Since I lovelovelove what Anne Cain did for this book–that is so Ricky–I’m going to beg shamelessly for your support. I can’t claim anything of this accomplishment beyond a vague wish on the art request, so give two hands or a click to applaud Anne by going here to vote. The easiest way to see the covers is to click here as well, and have both the art and the poll visible; these will both open in new windows.

Thanks!

Except Old Crusty turns out to be Kurt Carlson: confident, competent, and experienced. He’s also young, hot, friendly, and considers clothing optional when it’s just two guys in the wilderness. Sharing a small cabin with this walking temptation is stressing Jake’s sanity—is he sending signals, or just being Kurt? And how would Kurt react if he found out his new partner wants to start a fire of a different kind? Jake’s terrified—they have to live together for five months no matter what.

Enough sparks fly between the rangers to set the trees alight, but it takes a raging inferno to make Jake and Kurt admit to the heat between them.

Bonus Short Story: Into the Mountains Long before he met Jake, Kurt Carlson climbed Yosemite with his best friend, Benji. But after a storm traps them halfway up the face of El Capitan, Kurt has to accept that their friendship isn’t what he thought.

Jake and Kurt will return this summer in an expanded Fire with a bonus short story and all new artwork from Dreamspinner come June 22, 2012.

Fire is available for preorder, and a limited number of autographed paper copies will be available. Whee! It’s here on the Coming Soon page now.

Congrats to Vicktor, who won a flashlight keychain! I have more of those, so watch this space…

Thanks everyone, for showing your solidarity with GLBT and the people who care about them. Come back and play sometime!

I’d like to think that I’m doing something real, if small, to change the way people think. Perhaps it’s just entertainment, but that has always been a path to acceptance. The same way various ethnic groups have struggled to acceptance in the boxing ring (once many fighters were Irish, then came a wave of Jewish boxers, and more recently, African-Americans. Now one sees a lot of Hispanic boxers.) the protagonists of stories are also doing something to bring familiarity and acceptance for homosexuals, as are the writers, who turn out to be the person in the cubicle next door.

So, kind readers, thanks for stopping by on this blog hop. We have a long list of participants: good people, every one.

I’m going to ask you to brighten my little corner here. Tell me one positive change you’ve seen.

Everyone who shares a good thing and leaves an email address and a preference of file type may have a copy of the short story Carole Cummings and I wrote together, Crepuscule Monstrum. Your choices are pdf, epub, and mobi, and you get pdf if you don’t say otherwise. All commenters will be entered into a drawing for a PD Singer keychain flashlight, to be awarded May 21.

So, guys, tell me one positive change against homophobia that you’ve seen, whether it’s big or small.

I hope everyone who’s ever gotten one of these knows better than to click it: all kinds of evil pops out if you do. According to Sophos Security, this file contains Mal/BredoZp-B and Mal/Zbot-FV, capable of allowing remote hackers to steal your information and take control of your Windows PC. Just what would improve your day, right? Sophos reports a huge increase in this kind of attack in the last few months, coming out of Taiwan, Singapore, and Viet Nam.

My inner editor observed the email, and thought, hmm, no spelling mistakes, has a professional look to it, a comforting looking toll free number, a plausible looking tracking number… I’m not expecting a package from anywhere, certainly not from an international carrier. I’ve seen these before in much cruder form, but for grins, I thought I’d try the tracking number, which I pasted in the tracking window at DHL (which I arrived at without clicking anything this email offered me.

*red pen time* DHL tracking numbers are 10 digits. And good luck finding that 800 number, which Pam the fact-checker wanted to compare. It might be there, and it might even be correct, but I don’t plan to grow old searching for it.

If I was indeed expecting a DHL package, I might have considered clicking, but even so, one should never click blindly, but investigate through the carrier’s website using the tracking number.

So, like an anthology submission that doesn’t quite meet the call, this one gets rejected.  Not a form rejection this time, but a nice personalized note, explaining that execution is polished but the plot is trite.

Reece Dante has set the hills ablaze with this gorgeous cover!  I just love what she did here–Jake is all “I shouldn’t be looking at you,” and Kurt is all “I’m looking but not being blatant.” Just perfect for the novel.  Not only that, but look at the mountain effect she got with the M and the N in the bottom line–that is some cool typography, very subtle. Thank you, Reece!

The new blurb should be ready any moment now, and after that, I’ll tell you what the release date is.  Fire will be out in late June, hugely expanded and rewritten, with an all-new companion novelette about Kurt in the same volume. I can hardly wait to see it on the “coming Soon” page at Dreamspinner.

My brother, my sister, and I are adopted, and yes, we’re old enough that it was a matter of “saving the girl’s shame” by shipping her off to a home for unwed mothers. My birth mother gave me many gifts: a good constitution, a good mind, and a good family. I am grateful, how can I not be? but this young woman (and the young man who supplied the rest of the chromosomes) had no further place in my life. I was given to a loving family when I was but a few days old.

When someone asks me about my parents, I tell them about the couple who held me while I teethed, taught me to read and put books in my hands, who applauded my successes and commiserated my failures. The mother who spent sleepless nights with me, whether it was a bout of pneumonia or a prom, who leaned on me to practice my violin, my math skills, and my tact, is my real mother.

Once in a while, someone questions this. They wonder why I haven’t sought out my “real mother.” Excuse me? I know who my real mother is: she raised me, she loved me, and I would give about anything short of my own children to have her back.

“But your ‘real mother’…” certain fools persist. They don’t understand that I have only a remote curiosity about her, much like I’ll have to read more about ancient Thebes one day. I was a life-wrecking disaster to her, and I can only be grateful she sent me to my real mom. I would like to tell her that it all worked out well.

But my real mom, the one for whom I scribbled crayon declarations of love and drove crazy later, is the one I miss this day. The placental connection is the least part of what made her my mother.

This is Jake and Kurt’s lake by their cabin. There’s a couple of very important scenes in Fire on the Mountain that take place here.

No wonder Jake doesn’t want to leave.

PRIZE DETAILS.

ATTENTION TO THE OWNER OF THIS EMAIL ADDRESS

We are delighted to inform you of our Post Code Lotto prize award held in Rotterdam-Netherlands. This lotto awards is fully based on an
electronic selection, Winners were picked by computerized system, drawn from over 43,000,00 companies and individuals e-mail addresses worldwide. This award is officially announced in Rotterdam-Netherlands, Your email ID has hereby been approved alump sum pay out of ?1,500,000 Euro in cash
credit file Ref: GNP501/731KW, Batch: AM72/PGS27/09FC, Winning No:
DC61/PDN32/01NL

Note: No ticket was sold in this prize award, winners were randomly selected from electronic online world wide. Simply contact Our Foreign Financial Office by email with the following (1)Full name (2)Telephone,
(3) Nationality, for your prize claim immediately.

Dhr.P.W Van Hann
e-mail:advocatenwolgangan@aol.nl

Congratulations! once again.

Yours in service,
Mw. F.A.H. Wielage
(Dpt Sec.)

Well, of course there are benevolent strangers roaming the worlds and combing through lists of email addresses, just yearning to deposit large sums of money in random bank accounts. Just like the Tooth Fairy makes piano keys out of all the teeth she collects, and the Easter Bunny poops chocolates. I didn’t even have to buy a ticket to get chosen!

My inner editor doesn’t believe a word of it, and my inner proofreader thinks that anyone in the Netherlands knows where the Euro sign is on the keyboard. Or maybe the prize really is 1.5 million questions, all sounding like “Why did I fall for this?”

This one gets the form rejection.

Being turned down is said to be one of those growing experiences, and is rumored to help you survive the brickbats of a bad review.  Self-publishers who don’t run this particular gauntlet are at risk of a public meltdown, I’ve heard it said, but anyone who expects to get public feedback is at risk, even those of us whose rejections have been the “Thanks but no thanks” variety.

So as a public service, the Stoneslide Corrective has posted their Rejection Generator. Get enough rejection in the privacy of your own home without putting your written work on the line, and you, too, can survive the slings and arrows of a poopstorm review (or a job evaluation, or your mother in law’s opinions on your hairstyle…) with your smile intact. Seven varieties of rejection are available at any time, with new ones rotated in periodically, and they’ll send any or all your way.

This morning I toughened my hide with Destroy! Destroy! Destroy!

Dear Writer,

If we had the budget, we would hire one of the crews that cleans up toxic Superfund sites to visit your office and expunge all evidence of your attempts at writing. Perhaps we will apply for a federal grant. We’ll let you know.

Regards,
The Editors

and The Thumper:

Dear Writer,

Apparently it wasn’t enough to waste your own time.

The Editors

Check back: they change periodically. After those and the other five dillies, nothing anyone else can say to me today will even make me twitch.