Burn the Sky: Cover Reveal and Excerpt

Burn the Sky is on track for a mid-January release, so I (finally) get to show you the cover Chinchbug did for it.

And here's a little taste to whet your appetite:

Master Tevari opened the saddlebag that Kian had abandoned. He pulled out a set of chains and manacles, similar to the ones Garrik had glimpsed in the castle dungeons on the rare occasions when he and Jaire had crept down there to explore.

“What are those for?” Garrik asked, worrying his lower lip between his teeth as he eyed the chains.

“Protection.”

Garrik let out a nervous laugh. The Wytch Master arched an eyebrow. His expression was deadly serious, and Garrik swallowed his laughter. “Whose protection?”

“Yours. And mine and Kian’s, should things come to such a pass.” Tevari handed the chains to Kian and motioned for Garrik to enter the nearest bedroom. Garrik sat on the bed and removed his boots and his heavy overtunic.

A few moments later, the Wytch Master entered the room, wooden cup in hand. He offered it to Garrik. “Drink this, Your Highness. All of it.”

Garrik sniffed the liquid and wrinkled his nose. It had a foul smell, and bubbled and fizzed ominously in the wooden cup. “What is it?”

“It will help lower your natural defenses, easing the way for me to seek your power.”

He drank it down, nearly gagging at the taste, then lay back on the bed. Kian’s movements were brisk and efficient as he locked the metals cuffs around Garrik’s wrists and ankles.

“Kian,” Garrik said in a low voice, “look at me.”

Kian finished securing the chains to the bed frame and slowly met his gaze.

“Are you truly so frightened?”

Kian’s eyes flicked toward the Wytch Master and then back to Garrik. “It is your safety and your sanity I fear for, Garrik,” he whispered. “Are you certain this is what you want?”

“It is,” Garrik said. “Not just for Altan, but for Jaire. What kind of life will he have if the Wytch Council forces him to take the throne?”

“What kind of life will he have if you are dead?” Kian whispered fiercely. “Have you thought of that? Who will protect him then?”

Dead? Garrik’s certainty began to waver. Kian and the Wytch Master surely knew what they were about. If they were both frightened…

He gave himself a mental shake. What Kian and Tevari thought didn’t matter. There was no other way to protect Jaire. He tore his gaze from Kian’s and focused on the Wytch Master. “I’m ready. Do it.”

The Wytch Master moved to his side. “Then prepare yourself, boy. Because this will hurt.”

Thank You!

The nomination period for this year's Goodreads M/M Romance Group's Member's Choice Awards has just finished, and the first round of voting has begun. If you're a member--go vote now!

I was thrilled to see that two of my stories have been nominated. Gremlin's Last Run was nominated for both Best Paranormal and Best Sci Fi/Futuristic/Post-Apocalyptic/Steampunk, and Human Choices was nominated for Best Love's Landscapes Story. Thank you so much to the people who enjoyed my stories enough to nominate them!

WIP Excerpt: Burn The Sky

By the time the sun had set, Garrik had had enough of breathing exercises, and his failure to master even the simplest one had him prickling at the Wytch Master’s every comment.

When Ilya calmly suggested he start again for perhaps the hundredth time, Garrik’s irritation finally bubbled over into anger. “Enough! What’s the point of this? How is this going to teach me to control the shift?”

Ilya said nothing, but regarded his student with an expectant expression, as if waiting for him to continue.

“Breathing is simple,” Garrik tried to explain, “and… and I don’t even have to think about it. Shifting is… it just happens. I can’t stop it.”

“But you can stop your breathing.”

Garrik stared at him helplessly. “It’s not the same thing.”

“It is very much the same thing. The difference is simply a matter of degree. Both your breath and the shift are within your control.”

He had nothing to say to that. How did one control something that was so utterly beyond control? Garrik wasn’t the one causing the shift — it was happening to him, whether he wanted it or not.

“Begin again,” Ilya said in that infuriatingly calm voice.

That cool air of superiority sent a surge of white hot fury coursing through Garrik.

As before, the shift began without warning. One moment, he was drawing breath to fuel a caustic tirade, the next he found himself in the grip of unspeakable pain. His anger turned to acidic fire racing through his blood, and his flesh began to stretch and tear.

He was dimly aware of his body changing shape and lifting into the air on wings of flame. Everything was fire, inside and out. Garrik burned, and so did the darkening sky.

Lost to the raging fire, Garrik forgot everything until a quiet song of ice wound its way through the inferno of madness. It was the only thing in the world that wasn’t made of flames, and it riveted his attention as it moved through him, dousing the fire, freezing the madness. Garrik clung to it, knowing the cold was the only thing that could save him.

A breath of icy vapor ghosted across his burning skin, and huge frost-rimed wings wrapped around him, smothering the flames in their dark embrace.

The ice took the pain with it, and when Garrik came back to his senses, he was lying on the cold stone of the watchtower roof. There were arms around him, and a warm, male body pressed against his back. With a start, Garrik realized that he was naked and so was the man who held him.

His body responded with shocking swiftness, and Garrik turned over and pulled the man to him. A different kind of heat surged through him as his mouth moved over warm flesh.

The man in his arms responded to his touch, arching against him and turning his face to meet Garrik in a heated kiss. Garrik’s hands moved to explore slender limbs, narrow hips, and long, tousled hair—

The man tore his mouth away from Garrik’s and let out a needy whimper. Garrik caught a flash of pale eyes in the moonlight and a glint of copper hair.

Ilya…

It was the Wytch Master he held in his arms, the Wytch Master who writhed and moaned at his touch.

Garrik jerked back, shoving Ilya away from him. “What in Aio’s name—?” His voice sounded rough and harsh in his ears.

Ilya stared at him with wide, stunned eyes for a long, frozen moment before turning away and rolling gracefully to his feet. Before Garrik could say a word, Ilya turned on his heel and strode toward the stairs that led down into the watchtower.

NaNo 2014: In Which I Attempt to Warp Space and Time

Since I started this blog a couple of years ago, I've gone from having absolutely no one in my life who writes, to having a huge on-line community of M/M writers that I hang out with, get inspiration and advice from, and generally have a good time with.

These guys are awesome, and when a bunch of them started getting excited about NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) I started thinking about it. I might have even mentioned that it looked like it would be fun, but I have a ton of Family Stuff to deal with later this month, and I didn't think I could manage it.

Then I started thinking about how I have all my releases planned for 2015 except there's this big hole in the summer labelled Still To Be Written Fantasy Novel.

Next thing I knew, I was all signed up.

So this will be the month when I shall attempt to bend the laws of physics to my will, warping space and time in such a way that I create a little bubble of writing time that's all my own.

50K in a month?

No sweat.

The project is tentatively titled "Leythe-Blade", and it will be another story that fits into the tapestry I've started weaving in Human Frailties, Human Strengths, and Human Choices.

Here's a brief description:

Sasha is a healer with dreams of being a warrior. When he takes up his grandmother's sword in order to defend his Clan from attack, he gets far more than he bargained for. The sword--Ryka--is a leythe-blade, a magical weapon with the power to send gentle Sasha into a ruthless, killing frenzy. When the berserker rage subsides, Sasha finds himself the sole survivor of the attack.

A healer with blood on his hands does not deserve to live, and all Sasha wants to do is crawl away and die. Ryka has other ideas; Sasha is now her bond-mate, and she will do whatever it takes to keep him alive.

Lukas is a mercenary soldier, charged with protecting his commander’s younger brother on a journey through the Middle Kingdoms. When Lukas and Gwydion find Sasha alone and in agony, Gwydion's prophetic visions tell him that Sasha's survival is vital to the future. Gwydion's visions are seldom wrong, so Lukas turns his mind to helping Sasha find meaning in the tattered remains of his life.

But the last thing the shattered young healer wants is a reason to live, and the last thing Lukas expects is to become Sasha's reason to live.

If all goes well, you can look for it sometime in the summer. Now, I'm off to down a pot of coffee and get on with this time-warping thing. Can't be that hard. They do it on Star Trek all the time.

Gremlin's Last Run is Live!

For those of you who have been patiently waiting, Gremlin's Last Run, Book 2 in my M/M sci-fi series, Guardians of the Pattern, is now available at at Amazon, All Romance, and Smashwords (and will soon be available at other retailers).

This book is 100,000 words of sci fi adventure and romance, much of it taking place aboard a small freighter out in the deep dark of interstellar space.

Here's the book description:

Rhys Tyler, captain of the Gremlin, is no stranger to living on the edge: the edge of solvent; the edge of legal; the edge of sane.

An empath so sensitive that he cannot bear human touch, Rhys makes his living hauling cargo through the deep dark, the interstellar emptiness between populated star systems. And if keeping his aging freighter in working order means resorting to smuggling, well, a man does what he has to in order to survive.

Alek McKinnon is a Federation agent in trouble. Everything that could have gone wrong with his latest mission has. He's been ambushed, kidnapped, imprisoned, and forced to participate in an illegal experiment that has crippled his psi and left him bonded to an ancient artifact that has already proved itself deadly.

When Alek stows away aboard the Gremlin, all he's looking for is a way home so he can report to his superiors. He's not expecting to find a psion in desperate need of training. And he's sure as hell not expecting to fall in love.

Update, October 2014

Just a few things...

1. Gremlin's Last Run (Guardians of the Pattern, Book 2) is in the final polishing stages. Look for it mid-month.

2. For the month of October, Psi Hunter (Guardians of the Pattern, Book 1) will be priced at $2.99.

3. Burn the Sky (the dragon shifter story) is back from my beta readers. The next big project is to tear into it and get it ready for an end of the year release--maybe (see Item 5 below).

4. Ghost in the Mythe (Guardians of the Pattern, Book 3) will be next up after Burn the Sky, Look for this one in the spring of '15--again, maybe (see Item 5).

5. The release schedule after Gremlin's Last Run is tentative and nebulous at the moment--I have some Family Stuff I need to deal with, and at this point, I'm not sure how much it's going to impact my writing schedule. Check here for updates.

Gremlin's Last Run: Cover Reveal and Excerpt

Gremlin's Last Run (Guardians of the Pattern: Book 2) is still on track for an October release, so it's time to reveal the awesome cover Chinchbug did for it.

That's Rhys on the cover (that's Captain Tyler to you, dirtsucker), and here's a little taste...

Excerpt:

There was a flicker of tension from somewhere nearby, something leaking through his faulty shields. At the sound of the cabin door sliding open, Alek whipped his head around to face his captors.

Correction—captor.

He couldn’t make out anything beyond a fuzzy shape in the dim light until the figure across the room slapped the control panel, bringing the lights up.

The brightness stabbed through his head. Alek winced and brought his hands up to cover his eyes. His captor said nothing, and when the pain finally receded, Alek lowered his hands to see a familiar figure leaning against the door watching him with an unreadable expression. Tousled black hair, pale face, dark circles of exhaustion under his eyes—this was the man Alek had slipped past while he’d been busy with the cargo chief. He still wore the black flight suit, and even up close, there was no corporate logo or insignia of rank to be seen.

“Where am I?” Alek demanded. “Who are you?”

A slow smile spread across the man’s features as he studied Alek. “You can call me Captain for now. And I think I’ll be the one asking the questions here.” His voice was husky, and he spoke Standard with an accent blurring his vowels. He shifted his body slightly to display the weapon in his hand.

Alek went cold at the sight of the needle gun. Not a weapon he’d expected to see in the hands of a civilian. Not a weapon he wanted to be on the wrong end of, either. Those tiny slivers of metal might not clear the muzzle with enough velocity to damage the hull of a spacecraft, but they shredded flesh like nobody’s business.

“Now,” the man said, “how ‘bout you tell me just what the hell you thought you were doing in my cargo hold? Besides bleeding all over the place, I mean.”

Alek swallowed around a suddenly dry throat. If this had been a corporate ship, his status as a Federation agent might have been worth something, but here it could get him killed. He tried to speak, but all that came out was a croak.

His captor leaned toward the small desk built into the wall and picked up a water bottle. He approached slowly, holding it out to Alek. When Alek reached out to take it, the captain let go, jerking his own hand back quickly, as if he was afraid Alek would make a grab for him. Woozy from pain-killers and secured to the bunk, he couldn’t imagine that he looked like much of a threat.

He sucked down a mouthful of cold water, then set the bottle in one of the recessed spaces at the head of the bunk. “Thank you.”

The captain had moved back to his spot by the door. He nodded briefly and fixed Alek with an expectant look. “Now… cargo hold?”

“Yeah. Cargo hold. Look, I’m sorry about that. I didn’t have a lot of choice. Can we… start over, maybe without the needle gun? My name’s Alek. And you are…?”

His captor raised one dark eyebrow and made no move to put the gun away. “I’m the man who didn’t vent the cargo hold or turn around and dump you in the lap of Station Security. I’m also the man who fixed you up and put you to bed, so you can damn well do me the courtesy of explaining yourself.” His lips curved in a grim smile. “Or you can take a walk out the air lock. I don’t much care which, and I’m warning you, my bullshit tolerance is at an all-time low right about now, so you might want to consider your story carefully before you begin.”