12 Days of Christmas giveaway - free books!

today and tomorrow, Beneath the Neon Moon is free in mobi, epub, html and pdf format at All Romance ebooks:) Sign up for their newsletter to catch each daily freebie!

book cover contest

hey everybody, I subbed Sonja's pretty book cover for THE VAMPIRE'S BOY,in the November book cover contest at alternative-read.com - come look and vote if you're interested and/or curious:)

Alice

Say hello to Alice the alley cat - the girls and I found her last Wednesday on a walk behind the local high school, literally in an alleyway. As you can see, her ear appears to be ruined, but we'll see how it responds to treatment. She's emaciated and weak, 5.7 lbs., hugely friendly. We came back on Thursday to get her but it was raining and she was nowhere to be found. Went again Friday around 3:30 after I was out of work and found her. We put her in the cat carrier and took her straight to the vet. She's clear of feline leukemia and other worrisome diseases, since I have other animals and couldn't have her around them until she was cleared. She has a bacterial infection of the ear. She sleeps a lot and eats and knows how to use a litter pan. She's so friendly that she's had to be a pet at one time.

Happy Halloween!

"Put your arms around me please, I want to kiss you. Say that you forgive me for letting him love me. We can both love him, my darling."

new book reviews

Book Robot Reviews: Beneath the Neon Moon by Theda Black
"Emotional bonding from extreme fear leads to sex attraction to chance for love and you can't help feeling for these guys."

Top 2 Bottom Reviews: The Vampire's Boy by Theda Black
"Theda managed to make a coming of age story mix well with that supernatural suspense."

writing plans; an excerpt from THE VAMPIRE'S BOY

Plans: I like Riptide Publishing's collection call for Love for Sale, so I think I'll go for it, and I'm thinking about how a Frankenstein/Monster tale would work, and most definitely, the sequel to Beneath the Neon Moon. Love those two guys, and there's plenty more to say about them.

Annnd I thought I'd put up the first chapter to The Vampire's Boy here at the blog:)

------

THE FIRST TIME the vampire came for him, he was seventeen and afraid of nothing.

It was a Thursday night, and he’d been at Jordan’s house smoking weed. He’d told his mom they were studying, and honestly, that’s what he’d intended. It’s just that Jordan always had weed.

When he got to the point he felt like he was built of particles all floating separate and still but interconnected, he left. Jordan protested, saying it was just getting good (what it was, Jared didn’t know), but he knew if he stayed they’d end up cutting class tomorrow. And the last time he’d played hooky, the school had called his house and left a message, dry and mechanical: “For the parents or guardians of Jared Mikels, Jared was absent from school today. You have three days to submit—”

Aaannd the shit had hit the fan.

It was the end of April, with only a few more weeks of school left. He was determined to stay out of trouble before summer break. He hoped. First there was the little matter of getting into the house without his parents knowing he was stoned.

Jordan lived down the block from him, so it only took a couple of minutes for Jared to walk home. The moon was nearly full, white light bouncing off the sidewalk. A mild wind rustled through leaves just beginning to sprout on the trees.

It was a nice looking neighborhood, mostly upper scale Cape Cods, an occasional older bungalow thrown in. His house was a brick two-story, the pine in the front yard throwing a long shadow over the porch. He climbed the steps and opened the front door quietly, trying to act like he wasn’t trying to be quiet. He kept his head up, eyes wide, faking sobriety as best as he could in case his parents saw him.

It was after eleven and the house was dark, only the light from the TV screen in the living room flickering over the furniture. His dad sat on the couch, slumped comfortably against the overstuffed end cushion. The silver in his hair shone blue in the light, and his glasses sat crookedly over his nose.

Jared watched him a minute. His dad didn’t move. He was asleep.

“Yes,” he whispered, pumping his fist, and started up the stairs outside the living room. He was almost home free, but the last stair didn’t cooperate—it tripped him. He thumped to his knees in the hall, surprised. “Oops,” he said, snickering. But quietly. If his mom heard down the hall from her bedroom, she didn’t say anything. Most likely she was asleep, too.

In the bathroom he brushed his teeth, looking at himself in the mirror. His lids were definitely at half-mast over his pale blue eyes, sleepy and well, stoned-looking. He opened them wide as he could, straining to see the whites all around, but it wasn’t happening, and he looked stupid enough doing it that he grinned through the toothpaste at his image.

It’d been drizzling as he walked home, and his dark hair was wet. It was long enough that his dad bitched every time they were in the same room long enough to actually talk.

He leaned over, spat in the sink and rinsed. Hell with that. It wasn’t really all that long. His dad was a tightass. He’d really freak if he knew about the tattoo Jared had gotten. He pulled his sleeve up to look at it.

Peace, baby. He grinned in the mirror again.

Dad didn’t like the long hair or the low-slung jeans (in fact Jared got yelled at just this week for showing his ass off, literally, when he’d looked under the couch for Malvoline the cat’s favorite stuffed mouse toy). Or the earring, the music, his friends in general, and last but not least, the black, white and red T-shirt he wore with a hooker and a zombie making out.

He stared in the glass, absently rubbing the tat with long fingers, the grin disappearing off his face. He was pretty sure Dad didn’t like much of anything about him.

He sighed and shuffled off to his bedroom. The room was made of shadows, posters hanging on the walls like featureless black rectangles. He expertly avoided the usual heaps of clothes wadded up on the floor and flopped into bed still clothed. He fell asleep almost instantly. He never heard the window slide open.

Moments later he woke to a vampire in his bed, though all he knew at first was the press of a body against his and a hand lying flat against his heart.

Jared blinked up into the dark and tried to sit up, but the hand was unyielding. He turned his head to see who held him. It was a boy with dark hair and eyes like gray smoke, pupils red with hunger and mouth pale with need.

“I’m sorry,” the vampire whispered. “I’m so hungry.” He gripped Jared’s head between both hands and thrust his face into Jared’s neck, fangs sliding like twin blades of ice into his throat. Jared cried out. The vampire clamped a hand over his mouth. His head shook back and forth, burrowing into flesh, a beast feeding off a carcass. Jared’s body writhed against the bed, and only the hand against his chest kept him from falling to the floor.

The world around him narrowed and floated away in foggy wisps. The vampire whispered into his neck, voice vibrating low into Jared’s skin. I didn’t mean to come after you. I didn’t want to hurt you. Tears like diamonds, cold and hard, fell from the vampire’s eyes, rolling down Jared’s face and neck to melt into the bed clothes.

The hand holding him down stopped pushing against his chest and stroked instead, fingers cold. Jared’s nipples rose hard against the touch. The vampire whispered that Jared tasted like the best cherry wine, licking his neck over and over with long swipes of his cool tongue. It took away some of the hurt.

Jared felt sick and aroused, amazed that he was able to throw wood with the world like pale shadows in his vision. The vampire licked and kissed, achingly slow and soothing, murmuring in his ear how beautiful he was, how Jared’s blood was a part of him, voice and touch buzzing under his skin, until Jared thrust his hips upward helplessly and came in his pants.

Afterward he was very tired. He slept, and he didn’t awaken when his mother came to get him up for school the next morning. He didn’t know about his mother’s screams, and he didn’t realize when his father gave him CPR. He very nearly died, though he only found out after he opened his eyes the next day to see both his parents staring at him anxiously. He was in a hospital.

His father looked like he’d aged twenty years, red snaps threading his eyes, hand quivering on Jared’s arm, and Jared thought maybe he’d been wrong, that his dad loved him after all. He tried to smile, but he was still so tired.

His dad covered his eyes, shoulders shaking. He squeezed Jared’s arm. His mother held Jared’s hand in both of hers and cried. Embarrassed but touched, Jared opened his mouth to tell them he was okay. He fell asleep again before he’d gotten a word out.

Two months later when Jared was back home, freshly graduated from high school and spending his summer getting in more trouble than ever, back to the same sure conviction in his gut that his dad couldn’t stand the sight of him, the vampire came back.

Link to: M/M Readers Reaching Saturation Point? (Reviews by Jessewave)

http://www.reviewsbyjessewave.com/2011/09/25/are-some-mm-readers-reaching-saturation-point/comment-page-1/#comment-129045

The Band Plays On

Signed with Forbidden Fiction today for my truly short story, "The Band Plays On." The story's not romance - it is, however, a non-PC bromance with sex, banter, and drama. It's disturbing, really.

new review for BENEATH THE NEON MOON from Elisa

Very pleased with this one, and thanks to Elisa -

It’s not the first time Theda Black surprised me with her complex characters.

Berk Ozturk - http://www.berkozturk.deviantart.com/

edits editedit

I'm not writing, I'm editing. And editing some more.

I never realized I had so many things sitting around unfinished or as a rough draft. Which is good in a way, because I come back to it cold and can then see the flaws. Which can be enormous. But coming back to it cold isn't always great, like I've leeched my enthusiasm from the project. That happened with Neon Moon and Vampire's Boy, but I built enthusiasm back for both projects as I worked on them.

Talking to C - she said she found nearly 30 projects going on in tv and film for Frankenstein. So the revival is the next Big Thing? Maybe I should write that Frankenstein/Monster story sooner rather than later.

I am inappropriate

This morning, daughter2 is getting ready for school. She's 11. I insist on putting some product in her hair because it's frizzing all over. She sits down with me and I look down and say "underwear," because her underwear was visible. You know how low-rise pants are.

After the hair is finished, she stands in the doorway and looks at me. There's something STICKING from her pocket, jutting out from her abdomen.

"Take that out of your pocket," I say.

"What, it's a marker," she says.

"Looks like you have a penis," I say.

She throws her hands up. "You're so inappropriate!" she screams.

"You don't want people to think you've got a penis, do you? I'm trying to help."

Stomp, stomp. Away from the Offender. Maybe I'm too blunt. It didn't help when I started laughing.

Queried at ForbiddenFiction

I sent a query for "The Band Plays On,"  a short m/m story. It doesn't end well, but it's quirky and hopefully kind of weirdly touching. It's really the only place I'd think of submitting it. It pushes some boundaries (I think).

To quote the site: ForbiddenFiction is a publisher devoted to writing that breaks the boundaries of original erotic fiction. We aim to provide stories which combine intense sexuality with quality writing and dark themes. Many of the novels and stories we publish would be refused by other publishers because it breaks with convention for aspects such as BDSM, violence, non-consent or age variation. We do not have any content type that is forbidden. If it's a well written erotic story, we'll consider it. In fact, if it violates taboos in some fashion, we are more likely to publish it.

It felt good to send out a query. Now that I've done it, I need to forget about it.

new writing ideas

1.
Frankenstein/Monster

2.
Western, ghost in the desert (it's nothing new, talking to a guy you don't realize is dead, but I like it - and maybe there'd be more than talk).

3.
Banquet/Ballad of Chestnuts - Borgia orgy
not quite sure what I'd do with it

Disclaimer: my ideas can languish for years.  I pick up quite a few of them, eventually. And I have a pal who likes to help me come up with them (hi, #2;)

naked snakes, oh my

I'd credit if I could, believe me, but all I have is a link to tumblr.

self-publishing tip #1

Do not check your sales compulsively. Before you know it you're at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookstrand, All Romance, etc. etc. signing in over and over, talking to the screen, YOU MORON, cursing at it, or cheering if you're lucky - and for what? This I promise: it's not making your sales go up any. Really. Stop. Okay? I'm trying to help.

art: Joy Ang

Terrorsel by Joy Ang, print available

I wanted to say something pithy; instead there's this

originally posted by modelsrocksrightnow

hi - just trying out the new blog:)

Sent out a couple of books just now to winners over at Goodreads who were busy last weekend celebrating the m/m romance group over there.

Had some friends in surrounding states who felt the quake in Virginia today - I know people from the western US are finding it hard to understand the dust-up here in the eastern part of the country, but the infrequency of quakes here makes all the difference, esp. in terms of preparedness. It reminds me of when we run out of salt for the roads in the South over the winter - it doesn't often happen, and we're not prepared when we do get lots of ice and snow.

But when I lived in Jersey it was a whole other operation in terms of how they dealt with icy, freezing conditions.

Hm, off track - from earthquakes to winter weather!