Meeting New Friends... #books #quotes #mmromance

Good morning! Just spent some time off adding to my TBR pile. This week's reading: 

EM Lynley's Brand New Flavor and Gingerbread Palace

What about you?  

Are you ready to make some new book friends? 

 Breathless Press

 Book Strand

 All Romance eBooks

 Amazon

http://top2bottomreviews.wordpress.com/2013/04/23/the-park-at-sunrise-by-lee-brazil/

Wise Words : Seneca Inspiration that goes beyond writing

Wisdom From Seneca 

That I found useful writing my latest Story Orgy Story

We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.

True happiness is... to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future.

Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it.

All cruelty springs from weakness.

A man who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary.

Temptation

M/M/M Contemporary Ménage from Breathless Press

Meeting Solomon again while holding hands with another man wasn't in Lake's plan. Neither was anything that happened afterward.

On Writing : Ray Bradbury

One of my favorite books about writing is Ray Bradbury's Zen in the Art of Writing. If you haven't picked it up, I highly recommend it. It's not all technical or anything, about do a then b then c and voila you'll write a masterpiece. It's about creativity and finding yourself in your writing. 

So today, as I'm working on pulling together the second chapter of my new project, I give you a few words of wisdom from Ray...









“What are the best things and the worst things in your life, and when are you going to get around to whispering or shouting them?” 

Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations.” 

“And what, you ask, does writing teach us? First and foremost, it reminds us that we are alive and that it is a gift and a privilege, not a right.” 


There's much more to be gleaned from between these book covers, and to top it off, it s a very enjoyable time spent reading. 

On Writing : Perseverance

Seems like every time I think I'm getting close to the end of a project... it all goes away. Pfft. Nothing. I sit at the desk and stare at the blank pages and the words just don't come. 

What to do?

Seek inspiration. 

Watch a movie. 

Read a book. 

Take a hike. 

Bake a batch of cookies.

 Listen to anew album. 

Come back refreshed and remember...

“The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.” ~Rocky Balboa~

And so I'm heading back to the writing cave and working on my new contemporary piece :) Y'all have a good one. 

Pick up the Sequel to Trapping Drake today! 

"I"m not the type of guy who lets someone else control my life, Jesse."

https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-settingthetrap-1152571-145.html

Top Five : Kissing Quotes

Top Five Kissing Quotes 

Breaking away from the music today to visit another source of inspiration. As anyone who knows me well can tell you, I love kissing. Kissing to me is a language all its own. In many ways I find kissing to be more intimate than most sex acts. 

So, here are a few of my favorite kissing quotes, again, in no particular order! 

1. A kiss makes the heart young again and wipes out the years. -Rupert Brooke 
2. Happiness is like a kiss. You must share it to enjoy it. -Bernard Meltzer 
3. Now a soft kiss - Aye, by that kiss, I vow an endless bliss. -John Keats 
4. The sound of a kiss is not so loud as that of a cannon, but its echo lasts a great deal longer. -Oliver Wendell Holmes 
5. We are all mortal until the first kiss and the second glass of wine. -Eduardo Galeano 

 

Click HERE to Pick up the Sequel to Trapping Drake today! 

"I"m not the type of guy who lets someone else control my life, Jesse."

On Writing: Success

"Success is a finished book, a stack of pages each of which is filled with words. If you reach that point, you have won a victory over yourself no less impressive than sailing single-handed around the world."
--Tom Clancy

I measure success in my writing by a variety of factors, and any way I look at it, April has been a successful month so far. 

I finished the third episode of my Chances Are serial, completed edits on a Regency Romance due out May 1st from Evernight, and finalized preparations to release another short story this month in the Sweet Exchange Pulp Friction line. 

Of course, the list of items left to cross off my list is still growing faster than I can keep up with it. 

Most of all though? 

I count my success by the number of readers who have purchased my recent release, Setting the Trap. Thank you to everyone who has visited ARE or Amazon and picked up a copy. Setting the Trap has flirted with the bottom of the Amazon Top 100 Gay Romance list, and is in the Top 20 of the Drama category at ARE. 

On Writing: Or the Lack Thereof

One of my favorite distractions from writing is British television...

Unfortunately, I only have two seasons, six measly episodes of Sherlock on Netflix. Benedict Cumberbatch is the most intriguing interpretation of Sherlock Holmes I've seen in a long time. He's got the whole asexual, egotistical, genius thing down perfectly. 

I need more. 

I think I'll get back to writing now, I don't like the look on his face- it seems I've displeased him, and that can't be good. 

"The heights by great men reached and kept were not obtained by sudden flight. But they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night."

- Thomas S. Monson

So even if you only add a few hundred words a day, keep at it. Message received. Back to work on 50/50 Chances Are and Rake #4. 

Well, it's a good month for sales! I nearly forgot, but ALL GLBT titles are 20% off this month at the Breathless Press publishing site! That includes pre-orders on titles like Setting the Trap! 

Breathless Press

On Writing: Sylvia Plath

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.
Sylvia Plath 

Do you ever feel like there's nothing left to say? Like it's all been said and done before? Doubt is one of those things that keeps us from pursuing our dreams, and valuing our creativity as we ought. Many times a reader tells me how they love something I've written and it strikes me anew that hey, I wrote that. I think the doubt is one of the things that helps us to perfect our work.  

When doubt strikes me, I switch on the Tom Petty and let music soothe my soul. 

How do you deal with doubt? 

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Writing Quotes: Freedom

“Writing is a form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see in the making all around us. In the end, writers will write not to be outlaw heroes of some underculture but mainly to save themselves, to survive as individuals.”

Don Delillo

Top Five Writing Quotes

      “Be yourself. Above all, let who you are, what you are, what you believe, shine through every sentence you write, every piece you finish.”

 John Jakes quotes

    Of all the writing quotes there are, this one is my absolute favorite. First of all, I do love John Jakes and his resplendent Civil War saga, The North and The South. But that's not all. The themes and observations he imparts about human nature, about good, evil and indifference, about courage and despair, are timeless. And this quote for me, encompasses the means he used to get to that end. 

“I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.”

 Oscar Wilde      TWEET THIS                                                  

Cocky bastard, eh? To have that level of self-confidence is something we can all only wish for. Still, it amuses me when I'm having doubts about my role in the greater scheme of things, to remember I don't have to be a genius if I use my talent for writing.  

      “The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean”

 Robert Louis Stevenson                                                   

 Boy, how many times have I read back over what I've written and said wondered what I meant? Working on it, though. Putting the words together in the right way, to capture every nuance of the image in your head...I agree with him. It is a challenge. 

     “I love talking about nothing. It is the only thing I know anything about.”

 Oscar Wilde      

Uh huh. It's a big club. 

      “Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go.”

 E. L. Doctorow                                                  

 Perfect. Like having a bucket of legos and creating whatever you want. It starts as a house then evolves into a space ship, or a robot, or a whatsit. 

     “Write without pay until somebody offers to pay”

 Mark Twain quotes

                                                            

*Sigh* 

Wise man, Mark.