With infinite apologies to Anna for this being up a day late. I have no excuses except to say that my life is running away with me at the moment and I don’t know when I’ll next be in control of it.

Fortunately Anna is completely in charge, so I’ll hand you over to her now

Who Are the Fae

Fae (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faery) is the name given to a broad spectrum of beings. It is a species with many subcultures and races, much like human beings have a vast array of diverse people. The fact that Fae magics make them so changing though, takes their diversity to a whole new level.

In each legend the Fae take on another aspect or form. Some are humans who died gruesome deaths, like the Bean Si, the Banshee. Others are protectors of nature, like Jack Frost. And some are just down-right scary. A lot of the stories are cautionary tales dealing with how to avoid their anger and for good reason. An angry Fae is a terrifying think indeed. The most apt description I ever read to encompass all of the Fae was that they are “of a middle nature, somewhere between Man and Angel”. The problem is that even at their most angelic, they aren’t human and only have a skewed vision of what a human is (much as I’m sure we have a skewed vision of Fae, Angel, Demons and anything else that was never human). Because of this, even actions meant to be kind may result in anything but kindness.

I’ve mentioned in other blogs, their changing and very inhuman minds are one of the big reasons I like to write about them. There is so much potential and there are so many legends. An author could get lost in the possibilities. They aren’t human and never were so that alien feeling is always surrounding them. The only limit is the author’s imagination and too human mind. It is difficult to do the Fae and their strangeness the justice they deserve.

In modern media my favorite depiction of Fae was in the “Spiderwick Chronicles”. While the books were dominated by the smaller of the Fae, Pixies and Brownies, they delved into the darkness as well. Without being too overwhelming, or too graphic, the author captured the spirit of the old legends wonderfully. It’s a book for children, but that is also commendable, because it opens a whole new generation up to the fact that Fae aren’t all pretty little girls with wings. As they showed us in the movie Labyrinth, Fae have Bite to them.

And sometimes…it’s welcome.

Nearly a year since the nightmare at the cabin. Life for Daniel and Leinad hasn’t gotten easier, but at least there is something to say for familiarity. They fight, they threaten, but they love each other and in the end, that should be enough.

It isn’t.

When the shadows start stealing closer, and the past begins catching up to them, how long will the two lovers have before the Fae in Daniel emerges, and before Leinad has to face his own demons once again? Until the harsh light of reality engulfs the fragile world they’ve built for themselves?

How long will it be until daybreak?

Excerpt

"Daniel." The soft, trilling voice sent shocks of agony straight to his temples.

A thick band of tension tightened around his head. He closed his strange new eyes and begged silently for it to stop.

"Daniel," Leinad whispered again. The words were barely there, breathy. The soft, downy inside of his lover’s wings folded around him from behind, and he sighed as Leinad lowered both of them carefully to the bed. "Do not fight it. Don’t try to understand it. Whatever it is you see, it is not something humans are meant to process. You do not think like a Fae. Trying to grasp their worlds and ways will hurt you."

"My head is killing me," Daniel mumbled.

Leinad nodded against his shoulder and rested his face in the curve of Daniel’s neck. "I know."

"Reading my mind now?"

Leinad chuckled. "You squint when you get headaches."

Daniel tried to smile, but it felt brittle and impossible upon his lips. "I can’t… I’m terrified, Leinad."

A soft mouth moved against Daniel’s neck, softer feathers caressed his chest, belly, thighs. "I am here."

Long, tapered fingers slid slowly around his sides, teased their way to brush over Daniel’s chest and pulled him back harder against his partner. Daniel could feel Leinad’s interest pressed insistently against his tailbone. One talon tipped finger flicked the delicate nub of a nipple. Daniel gasped, Leinad moaned and nipped at the tender skin of Daniel’s neck.

"What are you doing?" Daniel asked stupidly. When did my mind and mouth lose their connection?

"I’m making you forget," Leinad said calmly, and rolled his hips into Daniel’s ass. "I’ll make you forget your own name."

"I already have." Daniel choked.

Leinad’s motions stilled. "Damn you Daniel. The other Fae weren’t nearly as difficult to interest."

"I don’t remember being Fae."

The wings opened and Daniel yelped in surprise. Leinad grabbed, twisted, and straddled him all in quick succession until Daniel stared up at Leinad from his back. The cruel curve of his beak, wide golden eyes, round and knowing in a pale white face, filled his vision. Feathers flowed over his head and shoulders like hair. The hands holding him down were talon tipped and deadly.

Daniel’s cock danced at the proximity of the dangerous creature. It thickened, lengthened, the blood rushed into it in an attempt to make it hard enough to tear through the linen slacks the creature wore. Again, one taloned hand flexed, a deadly claw teased his nipple. Daniel squirmed and moaned. He needed pressure, friction, flesh. He needed Leinad, in all his terrifying glory.

"You feel it too, don’t you." It was a statement, not a question. "The consuming pull, the want, your body craves mine as if you were made for me, of me. No matter what happens, you belong to me, my creature. So lie back and give yourself up to me. Fear me, need me, only focus upon me." Leinad punctuated his command by rolling his hips and opening his fly to free his rapidly hardening need from the confinement of his pants.

Daniel trembled, a familiar yet strange moistness seeped from his puckered entrance as his body prepared itself. His anus opened and closed again and again, begged to be filled, to be brutalized, to be taken, owned, claimed. It knew its master just as his dancing cock did, just as Daniel himself did. Leinad glowed gloriously and Daniel wanted nothing more than to be the vessel to his need. He arched his hips up, and closed his eyes at even the slight friction that earned him. Without the strange visual world to distract him, the sensations were doubled and then some, and he keened at their strength.

"There, now you are ready for me, aren’t you."

"Yes," he whimpered. "Oh yes, please."

"Please?" Leinad cooed. "You want me to please you, do you not?" He took Daniel’s hand and brought it to his huge, thick cock. The veins stood in stark relief against the magnificent shaft and the mushroom head leaked a thick, clear liquid that coated its length and pooled between them, made them slide smoothly against one another. "You want me to tear you open and live inside you, move in and out until you aren’t sure which you want more, the pleasure or the pain."

"Yes!" Daniel begged and writhed for more, for the action those words promised. "Please fuck me."

"I’ll fuck you into forgetting. Then I’ll go deeper. I’ll penetrate straight to your soul and saturate it with my seed. Body. Mind. Soul, all mine. You hear me? You’re mine!"

"Yes, sir." Daniel trembled. Leinad stood and stripped quickly. Daniel didn’t even have time to feel guilt over the multitude of bandages revealed before Leinad was back. He tore Daniel’s pants from his body, scooped Daniel’s legs up to rest on his shoulders and surged forward until Daniel was bent nearly in half, begging in shallow, panting breaths, his opening wide and wanting. "Please Leinad. Please don’t be cruel to me, not now."

"Never," the creature promised and thrust with one hard jab, burying himself deeply into Daniel’s core.

Daniel cried out in perfect, blissful agony. "More!"

Leinad thrust again, and lights danced in the blackness behind Daniel’s eyelids.

"Mine. Say it," Leinad ordered.

"Yours, I am yours. I am yours!" he sang brokenly while Leinad plowed into him again and again. Daniel might as well have been praying, for the worship he could hear in his own voice. The thickness inside of him was unrelenting, claiming, unyielding. He had no time to relax, to calm or think, barely time to breathe.

The speed behind those deep thrusts increased, and he was bent so far that his knees met his ears while Leinad blanketed him with his weight and rode him hard, wet and wonderful. A scream built inside of him, but he had no breath to give voice to it. Leinad pounded into him so hard that he slammed into the bed. It still wasn’t enough. Daniel reached down to grasp his own cock, but the force inside of him shook. Leinad’s cock rattled like a snake against his prostrate and before his fingers even closed around himself he was coming, twisted and covered and owned. It wasn’t romantic, but it was love, thick and hot inside of him. It bent him, twisted his soul to its bidding. "I love you," he breathed.

Leinad came and pulled out at the same time. His semen coated Daniel’s legs and crotch as he retreated to the far side of the room and stared at him with those wide, inhuman eyes.

"Leinad?"

"Damn you, Daniel." He choked. "You weren’t supposed to say it."

You can learn more about my books and myself at http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4430205.Anna_Mayle

And all of the previous books are also available for purchase at

http://www.resplendencepublishing.com/360.html just click on the cover to the right of the screen.

Thank you ^_^

Mirrored from Alex Beecroft - Author of Gay Historical and Fantasy Fiction.

I went to see The Avengers on Saturday. Being a massive fan of the Iron Man, Thor and Captain America movies, and a long-term reader of The Mighty Thor comics (though I’ve switched allegiance now that Loki has his own series) I had EPIC FEELS about this one. I’d been looking forward to it at fever pitch for months.

Which makes me rather sad to report that I don’t know what I think, now that I’ve seen it. I’m having a moment of cognitive dissonance here, because I enjoyed it thoroughly for about 90% of the way, and then in the last 10% I found myself getting more and more disenchanted until by the very end I came out feeling profoundly disappointed. I simultaneously thought it was awesome, and hated it.

I’ve spent all day today trying to figure out why.

Recap of the plot and spoilers everywhere below:

Mirrored from Alex Beecroft - Author of Gay Historical and Fantasy Fiction.

I’m so relieved – that gap between first publication and first review is always so full of angst. Will anyone like it, or will I have to change my name and tattoo someone else’s face on top of mine just to show myself in public again?

But mega thanks to Leslie S for a review that made me squee repeatedly. (Yay, so delighted that Mr. Smith gets a shout out. He was a favourite of mine too.)

It’s too long and detailed a review to sum up here. I’ll just link you to it

http://www.reviewsbyjessewave.com/2012/04/04/bombers-moon/

and quote the conclusion:

“This is quite simply a perfect story—no slow moments, no ‘meh’ characters, gorgeous writing, a complex and coherent plot. I cannot wait to read the second part, Dogfighters, which is released in May and which I’ll be reviewing later this month. Fantasy fans absolutely must pick up this book—and if you’re not a fantasy fan, I urge you to get it anyway—you won’t be disappointed.”

Thank you so much, Leslie!

~

And to celebrate both the review and the heroism of Mr. Smith, here is that excerpt I promised you yesterday.

A bit of background – Ben knows the elves are trying to kidnap him. He’s been given an amulet to protect him, which is basically a teaspoon of holy water in a BPAL imp. With this on him, the elves do not seem to be able to touch him directly. However, they are clever creatures and are slowly figuring out ways to get around that.

At half past one, Ben went back to work after lunch, spent a good couple of hours doing filing in the haunted basement. He’s just come out to the bank proper again, and discovered that it is still half past one. And that’s only the start of the creepiness:

EXCERPT

Mirrored from Alex Beecroft - Author of Gay Historical and Fantasy Fiction.

I may have mentioned before that I’m not the kind of writer who sees a movie in their head and writes down what happens from that. I’m the kind who has a head full of grey fog above a dark and unseen lake of words. I don’t have pictures of anything. If I want to know what something in the book looks like, I have to stop writing, make a concerted effort to visualise and then reach for the words.

And I can do that fine for scenery. Houses, reed beds, dust bowls, Elven spaceports? No problem. But I don’t seem to be able to do it for people.

This is why I now go out and find photos of people who look relatively right for my characters, gather them together in a folder on my computer, and periodically revisit them so I can hold their faces in my mind. Previously I’ve only bothered to cast my two heroes this way, but for Under the Hill I did all of the main cast.

Having done it, I thought I might as well share them. If you don’t like having someone else’s picture of what a character looks like thrust upon your imagination, look away now

Mirrored from Alex Beecroft - Author of Gay Historical and Fantasy Fiction.

So, after the excitement of Saturday I got steadily sicker, until by Wednesday it took me the whole day to write 700 words. On Thursday I gave up and awarded myself a sick day, which I spent reading blogs.

As a result of Chuck Wendig’s “promote yourself” post I added a whole load of new blogs to my friend list, which is good. But this morning I find the RSS feed thingy has given me all their recent posts in one huge slab of ‘OMG, my FL is broken!’ I hope that will settle down from now on or some of them will have to go again. I don’t mind reading one post of a particular blog a day, but I can’t cope with five.)

~*~*~

As if the prospect of learning the 5000 tunes in my handwritten, photocopied stack of ‘essential music for morris musicians’ sheet music on the whistle wasn’t enough, I seem to have decided to take up the pipe and tabor. This is the original morris one man band – a three hole pipe that you play in one hand, while you simultaneously play a drumbeat with the other hand, like so:

This makes the overblowing you do on the whistle to get the second octave seem like child’s play. To get a single octave on the tabor pipe you have to overblow once and twice, and to get the higher octave, three and four times. (What am I talking about? See here: http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Pipe_and_tabor)

I can feel my brain protesting, but I can at least play “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” with drum accompaniment, and almost play the morris tune “Balance the Straw” with rhythm. I’m fairly sure that this time next week I could do a good job of “Balance the Straw,” if I practiced it every day between then and now. Maybe that’s what I’ll do.

Mustn’t stop practicing the whistle too, though, or this will just end up destroying the progress I’ve made on that.

~*~*~*~

What is this ‘promo op’ of which you speak? Well, I thought it was a really good idea of Chuck Wendig’s to throw open the comments section of his blog to people who wanted to promote their book/blog/vid/editing/dogwalking service/any other thing. So naturally I thought it would be a good idea to do it here too.

Basically, if you have a new book out, or any other thing you want to shout about, leave a comment here. I don’t guarantee I’ll reply to them all, but I’ll see them all and so will anyone else who comes here. And it can’t hurt, right?

Mirrored from Alex Beecroft - Author of Gay Historical and Fantasy Fiction.

Well, the gist of this post is in the title. My lovely editor at Samhain, Anne Scott, emailed me this morning to say “Did you know Bomber’s Moon has a starred review in Publisher’s Weekly?” To which I had to sit down abruptly with the smelling salts (porridge actually) and calm myself before replying.

Publisher’s Weekly, how about that? And under “Fiction” – not “m/m romance” or even “romance”. Talk about mainstream

They say

Beecroft’s writing dazzles, brimming with lush descriptions of worldly and otherworldly landscapes, taut conflict, and two finely drawn romantic leads… readers will delight in every moment of their adventure.

Full review here: http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-60928-724-5

Coolness! *Doing the interpretive dance of speechless glee.*

Mirrored from Alex Beecroft - Author of Gay Historical and Fantasy Fiction.

Huzzah, and other, more period-appropriate, exclamations. The first draft of The Pilgrims’ Tale is complete at 87,890 words. It opens with a scene a little bit like this:

only without the anachronisms and arrows, and carries on being less about war and more about music and gender-role confusion than is usual with me. It’s probably the gentlest thing I’ve done so far (if you don’t count the way my heroes meet up the second and third time, or the fate of the best friend, or the inability of Leofgar’s lord to understand the word ‘no.’) That’s either because I’m feeling old and tired at the moment, or it’s because I wanted to show Saxon society when it was working, not when it was either falling apart under threat of invasion or gearing itself up to fight.

This is probably all wrong from a tension and drama POV, but my heroes are a professional musician/entertainer and a reluctant berserker. The gleeman would be in trouble in the middle of a war zone, and the berserker would have more pressing matters to attend to than to fall in love. Hence, peace.

I should really celebrate by going out somewhere nice – except that the car has broken down. Or by having a nice relaxing bath – except that a water main burst nearby last night and we still have no water in the house. Tomorrow then

I wrote 52,296 words of this since the girls went back to school on the 6th of January by making sure that I wrote at least 1000 words every week day. In practice I think I averaged about 1800 a day, with some sick days. Which is not quite as impressive as NaNoWriMo, (where I also only write on weekdays, and therefore need to write about 2,400 words a day) but is a lot more sustainable.

Now I think I will write that story about Loki versus the giant chicken, then do the first draft of a short novella, and thus give myself the time and space I need apart from this to come back to the second draft fresh.

Mirrored from Alex Beecroft - Author of Gay Historical and Fantasy Fiction.

I occasionally also froth at the mouth about this subject, and have crossed one publisher off my list of ‘people I will ever work with again’ because they tried to take my wases away. But I have been too lazy/ill informed to ever write a proper post about why using the verb ‘to be’ does not constitute passive voice, why you can’t just take it away without deforming the language – and why passive voice isn’t always such a terrible thing anyway.

Fortunately for my laziness, Patricia C Wrede has written her own post about it, and it is wonderful. Have a look at this:

Misunderstanding grammar

~

Mirrored from Alex Beecroft - Author of Gay Historical and Fantasy Fiction.

OK, so this was not what I intended to blog about this morning, but this was just more important:

We defeated SOPA and PIPA, but the battle is not over yet. You have another head on this hydra to slay, and it’s getting frightfully little attention. Feel free to repost this anywhere you like.
ACTA -
1. ACTA isn’t the “European” SOPA. It’s nearly GLOBAL, and will apply to every country that signs the treaty.
2. ACTA is far more aggressive. ACTA will not simply affect websites and have them blocked out of the internet – its measures go as far as surveillance of anything you share through private channels.
3. ACTA doesn’t have a campaign against it that is as wide-spread and organized as the SOPA one. This is DANGEROUS, as there’s less time between now and the final signing of ACTA.
4. ACTA has effects on healthcare, trade, and even tourism.
5. ACTA has to be stopped.
Let’s start spreading the word and organizing a good, solid response to it.
More information:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ56UNL5zeo

There is a petition against this one here: http://www.petitiononline.com/stopacta/petition.html

This petition is to stop ACTA(Anti-counterfeiting Trade Agreement). The ACTA is an international treaty that will create problems such as these.
(Via http://boingboing.net/2009/11/03/secret-copyright-tre.html)

” * * That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn’t infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.
* * That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet — and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living — if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.
* * That the whole world must adopt US-style “notice-and-takedown” rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused — again, without evidence or trial — of infringing copyright. This has proved a disaster in the US and other countries, where it provides an easy means of censoring material, just by accusing it of infringing copyright.
* * Mandatory prohibitions on breaking DRM, even if doing so for a lawful purpose (e.g., to make a work available to disabled people; for archival preservation; because you own the copyrighted work that is locked up with DRM)”

With this petition we hope to stop the unelected officials proposing this treaty, and keep the internet free.
We must also remember this is just the first in may steps to take our other freedoms away.
for more information
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XoFGApjhFE
http://ipjustice.org/wp/campaigns/acta/

and again, here’s the URL for the petition http://www.petitiononline.com/stopacta/petition.html

As it says on YouTube “ACTA, SOPA, PIPA all at once as soon as 2012? hit!…. I didn’t beleive in “2012 is the end of the world” until now”

Edited because that petition site seems to be down, and this one goes directly to the UK Government:

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/20685/

Mirrored from Alex Beecroft - Author of Gay Historical and Fantasy Fiction.

Copied wholesale from Erastes

I think if you are going to do one political act today, then do this one rather than the other.

(from thimble_kiss

If you are a transgender person in Sweden and want to legally change your gender, the government forces you to undergo surgery that will render you permanently infertile and forever unable to have children. That’s right: in 2012 Swedish law still mandates forced sterilization in order to do something as simple as changing your gender on a driver’s license.
Right now a reform of the law is being debated in Sweden. We need a massive show of support across Sweden and Europe against forced sterilization that will finally convince Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfledt to speak out and break the deadlock.
Whether you are straight, gay, lesbian, bi or trans, Swedish or European, will you take a moment to raise your voice and ask Prime Minister Reinfeldt to take a stand for human rights?
Take action now : http://allout.org/stop_forced_sterilization

Mirrored from Alex Beecroft - Author of Gay Historical and Fantasy Fiction.