Book News, A Muse to Live For

What happens when a gender-queer romance meets with the author's lifelong obsession with D. G. Rossetti, his stunning models, and the great poets of the 19th century?
Hopefully, good things.
The "Victorian Story" was at first called Paint Me True, and it originated from a curiously vivid and "well narrated" dream I had pretty exactly a year ago. I filed it under "future short stories" and left it at that, because I was writing Spice & Vanilla and I was completely taken up by it.
And it was to be a short story (of course) and very straight(forward) (of course). Easy peasy.
Well, unfortunately (?) I am crap at anything easy-peasy, so when I actually started to tinker with it last February,  the tale immediately grew in the telling, especially when it appeared that it could be connected to Spice & Vanilla, however tenuously, so that it became the third installment of my "transgender trilogy". After that there was no chance of keeping it simple. Ahem.
Despite the gender queer aspect however, the core of the story is the artist's experience, his inspiration, and the obsession, passion and depression that go with it, a topic that is very very deeply rooted in my own soul and experience.
Sometimes the story became a strange almost supernatural experience. The more I read and wrote about Rossetti the more eerie coincidences I found.

It is also a very, very heartfelt love story. I love it passionately, and I think that together with Woman as a Foreign Language it is my favorite piece of writing ever.
I made many character sketches for this story, mostly of Gabriel/le, not surprisingly,  but also of Nathaniel, although he is very much my alter-ego and didn't like to have his picture taken.

London, 1884.

An artist lives to create. When Nathaniel’s urge to paint died, so did his will to live.

Until the night he meets Gabrielle.

Gabrielle may be a just a poor prostitute, but she has the beauty of a Pre-Raphaelite stunner, and the otherworldly aura of a fallen angel. She also has a secret. Gabrielle is Gabriel, and when Gabriel’s dark past comes knocking and Gabrielle must abandon her new career as an artist’s model, Nathaniel’s  whole world comes crashing down again.

Better to die than living without her love, and the breath-taking creative drive she brought him.

But it’s dead easy to die for love. Any fool can die for love. To live for it, that takes altogether more courage, doggedness and imagination.

#transgenderromance #queerromance #crossdresser

Model for Nathaniel is Henry Ian Cusick. Model for Gabriel/le, Danila Kovalev... as always. I am struck by how much Danila K. resembles Rossetti's models, and often, when describing Gabriel/le in the story I found myself using contemporary descriptions of Lizzie Siddal and Jane Morris.And once, I discovered, which was both beautiful and rather unsettling that Rossetti and I had picked exactly the same words, independently, because I am sure I had not read that before, to describe the agonizing separation from our muse and love... Writing this story has been indeed a strange experience...

Here's a few pages from the beginning of the story, just to get in the mood of it...

(unedited)

A Muse to Live For

Chapter One

London, November 1884

Nathaniel

A mirror is an awful thing to have about one’s home.

One can, with care, go about life lightly, without knowing of one’s own existence, which is not a bad state of affairs, considering. Invisible and insensible, one can live on. In a manner of speaking. I, of course, have been a dead man for five years. But one can go on, in a way. In a sort of muffled darkness. Careful not to make a sound, or raise any dust.

Until one has to shave. The mirror stares back at me haggardly, telling the whole tale over again.

Dead. Dead to the world, and buried in these two darkened rooms.

It is fairly poor taste to disturb the dead, and I resent the intrusion as much as any dear departed would. If only Henry would let me lie in peace.

This mania for the music hall has become a perpetual nuisance. Hardly a month passes that I don’t have to go through this torment. It’s Henry’s way of doing me a kindness, or so he says. Says it will cheer me up. It doesn’t. It’s sickening. But I go anyway, because Henry’s ruckus if I don’t go is worse. Not in the amount of noise and exertion perhaps, but it’s more personal. At the music hall, I just float away. It’s just noise.

It might be easier to go and spend one and a half penny at the barber shop; but I dislike the man’s hands on me; he chatters without pause; his suspiciously pliant and universal political views annoy me; and besides, I’d have to walk the length of the road in my current state of unkempt overgrown shagginess. Worst of all, I would have to pass Mrs. Crabwood’s parlor downstairs. She thinks unshaved men should come and go through the traders’ door, which I would not mind, as such, but her reproving look would be unbearable.

I wish people were not so ready and eager to look me in the eye. If eyes are windows in the soul, should we not grace them with some privacy? There’s not one person on this earth whom I’d want to know my soul, and me theirs.

No, better to face the soulless mirror, and my own darkness. Marginally better, at least. I find scissors and snip unevenly away, before taking up the razor. The scissors are blunt like everything in here, and each cut pulls the skin, as if niggling at the puckered proud flesh over a half healed scab.

The scab being me.

It’s a twenty minutes-walk to Henry’s, most of it along the river. In summer it would be a pleasant walk, under the spreading plane trees, with the boats plying on the sunny water. Now my boots plash softly into sodden fallen leaves, and slick horse muck. Still, the bare trees looming in the mist have a gaunt beauty, and for a moment, the briefest moment, I wish I had a pencil and a sketching pad with me, to jot down the twisting, muscular forms of their outstretched limbs.

Time was when I never went anywhere without paper and pencils. But that man is long gone.

I am just in sight of number 16, Rossetti’s house—he’s gone these last two years, poor tormented soul, with all his women and his menagerie, may he rest in peace—when a gentleman in a dark coat steps out of a cab not two yards from me and hands out an elegant lady, who turns around to shake out the folds of her gown and unwittingly looks me right in the eye. I shudder, hurrying on.

Really. I mean it. If it’s true that eyes are windows in our soul, why do we look people in the eyes? How many people have you ever known that you’d want to share your soul with? One? Two? Twenty? Fifteen thousand? Or maybe none at all?

****

Gabriel

There is this to be said for my profession.

I can sleep in.

That unspeakable time of day, the early hours of the morning, when the whole world trudges along the streets with dead eyes and heavy feet, on to another day of toil, is spared to me.

I see the tiredness of the world at the other end of the day. But by then it’s dark, and there is not much to see, and the tiredness has a different flavor. To me, that’s mostly the flavor of a man’s spendings, which I mostly spit on the pavement. You get used to it. You get used to almost anything, given time.

Darkness or no, I must be seen of course. I am the one in the stolen foggy spotlight of the lamppost’s golden halo. But the darkness outside stares back blankly, and mostly I like it that way. I have seen enough of the world to last me a lifetime. My business needs the night, in any case.

I wish I could say my bed is warm and comfortable, but mostly it’s lumpy, damp and cold. But it’s mine and quiet, here at the top of the silent house. Mrs. Gride doesn’t like noise. She says it makes her temples ache, which is all stuff of course, but still, we all creep about as quiet as mice. No, much more quiet than mice. They do not listen to Mrs. Gride’s injunctions about walking along the drugget, talking in a low voice and making no sounds. I can hear them chewing and scrabbling behind panels and wainscots at night, when the house sleeps, and I come home to my lonely room. Usually they are the only ones to welcome me back. I’m always the last one to return. I feel a bond of likeness with them. We all live at the edge, behind screens. It doesn’t stop me from throwing shoes at them when they cross the room too boldly, or go close to my wardrobe. I have little enough as it is. The mice will have to nest elsewhere. I am not a charity institution after all.

In the morning the bed has a narrow strip of warmth in the middle, a stripe exactly as wide as my body, and I must not move, lest I stray on the flabby cold linen outside, but still, eventually I find the nerve to reach out and fetch my cigarettes, and light the first of the day. I smoke it in bed, my one and only indulgence. I have become adept at smoking in bed without shedding ashes on the sheets or setting myself on fire.

I watch the thin, ghostly, white smoke curling and floating towards the pale grey skylight, swirling into a puff of breath. It’s likely to be the most beautiful thing I’ll see all day.

I have a small pile of work to do for the girls downstairs, so I finally heave myself out of bed. I don’t ask money for these small jobs. By tacit agreement, I help out and the girls close an eye on my strangeness. It works very well for all involved.

Later, much later, in the light of a single candle, I shave at my little mirror (an evening ritual, for those like me). As usual I give fervent thanks that nature hardly gave me any beard to shave. Then I shed my trousers and my waistcoat and my shirt and wear my other things.

The stockings, which need mending again, but will do for one more night, in the dark, a small chemise. Then I put on my boots, with small heels and about a thousand fucking tiny buttons. They are old, second hand or third, like everything I own, but well-greased and waxed and buffed to a sheen. It’s cold out there, and wet.

And then my tight, tight corset. It needs some fancy bending to lace it up by myself, but I am limber. I pull the laces as tight as I can around my waist, feeling the shape of me change, like some creatures are said to change in the light of a full moon. The core of the corset is whalebone and steel, stiff like armor. It knows my true shape better than my body does. It hardly needs padding at the chest, hard as it is, but it suits me to pad it anyway, for the weight of it, with two silk cravats I keep for the purpose, so old, worn so soft by use, so waxy with the damp of my skin, that they almost melt to my chest. My skin is all tingling now, and it’s not the cold. Silk and steel hug me so close, so much tighter than my day clothes. I am almost naked, and yet every bit of me is more defined and clear, like I have come into sharper, truer focus in the searching eye of a telescope.

I paint my lashes and my eyelids, black and black, to make my eyes shine. I paint my lips red. That marks me as the whore I am, and I don’t mind.

I am what I am.

My wig hangs from the corner of the wardrobe. Freshly brushed, the blonde hair shines in the candlelight and waves like a ghost in the faint breeze as I open the wardrobe door. Maybe the ghost of the woman whose hair it is, who knows. She might well be dead. I don’t know what would be creepier, to wear the hair of a dead woman or the hair of a live one. Still, I’m stuck with the wig for now. I am not pleased with the color, which does not mix with my dark hair. But I got it almost cheap in Middlesex Street. It was the sort of bargain where nobody asks too many questions.

I wear my violet skirt over a small horse-hair bustle and a blouse and tight bodice. I don’t button this all the way up, but I put on a shawl, for the cold. The wig, which in summer would hitch and sweat, is almost a comfort now. I look at my mirror one last time as I tie my hair in a loose chignon at the nape of my neck, and stab it through with a horn comb. No pins.  I learnt the hard way not to trust a man around a hairpin. The mirror is too small to see much. My pale face, the dark circles of my eyes, the red lips, the ghostly locks. All the rest I can only imagine.

But that is my life. Imagining myself, conjuring myself into existence … especially the parts that don’t fit in the narrow, narrow picture.

A MUSE TO LIVE FOR

Coming

2019

E. D. Parr - String of Pearls - New release

Thank you for inviting me to your blog today with new release MM romance,

String of Pearls

The story is set in the same SciFi fantasy city as last year’s release, The Dreamboat.

Indigo Vaughn, the warlock head of security, features in the story along with a new cast of characters. When I wrote The Dreamboat, I already had the new characters in my head along with their story. Tobias Mars and Dante Pepper, the elite space pilots for the royal court, very nearly made an appearance in The Dreamboat, but because that story is about Indigo at last finding love, I decided they needed their own story.

Once upon a time Dante and Tobias were close to becoming lovers, but Dante met Viridian and fell in love. Tobias has yet to meet his love when String of Pearls, opens. He’s a man of high integrity, handsome, caring, but also longing for love and sex. String of Pearls is his love story.

Blurb

Handsome, elite space pilot, Tobias Mars is completing a special mission, when on a water planet, recently ravaged by space pirates, he discovers Dreft Hann hiding and injured in the sand dunes.

There’s instant attraction between the two men, but honorable Tobias believes the fact Dreft is in his care precludes him from showing his growing love for the young man. What’s worse is his shocking discovery of Dreft’s real identity. Even so, Tobias can’t deny his feelings for Dreft.

When head of royal security, powerful warlock, Indigo Vaughn discovers Dreft’s secret, he anticipates trouble.

As beautiful Dreft falls in love with Tobias and dreams of joining the elite pilot squad, trouble is brewing from someone in Dreft’s past.

Will love finally win with so many obstacles in Tobias and Dreft’s path?

Warning, the book contains MM sex, MMM sex, gay anal sex, MM oral sex

BUY the book

On special new release discount price only on the Evernight Publishing website

https://www.evernightpublishing.com/string-of-pearls-by-e-d-parr/

https://www.bookstrand.com/string-of-pearls-mm

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https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/906343

https://www.amazon.com/String-Pearls-D-Parr-ebook/dp/B07KFM3YFG

Amazon http://mybook.to/StringofPearls

Read an excerpt

Tobias Mars gazed at Dreft lying on top of the bed in room ten of the infirmary. Hari’s treatment had worked wonders and not only on Dreft’s wounds. Hari had cleaned Dreft up. His hair, now a dirt-free glossy hazelnut brown was brushed back to show off the handsome planes of his face. Hari had replaced Dreft’s strange boy-like clothes with the infirmary’s grey cotton pants and t-shirt. The man was, as his colleague, Dante, put it, deliciously pretty. For a fleeting moment, Tobias wondered what it would be like to kiss those perfect lips and hold that muscular body to his own. He shook the thought away.

Dreft opened his eyes and a shy smile spread on his mouth. As Tobias neared him, he shuffled up the bed to sit. “Thank you so much for helping me, sir.”

Tobias pulled a chair beside the bed and sat. “My name’s Tobias, Tobias Mars—no need to call me sir. How are you feeling?”

The handsome man’s eyes held gratitude. “I’m so much better. Thank you. I noticed the insignia on your jacket, sir.”

Tobias grinned as his fingers went to trace the gold and blue embroidered crest. “I’m one of the queen’s pilot explorers. I guess you could call us the elite unit. All the same, call me Tobias. I’d like that.”

“I’ve heard that you have to be aristocracy to be chosen for the unit. Is that true?”

A little frown creased between Tobias’s eyes. “Have you? Where’d you hear that?” A spike of worry prevented him from answering with the truth. His intense security training from the warlock, Indigo Vaughn, threw a question into his mind. Could Dreft be a rival court’s spy or even assassin?

“Sorry. I mean no harm. I heard a lot of things during my years as a slave.” Dreft’s voice held anxiety. His blue eyes clouded.

Witnessing Dreft’s unease, a wave of kindness softened Tobias’s look and tone. “How long were you a slave?” He remembered Hari’s description of the scars on Dreft’s back.

Sadness passed in Dreft’s eyes. “Five years—I’ve been a slave since I was stolen from my home when I was eighteen. I, I’d become desperate, hence the leap from the ship when we cruised reasonably low to take water from the lake on the planet where you rescued me.” His voice cracked a little.

Tobias watched fear replace the sadness in the young man’s eyes. He wanted to lighten the mood. “Hey, are you hungry? I bet Hari hasn’t given you breakfast and I’ve not eaten yet. Do you feel up to a little walk? My home isn’t far. I have loads of food—fruit, pancakes, savory pastries, and coffee. What do you say?”

Dreft gave him the most endearing look. “I’m very hungry.”

Tobias stood and pushed the chair away from the bed. He held out his arm for Dreft to take and helped him stand. “Hang on. You have no shoes.” Tobias left Dreft perched on the side of the bed. He went to the closet inset at the end of the wall and brought back a pair of felt slip-ons for Dreft.

Dreft pushed his feet into them. “Thank you. I think the medicA threw away what I was wearing.”

“Hari is the best medicA available. I trust him implicitly, but he’s a hygiene fanatic. He probably burned what you were dressed in.” Tobias laughed. “Can you manage or will you take my arm. It’s a gesture of support.”

Dreft’s gaze raked Tobias’s face and he smiled softly. “I know the clothes you found me in probably gave you the impression I’m a pirate’s plaything. I’d like to explain—”

“You don’t need to—” Tobias hurried to assure Dreft.

“I want to.” He held Tobias’s arm.

“After you’ve eaten, then.” Tobias led the way from the room, along the corridor and out of the infirmary door. His villa was two doors down from Dante’s and he walked slowly favoring Dreft’s halting steps.

“I’m limping but Hari said my legs were only bruised under the abrasions. Sorry. I didn’t expect them to hurt so much. My ribs don’t and they were broken.”

“Hari fixed your ribs and administered slow release pain reliever at the site. He fixed your abrasions somewhat, but it’s good to heal naturally where possible. He wants you to rest.” A smile sprang to Tobias’s lips. “If he sees us, he’ll probably say to me, ‘Sir, you got Dreft Hann up too soon.’”

©E.D. Parr, Evernight Publishing, 2018

Find E.D. Parr

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In the Eye of the Wind - coming soon - a teaser

So, I promised book news, and here's the first bit, which I have shared through FB and IG etc, but not on my blog, and it's that my novel In the Eye of the Wind has been accepted for publication and will come out some time in January 2019.

This was a ridiculously fun story to write. It came out of nowhere when I was sketching D. Kovalev as an elf, and completely f*cked up his left eye. I became so irate that I blacked it out with a black patch, and I was blown backwards out of the water (metaphorically) by the obnoxiously sexy elf-pirate that ensued. Plot bunnies hopped away in all directions, but I was deeply entangled and my Victorian story (more about that soon) and I didn't want to start a new project.
My resolution lasted exactly 12 hours, after which I was swallowed into this short story... I had no idea where it was going, but it was to be light and short.
Except that D. Kovalev himself provided such an intriguingly dark interpretation to the original sketch that the whole thing sped off out of control in a whole new direction, acquiring a far more complex story arc than I had anticipated. How do you combine the idea of fun-filled Mediterranean pirate world with an elvish character possessed by a blood-thirsty, demonic "otherness"?
Well, as it turns out, it all fell in quite nicely with my old fantasy novel Spellbreakers, of which it became part sequel, part spin-off.

It was a fantastic romp into a world of beautiful ships, bantering pirates, scheming queens and the shadow of old black magic, and a much needed holiday from the more "serious" stories I have been writing lately.

It also ran to 92k words. So much for a light short story. Ahem.

Here's my sexy elf-pirate, Rikko'.

Blurb:

Born in the northern wastes of Kaleva in the middle of a devastating war between light and darkness, Rikko’ has found his way south to the warm shores of the Circled Sea, the first elver to ever turn pirate.

Forbidden by the rules of the Andalouan court to pursue such an ungentlemanly career,  Gael can only dream of ever becoming a doctor, and his medical studies remain unfinished until his aunt the Queen sends him on a covert mission to the pirate city of Beyas’kahl.

And here, after one night with Rikko’, all his loyalties are put to the test.

Queen Amata has reigned for three decades, and she always used her men cunningly. But even the best player can miscalculate, and her blunder places Gael first in slavery, then in a naval battle, and finally, worst of all, face to face with Rikko’s darkest and deadliest side.

Prologue (unedited): 

The midwives had gathered in the house at sunset, when the waters broke. The armed men had come too, and waited outside, except for Eikki, the father, who would have to do the deed, afterwards.

The men thought that it should have been done long ago, months ago, before it came to this monstrous screaming and the unnatural, accursed thing that was happening in there. They were uneasy. Men are always uneasy around a birth, but this was different. One of them, Juoni, had a wife in there, Anneli, one of the midwives, and he fidgeted near the door, fingering the hilt of his dagger, half in a mind to go in, and put an end to it all, whether or not the birth was over. No living woman should be in the presence of such evil, his wife least of all.

But The Elders had spoken. It had been agreed that the child should be born.

Inside, the mother was thrashing in the childbed, soon to be her deathbed. Her hands and feet were strapped to the sides of the frame, and her eyes had turned back into her head and gleamed like pale blind eggshells in the light of the fire. The midwives were silent. There was no point soothing or urging her on, as is normal at such times, or telling her to push, to hold, to breathe, not to throw her head around so. She was beyond their reach. Never had been such a birth, the mother screaming, screaming, screaming, barely muffled by the gag—because she was gagged, she had to be, lest she bites her attendants—and the midwives mute, standing back, waiting. All they could do was hoping the child would come anyway, of its own accord, and that the mother would not kill him on the way. That, and that the child would be … normal.

It had been hours already, and the woman, what was left of her, was becoming weak, too weak to scream in her gag, or fight her bonds. Her body was doing what a mother’s body should, but sluggishly, fitfully, without her will having anything to do with it.

“It’s coming, I think,” said Anneli in a dog-tired whisper.

It was almost dawn. The women, the living ones, stirred, approached, prodded and probed, inside and out, shivering at the touch of that tainted flesh, feeling for the little life inside. Was it alive? Was it alive?

When it came forth finally, in a great gush a dark blood—it looked like ink in the firelight—it was blue-grey and lifeless, and it had to be drawn out from that grey body with irons, like a knife out of a wound, but babies can be like that sometimes, when the mother has been ill, or has fought so badly. Anneli lifted it, him actually—it was a boy—wiped the little nose, slapped him and chafed him.

“Breathe! Breathe!” she said again and again, chafing, slapping. “Breathe!”

She didn’t want him to be dead. He must be alive, for the sake of the poor father, if nothing else. “Breathe!”

 And finally the tiny thing coughed, and a mewling cry came from him.

“Stay with me now. There, there, stay with me, my sweet…”

Anneli washed him in the warm water that waited by the fire, and rubbed his little limbs (each of them perfectly formed and pink now) and carefully opened his eyelids. A lustrous pale green eye in each. He was small, smaller than the littlest elf-child, but flawless, beautiful.

“He is … normal. A living child. Weak, but living. The taint is not on him,” she said, her voice breaking with emotion, as she cradled him and rocked him, poor orphan.

Eikki, the father, put his face in his hands. “Thank the gods,” he whispered. “May I hold him? Please?”

The women looked at him, all of them, except his wife.

“Do what you need first. For mercy, Eikki. Do it. She’s already gone, you know that.”

Eikki sighed, and walked to the childbed, like a man in sleep-walk. He looked at his wife’s unrecognizable face. She had been beautiful once, the light of his life. Now her flesh had melted from her bones. It had been hard to feed her. Her silvery hair had been sheared from her head. It had been impossible to brush it.

“Do it, Eikki,” said a voice from the door. The men had come in. They were there to make sure he did it. It was agreed.

He took his knife from the sheath, and looked at his wife one last time, and then he plunged the blade in her soulless heart. She didn’t even cry. There was just a sound like wind through dried leaves…

Juoni looked at the child and spit on the fire, as men did in those parts to ward off the Evil Eye.

“That should be killed too,” he said.

“Why?” said the midwife, protectively. “He hasn’t been touched. He’s one of us. There’s few enough of us as it is.”
“How can you know? There’s never been a child born of … of one of them. You don’t know if it shows. You cannot tell.”

“We will watch him. We will watch him close. You will not kill him though, not like this. Not a baby.”

She crouched about the child protectively, like a wild cat.

“It would be a mercy, Anni. You know it would be. There’s not a woman in the whole of Kaleva, the Elverlaen, or the Near Vaelta’a that will nurse him.”

“I’ll feed him,” said Eikki. “I’ll feed him. Goat milk will do. It’s been done before. He’s all that is left of her. Let me have him.”

They gave him the child in his towel, and he held him close and rocked him. Tears streamed down his face, but he smiled a little. Poor little thing, that he should come into the world like this, at such a time. He should see one smile at least, on his birthday. Tears fell off the father’s chin and onto his little mouth. The little lips stirred, licked, sucked. It should have been milk, thought Eikki. It should have been milk, not salt-water, the first thing he tasted.

“What will you call him?” said Anneli.

“Lasse. Lasse. That is the name she wanted… if it was a boy.”

“Lasse,” repeated the midwife, stroking the child’s pale head. He was fair, like his mother had been, one of the white northern race, one of the very last. “Lasse Eikkissen. May you find your way home, always.”

IN THE EYE OF THE WIND

coming

January 2019 

New Release - Blind Spot - Jessie Pinkham

I am always delighted to Have Jessie Pinkham on the blog. Her stories are beautiful and her guest posts always thoughtful and interesting! So read on to learn more about her newest release, Blind Spot, which just came out with Evernight Publishing.

My interest in friends-to-lovers stories starts with my own, as Mr. P and I were friends for two years before we started seeing each other romantically. Or, if you ask him, we spent two years going on a series of “non-date dates.” These are defined as spending time together when one person realizes it is basically a date, and the other (that would be me, I’m afraid) does not.
There’s a certain universality about the fears that come with moving a friendship to romance. What if it goes badly? You have this person in your life who means a great deal to you, and you know full well how often relationships end, so the odds are against your happily ever after. When I finally realized my interest in him went beyond the platonic, I was terrified.
What really tipped the balance for me was the recognition that we wouldn’t be able to maintain the status quo forever. A woman would come along and snap him up, because he’s quite the catch, and our friendship would inevitably suffer as his priorities shifted. Remaining friends wasn’t a guarantee he’d always be in my life. From that perspective, taking the leap to ask him out was, if not easy, slightly less terrifying. (Fun fact: he later told me he sat through my introductory spiel thinking, “Okay, get all this out so I can say yes already.”)
When I set out to write a friends-to-lovers story, then, the idea that you can’t end-proof a friendship was solidly in my mind. Ben is nothing like me. For one thing, I regrettably do not have a sixth sense for true love. Just as I did, though, he eventually has to wrestle with the fact that he could very well lose this man who means so much to him, with or without taking a risk on dating.
I had a lot of fun writing Ben’s supernatural ability, or as Isaiah calls it, cupidar. At the end of the day, though, Ben is just like so many of us who are trying to find a promise of happiness in a world that offers no such thing.

Blurb
Ben has a sixth sense for love. He can instantly pick out partners who will be together for life, like a modern Cupid. Unfortunately, his gift has a serious limitation: he can’t use it on himself.

Emotionally scarred by his parents’ acrimonious divorce, he doesn’t trust love he can’t sense. This drives him to bury his feelings for Isaiah, his friend with benefits, because he can’t stand the thought of losing him to a bad breakup. Then he finds out Isaiah is in love with him.

He’s used to dealing with guaranteed happily ever afters. Now he has to decide which is more important: the promise of forever, or the man he wants to spend it with.

Excerpt in Indented Format
He wished his grandfather was still alive to meet Isaiah, because then Pops would’ve been able to tell him if they were a match. Now all he could do was hope his cousin sobered up or by some miracle he found another person with his gift. Maybe he should see if there was a secret message board for this kind of talent.
After all, Cupid couldn’t shoot himself. Ben was his own blind spot, so he had no way of knowing if he and Isaiah were destined to make a great couple or not. It was disconcerting beyond all measure to look at other people and simply know, and yet have no clue whatsoever about himself. This explained his chronic singledom.
In the meantime, he and Isaiah were fantastic friends who sometimes hit the sheets together. It could’ve been a lot worse, and Ben tried not to dwell on any lingering dissatisfaction with his life. He wasn’t setting himself up for a protracted, messy breakup, and in his experience, avoiding such a trauma was worth not acting on a long shot.
Couples who weren’t a perfect fit broke up all the time. Friends, statistically speaking, stuck around much longer, and having Isaiah in his life was infinitely better than not, so friendship was a better choice.
They didn’t finish the pizza. Sex wasn’t as fun if the blood was going to your stomach instead of your cock due to stuffing yourself beforehand. When the leftovers were in the fridge Isaiah said, “I don’t want to think right now.”
He sometimes preferred to let Ben make the decisions so he could turn his brain off, and that suited Ben just fine, not least because it was an action he could take to make his friend feel better and escape shitty reality for a while. The sexiness didn’t hurt, either.
“I can be persuaded to take care of the thinking.”
“Yeah, your dick is reliable that way.”
This wasn’t just Ben’s dick, though it was admittedly signaling enthusiasm for the prospect. He wanted to give Isaiah happiness even more than he wanted to get off, and he also had an inkling that his priority here suggested he might need to reevaluate his stance on risk aversion at some point.
If only there was a way to know. The more these thoughts about Isaiah niggled at him, the more annoyed he got that he could, at least in theory, discern ideal partners for everyone else in the world and meanwhile be blind and deaf to his own man. But there was no way to find out, not at present anyway, and Isaiah was there asking for him to make the evening a sexy diversion, so that was exactly what he intended to do.
****
As expected, the condoms and lube were already on Isaiah’s nightstand, just waiting to be put to good use. Ben looked at them and briefly debated suggesting a bit of kissing before they got going. Then he rejected the idea. They didn’t kiss, as a general rule, and Isaiah didn’t need him changing the game today.
Instead he pulled Isaiah’s shirt over his head. There should be some kind of rule against covering up such a good-looking chest. Isaiah was all smooth brown skin and toned muscles, with no pesky hair obscuring the view.
“Always so hot,” he said. After all, everyone liked to hear something nice when they were having a bad day, and this was completely true.
Isaiah was getting better about accepting such compliments. You’d think by thirty-one a guy would believe it when someone told him he was hot, but he always compared himself to his gym rat brothers with their Mr. Universe abs and bulging pecs. Said brothers looked at ice cream like you were offering them arsenic. Ben much preferred Isaiah’s regular-guy hotness and willingness to join him for dessert as opposed to lecturing on the evils of refined sugar.
This time Isaiah smiled like he actually believed Ben. “You’re not too bad yourself.” Then he unbuckled his belt with a sultry gaze aimed at Ben’s crotch.
Ben appreciated the sound of a belt buckle being undone. There was so much potential in the situation, so many delightful permutations of fun to be had all wrapped up in glorious anticipation. Ever since he’d let this information slip, Isaiah had been working his belt to maximum advantage. Ben had no complaints.
He got a move on as far as his own disrobing went. Seeing Isaiah drop his pants was a good incentive there, and Ben unbuttoned his shirt as fast as possible. He had entirely too many clothes on.

Excerpt in Web Formatting
He wished his grandfather was still alive to meet Isaiah, because then Pops would’ve been able to tell him if they were a match. Now all he could do was hope his cousin sobered up or by some miracle he found another person with his gift. Maybe he should see if there was a secret message board for this kind of talent.

After all, Cupid couldn’t shoot himself. Ben was his own blind spot, so he had no way of knowing if he and Isaiah were destined to make a great couple or not. It was disconcerting beyond all measure to look at other people and simply know, and yet have no clue whatsoever about himself. This explained his chronic singledom.

In the meantime, he and Isaiah were fantastic friends who sometimes hit the sheets together. It could’ve been a lot worse, and Ben tried not to dwell on any lingering dissatisfaction with his life. He wasn’t setting himself up for a protracted, messy breakup, and in his experience, avoiding such a trauma was worth not acting on a long shot.

Couples who weren’t a perfect fit broke up all the time. Friends, statistically speaking, stuck around much longer, and having Isaiah in his life was infinitely better than not, so friendship was a better choice.

They didn’t finish the pizza. Sex wasn’t as fun if the blood was going to your stomach instead of your cock due to stuffing yourself beforehand. When the leftovers were in the fridge Isaiah said, “I don’t want to think right now.”

He sometimes preferred to let Ben make the decisions so he could turn his brain off, and that suited Ben just fine, not least because it was an action he could take to make his friend feel better and escape shitty reality for a while. The sexiness didn’t hurt, either.

“I can be persuaded to take care of the thinking.”

“Yeah, your dick is reliable that way.”

This wasn’t just Ben’s dick, though it was admittedly signaling enthusiasm for the prospect. He wanted to give Isaiah happiness even more than he wanted to get off, and he also had an inkling that his priority here suggested he might need to reevaluate his stance on risk aversion at some point.

If only there was a way to know. The more these thoughts about Isaiah niggled at him, the more annoyed he got that he could, at least in theory, discern ideal partners for everyone else in the world and meanwhile be blind and deaf to his own man. But there was no way to find out, not at present anyway, and Isaiah was there asking for him to make the evening a sexy diversion, so that was exactly what he intended to do.

****
As expected, the condoms and lube were already on Isaiah’s nightstand, just waiting to be put to good use. Ben looked at them and briefly debated suggesting a bit of kissing before they got going. Then he rejected the idea. They didn’t kiss, as a general rule, and Isaiah didn’t need him changing the game today.

Instead he pulled Isaiah’s shirt over his head. There should be some kind of rule against covering up such a good-looking chest. Isaiah was all smooth brown skin and toned muscles, with no pesky hair obscuring the view.

“Always so hot,” he said. After all, everyone liked to hear something nice when they were having a bad day, and this was completely true.

Isaiah was getting better about accepting such compliments. You’d think by thirty-one a guy would believe it when someone told him he was hot, but he always compared himself to his gym rat brothers with their Mr. Universe abs and bulging pecs. Said brothers looked at ice cream like you were offering them arsenic. Ben much preferred Isaiah’s regular-guy hotness and willingness to join him for dessert as opposed to lecturing on the evils of refined sugar.

This time Isaiah smiled like he actually believed Ben. “You’re not too bad yourself.” Then he unbuckled his belt with a sultry gaze aimed at Ben’s crotch.

Ben appreciated the sound of a belt buckle being undone. There was so much potential in the situation, so many delightful permutations of fun to be had all wrapped up in glorious anticipation. Ever since he’d let this information slip, Isaiah had been working his belt to maximum advantage. Ben had no complaints.

He got a move on as far as his own disrobing went. Seeing Isaiah drop his pants was a good incentive there, and Ben unbuttoned his shirt as fast as possible. He had entirely too many clothes on.

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News of all kinds-and Transgender Awareness Week

I have been long absent from my blog due to slow connection and laptop trouble, but I am back, and I have big NEWS!
First, there's two (TWO!!) novels of mine coming out early next year with Evernight. I am tremendously excited!

Then there is another novel in the works. And a short story that I must write really quick. I am terrible at writing to a deadline, so please, send me good vibes.

I will post more detailed info about all this in the next days!

Today, I want to draw your attention to my guest post on the Evernight Blog, about Transgender stories, written for Trans Awareness week.

I hope you will drop by and have a read!

Talk more soon!!