So I’ve decided to make a change in my charitable giving for “A Little Too Broken.”  As of October 1, I’m replacing WWP with “Puppies Behind Bars.”  This is an agency that trains prison inmates to raise service dogs for wounded war veterans and explosive detection canines for law enforcement.  This agency has a four-star Charity Navigator rating, which is important to me (IAVA also has this rating), and I think its mission is perfect for this book, given that Tom runs an agency that provides service dogs to vets 🙂  Which means, ah crap, repubbing everything everywhere with new content to update the message about the charitable contributions.  Oh well :0 [MORE]

(Side note.  The “bank error” aka insurance error in my favor that was supposed to be “expedited” three weeks ago hasn’t been “expedited,” obviously, since I don’t have a check yet.  I guess in their world expedited means they’ll actually do it someday.  So the $560 from August that I was planning on donating earlier than I get it from Amazon, well, it’s still in limbo.) I don’t know.  Everyone has haters, but these articles are depressing.  From this Daily Beast article: “The Wounded Warrior Project has also gotten mixed results from charity watchdogs: Charity Watch gave Wounded Warrior a C+ in 2013, up from a D two years prior. Charity Navigator gave it three out of four stars. WWP claims to currently spend 80 percent of its budget on programs for veterans. But their formulation includes some solicitations with educational material on it as money spent on programs. A 2013 collaboration between the Tampa [MORE]

Ohhh, you know, when you’re rolling, you’re rolling.  2000 words this morning! This weekend I went back and reread “Apollo’s Curse,” and you know what?  It’s fucking GREAT.  I mean, as a novel, period, never mind a gayrom or anything else.  It’s my best work ever under this name or any other.  And it really does “read like a movie.”  I could see Wes Anderson making a movie out of it!  Seriously, he could do wonderful things with all the stories-within-a-story.  I dreamed that Daniel Radcliffe read it and loved it and bought the rights and wanted to star as Dane!  It could happen 🙂  I know that someday, this book will make my name.  It’s that good.  And I’m a harsh self-critic, as you know. But while I wait for my own personal Miracle Day, it’s back to work!  Rocky and Dex is flowing right out of my fingers now.  Took me a lot of hunting to finally get the research material I needed to write this [MORE]

So I was cruising photos this morning, and look what I found in my downloads folder – another HAWT PIC of Francesco Cura as a rock star!  I think I set it aside because it’s landscape and thus not quite perfect for a book cover, but…FUCK HE’S SO HAWT. The guitar is more prominent than in the “Standing” one, but of course in the standing one you can see his hawt bod 🙂 And of course while cruising the Curaphotography pix at Depositphotos, I found some new inspirations.  Francesco can pick ’em!  This dude, for instance, is going to get a little “red eye” in the pupils, and become a daemon in a future “Rob the Daemon” story.  He’s definitely got the devil in him!         And this last dude, well, sometimes you see a pic that makes you want to write a story just for that pic.  This “instagrammy” dude just cries out for a hot dirty story set in LA in the 70s, doesn’t [MORE]

So about half this is edits to the original excerpt, so if you remember that, and don’t care how the sausage is made (or remade) and you wanna skip ahead, just search on the words “Rocky was glad” and you’ll go right to the new content 🙂 I am loving this book.  Love love loving it.             “Hey, uh, Rocky…?” Rocky turned to the sound of the inquiring voice.  Without even thinking, he put on his “fan smile,” ready to sign an autograph and put out about two sentences worth of chit-chat.  Then he’d make his excuse about getting ready for the show and find out why someone had let a fan onstage during a sound check. But it wasn’t a fan after all.  It was Adam, the stage manager, looking abashed. “There’s a problem.” “Okay,” Rocky sighed.  “Let me have it.” “We, uh, someone anyway, made a mistake in the booking department.  And um, this stage is double booked.” “Well, I just did my line [MORE]

You know I just love…dudes.  Guys who aren’t posed and styled and clipped and preened and groomed within an inch of  their lives.  Yeah.  Like this random dude someone posted to Facebook.  He looks like some real guy who someone snapped a picture of one day.  He looks like he’s gonna finish mowin’ the lawn, and then he’s goin’ inside to have a beer, but he’s not gonna shower, because I’m comin’ over to pull those shorts down and lick the sweat off his balls 🙂  Yeah.  That guy.  That’s what I want. Oh, and Rocky and Dex! 2300 words this morning whoo!  I’m back at full steam ahead, baby!  This is going to be a REALLY GOOD ONE.  I’ll have another excerpt for you soon [MORE]

Sometimes I think I’m too hard on myself in the “research department.”  We all know I was too hard on “The Worst Best Luck,” beating myself up because I didn’t go all Method Actor and become an auto mechanic before writing one as a character.  And now I’m angsting over Rocky and Dex because I don’t know shit about music production or exactly what their vocal ranges are, and so on.  So I’m kind of froze up out of terror that I’ll fuck it up. That said, right now I’m reading Francine Prose’s “Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932.”  And of her many characters, one of the mains is a race car driver/mechanic, and the other is a photographer.  And you know what?  There is hardly a single detail about what racing, car repair, or professional photography involve.  Is it still a good story?  Oh yeah.  Do I feel like something is missing?  Well, no.  The way she’s written the book, [MORE]

WHOO! I got my first Five Star review from Mark Wills and Sinfully Sexy!  Mark has always been a “fair grader” on my other books, so to get a fiver from him gives me a happy 🙂 Check out the review of “Apollo’s Curse,” my long interview with Mark, and enter to win the Rafflecopter giveaway for one of 10 free copies! [MORE]

I posted this to Facebook, but if you aren’t my FB friend, and you should be, here it is again 🙂 Your favorite virtue: Honesty. Your favorite qualities in a woman. Smart, funny, loyal. Your favorite qualities in a man. Smart, funny, hung. Your chief characteristic. I’m fookin’ brilliant! (I guess that makes arrogance my chief characteristic.) What you appreciate the most in your friends. Honesty, loyalty. Your main fault. Self-criticism, the inability to let myself off the hook for any failing. Your favorite occupation. Writing a fantastic book. Your idea of happiness. Reading a fantastic book. Your idea of misery. Strapped to a chair with my eyes taped open, forced to watch a never-ending loop of Adam Sandler movies. If not yourself, who would you be? David Mitchell (because I’d want to be the moistest fantasticest author on the planet today). Where would you like to live? Where I am now, but with milder summers and just a little more rain. Your favorite color and [MORE]

I really want to get it out there again, raise the “visibility” of a book that probably isn’t doing so well because I spent so much time knocking it myself.  For no good reason, other than authorial anxiety and negative self-talk! Otherwise, I’m not feeling too supercharged right now.  I should be working on Rocky and Dex, pumping out the words, but my well is dry.  Of course, I did just write a 10,000 word outline of the *entire novel* a week ago, so I guess a break is in order while the sediment settles, eh 🙂  But that would involve giving myself some slack, and that just won’t do, right?  Well, sometimes you gotta give yourself slack, or you’ll just break the rope, right? [MORE]