Cat Grant and The Inspiration for Once a Marine

Hey, Jadette. Thanks for inviting me to blog here!

Once a Marine, my new release from Riptide Publishing, took a long time to gestate. I’d been wanting to write a m/m book with a DADT theme for a couple of years, but I had to wait for the policy to be officially repealed before I could see giving that kind of story a truly happy ending. So when President Obama signed the repeal into law right before Christmas in 2010, I rubbed my hands together and started brainstorming ideas.

As luck would have it, I’d also been following the awesome Rachel Maddow’s ongoing series of interview with service men and women discharged under DADT. Here interview with Army Captain Jonathan Hopkins struck a chord with me. When he told her he’d effectively put his personal life on hold for the better part of ten years because any relationship he had would have to be closeted, I knew I had the model for my Marine, Cole Hammond.

Then I had to come up with a worthy object for his affections – and I’ll admit, I didn’t look too far. I knew I wanted to set the story in a university town, so I picked Berkeley – because I HATE location research, and UC Berkeley is my alma mater, so I already know the town really well. And I made Marc Sullivan, Cole’s lover, a writer because I’d never written a book with a writer protag before. Basically, Marc is me if I were a thirty-year-old gay man. So once I had that down, I was good to go.

Writing the first draft took about a month, which is pretty fast, but I can normally knock it out quickly when I have the characters and the story firmly in mind. It was the editing that nearly killed me – in the best way possible. I’d never had developmental edits before, and needless to say, they were an eye-opener. But they helped kick-start my writing brain into overdrive, and by the time we were done, the book was a thousand percent better.

Many readers have commented on my choice to write the story in one 1^st person POV (Marc) and one 3^rd (Cole). Some have found Cole’s POV a bit distancing, which is exactly what I was aiming for. I wanted readers to get to know and slowly fall in love with Cole, the same way Marc does. Was I successful? That’s for readers to judge.

I had a great time researching and writing Once a Marine. It was a privilege to tell Cole and Marc’s story. I can only hope I’ve honored Cole’s sacrifice, the same sacrifice made by so many of our valiant service men and women, who can now serve openly, with dignity and honor.

Here's the blurb:

Love is a battlefield.

Discharged under Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, former Marine major Cole Hammond is struggling to find a new identity. But PTSD casts a pall on everything, and his hard-nosed, homophobic father can’t even bear to look him in the eye. To top it all off, he’s pretty sure he’s flunking out of law school.

Marc Sullivan is a kind, sensitive romance author-slash-waiter with a thing for men in uniform. Cole’s not wearing his anymore, but there’s no mistaking the warrior Marc meets in the diner one rainy afternoon. Cole’s sexy smile and Carolina drawl prove irresistible, but Marc’s played this game before, and he always loses. Once a Marine, always a Marine, and if there’s one thing Marc knows about such men, it’s that they all leave him in the end. It doesn’t help that Cole’s practically closeted in public, or that he refuses to seek treatment for his PTSD.

But like any good Marine, Cole’s willing to fight for what matters. And like the characters in Marc’s stories, he’s certain that if they try just hard enough, together they can find their own happily ever after.

Click the title to read an excerpt and purchase Once a Marine.

Visit my website for more information on my work.

Rhianon Etzweiler - A Blacker Than Black World

The cliché concept of an undead, immortal creature feeding on the blood of the living has been around for hundreds of years. It’s been done to death (pun intended) since the rampant legend of Vlad the Impaler birthed Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
 

The idea that humans are no longer being the top of the food chain (or no longer alone in that position) is an underlying theme of a healthy number of dark fantasy and urban fantasy books. Whether it’s fae, werewolves, vampires, shifters, or some other equally extraordinary race of creatures that usurps Homo sapiens, most of the tropes have been explored to exhaustion.

With “Blacker Than Black,” I wanted to go a different direction—a little further off the beaten path than humans being reduced to whoring blood to the ruling vampires. And selling their soul to a demon was off the table; it leads down an inevitable road of religious connotations. That wasn’t the type of story I wanted to write.

What else does a person have to sell? When you strip away the trappings of beliefs, possessions and social status, where’s the common denominator? The answer is emotions. Personal energy, aura. No matter what you take from people, the chi is autonomous. It remains firmly theirs. They can feel whatever they wish, and it can’t be controlled or taken away.

I wanted to change that. And that’s when I hit on using energy vampires. We’ve all known them. Those people that seem to suck the positive, happy, upbeat energy out of you, just by being in close vicinity. When you get away from them, you feel exhausted and relieved. Sometimes it takes a while to recover, to pull your mood up out of the dark hole they sink you into.

These are the vampires. Within the laws of this reality, taking chi from another living being extends the lifespan of the recipient, while shortening the donor’s. Thus vampires become immortal beings, though not without cost. They’re still human, the result of genetic permutations over time that give rise to a new subspecies of humanity. Homo sapiens bows to Homo hirudo. The leech.

In Black’s world, the mundane are reduced to second-class citizens, permitted to exist and live their lives for the sole purpose of enriching the quality of the emotional base the vampires have available.

Much the same way a farmer who wants quality meat will feed a healthy, balanced diet to an animal intended for slaughter.

Some vampires love the taste of hope. Some prefer the tang of fear. Some find the bitter twist of hatred more palatable. Others abhor the forceful acquisition of emotional energy and insist their sources offer it freely. Don’t rape the cattle. They must walk willingly to the slaughterhouse.

And then there are the ones that practice abstinence. There’s always some, in every society…

Blurb from Blacker than Black: 

Apparently, my twin and I are two of York's most notorious criminals.  We've been Nightwalkers in the blue-light district since the vamps took over the world.  Don't know how many years it's been.  Long enough that a stream of fellow 'walkers have come and gone.  Most don't last long selling their chi.  End up face0down in the futter, or worse. 

For us, one night and one sale change everything.

Monsieur Garthelle is the first john to hunt me down. He calls me a chi thief in one breath and offers absolution—servitude—in the next. Maybe I’m a sucker, but I like living and breathing. Strange that such a powerful vamp would show leniency to a mere human. And something’s not right with the chi I took from him. It won’t go away.

Neither will he, and he’s forcing us to spy on his peers. Then a vamp turns up dead, and we go from playing eyes and ears to investigating a murder. This isn’t what I signed up for. All I ever wanted was to sell a little chi, maybe steal some in return. I should’ve kept my damn hands to myself.

This is my story. Look through my eyes.

To read an excerpt and purchase Blacker than Black, click here.

First Wave Winner's Choice:  Pick any one backlist book from Rachel Haimowitz, Aleksandr Voinov, L.A. Witt, Brita Addams, or Cat Grant ("Frontlist" books, i.e. Riptide releases and newest non-riptide release, are excluded, as are the Courtland Chronicles.)

Find Rhianon:

Fan contact: Rhianon.etzweiler@gmail.com

Business contact: rhianon76@gmail.com

Website

Blog

Twitter

Facebook

Goodreads Page

Amazon Author Page

Google+

Aleksandr Voinov Dark Soul series

Finally getting it right

It was Churchill who said the Americans could be always counted on to do the right thing … after they’ve exhausted all other possibilities.

That’s a bit how I feel about Dark Soul. The character of Silvio Spadaro has been with me for twenty years. Almost as long as I’ve been published. You can bet that I’ve tried before to write about him. Thing is, as mercurial as Silvio is on the page, he’s worse in my head. I’ve literally tried everything to get him into a story, but nothing really worked. Not the loosely-connected episodes I wrote about him when I “met” him, not the novel-length family drama where he’s about sixteen and as pretty as he’s deadly.

I’ve written about him when he was a coke-head, early-to-mid-thirties, fucked up and still deadly. I’ve written him dying of AIDS. I’ve written part of his story in a near-future cyberpunk world. I’ve considered putting him into the Italian Renaissance – the Borgia and Medici surely know how to deal with him – but I never really got a handle on him.

Part of the reason is pure vanity. Hey, here’s me, Mr. “I know how this shit works” Author, and I can’t get a bead on a mere character, a figment of my own imagination? Normally I at least get to a workable compromise with my characters, sometimes the Muse does exactly what he’s supposed to do.

The other part is the desire to share. Hey, if I enjoy this character so much – and for so long – readers surely will, too. At least some of them. The problem is that, to communicate Silvio to a brain outside my own, I need to get him on the page. Back to square one. Talking only gets me so far when I try to share – writing’s more than talking. It’s a mix of re-imagining, living inside the character and the scene, but above all, it can feel like drawing a magical circle and making some incorporeal force visible by sheer bloody-minded determination and just the right spell book.

Like anything else you summon and feed with (heart)blood, characters are temperamental. Silvio more than any other. Thankfully, he’s pretty vain himself. (Never tease him with his dyslexia, he’s REALLY touchy there, for example.) So he wanted out.

So when I read a short story sub call about gun kinks (Storm Moon Press’s “Weight of a Gun” anthology) I originally wrote the story for that. The only one of my characters who I knew would get off on gunplay was Silvio. Hey, short story, I can do that without tapping the whole character, right? Can I jackshit.

Once I’d opened the gate and invited him in, he wouldn’t stop being there, teasing me with versions of his life. Most importantly, in the last twenty years, I ‘ve grown enough as a writer to finally do him justice. It’s still not a novel, but this episodic format works. Finally. Last alternative available, but it finally works.

Here's the blurbs from the three available stories:

Stefano Marino is a made man, a happily married west coast mafia boss who travels east to await the death of a family patriarch. All the old hands have gathered—of course sharks will circle when there’s blood in the water—but it’s a new hand that draws Stefano’s eye.

Silvio “the Barracuda” Spadaro is protetto and heir to retired consigliere Gianbattista Falchi, and a made man in his own right. Among his underworld family, being gay is a capital crime, but the hypersexual—and pansexual—young killer has never much cared for rules. The only orders he follows are Battista’s, whether on the killing field or on his knees, eagerly submissive at Battista’s feet.

But Silvio has needs Battista can’t fill, and he’s cast his black-eyed gaze on Stefano. A fake break-in, an even faker attack, and Silvio is exactly where he wants to be: strung up at Stefano’s mercy, driving the older Mafioso toward urges he’s spent his whole life repressing. Stefano resists, but when the Russian mob invades his territory and forces him to seek aid, Gianbattista’s price brings Stefano face to face once more with Silvio—and his darkest desires.

This title is #1 of the Dark Soul series. Read an excerpt and purchase here.

The second volume in the Dark Soul series features the stories "Dark Whisper" and "Dark Night."

In "Dark Whisper," Gianbattista may have broken Silvio's heart and sent him off to the States, but he's still just a phone call away. When Silvio returns from a sex shop with a bag full of goodies, Gianbattista can't resist topping his boy one more time, even if they are 4,000 miles apart.

In "Dark Night," the Russian problem comes back to haunt Stefano, and when a dark encounter leaves him bloody and broken, Silvio knows just the right way to ease his pain.

This title is #2 of the Dark Soul series. Read an excerpt and purchase here.

In "Dark Lady I," as Silvio Spadaro plans to take on the Russian hit squad that kidnapped his boss, he decides the best way to deal with four extremely dangerous men is to become an even more dangerous woman.

In “Dark Lady II,” Stefano discovers yet another disturbing—and arousing—truth about Silvio and how easily Silvio uses a man’s weakness for his own ends.

“Dark Brother” brings another player to Stefano Marino’s household. Franco Spadaro has just been released from the French Foreign Legion and is catching up with his little brother. In the middle of a war, a skilled sniper comes in right on time—but two Spadaros might be more than Stefano can handle.

This title is #3 of the Dark Soul series. Read an excerpt and purchase here.

Visit Aleksandr's website.