I want to wish you all the happiest of holidays and the
healthiest, best and most productive New Year.!
I’ve been quite busy this fall
writing and I thought I’d let you know what’s in the pipeline.
My general practice is to write a first draft, put it aside,
then come back to it a few months later. I’ll add in descriptions, make sure
the timeline works, and so on. If I’m happy, I’ll send it off to one of the
freelance editors I use. Then I’ll do another draft based on her advice, hire
my fabulous cover designer to create a great cover, and then put it up for
sale.
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Sometimes a book takes more than two drafts. I’ve been
working on an MM romance version of the story of David and Jonathan from the
Bible, for example. In the first draft I took the Bible stories from the book
of Samuel and knitted them into a coherent timeline (apparently several
different authors contributed to that book, so it’s a mess.) It wasn’t a real love story yet, because the Bible didn’t treat it as one, so I had to do another draft to improve that. I’m hoping after another draft, and then editorial review and revision, it’ll be ready this spring. |
Also on my hard drive is a historical MM romance set along
the Delaware Canal in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where I grew up. It’s also
where the golden retriever mysteries are set. I’m in a historical mood right
now—almost finished with a book I’m calling The
Gentleman and the Spy, a romance adventure set a few years later but in
London and the Cotswolds. Something about the tumult of that period appeals to
me—the US was recovering from the Civil War, and Victoria reigned over India.
And finally, I finished a first draft of the next Have Body,
Will Guard book, in which Aidan’s ex, Blake, needs him and Liam to protect
Blake’s husband, an Argentine diplomat, at a convention in the Bahamas. You can
feel free to tell anyone you know in the IRS that it’s loosely based on a trip
my partner and I took in the spring!
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If you haven’t read the most recent book in the series, The Same Page, Jon Michaelsen has
posted an exclusive excerpt at his website, featuring the
secondary couple of the book, young Russian Arseny and his Italian boyfriend
Giovanni. I’ve had several readers ask to see them in another book. What do you think? Leave a comment here or at Jon's blog and I’ll choose someone to get a free digital copy of The Same Page—or any other book in the series, if you wish. |
While you wait for all that, here’s a brief piece of flash
fiction about Aidan and Liam, who can’t seem to get away from protecting
people, even if they’re not hired to do so.
Christmas Village in the Place Massena, Nice
“Ice skating, Aidan? Really? You do know it’s eighty degrees
outside.” Liam stared at me.
“Yes, but this rink is only temporary for the holidays.”
“Didn’t you get enough of the cold when we were in Chechnya?"
“It’s not like we were there for vacation. Please, Liam?”
“Fine. But if you fall on your ass, I’m laughing.”
“Ditto.”
They drove their Jeep down into the center of Nice, which
was jammed with holiday tourists, and found a parking place in a garage near
the Place Massena. On their way to the ice rink they passed an animated
Christmas village, complete with elf, and a place where kids could have their
photos taken with Santa.
“If you tell me you want to sit on Santa’s lap I’ll call you
a pervert,” Liam said.
“I’ll settle for your lap, later.”
Beyond Santa’s village was a sugar shack, which was
announced as a Canadian tradition. They both followed the instructions, dipping
a stick in hot syrup and then rolling it in snow until it became a lollipop.
“This is good enough to make me want to visit Canada,” Aidan said.
They strolled through
the rest of the Christmas village, where people shopped for handmade ornaments
or crèches, drank mulled wine and ate crepes and waffles. The rink was the size
of an Olympic swimming pool, about half-filled with skaters in an odd mix of
clothes, from T-shirts and shorts over bare legs to ski pants and long-sleeved
turtlenecks.
It was in the low sixties, so they had both worn jeans and
polo shirts. While they fitted their skates beside the rink, the fan blowing
cold air chilled Aidan’s bare arms and rose goosebumps, but once they were on
the rink he didn’t notice them anymore.
His first few glides were wobbly, as he let his body
remember how to do this. He had grown up on a lake in Pennsylvania, and when it
froze over he joined the rest of the neighborhood kids out on the ice, skating
in loops and joining pick-up ice hockey games.
As with almost everything athletic, Liam was better than he
was, taking off on a long glide right out of the gate, even though Aidan was
sure he hadn’t been on skates since he was a teenager. Aidan focused on keeping
his balance, skating slowly around couples and small children.
As he did, he watched the crowd. When he had taken bodyguard
school years before, when he first decided he wanted to work with Liam, one of
the things he’d been trained to look for was people whose attire didn’t fit the
weather. Men in long overcoats, for example, when the temperature didn’t merit
it.
But that rule didn’t seem to matter when it came to an ice
rink on the Côte d’Azur. A young man, his face almost obscured by his heavy
beard and a wool cap over his head, wore a heavy wool coat that hung to his
knees. But who could blame him, when the ice was a frosty thirty-two degrees,
with cold breezes generated by the fans at the sidelines that had chilled Aidan
earlier.
Ahead of him, Liam twirled around and skated backwards
toward him, then took Aidan’s hand and spun him around slowly. “You goof,”
Aidan said, but he smiled.
Liam let him go, and zoomed off around the rink, and Aidan
skated slowly behind him. When he passed the young man in the overcoat, he
couldn’t help noticing something in his look. He remembered going to gay bars
when he was barely drinking age, back in Philadelphia. He had the feeling he’d
looked that way, longing as he watched men come and go with each other. Would
he ever find a man to enter his heart?
There had been Blake first, for nearly eleven years, and then
Liam, so Aidan knew that his youthful fears had been ungrounded. He had the
desire to pull that young amn aside and tell him not to worry, everything would
be all right in the end.
But what if he wasn’t gay? Suppose he was just frightened of
getting on skates?
“Did you notice the guy in the overcoat?” Liam asked, as he
skated up beside Aidan.
“The one who looks like a kid outside a candy shop?” Aidan
said. “Yeah.”
“I wouldn’t describe him that way. I’d say the guy who looks
like he’s hiding something under that coat.”
“Liam. He probably just wanted to stay warm out on the ice.”
“But he’s not on the ice. He’s on the sidelines and he’s sweating
like mad. Why not take off his coat?”
The next few moments appeared to Aidan to pass in slow
motion. The young man unbuttoned his coat, and Aidan recognized the outline of
a long gun beneath it. Liam saw that, too, and with a strong push on his
skates, glided quickly toward the sidelines. He jumped the low fence with the
ease of an Olympic skater, slamming into the young man.
The crowd reacted by pulling back, especially when a
twenty-something mother noticed the gun that had fallen free and called, “Au secours! Un pistolet!”
Aidan skated close to where Liam wrestled with the young
man, but couldn’t do anything to help because he had his skates on. Fortunately
a pair of flics arrived almost immediately, securing the long gun and
separating Liam from the young man, whose hat had come off to reveal an unruly
mop of black hair.
Aidan skated over to the exit, swapped out his skates for
his shoes, and picked up Liam’s running shoes as well. As he returned to Liam,
he heard his partner explaining how he had noticed the gun.
The crowd supported
him, and the dark-haired man was hauled off to the police station, after the
flics had taken information from all the witnesses.
“Just another sunny day on the Côte d’Azur,” Liam said, as
he swapped out his skates for his shoes.
“I’m starved. How about we go back to
that Canadian place and try the grilled marshmallows dipped in chocolate?”
“You know the way to my heart,” Aidan said. “Though you did
cause it to skip a couple of beats when you launched yourself at that guy.”
“Just keeping things interesting,” Liam said.
Thanks for reading this far! The hardest thing about the
Have Body, Will Guard series is figuring out why someone needs a bodyguard. I’ve
already done the following:
(BTW, all the links are to Amazon, where I sell most of my
books, but they’re all available widely at Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple and
other e-retailers.)
Any ideas I can use? I’d love to hear them, either by email,
Facebook message or post here or at Jon Michaelsen’s site.
Love and joy –
Neil
