jana_denardo

Z is for zen. I try to achieve a zen-like state daily. Oh, I suck at it but I try. I used to have my struggles with zen in my author bio until I changed it to fit my geeky brand a bit better. I tend toward a type A personality with a trigger temper. If anyone thinks changing your temper is easy is either a bit deluded or just plain misguided. I have mellowed in my middle age but still it’s bad.

I’m a high stress sort. I’ve broken four teeth grinding them. I’ve clenched ground and otherwise aggravated the fuck out of my TMJs so badly I now have arthritis in my jaw. I used to be a medical doctor, a high stress job. Teaching and writing have a lot of high stress moments too (what job doesn’t, am I right?) so I started looking into zen meditation.

I’m not looking for enlightenment. I’ll never be perfect. I’m mostly looking for a pressure valve so I don’t break more teeth, punch another wall, have a heart attack etc. (I leave pummeling people to fiction. If you displease me, you may meet a truly gruesome fictional end).

I’ve read up on meditation. I’ve done free meditation sessions via the Chopra Center. I’m not really living in an area where I can go to classes for this sort of thing.

More than a class, I wish we had a zen garden around here. The nearest Japanese garden is 80 miles away at Dawes Arboretum (Still want to go). Or any gardens. I have the hills but sometimes hiking them can be dangerous alone. I feel more calm surrounded by greenery though. I tend to get more out of that than I do out of actual meditation.

I may never be perfectly zen. I can only do my best and if I get some benefits from my attempts, that’s all I need.

And I survived the A to Z challenge. This was fun. Thanks for putting up with me for the month. I appreciate all the people who stopped by. I’ve enjoyed stopping by other people’s blogs. Thanks to our host as well.

X is for Xiphoid, one of those things that might have been on today’s anatomy exam. Yeah, I couldn’t think of an X word that went with my writing. I do, however, have ideas for X words and titles. If I could come up with X titles that made the least bit of sense, I would probably use it. Those read the alphabet challenges are really popular right now. X (Q and Z) are all really hard ones to find. I suppose it’s a bit dishonest to sucker someone in with a title bearing a hard to find letter but it does cross my mind.

X marks the spot. Trite yes but hey it could be the title to an adventure romp, right?

X-rated, nah. Gay romance has enough trouble proving it’s nothing but erotica (and it is so very much more).

Xenolith…is anyone interested in rocks or Xylem in plants.

Ooo how about Xenon Station. That could be a neat SF story. You know I think I’m going to hang on to that one.

I suppose Xenophobia would work but I’ve had FAR too much of that crap in the real world. Shudders.
And I’m going to make this a short post as I’m packing for a steampunk event.

V is for vampires in Vegas. I’ve been working with my vampires Arrigo and Siobhan for twenty years now. They, along with Luc, have been in my brain for a long time now. I’ve sold one story with them to Dreamspinner but I have to revamp, no pun intended, the novel. It’s had some problems but that’s the story of my Vegas vampires.

Originally, way back when it was actually in New Orleans because I was twenty-something and too new to realize just how clichéd that is. Their story started as a short story that was my bestseller in the 90s. Well, in the sense that it was given a contract THREE times and all three times the publisher went under. I’m beginning to believe this story is cursed.

Seriously cursed. That short story I mentioned, somehow I missed an act by Luc that was there early on when he and Arrigo weren’t a couple because in the 90s you really couldn’t write much in the way of gay fiction (and I had to write it as a man which today, for obvious reasons, is frowned on when you aren’t actually male). I don’t know how that slipped by me, probably because it was the second or third short story I ever published at Jana and I was just too excited to do my due diligence. I would like to redo that story and remove that scene! Maybe I will if the novel ever comes to life.

It wasn’t easy bringing a short story into novel country. In the end it was too long...way too long. And then it had issues I was blind to and weren’t pointed out to me at first when it might have been easier to correct. I’ve fixed some of the issues the publisher identified and I’m glad they are willing to look at it again put mortified at the same time that it was submitted in this condition. That’s going to hurt for a long time.

When I started reworking this nearly ten years ago already when it was just a collection of short stories, I decided Las Vegas was the ideal setting for it. Yeah sure New York, L.A. or Chicago have very active night lives too but they’re so overused. Vegas shockingly has had less paranormal activity and I love its tackiness (sorry Vegas but you know it’s true) so Arrigo moved from his Pontalba apartments to a high rise on the Strip. Another thing I have to change in the short story is where Arrigo, my ancient Roman vampire, is living. Originally it was in the Sky but that was before I saw exactly where they were, too far away from the center of life on the strip. He’s now in the Veer in the heart of the Strip and I was able to look into the condos thanks to online real estate sites.

But Vegas is perfect for vampires. So much 24 hour casino action (casinos with no windows), very late night bars, throngs of people running about. Heck on weekends there are even all night bowling alleys and mini-golf courses (looking at you KISS mini golf). Of course most young vampires would need a good hiding spot in the unrelenting sun of the day though.

Arrigo works for a group, the Chiaroscuro which is made up of vampires, lycanthropes, mages and the like to be sure that the supernaturals don’t prey on the unsuspecting humans. He enjoys his job as an enforcer, not so much that he likes killing other supernaturals but because he’s dedicated to protecting humans. Happily bisexual, Arrigo has found lovers among the supernaturals, like his long time on again off again (off because forever is a long time so they drift apart and then together again over the centuries) Siobhan and Fadil (the ancient Egyptian vampire who turned Arrigo back in the days of Julius Caesar). However, Arrigo likes humans too and he’s head on into lust when he first meets Luc.

Luc is out of the bayou having lost his home to Hurricane Katrina and has come to Vegas with his abusive father and brother who have tormented him long before they even suspected he might be gay. Luc’s father pulled him and his brother out of school when they entered middle school so he’s uneducated, working as a bartender with his family. When his path crosses Arrigo’s, he’s surprised at how sophisticated Arrigo is (thinking Arrigo is barely 21). Luc doesn’t trust this rich man because why would he want anything to do with Luc?

As their relationship grows, a dangerous twist crops up, one Luc couldn’t guess at and one that maybe Arrigo should have been on watch for. One of his former supernatural enemies has cropped up and Luc’s odds, as most Vegas odds go, are long when it comes to him surviving to see another day.

Hopefully I’ll have this finished before June or at the latest July. It’s taking me too long as it is but I hope to get to share this with everyone.

T is for Temple. In this case, Temple Chevalier, one of my 1930s demon hunters from the Soldiers of the Sun series. Ever have a secondary character who refused to be secondary and absconds with your story and the plot? That would be Temple. Caleb and Agni were meant to be the main characters but Temple, from the moment I put him on page refused the shadows. He is such a vivacious character that his partners often say not only does he have hair the color of an Irish Setter he has the enthusiastic personality to complete the analogy.

Temple hates that comparison but it’s accurate. He’s very friendly to just about everyone. He loves to talk (hates to study). He’s a fiend for dancing and music and Temple does have a bad habit of sleeping around. A lot. With both sexes.

Temple grew up in a family of Knights Templar from literally the moment there was such a thing. His family can all see the demons and they are exceedingly proud of their heritage to the point of arrogance. Temple always felt he never measured up to his father’s expectations as a soldier.

Temple believed his punishment for not being good enough was to be given to his grandfather for training. What the man was actually doing was sexually molesting Temple who bears deep psychological scars from this. Unfortunately for me this took me deep into the territory of ‘people think all bisexuals sleep around and can’t commit.’ That’s not at all what I wanted. Hypersexual behavior (or the opposite, sexual avoidance), self-blame, low self esteem, attachment disorders and PTSD are not uncommon in victims of sexual abuse. But it’s the 1930s. We didn’t even have 90% of those words, let alone much understanding of sexual abuse so I can’t really make my intentions clear within the scope of the novel itself. The closest I can come is having Agni observe that something is broken inside of Temple and that he tries to fix it with multiple partners but of course that isn’t working. So there is a huge potential for poor Temple to be misunderstood.

Temple, for all his faults, is a good young man. He’s the youngest of the team (until Jo joins). He ran away from Paris when he was in his mid-teams and gave up being Knight Templar (even though his name literally means Temple Knight). He joined the Soldiers of the Sun figuring it would piss his father off (he’s right) and he met Li, Caleb and Agni in London. They were all then sent to America where he unfortunately loses Li. Temple does worry about what he’s doing to Agni and Caleb’s relationship by joining them but his compulsion to be loved doesn’t let him back out. He’s also attracted to his new partner, Jo but believes General Taglioferro when the man promised bodily harm if Temple touches his niece.

Temple’s problems would be something I’d like to work with more if I ever revisit this world which I’d like to (but yeah seriously historical urban fantasy is a tough sell). He is fun to write though, all enthusiasm and sarcasm. And did I mention he fights demons with a Tommy gun? While he might take a ‘spray and pray’ attitude toward demon hunting, he is a good shot with a pistol as well, which he also carries.

If Temple sounds like fun to you, you can find his stories here. (Yes they’re in a series but they can be read as stand alones because hey 1930s demon hunters, right?).
 
Soldiers of the Sun. (novel)

The Darkest Midnight in December. (novella)
Snowbound. (short story)

On the cover Temple is down in front with the Tommy Gun.

R is for Rhys. Remember the whole ‘sometimes I change a character’s name thing from N is for? Rhys was probably one of the biggest characters I’ve done that for. Originally he was Sebastian (knowing me, probably because I had just read Black Butler before I sat down to name characters). Then I saw no less than eight new releases with the name Sebastian in my genre and I said, yeah I have to change this. I thought about the character and who and what he is and decided why in the world did I ever think he was a Sebastian. He absolutely needs a Welsh name and Rhys is one of my favorite Welsh names.

You see, Rhys is a Tylwyth Teg, a type of Welsh fairy. He’d like to point out that the human belief that his type is only two inches tall is completely erroneous. I’ve mentioned before I love folklore about the fey both good and wicked. I enjoy stories about the fairylands and I knew I wanted to add to the volumes of material out there.

Rhys is a fey prince, destine to rule some day when his mother decides to step down. His job until then is to police Earth and make sure the wicked fey aren’t messing up the humans much. He decides to shift his base to Pittsburgh, PA (because hey it’s easier for me to write about a place I know). Rhys has spent more time over the centuries on Earth than he has in his own dimension. He doesn’t mind. There are some bad memories there like war and losing not only his wife but his child too.

He meets Aaron at a steampunk party at first captivated by the amazing tech of his prosthetic arm then after they talk for a while, he knows he needs to see Aaron again. It doesn’t matter that Aaron is human. Rhys finds him intelligent, geeky and fun to be with. But he isn’t being honest with Aaron who has no idea Rhys isn’t human nor that Rhys has other children, his twins Bryn and Bran who are about two centuries old, and his daughter Briallen who is one century old. For the Teg, they age very slowly, a century equates to less than a decade in human growth so Briallen is quite young and the twins roughly are twentyish and live to torment Dad.

Even when he knows a past fey lover is after him, Rhys is still reluctant to tell Aaron what he is. He also doesn’t mention that technically he’s married to Gwenllian, an arranged marriage but he does care about her. The fey are polyamorous and Aaron eventually understands this, though unsurprisingly some readers don’t. In spite of there being plenty of open calls for polyamorous relationships there is a persistent belief that polys can’t possibly be happy or trusted. It’s also hard to miss, looking at reviews, that bi-erasure is a very real thing. People seem to want bi-characters but only when we see the homosexual side of it, not the hetero. There is a danger of course with a bi poly of treading into the negative stereotype of they can’t commit and that’s definitely not what I want. Rhys is often on earth for decades at a time and Gwen, also being fey wouldn’t think much of him having lovers. Aaron, however has some adjusting to do.

Rhys, of course, is magical and powerful and has fun with it. On the other hand, he feels some regret and guilt that he can’t use his magic to give Aaron back his amputated arm or fix the other scars the war left behind.

Rhys was such a fun character to write and seriously, one day I need to revisit his and Aaron’s world in long fiction.

P is for Pradesh. My demon hunting trio in Soldiers of the Sun & The Darkest Midnight in December originated in the UK. Caleb from Wales, Temple who had run away from Paris to London and Agni Pradesh who ended up in London by way of Bombay. They were then sent to fill out the ranks in Pittsburgh’s Sun headquarters after a demon uprising decimated them.

I wanted a little cultural diversity in this story and considered, for better or worse, England’s colonial ties to India. I’ve always had a fascination with Hinduism so Pradesh was born. What I absolutely didn’t want was him to be subservient to his two White partners in any way. Agni isn’t the leader (that would be Caleb) but the Pradesh family is a well-known, well honored group of demon hunters stretching back generations on par with Temple’s family who had been Knights Templar (demon hunters as well in this universe) since before they were officially an organization.

Agni is the quiet level headed studious one of the bunch but of course this leaves me being cautious not to tread too close to the ‘inscrutable Asian’ stereotype. Agni is open and honest about his feelings but on the other hand, feels he needs to be the anchor for the group. Temple is certainly not up to that task (and definitely needs anchoring). He shoulders burdens to allow Caleb, whom he has loved since the beginning of their partnership, to lead without as many worries.

Agni does try to hold on to as much of his culture as he can, which isn’t easy in 1930s America. His apartment is his refuge, decorated as closely to the average household in Bombay as he could manage. He struggles more with food but since the Soldiers of the Sun pull from peoples worldwide they try to help them feel comfortable by supplying things like ethnic food items as much as they can. Agni is unashamedly Hindu and his gods are prominently displayed in his apartment including the god he was named for.

Of course, this is 1930s America and Agni’s dark skin and accent (more the skin tone) can be a problem. This does crop up in the stories, especially in Soldiers of the Sun and the high end exclusive clubs they have to investigate don’t want to allow him entrance. I didn’t want it to be a huge part of the narrative but I didn’t want to simply pretend it wasn’t there. Yes, this is a different universe but I kept it as close to our world as I could. Prejudice was a huge issue in the 1930s obviously and I had to address that.

He faces another issue, being gay in the 1930s. Their leader General Taglioferro knows they’re gay. He knows Caleb and Agni are lovers. He probably even knows they’ve invited Temple into their bed as well. So long as it doesn’t interfere with their combat skills, he doesn’t care. He even considers the fact they might fight harder to save each other because they’re in love. Their homosexuality isn’t well known within the organization in general, however and Temple is a known womanizer (more about him at another time) and probably distracts attention from Agni and Caleb.

Agni might be a studious taciturn bookworm in public but behind closed doors he’s happy to remind everyone that Indians actually did write the book on lovemaking. He had been uncertain about bringing Temple into the relationship as they are polar opposites but was pleasantly surprised to find how compatible they were in bed.

Agni also gets to use the coolest weapons, preferring chakrams as his weapon (If you’re unfamiliar with them, think the metal discs Xena Warrior Princess used). Technically they’re Sikh weapons, not Hindu but in a world where you’re fighting demons, you learn to use every weapon you can get your hands on.

Agni is a fun character but hard to write. I hope I did him justice.

You can find his stories here. (Yes they’re in a series but they can be read as stand alones because hey 1930s demon hunters, right?).
 
Soldiers of the Sun. (novel)

The Darkest Midnight in December. (novella)
Snowbound. (short story)
And here’s some fan art done by one of my friends, Kira. Isn’t it cool?

N is for names. If there is anything harder than putting a title on a story (I’m horrible at it) it’s finding the names for your characters. Of sure, on rare occasion I’ll end up with someone who pops in my head fully named and confident about it, like Temple Chevalier from Soldiers of the Sun. Mostly I waste hours going through name books (back in the old days and occasionally now) and hanging out at Behind the Name. online. I love that you can sort by ethnicity because on more than one occasion the character’s heritage is important to he or she is.

Finding the right name can be agonizing for the author. I’ve been known to change a character’s name mid-way through. Thank God for the search function in Word because I put it to good use. I’ve also been known to put in place holders like XXX or YYY to use the global find and replace later on once that jerk of a character finally chooses a name. I’ve even held contests to help name characters. My usual beta will help me and then say ‘you won’t use them. You never like my names.’ That’s true (and probably goes both ways).

And that brings me to the other difficult thing about naming characters. What works for someone might not work for another. There is nothing you can do about that of course. I once knew a woman who literally hated her parents in part for her name which was a bit different but I thought it was beautiful and would have loved it. There’s a romance author I’ve run across recently (I don’t read a lot of het romance but this cover struck me and I looked her up) and the names were so bizarre and so weirdly spelled that I found it off putting. Heck I find it off-putting even with my students where you have a relatively normal name spelled so strangely as to make their child ‘different.’

Some names, however, should probably send up red flags to us and make us rethink. The fantasy genre for instance usually has bizarre names and using regular names might give the fantasy reader pause. I mean would Frodo, Samwise, Gandalf and Aragon have been the same if they had been named John, Tim, Dave and Bob? Conversely if you’re writing contemporary fiction and you named your protagonist, Dylton we might look at you strange (Charlaine Harris does that in her Midnight Texas story, all the characters have slightly weird names like Fiji, Xylda, Manfred and Bobo but they ARE slightly weird people).

Some names make us judgy even if we don’t mean to be. If I told you this woman’s name was Cinnamon you probably would assign jobs in your head to her (like I know I’ve seen strippers with that name, just saying) and never guess she writes science text books (she does). Some really make you think what were the parents were thinking (and if that’s part of your story then by all means go for it!) Like the race car driver, Dick Trickle, with all due respect to the man who has since passed. Or like someone I interact with professionally whose actual name is Precious. That’s a cute nickname for a baby sure but now she has to endure that name professionally and to an outsider, hearing a doctor call a nurse that would sound like grounds for a sexual harassment suit.

Names are very important. My great grandmother on Mom’s side of the family refused to Anglicize her children’s names when she came here from Italy. She was forced to do it for herself by the government (going from Guiseppina to Josephine) but her children she gave Italian names. On Dad’s side of the family they hid their Italian heritage. Many people did because of the racism of the day. We use names as clues to heritage and sexual identity, for better or worse (often worse). My actual name is unisex. When I noticed I couldn’t get a single response to my job search back when I was seeing patients I removed ‘American Association of Women Podiatrists’ from my resume and got dozens of call backs because they thought I was male (and then hung up on me when they learned I wasn’t). A prejudiced character could easily use a character’s last name to judge him or her without even meeting them, assuming for instance Lanisha is African American or Po Chin is Chinese or Stern is Jewish (Hell I’ve seen people doing that looking over resumes and tossing the ones they think could possibly be non-White, non-Christian because that is their only clue since ethnicity etc. would be off limits when it comes to job applications, and yes it made me see red.)

So yes, naming those main characters is a time consuming job, fraught with emotions (damn you why don’t you like ANY of these names?). Sometimes it’s fun. Sometimes you just want to murder the character before you’ve even written about him.

L is for love. It’s a natural that I’d choose this for L. Most of my stories are LGBT romance after all. For that matter, I love what I do. I love books and I love writing, which is a good thing because for the most part, you’re not getting rich doing this. Oddly enough that’s what I found the least believable about Castle, how rich Richard was. For every Stephen King, JK Rowling and James Patterson are thousands of midlisters who can’t (or barely can) quit the day job. And I’m okay with that because I DO love what I do.

But that’s actually not what I want to talk about in regards to love. Last year I was represented in two anthologies with the name Love in the title. Love Wins and Love is Love. While I am proud to be in both, it is a very sad thing that either of them was necessary. Both were a way to help support the victims of the Pulse shooting in Orlando. I find it eerie that as I sat down to write this blog post more information about that shooting surfaced ( See it here ) and in Russian they’re putting up internment camps and/or killing LGBT people. It’s a terrifying thing on so many levels.

And the truth is, as I see it, I can’t do much on a world-wide scale so I concentrate on doing what I can in my own backyard (like steering students to the Southeast Ohio Equality group), or anthologies like this. I might not be able to go to Florida to help (and I did go to school in Orlando so I do have a connection to it, even if I’m so not a Florida fan in general).

Both anthologies give all proceeds to charities in the Orlando area that can help directly. I jumped at the chance to help and maybe it’s not much but it’s what I could do. Love is Love is a poetry anthology and that is a huge stretch for me. I don’t do a lot of poetry. I’m not sure it’s my strong suit but I have always enjoyed poetry. I was going to read it on campus last week but unfortunately the poetry slam was the same day as another event I was obligated to be at.

Love Wins is one of two charity anthologies Dreamspinner put out to help the Pulse shooting (in fact many publishers did similar ones). My story here More Than His Scars is in the Kept Tears universe (see yesterday’s post). On the anniversary of the bombing that cost him his arm, Aaron’s friends, along with his lover, Rhys take him to Kennywood amusement park to help keep his spirits up. In another strange convergence, today a brand-new review of this anthology went up and the reviewer got the humor in the story. I’m happy for that.

Circling back to the main theme here, love is love. To me it doesn’t matter if it’s between a man and a woman, two men, two women. Love is blind to gender, to religion and skin color. It deeply saddens me that not everyone agrees on that. There could be people reading this post who don’t (well not any of my actual friends. I know they do) and I’m prepared for that. I can’t change the hearts of everyone but I will do what I can within my own circle.

If you want to buy either of these anthologies (again all proceeds go to those LGBT charities) you can find them here and thank you.

Love Wins (which is on sale along with ALL DSP titles this weekend)
Love is Love

J is for Jana, Joshua, John, Jason and Jupiter. You might think I like J names looking at that list. I don’t know how true that is but I will say in the real world, my whole family has J names except me. Jana is my nom de plume, which oddly has become problematic with people being unable to differentiate between pen names (exceedingly common in the publishing world) and catfishing. I’ve blogged about this before so I have little else to say on that other than how I got the name. Jana, pronounced Yah-nah, was my great grandma from Croatia’s name before it was changed to Jenny. My parents considered it for me when I was born but thought it was too ethnic (which given my age was unfortunately a big deal then). I decided to take it for my pen name along with Denardo, the surname of one of my Italian Great grandmas. What would those ladies think of what I write? Given they were alive in the 1800s, probably not much I’m sad to say. I’d like to think they wouldn’t have cared. Jana originally started as my romance pen name both gay and het though I haven’t done het in a while. It’s morphing into the pen name I use for LGBT stories as I want very much to write non-romances.

Let’s talk about those other J names. Joshua I’ve already mentioned in this bloghop series. He’s the ecologist in my WIP These Haunted Hills. I don’t know much about him yet. He’s still introducing himself to me. I know he’s a steampunk fan both dress and music. He’s literally one big, cute fan boy who would think nothing of running around in the woods with a Harry Potter ball cap (but he always gets sorted into Slytherin poor thing). He loves ghost hunting with his best friend and maintains a website (I posted it a few days ago). He’s a blond blue eyed German extract sort (rather picturing the lead of the new MacGyver show). He is in geeky heaven being asked to escort Brendan to all the haunted areas as he’s an enormous fan of the man’s writing and later of the man himself. He’s passionate about the woods and the environment.

Jason is a vampire I created for a m/m romance (a Goodreads group) and he also lives in the Hocking Hills/Athens Ohio area (as do I). He’s from ancient Greece and is part of the Lucerna, a group that hunts down evil supernaturals. He’s the long-term lover of Faolan, a mage who heads up the local branch and he’s with the local police force (in this world the people know the supernatural exist and that the Lucerna is there to protect them). He and Faolan, in Triskelion, fall in lust with Derrek the twin to the local werewolf pack’s alpha. In this world vampires and werewolves don’t get along well so there’s plenty of snark and plenty of local color. I’ve done many shorts with them and would love to do long fiction with them. If anyone is interested in Triskelion let me know. It’s a free story but I don’t have it up on my website yet. If you’re a member of the m/m romance group on Goodreads you can read this story here.


John is in Peace in the Valley and he is the human half of a werewolf/human ‘rescue dog’ team. It’s a Christmas short for Dreamspinner Press’s Advent calendar. There is some search and rescuing, there’s a lot of sex and of course Christmas stuff. John, like Joshua is a giant geek (as am I, coincidence? I think not). This story could be an ad for the Think Geek company. You can find this one here.


Jupiter is from the story The Ghost of Jupiter and is the star ship in my space pirate story. It was another very fun story to write. Modified hybrid humanoids, evil scientists, sexy star ship captains, all the things I grew up loving. Unfortunately the anthology it was in Crossbones is out of print I believe. This is another story I need to get up on the website as a freebie.

H is for haunted. I am a huge fan of haunted houses, the Halloween kind and the real kind. I’ve been a haunted house actress and I’ve been an actual ghost hunter for decades, long before TAPS and company. It’s only natural that some of my stories feature hauntings.

I had a short story, Haunted in Dreamspinner’s anthology, Two Tickets to Paradise where the set of lovers are ghost hunters on a working vacation in Victoria, British Columbia. They spent the story chasing down the same ghosts I had when I was there. I admit it, I ghost tour almost any place I go.

It’s heavily the theme of my latest WIP novel, These Haunted Hills, set in the Hocking Hills near where I live. Joshua is an ecologist teaching in the area (probably at the university I do but I don’t think I’m ever going to mention it. Could just as easily be OU). He is an uber geek who ghost hunts and has a ghost website. I.e. he’s pretty much a combination of me and my friends. In fact, his web site IS one of steampunk buddy’s, Haunted Hocking. You can check out a ton of haunted sites and see his books there too.

The potential love interest in this novel is Brendan, sort of a J.K. Rowling type (i.e. wealthy author), who has lost his son. He’s giving up YA writing and wants to write a ghost story channeling Stephen King and Joe Hill. He is also looking for a psychic to contact his son.

Together they’re going to explore the haunted hills, including a hotel I based sort of on Holmes’s Chicago ‘murder house.’ But ghosts aren’t the only thing haunting this novel. Brendan is very obviously haunted by his son’s early death at the hands of cancer. He hasn’t been living, merely existing, for the last three years. His wife, while remaining his close friend, has divorced him and moved on. Brendan, who identifies as bisexual, finds himself coming alive again in the hills with Josh at his side.

So far in the Rainbow Snippets community on FB (scroll back in my blog to find posts), it’s being well received which is great. It’s my camp nano, also great. What’s not great, no time to write and no ability to concentrate. Here’s hoping something kicks free soon.


Haunted Hocking: Ash Cave