Welcome Gentle Readers

This blog tends to wander from its main purpose -- updates on my fiction. I do have updates and excerpts of my work. But I also write about my obsessions -- food, friends and pop culture and my weird life in Los Angeles. Enjoy!

Sunday, October 16, 2011

New Blog, New Book and Some Old Chestunts

I have a confession to make. I have been working on a different blog. Oh, don't worry. I'm not catting out on some strange, random blog. This one is mine as well. You see, in order to properly socially network a project, it must have a searchable tag in the cloud or the interweb tubes (don't I sound very techie when I have barely a clue). And genres also don't like to intermingle, it seems. So, I had to create a blog for the various niche genres I write in. This new blog is Yaoi at Sybaritic Press. Warning: That site is dedicated to homoerotic fiction. The excerpts are quite explicit. Read at your own risk! In that blog, I introduced the new book, Ensnared Volume One. It's now in two volumes because the 180,000 words was a bit much to fit into one paperback. The volumes are a rollicking epic filled with intrigue, danger, humor and a big sprinkling of homoerotic D/s fun. Of course, no one is entirely who they appear to be, and even the simplest actions can be lethally dangerous. Above all, this is a love story between two people from extremely divergent backgrounds.

Here is the summary from the back cover blurb:

In this world, even the most powerful are captives

Lord Darius Galatea seems to have all the power in the world. He is Leader of the Cosimo or Cosi, those who keep order in an advanced civilization built upon a strict caste system. He could have a city razed with one call or have the most high born citizen put to death for the slightest transgression. Andreas Hesper comes from the lowest caste. He used an agile mind and just the right amount of muscle to become the most successful leader of an underworld gang. A chance encounter between the two men not only upends both of their worlds, but also ultimately puts their lives in jeopardy. It is custom that some of the Elite citizens of the world class city of Amara owned their lovers as playthings for a time. But those trained playthings or Damis were from a specific caste bred for their obedience and loyalty. Never had a gang leader become a Dami and thus privy to the secrets of an all powerful Lord. But there is more to the streetwise young man who agreed to be a plaything despite the objections from his caste and those from his Master's world. Andreas felt bound to the Cosi from the moment they met. He sees and hears more than even Darius himself. Andreas knows that they must tread very carefully in both of their worlds or the attraction that so closely binds them together will cause their destruction.

For more details, lengthy excerpts, and details about the characters and how the books were written, please visit Yaoi at Sybaritic Press.

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch




Last week was wonderfully cool. I managed to bake some test cookies from new recipes or new techniques of old recipes. I had hoped to make some soup stocks, but the cool streak didn't last very long. Still, I managed to figure out how to make oatmeal cookies without all of them spreading into one large, thin cookie. I also discovered that there are many cookie troubleshooting forums on line. They were very helpful. Jon and I are working on a production plan for the holiday baking that should be even more relaxed. And these recipe refinements are producing some very nice results. Jon's co-workers certainly are enjoying them. I've got my lineup fairly well set. I may be very daring and try to make macarons. [that photo is not of macarons I've made]. I'm not certain they'll make this year's rotation, because I'm unsure of how well they hold up (how many days do they last in a cookie bag or cookie jar and how well do they travel). I'm also not sure how well I'll execute them. I've done very little work with a piping bag. I've never ground nuts into flour. And that's another consideration. I have to be very careful of people with nut allergies. We already segregate the peanut butter cookies after baking. We acutally make them separate from the other cookies. And we do a heavy cleaning and disinfecting in between. I may try to make them though. We also have to have another whack at diabetic cookies as we have more and more people that fall into that category. It's not hard work, and Jon loves the resulting research so far.


The rest of the week that was not related to getting the book underway was not so great. Some people here have heard enough about my frustrations with automated customer service, so I won't rehash that saga. I'll just get angry again. Sending a book out into the world is always daunting. I'm actually depressed afterward. I find I miss hanging out with my characters. And then there is the terror that either no one will like the book or everyone with just shrug at it and walk away. I was fighting a cold much of the time, so that didn't help my state of mind. I was even achier than I usually am of late, and I had that vexing scratchy-sore throat thingy. It is very amusing that even after all I've been through as a cancer patient that I still find a garden variety cold this annoying. Baking helps with all of those negative feelings for the most part. But even a very successful round of cookie baking didn't quite lift my melancholy and discontent.

And then there is the event looming largely this upcoming weekend. I am taking my first trip since August 2009. It's my first convention since Dragoncon 2008. That's enough to make me nervous. I also opened my big yap to the convention committee on a controversial topic. Now, I'm doing a panel for the first time in years. The audience is likely to be hostile. Ah well, I've always liked San Francisco. Hopefully, we'll get to see a little bit more than the hotel during a short stay. I'll report on the whole shebang next week. That's just weird that shebang is in spellcheck, but it flags all possessive words with an apostrophe as misspelled. Strange.

Updates

I have none for this week. I'm still assembling promotional materials for Ensnared and my other works in that genre for the convention. And I'm about to enter the frenzied OCD phase of my travel preparations. I have lists of my travel lists. I'm out of practice, so I'm extra OCD right now. We'll only be gone a few days, yet my lists are ever so long and detailed. Poor Jon.

Stay tuned.


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