A Stranger’s Touch and the Executioner’s Cane

Well, gosh, it’s been a wild weekend for writing news, I can tell you! Where do I start?? First off, I have a brand-new web page for my upcoming short story, A Stranger’s Touch, plus an extract from the beginning. It’s due out in eBook version on 24 January 2010, so should warm the chilly New Year, I hope. Here’s the glorious cover art provided by Amber Quill Press:

Ain’t it grand? I am soooo pleased with it I am virtually frothing at the mouth (hell, what an unpleasant image …). Huge thanks to Trace Edward Zaber who produced it! Here’s the blurb:

Male prostitute, Red, is given an assignment by his pimp and lover, Robbie, with a very unusual client. Red meets the stranger in a darkened house in London and, during their sessions, he learns more than he ever knew about lust, love and his own personal history. How will his curious and life-enhancing encounters with the stranger affect his relationship with Robbie and his clients, and can love ever be part of a hooker’s life at all?

Equally fabulous news is that Amber Quill Press have accepted The Hit List for eBook and paperback publication in Spring 2010, hurrah! Still frothing at the mouth then – sorry … So I’ve updated my web page here. No cover art as yet, but I’m very much looking forward to what Trace will come up with.

Finally, on the writing front, I’ve added in a new web page for The Executioner’s Cane, together with an extract, so I’m on the way with that one at last. Hurrah!

Phew! Can the weekend actually get any better? All I really need is for someone to say yes to The Gifting, for Waterstone’s to ring me up begging me to do a signing for them (as if …), and for Mondays to be cancelled everywhere, and my happiness would be complete. Keep wishing, eh.

Earlier in the week, Lord H and I also popped over to the dreaded Car Parking Hell that is Woking and saw Matthew Bourne’s latest ballet, Dorian Gray. Hmm. All very clever, but not a patch on the joys and heartfelt emotions of the male Swan Lake, which has to be Bourne’s best ballet yet. Heck, I could watch that one loads of times and never get bored. For this one, I thought there wasn’t enough colour on the stage or indeed plot, though the dancing was magnificent. You can’t ever emulate Wilde’s magnificent prose in a non-writing format really. If you see what I mean. And I actually did find myself wishing the menfolk would put some clothes on and stop simulating sex on stage quite so much – they must have been freezing, poor things, and it was putting me off my mint choc ice. The aircon in the theatre packs one hell of a punch. Am I turning into my grandmother after all?? God forbid.

And, mixing religion with sex (as ever), Lord H and I have had great fun sorting out the post-church coffees this morning. Ah, if only they knew what I’d been up to during the week in terms of literary and dramatic eroticism, perhaps they wouldn’t be quite so keen on having us smiling like little devils at the back, eh. Oh well.

Anne’s website – where sex and religion meet together

Full steam ahead and the breakfast sonnet

My review on Thomas Keneally’s The People’s Train (he also wroteSchindler’s Ark) is now up at Vulpes Libris. A challenging journey indeed …

In other writing news, I’m pleased to say that the lovely people on my online writing course seemed to have enjoyed my attempt at the sonnet form, though I fear it carries a hint of desperation in its innards. Here it is:

The Struggling Sonneteer

All through breakfast I try to rhyme
but cereals are not known for verse.
The sonnet mountain’s too hard to climb
and this first stanza could not be worse.

At lunch a sandwich fires the brain –
there’s much that is soothing in tuna and bread
but nothing inspires this second quatrain
and my poetic heart is full of dread.

Finally dinner arrives on the table;
pizza and ice cream’s a culinary bliss.
But the poem befits neither fact nor fable
and a glug of wine simply tells me this:

that the sonnet form is not my friend,
but look! At last we’ve reached the end.

Ah well. I fear it’s not Shakespeare, but then nothing ever is, eh. I also see that the Poetry School are doing another online course starting in January which looks very interesting, so I might well sign up for that if there’s space, even though it’s on a Monday. And, as you know, Mondays are Not My Best Day.

I’m also pleased to say that my contract for A Stranger’s Touch fromAmber Quill Press arrived yesterday, so I’ve signed a copy and sent it back to them today (or at least Lord H is doing the actual sending, Gawd bless him). And I’ve even remembered to include a copy of my US tax form details in the package – Lordy, how efficient I am, ho ho. I must also say I’m hugely impressed with their professionalism and efficiency – they even included an addressed envelope for me to use, which has never happened before. I felt bizarrely touched by that. Which probably just goes to show what a Sad Desperate Writer I really am. But, hell, you knew that.

Other hot news is that I’ve written the first 1000 words of The Executioner’s Cane (Part Three in the Gathandrian Trilogy, for those at the back not paying attention) and am happy with the current direction it’s travelling in. So far. I think this one’s going to have a fair amount about fathers in it – both Ralph and Simon have difficult relationships with their absent fathers. Of course I can sympathise with that issue (though one cannot blame one’s parent for dying, I suppose), which is why I imagine quite a few of my novels have fathers in them. There you go. I am just writing myself over and over again. Dammit.

Oh, and the big excitement of the day is that I scored 10 out of 10 in the Strictly Come Dancing quiz. 10 out of 10!!! I can’t believe how very very happy I am about it. It’s the best thing that’s happened all week! Lordy but I’m sad.

Anne’s sad life can be found in all its glory here

Fashionable, sporty or chilled?

Amidst a rather better day at work today (and at least no-one was bitchy to me, well hurrah, captain, and put out the ruddy bunting, eh …), I have been trying to arrange my annual eye appointment. Since last year it’s all gone more modern and now the Godalming optician circles appear to be bookable via the internet. Naturally, given the chance to avoid speaking to anyone at all, I will choose that route, so I spent a relatively happy ten minutes finding my store and picking a time. However, I fear it’s not that simple, oh no. Gone are the days when you could just admit your name and select a slot. Now, my dears, you have to answer questions on your lifestyle and the lifestyle of your glasses before you even get to the calendar questions. However, none of the choices relate to me at all, and I fear I had to make a decision between whether I and my specs are (a) fashionable, (b) sporty, or (c) chilled. Strangely there’s no option for bag-lady with an attitude problem – so much for widening participation then. I also find it strange that the glasses have a section of their own, so you can be sporty and they can be fashionable, and so on. Perhaps it’s a way of separating the misfits amongst us?

Anyway, after much consideration, my glasses and I decided we are both chilled, even though it’s fairly obvious that I am probably the most strung-out person in the universe, as the other options were even more ridiculous. I wait to see now whether my appointment will be confirmed. In the meantime, Lord H wonders whether this new approach will also affect the eye test itself and whether I will have to stare myopically at smaller and smaller pictures of beer bottles, sofas and televisions and see if I recognise them (substitute Armani and Farhi designs for the Fashionable set, and football club managers for the Sporty people) until my brain explodes … We wait and see.

In the meantime, here’s a calming poetry book with a pleasingly large font (ideal for Christmas): Salt and Gold.

Anne

Speaking Her Mind and other matters

Goodness me, what a stormy day it is here in southern England – I hope you’re all surviving the experience and keeping dry. I was foolish enough to venture out this morning for a paper and some lunch, and everyone seemed very bad-tempered. Must be the wind. As it were. I came home all peculiar and had to have chocolate to cheer up. Not much change there then.

Anyway, to provide a moment of warmth and cheer in the midst of all this weather gloom, I’m pleased to say that my romantic short story,Speaking Her Mind, can now be read at the Chick Lit Review. Which just goes to show that I do have lighter moods on occasions.

Also, much to my surprise, I’ve written the first 500 words (including an ending I might even be happy with when I finally arrive there …) of the final part in my Gathandrian trilogy. The working title is The Executioner’s Cane, but I’ll have to see if that stays or not. It’s hard to tell at this stage. Anyway, it’s a surprise to have started as I was planning not to even touch the beast until January, but Simon and Ralph have been snipping away at my head and I have finally given in to them. Never say I’m in control of the writing game, because I am most definitely not.

Anne.

Holiday delights and sandpiper porn

The holiday was great – the weather was kind and I loved it. The only slight problem was that for some reason I was sick as a dog the first night so was up for most of it. Unfamiliar bathrooms are never pleasant when you’re ill. Still, at least I got a lot of the puzzles in my Puzzler magazine done. How I love puzzles.

We also managed to see several new birds including a glorious great white egret which was absolutely stunning, twite, Dartford warblers (which we’ve been chasing for a while) and bearded tits (firsts for this year only). Ooh, and today we popped over to Staines and caught a brief glimpse of the brown shrike currently staying there, so that was fun. Less fun was the appalling amounts of mud there is all over the place – thank the Lord for Wellington boots, eh …

Quirky thing of the week: Lord H was reading through the latest copy of one of the birding magazines, who are having a big focus on encouraging sandpipers to breed more effectively. Husband is therefore now musing on what, exactly, sandpiper porn might be. Best not to go there really.

And on my return, I see that my short story, Speaking Her Mind, has been accepted for publication by the Chick Lit Review, and new e-publisher, Untreed Reads, is very interested in my literary short, How to Eat Fruit. So that all looks hopeful. Less hopeful is I’ve had my first rejection for the much-revised version of The Hit List, from a publisher who says my hero Jamie isn’t terribly nice at the start. Well, he’s a hell of a lot nicer than he was in the original, I can tell you, and with the amount of personal stress he’s under at the beginning, I’m rather surprised he hasn’t lost his temper with a lot more people, really. Is it just me or are GLBT heroes getting way too wimpy for words these days?? Anyone who’d like a kick-ass but basically kind-hearted GLBT hero with balls (as it were), please apply here. In the meantime, I’ve submitted it to a couple of other places, and we wait and see.

Anne

Champagne and Gold

I’m really pleased to say that Pink Champagne and Apple Juice is now available with its brand-new cover at Lulu Books. It should fairly shortly be available at Amazon and other online book stores too, so I’ll let you know when that happens.

In the meantime, I’m also very happy to say that Salt and Gold - which is a collection of the first forty of my meditation poems – is now available at Amazon US as well as atLulu Books. Ideal Christmas presents for all the family indeed …

I’ve also finished the final read-through of Thorn in the Flesh, ready for Lulu Books, but I’ll worry about that when we’re back from our holiday, I think. No point getting over-excited now.

Other news for these last few days is that Lord H and I thoroughly enjoyed a wonderful production of Jenufa at Woking last night. It’s a veritable plum of an opera, and includes dead babies, domestic violence, murder, love, hate and an incredible scene of forgiveness and hope at the end which gets me every single time I see it. Plus it has the dream role of Laca, the unloved brother who’s in love with Jenufa and has this astonishing journey of growth and maturity to take during the performance. He’s the man in the photo in the link. He was bloody good in the role, I must say too. Wonderful. Honestly, I could see that opera every single day and there’d always be something gut-punchingly good about it.

The only problem was attempting to get out of the car park in Woking afterwards. They have this new system that means you can prepay so you don’t have to queue with a million other opera-goers after the performance to get your ticket stamped. We’ve done this once before with no problems, but what we hadn’t realised is that there are 2 pay bands depending on whether you get there before or after 7pm. It doesn’t say anything on the machines about this, dammit, and neither does it give you a choice of payment. So, you’ve guessed it – we arrived before 7pm, and then at the barriers at 10.30pm the bloody things wouldn’t let us out. There were about 12 cars behind us getting angrier and angrier, but nowhere to reverse to as there were no gaps. Groan. Added to this the fact that we were in 2 cars, so once we’d contacted the little man at the end of the Help button and persuaded him to let Lord H out, we then had to go through the whole ruddy rigmarole again in order for me to make my escape. I swear, I was within seconds of being torn limb from limb by angry car parkers. It puts poor Jenufa’s problems entirely into perspective, though of course I would have been more than happy to throw a few dead babies into the baying crowds to fend them off, I can tell you …

Oh, and some lovely person has knocked my driver’s side wing mirror console off – though thankfully the glass is still intact, so that’s another job to do for after the hols. £100 is what it’s going to cost me – hell, I’m in the wrong business for sure. So currently, I have a car with a limp, poor thing. But hey ho and never mind – Lord H and I will be at the Westleton Crown in Suffolk for the next few days, so frankly my dears, right now, I don’t give a damn. Bring on the rain and the birds! Hope you all have a fabulous weekend.

Anne

Unexpected recommendation and Amazon difficulties

I was delighted to see yesterday that A Dangerous Man is one of the Recommended Reads for November on the Jessewave Review site – thank you so much. That’s cheered me greatly! Mind you, I’m rather miffed that Amazon UK are still insisting that the book is temporarily out of stock even though my publisher tells me that’s not true. Is it because it’s GLBT fiction and from a British publisher, I ask myself??… Heck, let’s not go there again, Amazon, eh. Not if we can help it … So if you do want to purchase a copy, or even find out more information, then at the moment it’s best to buy directly from Flame Books. Deep Amazon sigh.

I’m also pleased to say that Maloney’s Law and The Bones of Summer have both been given a five-star rating on Goodreads by a reader called Pushubuu. Thank you indeed!

In the meantime, I’m mulling over ideas for a review on Thomas Keneally’s new novel, The People’s Train, for Vulpes Libris. All I’ll say at the moment is goodness me, but it’s a heck of a long train journey and I’m really not sure about the quality of the stock it’s using. At the same time, I’m giving a final read through to Thorn in the Flesh to get it ready for going through the Lulu self-publication process, and the proof copy of the new Pink Champagne and Apple Juice is apparently winging its way to me even as I type. UK postal service willing, eh …

Anyway, in case you thought my life was now being consumed by books and writing (as if …), I must say I really enjoyed yesterday’s drama on TV about Winston Churchill, “Into the Storm”. Great stuff about a great, but difficult man – which is of course the best sort of man really.

Anne

Surreal thoughts on death and other matters

Well, it’s finally happened and Gladys died yesterday. An event waiting to happen for a long, long time, in my opinion. More shocking to note, possibly, is that all I can feel about it is a mild relief and the thought that I won’t have to schedule in my weekly twenty minute silent visit to her any more. Which, I have to say, is more than anything a scathing revelation of my sadly lacking sense of humanity. I’ve been told already by well-meaning friends what a shame it was for “poor Gladys”. Yes, well, it’s a pitiful end to a life – I don’t think dying in a nursing home in the grip of a terrible depression is anyone’s idea of a good ending – but I have to say I’m glad it’s over. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t.

What’s focusing my mind most of all is (a) the nagging worry that in forty years’ time (assuming I get that long), it’s going to be me. Well, like Gladys, I’m child-free from choice and with very distant family – though in my case that’s emotionally and not necessarily geographically. Frankly, I can’t imagine anything worse than dying with my blood relatives around me. God forbid. I haven’t been that greatly impressed with the sum of them during life, so what on earth would I want with them in the dying process? Oh, and (b) no matter how much I try to reassure myself from a Christian perspective, I have to admit I’m not at all enamoured of the thought of the afterlife. Really, I just don’t want to go there. I don’t like change and Heaven, should it exist, seems crowded with people – two of my worse-case scenarios indeed. I’d far rather – if I have to think about death at all – be somewhere nice and quiet with Lord H and not have to worry about anyone else. That would be Heaven indeed. Much like being at home then.

Anyway, things I remember best about Gladys and I think are important to note, both bad and good, are: (a) I have to admit I didn’t like her that much, though in some respects I admired her and was also, at times, sorry for her; (b) she could be quite cutting about aspects of my appearance (never great at the best of times) when she wanted to be (hence the (a) note); (c) she and her late husband Charlie stole the frogspawn from their landlord’s garden when they left the flat they were in to move to Godalming, and I thought that was hellishly stylish – it always made me smile; (d) she and Charlie used to go on a lot of serious walking holidays all over Europe when they were young and once had a sing-song with Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears on a cruise ship round the ship’s piano. Totally magical indeed. Oh, and (e) she generally disliked children – which, naturally, I thought was wonderful.

Anne

GLBT Rainbow fiction award

Just a quick note to say that, much to my astonishment, The Bones of Summer is a Jury’s Choice finalist in the Mystery/Thriller section of the new GLBT fiction Rainbow awards and you can see me on the list here.

Well, gosh, eh! That’s certainly put a smile on this screwed-up, mood-swing obsessed author’s face …

I’ve also managed to complete my latest GLBT short story, Airheads and Angels, and send it off to Dreamspinner Press for consideration for their upcoming A Brush of Wings anthology. Unusually, it’s a comedy. I’d almost forgotten I could even do comedy. And heck, I know I’m hugely early with submissions, but that’s what a secretarial background does for you. Hey ho.

Anne

Amber Quill author and a hundred uses for a milk frother

I’m very happy to say that my GLBT erotic short story, A Stranger’s Touch, has been accepted for publication by Amber Quill Press, and is lined up in their schedules for next January or February, at the moment of typing. I’m hugely pleased to be a new member of the Amber Quill team, as it’s so nice to have another avenue for submissions, and also lovely to get that particular story out there. It’s one I’m actually quite happy with.

Other exciting news for today is that I have a brand-new milk frother, which (hurrah! hurrah!) gives me access to cappuccinos whenever I want them. And … um … looks fairly rude too, I have to say. Do I feel another story idea coming on?? God forbid …

Anne Brooke