And then, there’s that beautiful, wonderful day when you happen to get a bolt of inspiration and realize you can bring that story back into the light and work on it again.

That beautiful, wonderful day is dawning on a story that is very close to both of our hearts.

It is the first story we started working on together, so many years ago. It has been something we’ve been working on longer than the My Brother’s Keeper universe.

And it’s once again on our “Work in progress” page.

I couldn’t be a happier girl.

RD

“When we find ourselves believing that killing a man makes us more of a man, but loving a man makes us less of a man; it’s probably time to re-examine our criteria for manhood”

It was harder than we thought to find the right content. We’re open to suggestions. We were thinking we could also add author blogs if any m/m authors were interested!

Please click here –> GAY BOYS KISSING <—

Because apparently when I post video’s I break things. *sigh*

Working from home and having an indoor cat is more challenging than I expected.

I thought I’d just need to keep her from getting out the door. I didn’t anticipate needing to entertain her 24/7 lest she lay waste to the window screens–which, it’s summer, you know… kind of nice if the windows could stay open and let some air in.

She also expresses her need for stimulation by way of copious meowing, earnest looks and, if it comes down to it, biting my toes.

For a while the cat was obsessed with the basement. She was gone for hours at a time. It was awesome, even though I did get a bit lonely. Then she caught a mouse. I might have screamed a little when she brought it upstairs. Knee-jerk reactions can be so telling.

Post-mouse, she lost all interest in the basement. She’s all “been there, done that”.

So one day I let her outside, I figured she could be a part-time outdoor cat, only going out during the day. We used to have more coyotes hereabouts, but I’ve been seeing a lot of outdoor cats lately so I figured it might be safe again. In the day. She’d come in at night. Hopefully.

That same day a coyote crossed the road in front of my car on my way to the corner store. Made me sick to my stomach. And I’d already been worrying about her getting hit by a car.

I just can’t bear to lose this cat. Not this one. She’s the best cat I’ve ever had.

So the price of my peace of mind is apparently her ever-loving frustration. I feel bad. But I keep her in.

Trouble is, now she’s had a taste of the outside. (Actually a couple of tastes–she’d gotten out by accident twice before.) Now she’s all outdoor-savvy. Nothing indoor can compare. Even the laser pointer toy pales in comparison to the delights that await her just a window-screen away.

So she paces. And meows. And paces a hell of a lot more.

She drives me nuts–all. day. long. I don’t know what to do.

Someone could make a fortune with cloning research if they produced sterile short-lived moths or crickets that I could let loose in the house. What could be better? I would buy them by the dozen.

Because the packing tape idea? So did not work. She was distracted for all of thirty seconds.

Maybe next time I’ll use more.

I could wrap up her tail, make it harder to get off.

Maybe I’ll take a picture.

I feel I must add, despite it all, that she still loves me unconditionally. Even the part of me that sometimes wants to ring her little neck. She sleeps with me every night and purrs on a regular basis.

I give her Bonito Flakes whenever she asks.

I am well and truly blessed. Just going a little bit insane.

I wish I knew what that meant. I should have put up some sort of poll to at least find out if people were downloading because they heard the book had twincest in it, or if they were more interested in the slave!fic concept–of which our implementation is a bit non-standard.

Maybe some of them just downloaded it because it was free–though, given the reaction people have to twincest, I find that unlikely. It’s not something people tend to feel luke-warm about. More likely they were hoping the book would be more hard core and they could skim for the sexy parts.

I can say that people are far more interested in My Brother’s Keeper than it’s non-twincest counterpart. This makes sense, as MBK is a better story. Triangulations is more of a “character development via smut” foray.

I can also say that people who read slashy!slave!fic are apparently less fazed by twincest. I suppose that makes sense…somehow. I’m basing this assumption on the stats I saw come through after we announced the story in a slave!fic friendly community.

We did not announce the story anywhere that was expressly twincest friendly. This would be because I don’t know of anywhere to announce such things. Ironically, I’m not a big twincest reader.

We did hear from a few authors since releasing My Brother’s Keeper. Apparently there is a lot of twincest lingering about in the “I would write it if anyone would publish it” stages. I would wager that if so many people want to write it, then there are likely lots of people who want to read it. Twincest friendly fandoms are, well, the word rabid comes to mind–but in a good way! And Dark Eden Press did say that twincest was far and away their best seller. So if you want to write the brotherly lurve, then go for it!

(But by the same token, I’m not sure I would do it again. Well, I would write it, for sure. But maybe not bother with the public deployment.)

On a somewhat related note, a while back I queried an epub, who shall remain nameless, about their stance on twincest. Their submissions page didn’t mention it either way, so I figured I’d ask. I had to ask more than once, which suggests to me they are not comfortable with their own stance on the subject. Their initial response managed to completely ignore the question and focus on other items in my email. But eventually they did say yes they would consider twincest if it were menage. But no for a monogamous, consensual relationship.

I was reminded of the scene from an Austin Power’s movie where Austin is presented with two hot twins dressed up as Japanese schoolgirls who want to shag him. He nearly hyperventilates and then pulls out his list of “Things to do before he dies” and crosses off “threesome with japanese twins”. Check out the clip here (top left corner).

In this light, the publisher’s response made perfect sense to me, but when I mentioned it to my sister she was horrified. Menage practically equals cheating in her mind, and that is a major no-no.

So I told another friend who is no stranger to racy material. Surprisingly, her response was the same. She expected menage to be more squicky than monogamous twincest.

I suspect in both cases that twincest gets away with what incest simply cannot. Both my sister and my friend likely would have found incest (non-twin siblings) a greater turn off than menage. Incest has an inherent power squick, for one thing; and don’t even get me started on the het implications. But personally if it’s older brother/younger brother… uh… what? I liked Boromir and Faramir! In theory, of course. *cough*

Er…

Well no, I never wrote Boromir/Faramir. But I read a slash story about them once and I remember thinking 1) it made perfect sense, *snort* and 2) it forever changed that scene from ROTK for me. Then I went back to reading other things. Becoming enamoured with Mr. Sean Bean was to be for later–and, if you want to know a secret, I had him in mind every time I wrote about Dex’s uncle. The same uncle who once taught his nephew how to give a slave a proper spanking. The man looks good in uniform, what can I say?

As someone who primarily reads m/m, I can’t help feeling betrayed when I learn these things.

From Hobby Link Japan.

Bishie sold separately?

Harlequin Enterprises Limited (http://www.eharlequin.com/), the global leader in series romance and one of the world’s leading publishers of women’s fiction, announced today the launch of their Enriched Edition eBooks. With this launch, Harlequin becomes the first publisher to offer entire eBooks that are enriched with interactive buttons that hyperlink to Web sites with more information about the content.

The launch title, UNMASKED  by Nicola Cornick, a Regency-set historical available from www.eBooks.eHarlequin.com, has been enriched with interactive buttons that hyperlink to Web sites containing photos, historical commentaries, illustrations, sound effects, maps, articles and more, bringing the world of the novel to life without the reader having to leave the computer or the current screen page. The interactive buttons have been designed to be unobtrusive, so if one prefers not to access the bonus material, the reading experience remains uninterrupted.

By exploiting the interactive possibilities inherent with eBooks, Harlequin is recognizing the opportunity for online reading to enhance the reading experience, evolving it above and beyond the replication of print books.

Harlequin will release select Enriched Edition titles from its many series and imprints, but chose to launch with a historical release since the period setting particularly lends itself to the enriched experience. Obscure period details, customs, terms and references become instantly accessible should the reader wish to learn more about the story’s context.

Enriched Edition eBooks are available at www.eBooks.eHarlequin.com and are being sold at the same price as regular eBooks.

I am now imagining what links would have appeared in My Brother’s Keeper. HA!

RD

Ciaran’s Gift is proceeding, but won’t really make any headway until Special Handling is done as RD is strictly limiting me now to single stories at a time. Er. Single co-written stories that is. Skylar is more my pet project.

But I do have some extra stories about Dex and Dashi that might see the light of day when I have a free moment.

And in local news, the local Kiwani’s organization is having a duckie race for charity. I have entered Dex, Ciaran and Dashi in the race. Malik shall watch from the sidelines as he is ruler now and cannot play in the water with everyone else.