November 01, 2024

Now Available: 'Voices in the Briars'

And here we go! Voices in the Briars, my vampiric take on the "Bluebeard" fairy tale, is finally out in e-book and print formats. 


Here be the blurb:

The reserves of St. Jerome's orphanage have never enjoyed an easy life. Born with disabilities or deformities, they're separated from the rest of the orphans and are marked for a future working for the guilds or in noble households as servants. At least that's the belief for as long as the orphanage has been around.

Lóránt Kárpáthy was born mute and as such has become the target of bullies. He's also drawn the attention of fiery-tempered Dávid Bodnár, an older boy who gladly takes on the mantle of Lóránt's protector. The two friends find solace in each other's company through shared daydreams and hopes for the future.

It's a close bond that is soon tested when David is adopted while Lóránt becomes the special beneficiary of a mysterious patron. A patron who sees to Lóránt's education and sudden exclusion from the rest of the orphans when he's sent to live in near solitude in St. Jerome's north tower.

A childhood of colorful daydreams in spite of heartbreak falls prey to dark hallucinations that devour time. To the blood-soaked secrets of a family descended from a line of legendary hunters. To the appearance of a strange nobleman claiming the hand of a young man, a nobleman who brings his new husband to a sprawling manor hiding its own secrets behind its shut doors, its sepulchral corridors, and its army of silent servants. There are secrets outside as well—among seductive roses and hungry, whispering briars.

And woven among those secrets is the terrible truth behind St. Jerome's reserves.

Set in the dark dreamscape of 19th century Hungary, Voices in the Briars is a gothic gay romance and a retelling of the "Bluebeard" fairy tale.

The book's gallery page is over yonder, and you can check out some tidbits behind the writing of this book.  There are actually a few other things that never made it to the gallery page, but that's par for the course with these fun extras about my books, and that's okay. It's written purposefully to read like a dark fairy tale, and it was a real treat coming up with ways on how to turn the original story on its head while making sure everything lines and up and makes sense. 

At any rate, I hope you enjoy the book if you decide to check it out, and thanks so much for the support.

October 31, 2024

Happy Halloween!

I was supposed to post something this past Sunday, but as it happened, internet was down for the whole damn day. By the time things were back up and running again on Monday, I didn't have the energy or the motivation to get on here and say stuff. Not that much has happened, frankly, so you're not missing out on anything.

But yes! It's Halloween! 

October used to be my good month, the month were things went swimmingly and left me in pretty high spirits, but this year's been a real doozy of a dung pile. Then again, I lost my mojo when the lockdowns took place, and I couldn't seem to get it back again. Oh, there've been a few glimpses now and then, but on the whole, I think the pandemic's left a deeper than expected scar in my mind though I'm able to counter it still with my writing. 

At any rate, while I'm glad to see the end of this month (at least this year's version of October), I'm also celebrating all things autumn, all things spooky, and I'm looking forward (here I go again) to November and December and the coming winter months. Winter comes a very close second to autumn for my favorite season, so yeah. Yay.

This coming weekend will also mark the end of The Perfect Rochester as I only have two more chapters to write, and that's it for that book. It'll be rounds of revisions and edits following, and then I'll get started on Compline, hopefully in December. 

And since it's Halloween and I'm in the mood for a bit of escapist nuttiness, I finally got going on Van Helsing (2004), which is on Netflix at the moment. It's cheesy, it's fun, it's cheesy fun. And since I never got to see it when it first came out, I thought to make up for lost time, and I'm having a blast. As long as I shut my brain off and just run with it, it's a fun movie, terrible accents and all. 

However, if you're in the mood for some classic haunted house horror films sans the gore and jump scares, I still highly recommend my Holy Trinity of haunted house films:

The Changeling (1980)

The Orphanage (2007)

and The Others (2001).

So many ways of telling a ghost story. So many angles and PoVs to take. And, of course, they all have a mystery at the core of each ghost story. I'll never get tired of these three, and I also turn to them now and then to help feed the muse. Anyway, however way you want to celebrate Halloween, be safe, everyone!

October 20, 2024

Coming Down the Homestretch, Et. Al.

I finally finished my share of postcards for swing states, and I burned through the last twenty postcards with my ears getting blasted by the soundtrack to Underworld (2003), my favorite of the franchise. I mean -- all movies I've seen (first four, anyway, and I've yet to see Blood Wars) are technically guilty pleasure viewing, and I can't get enough of the first. 

And that makes me think about urban fantasy and how I never really got to tackle that -- beyond Ambrose and maybe some of my republished gay YA stuff. Much of what I've written so far are largely comedies, and I'd like to tackle something along those lines again a la Ambrose but with something other than ghosts. 

I know vampires and werewolves are pretty common in urban fantasy, so I'm going to have to look farther afield and see what else can be used. Not gonna lie. I'd love to mess around with variants of the vampire and lean heavily on all things occult. And it would be a nice break from my go-to settings of historical fantasy / an AU Victorian Europe. 

Something to think about now that I'm nearly done with The Perfect Rochester and am about to get preliminary stuff going for Compline.

October 14, 2024

Playing Catch Up

 

image from Don't Eat the Paste

Okeedokee, I filled out my ballot and sent it out. I'm also down to the last twenty postcards to sign and send out to a swing state, and then I'm done! At least I'll be done with anything to do with this year's elections. 

I recently started talking about my comfort series, The Great British Baking Show, and my predictions were based on only two episodes of this year's series. Welp... I've got to update them now after Bread Week, which saw one of the stronger bakers leave for, sadly, good reason. He fumbled the ball in the signature round, and the stress got to him. I could tell from the way he commented on his performance and his hopes for the showstopper round that he was getting agitated and anxious though I really don't blame him for it. My viewing of previous seasons has convinced me that those bakers who kept their heads and stayed calm and focused had a better chance of making it all the way through.

And that also makes me side-eye Andy, who also tends to panic when things blow up in his face. I pegged him as one to watch, but I've got a sinking feeling his nerves will get the better of him. I hope not, but this scenario's painfully familiar.

That said, I'm so happy to see my top three still competitive with Dylan coming out shining in the end, and with that I'm adjusting my predictions to add Nelly into the mix with Georgie a close second. I love that Nelly brings flavors from diverse sources (Eastern Europe and Asia). But seeing as how it's only the third episode so far, it's too early to tell, and the situation can still throw a curve ball. I do have to agree with Paul Hollywood's observation, though: this group of bakers are so far some of the most talented I've seen in the competition. Everyone seems to have style and substance pretty well-balanced -- more consistently than what I've seen in previous series, anyway, because any goof-ups tend to be small.

And in other news, the early November projected completion date for The Perfect Rochester is very much real as I'm looking at two chapters being added to the usual total of 26. But no problem there. Compline continues to reshape itself as new ideas and possibilities cross my mind, and I might just throw out any and all elements that have been inspired by Belouis Some's Some People (which I discussed a while ago). The epistolary narrative is the same, but the main plot as it reflects my take on "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" is morphing and taking paths I've never even considered but are very, very promising. 

I'll be talking more about it soon. In the meantime, it's a case of "steady as she goes" in writing.

October 07, 2024

Gallery Page for 'Voices in the Briars' is Now Up

Yay, me. I'm off today (another one of those unexpected days off given by the company because, well, my team's too good at what we do, and now we're too far ahead of schedule on our workload), so I took the time to put together the gallery page for Voices in the Briars as well as finalize the print book for release on Nov. 1.

So to check out the page, go here for some this, that, and the other. The book will be out on November 1 in both print and e-book formats.  

I'll try to haul as much ass as I can with the postcards to swing states today since I don't have any writing planned to do. A couple of light chores around the house, and I'm free for the rest of the day. Mind you, I'll be poorer in my next paycheck since I'm not applying any PTOs to today. Gotta take the bitter with the sweet, I guess. 

Oh, and since I spent much of my time earlier scouring the 'net for images to use in my moodboard, I stumbled across this amazing art showing the protagonists of Dracula. It's by Deimus-Remus over at DeviantArt, and I love its classic illustration look. The artist has a website as well, and his real name is Nathan J. Anderson, and you can check out his other work here.

click the image for a closer look
I'm so in love with this art style, and knowing it was the artist's attempt at interpreting vaguely described characters in the book makes this even more special. Love, love, love.

I'm champing at the bit over The Great British Baking Show since it's being released on Nettflix to mirror the UK release, which follows the weekly episode format. We've been so spoiled by entire seasons being dropped all at once that we often forget that this is actually an abnormal method of entertainment. At least I see it that way, anyway, especially when the survival of a show depends on metrics that are stupid at best and don't account for nuances in viewers' habits. But this is the present and likely the future of home entertainment, alas. 

Anyway, I'm going to put myself out there with this. 

There are only two episodes so far of The Great British Baking Show, but I'm starting to play around with possibilities of who might be in the final, and I'm basing my choices largely on flavor combinations and how gutsy the bakers are in tackling the unusual and making it work. So in this instance, if these bakers not only stick to their guns but improve over time, they're the ones to beat.

Dylan, Christiaan, and Sumayah. They're still hit or miss in one way or another, but episode two gave us a nice peek into their strengths and what they're capable of, and that's why I'm marking them as the ones to watch. Coming not far behind are John, Mike, and Andy. Those three are the "Steady Eddie" types who aren't as experimental in their flavors, but they do produce something special in the end. The rest of the bakers can still pull a rabbit out of a hat along the way and surprise me, and that'll be great if they do. This is one group that's neck-and-neck with the previous batch of bakers from 2023 in vying for the top spot of my favorite, so losing any one of them will be a real drag. 

Now I'm really excited about Bread Week.