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Wow, it’s been a while since I talked about the Ruby Birthstone story. The good news is, it’s out! Secrets Given is out today at Torquere, and I’ll be at the TP Social LJ tomorrow with excerpts and talk.
In the meantime, go take a look at Kris and Lane and the pretty red pants. 
I have a big Victorian house in the downtown area of a small town. Today I’m sitting on my front porch on a very tattered couch, my laptop where it belongs (on my lap, natch), and pounding out a hell of a lot of words. But working outside has side effects. There’s people out here. Cats, dogs, people. Neighbours to talk to, yards to see, cars cruising on by, bikes being ridden. People wave, everyone says hello.
A U-Haul just went by and I want to tell you all about what’s in it, where the people are coming from and going to, and how many dreams they’ve packed up to take with them.
Oh my. The most beautiful woman I’ve seen in a long time just walked past and smiled at me. Wow. And the guys remodeling the house across the street must be kicking up dust — I can hear them sneezing from here. They have a very nice 4×4, by the way. I must go and check it out in a bit. Other than ‘Ford’, I don’t know what it is. Hmmm.
…. Wow, random.
Pyke’s Peak, today. All day. Back to it I go.
Happy Fourth, my American friends!
Writes, of course. On today’s list:
reply to Kit regarding Bend Over Big Boy questions for the group feature
go over galleys for Check Your Mirrors, which is due to go to printers soon (anthology will be out in the fall, and I’m SO looking forward to this one — I’m going to buy many copies to sprinkle over my family) from Casperian
write five thousand words on Pyke’s Peak, a male/male/female romance with a rather broad sweep of comedy (The man bought a house with a kitchen on the second floor. He loves his best friends. He won the lottery. He plots to rid his girl of any man not himself or Shea. What’s not to love? Oh, and he plays a mean slide guitar and drives a motorbike. Shea is psychic. Laurel is confounded. FUN).
hem a maid of honour dress, take in the wedding gown, let the bride know I did not fail her.
tag the beautiful and talented Brain with some more Tobias hotness. Although they appear to be at the ‘omg I need a shower’ stage.
ride bike or do a wii work out.
pick up the gecko from daycare.
remember to eat.
So, what are you doing today?
(and I need to make a list of things to do on the websites — my new release updates on Drew Zachary.com and Chris Owen.net are both out of date! ACK! I see Friday shaping up….)
June is ending and summer is gearing up. I adore summer; I really do. I like warmth, I like the lack of snow, I like the rain storms of June and July here on the East Coast. I like vacations, I like the way the sky is light until nine-thirty at night.
Right now it’s pouring rain. I have a metal roof on my house, typical for the house’s age. I live in a long, narrow Victorian, built in 1898, and my bed is under the slope of the final peak of our many angled roof. It’s loud, this morning, and I love it.
I have coffee. I have firemen to write about, I have rain. I won’t be getting my bike ride in today, not unless the rain stops in the next hour and things dry out by four PM, but that’s okay. I rode yesterday, and it was wonderful — prime plotting time. I’ve been using my rides to just let characters mumble or shout, to change the angle on any plot issues, to tease out better ways of making a story interesting. I think my bike might be replacing my Magic Tub ™. Perhaps the bike will be my plotting tool of choice in the summer, the tub in winter.
Or perhaps I just need to settle down once in a while and be in a place where I don’t have so much stimulus. LOL
I’ve had a few more entries for my contests and this THRILLS me! I really need to draft a very simple “Thank you for your entry in the Summer Contest! Good luck, and have a great summer!” e-mail. Oh, look. I just did. *puts ‘mail entry acknowledgments’ on the to do list*
Now. I’ve finished first drafts of a couple things this month, but I’m behind. I need to write three or four more chapters of Cheek to Cheek to finish it off, and I’m writing an entire novel in July (m/m/f ), so you’ll forgive me if I dash off now to work with Mal and Will, yes? Yes.
Happy Sunday — I hope yours is calm.
Ah, summer. Sitting by the lake, reading a book. Sitting at the beach, reading a book. Sitting on the porch, reading a book. Sitting… You get the idea.
Summer. Books. They go together. I’ll be writing one and playing with ideas for the next one. I have my summer work all planned and scheduled and I’m good to go. The autumn, not so much. So here’s your chance to participate! Two summer-long contests, two chances to be part of the autumn book!
Name the book for me!
I have no idea what it’s about, and no idea who’s going to be in it. Here’s what I do know: It will be set in modern times, be contemporary and a romance/drama. It will not be fantasy/vampire/sci-fi/spec. It will be male/male.
That’s it. Your job: Send me titles. If I use your title you get a copy of the book and an acknowledgment.
Be in the book!
Lend me your name, your look, your job! If you win this contest you will get a minor character named for you. Maybe the character will have your job, too, or maybe your favorite sweater. Who knows? I don’t! You tell me!
To find out how to enter and to read the fine print, Visit the Web Page.
Fast note — someone poke me to link to Jordan Castillo Price’s new PsyCop book, Secrets. I’ve read it and LOVED SO MUCH. You need to get it. But I don’t have a link handy at the moment and this post is to pimp my contests. But you really need Jordan’s new book. Ahem.
ANYWAY.
Contests! All Summer Long! The link is right here, and the info is thus:
Summer. Books. They go together. I’ll be writing one and playing with ideas for the next one. I have my summer work all planned and scheduled and I’m good to go. The autumn, not so much. So here’s your chance to participate! Two summer-long contests, two chances to be part of the autumn book!
Contest One: Title the book! Contest Two: Be IN the book!
Check it out, yo.
Okay, so here we go. To win an e-book copy of Merge, send me an e-mail at (NEW ADDRESS FOR THIS!) chrisowen.net @ gmail.com
Subject: Merge contest
Body: From where did Chris get the general idea of Earth being a plurality/in a plural zone? <– General knowledge/Geekery question, not answered in the books
OR!
Body: What is Aunt Dorry’s job?
I’ll post the winner at 9 PM EST tonight.
Merge by Chris Owen
Picking up where Chris Owen’s Converge left off, Finn has crossed into Ari’s dimension, but now what? He’s a man without a past, without papers, and he can’t get home. Now that he and Ari are together in body as well as spirit, they can move their relationship forward. But the uncertainty of Finn’s status, and Finn’s unfamiliarity with Ari’s dimension, are definitely standing in their way.
On top of that, something strange is going on. People in Ari’s dimension are not only disappearing, they’re reappearing again days later. Tracking the news and combining it with the information he has about dimensions and Between, Finn begins to suspect that his appearance in Alpha and these strange happenings are connected for sure.
As he and Ari work together to help Finn adjust to Ari’s life, their quest for a way to restore communication with Alpha begins. Through some clues from Alpha, and an unexpected revelation about Finn’s friend Blake, Finn and Ari find someone who might be able to help him. But is the potential cost to them — and to Finn’s friends and family back in Alpha — worth the attempt?
I’ve been doing a wee bit of reading in the last while and want to pass this along:
I really loved Striking Sparks by Jordan Castillo Price. It’s not a PsyCop story (which you all KNOW I adore) but it’s in the same ‘verse, featuring a recurring character from the series, Crash. Oh, what was that sound? A million fan girls running. Crash is, after all, our favorite bad boy. Mmhmm. And in Striking Sparks he’s at his naughtiest and oddly most tender. Go get it.
The other rec is Mike Shade’s Witness. Oh, holy creepy. And scary. And sexy. Did I mention CREEPY?? Gah. I was scrolling so fast I didn’t realize I was reading in the dark until too late. Eep! It’s a mystery, it’s horror, it’s steamy BDSM, it’s pretty freaking awesome. Go buy.
Oh, btw — Merge is out on Wednesday, I’ll be hosting at the TP social LJ and giving away a copy. Drop in and say hiya.
Just very, very busy. Hardly an excuse, I know, but it’s all I have to offer. I’m not great at blogging, I’m worse at marketing, but I’m very good at writing. So that’s what I’ve been doing — my absence HERE means more stories THERE.
At least, that’s the tale I’m going to run with. It assuages the guilt over not posting.
Fast run down: I want to Romantic Times and it was amazing. I got to be with some of my favourite people, I got to sign books, sell books, talk about books. I got to hug Jade Buchanan more than once (she’s so adorable!) and I got a T-shirt from Jade Lee. I bought some books, I wore a tiny little dress, I wore a retro dress, I watched bull riding. Er, that was on TV on Sunday night, while working.
People were a world of awesome. Oh, and I got to squeal thank yous at Alessia Brio who’s done such wonderful covers for me! One of those –well, a pair of those–are the pair of covers for Converge and Merge. Merge comes out in less than two weeks! HOORAY!
Out today is Everyone Loves a Wedding, in the Family Matters anthology, edited by Jennifer B for Torquere Press. There’s Alexa Snow, Sean Michael, Kara Larson and me. Check my tags for bits and bobs of Everyone Loves a Wedding (Spencer and Dean). Available in e-book and print.
Today I’m finishing up a story for Torquere about a photographer who’s had a career crisis, a crisis of faith in himself (maybe), and possibly a mid-life crisis as well. He’s fixated on a pair of red shiny pants covering a very nice butt, too. Watch for Kris and Lane in July.
Okay, it’s taken me ….. five hours to write this between paragraphs of Kris and Lane. So I’m going to post now and get on with finishing that story, likely leaving out a LOT of information I’m supposed to pass on.
I’ll just assume you’d rather read the story than me babbling. 
Oh, and I think I’m going to mirror posts at my LJ for a while, just to see how it goes.
I do love this story. Back to the good ol’ boys, back to the love. Sometimes you just gotta go with the romance of it all, right?
So, Shady Ridge and the Neon Sky. It was on Turn of the Screw, and now it’s a Screwdriver, available to everyone. (And I do believe that it will be out in a print anthology in the coming days, with stories by such fine people as Julia Talbot and — man, I can never remember if it’s BA Tortuga or Dallas Coleman. Rats. Hey, maybe you’ll get really, really lucky and it will be both! Anyway, I’m not sure when that’s going to happen, but keep an eye out for Ranges.)
The blurb:
Hank is happy with his life in Shady Ridge, the small town he grew up in and now works as a police officer in. And if he has to go to the Neon Sky, a gay bar a couple hours away in the middle of nowhere once every six months or so to get his jollies, well it’s working for him.
At least it is until Charlie joins the force.
A giant of a man, Charlie has left the big city after a nasty break-up and come to Shady Ridge for a little peace. Hank’s immediately attracted, and when he runs into Charlie at the Neon Sky, finding out they’re batting for the same team… well it just might turn Hank’s ordered world upside down.
More? Okay. Let’s see if I can make this work…. Back here for an excerpt!
