Where is My Mind?

Way out in the water, see it swimming...

Heidi and I are getting somewhat of a reputation for hallucinatory expeditions! I'm nervous, but mostly pleased. Having Hawaiian Gothic compared to one of my literary heroes (China Miéville) by Val Kovalin is a high that hasn't faded yet. Whenever I'm in a down mood about my writing, I remember it.

If you missed the Hawaiian Gothic blog tour, check it out here on its minisite. We touched on a lot of pretty heavy stuff this round. My favorite is the post I did on Wicked Little Pixie, where I'm looking at underused mythology in a frame that's totally different from the usual "cultural appropriation or shunning" binary. Hawaiian Gothic is also on sale at Fictionwise today only for $2.67 with special code 070712 (or maybe tomorrow as well, the code ends July 9th). If you use code 070712, you'll get 55% off on all titles (except Samhain)!

If you're a fan and have a few seconds to help us out with a few clicks, we've been nominated on Best M/M Published in 2012 and Best Gay Athletes. If anyone would like to vote for us on there, that would be awesome. Nominations for any list that fit the book either on Goodreads or Amazon would also help, as would clicking [Agree with these tags] or adding your own tags on Amazon.

Other places where my mind is... so many. So many. Our hallucinatory expedition to WWII Finland ended in an impossible love becoming real. "The War at the End of the World" is a long short story available for free on Goodreads, Smashwords and Storm Moon Press. And then some asshole uploaded it onto Amazon and tried to sell it for three bucks! I mean, it has a gorgeous cover, but it's also the most uncommercial Love is Always Write offering I can imagine. What a loser. It took Amazon forever to get around to removing the listing, even after multiple complaints by S.L. Armstrong at Storm Moon.

We're also editing Mark of the Gladiator for Riptide's Warriors of Rome line. I'm so excited about this book. There are no paranormal elements at all (although our MC does have a few trippy dreams). Instead, it's a very rigorous historical that incorporates a lot of my academic and casual research without being wonky about it. Sarah Frantz, our editor, is carefully shredding any remaining wonk! Seriously, there's nothing I hate more than historical fiction that turns into a textbook.

We've got a lot of time to explain Mark of the Gladiator, since it's not coming out until November, so I won't go into details now. I'll just say that it's heavily influenced by the Steven Saylor Gordianus the Finder books, and leave it at that.

And then, of course, our Carina novel, The Druid Stone, is coming in less than a month. Heidi wrote a post about that over here. I cannot stress enough that the The Druid Stone is an urban fantasy with room to breathe at more than 110k. It starts intense and then it lets up a bit and then BAM... actually, I'd better stop now, because if I keep describing it I'll end up punching my leg. People who have problems with our other work might enjoy this better, since the structure is fairly linear, except when it involves time travel. But it's unapologetically intense and uses the paranormal in a way that doesn't fit preconceived notions. I like magic realism and first-generation urban fantasy and the New Weird, and yes, that's going to show.

Lastly, I'm a very opinionated person and although I reserve this blog for longer posts, I'm spewing opinions around a fair bit. I've founded a menage review blog called More Than This, which I'm running along with some other awesome readers. I'll also be posting at the new blog LGBT Fantasy Fans and Writers. Check out the first post there by the brilliant Alex Beecroft. Lastly, I'm not promoting this yet, but I started up a very informal review blog to post my reviews of MC/IR romance, mainly so that when I get requests for recs I can point people there. I've decided I'm only going to read MC/IR romance for the rest of the year at least—that helped me cut down my TBR pile a bit, but it's still massive—and anything I review that I like, I'll put up there. I might do more with it later, but right now, considering Mark of the Gladiator edits and The Druid Stone promo, that's all I have time for.

Here's a mournful piano version of Where is My Mind...



And to close out on an energetic note, a catchy, filthy bisexual throwdown.   I love Azealia Banks so much I could die. This is full of NSFW words and slurs but it's just so fucking positive.