All posts by darrah

A Master’s Fidelity (GQ Book 2.5) released!

Here’s another Martin point-of-view story: A Master’s Fidelity (Ganymede Quartet Book 2.5) – FREE

AMF 500

Can a master belong to a slave?

It’s a season for celebration, and Martin is falling in love. Henry has always been adamant he won’t share Martin with any other master, but when Henry accepts an invitation to a friend’s New Year’s Eve party, Martin wonders if Henry has changed his mind. Certain that this will turn out to be one of the masters’ notorious swapping parties, Martin resolves to do whatever Henry asks of him, with whoever Henry chooses, without question. But faced with the idea of Henry being intimate with any other slave, Martin despairs, wanting Henry all to himself. A good slave would never ask for a master’s fidelity, but that’s just what Martin wants to do. 

This story is told from Martin’s point of view and runs parallel to events that take place in the final scenes of A Proper Lover, the second book in the Ganymede Quartet.

FREE EBOOK
AMF @ Amazon
AMF @ B&N
AMF @ Smashwords
AMF @ Kobo

AMF can also be read for FREE online at AO3

where’s the Martin story?

Because the Martin story, A Master’s Fidelity (GQ Book 2.5) takes place concurrent with the very end scenes of A Proper Lover (GQ Book 2), I had originally planned to release the books a week apart, giving people a chance to read APL first if that was something they were going to do. Unlike the first Martin story, A Superior Slave (GQ Book 0.5), which stood on its own fairly well, making its own context, I really feel like AMF should be read after APL. I’m going to be offering AMF for free, and I know that huge numbers of people will download it simply because it’s free, but it’s really intended for readers of the series, as a bonus that hopefully enriches the experience of reading the main books. I don’t know what someone who hasn’t read APL would make of it, frankly :D

Anyway, I released APL on the 17th, and if I stuck to my original plan, that would mean releasing AMF on Christmas Eve, and that just seems like a terrible idea. So, I finished my uploads tonight, and hopefully it will be available everywhere within the next 12 hours or so.  I will be making a post with links when they go live.

 

A Proper Lover (GQ Book 2) released!

Henry and Martin are back in A Proper Lover (Ganymede Quartet Book 2):

APL500

What does it mean to belong to someone?

Henry Blackwell is the happiest he’s ever been, and it’s all because of his companion slave Martin. Every experience, whether it be mundane or spectacular, is improved by having Martin at his side. The better Henry gets to know his slave, the deeper his feelings grow. Though the physical attraction between them is undeniable, Henry’s sure there’s more to their relationship than just sex. He can’t be certain, as it’s never happened before, but he believes he might be falling in love.

Henry’s friends are ready and willing to put their own slaves aside in favor of female companionship, and they’re beginning to wonder why Henry isn’t interested in girls. Henry only wants to be with Martin and doesn’t know how much longer he can use “late bloomer” as an excuse. The holiday season approaches, along with the promise of parties with friends and family. Henry doesn’t want to share Martin with his friends, but he doesn’t like being left out. Will he stand up for himself—and Martin—when it counts?

This is the second of four installments in the Ganymede Quartet, continuing Henry & Martin’s story from A Most Personal Property (Ganymede Quartet Book 1).


BUY LINKS:

APL @ Amazon
APL @ B&N
APL @ Smashwords
APL @ Kobo

Nashville history

Glen Leven
Glen Leven, Nashville, TN

The sesquicentennial–150th anniversary–of the Battle of Nashville (Dec 15-16, 1864) is/was yesterday and today. In case you’re not a Civil War scholar (I’m not), the Battle of Nashville was the last big “western” battle in the Civil War, and it was won decisively by the Union Army.

I found out about the battle anniversary and the commemorative events entirely by chance. We had no other firm plans for the weekend, so I suggested to the Mr. that we might get some history, and he was amenable.

Our interest in the Civil War is of fairly recent vintage. When we moved to the South, neither the Mr. nor I knew much of substance about the war. Literally all I learned in school in Washington state was that the South was committed to slavery and lost the war because their cause was wrong. Or, in other words, the North was morally and otherwise superior to the South, which might be true in this instance, but also seems a simplistic reduction of the issues and certainly never made it seem very interesting.

(Please note: This is seriously a very long post about local Civil War stuff, not books or writing, or even AU slavery history in Ganymede Quartet! It’s about real history! And how I find it interesting!)

Continue reading Nashville history

holiday stories & upcoming releases

(image from themarysue.com)
(image found at themarysue.com)

They’re not a holiday books, per se, but the second Ganymede Quartet book, A Proper Lover (GQ Book 2), and the accompanying Martin POV short story, A Master’s Fidelity (GQ Book 2.5), do cover the fall and winter holidays quite thoroughly.

A Proper Lover begins just before a Halloween party at Henry’s friend Louis Briggs’ house. Following that, Henry and Martin share a special Thanksgiving, and then there’s a Wilton family Christmas that introduces two of my favorite side characters. This second installment in Henry and Martin’s story closes on New Year’s Eve. The accompanying short story, A Master’s Fidelity, also takes place on New Year’s Eve and runs parallel to the events of APL. For that reason, it’s recommended that you read APL first, though of course you can do whatever you want :P

I still don’t have firm release dates for either book. However, when they do go on sale, A Proper Lover will list for $4.99 and A Master’s Fidelity will be be FREE at all the retailers who allow it and $0.99 elsewhere. As before, I’m going to be asking for help reporting lower competitor’s prices in order to get Amazon to offer AMF for free.

I’ll be posting covers and blurbs shortly :)

 

my writing year

worst thing best thing
A little over a year ago, I asked my best friend which of my long-dormant ideas I should work on. I wanted her input because at that point in time it seemed quite likely that she’d be the only person who’d ever read whatever I wrote, so it had to be something she was interested in. I had been seemingly incapable of writing more than a few lines at a time for a very long eight years or so, but for some reason I felt hopeful I might be able to accomplish something if I would only try again.

For all these ideas, I had at least a few notes, some lines of dialogue, truncated character descriptions. For some very old ideas, I also had notebooks full of handwritten scenes, but even these were nowhere near complete stories. For reasons that escape me now, neither of us were in favor of my working on the most likely candidate, a contemporary romance for which I had written about 30K already. I don’t actually think I even offered her my paranormal idea simply because the scope is so big and it seemed especially daunting at the time. We both liked the cross-dressing “princess” story, which had been at various times medieval, then futuristic, and finally set in an alternate 1930s, and that one will definitely be written one day, but the one she asked for was the bossy slave/shy master. I had about 15 pages of notes and scraps, but nothing was set in stone except Henry and Martin’s names.

Continue reading my writing year

Martin’s dirty book

dirty book is rarely dusty

Toward the end of A Most Personal Property, Henry and Martin have a conversation about what sorts of dirty stories they’ve read. Henry tells Martin about the excerpts James read him from Psychopathia Sexualis, and Martin relates the following:

“Oh, there was a book, Sir, that we all read in secret, though our teachers must have known we had it. I don’t know what it was called because the cover was missing—as were some of the pages, for that matter. It was very dirty, Sir! It was from England, I think, as some of the words were different than we use, and it was about a family who all had sex with one another, mothers and sons, aunts and nephews. I know that feeling you referred to, Sir, excited and sick. You don’t want to like it, but you do, in some deep way, and your prick responds just as it would to something you really want.”

There is an actual book I had in mind when Martin gives that description, and thanks to Project Gutenberg, you can read it, too:

FORBIDDEN FRUIT, Luscious and Exciting Story AND More Forbidden Fruit OR Master Percy’s Progress In and Beyond the Domestic Circle (1898) (most definitely NSFW)

It has more than its share of title, as you can see. It is perverse and ridiculous. It contains pedophilia, incest, rape, florid language, and the term “fucker” used as an endearment, and it is absolutely the sort of thing a bunch of teenage Victorians would furtively pass around their dormitory.

There’s actually a lot of Victorian porn available online, and I read quite a bit of it trying to find just the right story for Martin and his friends. Honestly, though, I think they’d have been happy with anything, and that description would fit about half the Victorian porn out there anyway (they were really into incest!). Regardless, it made me happy to have a specific book in mind when writing the scene.

AMPP review at Boy Meets Boy Reviews

Lovely review of A Most Personal Property at Boy Meets Boy Reviews!

AMPP 500

I’m thrilled with the whole thing, but was especially pleased that I passed muster on these fronts:

Two things stood out as outstanding were the level of research that clearly was put into bringing 1900 NYC to life i.e. the language, the clothing, the class distinctions, the rituals. I appreciate research and Ms. Glass obviously did hers and I applaud her for it. The second was the character development. Henry and even his friends were so real I felt as though I were tagging along with them on their trips to the park and cycling and going to the arcade. Everything about Henry felt so authentic and genuine that I was honestly surprised to discover that this author was female. Bravo.

 

AMPP review @ Boy Meets Boy

 

This Charming Man by Ajax Bell

 

My dear friend Ajax has written a wonderful book.

tcm

 

WILL SEATTLE MAKE A MAN OF HIM YET?
It’s 1991 and Steven Frazier has danced away half a decade in the Seattle club scene with his beautiful-but-poisonous best friend, Adrian.

Two glittering princes against the world, too high above life to care about what they might be missing. But everything changes when a chance meeting with older—not to mention handsome—businessman John Pieters, reveals a cosmopolitan world and possible futures Steven’s never considered.

Flashy club clothes won’t impress John, this charming man who knows so much about many things. Motivated by fantasies inspired by his crush on John, can Steven finally fight Adrian’s sick hold?

As he steps out into the larger world, supported by new friends, Steven must prove to John—and to himself—that he’s not a hedonistic rhinestone club kid, but a true diamond in the rough.

I loved this book. Seattle in 1991 was my year, really, so there’s that, but there’s also a terrific love story between charming MCs, great secondary characters, and hot sex.

My  complete review of This Charming Man at Goodreads