Heat Haze price reduction

Where does the time go? I suddenly realised the other day that it was almost exactly a year since I published my collection of short sultry summer/heat themed m/m stories, Heat Haze: Summer Sizzlers.

To celebrate the anniversary, I’ve decided to reduce the price of the book. I’d always wanted to charge less for it but sadly Amazon have increased the lowest price margin on all self-published books, so I ended up with a higher price than I’d intended. That lowest price is still the same, but I’ve taken the book down as low as I possibly can and it’s now only £1.77 (or your local equivalent). And of course, it’s still free on Kindle Unlimited.

Five stories, five summery settings ranging from Salzburg in a thunderstorm to an abandoned railway carriage in… a thunderstorm, and including a Maltese sea cave and a desert where everything may not be what it seems.

SAND, SAND AND more sand. It’s all I can see in every direction, stretching to the far horizon where the dancing heat melds land and sky in improbable creases. Vast plains, wind-whipped ripples, towering dunes, all shifting imperceptibly to the rhythm of the air. The closest dune is marked by a line of sagging footprints, leading my eye to the tall, slender figure of my companion. As if sensing my regard, he turns, djellaba and robe flapping like prayer flags in the wind. Even from here I can see his sardonic grin.

            ‛You are flagging, Edward. Do you wish to stop and set up camp?’

            Damn him. We’ve only been walking for an hour, which he well knows. Guide or no guide, I can’t let him get away with that. ‛Of course not,’ I reply and trudge on. It’s the truth, anyway. The molten sun hurts my eyes, but the native dress he made me wear protects me from the worst ravages of the heat. The edge of my turban still bothers me, dipping down to dangle in my eyes, but it’s better than the alternative, a slow roasting that would send me mad with sunstroke. But I do need a drink, and I am tired of sand. Sand everywhere—in my boots, weighing down my every step, in my mouth, in the very pores of my skin. ‛Fucking sand,’ I mutter, shaking one leaden foot, but quietly so he won’t hear. I already know he’s laughing at me.

The stories are all slightly steamier than most of my usual fare. Even though summer is now on its way out there’s still enough good weather around to treat yourself to the book and take it out onto a sun lounger on the patio with a tall glass of something cool.

Fancy a bit of a sizzle? You can get Heat Haze: Summer Sizzlers at the new, lower price of £1.77 here. Happy reading, and happy whatever’s left of the heatwave!

Coming Soon: a Brand New Zine!

Many years ago I ran an online m/m romance magazine called Forbidden Fruit. Some of you might even go back far enough to remember it! It became quite successful in its own slightly naive way but it was also a ton of work, and after just over eight years I regretfully abandoned it.

Now, though, the wonders of modern technology – and the input of over fifteen of my fellow m/m romance authors – means I can put something similar together once more. New name, new contributors, new style, but hopefully the same blend of great short m/m fiction, reviews, articles, book news and general fun.

And it’s coming soon! Very soon, in fact, with the welcome post already in place and the first story due out tomorrow (Friday 12th August). New technology equates to a blog format rather than a standalone website which is so much easier to administrate. New contributors include the likes of Kaje Harper, Addison Albright, Anne Barwell, Jackie Keswick and Jay Mountney, to name just a few. And, er, me. Don’t say you haven’t been warned!

We’ll be introducing the entire team over the next few weeks and posting some amazing short stories, so why not hurtle over to the zine and bookmark it so you don’t miss out? You can find RoM/Mantic Reads right here. I hope you like it!

Rainbow Snippets: Night Music

Yesterday’s webring blog post was about the influence of music on our writing, and I realised after I’d posted it that I’d completely forgotten to include the short story I wrote that was entirely inspired by music. So, for today’s #RainbowSnippets entry, here’s a little burst of Night Music.

The story is set in Salzburg, where the main character has won a music-themed holiday from a music-themed magazine and invites the man he fancies along. Trouble is, the course of true love and all that… Ben is sullen and doesn’t seem to enjoy anything, not even the Mozart concert that’s part of the prize. But then they discover an ancient, shrine-lined street up to a monastery, and the music of Salzburg in a thunderstorm works its magic after all.

We’re near the top now; the hill’s crowned by a monastery of some sort, remote and forbidding behind stone walls. It reminds me of Ben: the way he hides what he really thinks, the way he retreats inside himself. He’s been retreating from me long enough.

Fretting about it won’t help. I turn aside, onto a path that winds beneath the monastery wall to a viewpoint hidden among the trees. And there beneath, lit by a sudden lightning strike, the city spreads out like a jewelled tapestry.

The street, and the viewpoint, really exist – we discovered them ourselves during a stay in Salzburg a few years ago. It was broad daylight when we visited, though, so we didn’t get up to the things that happen in the story, *cough*.

Night Music is available, along with a bunch of other summer/heat-themed short stories, in my Heat Haze collection on Kindle, or free on Kindle Unlimited. If you try it, I hope you enjoy all the stories, which are a little steamier than my usual fare and mostly written with my tongue firmly in my cheek!

New fiction archive

I’ve been thinking about ways to share some of my fiction online for some time. Not so much the published works – the books, or the stories in anthologies and magazines – but the untidy heap of older stories, unpublished stories, stories newly out of publication, and excerpts from books and even works-in-progress.

Well, after much prompting (aka gentle nagging!) by fellow writer Jay Mountney, I now have a Dreamwidth account to use for exactly this purpose. So far it only has a couple of short stories posted: one creepy little flash fiction called ‘Noises Off’, previously published in Paragraph Planet, and ‘Concrete Jungle’, a rather weird prose-poem which appeared in online British fiction magazine Ink Sweat & Tears. I’ll be adding more soon, though, so feel free to bookmark the link and check back every now and again.

You can find the account, and both stories, here: FIONA’S DREAMWIDTH PAGE. I hope you like it!

Update

For anyone who hasn’t come across me before or isn’t familiar with my writing, I’ve added a couple of new pages to the top menu bar with a selection of my books and stories.  All the books are available in a variety of formats, from a variety of outlets including Amazon.  The stories are all available to read free on the internet.  Please feel free to have a poke around and see if there’s anything you like – or head over to my website for a complete list of what’s available, where.