I recently joined this site for writers of paranormal romance, and I wanted to spread the word.
Ultimate Fantasy Books is a place to find the latest in paranormal, fantasy, dystopia and romance titles from indie authors and indie publishers. The site features book trailers, reviews, author profiles, contests and giveaways.
They’re currently running a poll for the best book trailers of 2013, and there are a lot of cool videos to choose from! Check it out. 🙂
I dunno. I thought my blog could use some music. And this discovery via Twitter hit the right chords for me. Game of Thrones!! Piano!! I took piano lessons through grade school to college (though my talents were/are pretty questionable).
Marriage Equality symbol from the Human Rights campaign
The Supreme Court decided on two huge cases regarding LGBT rights today.
First, they ruled that the Clinton-era so-called Defense of Marriage Act was unconstitutional. That means the federal government cannot reject the marital status of same sex couples who were married in states that permit same sex marriage. That means the federal government must provide the rights and privileges of marriage to married same sex couples.
Second, in a more complex decision, they rejected an appeal to a lower court’s decision on California’s Proposition 8 (the ballot initiative negating marriage rights to same sex couples). There’s a double negative there (triple negative actually), but the upshot is that proponents of Prop 8 lost their bid to appeal the lower court ruling. Same sex couples who were married before Prop 8 retain their marital status. Same sex couples in California can get married and receive full state (and now federal) rights.
I have linked a more detailed article on the Supreme Court rulings from NPR here.
It is a good thing I am off from work this week because I don’t think I would be able to do anything productive besides celebrate and share my joy over these historic rulings.
I have been an LGBT activist pretty much since the day I came out. That’s over twenty years. I was one of those gays who was actually very passionate about social justice before I came out, including LGBT rights. Even while I was not ready to accept myself as gay and to accept the ramifications for that, I felt deeply in my heart that it was wrong to treat people unfairly simply because they were not the norm, the majority, or just plain popular.
I say all that to explain why today’s rulings mean so much to me. I remember speculating with friends some ten years ago: when would LGBT rights be fully realized in America? We were all idealists, but none of us said that it would happen this soon (if you can call 10 years soon). We predicted that states like New York and California would recognize same-sex marriage. We predicted that employment non-discrimination laws would probably make some progress, even in the South. Most of us thought that marriage, adoption, and freedom from discrimination would happen in our lifetimes, but not until we were very old.
We figured that the non-LGBT majority in this country — some 90-99 percent of the population, depending on what studies you look at — had much too far to go in their understanding and acceptance of us to support our rights.
Our LGBT allies have shown that we had not given them enough credit.
I like what Melissa Etheridge had to say about the Supreme Court decisions in her interview today with CNN*, and specifically responding to the question: how is it possible for so much progress to happen in such a short time? Go back 10 years, and especially 20 or 30 years, and public support for LGBT rights was below the 50 percent mark.
Etheridge spoke about the importance of LGBTs coming out and changing public opinion. That was something that felt impossible for many of us to do in the 1980s, but one courageous act inspires another.
For me, coming out in the early 90s was made possible by meeting and getting to know other openly LGBT people. There weren’t any rock stars or  film/TV celebrities or pro athletes to look up to. Happily, there are many now, and they are making an enormous difference.
Why today’s decisions also mean so much to me is because 12 years ago my partner and I committed to living our lives together, becoming a family, honoring our relationship as something sacred and permanent — everything we understood marriage to mean although our “commitment ceremony” conferred no legal status.
Two years ago, when New York State expanded marriage to include same-sex couples, Genaro and I went down to the Queens County civil court and got a marriage certificate. That enabled us to file state taxes jointly as a married couple (not exactly a benefit by the way; more of an obligation) and for me to carry my husband on my medical insurance for a period when he needed it.
But federal laws trump state laws. If something happened to one of us — gods forbid — there would be no recognition of our relationship as it relates to medical decisions, social security benefits, inheritance, etc..
I have woken up to a day when we don’t have to worry about those things anymore. I’m stupefied. I’m enthralled. I’m so proud to be part of the LGBT civil rights movement.
*I couldn’t find an article on-line with Melissa Etheridge’s soundbite regarding the importance of LGBTs coming out. Please share it with me if you can find it.
Werecat: The Rearing came out on May 28th, and I have jumped head first into the ocean of on-line media to spread the word.
It seemed like a fitting time to share all of my efforts in one place. It’s hard to gauge the impact at this point, but I thought it might be of interest to other authors. Comments are welcome!!
The Basic Stuff: I created a Facebook Author Page, which has gotten 66 likes so far (go little FB page, go!).
I prettied up my GoodReads Author Page a bit, joined a trio of Groups (LGBT Fantasy Fiction, The Backlot Gay Book Forum  and Paranormal, Fantasy, Dystopia and Romance Writers), and am trying out GoodReads ads for Werecat. To date, 23 people have added the book to their bookshelves, there’s 7 reviews, and there’s a little chatter about the infamous “cat sex scene,” which my critique group wisely told me I had to keep in the manuscript. 🙂
I’m periodically tweeting news about the book and got picked up by various Paper.li weekly round-ups. The latter has definitely driven traffic to my website, about 100 visitors in a two week period. Through Twitter networking, I joined the Triberr LGBTQ Authors & Books Tribe, which has been great for cross-tweeting blog posts and working with other authors on promotional projects.
Promotions: I have an e-Book giveaway running at the Bibliophilic Book Blog through June 30th. It’s driven some nice traffic to my site, but entries to the giveaway are low. So it’s an odds-on ticket to a free copy of the book. 🙂
Authors Elisa Rolle and Red Haircrow have been kind enough to run new release and author interview posts respectively on their blogs.
I ran a 3 book giveaway at The Romance Reviews earlier this month and have headline ads running at the site, which is a nice give-back from TRR for authors who link to them.
I’m working on a bunch more stuff for July and August in collaboration with other authors.
Reviews: Werecat has gotten reviews from Cathy Brockman’s The Cat’s Meow, Sean Norris’ World of Diversity Fiction, Hearts on Fire Reviews, and author Michael Joseph’s review blog.
This is where you really take a chance as an author: sending out review copies and hoping for some positive press when the tastes of readers are so subjective. Gratefully, Werecat has been received mostly with praise. Of the industry reviews, it’s gotten an average of 3.75 stars. The GoodReads average is slightly higher right now: 3.86. Amazon and BN.com reviews are a stellar 5 stars, but there are fewer reviews.
I don’t intend to be the kind of author who gerrymanders review sites to promote my books. But it is within my ethical code to encourage you: if you read Werecat, could you take a couple of minutes to post a rating/review at Amazon, BN.com, GoodReads and/or wherever you buy and talk about books? It’s a huge help to authors with indie publishers like me. 🙂
So what happens next: I’ve got commitments from 6 more review sites to run a review of Werecat sometime over the next few months.
If you’re wondering how I found places to query, here was my process: I created an Excel spreadsheet of review leads by honing down the lists at the Book Blogger Directory. That meant visiting I would guess over 100 sites to make sure they were still active, and that they looked professional and had reviewed books similar to mine. My target sites were LGBT, paranormal, romance, sci fi/fantasy and best of all a combination of one or more of those themes.
This was a very time-consuming process. But really it was the only way to do it. Sometimes one blog would mention another I hadn’t heard about, so I would check it out and add it as appropriate.
In total, over four weeks, I came up with 40 prospects to query. Four ran reviews within about two weeks. Six more say they’ll do a review sometime over the next two months. One said they were not interested. I haven’t given up on the remaining 29. Everything I hear about the on-line review biz is that they’re flooded with requests so it takes some time.
Otherwise, I will be hopping over to some author blogs from time-to-time, continuing to network on GoodReads, and always welcoming new ideas about spreading the word. 🙂
Update 6/24/2013: Vicktor’s Giveaway Drawing is over, but please do read on about his book and his campaign. 🙂
Today, I’m handing my blog reins to author Vicktor Alexander.
Vicktor and I connected through Triberr’s LGBT Authors Group. Realizing we both have new releases in the paranormal romance genre (shifters even), we decided to do a blog swap. He’s got a great book and a great cause to talk about. So, take it away Vic!
Thank you to Andrew for allowing me the chance to talk to you all about a book, a series and a cause that I’m very passionate about. Impossible, book six of the Tate Pack series and The Trevor Project.
Impossible, book 6 of the Tate Pack series released Friday, June 14th and I was and am so uberly excited to hear what everyone thinks. It was nice to return to the Tate ranch, to hang with the guys again and I think you’ll all be very shocked by what happens in the story. Though I am to warn you that it’s angsty and will make you cry, at least according to my betas and others who have read it so far.
In light of what the book is about and what my plans are for the profits, I decided to do more than just give you the blurb, excerpt, cover and buy links, I thought I would tell you all why I really want this book to do well.
Also, one lucky person who comments will receive a free e-Book copy of Impossible. Just read this post and drop a comment below with your e-mail address and an answer to the question: Is there anything in your life you wish you could do over?
Last year I made a promise to donate half the profits of Impossible to The Trevor Project and half of the profits of Untouchable to the It Gets Better Project. I made these promises in light of all of the teenagers who felt as if the bullying, the scorn, the oppression, etc. that they suffered was just too much and committed suicide. I made it in light of the online friend I’d made who also succumbed to the darkness. I made the promises because of Justin, Angel, Ryan and Keesha who all have come to my rescue, more than once, when I tried to give into the darkness.
I made the promise because of Susan.
Who is Susan?
When I was fifteen I moved in with my bio father in Pensacola because I was making a lot, a lot, of really bad, really dangerous life decisions. I didn’t want to stay with my father, but at the same time, the decision to move had been mine (try to figure that one out). When I first moved up to Pensacola, I was the outsider. I was one of maybe six black kids in the youth group at the church my father and I went to that consisted of over 200 teenagers, I was the only one of all of my friends who had engaged in a sexual relationship, had done drugs, drank liquor, rebelled, etc. I felt out of place. But I pushed on and began to clean up my act.
Then I met Susan.
Susan and I had a similar story. Our backgrounds and childhoods were similar and so because of Susan I had someone I could talk to. About a lot of different things. And I was the only person outside of Susan’s mother and a mutual friend, Eve, who knew Susan’s biggest secret.
Susan was a lesbian.
Because of the church we went to, the friends we had, Susan and I didn’t feel comfortable a lot of times sharing the thoughts, desires, the dreams or even our true feelings to those around us. But whenever we were alone, in her purple bedroom, with the walls covered with newspaper clippings, her bed covered in a black duvet and her cat hissing at us from underneath the bed, we could talk about those things.
Susan and I talked every day. We emailed (yes, they had email when I was 15), we called each other on the phone and we hung out all the time. We promised to stay in touch. We promised to look out for each other. We promised to keep each other sane and to keep each other’s head above water.
I didn’t keep my promise.
When I moved back to Winter Haven, Florida I was 16. It didn’t take long for me to fall back into my old ways. And wracked with guilt I started dodging Susan’s calls. Responding to her emails with one line or two-line sentences. Before long the phone calls, the letters and the emails stopped. I’ll be honest and tell you that I was relieved. At 16 I was already responsible for my younger siblings, for helping out my bio mom, a single mother, around the house. I had school, my after-school activities, my siblings’ after-school activities, and my job, I couldn’t and didn’t want to be responsible for someone else.
I only found out that Susan committed suicide four months after we stopped talking, two years later when I went back to Pensacola for seminary.
I have been wracked with guilt ever since.
For over thirteen years since we stopped talking and eleven years after I heard about Susan’s suicide, I have been walking around with that over my head and I wanted to donate to The Trevor Project for Susan. So that maybe it won’t happen again. To try and atone for deserting a friend when she needed me most. While I understand when people tell me that it’s not my fault, I can’t help but feel as if it is.
I don’t think that I’ve ever talked about Susan with anyone outside of my therapist and other friends who knew her, but I’m happy that I have shared it with you all now.
There is a world full of Susans out there and I want to do my part to help.
Half of my profits from Impossible, book 6 of the Tate Pack series, will be donated to The Trevor Project. If you want, when you buy the book, you can leave me a comment here and let me know if you bought the book because of someone, ie “This is for my friend_____” and each time I make a donation to The Trevor Project I’ll remember those who are mentioned.
I hope you all enjoy Impossible. Thank you for helping me, help others and honor Susan.
And now, here’s where you can buy Impossible:
Blurb:
Alexander Dieson always knew that he was different. Yes, he could shift like the other wolf shifting cowboys on the Tate Ranch, but he could also make fire and a host of other things. When his parents move him to California from Texas he resolves himself to spending a life alone.
Ross Barber discovers the scent of his mate hours after the younger man moves away with his family. He spends ten years searching for Alex and finally finds him just after Alex’s life has been completely turned upside down.
Ross promises Alex that he will help find his mate’s missing siblings but in the process of their search they learn the truth about Alex’s DNA and are completely shocked by the way their lives and the Tate Ranch changes because of it. And when they learn how high up the plot to kidnap and sell paranormals actually goes, the Tate Pack will never be the same.
Excerpt:
“Hey! You!”
Ross looked up at the shout and found himself facing the throng of men who had left the house and now spread out to surround him. The man holding the toddler walked back to the front of the house before he returned. Ross looked around at them all, noticing the pack’s Alpha stood among them, not at all shocked that he would be involved in something shady—most Alphas he’d met were—testing his odds and figuring out his best course of action. His father was a former Green Beret and his mother had been Special Ops.
Ross had been trained from the crib in hand-to-hand combat, just like his sister. They’d been trained to kill when they had no other options, and his parents had always made sure they knew how to get themselves out of any situation they ever found themselves in. Most people would think his parents had done him a disservice by raising him to be a fierce killing machine, dominant, aggressive… mean as all get out, but Ross didn’t see it that way. There were some fucked up things out there, and not all of them were in the paranormal world. Ross, his sister, and their parents had come in contact with evil in its purest form and he would be damned if he would ever be caught unaware.
He tensed his muscles, ignoring the fact that he was completely nude because of his shift, and waited for the first man to come charging at him. That was always where people went wrong. They immediately went on the offensive when it was defense that won games, no matter what his football coach had told him.
“Hey, look, we don’t want any trouble,” Vet said, the new Alpha, if the power that swirled around him, almost bringing Ross to his knees, was any indication. His hair, which looked black in the darkness, blew in the late night breeze and his scent wafted up to Ross’s nostrils. Ross took in a deep breath and wrote the Alpha off as his mate again. He hadn’t been back at the Tate Ranch in quite a while. Even though much of it was like returning home, there were still aspects of the pack lands that were new to him. Namely, the fact that the men before him were older and their scents, while at the core were still the same, had subtly changed. Ross knew Vet. They had, in fact, gone to preschool together, come out to each other, lost their virginity together, and had shifted together for the first time. It was shortly after losing their virginity to each other that Ross and his family had left the pack to assist in a rescue mission.
Apparently the pack had added more new members since then. One of them was his mate, but Vet, even with his new, more powerful, cloying scent, wasn’t his mate. None of the men who currently watched him were. Which meant that his mate was in the house. “We just want to know what you’re doing skulking around the Dieson home. I am the new Alpha of this pack, and I would have you identify yourself.”
Ross tucked away the name Dieson for later and bared his neck to the Alpha in a show of submission. “My apologies, Alpha. You may not remember me, but my name is Ross Barber. My family and I just re-joined the pack today. You met with my parents earlier.” Ross waited for Vernon “Vet” Tate to nod before he continued. “I smelled my mate and came to find him,” he finished simply. He noticed the large man who had been holding the toddler earlier tense and immediately turned his attention to him. “Do you know who my mate is, Beta?”
Ross grinned when he saw the big man blink at him in stupefaction. He wasn’t sure how he was always able to know exactly what someone’s position was in a pack, coven, herd, company or wherever, but from the time he was a child, it had been a gift of his. He could either peg what they currently were, or what they would end up being. It freaked people out all the time; he just saw it as a fact of life.
The larger man recovered from his shock and growled low in his throat, showing a small measure of aggression at Ross’s blatantly disrespectful tone with him, before his shoulder drooped and he whimpered in the back of his throat. The sound was one of despair, and Ross felt his blood run cold. Had something happened to his mate? And what did the Beta mean to the man who belonged to Ross?
“His name is Alex Dieson. Alexander Mitch Dieson. He’s not here anymore,” the Beta answered.
Ross felt his heart stop in his chest. He crouched low to the ground, a growl rumbling up from his belly and bursting forth from his lips. He didn’t know why the Beta sounded so upset that Alex was gone since he’d obviously had something to do with it, but Ross didn’t care. The Beta would be the first to go. The other wolves crouched low, and Ross ignored the small, niggling voice at the back of his mind that pointed out that there was no smell of blood in the air anywhere, so his mate wasn’t hurt. Ross’s eyes took in the other wolves, and he noticed that the Alpha remained standing.
“Hold it, guys. He doesn’t understand,” he said, the power in his words causing them all to freeze. He stared at Ross and sighed. “Alex isn’t dead or hurt. At least, we have seen no evidence that he is. We came to invite him out for our weekly bowling party and found his home deserted. All of his stuff is gone, as well as those of his parents. We believe they left town sometime earlier today, without the permission of the Alpha, and with no indication about where they were going. They didn’t leave a note or a letter behind to explain their actions, either, though Alex did leave something written on his wall for us to see.”
Ross didn’t allow the Alpha to continue talking, instead turning and yanking off the doorknob to the back door in his rush to get inside. He ignored the shouts of the men behind him as he ran upstairs. He followed the scent of his mate and charged into the room where the smell was heaviest. He stopped when he saw the words written on the bare blue wall. There, written in large, black permanent marker were words that filled Ross with hope and a determination to find the man who belonged by his side.
I’ll be back.
Ross would make sure of that. He would find his mate and bring him back to Wichita Falls, where he belonged, no matter how long it took to find him.
Don’t forget: for a chance to win a copy of Impossible, drop a comment below with your e-mail and an answer to the question: Is there anything in your life you wish you could do over? At midnight EST on June 23rd, I’ll choose a winner through Random.org.Â
