Announcing Free Reads!

With the festive season winding down and the dust starting to settle -- it's certainly starting to settle on my desk, I need to find time to move all the stuff off and clean up again -- it's time for an announcement to keep that festive spirit perked up and running into the new year.

It's something I've had in mind for some time, and with the coming of Christmas and the spirit of giving, this felt like the ideal time to go forward with it. With this being the first big initiation, there have been some kinks in the process, primarily surrounding Amazon, as the only way to have something marked as Free is for it to be price-matched through more accommodating storefronts, which seems to take an entirely indeterminate amount of time to maybe get fixed. Go figure.

That aside, yes, free! As of this festive holiday period and moving forward, the following titles will be listed as free to discover and enjoy for all readers.

Daemonique I: The Darkest Desire

Darkfallen: Taking Jacob

Umbral Coil Chronicles I: Dusk

Deity of the Desert I: Arrival

Huntsman I: Princess

Soulflame I: The Spark

In addition, those that already have novel formats in Daemonique - Darkfall and Goddess of Sands have had their prices reduced accordingly to facilitate the relative first volumes now being listed as free. The main exception to this is that price-matching Free publications with Amazon does not seem to follow through to other regional storefronts such as the .co.uk front, which is really weird and inconsistent but it wouldn't be the first thing. The novel format prices have been reduced across all Amazon storefronts regardless.

With that said, there are alternatives, as this has been made live on all available storefronts, as follows;

Amazon (US - Tentative) | Smashwords | Barnes & Nobles | iTunes | AllRomance ebooks | Kobo

There will absolutely be more added in the future after this initial run, where the method in the madness is largely based around serial series that have multiple volumes out and in the case of Daemonique, Deity of the Desert and soon to be Huntsman, their novel binding versions released. The best way to stay abridged of future plans and publications will be through my newsletter and to join me on social media such as Twitter where I love to hear from and interact with people who enjoy what I do.

This first wave represents a broad range and span in time for my published works thus far, so if this is your first exposure or a chance to try out a new series' roots, I'm glad to have your interest and support with me.

Thank you for reading!

Soulflame III: The Invitation (Historic Lesbian Erotic Romance)

In the months following their audition to the stage, whilst change grips 17th century London, life for Annabel and Alice is good. Returning to privacy, the couple struggle to restrain the love of intimacy shared behind closed doors - until knocks come to those doors. 

Invited to a party of sorts in thanks for their audition, the young women will find themselves invited to the beginnings of an age of influence can be felt to this day, all the while secluding and enjoying the simple love and life that they share in the grand city of London.

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I'll be the first to admit time has slipped by for writing this feature, and it's funny how that works. What was once yesterday is now last month, what feels like a recent, fond memory was ten years ago. What was once someone's current day is now ancient history, and the truths of it lost to the annals of time.

The passage of time and its affect on the world in its own subtle ways is a fascinating thing. I saw a picture on twitter recently that really drove it home. Looking at it, I can remember a time with all those appliances, and still grasp to justify that they still exist now and are likely more proficient than the smartphone that's sitting on my desk with probably more relative processing power than the first, albeit already unstable, PC I owned.

And of course they are still around and still have their uses, but what makes it interesting is you can't really pin a specific point when this technology really came around to what it is and stuck. Unless of course you're that sort of technophile that can recall productive history but the point is as months turn to years and those years sneak on, little technical things sneak into life at such an easily accessible way that you don't really think much of it.

This isn't really a new phenomenon. Back in the 17th century and before, not everyone was literate and romance novels just didn't exist. There was poetry and playwright, but things only really started developing into what would later be known of as a novel in the late 1660s, where Soulflame is set.

A lot of things happened in London around this time period, and this volume moves the timeframe forward some months to accommodate that. It also expanded to a point of where I couldn't really just wrap up on this volume because there's so much going on. 

So to really enjoy the richness of the period, and given that Soulflame is as much a story of the city as the two women within it, this volume covers the formal invitation women received to finally join the stage in employ. In a similar vein to other historic retellings for entertainment, I've taken some liberties with character and place, because it just makes it feel better, and who knows how far from the truth it really was?

What was once their present day, where things were slowly, subtly changing around them, is now several centuries history left to imagination and fancy. That's what I've really wanted to capture with the Soulflame series, a sense of things so inherently similar, yet still so different and distant.

Excerpt follows the pagebreak.

Soulflame II: The Stage (Historic Lesbian Incest)

The year 1660 saw to a great many changes for England. The year also sees the growth of the love and intimacy so recently sparked between the two adoptive sisters, Alice and Annabel Rendall. As history is made, auditions are beginning. Both on and off the stage, the sisters’ love for one another will be both shown and put to the test. 

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And finally a new publication is out. With this one I went back to the historic tale of romance and forbidden love shared between sisters in Soulflame, taking the story's timeline forward to the stage. It's been interesting since this time period is a lot more rich than my original intent for it showed. Time to raid wikipedia again and go into a history lesson for this feature.

Now, as my initial research brought up the return of Charles II to the throne and the first female actresses on stage, 1660 saw the beginning of the Restoration Period as a whole. About 200 years prior to the Regency period, and 200 years after Medieval period. So I can't really put it under either of those History>Era book categories, and there isn't one for 17th century Restoration, which is really annoying.

Why? Because while short, spanning 50 years of British restoration, it's very culturally rich. Just the allowance of women on the stage in England alone, never mind the restoration of the performing arts which were outlawed and shunned under Cromwell's Commonwealth Puritan rule, was a pretty big deal in terms of equality and cultural acceptance back then. "Unfortunately", in an age where life expectancy was much lower - which I touched on in the first volume - Cromwell died after only a few years, and his son was found incompetent and removed. After some years of chaos and scuffing feet, Charles II was returned to England and the rest is history that lacks a categorised era for fiction.

It's ironic though since the era also saw Restoration comedy notorious for sexual explicitness, which Charles II encouraged. So we have the beginnings of sexualising performances for entertainment, but it goes further. Aphra Behn was one of the first writers of Amatory fiction, which would "predate and predict" the invention of the novel. It was also an early form of romantic and erotic fiction written by and for women, which struck me as a big deal. The sort of thing we enjoy now had roots in those years, and I've just stumbled onto the fact midway through writing in the era. Better yet is how it's suggested that even back then, as many men as women enjoyed it. Over three hundred and fifty years and so little has changed in that regard, no matter how people chose to label things.

But enough on the era, the focus is the sisters themselves, set in that antiquated culture and time of growth. The love, tension, interactions and some of the scenes I've been able to work into this volume have been wonderful, but I'll let the excerpt speak for itself, to those ends.

Sometimes you have to stop thinking to really think about it.

While working away on the next story challenge (size play), I had a bit of a possibly obvious revelation about Soulflame, my recent sisterly incest release. I was saying and thinking "the next volume might not even have incest, I'm not sure yet". It was as much part of a discussion about serialised volume releases, so I'll take a moment to explain what I'm doing with those too and how it came about to thinking about what I do with Soulflame.

Essentially, volume releases like Daemonique, A Boy's Secret and now Soulflame are episodic, serialised releases. You get a hit of content here and now, get to decide whether you like it, stick with it and get a new hit as soon as it's available on essentially prime releases or come in later and pick it up in bulk for a longer read. When I reach a sense of arc finality, there'll be more options for picking up the title all at once in a single sort of omnibus edition. The charm is knowing that neither way is 'right' for everyone, so being able to provide both is great for readers and myself alike.

Bunny Hole, in retrospect, is essentially episodic, but much more an enigma wrapped in a mystery. Okay, more of a petgirl project of using a story challenge for exposure before, rather than after heavily editing it. I like what I've learned from it, and I'd like to go back to expanding on it soon, but still. Comparatively  my expanded story challenge Shibari Shower hasn't done so well due to getting slammed under Amazon's childish, in no way child-proof filter. If you like bondage, steamy shower sex and lesbians, check that one out. It's a little hard to spot on Amazon because apparently BDSM is a "bad word" now. 

Don't get me started, seriously.

This is what brings me to the thoughts and discussion I was in on about serialised releases, though. Using Soulflame for reference, I said:

"next volume might not have PI in it at all, I'm not sure yet. People that don't mind can enjoy the full development in both books as and when released and people who don't want incest can start in 2 with light understanding of what happened in 1 and just miss some of the impact and character development."

but recently I thought hang on, really... 

I can write as many damn things as I want. What's to stop Soulflame being purely historic incest in varying tones and situations and taking what I have for non-incestuous plot and putting that into a different, new series title? Soulflame has had a pretty positive reception so far, why should I have to just dabble here and there when I can really drive it and cater? Why restrict when...

I can write ALL THE THINGS.

Yeah. Revelations hurt when they walk up and smack you, but the creative freedom of authoring is really something you don't always appreciate straight up. Maybe a bit dauntingly so, but maybe I'm just sleeptalking again since I've been working on putting together another world setting for my next story challenge.

Soulflame volume I: The Spark (Historic Lesbian Incest Erotica)

A tale of the most forbidden love between adoptive sisters in 17th century England, right around the time of King Charles II's return to the throne. What begins as a playful act and a kiss stolen in jest quickly develops to igniting the feelings of love shared between two women whom have grown up together, and will see them end the night in one another's arms. 

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I'd like to start this entry by clarifying exactly what this release originates from and what that may or may not mean for the future... of the past. We gotta go back, Marty. We've also gotta talk about Amazon's filter in the post below this. That information is really important if you interact with erotica to any degree on Amazon, so check if out if you don't already know all about the filter. Heck, even Romance titles and things so tame as Ménage are getting filtered now. That put a filter over two of my Daemonique books.

For those following what I've been doing recently, the 17th century premise may have rung a bell. Indeed, Soulflame was originally to be the publicised extension of Cinders of the Soul, my recent short story challenge piece. As seems to always be the way however, my will to push for more and strive for better has seen this take off into becoming its own dedicated volume. Now, as is always the case with altering pre-determined events in history, you cause all sorts of hell and chaos for continuity. So I can't say exactly how much of the prior short story will survive in upcoming volumes.

So enjoy the short story as a gauge of my style and potential to be a little weird, but don't take it entirely as a forewarning of where fate will take us in Soulflame just yet.

That said, I've thoroughly enjoyed the premise behind Soulflame. All the research alone has made it quite enriching a time to work with. It's also quite a difficult and tragic time where life expectancy was around 35 and people were by and large illiterate. Female actors were also illegal. Those were all some of the things I wanted to capture with the theme of this story. We all have our issues in this day and age, discrimination and unfair treatment is a prickly thing under the skin of any workforce. So to travel so far out of that comfort zone and put the reader in a time where the rights of people were so warped from what we expect now, and have it discussed as though the most normal of things really hit as a good opportunity for me.

I love gothic and medieval fantasy as much as the next person, and this isn't far off those eras, but what really hits home is that this was real. Great great distant ancestors lived in this era, world-changing science and art was done in this era. Untold death was visited in this era. Beneath it all, unspoken love was shared in it, too. It's scandal upon scandal for it to have happened at all, not only lesbian emotion but between sisters, too. The heart knows no boundary though, even across all sense of space, time and society. A spark of love will warm the soul into untameable flames. Such was my reasoning behind the title, anyhow.

Currently I'm planning to make this title three volumes of unique content. 'The Spark', 'The Stage' and 'The Cinders', clinching and pulling the original title back in. You'll have to stick with me to see exactly what happens in each of those volumes.

Extended excerpt follows: