Under Contract

2013 was a busy year. I spent a ton of time in doctor's offices addressing neck and shoulder pain. It's not all gone, but I'm managing it -- some days better than others -- and that's the best I can ask for at this point. I've also revamped my diet, removing most grains and sugar-added items from my meals, returned to a steady running plan, and wrestled insomnia down to a moderate annoyance.

Between my literal pain in the neck and working through setting myself up for a potential career path adjustment with my current employer I've barely had time to write. Sure, I could get up early to write, but sleep is important. I could forgo football season but... hahaha. Never mind. I think you know how these things go.

So despite all of this, I do have an exciting announcement. In between all these other activities, I have managed to write a story for Loose Id, with an expected release this spring, in time for Ostara (Easter). I don't have more than that to share today. I've yet to name the story, or edit my query blurb, but when these things get addressed, I will share them with you.

My fingers are crossed for a productive 2014. I hope to write more, step up my running program, and start a new role that will carry me through the next few years at the day job.

I hope you all had a wonderful 2013 and are looking forward to exciting activities and goals for this new year. Best wishes to each and every one of you.

Pia Veleno

Happy New Year!

Gosh, it's been quiet around the blog this holiday season. I hope that means everyone is busy spending time celebrating with loved ones. I've done a bit more celebrating than is good for me, and I fear that 2014 must start with a resolution to stop eating all that crazy holiday food and get back to the gym more often each week. Oof!

If you're looking for a calorie-free way to ring in the new year, check out the year-end sale at Torquere Books. Just use the code "hello2014" to get 20% off EVERYTHING. But hurry! It's only good through WEDNESDAY! I don't have many titles left there, but you can get Rose & Thorn for a little while longer. (I believe it's about to go out of print, and after that you'll have to wait to pick up it whenever I can make the time to re-release it.) And there's also the anthology I Put a Spell on You where you'll find a short-story of mine that you won't find anywhere else. So go shopping and have a sexy New Year!

Print Release and Excerpt

It feels like it's taken all year (and maybe it has, but I sincerely do not want look and find out that I'm right), but at long last Compass Hearts is available in print form. Bring home this sexy winter romance to keep you toasty this December. Here's an excerpt to get you warmed up.

Compass Hearts by Maia Strong

He barely recognized his own voice as he went on. “The human body is...fascinating.” There was a question, an invitation, underlying his statement. He hoped Ash would hear it and understand. Despite this sudden swell of bravery, he knew he couldn’t say that out loud.

A slow smile spread across Ash’s face. Matthew grinned back, guessing his message had gotten through. His guess was confirmed when Ash asked, “Have you ever had a live model?”

“No.” Matthew’s cock strained at his breeches. He yearned to draw Ash, see him stripped and posed. He couldn’t remember ever wanting anything so much or so urgently in his life.

Then reality crashed down on him. His face fell. “My materials are at my apartment.” In the time it took to get there and back, the moment would be beyond lost. And there was no way he was taking Ash back to his flat. He didn’t want him to see it. It was so unbearably grim, lacking in any charm or comfort, especially when compared to Ash’s quirky and inviting room upstairs.

“What do you need?” Ash asked.

“Charcoal pencils, largish paper.”

“I have that.”

“You do?” Matthew perked up at this spark of hope. It was almost too good to believe. “How? Why?”

“Botany class. We do a lot of plant sketching. I not only have charcoal pencils, I have pressed pigment pencils.”

Matthew’s eyes lit up and Ash grinned and grabbed his hand. “Come on.” Ash pulled him to his feet and toward the stairs.

Matthew’s practical side asserted itself and, still clinging to sense, he asked, “What about our books?”

“No one will bother them. Come on!” He practically dragged Matthew from the parlor. By the time their feet hit the stairs, though, Matthew was plenty willing to follow him up.

Inside the cozy comfort of the little attic room, Ash went immediately to the window seat. He opened it and fished around inside, coming up a moment later with a large tablet and a tin box. “Here.” He handed the box to Matthew, who opened it and looked in wonder at the myriad colored pencils within.

“Where did you get these?” he asked, awed and envious.

“Some of them I bought in town. Some of them my dad gave me before I came here.” Ash flipped through the tablet of his botany drawings, Matthew looking over his shoulder. The plants were barely recognizable, and then only because he’d labeled them. “They’re awful, I know,” said Ash. He pulled a disgusted face. “It’s all right to say so.”

“I just have one question,” said Matthew.

“Yes?” Ash turned and looked up at him. “What?”

“Are you actually passing botany?”

Ash burst out laughing. “All right, Master Critical.” He flipped to a blank sheet and shoved the tablet at Matthew. “Let’s see you do better.”

“That much I can guarantee.”

“I’ve never been an artist’s model.” Ash’s eyes shone deep blue in the lantern light and his voice was husky. “Tell me what to do.”

Matthew swallowed hard once. The heat and tightness in his groin were intense, and he was glad for the tablet he held in front of him. What was he thinking? He’d never get through this! Panic began to rise in him, quelling his arousal. No. I want to do this, damn it! Steeling himself and taking control of his fear, he said with as much authority as he could muster, “Strip.”

Christmas Bestseller

It's been a whirlwind since Where the Lovelight Gleams was released a week ago. I'm thrilled that it's become a bestseller on All Romance Ebooks! This morning it moved up to number 11.

This book has exceeded all my expectations and I'm so delighted and grateful for my awesome readers. Can two actors take their romance offscreen this Christmas, or will it be only in their dreams? Find out at:

Loose Id -- save 10% this week!
Amazon
ARe

Make the yuletide gay!

A reminder to check out all the awesome LGBT holiday romance giveaways at my website! All contests are open until December 22, and there are dozens of books up for grabs from bestselling authors including RJ Scott, Neil Plakcy, EM Lynley and more! Enter to win some sexy holiday cheer:

Happy Sunday, readers. My absence can only be explained by pressure from the day job and a pretty bad sinus infection. All I've done this weekend is sleep, so excuse my ramblings here. I've been dreaming of starting a new novel. I'm caught between firefighters (mm) and teachers. Perhaps combine the two? After all, they both face dangerous situations every day. And I bet the school teacher could show the fireman that standing in front of 30 students every day takes just a little bit more courage than racing into a burning building, ha.

Welcoming any and all thoughts on this!

Amanda Young's Holiday Giveaway

Hi everyone! My holiday contest is up and running! This year I'm giving away a brand new 6" Kindle, a $25 Gift card to either Amazon or ARe (winner's choice), an autographed paperback, and an ebook. Whomever wins the books will be able to choose their title. The giveaway will run until December 30th to give everyone plenty of time to enter. Winner's will be chosen at random and announced on my website blog (amandayoung.org/blog) on New Years Day, so make sure you check to find out whether or not you've won.

To enter, please use the Rafflecopter entry form below. Hopefully you all will see the Rafflecopter widget and have no problem navigating around the entry options. This is my first time using them, so I'm just crossing my fingers and hoping everything goes smoothly. If you have any questions or concerns, you can always email me directly at authoramandayoungATgmail.com.

Good luck guys!

Happy Holidays!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Sexy Hollywood Hunks Want to Take their Fling Offscreen

Meet Ryan and Cary, the Hollywood stars of my upcoming Christmas romance Where the Lovelight Gleams. 

This Christmas, actor Ryan Drake is pining. He may get to kiss gorgeous Cary Holloway on the set of their hit TV show, Space Academy, but he knows it’ll never happen in real life. Charming Cary–the son of Hollywood royalty–is straight, as evidenced by his starlet girlfriend. But Christmas is a time for unexpected gifts, and Cary accepts Ryan’s invitation to leave the palm trees behind and spend the holiday with his family at their cabin in the Great White North.

Amid the snow and mistletoe, Ryan struggles to keep his longing under wraps. Little does he know, Cary wrestles with his own unspoken desires, and his very identity. Surrounded by family and holiday joy, their warm friendship deepens. Will these two co-stars have the courage to brave Hollywood pressures and take their romance offscreen–or will it be only in their dreams?

Find out December 3!

p.s. Check out the Make the Yuletide Gay holiday book giveaway extravaganza starting tomorrow at my site! Comment to win fantastic holiday stories all month long!

Interview Links

The transcript of Kate Davies's interview with Eric Sheffer Stevens is available on her blog. In fact, all four parts are up now! I have to say, it's a blast helping her out with these and I hope it isn't nearly so long before we do it again. And I'm looking forward to seeing Eric on my TV screen again!

Interview with Eric Sheffer Stevens, Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four

Not finishing....

I was going through my ebook library the other day. There is so many books I've read and enjoyed. I particularly love series. LOL. I know I have a few of my own I'm writing. As I checked over the titles I found this one that I was meaning to see if it continued because there were a few characters I wanted to read their story. I went and looked on the author's site and didn't see anything about another book in the series. So I emailed the author to ask.

When I got the response I was disappointed. The author didn't plan on doing anymore in the series. I was bummed because I wanted to read more. Know about some of the characters I liked happily ever after. I was curious on why they weren't continued the series but didn't ask. So my curiosity on why the books aren't continued and the characters I liked will go unfulfilled because the series will not be finishing.

Talia Carmichael
http://taliacarmichael.com/
Fill Your Cravings

Blog: http://taliacarmichael.com/blog
Newsletter:http://groups.yahoo.com/group/taliacarmichael

Buy One Good Man here

Here Come the Holidays

I love the holiday season. Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanza -- you name it, I love it. It's a time of year filled with family, friends and food, which are three of my very favourite things. I love the lights and the pretty wrappings and trees. It's also a time of tradition, and I eat certain treats and watch certain movies that are reserved strictly for December.

Here's another tradition I'm excited about!

Well, I'd like to make it a tradition. :D  I hosted this event a couple of years ago, and I'm bringing it back with a ton of holiday book giveaways! Come by and enter to win awesome LGBT holiday books from bestselling authors.

November 27 to December 22

www.keiraandrews.com

Hope to see you there!

Com by Bent Con

Come by Bent Con in Burbank this weekend. ZA Maxifield, Belinda McBride and I will have a table with books and promo at the queerist Fantasy/Sci-fi con in CA.  It runs all weekend at the Burbank airport Marriott.

Interview

I had the pleasure of assisting my friend Kate Davies in interviewing Eric Sheffer Stevens today. This is the second interview she's done with him, and the second time I've gotten to help out and play sound tech for her. If you don't know who he is, well, shame on you! He's very talented and a charming person to boot. He's also one half of the soap opera duo LuRe (that's Luke Snyder and Reid Oliver, for the uninformed) from As the World Turns. Now, the show has been off the air for three years now, but not before Eric and co-star Van Hansis as one of the first (and IMO the best) gay couples on American daytime TV. Well, ATWT is gone, but ESS is still working, I am happy to say. And the full interview will be up as soon as Kate can manage it. I promise to let you know when it's available. In the meantime, just sit back and enjoy the pretty.

As the World Turs - Reid Oliver

Silent House - Peter

Title and Cover Reveal

My thanks to everyone who made suggests for my little work in progress here on the website, Facebook, and Twitter. I've decided to keep the title of my upcoming collection short and sweet. I'm going to call it Trio.

As soon as I chose the name, I ordered a spiffy new cover from the good people over at Goonwrite.com and this is what they made for me ...

Hopefully I'll have this new collection finished and edited soon.

Wish me luck. :D

Winter Has Arrived

Today, a coworker is running the Manchester City Marathon. Yesterday, when I went for a (much shorter) run, it was 65 degrees, sunny, and beautiful for November in New England. Today – this morning – even my stubborn cat, who wants to go out after breakfast year round, simply stood in front of the door wincing and flattening her ears at the icy, blustery winds whipping past the thermometer that read 35 degrees.

Now running in 35 degree weather isn't as nice as 65, but it's doable. Once warmed up, 35 feels more like 50ish, but that wind takes all the fun, and heat, out of the run. For me, at least. For my coworker, well, she does this stuff a lot more often, and she's trained hard. I'm sure she dressed appropriately, in layers she was willing to drop as needed. One doesn't spend months training for a marathon and then change her mind just because it's a tad windy or the temperature is a bit low. This is New England after all, where we say: Don't like the weather? Blink. It'll change.

It's Sunday in New England, but our Patriots aren't playing until four p.m. I won't be going out in this windy, chilly day to hike, as we'd previously planned, and I'm glad I squeezed in my run yesterday, before this cold blew in on the tail of a rain storm. Today, instead, I'll be writing. I want to say "finally writing" but I won't diminish it. I pounded out a few tequila soaked words last night, and today, with less tequila, I'll work on an M/M friends-to-lovers story I abandoned months ago. With that in mind, maybe it's good it's cold today. Though I will feel a little guilty about that statement tomorrow when I ask my coworker how she weathered the race.

Stay warm this winter, dear readers.

Ready, Set, NaNo

It's this time of the year again - National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). It's started as a bit of a fringe movement, but according to the website here, there are more than 210,000 people registered to write their 50,000 words during November. And that's only the ones that are signed up, so the true number will be several times larger.

I've only "won" NaNo once, and it's a drama - as you veer from elation to panic to exhaustion to giddy hysteria. And eventhen I cheated somewhat. I picked up a manuscript I'd started, added 50k, and then it took me three months to "find" the ending. So, strictly speaking, I cheated. I did sell the book to a publisher, though. Since then, NaNo has weirdly always caught me by surprise - despite the fact that it's always in Novem,ber. Usually I was in the process of wrestling a novel across the finishing line, and it's true this year too: I'm still wrapping up Scorpion3 and on't havethe headspace to start a new book. I will try to commit to a symbolic 1,667 words/day goal, though, so I'm doing it by proxy this year. Kind of.

Other people are much more prolific and take NaNo overall way more seriously. Here's an excellent blog post from my partner in Market Garden, LA Witt: My Not Very Reliably Annual But Still Hopefully Useful Pre-NaNo Pep Talk. NaNo can be life-changer, especially when you're hovering in that weird space between "I should/want to write a book" and "I'm actually writing". Try it. Try it for the fun.

And the old hands - doing NaNo might feel like going back to school. (Let me explain that one: German authorities recently caught a dude who'd done his finals in school AGAIN - only he was already a medical doctor and had done his school finals (the exam that determines whether you can go to uni in Germany) a few decades again. He passed with a C overall and now seems to have got ambitious - he wants to better that "next time".) So, yeah, like going back to school, just with a bit of ambition this time round. Many published authors live and die by their wordcount; I think it could be fun to devote NaNo to the one crazy project that's been lurking in the back of your head - the one "nobody" is interested in but you. That's what my plan was for this month, anyway.

In case you are tempted, but don't have a plot or your "idea" isn't ready yet, I just read a book by esteemed colleague EM Lynley, who wrote a short e-book on the basics of plotting and planning for NaNo: How To Be A NaNoWriMo Winner. It should equip you with everything you need to get enough of a plot skeleton sorted in a couple of days. A little bit of planning does go a long way and saves time in the long run.

But regardless of where in the journey you are, what your goals are, and why you take part: I'm wishing you all the best on that rollercoaster. I might join you once I'm done with my current book (which means I'll start a week late). Hook up with friends who are also doing NaNo. Brag. Whine. It's all part of the journey.

Good luck!