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First of all, welcome to everyone who found my little corner of the Internet for the first time through the Hot WinterNights Giveaway Blog Hop! I hope you enjoyed meeting Kevin and Tiernan, the main characters in the first Soulshares novel, Hard as Stone. The second book in the series, Gale Force, is in the loving hands of my editor even as we speak, and I’m hard at work on the third, Deep Waters.

Winners? Ah, yes, winners. *grins* The winner of eARCs of Hard as Stone and Evernight Vol. 2 from my Comments list is Lona Stringer, and the winner from my new followers is the lovely but unpronounceable jyl22075! I’ll be in touch with you both shortly to get you your prizes — wishing you many hours of happy, hot winter night reading!

Hot Winter Nights Giveaway Hop

Welcome to the hottest stop on the Hot Winter Nights Giveaway Blog Hop! *winks* All comments here will enter you in the drawing for the Grand Prize of a $50 Amazon gift card, $10 in Bookstrand Bucks, and a selection of 11 e-books. Total value of the Grand Prize package is over $100, so comment early and often! And be sure to INCLUDE YOUR E-MAIL ADDRESS!

(To get back to the list of participating blogs, click HERE: http://nicolemorganauthor.blogspot.com)

In addition to the Grand Prize, all comments on this blog entry, and all “follows,” will register you for one of two RoryNi prizes — you’ll find those after the story you’re about to read.

Oh, yes. Story. Here’s my Christmas gift to you, dear readers — an all-new short story set in the world of the Soulshares, in the deep and dark midwinter. Come with me, and step into Purgatory, the hottest all-male sex club on the Eastern Seaboard. And the only one run by a Fae…

Refuge from the Storm

Tiernan cast one last look around Purgatory. His enhanced senses let him see perfectly well in the light from the exit signs, which was all there was at the moment. No sense having anything else on, not when all of D.C. was paralyzed, and the club – and everything else – was closed until the fucking snow stopped. Though he’d seen blizzards that were probably worse, in a century and a half in the human realm, this was the first one he couldn’t just Fade someplace warm to get away from. Well, he could, but it would mean leaving his husband to freeze his ass off. On their wedding anniversary, no less. Shit, I hope Kevin made it home from work. He still shuddered at the thought of spending any length of time in Kevin’s car, but the thought of being stranded somewhere in it was infinitely worse.

Surely Kevin was home by now. And they could take advantage of being snowed in by spending the night in the hot tub by candlelight, instead of going out to dinner. Fuck tradition, he wanted to spend his anniversary wet, hot, and moaning. And making his husband the same way. Thank you, blizzard. Time to get home and find the candles –

What the hell? A blast of cold air roared through the suddenly-open door, seeming to blow a snow-covered figure in just ahead of it. Kevin leaned against the door to close it, breathing hard, snow falling from his hair and clothing. “Shit – are you here, lanan? I can’t see a damned thing.”

Tiernan gestured, and the lights came up over the cock pit as he hurried to Kevin’s side. “What the hell were you doing out in this?” He watched as Kevin tried to unbelt his coat with numb fingers, finally pushing his hands aside and doing the job for him, pushing the coat off his lanan’s broad shoulders and letting it lie where it fell.

“It wasn’t that bad when I left work. I thought I could make it here, surprise you before the club opened for the afternoon.”

He could feel Kevin’s shivers, and wrapped an arm around him, urging him down into the cock pit, to one of the black leather loveseats. “Where’s the death trap?”

Kevin shot him a look as the two of them sank onto the soft leather. “The Mercedes made it as far as the entrance to the valet parking. It’s stuck. And as soon as the plows come by, it’s going to be really stuck.”

Tiernan wrapped his arms around his human, and frowned. “You’re freezing. Why don’t you get out of those wet things, and I’ll go get us something to chase away the cold?” Unable to resist, he leaned in for one hot kiss, then Faded to the bar and started looking around for what he needed.

By the time he poured Kevin’s Jack and coke, and – after some reflection – a shot of Tennessee Honey for himself, every stitch Kevin had been wearing was in an untidy pile on the floor. The human still looked chilled, but the dark gaze raking over the Fae was hot beyond belief.

“Was this what you wanted?” Kevin’s baritone was husky, and whether it trembled with chill or with need, Tiernan had no fucking clue.

Except that either way, he needed his arms around the male. Right now. He all but dove back into the loveseat, could barely wait for Kevin to take his drink before snaking an arm around him and drawing him in close.

Kevin’s low laughter went straight to Tiernan’s cock, teasing it to rigid attention. “Not quite the anniversary we had planned.” The lawyer downed half his Jack and coke at once. “But I think I can make do.” Slowly, he leaned closer; his tongue stroked softly, insistently over Tiernan’s eyebrow ring. “Any way to get some music?”

Tiernan blinked, trying to make sense of his husband’s words. “Music. Right. Yes.” It was just fucking unfair, when you got right down to it, that Kevin was naked and he himself had to deal with zipper teeth trying to circumcise him. He closed his eyes and reached out with his sixth sense, the magickal one, and abruptly the darkness around their little island of light was filled with the pulsing E.D.M. Purgatory was known for. As long as computer chips were still made of silicon, a Fae of the Demesne of Earth always had a way in.

“Perfect.”

Tiernan’s eyes snapped open at the sensation of Kevin’s hips rocking against his. He looked up into dark eyes, dark hair still wet with snow-melt, a smile that he knew from experience could get him hard from the far side of a crowded dance floor. Kevin’s knees were braced to either side of Tiernan’s thighs, and his hands to either side of Tiernan’s head where it rested against the high back of the loveseat. For once, the Fae had no complaint at all about being confined; his gaze traveled around hard-muscled thighs, bunched biceps, washboard abs with a dusting of dark hair, undulating in time with the driving beat of the music, and a proudly erect cock that would make a she-mammoth pack her things and move back in with mama. It swayed and bobbed with Kevin’s every sinuous movement, and left drops of clear fluid scattered across Tiernan’s shirt.

“Best fucking lap dancer in D.C.” Tiernan’s voice was thick, unsteady. “I hope to hell this isn’t one of those times you’re planning to insist on foreplay.” He skinned out of his shirt as quickly as he could, penned in as he was, and shoved his jeans down his hips, groaning as his shaft sprang free, the mark of the zipper clearly visible.

“Maybe that’s all I’m planning.” Kevin’s body slid down Tiernan’s legs until he knelt on the floor; his hand curled around the base of Tiernan’s cock, clenching and releasing to the bass rhythm coming out of the darkness. “A nice, long, slow tease. Hours of it.”

Tiernan cursed as Kevin’s hot mouth closed around the head of his cock. “Not tonight, buchal dana.” Fuck, yes, his husband was being a bad boy. It was Kevin’s shyness that had first driven Tiernan mad for him. And there was still some of that reticence to him, hesitation, wanting to be urged. But from the start there had been a buchal dana living deep within his human, and during this year of their marriage the bad boy had learned how much the Fae delighted in him.

Shit, that beautiful ass was still moving, as if compelled by the music. Tiernan’s hands plunged into Kevin’s hair and pulled him down; he cursed again, ecstatically, as his Prince Albert dragged along Kevin’s tongue, and yet again as the head of his cock bumped against the back of Kevin’s throat. I’m not going to last. No fucking way. “You can come up here and ride me.” His voice was a low purr, barely audible over the hypnotic throbbing of the music. “Or I can come down there, turn you around, and take you as hard as you’re begging to be taken. Your choice.”

Dark eyes laughed up at him for a moment before Kevin released his shaft. “Why do I have to choose? We have all night, after all.” Steadying Tiernan’s shaft with one hand, he lollipopped it from taint to tip, his tongue like hot velvet. “But you’re right, we need to start somewhere. Why don’t you come here and see what you can take?”

The words were hardly out of Kevin’s mouth before Tiernan was off the loveseat, using one hand in his thick dark hair to turn him around, kneeing his thighs apart and pushing him to hands and knees on the black marble floor. He stared in wonder for a moment at his own weeping, nearly purple shaft, before wrapping his free hand around it and positioning the head at Kevin’s clamped-tight entrance. “Look what you do to me, lanan.”

Kevin turned, at this, looking up from where his weight rested on his forearms. The color was high in his cheeks, behind his five o’clock shadow, and his eyes shone. “No more than what you’ve always done to me.”

Tiernan lunged forward, taking Kevin’s mouth in a ferocious kiss and crying out into the kiss with the exquisite burning pleasure as he buried himself deep in his husband’s tight dark passage. Again he thrust, and again, pounding even harder than the bass beat that filled the air, gasping for breath even as he continued his assault on Kevin’s mouth. And he’d been right to think he wouldn’t last; his sac was already rising up, heat pooled at the base of his spine.

And every nerve in his body sang with joy, a blazing bright wonder that convulsed him as he released. Scair-anam

The desire and the joy, his husband’s tight hold and his husband’s kiss, those were what kept Tiernan conscious until the pleasure finally started to ebb. “Damn.” His lips moved against Kevin’s, both mouths swollen and tender and wonderfully sensitive. “Happy anniversary.”

Kevin laughed, a low, rich, delicious sound. “And it’s only just beginning.”

“Not quite what you’d planned, though.”

“Ah, but I’m very good at improvising.”

If this story was your introduction to Kevin and Tiernan and the world of the Soulshares, and you want more, here’s the link to their story, in Hard as Stone:

http://www.amazon.com/Hard-as-Stone-ebook/dp/B009SX91JQ/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1354327413&sr=8-2&keywords=hard+as+stone

And if you’d like something a little different, you can check out my Gems of Night short story, “Serpentine,” in Evernight 2 —

http://www.amazon.com/Evernight-Vol-2-ebook/dp/B009LLZHX4/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1354329397&sr=1-1&keywords=evernight+2

On December 5th, each comment below, and each follow, will count as an entry for eARCs of both Hard as Stone and Evernight 2!

I’ve been trying for the last three days to write the climactic fight scene in the latest Soulshares novel. It’s been an intensely frustrating experience, for one reason I anticipated, and one I didn’t.

The one I anticipated — action scenes are not my favorites to write. I’m guessing that this is just me; I want my action to happen as quickly on the page as it does in my head, and since visual imagery is simultaneous and words on a page are linear, the pace of an action scene is never going to be fast enough to suit me. Though hopefully it’ll be fast enough to suit my readers!

The one I didn’t — IMHO, it’s unexpectedly hard to write a fight scene that has anything like a realistic amount of violence, and not bore the reader. I cut my teeth in this genre on Sherrilyn Kenyon (more about which in a minute), and compared to anything of hers, my fight scenes feel, to me, like they convey all the urgency and danger of a moderately bad paper cut. Yet when I go back over them, I always find that they involve crippling injuries and/or serious threats to life and limb, averted only by my heroes’ quick thinking and crazy mad fighting skillz. Which ought to be good enough, right? So what’s missing?

When I leaf through any of SK’s books, it seems that I immediately find the answer. Battles with swords and knives and claws and fangs and bolts of lightning. Oceans of blood, howls of agony, jaws bolted closed (I think SK’s used that one several times), bodies immersed in acid, skin flayed from bones, ribcages split and vital organs hanging out of the body. And generally, all of this happening to immortals, so that they can (and do) endure this kind of treatment for thousands of years, until their One True Beloved happens along to take the pain away and teach them to love and trust again.

Which leaves me wondering: is there such a thing as, well, overkill? I don’t like torture or violence porn (by which I’m not referring to BDSM as I understand it, but rather to extremely detailed and graphic descriptions of extreme violence outside the context of sexuality — the “X” rating at one time was intended to apply to extreme violence as well as to graphic sexuality), but my writing experience is starting to make me wonder if at least some of what I’m reading might be in part the product of the kind of frustration I’m running into when I’m writing. When things get violent in your story, how do you make that violence real to the reader without going to extremes that would never happen in anyone’s real life?

And the winners are…. *drum roll*

KaityKatt wins a copy of Evernight 2!

Beth wins an autographed copy of Hard as Stone! (as soon as they’re available — I’ll let you know, darlin’!)

Congratulations to you both!

Thank you, Ursula Avery, for this wonderful review!! —

I could not put this book down. I started it last night prepared to read enough to get a feel for the story and then planned to put it down and go to bed. I ended up staying up until 2am. Curse you Rory Coileain, for my lack of sleep. This book was raw and gritty. The intense attraction between Kevin and Tiernan leapt off the pages. There were bad guys of the human and paranormal variety. The book was just intense.

I like how the story started out telling us what happened to get Tiernan exiled. I prefer that method to flashbacks that enlighten the reader. I seriously wanted to take the knife and stab Tiernan’s sister myself. That bitch! I fell in love with both of the guys. They are each vulnerable in their own way and that made me love them even more. It was interesting how Kevin starts to come into his own after he meets Tiernan.

This book is a book that will take you on an emotional ride with a satisfying end. So go read this tale of destined lovers who fight enormous odds to be together. I hope you love it as much as I did.

Be afraid. Be very afraid. I’m going to attempt something technological. (pauses to give you all time to poke your noses out from under your beds, wondering if it’s safe to come out yet) I’m going to try to post the links to the next stops on this blog tour. Here goes… *cracks knuckles*

The lovely Ashley Mingledorff Groppe: DahliaNightingale.tumblr.com

The delightful Kat Stroud: http://authorkatstroud.wordpress.com/

and

The brilliant Aaron Speca: http://aaronspeca.blogspot.com

You still have through tomorrow evening to comment on my Next Big Thing post and/or follow my page, to win some lovely prizes, too, don’t forget!

Comment on my blog entry, The Next Big Thing, by Wednesday, October 31st, and be entered into a drawing to win an autographed paperback copy of Hard as Stone when the print-on-demand edition is available! And follow my blog to be entered in a drawing for a .pdf copy of Evernight 2, with my short story, Serpentine.

I wish there were 10 stars to give. After 9 hours of continuous reading, I hated for the book to end. I rank this book among the best I have read in the m/m genre. The combining of two halves of one soul, one half residing in Kevin, a lawyer in the real world and the other half in Tiernan,a Fae. Their meeting and instant attraction is a puzzlement to both, but an attraction neither of them can deny. The emotions of both men are ever present throughout the story and make the characters real and endearing. The path to love is not easy for Kevin and Tiernan. Where would a story be without an evil interloper both in the Fae realm and in the realm of the real world. As in life, our struggles often bring us closer to the ones we love. Interesting twists and turns take the reader on an addictive ride as our characters come together. In my humble opinion, HARD AS STONE is an absolute MUST READ. I guarantee that you will not be disappointed. 5 stars and a keg of honey for you, Rory Ni Coileain.

The Next Big Thing

Welcome to my edition of The Next Big Thing! (starting ever so slightly late, which is pretty much proof positive that it’s mine…)

For THIS WEEK ONLY, October 24th through the 31st, I will be running two giveaways:

At the end of the week, I will choose a “follow” for this blog at random, to receive a copy of Evernight Volume 2!

And

At the end of the week, I will choose one of the comments to this posting at random, to receive an autographed paperback copy of HARD AS STONE, as soon as they’re available! So comment early and often!

I’ll be posting throughout the week as well, so please check back. And as soon as I get the URLs of all four of the lovely and talented individuals who will be your next stop on the tour, I’ll be putting those up as well!

And now, on to the questions…

What is the working title of your current book? Gale Force. Though I think my publisher will be asking me to naughty it up a little.

Where did the idea come from for the book? Flowed out of the first one in the series, Hard as Stone.

What genre does your book fall under? Um. Well. I consider it male-on-male urban fantasy erotic romance. The first book in the series was a little closer to male-on-male urban fantasy erotica. And my publisher calls it “fantastica”. So take your pick.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie? Ummmmm. Might have to take a pass on that one, because I don’t really go to the movies. Except the ones my son wants to see. Or ones that have Liam Neeson in them. And none of my characters particularly look like Liam Neeson. I can’t figure out why I haven’t gotten around to that yet.

What is a one sentence synopsis of your book? The most powerful mage in the last two thousand years of Fae history loses his magick, and half his soul, to a dark-eyed human who longs to give him the love – and the pleasure – he’s never dared let himself taste.

WIll your book be self published or represented by an agency? Neither one; it’s being published by Ravenous Romance, and I got together with them through submitting a short story for one of their anthologies, about a year and a half ago. Although I would love to find an agent for the print rights. I’ll add that to my “to do” list. If I can find the end of the list. I know it’s around here somewhere…

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? This one has to be totally done within five months. Have I mentioned yet that I hate deadlines? I hate deadlines. Really hate them. So I’m writing a first draft, and in my spare time (tee hee) I’m going back and rewriting the beginning.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre? I actually don’t read within my genre. Not that I don’t love it – but I tend to soak up writing styles like the proverbial sponge, and I really, REALLY want to keep my own voice while I’m working on the boys. Maybe once the contract’s done I’ll dive into a pile of books and not come up for air for a while.

Who or what inspired you to write this book? I’ll take this as being about the series in general, not just this second book in it. I have an RP character on Facebook that I created as a very spur-of-the-moment thing, but I came to enjoy him. A LOT. And I created a back-story for him, a whole culture and world that he came out of, because that’s just how I roll. And then Allison Cassatta put on a writing competition for role-play writers that involved putting your character in a situation where his/her best friend was keeping a secret that could endanger his/her life. I wanted to enter, but my character’s best friend wasn’t mine to write. So I had to create another Fae. And another “best friend” for him. And the story I wrote for that competition eventually became, let me think, Chapters 15 through 17 or thereabouts of Hard as Stone, the first of the Soulshares books.

What else about your book might interest the reader? My goal is to write a male-on-male erotica that an urban fantasy lover would fall in love with, and an urban fantasy that an erotica fan would swoon over. And a love story that will make someone who’s never read a romance novel in his or her life say, “Damn, I wish real life could be like that.”

Hard as Stone is out!!!

HARD AS STONE is available on Amazon, Amazon UK, Barnes & Noble, All Romance Ebooks, and Ravenous’ own Web site, with more to come (especially Kobo). I’ll post the links below as I get them, and as soon as I calm down a little I’m probably going to run a contest of some kind, so stay tuned!