Release Blitz: All That is Sold Melts Into Air by C. Koehler #LGBTQ #NewAdult @christopherink @GoIndiMarketing

 

Title: All that is Solid Melts into Air

Series: The Lives of Remy and Michael, Book Two

Author: C. Koehler

Publisher: NineStar Press

Release Date: 02/22/2021

Heat Level: 3 - Some Sex

Pairing: Male/Male

Length: 107500

Genre: Contemporary, LGBTQIA+, Contemporary, romance, new adult, family-drama, gay, sports, college, rowing team, HIV positive

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Description

Remy thinks life after high school will be easier. He’ll go to California Pacific for a year while he gets a handle on his HIV, then after Michael graduates from high school, they’ll blast out of there for colleges—and life—on the East Coast. Then Remy visits Boston and everything changes. He realizes he likes CalPac. Turns out, Boston doesn’t have anything for him beyond one of the biggest regattas in North America.

Life grows more complicated when he gets home. He can’t find a way to tell Michael that he’s just blown their plan for their lives out of the water. Then Remy’s CalPac coaches drop a bomb on him. Those rowing officials who have been watching him? They are recruiters for the national team, and his coaches want him to try out. They’ll even let Lodestone coach him. Now he has to choose, school or crew, CalPac or Michael, and he still hasn’t told Michael he can’t transfer. Is there even a place for Michael in his life? Somehow they have to withstand training at the highest levels and having different goals. Will love hold them together…or tear them apart?

Excerpt

All that is Solid Melts into Air
C. Koehler © 2021
All Rights Reserved

Chapter One

So far, I’d made it halfway through the first semester of my freshman year at California Pacific, and you know? I had to admit that it didn’t suck. I know, I know, that was a bizarro thing to say about one’s choice of school, but there’s something you had to remember. CalPac was most assuredly not my choice of school. I made some very…I’ll call them colorful…choices the summer before my senior year of high school, and the gods of indiscriminate love rewarded me with HIV. It almost killed me—mostly because I neither told anyone but my brother and my boyfriend, nor did I seek medical care—but my parents made a decision I resented at the time: rather than sending me across the country to Boston University, as I wanted, they spoke to the men’s crew coach at CalPac. Between their persuasion and some fast talking from my high school coach, the ever-awesome Peter Lodestone, I wound up going to the local private university in the Sacramento area with a full-ride scholarship so long as I stayed brilliant in the boats. Mom and Dad’s idea was that I spend my first year in college at CalPac as I learned to quote, unquote manage my condition, and at the end of that we’d discuss transferring.

I flipped out when they dropped this bomb on me, and I dropped an R-bomb on them in return. R-bombs. That’s what Michael affectionately called my rages. They’re like daisy cutter cluster bombs but involved words and caused a lot more damage. All my plans—all our plans, as Michael and I had our future worked out—gone, just like that. But my parents knew me well, surprisingly enough, or at least knew my temper, and to take the sting out of it, they made a contract with me: in return for my cooperation, they gave me a notarized promise that at the end of my freshman year I could transfer to the school of my choice. Or maybe the school of my choice that chose me back might be a better way to phrase it. At the time I felt so sure of my future. Row my seat, keep my grades up at CalPac while I applied to BU, and bide my time while Michael finished high school. As soon as he graduated, I’d transfer so fast people behind me would get pneumonia from the wind in my wake. Michael and I would stay on the same schedule on the East Coast. That was the Plan. I’d worry about NCAA eligibility later.

Oh, and then there was my father’s edict that despite the fact they lived across the Yolo Causeway from CalPac, I would live in the dorms. That went over well.

“You’ve got to make the break, Remy,” my dad had said.

As I recall, I made a face. “Dad, no. I’ll be what, fifteen miles from home? How much of a break could I possibly make?”

“Trust me.” Dad snorted. I remembered that clearly. “Once you’re there you’ll realize we might as well be on the moon. It’ll seem like a world away, and one more thing—you can come home maybe once in a while, but under no circumstances will your mother and I allow you to come every weekend.”

“What? Why not?” I think I whined.

Then Mom jumped in. “That seems a bit harsh, Steven.”

“He’ll never make the transition to any kind of independence if he does, Dina. He’ll be more likely to drop out, and he’s too good a student to allow that. I can show you the research if you want.”

“There’s research?” Mom had sounded surprised, and I didn’t blame her. Dad could be autocratic sometimes.

I still saw Dad nodding. “You bet there is, hon. This isn’t me being arbitrary, for once.”

“Then I agree,” Mom had pronounced before turning to me. “We want you to stay close to home to make sure you learn what you need to know about your HIV from Dr. Kravitz, not to create a state of permanent dependency.”

So, there I was at CalPac and living in the dorms. There was one thing I was absolutely unprepared for when I agreed to all of this with my parents.

I loved CalPac.

No matter how much I held myself back, no matter how hard I tried to cultivate a “just passing through” attitude, no matter how hard I tried to remember that Michael and I dreamed of life together on the East Coast, I grew more and more attached to this small private school among the leafy greenness of Sacramento. That proved to be a major roadblock to my plans for escape, to the Plan. The campus was beautiful. Unlike some local schools I could name, the buildings at CalPac didn’t look like poured-concrete monstrosities or cheap interpretations of New England campus Gothic. CalPac’s campus was a place all its own, its architecture unique, suited to its environment, like the building committee actually listened to the school’s Architecture and Design Department instead of whatever was trendy when new buildings were approved. The result was a campus at peace with its host city and the surrounding geography. Okay, some of it stuck out. The Art Department owed a little too much to Dalí and whatever came after postmodernism, and the History Department looked like a Renaissance palace in the Florentine style, only smaller. The scale was all wrong, and it made me giggle every time I walked by. But mostly everything worked.

I hit my second roadblock not long after I moved into the dorms, only I didn’t know it. More of my obliviousness to everything that didn’t involve rowing shells and oars, I guess. This was hardly a revelation. Michael and Goff both had teased me about that for years, telling me I needed a keeper. I’d been counting on Michael fulfilling that role. I knew I would always find my way to the boathouse—whatever boathouse I was currently rowing out of—but the rest? I needed firm guidance, and how lucky was I that Michael liked to provide firm guidance? My pants always got a little uncomfortable when I thought about Michael and his firm guidance too much.

Anyway, my plan to bail when Michael finished high school also meant I at first held myself aloof from collegiate life, so maybe that’s why I missed all the signs that my roommate at the very least thought I was an asshole and more likely hated me. I promised myself I’d get my head out of the clouds one of these years. But the air was so much fresher up there…

I thought we had had a decent roommate-type relationship, although I had no real grounds for comparison other than what Goff, as I called my twin brother, Geoff, and his girlfriend, Laurel, told me. Okay, Laurel lucked out with her roommate. A month into the fall quarter at UC San Diego and, according to Laurel, she and Olive were as close as sisters. Goff and his roommate were taking longer to warm up, but that’s because Goff was pretty sure Craig was gay but hadn’t admitted it to himself, let alone to Goff. Goff knew that once Craig came out it would all be fine. I tried to caution Goff not to push the issue, but he brushed me off. After all, what did I know, I was only gay. I was sure Craig would be subject to all manner of “my brother and his boyfriend” stories in the coming months. The thought of meeting this guy made me cringe.

Anyway, Brady Watts and I might not have hit it off like Laurel and Olive, but we were at least cordial. Or so I thought until one afternoon. Brady and I waited outside a classroom in the Life Sciences building for our fresher seminar to start. CalPac trotted all freshpeople—yes, it’s that liberal and averse to gendered language—through a series of half-semester seminars. They were part breadth requirement and part help choosing a major and included the social sciences (boooring), life sciences, physical sciences, and humanities. CalPac was a semester school, so we started our fall semester in early August and ran sixteen weeks until the middle of December. We had barely started our second eight-week seminar, life sciences, obvs. I already knew the life sciences were for me.

So anyway, a bunch of us were waiting for class to start, and I wasn’t the only one with earbuds in, listening to my jam. I was, apparently, the only one not blasting said jams.

I heard someone say, “Stuck-up asshole.”

That someone was Brady.

Ouch. I tried not to let it show. I clenched my jaw, instead.

Then I got angry.

It was not as if he and I never spoke. We both spent time in our room. He knew why I got up stupid early in the morning and why I went to the gym every afternoon. He knew where I was from, just as I knew he hailed from LA, hated Sacramento, and wasn’t adapting well to college. He knew I had a twin brother whom I missed terribly, and I knew he had a little sister who had died young from an anaphylactic reaction to antibiotics. The only thing I hadn’t told him was my serostatus. If I ever cut myself and bled everywhere, then I’d tell him that too. What more did he want from me?

I shoved all of this aside. I had a class. I’d deal with my roommate later. Thank God I was a master of compartmentalization.

Later that evening, after I’d returned from weightlifting and seeing Michael, I faced Brady. It’s not like I had a choice. He glowered at me when I came back to our room.

Seriously, he looked up from his reading when I walked in. Then he went right back to his studying with the most dismissive glance ever. Not even Michael looked at me like that when we were on the outs before my senior year of high school. If looks could kill…

Of course, back then Michael had ignored me too studiously for it to count. Me, I’d shoved things into tidy little boxes in preparation for my first Youth Nationals.

I noted with a certain humor Brady was cramming for the next life sciences quiz. I barely cracked the book. I didn’t have to. I was acing the class. Like I’d told Mom once, Davis High had prepared me well for college.

After dealing with a duffel bag full of smelly gym clothes, I checked the dry-erase board to make sure everything on it was out-of-date. For reasons of its own, the housing office thought each room needed such an accessory. Personally, I didn’t care why our room had a dry-erase board. I merely welcomed a canvas on which to make my point. I pulled up a handy meme I’d saved on my phone to refer to and started drawing. After a few minutes, I felt Brady’s eyes on me. Mission accomplished.

Then I kicked off my shoes and sat down on my bed.

“What’s that?”

I smirked, looking up at the picture of a donkey stuck in a hole in the ground. “It’s an asshole.”

“A what?” Brady acted like he didn’t know what I was talking about, but really? An ass in a hole? C’mon, buddy.

This wasn’t my first time around the block. When I wanted to make a point, I made it stick. “I’m not an asshole…you asshole.”

Brady flushed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do. I heard you before fresher biology seminar today.”

I met his eyes and then stared, unflinching, unblinking. I’d faced my own mortality. A snippy college freshman didn’t compare.

Brady started shaking and breathing heavily, only glaring at me harder. “Do you have any idea how hard it is for me to live with you?”

“Uh…no?” I wasn’t expecting that. I’d thought I was pretty easy to get along with. I kept my things on my side of the room. I was quiet and clean. What else could anyone ask for in a roommate?

“You never talk to me. Did you know that? We have no late-night dorm room bull sessions. We don’t go out for beers, we don’t get high together, you’re an asshole,” Brady continued.

I rolled my eyes. It’s a bad habit of mine, one I’ve never succeeded in breaking. “You do know I’m here on an athletic scholarship, right? We’re both underage, so don’t even talk to me about alcohol, and smoking of any kind—really? World-class rowers have the highest VO2 max of any athlete, and before you trip out at the thought of having to look something up and accidentally learn something, two things. One, putting it crudely, VO2 max is the measure of how much oxygen an athlete can extract from a lungful of air, and two, I really do have a shot of being that good. So yes, I’m that much of a straight edge, and no, we’re not going to bond doing any of that shit.” There went that eye roll again. “As for late-night bull sessions, we’d actually have to be friends for that, and calling me an asshole in public isn’t likely to bring that about in a hurry either.”

“Can you even hear yourself?” Brady’s voice rose. “You’re so patronizing. It’s…it’s like you’re not even human or something. You’re this unstoppable machine who marches out and gets what he wants.”

I sighed. “It’s called having goals. You should try it.”

“You are such a…such an asshole!”

This grew more tiresome by the minute, only now I was losing my temper. “You’ve said that already.”

By this time, he’d jumped up from his desk to confront me. We both realized at the same time exactly how much shorter he was. If he decided to take a swing at me, it’d be the shortest confrontation in the history of everything. Seriously, I had seven inches on him.

He looked up at me, hopefully reconsidering his plans for the immediate future. “I’m failing our biology seminar, and…and you never talk to me, and you’re gorgeous, and you don’t even look at me, and you’re probably some kind of fundamentalist creep who’s about to pound me.”

I stared at him. “I…what?”

Brady pointed at my neckband. It was a tight-fitting leather collar given to me by Michael, studded with metal. Hanging from it was a metal plus sign, plus for poz. A cross was the last thing it was, if only because I was pretty sure Mom’s parents were born Jewish. Since she was never bat mitzvahed, we’d lapsed hard. “You’re really, really wrong. My boyfriend lives in Davis. You’ve met him, so what the hell are you talking about?”

“That figures.” Brady slammed his hand into the wall.

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “Dude…you don’t know the half of me. If you did, you’d never say those things.” Brady exploded again and moved to storm out of the room, but I was lightning fast. I grabbed his arm. “Don’t go, not if you’re serious about help or getting to know each other.”

“And whose fault is not knowing each other? You bailed on those roommate mixers.” Brady jerked his arm out of my hand, but at least he stopped reaching for the door.

I sighed. “Those things are terminally stupid, and you know it. You never would’ve learned the things you seem to want to know at those. I actually think you’re a nice guy. Or did. So, you’re failing biology seminar. Did it ever occur to you to ask for help? Because I’ll be honest—I haven’t heard a thing out of you.”

He didn’t say anything at first. Then, “No.”

“Did you go to the tutoring center or talk to the prof?”

More silence.

“Riiight.” I rolled my eyes again. “Let’s look at your quizzes. I’ll see if I can help, because there’s another quiz coming up, you know.”

So little Brady was gay. I hadn’t noticed any signs, but then again, he wasn’t made of carbon fiber and was therefore unrowable. I told him nothing else about my life, my condition, or anything else of substance, certainly nothing about Michael. After tonight he was on a need-to-know basis. Brady would have to earn his way in.

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Meet the Author

Christopher Koehler always wanted to write, but it wasn’t until his grad school years that he realized writing was how he wanted to spend his life. Long something of a hothouse flower, he’s been lucky to be surrounded by people who encouraged that, especially his long-suffering husband of twenty-nine years and counting.

He loves many genres of fiction and nonfiction, but he’s especially fond of romances, because it’s in them that human emotions and relations, at least most of the ones fit to be discussed publicly, are laid bare.

While writing is his passion and his life, when he’s not doing that, he’s a househusband, at-home dad, and oarsman with a slightly disturbing interest in manners and the other ways people behave badly.

Christopher is approaching the tenth anniversary of publication and has been fortunate to be recognized for his writing, including by the American Library Association, which named Poz a 2016 Recommended Title, and an Honorable Mention for “Transformation,” in Innovation, Volume 6 of Queer Sci Fi’s Flash Fiction Anthology.

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New Release: Merlin's Legacy Vol. 2 (paperback) by Angela Knight #UrbanFantasy #DarkFantasy @AngelaKnight @changelingpress

Aliens, vampire Knights of the Round Table, and a wolf in her Burning Moon. Love can be complicated.

Master of Passion: When blue-skinned aliens try to kidnap combat news cameraman Adam Parker, the attempt is foiled by a sword-swinging Knight of the Round Table and his witch partner. However once the vampire knight removes his helmet, Adam realizes Sir Baldulf is the father who abandoned him and his mother. Ulf swears he and Opal Cassidy are Adam’s only hope of survival, but Adam wants nothing to do with either of them. Opal doesn’t want anything to do with the handsome, cynical mortal, either. But orders are orders, so seduction it is.

Master of Honor: Cheryl Parker thought she was an ordinary woman -- a nurse, a mother, a single parent. Now an alien spirit who has made her immortal. And not only is her ex back, he’s really Sir Baldulf, a vampire Knight of the Round Table. The good news is, he still loves Cheryl. The bad news is, he thinks the creature inhabiting her is a potential threat to humanity. The worst news is, there is a threat -- and it could well kill them all.

Master of Desire: Half-Sidhe billionaire Conal Donovan’s rich people problems include his ex, evil Fairy goddess Siobhan, who sends a team of werewolf terrorists kill his family. He’s rescued by Helena Baker, African American, former FBI agent, and wolf-shifter, who’s best friend is a gun inhabited by a retired death god, so she can handle werewolves. She’s less sure about the handsome white guy with the talking phoenix and the relentless commitment to protecting his sisters. Especially considering that she’s in her Burning Moon -- the werewolf version of heat. Her pheromones make Conal just as interested in her as she is in him. But is their growing love real? And what will happen when the hormones wear off?

Get it at Amazon

EXCERPT

All rights reserved.
Copyright ©2021 Angela Knight
Excerpt from Master of Desire

“I’m hungry.”

“You just ate. Last week you had two Fomorians and a troll.” Helena Baker turned the page, trying to concentrate on her romance novel. The roses that covered the arched wooden arbor cast cool, sweet-smelling shade over the pages. Maeve’s palace was surrounded by glorious gardens, and the arbor’s cushioned wooden bench was her favorite spot to enjoy them.

She glanced up from her book. The palace looming over the trees was breathtaking in its fluid Sidhe architecture, white marble blazing in the golden afternoon sunlight. I’m living in a Fairy tale. When she remembered she used to be an FBI agent, it was enough to give her psychic whiplash.

“That was last week. I’m hungry now.”

“What you are is bored.” Why wouldn’t he shut up? She was almost at the good part. Sexy, threatening Daegan was about to dominate Gideon. These days reading a BDSM romance was the closest she came to getting any. And she needed some. So, so bad. Her Burning Moon hormones were driving her insane. Swear to God, it gets worse every year.

“But it’s your job to provide for me.” His voice was way too close to a whine.

“My ‘job’ to keep you from killing people.” Turning the page, she glared down at him. “Would you please let me read my book in peace? Or do I need to put you in the Box?”

“All right, all right! You get so bitchy this time of year.” His tone brightened. “Maybe we could release some of that pent-up aggression by hunting a serial killer. Remember that DCN piece about those murders in…”

She held up one finger, frowning. “Hear that?”

“What?” Liam said.

“It’s the Box, calling your name.”

“But…”

“That’s it!” Helena picked up the Desert Eagle and started to stuff him into the enchanted holster on her belt. “You’re getting quality time in the gun safe.” An hour in the Box would shut him up and give her a little privacy for a foursome with Daegan, Gideon and her new vibrator.

Liam promptly turned into a rocket launcher. She almost dropped him before she managed to get a good grip again. “The hell? You trying to shoot me in the head?”

“Of course not.” Lacking vocal cords -- or a mouth, for that matter -- he had to use magic to generate speech. “You’re my priestess.”

“For the last time, I’m not your damn priestess. I’m your keeper, and my job is to make sure you don’t kill anyone who doesn’t deserve to die. If I weren’t immune to magic, you’d be trying to convince me to shoot myself.”

“I’d never do that. You’re the best priestess I’ve ever had.”

“Yeah, in the sense I’m the only one you haven’t managed to kill. Yet.”

“I am a death deity.”

“A retired death deity. You swore to obey me, Liam. Change. Back.”

“Fine. Keep your flea collar on!” Sparks exploded, leaving behind a very ladylike Smith & Wesson with a pink grip.

Helena glared down at him. “Now you’re just being insulting.”

“Helena?” Maeve’s voice rang out over the garden, sharp and urgent. “Where are you?” Normally the Mother of Fairies could sense anyone on the palace grounds, but her magic rolled off Helena like water off a mallard.

Helena’s head snapped up as she rose from the bench, gun in hand. “Here! What’s wrong?”

“Werewolves have captured Conal Donovan.”

Liam cursed in a language that had been dead since the last ice age. Thrusting him into his belt holster, Helena leaped into a dead run. “Coming!” Conal Donovan might be a Changeling -- half human, half Sidhe -- but he’d also saved the life of Maeve’s granddaughter at considerable risk to his own. That was the kind of debt the Mother of Fairies took seriously. Since the goddess’s magic had no effect on werewolves, rescuing him would fall to Helena.

Maeve rounded a topiary unicorn and strode between towering mounds of Mageverse blooms toward Helena. Six feet, six inches of sculpted, regal beauty, the goddess radiated power like a storm front. Gleaming green hair fell around her shoulders, pulled back and bound with thin braids to reveal the elegant points of her ears. An emerald-green leather vest hugged her full breasts and bared powerful biceps, while matching leather pants and thigh-high boots made her muscled legs look even longer.

She was every bit the badass she looked, which was why the grim look on her face made Helena’s blood run cold. “What happened?”

“A team of werewolves broke into Conal’s house.” Maeve’s voice was clipped and crisp, but her peridot eyes held worry. “Essus was injured in the fight, but he managed to open a link to me. He says he can hear Conal screaming.” Her mouth tightened. “They’re torturing him.”

“How many wolves?” Helena thrust away the memory of blowtorch pain as fangs ripped into her belly. Looking down to see a coil of something red…

“At least ten. But there’s worse news.” Her jaw flexed. “I tried to open a gate and couldn’t.”

“Siobhan,” Liam spat. The magical geas that bound Maeve and her daughter insured neither could use magic in anything directly involving the other. It was a devil’s bargain from Maeve’s point of view, but she’d have agreed to worse to save her granddaughter. Otherwise Siobhan would have killed the little girl despite Conal’s efforts to save her.

Unfortunately, the geas did nothing to protect Conal, which was apparently why Siobhan had gone after him. She had an uncanny instinct for the best way to hurt her mother. But why now? Helena wondered. It had been thirty years, for God’s sake. Figure it out after you save the hostage. “We’ll take care of it. Where’s Conal now?” 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Angela Knight's romance writing career began in 1996, when she realized her dream of romance publication with Red Sage’s Secrets anthology. She is a New York Times best-selling author of more than fifty novels, novellas, and ebooks, including the Mageverse and Time Hunters series. Her career spans twenty plus years. Romantic Times Bookclub Magazine gave her a Career Achievement award in Paranormal Romance, as well as two Reviewers’ Choice awards for best erotic romance and best werewolf romance.

Angela is currently a writer, editor, and cover artist for Changeling Press. She also teaches online writing courses with SavvyAuthors.com. Besides her fiction work, Angela’s writing career includes a decade as an award-winning South Carolina newspaper reporter. She lives in South Carolina with her husband, Michael, a thirty-year police veteran and detective with a local police department.

New Release: Dark's Lover by Emily Carrington #LGBTQ #UrbanFantasy @CarringtonEmily @changelingpress

 

A Singer draws energy from within to work what others would consider miracles: soothing the sufferer, tending the grief-stricken, and defeating enemies.

When Blagden, a Night Wanderer-Singer, meets Caleb, he is drawn to the Grand Fae’s struggle to accept his new life as a member of SearchLight. Caleb’s son is blind and the grand Fae have cast out all disabled children… and those who support them.

But Blagden has a terrible secret. He inadvertently steals energy from those he loves. When SearchLight is attacked, Blagden must choose between the Fae he loves and his resolve never to steal energy again.

Get it at Changeling Press

Preorder for February 19th at booksellers

EXCERPT

All rights reserved.

Copyright ©2021 Emily Carrington

Caleb was one horny bastard. Not to mention exhausted. And that was not the right way to start this interview. Sure, the potential teacher sitting across from him was easy on the eyes. Tall, muscular, and big like a football player, his face showed intelligence instead of… Well, what exactly had Caleb been expecting? Something dopey?

No, but he hadn’t expected to feel like he was being studied in return. Not by a totally blind Night Wanderer.

His compatriot cleared her throat. “Welcome to Mojave Valley, Mr. Graywolf.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Pennyworth.” Blagden Graywolf smiled, and even though his eyes remained closed, the honest pleasure shone in every plane of his face. If he was nervous, he hid it well.

“To my right is Caleb Cartwright, the head of our program for the visually impaired.”

Blagden extended his hand after touching the side of the desk discreetly. He held his hand higher than was usual, but Caleb assumed that was because he wasn’t sure what obstacles he might bump.

He grasped Blagden’s hand and found the other magical creature’s grip strong and dry. “Pleased to meet you,” he murmured, embarrassed by how gruff he sounded.

“Tell us a little about yourself,” Mrs. Pennyworth invited.

The Night Wanderer settled back in the chair, clasping his hands in his lap. He turned his head toward her voice, but occasionally… He wasn’t actually glancing at Caleb to keep him in the conversation, but the tilt of his head gave that impression.

That’s something I need to teach Nat. His son had a tendency to address a random corner of whatever room he sat in or sometimes his shoes or his hands. Blagden Graywolf looked thoroughly invested in this interview.

He told them about growing up on a reservation in Utah, about being born totally blind, and how he’d decided to pursue being a teacher of the visually impaired because he loved all the tricks he’d been taught over the years.

“I thought the reservations didn’t have as ready access to teachers of the visually impaired as most schools,” Caleb put in. It was his understanding that Native American children weren’t given the same advantages. They were often overlooked or underserved. Of course, Night Wanderers weren’t exactly Native Americans, although their appearance had fooled many over the centuries. But since he’d been living on a reservation, he would have been subject to the same prejudices.

“My grandmother, uncle, and older brother are all blind,” Blagden said comfortably. “My grandmother went to the Perkins School for the Blind. She made sure we were all braille readers. And I attended a public school in Salt Lake City to make sure I got all the vision services I needed.” His dark eyebrows rose over his closed eyes. They were feathery and narrow, those brows. Elegant. “I had a series of three great TVI instructors during my school years.” Then he returned his attention to Mrs. Pennyworth. His focus was a little off to her left, but not tremendously so. “Ma’am, before I ramble too much, is there anything you’d specifically like to know?”

“What made you leave the human sector and seek a job with SearchLight?”

Blagden tensed. His hands in his lap, formerly folded together, knotted into a tight ball. “I’d prefer not to say.”

“We received glowing reports from your former colleagues and principals,” Mrs. Pennyworth said smoothly, as if he hadn’t just refused to answer a question during an interview. As she progressed into familiar territory, including asking what Blagden’s greatest strengths and weaknesses were, Caleb found himself daydreaming about his head teacher-to-be. Despite his refusal to answer a basic question, he was years more qualified than any of the other magical creatures they’d interviewed. Many of those would find jobs here, but as paraeducators and other instructional aides, not as the lead teacher.

The man began talking with his hands as well as his voice at one point, and Caleb interrupted a nice fantasy about kissing the Night Wanderer to ask, “Are you actually using tactile sign language?” 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Emily Carrington is a multipublished author of male/male and transgender erotica. Seeking a world made of equality, she created SearchLight to live out her dreams. But even SearchLight has its problems, and Emily is looking forward to working all of these out with a host of characters from dragons and genies to psychic vampires.

New Release: Child of the Sea by Faith Talbot #LGBTQ #UrbanFantasy @changelingpress

Mara has a surprise for her men -- she’s pregnant! But Aaron doesn’t seem as happy as he should be. In fact, he fears the baby’s life may be in danger depending on which of them is the father: Aaron, who was born to the ocean, or Chris, who was born half human.

Together, they visit the underwater city where Aaron’s people live to find out if his fears might be valid. With few answers, they await the arrival of their new family member, hoping the bond of their love will keep the baby safe as it enters a world above the sea.

Get it Now at Changeling Press 

Preorder for February 19th at online booksellers

ADULT EXCERPT

All rights reserved.
Copyright ©2021 Faith Talbot

The warm, golden Cancun light spilled through the window onto Mara’s bed. She lay in a decadent, wide-open sprawl across the blankets, legs spread, one hand in her own hair, the other combed into Aaron’s. Aaron’s face was between Mara’s thighs, his tongue coaxing sparks of sheer pleasure from her clit. Mara’s head lay pillowed on Chris’s chest, and he had one arm snaked around her, his fingers absently plucking at one of Mara’s turgid nipples.

Oh, to wake up every morning like this. But, truth to tell, Mara did wake up most mornings with one or both of her men pleasuring her, getting ready to pleasure her, or at the very least thinking very seriously about pleasuring her. Occasionally the two of them got preoccupied with each other, but there was nearly always some sort of insatiable current flowing through the bed not long after sunrise.

Aaron pushed his tongue inside her, thrusting, and Chris shifted a little under her, tweaking her nipple almost too hard. She gasped, pressing her chest up toward his teasing fingers. His pinch-grip tightened even more and he shifted beneath her, lifting his body so he could kiss her. He reached out with one hand, combing his fingers into Aaron’s hair where Aaron’s head bobbed between Mara’s thighs.

She loved it when they touched each other when they were all making love. They had been together when Mara had first met them on the beach in Cancun, and even though she knew there was no reason for it, she sometimes felt like she’d come between them. She hadn’t, though. They’d all come together, forming a unit. Mara had never imagined anything like that could ever work, much less be such a perfect arrangement.

The thread of gentle memory faded as Chris shifted position, straightening behind her and pulling her more fully into his lap. Reaching around her, he held her legs open with his hands on her thighs. With a smile, Aaron eased up on them both, stroking up her legs until his hands clasped the backs of Chris’s. He lowered his head again, his mouth clasping onto Mara’s sex. Mara’s back arched, her head pressing against Chris’s chest as heat rose inside her.

They leaned back as one without a word, Chris shifting on the pillow as Mara pushed against his chest. and Aaron, with one last, long, thorough lick to her sex, rose over her and sank inside her as his mouth took hers. His lips and tongue were wet, sticky, and suffused with the dark, salty flavor of her.

They synched perfectly, the three of them, in ways Mara had never imagined. Even now, her brain fizzing with the question she’d awakened with, everything faded except the raw physical merging when skin met skin met skin. Where Aaron’s body penetrated hers, where Chris’s mouth bit down on her neck as his wide torso held her anchored. She could feel his cock against the small of her back, hard as steel, hard enough to bruise as she rolled her hips into it.

Aaron surged in and out of her like the movement of the tides. With her body becoming light as her orgasm rose, she opened her eyes.

Aaron met her gaze, his eyes glazed with his own desire, then suddenly they snapped back to reality, locked with hers. His eyebrows drew together.

“What…” he started, but then the waves of climax rose and flooded him and Mara, and he closed his eyes again as orgasm pulled them both under. Behind her, Chris tightened and let out a long, hot breath, his cock grinding into the small of her back as he, too, found release.

It was only after, when they moved slowly apart, all three of them sticky, sweaty, and replete, that Aaron met her eyes again and said quietly, “When were you going to tell us?”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Faith Talbot has been a body double, a prima ballerina, and a forklift driver. In her spare time, she likes to knit and play the zither. Sometimes she can be found at rock concerts not being the least bit stalkery at all.

Release Blitz: Sticks and Stones by Steve Burford #LGBTQ #Thriller @ninestarpress @GoIndiMarketing

 

Title: Sticks and Stones

Series: Summerskill and Lyon, Book Three

Author: Steve Burford

Publisher: NineStar Press

Release Date: 02/08/2021

Heat Level: 1 - No Sex

Pairing: No Romance

Length: 69600

Genre: Contemporary Police Procedural, LGBTQIA+, Contemporary, crime/thriller, family-drama, murder, drug dealer, school, politician

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Description

“He’s a thug… a really nasty piece of work.”

When young Clayton Kerry, member of a notorious Worcester family, is found dead on an abandoned factory site, it looks like an accident. Some even say it was what he deserved. But headteacher Alun Blake’s refusal to sugarcoat the truth about the pupil he excluded causes outrage in the local community and sparks a vendetta against him that rapidly spirals out of control threatening both his life and that of his daughter.

When Detective Inspector Summerskill and Detective Sergeant Lyon investigate, they find Clayton’s death was by no means as clear cut as it had seemed and that they are at the start of a trail that will take them into the heart of a school and far beyond the boundaries of their city, to crime on a national scale.

As they uncover what really happened, Summerskill and Lyon are brought face-to-face with uncomfortable truths about their own lives and relationships. Personal loyalties are tested, and before the case is through, at least one more person will die.

Sticks and Stones is the third in the Summerskill and Lyon series of police procedural novels.

Excerpt

Sticks and Stones
Steve Burford © 2021
All Rights Reserved

“And some sad news just in. A tragic accident today on the site of one of the county’s oldest landmarks has resulted in the death of a Worcestershire schoolboy. Fifteen-year-old Clayton Kerry was killed when one of the walls of a building on the site of the old William Fitzmaurice brewery collapsed.

“The Fitzmaurice brewery, once the producer of some of the county’s most prestigious beers and ciders, has been a familiar site on the banks of the River Severn for as long as anyone in the county can remember. For decades, however, it has been closed and deserted, its buildings neglected and crumbling. All attempts over the years to procure the site for redevelopment have been blocked by legal wranglings within the Fitzmaurice family.

“James Fitzmaurice, oldest surviving member of the brewing family, today said that he and his family were deeply saddened by the death but that they could take no responsibility.

“We’ll have more on that story in our local news bulletin later this evening. And now, over to Duncan Lewis with today’s weather…”

The picture on the screen changed to an earnest young weather forecaster in glasses, smiling in front of a map of the country even as a mass of CGI storm clouds crept in from the west.

“Tragic accident.” The man in the bed yawned, muted the television, and carelessly tossed the remote control to one side. “It was hardly going to be an amusing accident or a laughable misadventure, was it?”

Sitting on the other side of the bed, Dave Lyon paused in the act of pulling on his trousers. “And is that all you’ve got to say about it?”

The man he’d addressed gave one of his typical crooked smiles, laced his hands behind his head, and lay back against the large pillows. The sheets were pulled down low over his stomach, and Dave didn’t doubt that their position and the pose had both been deliberately chosen to afford him a good view of the body he was getting ready to leave. It was a great body. “What do you want me to say?” Sean Cullen asked. “That I’m heartbroken over the death of some kid I’ve never even met? Touch hypocritical don’t you think?”

“You’re an MP. I thought that was part of the job description.”

Cullen smiled again. Dave’s barb hadn’t pierced his thick politician’s skin at all. But then Dave hadn’t thought for a second it would. “And you’re a detective sergeant. Didn’t you detect anything about that report?”

“What do you mean? It was an accident. The report didn’t say anything about suspicious circumstances.”

Cullen tutted slowly, clearly enjoying himself. “You heard them say the old Fitzmaurice brewery has been closed for years, and I mean years. Even I used to slip through its fences and hide in the buildings when I was a kid.”

“Bunking off from your posh public school for a crafty fag with the lads?”

“I was never one of the lads, David, and even if I had been, I wouldn’t have wanted them with me while I was enjoying my cigarette and a copy of Zipper or Vulcan or whatever I’d managed to get my hands on. Anyway, these days the old Fitzmaurice brewery has got more barbed wire around it than the nearest HMP but it’s still notorious as a hangout for kids drinking and taking God knows what. Which means, the victim of our tragic accident would have had to walk through several very obstructive fences and have failed to notice several very prominent warning signs before he made it to the buildings where he was no doubt in the act of doing something very naughty before a ton of bricks fell on his trespassing little head.” Cullen assumed an expression of mock surprise. “I know my constituency, sergeant. Don’t you know your beat?”

Annoyed with himself and with Cullen, Dave was damned if he’d show it. Now he thought about it, he did remember some talk back at the Foregate Street station about the brewery, but he was still comparatively new to the area, and neither the name nor the reputation of the place had struck a chord when he’d heard that television report.

Cullen, of course, made no allowances. The product of an Oxford education, where he had been on a winning Boat Race team, and of an adversarial parliamentary system where he had been, when elected to the House of Commons over a decade previously, one of the youngest MPs in the house, Sean Cullen was an extremely competitive man. And that competitiveness, Dave was discovering, extended all the way into his personal life.

Dave took some comfort from the image of the young public school boy Cullen had been, sneaking off to abandoned warehouses to smoke and enjoy gay wank mags. It was good to remember he hadn’t always been the high-profile, smug arse he was now. “Well, whatever he was doing, I doubt it was going through his collection of gay porn.”

“You think kids have changed so much?”

“No. But they do have the internet. Any young lad these days can pleasure himself blind in the comfort of his own home. Straight or gay.”

Cullen reluctantly conceded the point. “Mind you, it wasn’t all just about the fags and mags.” He yawned lazily, like a self-satisfied cat recalling an empty carton of cream.

Dave buttoned up his shirt, began the search for his shoes, and refused to give Cullen the satisfaction of asking what he meant by that. How was it you could only ever find one shoe when you were trying to leave a guy’s bedroom? “Why’d you even want the television on anyway?” he asked as he searched. “You trying to impress me with the size of your screen?”

“I thought I already had impressed you. And I was hoping,” Cullen went on, before Dave could reply, “to catch something about my Fitness First initiative. I did an interview about it yesterday for the local news. They said it might be on today. We’ve probably missed it. Or it’s been dropped in favour of the tragic accident. I’ll check again later.”

“Want to see how good your profile looks on the television?”

Cullen smiled, the sheet over his body slipping down another inch, almost accidentally. “I know how good it looks on television.”

Yeah, I’ll bet you do. Like the body, Sean’s was a great profile. With those cheekbones, there had to be aristocracy somewhere in his family bloodline. “I’m only surprised you haven’t got a mirror over the bed.”

Cullen yawned. “Too seventies. And it would get in the way of the cameras.”

Missing shoe found, Dave stood, reached for his jacket, and forced himself not to look up at the ceiling over the bed. A joke. Just a joke. Don’t give him the reaction he wants. “I’ll see myself out, shall I?”

“I think you know the way by now.”

At the bedroom door Dave stopped, hand on the handle, and looked back. Cullen’s eyes were closed as if he was already drifting into sleep. “You never ask me to stay.” It was a simple fact, calmly stated.

Cullen didn’t open his eyes. “Would you?”

Dave considered. “No. See you later.”

“I look forward to it.”

Neither man suggested when or where that might be.

This had been their third hookup at Cullen’s house since that night they had walked out of Gallery 48 together, and this was pretty much the way it had ended the previous two times. Dave couldn’t see that changing any time soon.

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NineStar Press | Books2Read

Meet the Author

Steve Burford lives close to Worcester but rarely risks walking its streets. He has loaded conveyor belts in a factory, disassembled aeroplane seats, picked fruit on farms, and taught drama to teenagers but now spends his time writing in a variety of genres under a variety of names. He finds poverty an effective muse, and since his last book has once again been in trouble with the police. (He would like to thank the inventor of the speed camera.)

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Release Blitz: Business and the Beat by Kellum Jeffries #LGBTQ #ContemporaryRomance @kellumjeffries @GoIndiMarketing

Title: Business and the Beat

Author: Kellum Jeffries

Publisher: NineStar Press

Release Date: 02/08/2021

Heat Level: 3 - Some Sex

Pairing: Male/Male

Length: 33800

Genre: Contemporary, LGBTQIA+, contemporary, gay, pan, rock star/musician, family issues, band shenanigans, slime attacks

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Description

Rutherford Fitzhugh, shy, repressed financial advisor, is happy to stay in his professional and personal rut. But his world gets shaken up when his new boss insists the firm take on more exciting clients and assigns Rutherford to Mak, the brilliant bassist and chief songwriter for the mega-popular rock band, Memo to Myself.

Mak Makana, extroverted prankster goofball, hasn’t had a serious or lengthy relationship in years. He learned early on in his band’s meteoric rise to fame that a lover he’d fallen hard for was more interested in his fame than him.

The sparks between the two men are immediate and intense, despite their disastrous first meeting when Rutherford walks into a gooey prank Mak meant for a bandmate. Rutherford discovers that Mak isn’t the spoiled, shallow rock star he expected, and Mak finds that Rutherford has a hidden artistic and quirky side. They can’t keep their hands off each other—even as they work to convince themselves it’s just a fling.

Rutherford’s never been able to please his conservative, traditional Virginian parents—or get them to accept his sexuality—and the sudden paparazzi attention brings their disapproval on full force. Mak’s got a supportive family back home in Hawaii and another one in his bandmates, neither batting an eye at his pansexuality. But that early experience with a fame-collector makes him wary of opening up to anyone who’s not birth family or band family.

Mak and Rutherford’s very different lives threaten to pull them apart, but could it be they’re different enough to be perfect together?

Excerpt

Business and the Beat
Kellum Jeffries © 2021
All Rights Reserved

Rutherford’s morning started off with a reassuring sameness—same boiled eggs for breakfast, same dogwalk around his neighborhood, same quick skim of the Financial Times during his morning Lyft ride—and there was absolutely no warning that by noon he’d be flustered, turned on, and temporarily dyed blue.

He arrived at work his usual half hour early. It was calm and quiet then, and he had a few peaceful moments to sit with his first cup of tea of the day and start looking through his portfolio of clients, making sure he’d checked in with each of them recently enough to keep them well informed and happy. (This was a tricky balance; some clients were annoyed by frequent contact, some enraged by any lengthy absence of contact, and, of course, there were a few who would find something to be peeved about regardless.)

Rutherford wrote up a schedule of check-in calls to make and started looking through the first client’s current investments, checking on the returns and pondering the fact that said client had a child reaching college age soon. Would tweaking her portfolio in light of that be advantageous? And just when he was settling into deep thought, doodling flowers on his legal pad as his brain ticked over possibilities, Hurricane Jen blew into the office.

He winced—he liked Jen, somewhat reluctantly, but she was loud.

“Heeeeeeeeeey you!” she bellowed, and he sighed as his mental train of morning productivity not only derailed but fell spectacularly off a cliff, hit bottom, and caught fire.

“Hello, Jen.”

He’d wondered, the first few times she greeted him with a “Hey you,” if she was being intentionally rude to him since she seemed to remember everyone else’s name. But when he’d reintroduced himself after several weeks of this, she’d wrinkled her nose and said, “I swear I know your name, I’m sorry, I just— It just doesn’t seem like you! It’s so stuffy! Sorry, I don’t mean to insult your name, you probably love your name, and it’s certainly elegant and everything, and argh, I’m a dick.”

He’d blinked at her, astonished she thought his name too stuffy for him—he was well aware most people thought of him as, well, stuffy. (He was also astonished she felt comfortable blurting “I’m a dick” by way of apology, but the boss’s daughter had certain prerogatives.)

“I, uh, I don’t love my name,” he’d said. “‘Hey you’ is…rather nice.” And since then, he’d been oddly fond of her.

Today, though, in addition to completely ruining his concentration, she was making him nervous. She didn’t come into the office all that often; she was in charge of schmoozing prospective clients, which kept her on the road a good deal. When she did come in, it tended to be for all-hands-on-deck things: staff trainings and the like. Rutherford snuck a look at his online calendar, but he knew before he checked there was nothing like that today. So why was she here?

“What brings you here today?” he asked, but she added to his worry by grinning and making a lock-turning gesture in front of her lips, then striding off to her dad’s office.

“Oh god,” Rutherford murmured to his computer screen. There’d been rumors flying around lately about the old man’s retirement. Rutherford had tried to discount them, but…he wasn’t so sure now.

MacKenzie from the next office stuck her head in his doorway, pointed the way Jen had gone, and did some frantic gestures he assumed were mime for “what is happening?” He shrugged, and she frowned and popped back out again.

He slid down in his chair, put his hands over his face, and whispered, “I hate change” into the dark of his palms.

And sure enough, a few seconds later, an “Everyone to the meeting room” alert popped up on the office IM.

Rutherford grabbed a pad and pen and headed for the hallway; bad news was always a bit more palatable when he had some paper to cling to. He met MacKenzie on the way, leaned down, and murmured, “Two pencils,” in her ear.

“Crap, thanks,” she said and grabbed the pencils out of her short Afro. Sometimes by the end of the day, she had five or six.

They reached the meeting room and grabbed seats. And once everyone had filed in, Jen patted her dad’s shoulder and said, “Don’t leave ’em hanging,” and Rutherford barely managed not to groan aloud.

Mr. Wozniak stood up, said, “Yep, I’m retiring. Nope, we’re not letting anybody go. Yep, I am going to do a shitload of fly-fishing,” and sat down.

As bosses went, he’d always been admirably succinct.

The room was silent for a moment, awkwardly so—what did one say in response to that? And then Jen stood up and talked about how her father had founded the firm on the principles of emphasizing ethics, hiring the best people, and treating them very well. How their employee retention rate (“and our long tradition of not getting caught up in hideous scandals!”) proved these principles worked, and how she planned to continue on the same path.

Oh, good, it was going to be Jen. Rutherford had worried the firm would be sold. Jen, while noisy, was at least familiar and liked.

He’d begun to relax a little when Jen’s speech took a turn.

“While most of you will keep your same client load, I do plan to shake things up a bit. I’m planning to start pitching clients in the entertainment industry—we’ve got a longstanding industry halo for ethical business, let’s add a little buzz as well.”

That certainly got a buzz going in the room at least, but she held up a hand. “I’ll share details with those of y’all who are gonna be involved. Meanwhile, let’s start planning a massive retirement party.”

Rutherford tuned out for the rest of the talk, sketching tiny birds in the margins of his legal pad while he mulled over what this might mean for him. He had every intention of staying. Surely, his job wouldn’t change significantly since there was zero reason for Jen to drag him, of all people, into the new “entertainment industry” focus. However, someone his own age taking over the company would certainly send his parents into another “We can’t believe you’re happy with this career…plateau” rant.

He sighed and then startled, realizing only when Jen’s hand landed lightly on his shoulder that people were starting to clear out of the room.

“Hey, you,” she said, grinned, and patted his shoulder. “Let’s talk.”

Oh no.

Purchase

NineStar Press | Books2Read

Meet the Author

Kellum Jeffries is a bisexual Southern librarian, lucky enough to have a supportive fellow-writer partner and a fabulous dog. She knits socks, gives excellent shoulder rubs, and can touch her nose with her tongue. She loves to write about all kinds of people finding themselves, finding love, and finding the nearest Waffle House.

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