Plan the Next Lesson in The Professor's Rule!

The first two instalments of The Professor's Rule are out now, but for the third, we thought we'd try something a little different . . .

Namely, we thought we'd let you (yes you!) pick the kink James and his Professor explore next. From now until October 2nd, you can stop by The Jeep Diva to make suggestions of kinks you'd like to read, either anonymously or no. After the 2nd, Amelia and I will pick our five favourites, and open it up to a vote! The winning vote gets featured in the next instalment of the series. And even if your kink doesn't get picked, just making a suggestion gets you entered in a draw to win a $10 Riptide giftcard.

What are you waiting for? Click the gif and get your kink on!

News, news, news!

Item One:

GRL is happening in Atlanta in less than a month! I'll be there. I'm packing sensible shoes. If you can't find me at first, just look for the tubby little Canadian complaining about the heat with eyeliner melting down her face. (This is only slightly a joke.) Seriously, I'll be there and giving out a free book so fiiiind me. Just promise not to punch me over the ending of the last season of Flesh Cartel, okay?

Item Two:

Lisa Henry and I have a contract and a release date for our M/M post-apocalyptic King of Dublin, all about a post-pandemic post-economic-crash Ireland that's fallen to anarchy. It's got all of the dark sex and violence and suspense you can expect from Lisa Henry or myself. Oh, and did I mention? It's a big meaty book of 90+k, so if you like me but dislike my penchant for short formats, now's your chance! Look for it next February from Riptide! I'll be posting here when I have coverart/blurb/pre-order info available.

Item Three:

I've paid my registration fees and I'm signed up to speak on an LGBT romance-themed panel with some Big Fucking Names, so I guess I can say it: I'll be at the RT Booklovers Convention 2014 in New Orleans! I am soooooo excited for this convention and meeting all the awesome Romancelandia folks in M/M and beyond. Should be fun, too, because this convention falls AFTER the release of my first (still queer) M/F! So I'll be there representing myself as Heidi Belleau and Heloise Belleau.

Item Four:

Wallflower got a positive review in Publisher's Weekly! Yes, really! :faints: They called it a "thoughtful exploration of complex gender identity." Talk about ego stroking, right?

Item Five:

Speaking of Rear Entrance Video, I'm nearly finished the third in the series, Straight Shooter, which stars none other than Austin! If you haven't seen it yet, here's my (working) blurb:

This macho jock has a crooked little secret. 

SFU hockey winger Austin Puett has a big problem: he’s getting kicked out of his place if he doesn’t straighten out his act when it comes to how he’s been treating his flamboyantly gay roommate. And speaking of straight, Austin swears up and down that he is—and he’s got the list of past puck bunny conquests to prove it—but insults implying he’s gay still get him hotter than an entire store’s worth of straight porno. Which, when you’re skating in the ultra-macho world of competitive men’s hockey, happens way too often. And it’s been getting worse. His old methods of coping with his unique problem have all stopped working, and he thinks his roommates and his job at the newly-queer Rear Entrance Video may be to blame. 

He’s one slur away from losing his home and his job, and one inconvenient boner away from losing the respect of his team. Pure desperation drives him to rent a popular Mischievous Pictures BDSM series about straight men tricked into servicing a male Dominant, all in the hope that giving into his twisted desires will let off some steam and get him back on the straight and narrow again. Instead, it just leaves him craving more, more, more. And he might just get it—because professional dom Puck (real name Liam Williams), who stars in the video, just so happens to be a Rear Entrance Video regular. Meeting the charismatic, assertive Liam in the flesh sends Austin’s addiction to humiliation into overdrive, and Austin himself into Mischievous Pictures Studios looking for an audition. After all, you can be Gay For Pay and still straight . . . can’t you?

Sadly, thanks to my illness the release date of this one is getting pushed back from January to April of next year, but I promise you it'll be worth the wait. It's a sprawling GFY with the unlikely combination of gay BDSM, porn, and college hockey. Austin's a complete asshole, but hopefully this book will help you learn to love him (while still wanting to punch him in the face sometimes). I'm about 4-5 scenes away from finishing up, and hoping to have it in Sarah Frantz's inbox before GRL. Wish me luck! (Or tell me to get the fuck off twitter if you catch me slacking.)

Eight Things I Learned At GRNW

1. If you're going to the gay bar, don't wear heels.

I went to R Place in Seattle with a bunch of fellow M/M readers and authors. I wore gorgeous but impractical heels. I thought I could drink tequila until my feet stopped hurting, but I ended up just drinking until I got sloppy drunk and I had to pour myself into my hotel bed.

2. The gogo boys are not your muse.

Corollary to point 1, after several glasses of wine and several tequila sunrises, a gogo boy named "Danny" introduced himself to me and Anne Tenino. Anne went on with her evening as any spry young woman would. I, however, in my maudlin drunken state, concocted an entire sad backstory for Danny. Good for an angsty m/m contemporary I'm hereby calling "The Lonely Gogo Boy", bad for not being the lady projecting your issues onto a dude who just wants to twerk his way to a paycheque.

3. The Hotel Monaco is amazing.

It's clean, it's well designed, the staff is super friendly and they're welcoming in ways you'd never expect: a free wine hour, free cold drinks in the lobby, a yoga mat and umbrella, BIKES? I felt like royalty the entire time I was there. And the food and drinks at the "happy hour" were faboo.

4. Everyone is beautiful

Seriously, I spent the entire convention in absolute awe of everyone attending. You were gorgeous, you were funny, you were well-dressed, you had great hair and great leggings and great shoes and great jewelry. I fell in love with everybody!

5. Meeting new people is dangerous for a compulsive co-writer

Laylah Hunter (whose breathy voice makes sex scenes EVEN SEXIER) and I are on to write some F/F. Kade Boehme and I are on to do something gay and filthy that takes advantage of our balls to the wall crazy chemistry. Possibly something to do with my delightful Freudian slip: "Christian Gay".

6. Let other people have the mic

Speaking of my Freudian slip, I did my first panel EVER during GRNW and I talked wayyyyyyy too much. Next time I will try and shut my mouth ever so slightly more so other people can speak, too. (Sorry, fellow panelists!) I do think other than the "talking too much" thing, I managed to do decently well, though? It was such a fabulously interesting set of topics to discuss; one I had, uh, a LOT of thoughts on. I can't wait to see how a year's experience and lessons learned will affect all the panels and panelists!

7. Meeting readers is the BEST FEELING EVER.

Seriously. I can't even describe how great it is to have someone come up to you and say "I read your book." Even better when it's someone saying "Thank you for writing this." That's why I'm here. That's why I do this. I want to tell stories that satisfy people, make them happy, give them an afternoon's distraction or a little bit of hope. Putting faces to the people I'm sharing this weirdly intimate relationship and exchange of ideas with... it's pretty epic for me. Makes this whole thing real in a way I am never going to forget.

8. We have a long way to go

I've talked with several people since the convention looking for more LBT* representation coming from authors, publishers, and panelists. Calls for diversity during panels were met with more than one comment along the lines of "we write people" or "the story has to come first", as if both of those things can't be true when authors are also working towards goals for representation. Audience comments that pointed out the focus on gay cis men at the convention and in queer romance (an issue that affects the LGBT community in general, lbr) were met with "f/f doesn't sell".

But hey, we're a new genre and GRNW is a new convention, and the overarching feeling for me, at least, was that things are only gonna go up from here. Hearing that the Seattle Public Library had bought two hundred books for its collection was amazing. The call to action, that we bring LGBT romance to the mainstream rather than us waiting for them to finally notice and accept us, was timely and spot on.

Next year the convention will be on Sept 13th, and I'll try my damnedest to be there again. I wanna meet more people, hear more perspectives, see more gorgeous queer people, read more books, get more swag, and wear more sensible shoes!

See you in 2014! :D