The one thing which surprised me is that there are so few women characters, and they don’t interact much with each other. Malia’s people are matriarchal and revere their women, but I didn’t get a strong sense of this in the first installment. It doesn’t necessarily bother me, and it won’t reduce my rating. I was merely surprised.

Aside from that, this is an absolutely outstanding novel. It hit all my buttons just right, between the historical/fantasy setting, the deep character development, and the gorgeous style.

For beautiful writing, a thoroughly engaging plot, and characters who drew me in, this gets 10/10 fountain pens.

Fractured Days

This second part of the trilogy is a good bridge between the other two. The others read as complete plots on their own, and although that’s true here to some degree, it cannot be read on its own. That is not a problem, since I was so captivated by the world and the people while reading that I wouldn’t have wanted to read it alone.

In this part, there are a host of new characters. Since so many of the Maddion died (or were never named) in the first one, that leaves room for us to meet more of them in a different way. I give credit to the author for drawing me into Muvumo’s desperation. I truly felt for him while at the same time being repulsed by him. His actions swing between eliciting sympathy and anger.

Meanwhile, his wife, Chanwa, is a fascinating person. She has so many secrets, and I loved her character development. She and Muvumo represent opposite sides of the same coin. Both want to save their people, but Muvomo believes that means from without and Chanwa sees that coming from within.

None of these stories are romance at all, but there are a number of relationships which develop and are explored in the text. Some of them are enemies becoming allies, others are friendship, family, and romantic. There is a relationship between two of the women, and I really like how it develops and how the author handles it. It is neither more nor less than any other couplehood, addressed in the same understated way as the rest. One thing I appreciate is that it isn’t used against them as some sort of “hero’s downfall.”

I enjoyed this book every bit as much as the first, and my concern over the lack of women has been laid to rest. I’m still surprised that we see much more of the Maddion women than the Taakwa, but it doesn’t take away from the enjoyment of the story.

For a superb follow-up, an excellent new cast of characters in addition to familiar faces, and a cliffhanger that promises an exciting conclusion, this gets 10/10 fountain pens.

Shattered Fates

This is the last part of the series, and I have to admit, I wasn’t sure how it was all going to come together in the end. It did, though, and I was left feeling exhilarated, satisfied, and emotionally spent. It is absolutely the perfect conclusion.

As much as I love Malia, Chanwa became my favorite character. She is absolutely wonderful, and her perseverance is inspiring. She’s fascinating on every level. I wasn’t sure what to hope for aside from simply wanting her to win. It would be spoilers to give details about how she carries out her plan, but it’s brilliant. Also, she deserves credit for creative use of a fertility statue in her quest for victory.

I was also not sure how or whether the mutara, who had more than one name in the story, would be integrated at the end. The way it happens is gorgeous and perfect, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Everything about this is pitch-perfect. Despite some of the darkness and destruction, there’s also a thread of hope throughout and plenty of low-key humor. The romantic subplots continue to be understated but integral to the whole story, and the resolutions to those are highly satisfying.

This is a series with a message, but it’s not delivered in a heavy-handed way. Instead, it’s brought out in the love women have for those around them: family, friends, lovers, and even former enemies. These books are must-reads for anyone who enjoys a bit of realistic commentary with their fantasy escape. I’m looking forward to reading more by this author.

For an absorbing story, characters who become like friends, and a perfect ending, this gets 10/10 fountain pens.

About the Author

Rebecca Roland is the author of the Shards of History series, The Necromancer’s Inheritance series, and The King of Ash and Bones, and Other Stories. Her short fiction has appeared in publications such as Nature, Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, Stupefying Stories, Plasma Frequency, and Every Day Fiction, and she is a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop. You can find out more about her and her work at rebeccaroland.net, her blog Spice of Life, or follow her on Twitter @rebecca_roland.

WIPpet Wednesday: Offerings, Part 2

Rainbow Snippets: Under the Weather, part 1

Review: Frank at Heart by Pat Henshaw