 The big news this week is that Brandywine Investigations: Family Matters has launched! Hooray! A couple of quick answers to questions from the launch:
Also: Fireworks and Stolen Kisses: Lijun 1 is scheduled to go to the betas this week. Cross your fingers for us!
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Happy Friday, everyone! A little bit of a reading for Dionysus from Books, Bulls and Bacchanals, the first story in the Brandywine Investigations: Family Matters. Poor Dio. Libraries are not his friends.  BRANDYWINE INVESTIGATIONS: FAMILY MATTERS
Pre-order links: Amazon Kobo iBooks Barnes and Noble The second Brandywine Omnibus contains books #4 and #5 (both full-length novels), plus a short story as a bonus. With his career firmly established and his reputation as a successful PI growing, Hades should have the perfect life with his human lover, his faithful ferryman, his dogs and the parts of his family still speaking to him. But murder and chaos are never far away for death lords as his nephew Dionysus and his oldest friend Charon are drawn into the maelstrom. Includes: Books, Bulls, & Bacchanals: Brandywine Investigations #4 The god of wine and orgies teams up with the librarian of the gods to investigate a murder. Should go well, don't you think? Midwinter Dancing: Brandywine Investigations #4.5 Ing's grandmother has always told her about meeting the old gods. She's never believed it until one snowy midwinter night. Pack Up the Moon: Brandywine Investigations #5 Death isn't working within normal parameters. Charon the ferryman needs to figure out why before it's too late, with or without the help of a certain, paws-in-everything raccoon god. Please note: Books, Bulls & Bacchanals has been re-edited with a few story adjustments for this edition. For those of you steeped in classical literature, none of this will be news. (Skip forward and buy the story - you'll have fun with it ;) ) For those not as familiar, a little bit about why the heck I'd want to write about a minotaur. Properly, of course, it should be THE Minotaur, capitalized and said with a certain sense of dread, but when you write fantasy you get to assume that perhaps there was more than one. I digress. The story of the Minotaur, in brief, is that King Minos of Crete made a promise to Poseidon that he didn't keep, Poseidon got mad and sent a beautiful bull to the island and then made Minos' wife Pasiphae, fall in love with it. Yeah. The myth goes there. We'll skip ahead... Pasiphae has a child with this bull and it's not quite right. It had the head of a bull and the body of a man. She tries to do right by the baby, but it grows up huge and fierce and starts eating people. Mom and stepdad shut the Minotaur up in a labyrinth and send it sacrifices from vassal kingdoms. Eventually a prince from Athens, Theseus, comes along and slays the Minotaur and ends the terrible consumption of youths and maidens. So far, so good. Thing is, the story we know is, not shockingly, told from an Athenian point of view. The Minoan culture on the island of Crete didn't leave much behind for us in the way of their own stories. But when people studied the ruins of Knossos on Crete, they started to put some things together. The bull was revered in Minoan culture and there were bull dancing ceremonies where athletic young people vaulted bulls using their backs and horns. Some accidents probably occurred, but I very much doubt the bulls had any interest in eating humans. (Eeeew, say all the bulls.) The labyrinth as well is most likely an exaggeration of the complexity of Minoan architecture, which did tend to be twisty and turny. I guess the Athenians didn't like that. So what we see in the myth of the Minotaur is partly cultural misinterpretation and partly a once conquered people telling stories about the evil oppressor - whether the stories were true or not. It's this and the general character of Theseus himself - he was a total jerk - that's always made me more sympathetic to the Minotaur. I've often wondered what he was really like. In Bulls, Books and Bacchanals, I finally got to tell the Minotaur's side of the story. Somewhere deep down, I think I've always wanted to. Releasing next Wednesday. Up for pre-order now;  BRANDYWINE INVESTIGATIONS: FAMILY MATTERS
BRANDYWINE INVESTIGATIONS #2 Amazon Kobo iBooks Barnes and Noble With his career firmly established and his reputation as a successful PI growing, Hades should have the perfect life with his human lover, his faithful ferryman, his dogs and the parts of his family still speaking to him. But murder and chaos are never far away for death lords as his nephew Dionysus and his oldest friend Charon are drawn into the maelstrom. Includes: Books, Bulls, & Bacchanals: Brandywine Investigations #4 The god of wine and orgies teams up with the librarian of the gods to investigate a murder. Should go well, don't you think? Midwinter Dancing: Brandywine Investigations #4.5 Ing's grandmother has always told her about meeting the old gods. She's never believed it until one snowy midwinter night. Pack Up the Moon: Brandywine Investigations #5 Death isn't working within normal parameters. Charon the ferryman needs to figure out why before it's too late, with or without the help of a certain, paws-in-everything raccoon god. Please note: Books, Bulls & Bacchanals has been re-edited with a few story adjustments for this edition.
Hello and happy Friday! It's been a bit since the last reading :o Today, we return with a excerpt from J. Scott Coatsworth's second novel in his Oberon Cycle. Lander, in the middle of its grand book tour, launched February 13. Stay with us to the end of the post for the giveaway!
Lander
Oberon Cycle 2 Dreamspinner eBook Dreamspinner paperback Amazon US Barnes & Noble Kobo iBooks QueeRomance Ink Sometimes the world needs saving twice. In the sequel to the Rainbow-Award-winning Skythane, Xander and Jameson thought they’d fulfilled their destiny when they brought the worlds of Oberon and Titania back together, but their short-lived moment of triumph is over. Reunification has thrown the world into chaos. A great storm ravaged Xander's kingdom of Gaelan, leaving the winged skythane people struggling to survive. Their old enemy, Obercorp, is biding its time, waiting to strike. And to the north, a dangerous new adversary gathers strength, while an unexpected ally awaits them. In the midst of it all, Xander’s ex Alix returns, and Xander and Jameson discover that their love for each other may have been drug-induced. Are they truly destined for each other, or is what they feel concocted? And can they face an even greater challenge when their world needs them most?
Author Bio:
Scott lives between the here and now and the what could be. Indoctrinated into fantasy and sci fi by his mother at the tender age of nine, he devoured her library. But as he grew up, he wondered where the people like him were. He decided it was time to create the kinds of stories he couldn’t find at Waldenbooks. If there weren’t gay characters in his favorite genres, he would remake them to his own ends. His friends say Scott’s brain works a little differently – he sees relationships between things that others miss, and gets more done in a day than most folks manage in a week. He seeks to transform traditional sci fi, fantasy, and contemporary worlds into something unexpected. He runs Queer Sci Fi and QueeRomance Ink with his husband Mark, sites that bring queer people together to promote and celebrate fiction that reflects their own reality. Author Website: https://www.jscottcoatsworth.com Author Facebook (Personal): https://www.facebook.com/jscottcoatsworth Author Facebook (Author Page): https://www.facebook.com/jscottcoatsworthauthor/ Author Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/jscoatsworth  For those who heard me read from Pack Up the Moon in Rhode Island and at Annie's Book Stop in Worcester (nearly a year ago), it's finally here. Brandywine Investigations: Family Matters is the second Brandywine omnibus to release. The first one, Brandywine Investigations: Open For Business, contained the first three novella length Brandywine stories. (About 125K words total.) This one contains book 4, novel length Bulls, Books and Bacchanals, 4.5 , the short story Midwinter Dancing, and book 5, novel length Pack Up The Moon. The new omnibus comes in at about 136K words. Um, those are a few words, there. Thank you for you patience and I hope you enjoy. I do suggest that the stories be read in order, so if you're at all interested in gods in the modern world, red panda library assistants and what really happened to a certain legendary dragon, I suggest starting with the first omnibus. If you've been waiting for the second? Here it is... Brandywine Investigations: Family MattersRelease Date February 28
Pre-order links: Amazon Kobo iBooks With his career firmly established and his reputation as a successful PI growing, Hades should have the perfect life with his human lover, his faithful ferryman, his dogs and the parts of his family still speaking to him. But murder and chaos are never far away for death lords as his nephew Dionysus and his oldest friend Charon are drawn into the maelstrom. Includes: Books, Bulls, & Bacchanals: Brandywine Investigations #4 The god of wine and orgies teams up with the librarian of the gods to investigate a murder. Should go well, don't you think? Midwinter Dancing: Brandywine Investigations #4.5 Ing's grandmother has always told her about meeting the old gods. She's never believed it until one snowy midwinter night. Pack Up the Moon: Brandywine Investigations #5 Death isn't working within normal parameters. Charon the ferryman needs to figure out why before it's too late, with or without the help of a certain, paws-in-everything raccoon god. Please note: Books, Bulls & Bacchanals has been re-edited with a few story adjustments for this edition. It really is - no sarcasm hiding in that title. I'm so pleased and...we need a British term here - dead chuffed when readers and reviewers enjoy my odd little romps into fictional worlds. From last year's crop of stories, there are some that have been nominated for awards. :o EPIC Award Finalists I have two titles in the Fantasy/Paranormal Romance category as finalists this year. EPIC judges everything together, so there's no separation for LGBTQ stories. It's fabulous to see how many queer stories are included in the finalist categories. It appears that winners are announced in June, but it's wonderful to have a spots in the finals. The two titles competing against each other in the same category? (I know, that was silly of me.)
Second, the Paranormal Romance Guild has their annual Reviewer's Choice Awards up and these you get to vote on! Jackalopes and Woofen-poofs is up for LGBT/PARANORMAL/METAPHYSICAL MYSTERY THRILLER and Offbeat Crimes is up for LGBT/PARANORMAL/METAPHYSICAL MYSTERY THRILLER – SERIES You can vote for all the lovelies at the Paranormal Romance Guild Reviewer's Choice Awards until February 18. If you're looking just for the LGBTQ titles, you do have to scroll down a bit.  Last but not by any means least, Brandywine Investigations: Family Matters is with the proofer. We're nearly there! I have seen the lovely art work by Rebeckah Murray for the cover, but the typography is in the works and I can't show you yet. *cries* Soon, my precious, soon.... *pets cover* Happy Thursday, everyone! Just one quick bit of news this morning while we anxiously await cover art for Brandywine (eeeee!) - Finn and the Endangered Fae series now have a coming soon page on Pride Publishing. Woohoo! Finn goes up for pre-order April 10, release date is May 22. :)  |
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About Angel
Angel writes (mostly) Science Fiction and Fantasy centered around gay heroes. Currently living part time in the hectic sprawl of northern Delaware and full time inside her head, she has one husband, one son, two cats, a love of all things beautiful and a terrible addiction to the consumption of both knowledge and chocolate. |
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