Finding Reasons to Celebrate

Today is National Coming Out Day and October is Queer Romance Month. Both great reasons to celebrate.                              

Invitations: To recognize, celebrate, and advocate love is love, Queer Romance has a whole site with great blogs and stories. Check it out. 
Also, I request the honor of your presence. Stalk me by liking/following my Author Fan Page on Facebook, or GoodReads, or Amazon. Three more places to party.

Party Favors: G.I. Joe Holiday, my Navy SEAL Christmas story where Declan Mathews comes out to his family, is free on Smashwords. Don't use  Smashword? No problem, comment below with the file type and I'll send it to you.

Toast: *thunks side of glass* I want to thank you all for coming. I was speaking to a mentor this morning about reoccurring themes in my writing. She says I write about outliers. The Amazons, Mightys, Blue Hairs, Navy SEALS, Bi-Sexuals, Gays, uptight accountants and rugged adventurers...People who are trying and succeed at finding their place in life, but only after they are brave enough to say, "I deserve, have earned, a right to a Happily Ever After. This is who I am and I'm proud." Let's give these brave souls around of applause.

Parting Gift: Bravery Not Included is now just $2.99 at these fine retailers. Amazon and Smashwords. The print version will be available by the end of the month.

Go forth and enjoy your gifts and thank you for coming.

Bravery Not Included - Excerpt

Bravery Not Included launches my Amazon series. Here is the excerpt:

Being an Amazon didn’t automatically make you a morning person. “Whose idea was it to go so f’ing early?” Liesel Grant turned her head so her little sister wouldn’t see her stifle another yawn. She could always attribute the moisture in her eyes to the glare of headlights from other cars. Harriett saw anyway and laughed, the dork.

“It’ll give us more time to talk.” Harry grinned at her sister, annoyingly chipper and fully awake without the aid of caffeine. “This once-a-week get together has been canceled twice.”

 Liesel could hear the hurt in her sister’s voice. “I really am sorry I canceled last week.”

 “You’d better be. And you can prove just how sorry by buying breakfast.” Harriett kept her eyes on the road.

“Crap, Harry. I’ll do better—”

“What? Like it’s just you?” Her baby sister flipped her golden hair off her shoulder to look at Liesel. Then Harry looked back at the road and sighed. “How long since you’ve seen Karma for anything but babysitting? She doesn’t return my calls and I’ve not seen her for over a month.”

Liesel didn’t want to fight. The sun had to be up before people could fight. It was a rule. And if she tried to defend their older sister Karma, they’d fight. It wasn’t that she didn’t agree with Harriett. She did. But you stuck up for your sister.

Headlights flashed in their eyes again as they took the sharp corner. A Suburban ignored the twist in the road, popped the curb, hit the canal’s guardrail and kept going. The sound of steel folding like aluminum foil, ground down Liesel’s spine as the Suburban pushed through the metal barrier. The sound, like a fucking dog whistle, had all her senses on full alert. It switched Liesel to ready mode.

Done and Off

I reached my goal and submitted Bravery Not Included to Carina Press. Woot! Now we wait. Here is the blurb from the query letter.

Amazons, once facing extinction and scattered across the world, have re-emerged through HOAX – Home Of the Amazon eXchange – a website developed by Leisl Grant. But someone is kidnapping Amazon children, children who only have one thing in common;  HOAX. P. I. Jim Griffon has been hired to find the missing kids. Jaded, manipulated and used by powerful women in the past, Griffon refuses to work with Leisl to uncover the kidnappers.

Can Griffon put his trust in a woman? Has Leisl’s hunt for truth exposed her people to danger? And when Griffon discovers Leisl is an Amazon – stronger than he could possibly imagine – can they find love?

This is the logo I see Leisl using on her website. HOAX. Like?

Thank you for all the encouragement via Facebook. You all rock!