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Monday, July 30, 2012

News and stuff

Damn I'm good with blog post headlines...

A few things: First of all, I'm in the process of editing one freebie short story (will be out at some point through Dreamspinner Press, I'll keep you posted) and Finnshifters 2 that now has a brand new title!

Finnshifters 2 was supposed to be called, or rather its working title was, Moving On. Then another book named Moving On was released by DSP last month (I think) and I had to come up with a new name for FS2.

The new name is Tiglon by the Tail. I love the name and I wouldn't have come up with it without some help from the editorial department, so thanks! Also, the release date is in September, which day, I don't know yet.

Secondly, I'm going to start the process of having a new website done! It will be easier to update (thank you for everyone who hasn't emailed me about the lack of updates on my current site...) and it will look really good, I bet. Can't wait to see what AngstyG comes up with!

Thirdly, on August 4th, next Saturday, I'll be hosting a Facebook chat on Dreamspinner's Facebook page. Now, a bunch of stuff will be happening there, but there will be giveaways and even a paperback giveaway (signed and delivered to you wherever you live!) So keep an eye out!

Fourthly (this is getting silly...) in September, there will be an event in Brighton called UK GLBTQ Fiction Meet and I'll be attending with plenty of other authors. So in case you're in Brighton on September 15th, please do come meet us!

That's about it for now!

Sunday, July 22, 2012

Writing Sex -- Or Not?

I've been struggling to write recently, and once again someone brought up the "writing sex for the sake of sex" thing in conversation.

I don't know about other authors, but I would never write sex for the sake of sex. To sell more books to those who read M/M books for smut. Nope. Not my thing.

If my characters have sex in my stories, they do it for a reason. But the reason is never because I, the writer, thought "well this is a good spot to insert some smexin'". Even in Technically Dead, in which there's more sex than in say, By Any Other Name, the sex scenes are there to demonstrate the characters'... well, character. The relationships they have.


Let's take Bran, for example. He has sex with several people who are not the love of his life. He has sex to feel connected, for comfort, for control. And because it's fun as hell to have sex with either people you don't know at all or people who know exactly which of your buttons you might want pushed at any given occasion. No, not my personal opinions, but Bran's.

Whenever I see a book reviewed as "PWP" or "PWPish" yet I find the blurb interesting, I give the book a chance. I might actually skim some sex scenes if they're CLEARLY there for the sake of it. But there are plenty of ways to write sex and not all of the "innecessant" sex annoys me. Most of it does, though, I'll tell you that right now.

I want sex in the books I read if it belongs in them. Same with my writing. I've written stories with next to no sex compared to page count (By Any Other Name, Something New) stories where there's a lot of sex compared to page count (Technically Dead, Lucky, Unwind) and something in between. All this is relative, by the way, what is a lot of sex for my stories, might be peanuts for other writers.

This is exactly why I don't believe all the reviews I see that say the story has too much sex. I'd rather take a look myself, because the reviewer might be wrong, they might not agree with the kind of sex the characters are having, or they might just feel like there shouldn't be sex at all or it shouldn't be as graphic as it is. Everything is relative.


For example, not everyone finds handcuffs sexy. That's their quirk, not mine. ;)


Thursday, July 19, 2012

Countdown to Technically Dead, the last day!

Tomorrow, Technically Dead is out! FINALLY!

Trust me when I say I've been waiting to tell this story, write it and then see it published for a long time now. When I wrote the initial version last year, during NaNoWriMo, I was feeling relieved to get it out of my system.

My vampire lore might be different than what you're used to, but give it a chance. And please, let me know what you thought of the book. Email me or send me message on Facebook or Goodreads.

Here's your last treat before you get to read the book. This is part of Heath's ponderings about how he has changed as a vampire over his centuries.



His rental car was a practical something-or-other; he didn’t care much. He had lived for so long that it took more than a fancy machine to make him interested. Actually, he liked horses better than cars, always had.
It had been in England, some three centuries ago, when he’d last had a stable full of horses. Horses were good judges of character, Heath had always thought. One of his horses, an old mare, made him realize he had changed for the worse. The horse had been with him since she was born, almost twenty-five years. It was a long time for a horse, and she was a regal being, very much a lady.
In some ways it surprised Heath that the eventual changes happened so fast when they started for him. It was Lilac that made him see he had become an Elder in the most basic sense. Because the mare was like a mirror, growing from a sensible young horse into an adult horse who seemed to be able to read Heath’s mind, and then into an old mare who was always very correct, not cautious but certainly less keen to show emotion. All those changes happened to Heath, too, in the course of the mare’s twenty-five years.
Some said he got lucky. He knew there were vampires who got into their cold, less human state even before they hit three centuries. For Heath it took six. He lost interest in things like socializing or throwing parties for fun instead of for profit. He started to care less about the human lives he saw taken in wars or by vampires who weren’t that discreet when it came to showing their evil deeds to their own kind.
But the day Heath noticed Lilac giving the cold shoulder to everyone, he realized he was doing the same thing himself. It wasn’t long before the mare gave up and Heath found her dead in her favorite part of the pasture. He vowed he wouldn’t go like that, just because he lost the will to live.
It took three more decades for anything to change enough for him to actually believe in what he could do. Meeting Bran had made an impact. Losing Bran had made another. Now, after the years spent without the young human, he’d come to realize the changes again. He had been more “lively,” but he hadn’t been happy. It was time to change that, if he could.
And there we have it! The countdown is done, and all you have is to sleep one night and the book is out!

Hope you'll enjoy it. :)

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Countdown to Technically Dead, Day 2

I promised you an excerpt and now that the second thunderstorm of the day is gone, I can finally post it!

There's a lot of story to Bran's ivy vine tattoo, and this is from a scene where he goes to get some more ink on it...


The bell jingled above the door when Bran stepped in. It was late, sure, but with vampires wanting tattoos too, the old business hours were history. In fact, Bran couldn’t remember a time when everything wasn’t open all night.
“Hello, Bran. Penny’ll be a minute.” The other regular artist, Penny’s daughter, Rachel, grinned from where she was inking a girl Bran had seen before.
“Sure, I’m in no rush.” He nodded, walking to the wall to look at some of the amazing jobs Penny had done over the years.
Absently, he hung his leather jacket on the coatrack nearby and began to unbutton his shirt; after all, he’d be shirtless in no time, anyway.
“That’s very nice work,” a middle-aged biker-looking guy said as he walked past Bran on his way out and got a peek at the vine crawling around his neck and shoulder.
“Thanks.” Bran nodded, used to getting reactions to it.
The guy seemed to realize Bran didn’t want to chat, or maybe he was just one of those sensible people who understood that sometimes ink was too personal to be discussed with strangers.
“Bran, come on in.” Penny, a robust woman with faded old tattoos all around her body, gestured from the back, where her workspace was set up.
He walked to sit in the chair and sighed contentedly.
“That time of the year again, eh?” Penny smiled as she placed her basket of ink bottles on his lap.
“Oh yes….” Bran began to look through the shades of green and picked a couple. “I trust you with this, just make it your style and…. The idea for this year is a silver lining.”
Penny nodded thoughtfully, then began to squeeze blobs of ink into the small cups that always reminded Bran of the thimble his grandma used to have when he was a little boy, only miniature versions.
“I think I can work with that idea…. Do want me to freehand it?” Penny asked, and Bran nodded. He’d seen her freehand work, and the leaf should form nicely like that and show Penny’s own style. “Where do you want it?”
“Well… since there’s space and I think the theme fits…,” Bran murmured and pointed at his left pec.
The silver lining should be on top of his heart, he reasoned.
“Works for me. Is there a reason for the silver lining, or are you still waiting?” she asked as she picked up a marker and began to sketch.
“Who knows? At least things look good, like about the same as last year this time. It’s a change, having a job and stuff….” Bran let himself sink into the seat.
He had known Penny for a decade, and she was one of the people who knew what the ivy vine was about, and one of those who never judged.


Tomorrow is the last day of our countdown and the day after the book is out! So what should I do for tomorrow? Well, I know what my suggestion is: a little bit from Heath's POV? Sounds good? ^^

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Countdown to Technically Dead, Day 3

Only three more days! Or well, since it's evening here, I'm going to be an optimist for once and say two more days. Anyway, not long now!

So, secondary characters' faces? Yes. While this is a lot of fun, I'm apologizing to those who hate blog posts full of photos and those who want to make their own mind about how someone looks like. These aren't "exactly" faces. These are closest I've come across that fit my mental images of my beloved characters.

Let's get started then! First of all, there are quite a few secondary characters in the story. There are some that don't have faces, even one quite important secondary character only has a description. But here are the ones I've found.

 This is Tony, Bran's best friend. I found another smiley-photo of this model ages ago and when Tony appeared in my head, I knew that this guy was going to be his face. Luckily I found these photos of him later on, and you can see him serious as well. ^^


 This is pretty much how I imagine Kris. He's young and blond and fit and lovely.


 Here's Kris' boyfriend and Bran's ex, Ric. Although Ric doesn't have the tattoo, he's pretty much this type of hot, older man with some salt and pepper going on...


 This girl you might actually recognize. She's actress Eliza Dushku. She's my face for Lilith. Gorgeous, isn't she?


 If you know who this is, you like gay porn. *g* This is a gay porn star Paul Wagner. But he's also the all-American kind of guy that Adam is in Technically Dead.


I came across this guy randomly. I don't know who he is, but he's definitely my face for Tadashi.

How about the ones that don't have faces? Well, Franco, for example doesn't. If I come across someone who "looks like Franco" I'll let you know. :)

Oh and that excerpt? I need to run right now, so you'll get that tomorrow! ;)

Monday, July 16, 2012

Countdown to Technically Dead, Day 4

Alrighty then!

It's time for the next countdown post for Technically Dead.

I promised this would be about places and faces, so let's start with the less exciting, the places, eh?

While there are mentions of the characters' pasts in Chicago, the story itself takes place in Atlanta. Because Technically Dead is a "contemporary vampire fantasy," most of the places I describe in detail are actually real places. There are a few that I made up, like say Gianna's, or the club the boys frequent (but even the club is something I have looked up location-wise).

The combination of made up and real places makes very little sense, but I can tell you that if you go to Google Maps and zoom into downtown Atlanta, there are buildings there I've used. Yes, I was that anal about this story.... Bran and Tony's houses are from real estate sites, the Shelter is on Trinity Ave and you can probably find the building if you follow the description and are interested to find it.

Why Atlanta? Well... honestly I don't know. I went through a mental list of places I've thought of using in my stories, and figured why not! I was also seriously lucky to have help with Atlanta-knowledge. Shae Connor, a fellow Dreamspinner author, has all the knowledge. ;)

Now okay, let's go to the part that REALLY interests you, the faces.

I'm one of those writers who likes to find a face for a character. Either the faces find me or the other way around, but I really did know who Bran looked like quite early.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is Jon Kortajarena. He's a model and an actor, and you might have seen him in A Single Man. Now, this is what he looks like without his shirt on...
If you add the ink that's described in the book, you have yourself my dear boy Bran. :)

So what does Heath look like? This is actually a funny story... You might know this actor from Hawaii Five-0 or some of his movie roles, but he's also done a vampire show that lasted for one season, I think.
His name is Alex O'Loughlin, and he's an Aussie (yes, please do add the accent to your mental image for a moment. Now, take it off and replace it with a British accent. That's what Heath sounds like.)
 
To me, Alex is one of the most handsome men on TV at the moment. That said, when I realized Heath looked awfully lot like him, I honestly didn't remember that Alex had been on Moonlight, the vampire show. There are photos of him with fangs out there *points at the internet* but the hair is wrong... Yeah, Heath is a bit particular about the short hair.

Anyway, that's the main couple. I do have photos of guys (and girls) who make up the secondary characters. In case you want to see them and maybe get a little excerpt from the story, please do join me tomorrow for countdown day 3!

Sunday, July 15, 2012

Countdown to Technically Dead, Day 5

Hello, everyone!

I thought, since Technically Dead is out soon (on the 20th), I'd do a little countdown for you all.

I might be mostly talking about the music of Technically Dead, but I will probably share a lot of other things too, like the faces I see when I think of the characters and things that influenced the story.

And on the day of the release, I'll also be giving away one eBook copy of the book, so you might want to keep an eye on this countdown to learn how you're eligible for the "contest", which won't really be contest at all. ^^

So let us begin.

As I said, music. Many of my stories have a song or a few I associate with them or the events, characters or places, even scenes. So far only my novels have playlists, though.

There's a post somewhere in this blog about the playlist of By Any Other Name, in case you're interested. Just follow the tags.

Technically Dead has even a longer soundtrack, an I keep adding to it occasionally. The latest two additions are Bring Me To Life by Evanescence and Shady by Adam Lambert. Here are the videos for you, I won't spoil who or what I associate the songs with, though. You can read the book and figure it out yourself! :)




I thought I'd share some of the other songs too, but these I can tell you more about... ;)
Just as By Any Other Name's "main theme" was Ghosts of Days Gone By by Alter Bridge, there's one "main them" for Technically Dead as well. This is it:

I love Three Days Grace in general, but when I had just started to write Technically Dead, it hit me that Lost in You was the perfect song for the novel.

Of course I may "see" these songs differently than most readers will, but they're still very strongly "Technically Dead's songs".

Hmm... what next? Well, the funniest thing that I can find from the "soundtrack" is this... :)

Trust me, even when I was writing the book and this song came up as an addition to the soundtrack, I aimed a "really?" at Bran. He insisted. So here it is, Teenage Dream by Katy Perry. I think, even though Bran has never said it, that it represents the naive teenager Bran was when he first met Heath.

As I was writing Bran doing everyday mundane things, like walking from one place to another or working in his office, he was whistling this song in my head a lot.
Moves Like Jagger has been my "earworm" for a long time and apparently I gave it to Bran at some point. However, it doesn't annoy him like it annoys me sometimes, go figure. Yes, writers are a bit odd like that... Nobody ever claimed we were sane... ^^

When I poked at Heath in my head and asked him if he liked contemporary music, he said that he didn't mind it, but that he rarely found any that he truly liked. When I pressed on, he managed to come up with one song that he absolutely loves, but the smile that he gave me was a bit sad, and if you listen to this, you'll know why.


That's about it for today! Because there are almost thirty songs in this list of mine, I'll share with you the Spotify-link to it. Click here to see more. If you don't have Spotify and there's interest, I'll write them all down and make a post or you can email me and ask about the songs if you want.

Tomorrow is all about places and faces, I believe... So see you!




Saturday, July 7, 2012

The one where I try not to rant... much.

Lately I've been trying to stay away from Goodreads. Why? Because I seem to be getting a lot of reviews that, positive or slightly less so, miss the story's point completely. Whichever story it is, whatever kind of review it is, I find myself going "did you actually READ the book?" or "wasn't that obvious?" way, WAY too often.

One of my pet peeves is people who read my shifter book, Chuffed, and compare it to the kind of books I talked about in my blog post at Sue's blog. Or when they just don't seem to read the book carefully or slowly enough and then complain about things they missed because they really didn't see them, I guess?



For example, I've had one or two complaints about the shifters in Chuffed going to have their blood tested to be able to bareback. The complaint is that they don't go to the hospital for other reasons, but they do for this? Like it's an OUTRAGE for this to happen. My question to these readers is, where in the book does it say they can't go to a hospital/clinic to have their blood drawn? It's made very clear--if you read the book, that is--that they won't go to a hospital when they're in serious pain because that causes an involuntary shift and they need to stay hidden from the human eyes. Getting your blood drawn wouldn't cause this...?

Or maybe they think that there's something in the blood that would expose the shifters somehow? This is not even talked about in the book, but now that I'm talking about it here, no. There's not a thing in their blood that someone could see and think odd while taking a standard STD-test.

Another thing that comes to mind is about Thank My Lucky Scars, my novella about a bike messenger and a porn star who fall in love. The complaint about this story seems to be that it's ridiculous/stupid/pretentious/hypocritical/whatever that while the guys don't have sex, the porn star goes and has sex on the job.


Now, I don't understand this at all. Honestly. Let's say you're in a tentative relationship with someone who doesn't drink wine. Your job, however, is wine tasting. That's all you do all day every day, taste wines. Because your romantic interest doesn't drink wine, do you stop doing your job?

I know it's not the same, sex and wine are hardly the same (though some say both can be near religious experiences...). My point here is that IT IS A JOB. Do you stop doing your job for your lover who, by the way, understands the nature of your job completely?

Or maybe these people who complain about this aspect of the story don't understand porn? Don't approve of it? Or just find porn dirty and disgusting, unless they're watching it when it's SUPER HOT. But god damn it if those guys have a real life outside their jobs! That's just DISGUSTING!

Okay. I think I'm done ranting now. ^^

There are several other things I don't understand about some reviews or random comments I see about some of my stories, but then again, that won't prevent me from writing other things people won't approve of or understand. In some ways, writing a completely understandable book and trying to see how many people don't actually care to read it carefully enough is... fun. In some masoctistic way, at least.

Another pet peeve? When people round down their .5 ratings on Goodreads. That's just mean, really. But that's a whole other rant for some other time.

(PS. There will be a contest at some point soon, you can win a paperback of Technically Dead and whatnot... Keep your eye on this blog and my Facebook and Twitter too. Just remember I'm usually not that SFW with my Twitter links... ;))

Friday, July 6, 2012

A book you might like

Hello, everyone!

I know it's still a while until Technically Dead is out (two weeks, to be exact), so I thought I'd give you guys another recommendation meanwhile. :)

A friend of mine, a fellow author Anna Martin has her book Tattoos & Teacups out today! It's such a lovely book, that despite reading it twice already (I was one of her betas for this), I just bought it and am reading it right now!

If you like my stories, I'm pretty sure you'll like this one too. :)

So go ahead and check T&T out here: http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/store/product_info.php?products_id=3080

Oh, and isn't the cover gorgeous? :)


Monday, June 25, 2012

Coming Soon: Technically Dead!

Technically Dead is now on Dreamspinner's Coming Soon-page. The release date is July 20th, and I couldn't be happier with the cover. I think it's stunning!


I hope you'll like the book as much as I do!

Sunday, June 17, 2012

I'm at Sue Brown's blog

...as usual, rambling. This time it's about the shifter genre in M/M romance.

Click here to read the post.

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

YAM LGBT Blogathon -- The awesomeness of QaF




Since I'm all for abbreviations and this post is for the YAM GLBT Blogathon, I thought I'd write about QaF. That, to those who don't know, is Queer as Folk. 

Now, Queer as Folk was a huge thing back in the day when it was originally on TV. The original, British version only ran for one season and one TV-movie, but it laid a foundation for the American version that became huge. What the shows had in common was the frank sexuality and showing the urban gay lifestyle in a way no one had seen before, not on TV. 

The American version of Queer as Folk ran from 2000 to 2005 for five glorious seasons. Whereas the UK version had the main characters more archetypes than actual characters you could take seriously, the US show managed to pull off much more than that. In QaF US, we see some serious arches and character development. In fact the growth the writers managed to pack into five seasons is staggering, if you compare it to some other drama shows out there.

Now, as many of you may know, QaF US was the first show on American TV to portray a simulated explicit sex scene between two male characters. And what a scene it was…. Not only do we see a scene between two men, we see a scene where someone loses his virginity. We see—even though we really don't see it—anal sex, rimming, even. When was the last time you saw either of those things on TV? Yeah, it's still not something you see in a regular drama show, yet this show did it twelve years ago.

I have to say I didn't see the show before a couple of years ago. I do, however, remember being in my early twenties when it was shown here in Finland, and I was so bummed the channel it was on was out of my reach at the time. Back then, I was a young, out and proud, so even though we didn't get The L Word until 2004, there was a LGBT show there already. In some ways, The L Word did to lesbians what Queer as Folk did to gay men.

What struck me first, when I started to watch QaF myself, was the frank portrayal of sex. I was shocked. Not because I'm easily surprised or don't approve of showing sex on TV, but because it was a ten-years-old show I was watching. Naturally, I enjoyed those bits, as do most of the people watching it, but soon I began to realize the other awesome things.

First of all, we get to see gay life. That's something refreshing in itself, but huge for us LGBTQ-people who get to see the straight lifestyle portrayed in every show we see. Many straight people never understand what we go through in our daily lives, let alone in general, just because we were born different.

The topics QaF covered went from the relatively ordinary things—like coming out, the club culture, safe sex, gay adoption, internet porn (also as an industry) and discrimination—to the things many people never even think of—like conversion therapy, underage prostitution and violence.

Secondly, the cast was well-thought, and the dialogue was spot on. What I also love are the contrasts it show. From the friendship between Brian and Michael, to the relationships Justin had with Brian and Ethan, to the lesbian couple's struggles compared to those the gay couples had. Even the two main mother-figures of the show—Debbie who was not only Michael's mother, but pretty much the only supportive mother Brian ever had, and Justin's mother Jennifer—were two very different women. At first they were different from each other, then later different from the other mothers (Brian and Lindsay's mothers, for example).

The subplots in the series are various and varied, and they are always meaningful or, at least, funny. The humor in the show is one of the major things that make it work so well. While the themes are often really heavy and heartbreaking, the humorous events and the witty dialogue make things easier to bear. Anyone who has seen the show remembers the hilarity when Debbie started dating and Emmett and Ted gave her certain tips…. But we also remember the end of season 1 and the subsequent horribleness….

If you've never seen the show and plan on beginning, please make sure you have a couple of episodes of season 2 also. When you get to the end of S01, you'll thank me. Trust me on this.

Queer as Folk has something for everyone. If you want the hot gay sex, you have it. If you're looking for serious themes, yep, they're there. Looking for fun? I can quarantee you'll laugh your butt off.

One of the best things Queer as Folk US gave us is Brian Kinney. Why? Watch the show and find out.