Vanilla Coke

You’ve probably had that experience, the one where you pick up a glass of soda, thinking it’s Coke (or Pepsi, I don’t want to exclude anyone) and you get something a little different, vanilla Coke or maybe root beer. Even if you are immensely fond of vanilla Coke or root beer, the experience is a bit disconcerting because you were all set to taste Coke.

There is a point to my little did-you-ever introduction.

I’ve got a release coming up in three weeks, Regularly Scheduled Life. (Ooooo, pretty cover, thanks again, Anne.) There are a lot of things about writing that I love, and one of the things I love the best is having readers. I want them to be as happy as I am when I read a book by an author I’ve read before. I don’t want any readers to get that head-shaking sputter if they pick up Regularly Scheduled Life and end up with an unexpected vanilla Coke experience.

Not that the book is vanilla. No, not with interesting uses for a old Boy Scout scarf, not with the “tingling sensations” lube and not with the glass dildo. But RSL is different than any of my other books, actually different than anything I’ve ever written.

I knew it was vanilla Coke when I wrote it and I loved it just as much (and sometimes more) than regular Coke. See, the characters in Regularly Scheduled Life don’t meet, fuck like weasels and then fall in love. They’re already in love and fucking like weasels when the book starts. They’ve had years of happy, perfect coupledom. (As for how weasels fuck, I’m sure I’ve seen it on Animal Planet.)

What Kyle and Sean have to do in their book is to learn how rare and good their bond was when something threatens it. Even after the initial threat, how they react to the threat is what pushes their bond to breaking (though they get in plenty of weasel action). When a relationship has been easy and suddenly you have to work, it can be a lot more disconcerting than even picking up what you think is a glass of water and getting Sprite. (I think there are too many glasses around my house and parenthetical expressions in this blog entry.) But in the case of Sean and Kyle, I really wanted the vanilla Coke. I loved having something just a little different, even when the characters made me cry.

So, to help readers get used to that slightly different taste, I thought I’d write a few free prequels. (At least enough to cover the meet-and-fuck-like-weasels part.) The first is ready to go on my live journal. You don’t have to be a live journal member to read it. Just follow the link. And check back on live journal for more updates as I get Joey and Aaron to shut up long enough to get the prequels done.

Link to free porn prequel