I'm actually discussing two projects, fairly closely linked.

What is the working title of your book?
Here's an excerpt from Love is a Stranger showing a typical work day for one of our protagonists. It's a sex scene, but not one of the sexier ones.

Paul parked in the shadow of the glittering silver Escalade. He’d been to this Beverly Hills house several times before, enough to not really care that his own Camry didn’t fit in.

He texted the people inside. -At the door.

When he put his hand on the door and swung it open, that reliable magic struck.

He walked in like he owned the place, his latest review had said, and it wasn’t the first time someone had used those words. Knowing Jay and Adriana had written them made the reading of it more satisfying than usual, though.

He walked in like he owned the place.

“What the hell are you doing here?” CJ asked. He was a big man, built strong, a little more solid around the shoulders than Paul. He worked in sports but he’d never been a player, and Paul imagined he probably had a home gym and a personal trainer.

Paul brushed past him like he didn’t even exist.

“I called him over,” Mary said. She was naked, except for high heels, and carried a riding crop. “I wanted to show you how a real man fucks, you goddamn sissy bitch.”

“No,” CJ moaned. “Don’t do this to me.”

Paul had to fight to keep a straight face at this point. Once past the protestation stage, he enjoyed these sessions, but CJ’s love for melodramatic delivery was always dangerous.

The rope was on the hall end table. CJ struggled weakly. Paul held him down with the minimum of full body contact. CJ wasn’t really his type, but he was good-looking enough that Paul regretted not being able to stick something in him while he was down there. CJ didn’t go that way, unfortunately.

Paul tied the last knot and moved to let Mary have a go at her husband, her full breasts quivering magnificently as she struck with the crop.

When she was panting with exertion and nicely worked up, he had her against the wall, then on the floor, not two feet away from where CJ lay bound, his eyes wide and stricken.

He came inside her. Went to the spa-sized bathroom, threw away the condom and washed his hands. Waved goodbye on the way out. “I’ll lock the door behind me,” he told Mary. She was always nervous about that.

“Thanks,” Mary said. “See you next month.” She turned away and looked down on CJ with cool delight, very much like a cat, and nudged a pointed toe against his thigh. He moaned again, and this time it sounded entirely real.

There's a fairly new clearinghouse site for information on the SGRB. It's called "stopthegrbullies.net"—please note the dot NET, not the dot com. I thought I'd go ahead and link to it and help it out in Google ratings.

We've had a run-in with the SGRB over a drive-by on The Druid Stone. Aside from personal antagonism (and the fact that the majority of the authors they defend are absolutely indefensible) here are some reasons why I'm against them.

I believe in honesty. 

Being an author doesn't mean I stopped being a reader, and I'm also a reviewer. I'm very proud of my reviews, which are often unprofessional, eccentric, profanity-laced and long. I like honest reviews, so anything that encourages honest reviews, I also like. Enforcing arbitrary niceness rules via the threat of stalking—a SGRB tactic which has been well-documented at the above site—doesn't encourage honesty, to say the least.

Authors are not entitled to politeness and are never above judgement.

I usually believe in separating the book from the author. If I made a resolution to stop reading assholes, I'd probably have to throw away half my library, because being a good person only partially overlaps with being a good writer. This gets a little tricky in today's contact-rich social-media-driven environment, and although I try to separate the book, if someone really makes me angry, I don't feel like supporting them by giving them money, and my enjoyment of the book is going to be affected. So I see where other readers are coming from.

I cannot stand the "you're not allowed to judge!" mentality. My philosophy is judge away, and then prepare to be judged if your judgement is especially stupid or offensive. If someone says "I am not going to buy this book because the author is a sexual predator", that sounds fair to me. If you say, "I am not going to buy this book because the author is gay," well, I (and a lot of other people) are probably going to be judging you pretty badly for that.

Authors should not comment on reviews unless welcomed or invited.

I don't think this is some eternal moral principle, it's just good sense and good social skills. Reviews are primarily for other readers.

I read almost all my reviews. I'm thick-skinned about them, so I mostly enjoy the hell out of the process. I love reading reviews that really engage with the book and make connections that I hadn't even thought of myself.

I've had bad reviews, some that I considered well-reasoned, others that were a) factually inaccurate b) personally insulting c) racist. They don't bother me that much. C) comes with the territory for writers who take multicultural narratives seriously, like my cowriter and I do—not just giving lip service, that is. I'm a woman of color who's fairly open about talking about race so I've seen a lot worse on the internet. The more people that read my books (hopefully) the more of the objectionable stuff I'll get... but that's the inevitable price to pay for much more of the awesome fun ego-boosting stuff.

I don't believe that reviews are sacrosanct. I simply believe that the author of the book is the absolute last person in the world who should jump in and criticize them. And that includes whipping up fans or friends to come in and white-knight. Try to stay the hell out of it. Save the explanations of authorial intent for people who've made it clear they want to hear them. Otherwise, intent is basically irrelevant.

Complaining about bad reviews should be done privately. Or do it publicly, if you can make it entertaining and non-blaming.  Here's a recent example from the author of a book called Throne of the Crescent Moon:

I suppose my first reaction to a negative review titled "Groan of the Crescent Moon" shouldn't be "Har! Good one!"
— Saladin Ahmed (@saladinahmed) December 5, 2012

But attacking people who give you bad reviews as a class is petty, vindictive and disrespectful to all readers.

Bad reviews do not constitute bullying or abusive behavior.

This is the most important point, and one that sends me into a soaring rage. I had to deal with racist abuse from the age of six on through fifteen. I had my peers physically attack me, throw rocks at me, try to poison me, tell me twenty times a day that everything about my body and face and voice was wrong. I had no choice in the matter. The idea that giving someone a one star for a book is ANYTHING compared to what I went through is disgusting, appropriative and morally bankrupt.

I take it very personally.

I'm giving five (public) stars to Readers have Rights.

I love all the comments we've been getting this tour! Thanks, everyone, and thanks to all our hosts!

I have to brag a bit and say that we've gotten some awesome reviews.  Here's a super passionate one and here's an impressively comprehensive one.

You still have time, up until Dec. 10th, to comment on any of these blog entries to win a threesome deal: The Druid Stone plus prequel "Cruce de Caminos" and sequel "Galway Bound" in the ebook format of your choice. And there's another Goodreads contest ending on the 10th to win a gorgeous print copy of Mark of the Gladiator.

Here's the blog tour wrap-up:


At You Gotta Read, we have a short excerpt that packs a powerful punch, as Anazâr prepares to perform special duties for his master. Consent is pretty damn dubious—although this master/slave dynamic isn't the core of the story, it's still there.

At Words of Wisdom from the Scarf Princess, I interview Heidi Belleau. We love this cross-interview format, by the way, because we can cut to the chase and ask the questions that matter. Heidi waxes eloquent on Spartacus and gives some insight into the structure and dark humor of Mark of the Gladiator.

At Well Read, it's my turn to be interviewed. I talk about my experiences with Latin, and how crucial I felt it was to show women with flaws and strengths who both suffer and survive in order to balance out the common issue of m/m manpain über alles. And what it might have been like for Marc Antony to give you a pep talk.

The Pen and the Muse has an entry with a lighter touch that explores the dynamic of the love triangle. By the way, this is a triangle that has the most definite of resolutions! However, we use this entry to play up a bit of uncertainty and suspense in the beginning.

Elisa Rolle puts up the most serious post, a discussion of Roman sexuality and masculinity.  As I mention in the post, "The Romans had no conception of 'gay' or 'straight' as sexual identities." So what did they have? It's a fascinating subject.

Do you want to know more about ancient love poetry? How about hate poetry? Book Reviews and More by Kathy has a post where I discuss some very beautiful and nasty excerpts.

At Sinfully Sexy Book Reviews, we count down our top seven hot Roman warrior dudes. The list is pretty Spartacus heavy (including Tony Curtis). The blog did an awesome job with the images.

Bending the Bookshelf has another educational post, this one short, and um, blunt, about sex toys.

Thus ends the blog tour. Vale!


We also posted on our own blogs. Heidi has a Five Facts post where she mentions her dream casting for the movie. I go on a long, image-heavy rant about the difference between Nubians and Numidians and the failures of portraying ancient Africa in general.

I'd also like to mention our USA Today HEA Romance Blog post: "Women Who Love Men Who Love Men: The Appeal of M/M". This was a wonderful opportunity to represent m/m and recommend books for readers new to the genre. We kept it short due to length constraints and touched on lots of different areas.

We're happy to answer any questions about the book, the process, or the contests.

Buy it at Riptide Publishing, Amazon or ARE Add to Goodreads

Mark of the Gladiator releases on November 26th in ebook and December 3rd in print, and you can enter to win a free print copy here. I'm incredibly proud of this book on so many levels. This is the most tightly structured and suspenseful book we've ever done. I'm very happy with it, and I'm especially happy about the advance reviews that speak of rapidly alternating confusion and delight at the plot twists. As a reader, I love the moments where I yell WHAT! (in a good way) and look wildly around me.

This is also our book that has involved the most historical research, and that's saying a lot, since many of our books are research-heavy. As always, the research was quite enjoyable. I know a lot about the subject already—that doesn't mean I got everything right, just that I didn't start off with a blank slate—but I also learned some fascinating new material.

In one of the upcoming blog tour posts, I talk more about my background in classics and why I'm fascinated with ancient Rome (it starts with Asterix and travels through Catullus). But for this post, I'd like to zero in on one of my historical pet peeves. Have a historical rant!

In case you haven't heard of the term "potato rager" before, I learned it last year, and love it. It describes someone who RAGES when potatoes are mentioned in medieval Europe, since potatoes come from the Americas and are a fairly recent addition to European diets.

I'm not exactly a potato rager, if only because in my opinion USians know too much about Western European history. It's depressing as hell when my countryfolk know the difference between a Viscount and an Earl in 19th-century England but can't name a single President of Mexico. So I'm not a potato rager, but I am a little bit of a Rome rager. A stirrup-rager, if you will (Roman cavalry didn't have stirrups). And one thing that especially enrages me is how stupidly Africa is treated in popular media about ancient Rome.

Africa is not a country. It's a continent. It's not just any continent, it's a huge continent, many times bigger than Europe—and if there were any geographic justice, Europe wouldn't be a continent at all, it would simply be the Northwest Asian subcontinent.

In the ancient world, as today, there was a huge variety of ethnicities, languages, architectural styles, religions, etc. to be found in Africa. During the height of the Roman Empire, Egypt and vast sweeps of Northern Africa were under Roman control and influence. Roman Africa was integral to the empire in a way that, say, England was not.

One mark of sloppy history is throwing in an African character and randomly calling them a Numidian. I think colorblind casting can be awesome, but if the European characters aren't cast colorblind, then non-European characters shouldn't be, either. And people from Africa have very distinctive, different features depending on where they're from.

Numidians, for example. The old Numidian empire was based in Western North Africa, and the people were mainly ethnically Amazigh, commonly known in English as "Berber"—I put that in quote marks because many regard it as a pejorative name, since it shares the same etymology as "barbarian". The people themselves do not use it.

Here are some modern day Amazigh men.

Here's an ancient depiction of King Juba of Numidia, who reigned from 60 BCE to 46 BCE and was an ally of Pompey.

Here's an ancient depiction of Jugurtha, another famous Numidian king.


Ancient Nubia was south of Egypt and thousands of miles away. Here are some modern-day Nubians:

I don't know what I would have done if November 6th had turned out differently, but I was fairly confident my side would win. And it did. Woohoo! I'm very heartened.

My family and I did a lot of work in the election. I went to North Carolina, the closest battleground state, several times for GOTV campaigns, and my oldest son, who is ten, helped out on the last trip. I called. I did data entry. After we won, I showed my son this video of Obama crying while he thanked campaigners.



There were some pretty big stakes for me. I don't have health insurance. My children both have special needs. Losing this election would have meant financial and medical disaster for our family.

We're also not white, and I was terrified by the naked racism I saw in so many parts of the other side.

In the 1996 presidential election, more Asian-Americans voted Republican than Democrat (we're a diverse group and some are very conservative). Since then, the Republicans have alienated us so much, and Asian-American Obama supporters have worked so hard, that Obama won us this year by 73%. 73%! That's more than Latinos at 71%. Suck it Latinos! Jejejeje. Just kidding, mis hermanos!

In other relevant political news, the first openly gay person of color has been elected to the House this year, and he's Japanese-American: Mark Takano.

I also found the message of this clip to be very inspiring. In two words? Hate lost.

I'm dipping my toes back into social media and looking forward to reconnecting. However, I'm scaling back in a lot of ways. There are certain values in the m/m writing community, certain directions things are going, that are just not healthy for me. This doesn't mean I'm necessarily going to stop reading or writing it, but I can't be any kind of insider anymore, if I ever was.

I've been writing this whole time. The project I started on is not the project I'm working on now, but I'm still excited about all of them.

I'm working on Mark of the Gladiator promo posts with Heidi now, and it's hard work but a lot of fun to delve back into Roman history. There's a lot of sex and violence in MotG, but it has a humanist core. I can't stress enough how much the Steven Saylor mysteries have influenced that approach for me. Although I won't have a full post on that, I just wanted to give a shout out to any other Roma Sub Rosa fans. Vale!

Best wishes to everyone and especially people who have lost something or someone in Sandy. My friends in NYC are OK but I still feel terrible about the situation. Please give here. I'm going to go donate blood as soon as I get better (I'm sick with a nasty head cold/ear infection).