Summer Shorts!

Life is crazy busy these days and it’s easy to get caught up in the day to day juggle of all our responsibilities. Often we don’t have the luxury of an hour, or sometimes day, long reading binge. Then right when you’re at the best moment in the book, Especially when your brain is obsessing over what happened to the character in the book you were just reading.

Short stories are the perfect solution for those nights when you think “I’m going to start this book but just another chapter or two” and then it’s 2am and you have to get up in four hours knowing you’re going to get exhausted at work the next day.

It’s the instant gratification of being able to enjoy a story in the tub and be relaxed when you get out safe and secure in the knowledge that the characters are living their happily ever after.

As an author, I love building the rush between the characters exploring love at first sight or the moment when the character loose as a friend and realizes there is so more more to them than friendship. The challenge of making it realistic or at least plausible capturing that moment for my readers to experience. 

My newest release is tomorrow and I loved the theme of the short stories included in this anthology. Mature couples! Writing about a heroine I can personally relate to made this even more enjoyable. While you don't have to be in your 40's to enjoy these stories, they are a celebration of love at every point in our lives. 

Release Date June 27th!!

In the world of working women and glass ceilings, these heroines have kept their eye on the prize. Until now. The prize has suddenly shifted, and they're ready to break the rules, and get wild. From past loves, to forbidden strangers, these good girls are swooning for bad boys, and you're invited to join in.

From 12 NYT and USA Today bestselling authors, these tales of seduction will leave you panting for more...
Featuring stories from: Adaline Raine, Elizabeth Kirke, Ever Coming, Kate Richards, Katherine Deane, Kayleigh Malcolm, Krista Ames, Michele Ryan, Monica Corwin, Nicole Morgan, Tina Donahue, and TL Reeve

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MEANT TO BE – Kayleigh Malcolm

Cassandra Jakes’ career gave her more satisfaction than her ex ever did. Making time for relationships was pointless, because at her age, Mr Second Chance wouldn’t be an easy find. She’d kept her inner bad girl locked in a cage for so long, there was no easy way to change that now.  

Remy Moraes had a two week maximum on any relationship and enjoyed the fact that no one expected a commitment from him. Cassandra was the only woman who could have tempted him to stray from his eternal bachelordom, but she was too far out of his league.

When Remy interrupts Cassandra’s solo camping trip, the two of them fall into an erotic weekend of unbridled passion. Returning to the world of indoor plumbing, they both have a lot of baggage to unpack. Can they work out their differences and accept they were meant to be?

Excerpt:

Forest air tasted different, Cassandra inhaled deeply and smiled. It smelled better up here too. No car exhaust, city structures, rush hour, or gridlock. A 20 minute hike into the woods to her site had her almost light headed though. Especially since she did it twice in order to get most of her gear up to her site, the rest she left in the car. After only a couple of nasty swear words her tent was up and food stored away in the bear boxes, the last thing she wanted to do was to have any big fuzzies show up for a visit.

            Why didn’t she ever think of this sooner? The sun was setting over the mountains painting the sky in shades of purple and red. A perfect end to a beautiful day after spending the afternoon wandering along the marked trails, and enjoyed the simple beauty around her. 

The only smudge to the picture perfect sunset was a large black cloud formation in the sky adjacent to the vibrant shades. The weatherman hadn’t said anything about bad weather yesterday and she hadn’t double checked this morning. A little rain never hurt anyone. 

With a small fire going in the safety pit, she relaxed in her chair and read. Around her the forest was alive with sounds of little critters and hooting owls. There were already a couple chipmunks she’d bribed a return by tossing a handful of peanuts on the table for them.  She reached for her cell to call Jenny only to find it wasn’t in her pocket. Damn, she vaguely remembered tossing it on the passenger seat. That hike could wait till morning.

            A bottle of Alsatian Gewürztraminer sat on the cooler, a partially filled glass next to it. She held her hotdog over the crackling flame, toasting it perfectly on all sides, a bun in her lap already with horseradish mayo on it. This was the life, no worrying about what her breath would smell like, or if she made a mess. It was going to be a perfect weekend.

            A flash lit up the sky above her, followed moments later by a deep roar of thunder. She loved thunderstorms and her earlier thought of crawling into her tent with some of her toys crossed her mind again. She wished she was brave enough to go at right here and now, there was the slim possibility that someone might stumble across her. Exhibitionism was not her thing, neither was voyeurism. Both embarrassed her and that had been one of the nails in the coffin her marriage had been buried in. Karl was willing to do anything anywhere. Getting caught by a stranger while playing with herself was an intriguing fantasy but not one she wanted to experience. Unless it was Rémy….no! Not Rémy. She could feel her cheeks burning and was certain the heat from the fire didn’t have anything to do with it. Rémy Moraes was a fantasy all on his own and one that would have to stay that way.

****

            Rémy was going to throttle Jenny Jakes and her mother Cassandra.  The former because the silly twit had run off and gotten herself married in Vegas of all places. No doubt she had some Elvis impersonator do it too. His daughter, Tiffany had filled him in on a few details. Flighty and irresponsible. Apparently Jenny’s boyfriend/now husband had his feet a bit more on the ground, but then after this latest stunt he was going to have to question that previous impression. If this was a grand gesture to win Jenny’s affections back, the man was an idiot.

            Anyone could have seen that Jenny had been pining for him. Moping around, bursting into tears at the slightest mention of him. As much as he loved Jenny, and considered her like another daughter, whenever she came by to cry on Tiffany’s shoulder, he’d beat a quick escape from the house.

            Contrary to his long time impression, apparently Cassandra was as flighty as her daughter. Taking off on a solo camping trip? What was she thinking? She wouldn’t know the difference between a hatchet and a hammer. No doubt almost chopped all her toes off by now trying to break a stump into kindling while wearing a pair of dainty strappy sandals on her delicate feet. That thought distracted him enough that he almost drifted into a tree. Damn, she had sexy calves too, terrible thing if she cut herself.  Shit! He snapped his attention back to the road steering his truck off the gravel shoulder. His wipers barely keeping up with the onslaught of rain pounding against his windshield.

            Goddamn, that woman always had that effect on him. Ever since highschool, when she’d been far too good of a girl for him to ever consider speaking to. She’d hugged the walls when she walked, her head in a book. A riot of black curls surrounded her pale skin, she’d never strayed far from her pack of silly twittering girlfriends. Even at that age he’d know she’d doing more with her life that he ever would. She had a seriousness about her and a drive to succeed he later found out was from her parents high expectations. She'd done well for herself and matured into an incredible woman.

            It wasn’t that she was a snob or anything. Cassandra Banks was a delicate hot house flower and he spent his days as a National Park Ranger. He loved his job, loved being outdoors and to get involved with someone more comfortable in a boardroom then in a forest wouldn’t be fair to either of them. But, here he was driving out into the middle of nowhere at ten at night to find a woman because she’s failed to ensure her phone had a signal. He’d do the same thing for anyone else who’d called him concerned about a family member. She’s not going to drown or get struck by lightning, be attacked by bears, starve, or die of exposure.

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Loving it Short & Sweet with @NathanBurgoine

Given that May is short story month, it seems like a good time to talk about the shorter side of fiction.

Oh, who am I kidding? I've been waiting for May for just this reason.

To be honest, if you've ever talked writing or reading anywhere near me, you've likely heard me wax poetic about short fiction. But if you haven't? Let me be clear: I love short fiction. I love writing it, I love reading it, and I love how short fiction can open doors for new authors from both sides of the equation: giving first-time authors a shot at getting published through a call for submissions, and giving readers an opportunity to bump into a new-to-them author when they're reading an anthology.

That was my path, and the path of so many of my author friends. My first short fiction piece was "Heart," in an anthology called Fool for Love: New Gay Fiction edited by R.D. Cochrane and Timothy J. Lambert. In fact, there were quite a few people in that anthology who were getting published for the first time, and I've happily been following them ever since.

Not in a stalker way. In a reader way. Though to be fair, I did also get to meet most of them.

Now, for all my love of the forms of short fiction (be they short stories, novellas, or novelettes), I do know I'm not exactly in the majority. Quite a few readers are pretty vocal about not enjoying short fiction, and that's fine: we're allowed to enjoy different things. Heck, as lovers of romance, we sure know people get down on the genre as a whole, no?

I can't help but wonder, though, how often dismissal of the shorter forms of writing is done out of a lack of good experience. Or, put another way, how much of it should we blame on high school?

I know, I know, high school gets a bad rap. In the interest of being just as clear about how I feel about high school, let me be blunt: it was awful and you couldn't pay me enough to ever do that again. And even I, a lover of short fiction, pretty much disliked every short story we were forced to read for English class.

Like, a whole short story about teaching a dog not to be gun-shy when duck hunting? Who in their right mind decided that was something a group of sixteen year olds would find enthralling? For every "The Lady or the Tiger," (that one had the whole class chatting) there were a half-dozen stories that, in the hands of teenage readers, felt like the equivalent of watching paint dry.

So is it any wonder short fiction makes so many adults stop and shudder and recall chalk dust and classrooms and staring at a clock and hoping the minute hand will go faster?

In romance especially, the short story (and the novella) are, to me, the sweet dessert when I'm peckish. I can dive into a short story while I'm waiting for my turn with the doctor, or while I'm at a coffee shop on Sunday mornings with my husband, and get a full narrative. That little jolt of happiness is perfect alongside my hot chocolate or my tea, and leaves me smiling for the rest of my day.

During times when my time is crunched, it means I can keep reading. Back when I worked retail at Christmas, this was huge: I would almost stop reading entirely in November, and not start again until January. I'd sometimes re-read things I'd enjoyed, because I was too tired for the mental challenge of a new narrative. But once I'd discovered novellas and short stories? It was magic. In fact, the holiday novella is a huge thing, and I made it through retail Christmas after retail Christmas with tales like Eli Easton's Blame it on the Mistletoe, Anthony Cardno's The FirFlake, Brandon Witt's Teddy Bears, and Z.A. Maxfield's I Heard Him Exclaim.

Even better? I can finish the whole tale and not feel guilty if the to-do list is a kilometre long. Unlike "just one more chapter," the whole thing is likely the length of a chapter. So I read a story, smile, and get the laundry done. If I'm reading in bed, the end of a story makes a perfect lights-out moment, rather than realizing it's now three in the morning and I've got one chapter left on this novel but I need to be up in three more hours.

I mean, I still do that. But with an anthology, at least I can avoid it sometimes.

Although, sometimes this happens.

For me, one of the best things about the e-revolution in the publishing world has been the revival of the novella and short story. E-formats make novellas and short fiction portable (my Kobo is packed to the brim with short stories, anthologies, and novellas). Publishing a novella was a hard sell in the days of paper, as the costs of crafting the book, and the expectations of return on investment were pretty low from the point of view of the publisher. And I won't lie: it's not magically better now. Short story anthologies will likely never be on the same footing as the novella, and certainly they don't perform as well.

But man am I glad they exist. I wouldn't be anywhere without them. And I wouldn't have "met" so many amazing authors if I hadn't bumped into some of their short stories first. There are even novella series that function as shared worlds that invite you in to a familiar surrounding and let a new author give you a story with every instalment, like Kayleigh Malcolm's Craving His Love. The Black Hills Wolves series has over sixty novellas! Werewolf love at your fingertips, and what better way to try out a new author than with a genre you already know you love?

Okay. I'm going on and on about short fiction, and I'll stop after one more thing: side characters. This is another thing about short fiction where I often jump up and down and get really excited. You know how you read a great romance, and there's the best friend to the heroine and you just wish you could hear their story? Again, enter the novella or short story! After loving Heart Block, by Melissa Brayden, I loved one of the supporting cast, Lucy. And lo! Lucy got her own love story in the novella, Firework. This happens more often than you'd think, and is so much fun to track down.

So. Short story month. What about you? What was the last short story you read that you loved? Have you discovered an author through an anthology? What about novellas? Shared world series? Please let me know, as I'm always looking for more.

*

Speaking of short romance, my short story "Range of Motion," appears in Men in Love: M/M Romance from Bold Strokes Books. "Range of Motion" is about a personal trainer who can't keep his eyes off a particular client who comes in fairly regularly to run on the treadmill who realizes he might have missed his chance when the client stops showing. But when he does come back, weeks later, it's obvious something has happened, and the easy going smile is gone. He decides he'd like to put it back.

Spring approaches with the promise of new beginnings, fresh adventures, and the thrill of romance rekindled or discovered. Hot, sexy guys abound—meeting on the ball fields or the boardroom, at the theater or the classroom—falling in love and lust for the first time or celebrating a lifetime. Come join the rites of spring and indulge yourself in the passion and pleasures of our luscious men in love. Stories from some of today’s popular m/m romance authors explore the many faces of men in love: gay for you, seductions, weddings and more.

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