#SampleSunday: Sleeping Dogs

I finally got Sleeping Dogs out in time for Halloween! Here’s an excerpt so you can see whether you fancy a slightly spooky low-heat short sapphic short story. It’s $1.99 on Amazon and also in KU.

Sleeping Dogs

Alice doesn’t think she’s ready to start dating again. Or even to make new friends in the village where she’s come to live with her sister’s family. Will a rainy autumn day and an encounter with a mysterious black dog, a beautiful woman, and a fox cub change her mind?

A 10 500-word Halloween short story in the Celtic Myths Collection. With dogs, bats, a camper van with a woodburning stove, and a fox cub.

Available at Amazon and in KU

Excerpt from Sleeping Dogs

As she picked her way down the steep, stony path toward the stream, she was pulled out of her thoughts by a dog barking in the distance. And, perhaps… someone shouting? She stopped and cocked her head as she listened. Where was it coming from? Difficult to say but she thought it was in front of her, down in the valley. It could be echoing around though, bouncing off the hills. She pulled a face and hurried down the path. As she moved forward, both the barking and the shouting got louder and as she rounded the corner that finally took her to the stream, the culprits came in to view.
It was a woman, and the barking was coming from a black Labrador. The woman wasn’t shouting any longer, but she was holding the dog’s collar apparently to prevent it from lunging into the water. On the other bank stood a fox, with three fat cubs ranged behind her, snarling back. Between them in the water was a fox cub, struggling against a rock in the middle of the stream, trying to scramble out of the current. It was having problems and was getting weaker as she watched.
“Can you help?” the woman gasped, struggling with the dog. “I think it’s hurt. I can’t let the dog go because she’ll go for the vixen.”
Alice was already stripping. She didn’t bother to say anything. She ripped off her coat and boots and plunged in up to her hips, gasping at the cold. She could just… just… reach it. She overbalanced and nearly lost her footing as she grasped the struggling cub, but she recovered her balance and backed out as carefully as she could. The fox was limp in her hands.
She passed it up to the woman before scrambling out. “I think it’s dead,” she said. The woman had to let go of the dog before she could take the cub and instead of running off after the vixen, it lay down and crossed its paws. Oh! Her memory tumbled into place like a key in a lock. The dog was the one from yesterday.
And the woman was Morwenna.

Available at Amazon and in KU

Surfacing Again: Otters and anthropomorphism

Morning everyone! Surfacing Again is 99c for the whole of this week and I thought I’d share a bit about otters. This is largely an exercise in basking in cuteness for five hundred words, so please do excuse me.

close up shot of otters
Photo by Silvia Heider on Pexels.com

As you know if you’ve met any of my Celtic myth retellings, they are all based on some sort of legend from the westward Celtic fringe of the British Isles. I began by making them Celtic (hence the name, doh!), but I’ve expanded a bit for the sake of a good story and St Cuthbert was actually knocking round Northumbria in the very early middle ages, during the seventh century. His church was part of the Celtic tradition, but he wasn’t a Celt. I made an exception for him because I was so taken by the otter story. (The whole Celtic church versus the Roman church is a whole other post, so we’ll go with this oversimplification because it’s a niche interest 😊)

So. Cuthbert was an extremely austere chap, who used to go and stand in the sea to pray. When he got out, a pair of otters would come out of the sea too, and dry him off. We know this because a creepy stalker-monk spied on him and later told St Bede, who wrote it in his Life of St Cuthbert.

This is…not usual otter behaviour.

cute wild otter swimming in lake
Photo by David Selbert on Pexels.com

Here in the UK we don’t have sea otters. We just have otters, some of whom prefer to hang out on the coast. I like to think of them as water-cats, or maybe water-dogs, because they are so active and playful. They are the European otter, members of the Mustelid family which also includes stoats, weasels and mink. They’re all pretty fearsome creatures with an exciting set of teeth that you don’t want predating in your chicken house.

They are also exceedingly rare in the UK at this point, although I believe they are less rare than they used to be. My sister (to whom Surfacing Again is dedicated) is our local point of contact for one of the otter protection organisations and she does counting and watching. This seems to mostly involve dangerously hanging over bridges and wading through unpleasantly deep streams to change the cards in her wildlife cameras and then watching the footage and logging what she sees. She also counts up footprints and spraint that she finds. Because they are so endangered, people aren’t encouraged to deliberately go and search for them.

I think we have this anthropomorphic idea in our heads about some wild creatures that doesn’t serve us well, simply because they are so charming. Otters fall into this category I guess.

They eat mostly fish, but will also eat birds, mammals and frogs if they’re hungry. Because they’re inquisitive they will interact with humans occasionally in the way they do in Surfacing Again…coming up to see what’s going on. But like all wild animals they aren’t tame and we shouldn’t see them like that. Having said that I loved Gavin Maxwell’s Ring of Bright Water when I read it in my teens. In my opinion it’s the ultimate otter book. Maxwell lived with a house full of otters on the west coast of Scotland—he was a naturalist who travelled widely in the interwar and post WW2 years and brought his first otter back from Iraq . It was a different time and these days you have to have a licence to keep a wild animal as a pet.

In my story I tried to balance my desire for Mustelid cuteness with my feeling that otters are wild creatures who should be respected. I hope I’ve done that.

Surfacing Again

Cover: Surfacing Again

Melinda is staying on Lindisfarne for a Christmas break with her old friend when an unexpected argument leaves her alone for the holiday.

It’s the first Christmas since her mother died and the island’s peace and wild tranquillity bring balm to her wounded heart. Two chance meetings, first with a pair of wary otters and then with cafe-owner Rowan, bring her genuine joy.

Will her tentative relationship with Rowan survive the end of her holiday and the turning of the year?

Buy on Amazon : Buy Elsewhere : Add to Goodreads

otters drinking water from river
Photo by Kieren Ridley on Pexels.com

#AmReading

I haven’t done an #AmReading post for a while, largely because my reading has consisted of doomscrolling on twitter and a deep-dive in to the fanfic excellence of AO3.

However, I have begun to surface into actual, purchasable books again over the last couple of weeks and the first one I want to tell you about is a re-read of FF historical The Covert Captain by my dear friend Jeannelle M. Ferreira. I include this to indicate that I am biased! Jeannelle is working on the sequel and I did a reread so I’d be ready. This week I also talk about contemporary MM The Other Boyfriend by Darien Cox and The Green Man’s Challenge by Juliette E. McKenna

The Covert Captain by Jeannelle M. Ferreira

The Covert Captain by Jeannelle M. Ferreira is a f/f regency and I had forgotten how delightful I found it the first time round. Eleanor Fleming (Nora) comes home from war…where she has spent the last decade or two fighting Bonaparte as Nathanial Fleming. She falls in love with her commanding officer’s sister, Harriet. Hijinx of the ‘gosh I didn’t realise you were a woman!’ variety ensue.

I love the historical detail in Jeannelle’s stories (you should check out Your Fingers Like Pen and Ink if this is your catnip, it’s a free transcript and/or podcast) and The Covert Captain is no exception. I felt immersed in the eighteenth century as I was reading—the day to day detail reminds me very much of Dorothy Dunnett’s style.

I should add…this is not a trans story. It’s a woman dresses as a man to survive story. And it’s perfect. Highly recommend.

The Other Boyfriend by Darien Cox

The Other Boyfriend by Darien Cox

Darien Cox is one of my favourite authors and I was delighted when I realised I’d missed a release. The Other Boyfriend should probably be described as a romp. It’s got an unusual plot where our main characters Jonas and Lee, the younger boyfriends of two brothers, work out that actually they don’t hate each other after all. I don’t think I can tell you much more than that without massive spoilers.

I really enjoyed it…it’s a light read with positively Shakespearean undertones. Recommend!

The Green Man’s Challenge by Juliet E. McKenna

The Green Man's Challenge. Juliet E. McKenna

Another wonderful Green Man story. This one is set in White Horse Country in the south of England. Dan is called to the area both by a night-time visit from the Green Man and a phone call from Fin, his river-ecologist, swan-maiden lover. She just happens to have seen a giant on her way home from a job in Wiltshire. As you do. I love the magic in these books. It’s very strongly tied to the earth and to English myth and it resonates really deeply with me. The giant isn’t a force for good in the world; but the white horses that populate the chalk hillsides of the area are. This book also introduces good witches that turn into hares, which is brilliant. It’s set in the summer of 2020 or 2021, in the pandemic, and it’s very well done–there in the background, with Dan’s worry about his elderly father, he and Fin’s confusion about whether it’s safe for them to sleep together, all those little things. But it’s not overwhelming or intrusive. The way the real world and the magical world are interwoven is superb as usual.

This is definitely worth your time.

That’s the lot for this time!

Guest Post: Mags Hayward and Sweet as Candy

New author Mags Hayward is here today to talk about her new release, Sweet as Candy and let you read an excerpt. Welcome, Mags!

Hi Ally, thank you so much for inviting me over to your blog. It’s the first time I’ve been here and I’m very excited.

My name is Mags Hayward and I’m a new author writing lesbian romance and erotic romance for JMS Books LLC. I’m here today to talk about my fourth publication, Sweet as Candy, which was written for the JMS Books sweet or spice submission call and published on February 19th.

Sweet as Candy is a gentle lesbian romance centred on Kate, a nineteen-year-old student who’s never found love. Kate’s lost faith that she’ll ever find the one and certainly doesn’t believe in love at first sight. Meeting Candy, however, is about to change all that.

The story unfolds over one day, from morning ’till late, with the action taking place at a Pride festival organised by Kate’s best friend, Danny.  It’s this festival I’d like to talk about.

Jubilee Park Pride is based on a Pride festival that took place in a town near my home in the UK Midlands in 2019. It was the first Pride event the town had staged and was a much anticipated event. I attended in the morning and did my favourite trick of wandering around, blending in invisibly, while people-watching and listening to chatter. I gathered that many of those attending had travelled miles to support the event, some obviously having never visited that town before. There were frequent where’s this, where can I find that questions being asked, all politely answered by the police and other emergency services workers who’d kindly volunteered to act as stewards for the event.

There were locals there too, of course, but I didn’t recognise as many faces as I’d expected. The weather may have been partially to blame. Unlike Jubilee Park Pride’s all-day blazing sunshine, the real 2019 event was plagued by heavy downpours of rain. It didn’t spoil the fun, and I remember everyone smiling and having a great time, but it may have reduced the number of last-minute attendees. Who knows? Anyway, for the purposes of my feel-good short story, I decided to let the sun shine all day.

The decorated shop fronts, outlandish costumes and live events such as the bands in the park and the pub drag night are all based on the real-life Pride festival. It was quite a party – a bright, colourful, rainbow party. Sadly, the 2020 repeat celebration, which was scheduled to be bigger and feature a carnival-style street parade, was cancelled thanks to Covid. The 2021 event was also cancelled. Again, I chose not to reflect this in my story. Jubilee Park got its second Pride festival as, I hope, the town that inspired it will in 2022.

As I said, Sweet as Candy is my fourth publication with JMS Books LLC. My first book, Sydney, One Way, is a lesbian erotic romance flash fiction published the same month as Leap of Faith, a longer sweet lesbian romance. My third book is also a ‘Hot Flash’ – lesbian paranormal romance this time. My next project is another short paranormal romance.

Thank you for reading. Best wishes, Mags x

Sweet as Candy by Mags Hayward

Sweet as Candy by Mags Hayward

The first Jubilee Park Pride is in full swing and Kate’s soaking up the carnival atmosphere and energy of the flamboyant crowd. Although she’s there to support the event organiser, her best friend Danny, Pride has a special place in her heart.

She loves being a part of it—but doesn’t expect to find love. Never having had a girlfriend, Kate lacks confidence and can’t imagine meeting a girl and falling in love on the same day. That happens to other people. Certainly not to her.

But Candy’s different: beautiful, confident, yet down to earth and easy to talk to. Kate’s never met anyone like her. Has Fate brought her and Candy together—or will Kate be broken-hearted when the Festival ends?

Read an Excerpt

Crossing the road, Kate ran ahead, eager to explore. Like the theatre, Jubilee Park was bigger than she’d expected, and the town’s first ever Pride—Danny’s debut as an event organiser—was buzzing. Bunting fluttered from anything tall enough to tie it to; stallholders lined the paths, selling everything you’d expect at a festival from handmade, tie-dyed clothing, to local honey, and sizzling ‘healthy alternatives’ fast food. 
The park sloped downhill, and the lower area was filled with giant inflatable slides, bouncy castles, and kiddies’ roundabouts. Children’s shrieks and laughter cut through the pounding music pumping through speakers strapped to the trees. The park was alive with colour, music, delicious smells, and an atmosphere so joyous it brought a tear to Kate’s eye. 
“Danny”—Kate flung her arms around Danny’s neck—“I’m so proud of you.”
“Aw, babes… Now get off me and take a proper look. The bands will be performing on the bandstand over there.”
“Where?”
“Step to your right. See it?” 
Kate spotted a hexagonal structure in the centre of the park, partially hidden behind an ancient oak. She walked a few steps further to get a better view. With ornate pillars and intricate trellises around its conical roof, the bandstand was an impressive relic of Victoriana. The raised stage was piled high with speakers, drum kit, and keyboards, while a DJ had squeezed his equipment onto the top step. Wearing oversized headphones, he waved his arms to the beat, rallying the crowd. 
Kate eyed the multitude already gathered around the bandstand and gasped, heart leaping into her mouth—the girl with the multi-coloured hair was right there. She was talking to the blond girl and three others, hands moving animatedly as she chatted. The girl suddenly threw back her head, coloured locks flying, then she swayed to the music, arms above her head, dancing like no one could see. 

Meet Mags

Originally from North Wales, Mags Hayward lives in the UK Midlands with her family. Theatre Administrator by day, she started writing in 2012 and her debut novella, The Devil on Her Shoulder was published in January 2017. Mags is a hopeless romantic who’s forever daydreaming. She writes lesbian contemporary romance and erotic romance.

WordPress : JMS Books LLC Author Page : Amazon.com Author Page : Twitter

Jaymie Wagner: Interview and her debut release, Orphan’s Cry

Jaymie Wagner

Today we welcome debut author Jaymie Wagner to the blog. Jaymie, welcome! Thank you so much for visiting. Do you have any particular reason for popping in today?

I have my first novel, Orphan’s Cry, being published by JMS Books at the end of February! Even better, it’s the first book in a trilogy, so I’m pretty excited about going from 0 published novels to 3 by the end of this year.

More importantly – I’m doing this because I love these characters and their story, and I am hoping that you will too.

What started you writing?

I loved stories as a kid, and my parents taught me to read at a pretty early age so they could share their love of books with me.

I started writing down the stories I came up with as soon as I learned how to, and I’ve never really stopped since.

Where do you write?

I have a beautiful old wooden roll top desk that I inherited from my grandparents, who got it from my great grandfather. It’s nearly 150 years old and I have so many good memories of watching my grandmother using it when she was writing letters, or my grandfather using the computer they eventually kept in it to check his golf league scores.

Every time I sit down with it, I get a big hit of nostalgia and love, and it helps kickstart my writing.

Before I got the desk, I would keep my laptop with me and basically write wherever I was when I felt the inspiration to do so – or write notes to myself on my phone when I didn’t have it with me!

(I think the best story I can tell you was when I got the idea for a short story while hiking in Appalachia, and I literally sat down on a rock and wrote the first ~1000 words on my phone then and there because I didn’t want to lose it!)

What do you like to read?

Fantasy and Sci-fi books were my first love, and will always have a special place in my heart, but I’ve gotten fascinated by non-fiction works that dig into why people do things, and how we are shaped by our communities, environments, and intersectional factors.

I read an amazing book recently called The Alchemy of Us by Ainissa Ramierz that talks about how the things we create and shape also shape us in turn, and it was fascinating!

What are the three books you’d take to a desert island? Why would you choose them?

  1. An omnibus edition of Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga. As someone who was born disabled, Miles Vorkosigan was a hero I could see myself in when I started reading the books as a kid, and as I have gotten older they still resonate deeply. When I transitioned, I chose my new middle name (Delia) in honor of Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan, who I think is a great role model for the woman I want to be when I grow up.

  2. The Hobbit. When my family took our first “big trip” together that didn’t involve driving to see my grandparents, my dad bought the BBC radio audio drama of the unabridged Hobbit (six tapes!) and we listened to it as we drove from our house in Ohio to a vacation in Virginia. I have a lot of good memories of listening to those tapes, and it was one of the first books I read cover to cover by myself.

  3. Every Tool’s A Hammer, Adam Savage’s biography. I was a huge fan of Mythbusters for both the explosions and the problem solving, and I ended up following Adam on social media and his Tested video channel where he continues to share builds, tools, talks through problem solving and shows off the neat stuff he finds. I love how inspired and energetic he can be about the simplest things, and hey, if I’m stuck on a desert island, I bet he’s got some plans for a duct tape house in there…

Writing is an intrinsically solo occupation. Do you belong to any groups or associations, either online or in the ‘real’ world? How does that work for you?

I really enjoy both writing and reading fanfiction, so I’m in a few different discord servers here and there for both authors and fandoms I enjoy. It can be fun to fangirl, vent, or just sit around and bitch / brainstorm there and see what happens!

I’m friends in real life with some wonderfully talented authors (Lucy A. Snyder, Sarah Hans, Gary Braunbeck, and more) and I like getting together physically or virtually to just hang out and have fun too, but I am not part of other groups – yet.

Once the novel is released I will qualify for SFWA and RWA memberships, so I’ll apply for those as well. It never hurts to have more resources at your disposal!

What do you like to do when you’re not writing?

Oh goodness. So many things!

I paint miniatures as a hobby, particularly Battletech, and love to build Gundam models, hence my collection of tiny giant robots. I live with two cats, Mr. B and Rocket, who are respectively a massive asshole and a ginger himbo. My partners, Dee and Katherine, have their own place which they share with five cats, Dee’s support dog, Timbit, and a hedgehog named Swirl – Timbit has basically adopted me, the hedgehog enjoys climbing up into my hair while Dee’s younger spawn cleans her tank, and the cats have deemed me tolerable, which I will take. 🙂

I love to cook, even though my disability sometimes makes it more difficult than I would like, and I enjoy lots of different shows and movies on Netflix, Hulu, and other services. Dee in particular is a big fan of disaster movies, and I love watching her watching them!

As far as learning something new, my parents used to make me do violin lessons when I was a kid, which I eventually stopped as I got older. Early in 2020, a friend bought a new electric violin and I was struck with an urge to play one, so I ended up getting back into the art with a local teacher who could do video call lessons, and I performed a solo piece for a recital last November!

Tell me a little bit about your most recent release. What gave you the idea for it? How long did it take to write? What did you enjoy about writing it? What did you hate?

Orphan’s Cry is the tale of Leah, a Royal Mail letter carrier who was bitten by a werewolf a year and a half before the book begins, and has been trying to hide her condition ever since.

To her great surprise, it turns out that she’s nowhere near the only werewolf in London, and that she was hiding so well that she never realized there was a whole community out there able to help her!

I enjoy messing around with tropes and conventions, and it’s fun to tilt things on their head and see what happens from there.

(One of the best pieces of writing advice I ever got was to create a character that you love, and then figure out what the worst thing you can do to them is. Bang! Instant plot ideas!)

I brainstormed the general shape of the story with a few friends at the end of 2016 and started writing it in 2017. When I finally finished with the stories I wanted to tell at the end of 2019 it was a 200k word monster, and it took another year or so of editing and rewriting to shape it into a trilogy of books. The first one focuses on Leah, another on her friend (and eventual lover) Amélie, and the final book ties all the threads I’ve woven into them together with a focus on their pack leader and girlfriend Amy – and the prophecy that all three have a part in.

(Oops. Did I say too much there…? I guess you’ll have to read and decide what you think!)

I loved writing the dialogue in the story. Leah’s status as a fish out of water means she’s going to need to learn a lot of things over the course of the first book, and I needed to keep that interesting! Thankfully I had a lot of character voices to work with, and more than a bit of good old fashioned smartassery I can rely on in a pinch.

I think the only thing I hated during the course of taking this from an idea to a published book was the inevitable rejections when I started to put it out there. With them came a lot of useful feedback that I was able to use to make the eventual result better, but it’s never fun to pour your heart into something for several years and then be told it’s not what they’re looking for.

Orphans Cry

Orphan's Cry, Sing For Me, Book 1 by Jaymie Wagner

Six months ago Leah Corbyn was bitten by a “dog.” Two weeks later, the full moon’s rise revealed she’s now a werewolf.

After spending six months trying to hide her secret in the city of London, Leah is about to learn she isn’t alone … but that knowledge comes with new responsibilities, and new dangers.

As Leah finds solace in her girlfriend’s arms, she must find her place among the wolves of Londinium, but can she prove herself in time?

Find Jaymie

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