Edited Nov. 25, 2014: Searing Betrayal has been removed and is now only an excerpt. To read the entire Dark Phoenix novella, you can go to the Books page for retailer links.

The story Searing Betrayal (Dark Phoenix 3) has been published. It is a 7300 word story featuring the same M/M pair from Phoenix Fire (Dark Phoenix 1) and Heated Invasion (Dark Phoenix 2).

Without saying too much I wanted to point out that this middle story (of the five) became sort of the turning point between Landon and Jak. It’s also the piece that delves the deepest into the minimal world building I did for the entire story. There’s a lot more to be discovered, obviously, but given the fact that dark phoenixes are solitary creatures, there just wasn’t any need to do anything expansive.

This piece did let me play with the syrens a little–which actually reminds me to tell you why I choose such a weird spelling when a normal spelling and a million other names for mermaids abound across a great many cultures. Well…the real reason was because I already had another story with sirens (Like Dark Algae) and they were inherently different in that their voices were automatically powerful sexual attractors without their explicit consent in the deal.

I wanted a mer-creature who could still manipulate people using their voices, thus needing sirens because that name gave the automatic assumption of the ability, but I also wanted to make it clear that they were of a different breed altogether than my original creation. Probably unnecessary considering these stories are contemporary based and the other had a secondary world setting, but those were my reasons for using syren vs. siren/mermaid/naiad/merrow/nixies, etc.

Next Sunday, Nov. 2: Gentle Burn – Dark Phoenix 4 (fantasy, short story, M/M) – There’s a point in every relationship where it either becomes more intimate…or completely fizzles.

Edited Nov. 25, 2014: Heated Invasion has been removed and is now only an excerpt. To read the entire Dark Phoenix novella, you can go to the Books page for retailer links.

The story Heated Invasion (Dark Phoenix 2) has been published. It is a 4200 word story featuring the same M/M pair from Phoenix Fire (Dark Phoenix 1).

When I first wrote Phoenix Fire I hadn’t intended on doing anything else with it. The story was supposed to be just a couple thousand word solitary piece. Then I went to bed and fell asleep with Jak irritated with me because I’d turned him into some sort of user who had a sincere lack of feelings. It was almost a sob story, Jak style, with lots of threatening glances in his (inept) way to prove to me he wasn’t the person Landon thought he was.

I admit I was a little surprised because the entire pieced-together story is written from Landon’s perspective so I would have assumed it was him who would be annoyed at being left without any sort of romantic happily ever after. Nope. Not the case.

I probably could have written the story from Jak’s point-of-view, but then it would have been an entirely different type of story. A lot less mysterious and a lot more boring (in my own opinion, that is).

Next Sunday, Oct. 26: Searing Betrayal – Dark Phoenix 3 (fantasy, short story, M/M) – There’s a reason the dark phoenix keeps his visits short and Landon is about to find out why.

Edited May 12th, 2015: Heat of the Moment has been removed. It will be republished on Amazon on May 22nd, 2015.

Heat of the Moment (Part 2 of 2) has been published. This story is a fantasy M/F of about 7500 words total. Part 1 can be found here.

During the first part of this story I did a POV jump from the female protag to the male. I don’t normally do more than one POV in short work because keeping to one tends to keep the story more contained with less possibility of it exploding into epically-lengthed proportions. In this case it didn’t change the story much and I wanted to see the heat occurring in Reach’s point of view since he would be the one who had to be in need of all his facilities during that time.

I think it’s worth mentioning that this is the third type of shapeshifter that has put in an appearance in my stories. Both Marks of the Protector and Wounds of the Warrior had bear shifters–growlers–and For Want of a Man had a car shifter–yes, you read that right and no, she’s not a transformer.

No wolves though. Strange. It’ll happen.

Next Sunday, Oct 12th: Phoenix Fire (fantasy, short story, M/M) – Can he withstand the heat?

Edited May 12th: Heat of the Moment has been removed and will be republished on Amazon on May 22nd, 2015.

Heat of the Moment (Part 1 of 2) has been published. This story is a fantasy M/F of about 7500 words total.

This is one of those rare beasts that never happen (sarcasm alert)–a story that was supposed to be flash. And then it wasn’t anymore and I suddenly had to do some research on what you call a group of cats. Because us authors do that sometimes–just look up random weird things that no one but us needs to know. Like…how to poison someone. The police would have a great time looking through an author’s search history no doubt.

So, did you know that there are 3-4 words for groups of cats and yet we don’t use a single one of them because cats don’t typically live in groups? I didn’t either. This isn’t counting a lion’s pride, of course. I chose clowder because it sounded the best and would be easy to do a search and replace on…unlike glaring. What I don’t understand is why we have so many of these words if they are so utterly useless. Baffles me.

So when you see the words clowder and queen and tomcat in relation to cats in this story I actually didn’t randomly grab them out of thin air. I make up a lot of stuff though, so I wouldn’t blame you if you thought that.

Next Sunday, Oct 5th: Heat of the Moment – Part 2 of 2 (fantasy, serial, M/F)

Edited Jan 11, 2015: I’ve removed Worth a Thousand Words as of this date. It will be available for sale on Jan 16th, 2015.

Worth a Thousand Words has been published. This story is a fantasy short story of about 2300 words featuring a M/M pair.

Like a bunch of other stories, this one was meant as a flash. I didn’t intend for there to be any romance. Didn’t intend for the story to end as it did. The original ending wasn’t as hopeful though and while I was writing I just couldn’t bring myself to go there.

Title is a bit cliché. Okay, a lot cliché. But I liked it and I didn’t want to change it.

The story was also supposed to be on the fun, light side and ended up being more serious. Emotions quickly started to show up within James, making me begin to feel bad for the state I’d thrown him in. And that’s what got me in trouble with this one because I couldn’t just leave it all as a fap-job. Cause, really. That’d be just depressing.

Next Sunday, Sept 28: Heat of the Moment – Part One (fantasy, serial, M/F) – The pressure is on for this tomcat.

If These Walls Could Talk, a fantasy piece of about 3100 words, has been published. It’s technically a M/F pair…I think. I’ll let you be the judge of that.

This one began with a prompt. Needed something that revolved around the color red. Don’t ask me how I managed to get onto the subject of disembodied lips, especially magical ones that somehow can still see and feel and have throats and tongues and…you probably get the picture.

I didn’t want there to only be one set of lips, so I introduced a total of ten. (Naturally that would be the answer.) Generally in a story this short having eleven named, speaking characters would be a total unbridled mess. To combat that, I had the MC name most of the lips after characteristics so they would be easier to remember.

Really, it doesn’t matter whether you remembered each of the individual lips since the piece was supposed to be comedic and not in any way serious.

Next story is serious though.

Next Sunday, Sept 21: Worth a Thousand Words (fantasy, short story, M/M) – Not all pictures are created equal.

The Cascade and The Firebrand has been published. This story is a 5400 word fantasy story featuring a m/m pair.

I had been meaning to write a shaman story for a long time, the idea in limbo because I wasn’t sure how to make it different from a few other ideas I had already created in a novel I’d finished a couple of years ago. I took a couple different nuggets I’d planted haphazardly in a few shorter stories I’d written–some that had been published and some not–and came up with at least a semi-organized shamanistic city. The story itself is micro oriented so there’s not too much detail about the world surrounding the main characters, but I feel as if it’s a good start to something. A place I can definitely extend at my own pace.

And…it was a ton of fun to write. One of those stories that calls for you to revisit now, not later.

As a note about the totem names–they are taken from Latin. No, my worlds don’t technically have Latin, but I felt it was a good way to title the denizens that inhabit the totems of certain elements without completely making up their names or going with typical and/or over-used names.

Next Sunday, Sept 14: If These Walls Could Talk (f, ss, m/f) – They could do any number of nasty things.

Wounds of the Warrior (Part 3 of 3) has been published. This is the last part of a 15400 word serial that features a M/F couple. Part One and Part Two should be read first.

You can read some of the previous comments I made about this story here and here.

I don’t want to say too much about the end of the story since that would be spoiler-like, so instead I’ll talk about the writing of it. The story actually sat around on my computer for months, mostly written, maybe five hundred to a thousand words shy of “The End.” I only finally finished it because I was procrastinating working on a different project. Ending up finishing a number of things around the same time that had been floating in limbo waiting to see if I’d ever bother getting those last, all-important words down.

Wounds wasn’t as hard to begin as Marks had been. Where Marks had a few false starts and a lot of thrown-out words, Cohriahra took over almost immediately and Wounds poured out pretty quickly because of it. I had a few possible directions I could have gone–namely introducing more characters into the story itself instead of merely referencing them, but I think the story’s stronger with only Mahden and Cohriahra interacting the entire time, giving them ample opportunity to influence one another without outside interference.

Next Sunday, Sept 7th: The Cascade and The Firebrand (fantasy, short story, m/m) – He wore the water, a cascade flowing down his torso and crashing at his feet.