The blog tour will hop here, for February 11-14, and I will put up a special post for the dates, where you can leave a note and be eligible for some goodies! I’m giving away a copy of my new novel, The Rare Event, or a selection from my backlist, and a PD Singer keychain flashlight. My last blog hop flashlight went halfway around the world! So remember to join me on those dates, and we’ll talk about some m/m love, lovin’, and maybe a little smut.

See the post here for all the wonderful authors who are participating.

I hadn’t checked in with McKoala since posting my December totals, which were good enough to make Her Eucalyptousness smile upon me. Realizing that I’d completely redone the site here, and wondering if she’d changed the value of such an endeavor (one gains marsupial favor by writing, editing, submitting, marketing, and other writerly activities. And no, she had not.) I popped by, to find that she’d posted the yearly totals as well.

Much to my surprise, since I’d had a few difficult months, I had won the yearly prize! I’d won the year before on the strength of The Rare Event, and (heh heh) will make “approves” again on the strength of that book, since it needed editing again, this time for publication. Whatever else one thinks of RE, it’s kept me away from the Antipodean Claws of Doom!

For those who might like to play: McKoala Days to sign up.

There are worms that live only on the carcasses of whales that have sunk to the ocean floor. There is dystopian fiction which has “lower than whale dreck” as its catchphrase. The whales dive to the bottom of the see to eat squid that they must take on faith are there. I am a diver: I know the feeling of  a column of water between me and the air, and between me and that which I want.

Yet I will never know what the whale knows; the sustenance to be found far from other, equally necessary substances. I am a simpler creature–I understand thirst, hunger, and the need to breathe, but I am not capable of sustaining myself by separating them widely. I cannot speak to others forty miles distant without a great deal of technology; the great whales can click through their heads and complex nasal passages to tell others what they think.

I have to dirty the page or to speak aloud with the aid of technology to spread my thoughts: doubt creeps in that the produce is worth the effort or the proliferation of technology. And yet, I click, and hope that someone on the other side will hear.

I started with a 4 column theme in WordPress, and it was all: Ooh! Look! Shiny! I could have ten thousand things on the page and I wanted them all.

This is not to say that I should have had them all, and until Cindy Potts said something in a way I could hear it, they stayed. But this was too busy and hard to read. Goodness knows how many readers fled screaming.
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I should have taken a screen shot before I took the next iteration down; this is that theme after the big cleanup, and it might have worked once I organized the pages and got rid of the third column of widgets. There was a forest of tags at the top, very cluttered, and a bunch of widgets that didn’t add anything to the usefulness of the site. I’m not sure anyone ever clicked the tag cloud. Trouble was, this didn’t show the secondary and tertiary pages once I’d nested them correctly. So, onwards.

What you see here is my evolution to simple, clean, and organized. I found another theme that would show the subsidiary pages when you hover. I think you can find everything you want, but I designed it so of course I can find it. The question is, can you?

My challenge to you: explore. Punch the buttons and twist the dials. If it’s broken or just not right, leave a comment, here or where the trouble is; I can find all comments from the admin screen. There will be a PD Singer flashlight for anyone who locates a problem I can fix and improve. Excerpt pages are still under construction, but anything else, please mention. I appreciate the help!

I am very busy on rewrites for Fire right now; Kurt and Jake have more going on than I knew when I started this book.  Kurt also has an entirely new short story that will be included with the novel, so we will know a lot more about him.

The novels, with their bonus short stories, will be available in both ebook and print;  the thought of a row of spines marked “P.D. Singer” taking up a couple of linear inches on the bookshelf does make me smile.

For all of you who have shown interest in Fire, Snow, and the shorts while they’ve been out of print, I thank you, and hope to reward your patience with a fine read.

Here’s a tentative blurb for it:

Hedge fund traders Jon Hogenboom and Ricky Santeramo’s relationship is crashing and burning, just like the stock market, because Jon will no longer tolerate Ricky’s roving ways. Jon’s given up on getting Ricky to commit, but he won’t let Ricky blow up his portfolio without a fight.

Now Davis Willingham wants to enjoy all the delights of New York City in Jon’s company—Ricky wants to push those ideas down Davis’ throat.

Wall Street’s brutal – Jon’s juggling two men vying for his attention, an asshole boss, and a volatile market. If everyone would quit yanking at his heart, Jon could make some real money!

Pub date is still TBA, but I will certainly keep you all posted. March or April is as much as I can narrow it down just now.

I was bowled over this morning when Angie Benedetti pointed me toward Speak Its Name, a review site that specializes in historical gay romance. (Thank you, Angie!) Erastes, who knows her history, had taken a look at Donal and Jimmy!

And was pleased! In part, this is was she said:

Despite the fact that the book fits its bounds so well, despite the breadth of topics covered, I would have liked more, it’s impossible not to want more when something is this well written. I don’t know P.D. Singer’s work–I believe this is her first gay historical–but if she writes another I will be snapping it up immediately.

I recommend this book highly, and I’m sure you will enjoy it.

Read the rest of the review here, and find Maroon at Torquere, Amazon, or ARe.

Top2Bottom Reviews’ Lisa gave Maroon a 5 and included it on her list, with such diverse and amazing reads as Erastes’ Junction X and Marie Sexton’s Paris A to Z.   See Lisa and Michelle’s lists here.

And Tom, who posts on A Bear on Books, had kind words and a top slot for Maroon as well, placing it with some books that wowed me, like Ellis Carrington’s Amor Prohibido and KZ Snow’s Visible Friend. See Tom’s list here.

So if you see me with a slightly goofy smile and a swollen TBR list, this is why. Thank you, Tom and Lisa!

Every now and then I run across a piece that explains something in such a perfect way that all I can do is read and marvel. I just came from such a piece, by Theresa Stevens, at whose feet I lay chocolates truffles.

She explains the appeal of romance in terms far better than I ever could, indeed, in terms that I could not have begun to articulate. Indeed, I wasn’t even too sure that I had the concept, yet her explanation resonates in the way of true things.  I urge you to read the entire piece; you will understand the allure of romance at a level that goes far beyond true love and hot guys. And still be ready to read the hot guys.

…Art, whether paintings or novels, consists of both form and content. For us, the novel is the form. It is built of language, but not just any kind of language; the novel is written in narrative prose…

…Content, we might say, is specific to a particular work. It’s what we put inside our form to make our specific work meaningful, or it’s what our work is about. It’s what we use to make an intimate connection to our audience. Form is “heroine,” but content is “Minerva Dobbs.” Form is “romantic conflict,” but content is, “Minerva knows Cal bet ten grand that he could get her into bed within a month, but she needs a date to her sister’s wedding so she strings him along for a few weeks.” There are other ways to define form and content, but for our purposes, form stays true from work to work, but content changes.

What Monet did (and what we as romance novelists do in some ways) is extend the definition of form into areas that might otherwise be deemed content. A painter might ordinarily define his painting as “a painting of a haystack” to distinguish it from a painting of a puppy or a battlefield or a melting clock. The content in that case is what makes it unique. But with a series of paintings of haystacks, the haystack itself is as ubiquitous as the canvas, frame, or paint. It becomes part of the form. The content, then, is not puppy vs. haystack, but autumn haystack vs. winter haystack, or sunset winter haystack vs. sunrise winter haystack vs. noon winter haystack…

Yes, this, when the question is “Why romance? You know how it’s going to end.”  Yes, I do know how it will end, but I don’t know how it will get there. A haystack at noon looks different than a haystack at sunset, a haystack in summer is not the same as the haystack in winter, and a lot of those haystacks hang in museums.

To find this wonderful explanation at the beginning of a new year refreshes me–I am working on another romance, but I am doing more than that: I am experimenting with haystacks. I have haystacks in the snow, now I’m setting a few of them on fire.

Read the entire piece here, while I go find Theresa Stevens another truffle.