(I’d love to see turtleshell bondage in this, but no pain, or a slave-master type relationship…maybe coworkers to friends to lovers or something like that?) “

I took some liberties with the prompt, as one does, but I’m pretty pleased with how it came out. You have to join Goodreads and then the m/m group in order to read it, but it is free. To whet your appetite…

His name wasn’t Feral. It couldn’t be. That wasn’t the sort of name that you gave to a child. That was a name someone earned. How he’d earned it, Levi could well imagine.

Levi was a long way from his high rise, from his flat screen, from his douche nozzle friends and the Occupiers who seemed to think anyone gave a shit about them. Silly fools who still believed they lived in any kind of democracy. Perhaps Levi had sold his soul for his place in boardrooms and silk bedrooms, but while money couldn’t buy happiness, it could buy a pretty good facsimile.

Or so he’d thought.

The streets grew darker, seemed slicker in this part of town, as if rain came down and stuck in the gutters. Oil slick. Sweaty. Grime so porous that it never let go.

Levi watched skeletons of buildings, burned out hovels and boarded up future sites of something fabulous and expensive. But for now, the streets belonged to another kind of one percent. A lower percent that only seemed to exist at night.

Levi didn’t have to tell the driver where to go or where to stop. He never even told him to show up. The driver, and by extension, Feral, just knew when it was time for a visit.

Or maybe Feral was only controlling Levi and everyone else simply executed his orders.

Any and all could be true. It didn’t much matter.

The black car stopped. Out of habit, Levi offered the man a tip and received a sneer for his trouble.

Levi let himself out of the car and looked up at the old familiar building. In daylight it should’ve been green and red with strange markings that were Hindi? Kanji? Cyrillic? They could’ve been in Aramaic for all Levi knew.

Every night when he was summoned, he tried to catch the address, tried to recall the building. But he could never find it on his own.

Fat, warm droplets of rain pounded his head and spilled like runny eggs down his face and the back of his neck. He ran forward to the imposing red door. It opened for him as it always did, like it was left unlocked. On a street where even demons feared to tread, leaving an unlocked door was unthinkable. Yet once Levi was inside, he felt no fear.

There were no other residents in the building other than a few rats that clicked and skittered between the walls. Feral lived on the fifth floor regardless.

Patchouli wafted down the stairs as Levi walked up to meet the source. The scent reminded him of the first time he’d met Feral.

Levi was at one of those tiresome clubs that his friends always dragged him to. They well knew that he was gay and yet carried on as if he were supposed find something charming in their misogyny and mistreatment of women. In their minds being gay meant that he should hate women. There was a big difference between a lack of sexual interest and hate, but that was too fine a line for coked-up bond traders to make.

He went along for the free drinks, free drugs, and free blowjobs they all eventually wound up giving him. All-in-all it had seemed satisfying enough. Until that night.

In spite of his long, platinum blond hair and almost unnatural thinness and height, Feral somehow managed to occupy the shadows. Such ethereal beauty seemed more likely to be a ghost or a hallucination, but before long Feral focused on him.

His eyes were black like they were all pupil. He wore long, dark purple robes that night and smiled curiously when Levi sat beside him at the dark corner of the bar.

Somehow Feral’s low, whispery voice penetrated the shouted conversations and booming bass of the club. Smoke wreathed him in a halo. Even now Levi couldn’t remember agreeing to leave and yet he’d found himself here in this mysterious building, being led by the hand to the top floor.

The boards creaked under Levi’s feet, bringing him back to the present. All the doors in the building were closed save one. Light flickered, unsteady and warm.

Before him on the ground were a cushion, a small basket filled with untreated hemp rope, and a single candle.

Feral never gave orders. He never gave ultimatums. He simply laid a task out for Levi to complete.

Read the rest of the story for free

When player Marshall accepts a bet to bed Luke, a cute nerd who belongs to a “true love waits” group, he ends up wanting more than sex, but the group’s shady leader endangers more than their romance.

Art by P.L. Nunn

Coming in June from Loose Id!

Reblogged from Allie Ritch, author:

“The interview is the single most important part of the pageant. It counts for 30 percent of your total score.” “What’s the other 70 percent? Cleavage?” - Miss Congeniality

***

It’s the final round. Time to focus on some really serious topics: cartoons and birthdays.

Question #9: Which cartoon character would you like to be and why?Although this question was free-response, three characters got multiple votes.

Read more… 1,483 more words

I'd be Superman.

So why have I been following this trend? Other than being incredibly, seethingly, almost paralyzingly jealous of someone making that big of a hit in the erotic world, why bother? I don’t have an answer for that. It is interesting that something so genre is making such a big splash. It does shine a light in an area that may benefit everyone.

Anyway, it is my habit to watch the Today Show every morning and they had an interview with the author. She seemed very down-to-earth, just another author with a ready laugh and just about as mystified as anyone as to why this was all happening. Then she said it. She basically said she wasn’t really a writer.

This struck me as funny because while she may not have studied to write, or intended to write, or be the best writer evah, she sat down and wrote something, start to finish. Not everyone does that. Not everyone can do that. I know a lot of English majors who just can’t close the deal and finish a book. Maybe their phrasing is more elegant or their use of the language more mature, but not everyone loves literary fiction.

That’s the other thing that’s struck me. Twilight isn’t known for its awesome use of the language, either. As I see other authors fighting over bad cliches and other minor foibles of grammar, by and large, people don’t seem to care that much. This isn’t to say that we should all write poorly, but when I read someone talking about screaming over disembodied parts moving on their own, I think, “time for a bath and bowl, man.”

Okay, that was just some quick thoughts after the interview. Back to chapter 8 of the Black Gold sequel!

To me, the argument in favor of print books is old people and Luddites–there are more of them then there are of us. Therefore, it is with much regret to trees that must give their lives for my nonsense, but nevertheless great enthusiasm in which I am to announce that Le Jazz Hot will soon be available in print.

As proof, I offer you the book cover:

With reviews on, even!

I do not yet have a date for when this will be available. After much squealing and pleasure, my next thought was that ‘Hey! I could do signings now that I have something to sign!’

Now if only I could track down a pen.

In the interests of full disclosure, I’m going to reveal a couple of things. One will not be at all surprising. The other may be.

I’m registered Democrat. Yeah, I know. Pick yourselves up off the floor.

I used to be Secretary for the College Republicans.

Yeah, while everyone else was out there experimenting with drugs or figuring their sexuality out, I was messing with being an evangelical and going to Republican Conventions.

This is a strange turnabout for a woman who can still get passionately angry about Iran Contra. I was in debate about that time and that and mandatory drug testing were the hot debate topics.

But, in college I also experimented with being a Dittohead.

This was really for maybe a year or so before I snapped out of it. And it wasn’t that I even really agreed with him all of the time. But the truth is, I’m pretty fiscally conservative.

Now, when I say that, I mean that I won’t just throw money at problems. I own a Prius. I didn’t buy it to be good for the environment, though. I bought it because I didn’t enjoy the effects of a wildly unstable gas market on my discretionary funds. If speculation run rampant can increase the price of gas by several dollars a gallon, I’m going to be much less affected with my 10 gallons that last me 2-3 weeks than someone who has to fill up every week. With twice that. Or more.

It was a big up front outlay of cash (and I paid it in cash, I don’t have credit cards) but I have yet to leave the gas pump wishing I could’ve paid more.

I enjoy some of this freedom because I chose not to have children. Not everyone has my chilly attitude toward progeny and I’m not judging, merely pointing out the fact that family planning goes hand-in-hand with financial planning. Children cannot work until they’re sixteen by which time they’re likely to want to keep the proceeds for themselves. Not to mention the fact that you have to clothe, feed, and shelter them. That costs money. It’s not really a fiscally conservative choice to have a child. Yet…fiscal conservatives often want people to follow through with pregnancies they can ill afford.

And you know, I don’t personally have a problem paying extra taxes so other people’s kids can have an education. I have every right to be pissy about it, but I’m not and you know why? Because one of our best resources in the United States is our people and they are worth the investment.

Yeah, schools are expensive. Yeah, welfare gets expensive. But these are things that enrich our country. They are a solid investment. Not every investment I’ve ever made has gone well. Not every child will grow up to be a rocket scientist. But failure to try is going to result in failure. So it’s not fiscally conservative to deny benefits or schooling.

Back to energy. And the Prius. See, because energy is important and fracking, drilling, it’s expensive no matter what they try and tell you. And dangerous. Our natural resources, aside from our people, are a whole vast expanse of land on which we could have wind and solar farms.

This is not the only answer, it’s part of a portfolio of answers. And it’s not even the answer because of climate change. It’s the answer because instead of employing people going overseas to fight wars, we could employ people to build and run these things. Nuclear plants. We’ll need ‘em and we’ll need people smart enough to build them and run them.

There’s a problem transporting energy so these plants would remain local, supporting local economies and towns. The major push back on this is really this dopey idea that a free market exists. Oil subsidies anyone? Major oil companies don’t want to give up their power. They’d be smarter to start diversifying, but then they’d have to explain the “losses” to their investors.

So, yeah. I’m fiscally conservative, but in a way that doesn’t mean I refuse to write checks to buy a lawnmower while my grass overgrows till I can’t get to my house. That’s not conservative, that’s stupid.

That said, Republicans really do add to the political discourse. Not lately so much but I think that traces back to people like  Rush Limbaugh. People who can make politicians shudder and recant for no good reason at all.

In 2008 when McCain was to be the nominee, I was actually kind of excited. It sounded like a real two man race. I was pretty disenfranchised that we passed over Hilary Clinton (who was kind of president before–Billary anyone? and during the most profitable time in recent memory) for Barack Obama. I was taking a serious look because McCain seemed to have some real backbone and like he’d really rise up to the task and tell other Republicans to suck it if they didn’t like his ideas.

And then…he was a RINO. Something broke and he became this sad old war veteran who kowtowed to every whim some batshitloco group of people (who were consistently overreported on–I was at Perry’s succession “speech” there were people but it wasn’t anywhere near a majority.) I really couldn’t believe it. When he announced his running mate, I was intrigued. A woman! Then she opened her mouth.

Even now, with as much gridlock as we face, we have some serious shit going down from the Democrats that needs review. And it isn’t gay marriage or insurance copays. We’re letting American citizens be blown up without due process. Indefinitely detained. This is where some real arguing should be happening, but it isn’t.

It’s frittered away on whether climate change is happening or not. So either a bunch of scientists are wrong or Pat Robertson is right and the tornadoes are here because we don’t pray enough. Really?

Anyway, I hope for the Republican Party’s sake that this fool Limbaugh is finally put in the dark corner of the party where he belongs. He’s not only ruined McCain, he’s ruining the party.

And it’s not just me who feels this way. Ask George Will.

There’s actually been a few issues I’ve been Really Angry about that just never quite culminated into blog posts for a variety of reasons, mostly work-related (day job AND writing/editing.)

I guess if my excuse for not writing is writing, things could be worse.

Things I didn’t post about that I should have:

• RWA’s exclusion of LGBT fiction and writers from their contest which they would rather remove than allow LGBT fiction in–this isn’t a new subject and I’m not a member. I’m not a member because I hate giving money to groups that encourages bigotry. Especially when they’re all up in your face about it. I don’t always have the opportunity to control where my money goes, but when I do, boy howdy, they ain’t gettin’ it. I know a lot of LGBT writers are members of RWA and are fighting the good fight from within. They even have a Rainbow Romance Writers group. I lack the intestinal fortitude to live in the lion’s den. I admire those who do. Even when I think I might be able to manage it without turning into Wowbagger, the Infinitely Prolonged, I can’t help worrying over what nefarious purpose my discretionary income is being put to.
• On that topic, for whatever reason, when I gave money to the Courage Campaign (you betcha Prop 8 is unconstitutional–it’s not even a matter of supporting gay marriage–it’s the CONSTITUTION), they asked for the name of my employer for compliance. Compliance to what? I said I didn’t work anywhere. I wasn’t asked about my employer when I gave to Planned Parenthood.
• And on that topic, Susan G. Komen can suck it, too. Thank whomever needs to be thanked that I have not had cancer, but friends of mine are survivors (and some didn’t survive) and so that’s a charity I gave to. When I was in college, Planned Parenthood was there for me. I didn’t have need of their more controversial services, but I vowed that I would get myself in a position to repay them. And I have. I had given to SGK with the understanding that some of that would filter down. I know there was a resignation and things were cleared up, but frankly, I don’t trust them anymore. Someone hired that woman.

I had other things on my mind but while they’re topical to an extent, they’re things I can probably explore without the pressure of time passing. Indefinite detention is indefinite.

My new favorite site may be Wonkette. If you like your US liberal politics with a heavy application of snark, you have a home now.

What did happen, in some ways, is not that exciting. Or that unusual. No videos or sex tapes were released online. Tyler was, if not advertising being gay, was not completely in the closet either. That said, it’s hard to say how comfortable anyone would be with public exposure of their private lives and this young man sounded shy.

There’s little other than speculation as to what drove this young man to finally end it. There’s certainly a lot of stress at that time of your life whether you’re gay, straight, or any shades in between. I had a friend end his life when I was in college. He was a happy-go-lucky sort of guy and when my friend came to tell me that he’d killed himself, I immediately responded with, “That’s not funny.”

Because he wasn’t a person that you’d expect would even have thoughts like that. Me, with my black hair and Cure t-shirts, sure. I won’t deny my own struggles with depression, but maybe my ability to be open (and whiny) about it was what ultimately kept me from going that far.

I, and maybe we, would prefer it if there were something bigger to point to in Tyler’s case. Obvious bullying where there are bruises and scads of “Go kill yourself,” messages are easy to point to. Some of what motivated Tyler was even his inner struggle with a roommate that he perceived was nice. Maybe someone he even liked, who so casually and callously treated him with such disrespect. Then the shared disgust with what probably felt like the world.

And, of course, the roommate. He with his own struggles to find his place. Kind of a jerk. I don’t know too many 18-year-old boys who aren’t. Or 18-year-old anyones who aren’t hopelessly self-involved. You can almost feel the desperation to be special, to be the center of attention. Regardless of his personal feelings, which may or may not have been homophobic, his actions were at best unconscionable, and illegal.

I suppose he’s got plenty of attention now.

So what of it? In projecting myself back to that age, I can see myself in both of those struggles. Scared and sensitive, feeling unanchored, as well as the occasional mean girl who used sarcasm and gutting remarks to defend her wall. And, sometimes, for selfish amusement.

When I was nearly to the end of the story, I recognized a name — the name of the man who found Tyler Clementi’s body. I went to high school and college with him and he has since moved to New York. I didn’t know him that well as I was a freshman when he was a senior, but I recalled him from debate competitions. He was older and wiser and I was quite new to the life of high school and more than a little intimidated by the world. I hadn’t moved but our high school fed from two different junior high schools, plus people who knew how to drive, who had been in high school level debates, seemed so worldly.

Not many of my friends from junior high went on to participate in high school competitions and without my debate coach, I felt very lost and too shy to make much conversation with the older students. I remember being very wide-eyed and stuttering when spoken to. And without anything in particular to say, I’d just keep quiet and watch from a distance, wishing I could just force myself to swagger in and break the ice.

In other classes, filled with familiar faces, I was fine. Gregarious, even. But that lost, scared feeling, being too intimidated to reach out, I get that.

It sounds like he was a talented, quirky kid. The world needs those.

But what sticks with me is that the problem isn’t Dharun Ravi. It isn’t even a team of Dharun Ravis. He was just a stupid kid doing stupid things. But what empowered him to do those stupid things was the shock and stigma of Tyler Clementi being with another man. It’s hard to imagine anyone being that shocked or curious if a young or even older woman showed up in the dorm room. Hell, they may have even acted like he was a stud.

The systematic humiliation of the LGBT community by allowing laws that deny equal human rights is the root of the problem and will continue to be, no matter how many “It gets better” videos are launched. Dharun Ravi was simply the socially acceptable level of homophobic and for that reason, he feels like he did nothing wrong. Or at least not enough wrong to be going to prison.

In a world where homosexual relations are compared to sex with dogs, his behavior isn’t nearly that extreme. And that’s the problem. You can’t tell high school students to play nice and tell the LGBT students that it gets better when you know damn well that it doesn’t. Not completely. It’s just not so open or so extreme.

Maybe Tyler realized that. Maybe it was an impulsive teenager thing. Maybe it was something so unrelated that we’d all be shocked. None of that matters now.

What matters now is what we do going forward.

But it’s not.

While it could be (and certainly will be) argued that their reward scheme for popular uploaded files led to the uploading of pirated material, those files did not upload themselves. Furthermore, not every file uploaded to their site was copyrighted content, yet every file is not accessible.

Trust me, I know the pain of having to file the DMCA notices for every file that’s been uploaded. I’m not saying any of this from a place of ignorance. I’m saying all of this from a place of careful caution.

There is more than one way to skin a cat. Congress does not have to pass a law to get SOPA/PIPA’s principles across. Court precedence has a huge impact on the rule of law and by idly standing by while a site is pulled down by the government–how different is that from the possibility of violating free speech with SOPA, really?

Basically, the government just decided that site should be shut down and it was. Rather than having ISPs ignore it, they made it go away. All files that may or may not have been copyrighted material are offline with no discrimination. File sharers made the site popular, but businesses were using it. People sharing photos and videos with their families. People using it to back up old files. They had no warning, nor are they guilty of anything, but their files are inaccessible either way.

Another thing that bothers me is that this is just another form of corporate welfare. Hear me out here. My tax dollars are going for the prosecution of these people who ran a hosting company, basically. And was it because they were hosting a weapon of mass destruction? No. They were hosting files that violated copyright. Okay, not good, but does that come out of my pocket as a citizen? Sure, it can come out of my pocket as a content creator, but I don’t expect the government to file my DMCAs for me. However, Megaupload executives are being seized at great expense to us for the profit of movie and music companies. It’s their pocketbooks that are supposedly suffering (though they can only estimate what their damages would really be.) Why is that a national issue? Oh, right. Lobbyists.

Did they know files violating copyright are up? Sure they do. Youtube knows this, too. But no one is required to respond unless a DMCA notice is sent. Then the response is to take the file down. Sure, they get uploaded again, but guess who’s doing that? The pirates.

And guess who’s just going to move their target site? The pirates.

And guess what problem isn’t resolved? Pirating.
And guess what problem is resolved? The government’s ability to take down sites for fairly nebulous reasons.

Pirates are annoying. I get that. But this is not going to stop them. It’s not even going to stun them. The only real way to do so is to give up your freedom on the internet. Maybe I could’ve made a couple hundred more dollars this year. Maybe a couple of thousand. I don’t know. I have no way to know how many people shared my files or in what way or if they would’ve ever even bought my book to start with.

Hell, I don’t know if they got a book free from an internet site and bought the rest of the catalog because they liked it. I have no way of calculating or understanding any of that.

But I can tell you that I would give a lot more money than what I would’ve gotten to keep the internet free.

Especially if it ever comes to that conservative Supreme Court ever getting to weigh in on what smut or pornography is.

Think about it.

But, as I try and communicate more and be more personal and not just this unknown entity producing books, I started to feel dishonest. Plus, being someone who doesn’t really love sharing personal woes, it left me with little to talk about.

The next couple of manuscripts I’m working on are not just the romance and sex but also are thrillers and political. So I don’t think my punditry would’ve remained in the closet long either way. So I come out now as a liberal. Progressive. Card-carrying member of the ACLU.

Okay, there are no cards. I lied about that part. But I do make yearly donations.

Now, I don’t mind debating my beliefs. I enjoy political discussions, particularly over dinner with a bottle of wine to lubricate the conversation, so long as everyone can agree to disagree and go home as friends. What I get, on occasion, is, “This is America, love it or leave it.”

Here’s the thing. I live in a nice house that I like. If the roof springs a leak, I don’t enjoy the deluge or move out. I try to fix the leak.

That’s the point of all of this. Everyone has their own idea of how to fix the leak, or even different ideas on what would be an attractive addition to the house. Since we all share the house, we have to work out a compromise. It isn’t always pretty. In fact, sometimes it’s downright ugly and no one’s happy with it (o hai Citizens United!) But it’s still ours and even if it embarrasses me or makes me feel downright ill (indefinite detention anyone?) it’s still a nice house and worth repairing.