Dare Seize the Fire has roared to life!

And here it is! Dare Seize the Fire is available right now as an e-book and soon in a print version. Woot!

Katie Zielinski is an ordinary girl who obeys her parents, does her homework, and loves her autistic brother, Cassie. But Katie is too afraid to tell anyone about her secret crush on her best friend, Laurinda. Then Katie meets Jyoti, a tiger who's able to think and talk when he gets close to her, and also fuels amazing magic powers in Katie. The evil warlock Zadornin wants to sacrifice Jyoti in a black magic ritual, and he'll kill anyone who gets in his way. Katie must think fast to save Jyoti while her ordinary world explodes with magic fireballs, a deadly enemy, and discovering how Laurinda really feels about her. From a chase among ghosts on the Gettysburg battlefield to a confrontation in Philadelphia where mythical creatures join in a vicious battle against Zadornin, Katie must learn to dare seize the fire of who she really is to survive.

Stay tuned for updates on the availability of a print version. Either way, I think you'll love this one; it's got adventure, young romance, a tiger, and gryphons! How can you go wrong? :D

Dare Seize the Fire at Storm Moon Press/Budding Moon Press

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The Gryphon's Boy has been unleashed!

He's finally here! Dzywllym, the young bird-boy first seen in The Glasschanger's Child, is back with his own amazing adventure in The Gryphon's Boy! Discover how Dzywllym's parents were killed, leaving him an orphan wandering around aimlessly until one day when he spies the magnificent ship Orpheus and meets his true love, the ship's navigator and budding opera composer Quinn. Quinn is a young gryphon who fled the cold gryphon homeland of Okrakktyr to find adventure of his own and found the devoted Dzywllym as well. But things are about to get a lot more adventurous for both the gryphon and his beloved boy!

The winged Vylloizõ boy Dzywllym is tired of adventures and simply wants to love his gryphon boyfriend, Quinn. When Quinn is called back to the gryphon homeland Okrakktyr and imprisoned there, Dzywllym sets out from Klyrrok with the cheerful and valiant mytho-magic Fledglings to rescue him. But wizard Flyntn Castefurvus, who murdered Dzywllym’s parents, takes over Okrakktyr in his pursuit of Klyrrok’s throne. Chaos erupts when Flyntn and his sadistic henchmen steal a battleship from Earth. The fates of Earth and Myrohtrae hang in the balance as gryphons, dragons, wizards, werewolves, the goat-god Pan, his prankish, sexually rapacious and deadly cousin Pwcca, a cranky, well-armed guardian angel, and the magnificent triple-hulled flying ship Orpheus wage war with Flyntn in the skies over both worlds. Amidst intense episodes of erotic passion and ferocious violence, young Dzywllym must learn to vanquish his fears and focus his rage to save Quinn and exact revenge for his parents’ savage deaths.

Join Dzywllym for his greatest adventure in The Gryphon's Boy, now available in print and on Kindle, and available soon in other e-book formats.

The Gryphon's Boy (print)

The Gryphon's Boy (Kindle)

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Sinews of the Heart is here!

Sinews of the Heart is finally available in both softcover and e-book editions! Check out this great review of Sinews of the Heart from Kris Piet, and look for updates about reviews and my blog tour on my Facebook page. You can read an excerpt from Sinews of the Heart and order the book from Budding Moon Press, the YA imprint of Storm Moon Press. It's a great story! Hey, where else are you going to find genderqueer youth, furries, a post-apocalyptic world, and big explosions all in one novel? :D

Sinews of the Heart at Budding Moon Press

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Sinews of the Heart is awesome!

Kristina Piet of Storm Moon Press wants to tell you about my upcoming novel, Sinews of the Heart. She likes it. She really likes it!

This book, quite frankly, breaks the rules. These days, people expect YA QUILTBAG fiction to basically be YA Gay fiction. Let’s face it, the rise in popularity of gay fiction in general has led to quite a number of authors in the gay romance fiction genre ‘giving a go’ at writing YA gay fiction. Is that a bad thing? Oh, hell no, it’s not! I love seeing an influx of Gay YA just as much as the next reader who wants to spread the love for GLBT to young people. But it does mean that the majority of YA books coming out deal primarily with gay characters. This book doesn’t end at that. Sinews of the Heart breaks past that barrier into not only addressing the common ‘coming out’ story arc for a character identifying non-heterosexually, but also addressing gender identity in a very raw and organic way. The main character, Nikki, is biologically male but lives as a female. Her parents fight about it, have pronoun arguments, the works. On top of that, a romance develops between Nikki and a boy, Kane, who then has to come to terms not only with his own sexual identity, but with Nikki’s gender identity, expression, and sexuality as well. Add another boy into the mix–Rory, who is secure in his identity as a gay young man–and you have just struck YA QUILTBAG Fiction gold!

Nah. To hell with gold; this is YA QUILTBAG Fiction diamond-studded rhodium. It has the potential to open eyes and minds through skillful narration, balanced storytelling, and some really amazing characters. All this from a novel starring a trans* anthrotiger in a post-apocalyptic setting! YES, please!

Wow! I'm humbled that something I wrote has touched someone like this. Sinews of the Heart will be available on September 27, and you can save by pre-ordering now.

QUILTBAG YA Fiction: You’ve Gotta Read This Book!

Sinews of the Heart at Storm Moon Press

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The Gryphon's Boy is almost ready!

He's almost ready! I'm putting the last touches on the text of The Gryphon's Boy and fiddling a bit with the formatting. The Gryphon's Boy is a sequel to The Glasschanger's Child. I already have ideas for another novel in this series. The books each stand alone, so you can start with whichever one you prefer. Adventure awaits!

The winged Vylloizõ boy Dzywllym is tired of adventures and simply wants to love his gryphon boyfriend, Quinn. When Quinn is called back to the gryphon homeland Okrakktyr and imprisoned there, Dzywllym sets out from Klyrrok with the cheerful and valiant mytho-magic Fledglings to rescue him. But wizard Flyntn Castefurvus, who murdered Dzywllym’s parents, takes over Okrakktyr in his pursuit of Klyrrok’s throne. Chaos erupts when Flyntn and his sadistic henchmen steal a battleship from Earth. The fates of Earth and Myrohtrae hang in the balance as gryphons, dragons, wizards, werewolves, the goat-god Pan, his prankish, sexually rapacious and deadly cousin Pwcca, a cranky, well-armed guardian angel, and the magnificent triple-hulled flying ship Orpheus wage war with Flyntn in the skies over both worlds. Amidst intense episodes of erotic passion and ferocious violence, young Dzywllym must learn to vanquish his fears and focus his rage to save Quinn and exact revenge for his parents’ savage deaths.

And isn't that a great cover? Thanks once again to April Danaher for her great work!

Dzywllym and Quinn will be flying your way soon! Thanks for being patient; perfection takes time. :D

The Glasschanger's Child

April Danaher's Photobucket Page

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The Gryphon's Boy is going to have an amazing cover!

Just look at this awesome and amazing cover art being created by April Danaher for my upcoming novel, The Gryphon's Boy (a sequel to The Glasschanger's Child). I love the vitality of this preliminary drawing so much that, instead of finishing it off with a fully-colored version, I'm going to try leaving it as is and have April add just minimal color touches similar to what she's already added. Any opinions? I think this drawing is lovely.

The Glasschanger's Child

April Danaher's Photobucket Page

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The Gryphon's Boy is getting ready!

Look at these lovely sketches that the wonderful April Danaher has made for the cover of my upcoming novel, The Gryphon's Boy. I particularly like the one in the lower right corner, but each one of these images is just delightful! :D

The Gryphon's Boy is a sequel to The Glasschanger's Child, and focuses on the bird-boy Dzywllym and his boyfriend, the magnificent gryphon Quinn. It's tender, tragic, emotional, and beautiful, with lots of story twists and intense scenes of love and violence. Many familiar characters from the first novel return, including the Fledglings and their tremendous, three-hulled flying ship, the Orpheus. I'm still polishing up the manuscript, but I'll be publishing The Gryphon's Boy sometime this summer.

The Glasschanger's Child

April Danaher's Photobucket Page

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"Sinews of the Heart" will soon have more furriness to love!

"Sinews of the Heart" has switched publishers! Storm Moon Press originally passed on the story since one of the editors, S.L. Armstrong, felt it was more of a YA piece and at the time, they didn't publish a YA line. Well, now they do! And S.L., who liked the story very much, contacted me again about placing the story with them, with the caveat that I have to make it...longer?!? No one ever wants me to make my stories longer! How cool is that? I came up with the idea for a follow-up tale shortly after I originally wrote the story, and now I'm working on expanding the original "Sinews of the Heart."

The story is set in a post-apocalyptic world where human civilization has fallen in a war with anthropomorphs. A family of anthrotigers hiking across the Yellowstone Territory comes upon a hidden family of humans. Whether to kill the humans or let them go is a decision that has dire consequences for Nikki, a twelve-year-old anthrotiger, whose true identity her father refuses to acknowledge. It's a compelling story of coming-of-age, forgiveness, and the importance of being true to one's real self. Plus, it has furries! And now, the story will continue, where some interesting new developments will happen with the characters.

I'll post another update as we get closer to publishing the story. I still have lots of work to do! Meanwhile, go check out Storm Moon Press; you might find something interesting there! They publish LGBT-themed works, usually with SF/fantasy/horror settings. Quite intriguing! Thanks to S.L. for remembering and liking my tale so much!

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Drawing from here.

Beware of the unicorns!

"Rainbows & Unicorns" is now available from Aeon Press Books in a volume called Transtories. This anthology looks to be chock full of great stories! My story "Rainbows & Unicorns" is a sweet fairy tale with blood splattered all over it, in which a gang of hurt kids encounters a brand of helpful magic that, for some people, turns into a nightmare. I will leave it for you to discover why it fits perfectly in an anthology involving stories that in some way are based on the word "trans".



Transtories is available in both print and electronic editions. Read it, and be very careful that you never harm those who are protected by unicorns. Enjoy!

Transtories, from Aeon Press Books

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An American Classic

I first read this book many years ago on a business trip, one of those things you have to endure where you want some sort of engrossing novel to carry you away from the bullshit of a job you hate (and traveling with the company owner, too) and one of those nerve-wracking times when you have to be “on” all the time because you’re surrounded by clients who are all morons anyway, and you have to be nice to them. I was on board a plane reading the opening scenes of American Gods that take place on a plane. Not that it had anything to do with the novel, but I remember watching what was almost a mugging on a Baltimore street from my hotel room late one night while I read this book. Fascinating, as if the world had become weirdly in-tune and out-of-order from the normal and usual, as if tendrils of the novel wormed their way out of the pages and into the ether.

I finished American Gods well after that trip ended, and when I closed its pages I was startled by an unbidden thought: “That was one of the most satisfying books I have ever read.” And I meant it. Every moment spent reading American Gods had been worth it, every hour with it an hour much more than well-spent. How often can you say that about any book? The works of Shakespeare and Homer; the utterly perfect characters and situations of Stephen King’s masterpiece, The Shining; the overwhelming too-muchness and diamond-flaw perfection of my favorite novel, Les Misérables. Not many others. Not many others at all.

The edition of American Gods I read years ago was the “standard edition,” I guess we could say. I started reading it again recently in the above pictured, Tenth Anniversary edition, with text restored by the brilliant Neil Gaiman. I’m already hooked again. Read this. It’s worth every minute of your time. Very little written today is this goddamned excellent.



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Wolf Note

My novel Wolf Note is now available in an Amazon Kindle edition! This tale is an action-filled mystery with a werewolf private eye who falls in love with a beautiful and famous operatic soprano -- and then he discovers that someone is trying to kill her!

Private investigator Griffin Thorn must find out who wants to kill opera superstar Brianna Keller. Griffin becomes Brianna’s bodyguard after an unknown assailant attacks her, and his admiration of her talent quickly turns into love for her. Secretly, Griffin is a werewolf keeping one step ahead of bounty hunters dedicated to wiping out his kind. Orphaned as a boy, Griffin took bloody revenge on the hunter who killed his parents. Griffin thwarts another attack on Brianna and, with hard-nosed FBI agent Tarrant Cobb, tries to uncover the stalker’s identity before he strikes again. Brianna learns Griffin’s secret and falls in love with him anyway, but another deadly attempt to take the singer’s life nearly kills her children. With the puzzle unsolved, Griffin realizes his violent past might destroy his dream of staying with Brianna forever. But Griffin soon learns that in life, love, and murder, nothing is ever as it seems.

There's plenty of action and romance in this one! Wolf Note will soon be available in a print edition and in other e-reader editions. Get ready for some red-in-tooth-and-claw opera werewolf action! And it's just in time for the beginning of the new season of The Metropolitan Opera! Enjoy!

Wolf Note at Amazon.com

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"Straighten up your gay kids or find another agent!"

Here's a great blog entry about a pair of writers who encountered trouble when a prospective agent demanded that they "write the gay away" -- i.e., remove the gay elements of one of their teen boy characters in a YA fantasy novel they had written. The writers stood their ground and wrote this excellent blog post alerting fellow writers and genre fiction fans to the problem, which appears to run pretty deep in the publishing industry. There's not much I can add to what the writers say or to some of the terrific comments that follow their post. This incident makes me anxious to finish my gay YA steampunk fantasy novel Wrath of the Gryphonwind and get it self-published. It also convinces me that I was correct to go ahead and publish WotG myself. Keep an eye here for updates on that novel, and go read some gay YA fiction! If you want to read something shorter than a novel, try one of my stories listed on the left side of this blog and enjoy!

"Authors Say Agents Try to “Straighten” Gay Characters in YA" -- Genreville

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Have an adventure this weekend!

Need a good book to read for the Labor Day weekend? Try one of my novels, The Glasschanger's Child or Orphan Stone. The Glasschanger's Child is a contemporary fantasy with wizards and dragons, an opera-composing gryphon, and the the Greek god Pan. Orphan Stone is a science fiction adventure about a young girl battling furry pirates among the rings of Saturn. Follow the links for more details about the novels and where you can buy them. Enjoy!



Orphan Stone

The Glasschanger's Child

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"Sinews of the Heart" is coming; or, The Furries Have Inherited the Earth!

My short story/novella "Sinews of the Heart" will be published as an e-book next year by WolfSinger Publications! The story is set in a post-apocalyptic world where human civilization has fallen in a war with anthropomorphs. A family of anthrotigers hiking across the Yellowstone Territory comes upon a hidden family of humans. Whether to kill the humans or let them go is a decision that has dire consequences for Nikki, a twelve-year-old anthrotiger, whose true identity her father refuses to acknowledge. It's a compelling story of coming-of-age, forgiveness, and the importance of being true to one's real self. Plus, it has furries!

"Sinews of the Heart" is one of my favorite tales, and I'm very happy that it has finally found a home. I'll post an update when the e-book becomes available.

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Drawing from here.

The Glasschanger's Child

My novel The Glasschanger's Child is now available in an Amazon Kindle edition! This one is a contemporary fantasy-adventure tale with some fascinating characters and lots of interesting twists.

Young Ciar Allyn pleads to the heavens for news about her vanished father, but the only reply is a gold glass star given her by two mysterious faeries. Years later Ciar discovers the Fledglings, a free-spirited band of mytho-magic creatures seeking Ciar’s powerful star aboard their fantastic flying vessel Orpheus. Ciar learns that her father was secretly a glasschanger, a powerful wizard who left Earth to help the Fledglings save the throne of their home world, Klyrrok. Swept up in their quest, Ciar fights side-by-side with werewolves, a gryphon, a man made of blue glass, the goat-god Pan, an abrasive and well-armed guardian angel, and a world-famous opera singer who sometimes turns into a tiger. Together the Fledglings battle an evil wizard and his cheerfully sadistic henchmen to save Klyrrok’s true king. But only Ciar’s growing mastery of her newly discovered glasschanging powers can carry the Fledglings to final victory.

This novel is one of my favorite creations, and I hope you enjoy it!

The Glasschanger's Child is now available in a print-on-demand paperback edition (just follow the link to Amazon) and in other e-reader formats. Also, some independent bookstores have the print-on-demand paperback edition available, too. Check with your favorite book retailer!

The Glasschanger's Child at Amazon.com

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"Rainbows & Unicorns" is coming!

My story "Rainbows & Unicorns" has been accepted by Aeon Press Books and will be published this fall in a volume called "Transtories". "Rainbows & Unicorns" is a sweet fairy tale with blood splattered all over it, in which a gang of hurt kids encounters a brand of helpful magic that, for some people, turns into a nightmare. I will leave it for you to discover why it fits perfectly in an anthology involving stories that in some way are based on the word "trans". I believe "Transtories" will be available in both print and electronic editions. I'll post an update when the story is published. Meanwhile, please check out the list to the left of my other published stories. Enjoy!

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"White Fire" is here!

It's here! My story "White Fire" is now available for your consideration at Gypsy Shadow Publishing. "White Fire" is an adventure tale about a young faun who arrives in the glittering metropolis of Port Cedryssene just minutes before enraged gryphons attack the city. The faun escapes the slaughter in Port Cedryssene's train station knowing that one of the gryphons is after him, and in his quest for safety the faun finds another boy his age and falls in love. Please feel free to comment here with your opinions of the story!

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Coming Soon: White Fire

Click on picture to enlarge.

Good news! My short story "White Fire" should be going up in the next couple of weeks at Gypsy Shadow Publishing! Here's a preview of the cover for the story. "White Fire" is an adventure tale about a young faun who arrives in the glittering metropolis of Port Cedryssene just minutes before enraged gryphons attack the city. The faun escapes the slaughter in Port Cedryssene's train station knowing that one of the gryphons is after him, and in his quest for safety the faun finds another boy his age and falls in love. I'll let everyone know when the story goes up at Gypsy Shadow.

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