Cover art for Sonoran Heat!

Yes, we have cover art for Sonoran Heat! Trace Zaber did a lovely job of finding matches for the characters, right down to Tony's Van-dyke beard and Josh's shaggy hair and hot twink bod. I think he captured the desert theme of the book nicely, too:



Amber Allure's tentative release date for the e-book is September, with a print release soon after! Stay tuned!

Take pen, forget character; have keyboard, will txt.

My handwriting was never pretty to start with, and it has gone to complete crap in the years since I've come to rely on keyboarding as my primary mode of communication. My youngest child, who turns 8 soon and learned to do everything on the computer first, is at the top of his class but continually receives points off from his teachers for poor handwriting, prompting him to ask near-daily, "Why do I even have to write things down? We should use computers at school for everything!" Meanwhile, my intelligent teenagers have a hard time reading cursive (although they can write in it just fine), and they applaud the recent decision by some schools to phase out cursive as an obsolete form of writing.

A Japanese friend in her early 30s tells me kanji is becoming a lost art form in Japan, like calligraphy has in the West (and apparently cursive may become to Westerners someday, too?). It was with all this in mind that I noticed today's LA Times article on the current Chinese phenomenon of "tibiwangzi," which translates to "take pen, forget character":

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-china-characters-20100712,0,6032882.story

My opinion is that so long as there is a way to communicate, then it is the ideas that are key, not the medium. (Yes, spoken like a true e-book author, eh?) However, I do think it's sad to see such a lovely form of handwriting, and a significant piece of Chinese culture, go the way of the dinosaur.

Looking back to the Westside, I will always remember fondly the days I wrote 3 or 4 page letters by hand and then stuck them in that thing called a mailbox. Perhaps we should designate a few monks to hide out in the hills to preserve the art of plain old Arabic block writing, because you never know when we may all find ourselves without keyboards and/or printers. Just don't ask me to go back and transcribe this blog post to paper, because you will NOT be able to decipher it!

Sonoran Heat contracted with Amber Allure!

I'm pleased to announce my contemporary M/M novel Sonoran Heat has been accepted for publication by Amber Allure! I was invited to submit to Amber Quill Press last year, and am excited to be on board under their GLBT imprint. Tentative release date is scheduled around September in both e-book and print -- yes, my first stand-alone novel in trade paperback!

Sonoran Heat is the 48K word novel that evolved from free short story Sunrise at Mama Irene's. This story is a bit slower-paced on the seduction front than my other work -- well, at least compared to, say, Derek/Blue or Satori/Edwin, it's slower -- but I promise it's still hot! I also explore plain old internal conflict, so rather than face serial killers, forest fires, dust storms, or train wrecks, my characters simply confront issues that arise in their regular everyday lives. This is also the first M/M I've set in a named, non-fictional city -- in this case, Phoenix, where I've lived twice in my life. (Two of my het stories are set in real-world locations, but otherwise, I've usually invented my own crazy locales.)

While I enjoyed this shift in direction, and hope readers will too, at the same time, readers will recognize my preferred themes of May/December, hot college-age twink, etc. I just took a down-to-earth approach to them this time around. In the meantime, I thought I'd finally post a blurb so everyone can see what became of that little sunrise:

*****

Tony is newly single, lonely, and stuck in the past. When he grabs a late-night meal at an old haunt, his trip down memory lane is derailed by gorgeous waiter Josh. Tony sees a chance for a fresh start with the 21-year-old, but worries chasing a man half his age will lead to heartache. It's hard to resist when Josh intrigues him on an intellectual level -- and fires his libido hotter than the Arizona desert they call home.

Josh has goals. Digital design student by day, he waits tables at night, but his true dream is to paint. When he falls for Tony, he starts to rethink his plans and how the sexy older man might fit into them. But Tony's recovering from a failed relationship, one that lasted nearly as long as Josh has been alive, and Josh must prove that in spite of his age and inexperience, his feelings are sincere.

As the desert nights heat up, Tony and Josh explore possibilities both in and out of the bedroom, but when each man faces a difficult choice, they must decide on the future. Whether that future is together, or separate, is a matter of reason versus the heart.

****

So, there you go! Sonoran Heat -- coming soon from Amber Allure! Stay tuned for excerpts, cover art, and official release information!