Video I Love: Neil Patrick Harris and Hugh Jackman duet

From the 2011 Tony Awards. “Now I know why you’re all six-packy.” Adorable!

Quote I Love: My First Love Story

“The minute I heard my first love story,
I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was.
Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere.
They’re in each other all along.”

-Maulana Jalalu’ddin Rumii

“Arrr! Lick Me Nipples”

Hi all. Hope everyone had a great week.

I’ll explain the title of this blog post in a moment, but first a brief writing update:

As I mentioned on Wednesday I finished a new short story and sent it off to my critique partner. Now that it’s done (or close to it) I realize I feel like I’ve spent months with those two guys, writing a novel, not a short story. Hopefully that means something good. I don’t know.

Since then I’ve been focused on TAKE ME HOME. Now that I have all the revisions in place I’m working on another read-through to polish the dialogue and descriptions. Today I read the first 5 chapters, and I think they are ready to go. I still need to do my final checklist of common mistakes and get my critique partner’s input, but other than that, I finally feel like this book is close to submission-ready.

Now on to review the next 20+ chapters again.

(c) istockphoto.com, davidf 2010

Before I get back to it, I wanted to share a link. This week I blogged at Loose Ends, the Loose Id author blog, where I talked about the importance of having someone else proofread a story. The blog is titled: “Arrr! Lick Me Nipples” Or the Importance of Another Set of Eyes. I’m curious how much errors bother readers. I’d love to hear what you think. Feel free to leave a comment here or at Loose Ends.

Hope you all have a great weekend. My little baby nephew is getting married tomorrow. I guess that means he’s not a baby anymore. When did that happen?

Preview of a New Short Story

Finished revising and editing my latest short story (based on the picture above), and it’s off to my critique partner. There will probably be a few corrections/changes, but for the most part it’s done!

I have to say, I’m really happy with how quickly I wrote this one, as well as how the story turned out. I won’t share the title yet as the group at Goodreads is doing some fun stuff with guessing titles and character names.

In celebration of finishing it, I thought I’d give you guys a little preview.

Here’s a snippet:

I expected him to bend me over a piece of the matching wicker deck furniture, the table or maybe one of the oversize lounge chairs, but he didn’t. He smiled again. I hadn’t seen him smile this much in months. He looked like a dope with the silly grin and his dick rock hard. I didn’t care. It was a stunning combination.

“Race you,” he said, then jumped off the deck and ran onto the beach stark naked, heading for the water’s edge.

“Asshole,” I called out as I kicked off my shorts and shoes. I chased after him, laughing all the way to the water. He’d already made it in waist-high by the time I got there. He splashed me as I ran in. I lunged at him, and he let out a huge-ass giggle as I wrapped my arms around his chest from behind. A fucking giggle.

Wait. That hadn’t come from him. It was from me. His laugh still sounded like a guy his size normally would. It sounded great. I sounded like a kid running to get to the dodgeball first at recess. Maybe it was the sound of pure joy.

– From a new short story coming soon to the M/M Romance group at Goodreads and my website

Edited post on 7/1/11: revised the above except to incorporate final revisions.

For the Love of: Reader Emails

(c) istockphoto.com, malerapaso 2011

I only have a minute to post today, and I know I’ve posted on this topic before, but I wanted to give a shout of thanks out to everyone who has taken the time to write and let a romance author know when you’ve enjoyed one of their stories. Please know, authors really do appreciate the effort.

I’ve received some amazing emails lately, and no matter how often it happens, there is nothing sweeter and more rewarding than knowing when one of my stories was an enjoyable experience for someone. And even better is knowing that story touched the reader in a meaningful way. Your words of appreciation and encouragement mean more than I can say.

Thank you!
Sloan