11/06/2015

Story Orgy Creature Feature: Mum's the Word #storyorgy #mmromance #creaturefeature


Good morning friends and readers!
Welcome back to Story Orgy. Welcome back- I'm catching up with Izzy and Owen slowly, but it should be clear by now that this story is going to go on a whole lot longer than originally planned. It was supposed to end on October 26th, at which time the whole of Story Orgy was switching to a holiday theme and writing some good old fashioned feel good holiday stories. That didn't quite work out, as you can tell. I have a few more posts to go before we get this all squared away and move on.
Ready to see what happens next?


Mum's the Word 
Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fourteen

Izzy handed the badge holder back to Gregoire… whose real name appeared to be Gregory Noire, which wasn’t much better than his assumed identity. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were law enforcement I would never--”
“Throw a cannonball at a cop?” Hearing the clear, crisp voice, Izzy was amazed that he’d ever thought the man a foreign national. “Good to know.”
“I can’t really take credit for the cannonball.” Izzy demurred. “You actually knocked that shelf over all by yourself.”
“Because you hit me in the head with something else!”
Shrugging, Izzy glanced around the room. “So, there’s no Cigar Store Indian here either. Is that what you’re really looking for?”
“Today it is. I didn’t figure we’d find it though. Same as with all the other moderately valuable items. It’s gone.”
“Gone?”
“Stolen.”
“There isn’t really going to be any new grand reopening of the museum for the alumni association, is there?” He’d thought after the weeks of fruitless seeking, through box after box of worthless trivia, of the growing certainty that there would be no archaeological glory, that disappointment had become something he knew well.
But it seemed that he’d been holding some secret hope, some spark of a dream that had been nurtured by their recent findings. And that small spark had been enough to warm the fire of his ambition and if not fan it to a full flame.
Noire’s words were a bucket of ice water thrown rudely in his face.
“No. There is not.”
Frustration spilled over into rash speech. “Then what are we doing here? Why are Owen and I wasting our time in this museum?”
“You can’t guess?”
“Why should I?”
“Your professor Gamez was the most likely suspect. While I was investigating his thefts, I needed to keep an eye on his two proteges in case they were a part of the scheme.”
Flinching under a tidal wave of emotions, anger, resentment, fear, Izzy’s lips moved, but no sound came out. The university thought he and Owen… “Professor Gamez?” He asked, shocked. “You think the professor stole artifacts?” Even as he couldn’t believe it, neither could he find any other solution.
“There is no doubt at all.”
“But these things could have been taken any time. The museum has been closed for decades.”
Noire shook his head relentlessly. “No. The last complete inventory was done in 1994, when the previous museum head retired and Gamez took over the position with his promotion to full professor. since as you noted, the museum was not open to the public nor used to teach classes any more, there was exactly one set of keys which remained in his possession.”
Izzy shook his head in disbelief. “It’s not possible,” he murmured. “Other people…”
“The losses are too extensive, Izzy. A professor here and there, or a student who might have come in for research? They just didn’t have the time or the opportunity to hunt down the most valuable artifacts, no. There was only ever one suspect in this case.”
“Professor Gamez.” Incredible. He’d known the professor so long, and never suspected the amiable man was capable of such… dishonesty.
“And his two teaching assistants.” Izzy tacked on bitterly. “I can’t believe--”
“Oh, believe it.”
“And the university let you… just… we don’t really have jobs for this semester?” That hurt more than finding out the professor he’d defended was a criminal. He’d counted on this job, on getting caught up with all his bills and being able to quit working at the senior citizens home. Looked forward to lattes before class and steak… not every night but once in awhile.
If you’d asked him even two years ago what food he could eat every day and not grow tired of it, he’d have said pizza. Now? He was heartily sick of every kind of cheesy tomato pie you could imagine. “I think that’s pretty shitty thing to do. Owen and I have never done anything dishonest.”
Noire’s brows rose, “Except take home boxes of docuemnts that aren’t supposed to leave the museum?”
“Except that.” Damn Owen had really screwed them over with that move. “And we did return them promptly.”
“Exactly.” Noire had the good grace to look slightly ashamed. “I’m not sure about your jobs. I’m pretty sure at this point that you two had nothign to do with the thefts. But as for your employment, that’s up to the university.”
“Of course,” Izzy muttered. “Owen has been gone a logn time.”
“He has, hasn’t he?” Noire stood up, smudging the blood smear on his head as he brushed at it. “We’d better go find him.”
“He’s not stealing anything.” Izzy felt compelled to defend his friend. “I know he isn’t.”
“Then what’s taking him so long? If he’s not doing something he shouldn’t be then he’s taking the longest piss in medical history.”
“He’s looking for a mummy.” Izzy confessed, feeling like an idiot for not realizing what Owen meant sooner.
“A mummy? The one referred to in the box of correspondence you took home?”
“Yes.”
“It’s not here.” Noire said flatly. “That was one of the first things we looked for. It’s a sizeable piece of stone and easily recognizable.”
“You knew it wasn’t here?” That explained why he’d had little interest in the box of documents.
“We knew. It was a red flag for the university.”
Noire opened the door and allowed Izzy to pass in front of him. Instead of heading toward the staircase and the restrooms, Izzy shined his light toward the end of the hall. It was dark, and looked much the same as when they’d left it earlier in the day.
“The restrooms are up here.” Noire pointed out.
“Owen’s not in the restroom.” Izzy confessed. “He left to check out a secret door we found earlier today.”
“Secret door?”
“Down there,” Izzy gestured, sending light scattering up the walls and around the end of the hall.
“He’s not there.” Noire must have extraordinary night vision because he shot past Izzy into the darkness without a second thought.
“Seriously?” Izzy followed more slowly, shining the beam of his flashlight into the side corridors as he went checking to see if Owen had wandered off somewhere else, even though a growing sense of foreboding told him that the secret room behind the secret door had swallowed Owen whole and left Izzy here with the law and no idea…
“Come on Izzy. I can’t believe our initial searches missed this.”



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11/05/2015

Welcome Viki Lyn and Perceived Love #characterinterview #pridepromotions

Nate Coleman Character Interview Questions – Perceived Love by Viki Lyn:

1. What do you consider your greatest achievement? Professionally, it was helping the SFPD capture the Cable Car killer. He’d murdered five women before he was caught. It was a nightmarish time, but worth it in the end.  Personally, my greatest achieve to date was realizing I had to compromise so Will and I could be together. I blamed him for everything when we’d split up. That wasn’t fair.

2. If you could have any job or profession, what would it be? I’m doing what I love. Being a psychic counselor and using my gifts to help others.

3. What is your biggest regret? My biggest regret was leaving Will without talking to him first about how I was feeling. And explain why I felt the need to leave the relationship.

4. What is your favorite food? My grandmother’s homemade blackberry jam. We would pick the berries that grew wild in the empty lot next to her house. I’d spread the jam real thick over a slice of fresh French bread.

5. Share five of your favorite songs. Come Undone by Duran, Duran, Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen, Collide by Howie Day, Running One Empty by Jackson Browne, Savage Night At the Opera by Destroyer

Blurb:
When psychic Nate Coleman dreams of a murder, he knows it’s a premonition. He can’t forget the image of his ex-lover with a bullet hole through his chest. Nate has no choice but to confront Will and face the skeptical scientist’s ridicule.
Dr. William Ryner doesn’t believe in what he can’t prove. When Nate comes back into his life, it’s not to rekindle their love, but to bring up more of that mumbo jumbo that split them apart.
Despite Will’s refusal to listen, Nate can’t ignore the premonition. And, Will can’t ignore Nate. Before the gunman strikes, Will must either trust in Nate’s ability or rely only on the facts, but if he does the latter, pride could be the death of him.

NOTE: This story is a do-over, and has almost tripled in size! This book was previously published but has been revised and edited in this edition.

EXCERPT
Nate woke with a start, his heart pounding. He reached for the water glass on the nightstand and almost dropped it. Rarely did he dream of death, but when he did, he took notice. That it was Will he’d seen in his nightmare made it more complicated.
No matter. Nate had a responsibility to explore the possibility that this was a precognitive dream. Beyond that, he didn’t want to think about the consequences of taking action.
Nate grabbed his sketchbook from his nightstand. He picked up a charcoal pencil and sketched the dream images before they vanished from his mind—the gunman had worn an orange baseball cap and dark hoodie. Nate recognized the oval-shaped plaza with its pruned elm trees and classical bandstand. Will and Nate used to jog the trails throughout Golden Gate Park, and Spreckels Temple of Music had been one of their favorite places to see a concert.
There would be no reason for Will to be on a stage, especially a bandstand in San Francisco. He had moved after their breakup and now lived in London. Yet Nate couldn’t shake off the sense of dread. Maybe he had substituted Spreckels for a place in London? Sometimes his dreams were hard to interpret. Images were often metaphors.
But this nightmare… Shit. The man with the gun could be a metaphor for himself. He did own an orange baseball cap stuffed away in the back of his closet.
No. No way was Nate the shadowy figure. Sure, at first he’d wanted retribution, for Will to suffer as much as Nate had. The hurt and anger burned for months. Then one summer morning, he had awakened with a feeling of peace. The ache in his chest had lessened. From that day forward, he’d wiped Will from his memory and gotten on with his life.
Nate finished his drawings and tossed the sketchbook and pencil on the floor.
Next to him, Lulu napped on a pillow. Nate snuggled the furry body to his chest. The cat’s warmth eased his anxiety.
Lulu meowed at being disturbed as she sprawled into Nate’s arms. He’d taken in the ginger kitten when he found her on his stoop. A bowl of milk a day had convinced her to become his constant companion.
He scratched the underside of Lulu’s chin. “What should I do? He doesn’t live here. And even if I did find his number, he’d laugh me off the phone.”
Lulu tilted her heart-shaped head and blinked those expressive green eyes as if to say Nate was crazy to even consider calling his ex-boyfriend.
“Yeah, yeah, you’re right. I’d be insane to open myself to his ridicule.”
Will, a scientist through and through, would never listen to Nate’s warning. Will only believed in what he could prove in a laboratory.

Buy the book:


Meet the author:
Rainbow Award winner, Viki Lyn is a successful writer of sexy romance, both gay and straight. She likes a challenge and at times breaks the rules of her genre. But always, it’s the romance that drives her stories to their happily-ever-after. You can also find her at Viki Vina Romance – the site of her books co-authored with Vina Grey. Check out their popular Orbus Arcana m/m vampire series!


Where to find the author:
Newsletter (sign up on my website: www.vikilyn.com)\

Publisher: Loose ID
Cover Artist: April Martinez

Tour Dates & Stops:
5-Nov: Lee Brazil, MM Good Book Reviews

Rafflecopter Prize: $10 Loose ID Gift Card






Crawl in Bed with AM Leibowitz And Passing on Faith #authorinterview #mmromance



Crawling Into Bed with A. M. Leibowitz
And a Good Book

Important things first, are these sheets silk or cotton?
Flannel! I know, I know…not sexy. But it’s November in western New York. It’s cold!
What are you wearing?
I have these divinely soft black pajama pants, a cami, an old fleece sweatshirt, and a pair of fuzzy socks. Did I mention I get cold?
What are we snacking on in bed while we read tonight?
How about animal crackers and hot cocoa? Whipped cream, no marshmallows. I am all about comfort and warmth (seriously, it’s cold).
If I open this nightstand drawer, what will I find?
Baby powder, hand cream, and my favorite perfume. I also have a couple of fairly vanilla sex toys and some lube. It will not surprise anyone after my previous answers to learn that it’s warming gel.
Do you roll up in the blankets like a burrito, or kick the covers off during the night?
Neither, actually. I like the covers tucked under my chin but not wrapped around me. There’s no need—I have a heated blanket.
Can I put my cold feet on your calves to warm them up?
Good luck…I’m more like an air conditioning unit. You’d get more warmth from a glacier.
What are we reading?

Book Name: Passing on Faith


Series: In Good Faith
Book: Two – can be read as a standalone
Blurb:
Following his father’s death, Micah Forbes believes he can finally put the family who rejected him and their religious bigotry behind him. In a cruel twist, his older brother calls to tell him he’s inherited their father’s abandoned vacation home.
Micah discovers the house comes complete with a long list of repairs, boxes full of family secrets, and a handful of quirky neighbors. Despite not wanting to get in too deep, he can’t help the spark of interest stirred when the sexy redhead next door offers his help. Everything about the enigmatic Cat Rowland throws Micah off-balance, from his gender-bending sense of fashion to his handy repair skills to his deep spirituality. Before long, Micah is swept up by Cat and his friends, but Cat himself keeps his heart carefully protected.
When Micah’s past and his present collide in a painful way, his self-destructive coping habits threaten to overwhelm him. To save himself, he needs to open his soul and let someone in. Cat has the key to unlock him, if he can let down his guard and trust his faith enough to catch Micah as he falls.
Pages or Words: 276 pages, approximately 96,000 words

Categories: Contemporary, Fiction, Gay Fiction, Trans*, Religious/Spiritual

Excerpt:
Micah decided he would sit right there until he was struck with a brilliant plan for how to manage his misfortune. It might have been a whole two minutes before someone knocked on the front door. Huffing, he rose and went to answer it.
He nearly groaned when he saw who it was. Cat, his oddly chipper neighbor, was back. He had a glass of what might have been lemonade in his hand and a lopsided smile on his face. When he looked up at Micah, his expression changed. His smile slid away and his eyes widened.
“You okay?” he asked.
Micah ran a hand through his hair and contemplated telling Cat it was just allergies. Instead, something made him say, “No. I am not okay. But if you want to come in and sit on my couch, risking black lung from all the dust, by all means.” He stood aside and swept his hand, indicating Cat should join him.
Hesitantly, Cat stepped over the threshold. He extended the glass to Micah. “Thought you could use this. Maybe you need something stronger, though.”
Micah snorted. “Yeah, probably, except I don’t drink.” He accepted the lemonade and took a sip. The tart liquid was refreshingly cool against his burning throat. “Thanks for this.” He tilted the glass toward Cat.
Cat grinned. “I was a little worried for a minute there. Want to tell me about it?”
Micah sighed heavily. “I inherited this house. My father just died.”
“I’m sorry,” Cat said, his voice soft and warm.
“I’m not.”

Buy the book:

Meet the author:
A. M. Leibowitz is a queer spouse, parent, feminist, and book-lover falling somewhere on the Geek-Nerd Spectrum. She keeps warm through the long, cold western New York winters by writing about life, relationships, hope, and happy-for-now endings. In between noveling and editing, she blogs coffee-fueled, quirky commentary on faith, culture, writing, and her family.

Where to find the author:

Publisher: Supposed Crimes LLC (Acquitted Books) http://www.supposedcrimes.com/
Cover Artist: Stacy O’Steen

Tour Dates & Stops
11-Nov: BFD Book Blog

Rafflecopter Prize: Signed print copy of 'Passing on Faith' by A.M. Leibowitz



pof_final.jpg

Excerpt:

Micah stared up at the old house. It was nicer than he’d remembered, at least on the outside—other than the overgrown lawn and garden. He wondered if there was a lawn mower in the shed. Then he wondered if there was a shed. Just one more thing to worry about. At least he had the entire summer to figure out what he did and didn’t have available to him.

His mind ran through all the possible scenarios of what could go wrong during his tenure there, from the house falling down around him to his friends having a crisis while he was unavailable. He tried not to imagine that the students renting his own home had merely been putting up a front and were actually throwing a wild party even as Micah stood on the front porch of the lake house. None of that would do; they were his way of finding excuses not to stay in Concordia.

While he was thinking about all of that, a voice behind him said, “Hey, there.”

Micah nearly jumped out of his skin. He turned around slowly and came face-to-face with a gingery-blond young man. He was average height, perhaps an inch or two shorter than Micah, and had a wiry build. There was a dusting of freckles across his pale skin, and he had a row of small hoops down one ear. In the other ear, he wore a dangling earring that looked like some kind of leaf. He had on a trendy pair of black knee-length pants and a fitted white t-shirt with a rock band logo Micah didn’t recognize. His gray-green eyes were wide and held a spark of mischief, and his mouth curled upward in a charming smirk.

For a moment, Micah was disarmed, but he quickly recovered himself so as not to be caught staring. He made only a half-hearted attempt to return the smile. He reminded himself he didn’t want to get to know the neighbors—he was just there to fix up the property and sell it. People would only complicate that process.

“Uh, hi,” Micah said. He tried to think of something to tell the young man to get him to go away.

“I’m Cat Rowland. I live next door.” He extended his hand.

Reluctantly, Micah accepted it. “Micah Forbes.” He frowned in confusion. Before he could stop himself, he said, “Your name is really Cat?”

Cat laughed. “Sort of. My baby sister couldn’t say my name, so she always called me Cat—no idea why. My mother always joked that I had nine lives, so it stuck. Good thing, because I hate my real name.”

“I take it you’re not going to tell me what it is, then.” Curiosity had the better of Micah, despite his instinct to tell this guy to shut the hell up and go away.

Shrugging, Cat replied, “I don’t mind. My given name’s Becket.”

“Like the playwright?”

“No, as in Thomas à Becket, archbishop of Canterbury. My parents are weird.”

Purchase Links:

Please include purchase links and web links where readers can find you.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/amyunchained (@amyunchained)

11/04/2015

Story Orgy Creature Mum's the Word Part 13 #mmromance #creaturefeature #storyorgy


Good morning friends and readers!
Welcome back to Story Orgy. I'm late by over a week with this post! Late seems to be my middle name for this whole story. Ready to see what happens next?




Mum's the Word 
Chapter Thirteen
Oct 26: "So...it has come to this?"
“So it has come to this has it?”
Owen stirred groggily. The voice was familiar… his eyes opened reluctantly. His whole head throbbed, worse than the time he’d downed an entire fifth of whiskey freshman year. But he hadn’t gotten drunk… not in a long time. Certainly not since he and Izzy had been on such a tight budget all summer. Then why did he…
The memory of the blow to the head returned quickly along with the general impression of getting the shit kicked out of him by a mummy. Which couldn’t be right, and might just be a sign that he’d finally reached his limit in terms of how many B movies a man could watch without going completely insane.
“What…” His tongue seemed swollen and unwilling to do its work. Owen could sympathize, but felt imminent danger too keenly to allow any slacking. “What’ s going on?” He tried moving and discovered that it wasn’t possible. His toes wiggled, his fingers clenched, but his ankles and wrists seemed to be bound with something.
“I might ask you the same question, but I really don’t care to hear the answer.” Because the speaker stood between Owen and the candle, he appeared to be all shadow, a bulky, masculine shadow.
“Professor Gamez?” The identity of the speaker dawned on him in a rush. “You’re not supposed to be here.” He’d been banned from the campus following the allegations of sexual misconduct the year before.
“I’m not the only one. Those idiots think they did me a disservice by firing me? Ha.”
A cautious glance at his feet revealed that the duct tape he and Izzy had left in the hallway after rigging the door that afternoon had been put to good use. “You could have fought for your job.” Owen wiggled. It was the best he could do. The duct tape ripped hair out of his wrists. The pain of that allowed him to focus more, to get out of the throbbing in his head and think more clearly.
“Fought for my job? Teaching idiotic teenagers about Howard Carter and demolishing their dreams of becoming Indiana Jones? Whatever for? No. No. I was nearly done there anyway. I just needed a little more time.”
“Time?” Owen rubbed his wrists together, trying to loosen the tape enough to squeeze his hands through. “But…”
“Time to cover my tracks, and to make sure that there wasn’t anything else left.”
The professor moved, and the candlelight flickered over features that Owen had once considered friendly, genuine. He didn’t know whether it was his current situation or a new clarity of vision that revealed a less than amiable aspect of his favorite… former favorite… professor’s appearance. his eyes appeared to be dark and cold, his lips were twisted in a derisive sneer.
“Cover your tracks?” The truth… or a possible truth… dawned on him in a flash. “You’ve been stealing the museum’s artifacts?” Selling antiquities on the black market… or even eBay was probably quite lucrative. Especially if the professor had been hand picking the most valuable items for his entire tenure.
Which explained why Izzy and Owen hadn’t found anything of much interest in all the storage rooms they’d swept and inventoried. Gamez had most likely been removing all reference and records related to each item he’d taken as he’d taken it, leaving piles of the sorts of things that people all over the country probably had in their own attics. Like arrowheads, family journals, and civil war memorabilia.
Of course, taking all the bloody arrowheads would have been just as good a money making scheme, and probably less noticeable. More time consuming though, Owen conceded. Why make your money two dollars at a time when a single Egyptian artifact… with provenance, might bring you a hundred thousand dollars?
“Stealing? The museum had no right to those things.”
“Most of them were donated by alumni,” Owen pointed out. Right now he really wished he’d adhered to Izzy’s demand that they stick together. The tape on his hands was getting less sticky, and his wrists smarted where the hair had been ripped out.
“Who misappropriated them from their land of origin.” The professor picked up a shoe box that Owen recognized as the one he’d taken home the other day. So Gamez had the Egyptian artifacts too.
“That doesn’t make you stealing them right.”
The professor picked up the candle, illuminating his face in full for the first time. “Ah… your nursery school morality is so… useless. Two wrongs don't make a right, do they? Well, Owen, it’s been nice chatting, but I must be off.” He blew out the candle and disappeared into the resulting darkness. “I’d wish you well, but… I’m afraid that’s probably not going to work out for you in the circumstances.”
At least, that’s how it seemed as Owen’s eyes struggled once again to adjust to the change in lighting.  It didn't take as long this time, and if he’d paid attention in biology class he might have known why. Instead, he was just left with gratitude for the fact.
If he could reach the swiss army knock off in his pocket, he’d be able to escape easily. If he didn’t… then it sounded like Gamez’s threat had a solid basis in reality. No one knew this door was here, just him and Izzy.
Izzy.
Izzy would come looking for him, and find the hidden door for sure.
Unless he was off somewhere making out with the sexy professor he’d been making eyes at all semester.
“Izzy!” He shouted, jerking at his bound wrists. “Izzy!” Somehow the idea of rotting in this hidden room while Izzy and the Professor went about their lives, wondering occasionally what ever happened to Owen, why he’d disappeared while taking a piss in a museum that had been as looted as Tut’s tomb, really pissed him off.
Because.
Izzy was his, wasn’t he?
And Owen as an only child with few possessions, had never really learned to share.



If you enjoyed my post, click on over to the rest of the Orgiasts and read more! 

Be Yourself

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting. ~e.e. cummings, 1955
The Romance Reviews