Delectable December continues with special guest Gideon Francis, who will strike a chord with anyone who has tried to change their diet to be healthier and found it’s quite a challenge. He’s even got a yummy vegan gingerbread recipe, so it’s an automatic thumbs up from me. He’s also giving away an awesome prize: Your choice of his Christmas e-book or a tarot reading… enter on the Rafflecopter below and leave a comment.

When a friend of mine became vegan, it meant that I pretty much had to relearn how to cook most things. At the time, we lived together in a small two bedroom apartment near our university. The kitchen was cramped enough when the two of use decided to make dinner that we often traded off the responsibility to save on time and leftovers. We also spent a lot of time at one another’s family homes over the Christmas break. While we normally passed most of December trading our favourite dishes back at forth, this particular December (around 2010), we had to spend a little extra time getting used to the adjustment.

There are many reasons to go vegan – health, welfare of animals, political, or even allergies – but what I really think matters is the food. And instead of looking at veganism as an unfortunate chore that had to be done, my roommate and I both began to think of it as a fun new way to “re-write” our favourite meals. When you re-write something, not only do you change specific things to evoke a different reaction, but you get to know the work a little better. Veganizing a recipe is a lot like translation, too. Over the years we lived together, I got so good at making vegan food that I could look at a recipe and know how to replace the eggs or sub out the butter in an instant. I even memorized her specific favourite comfort food and would always have it ready when the time came. When you eat vegan, it means spending a lot of time in the kitchen, since you can’t rely on the quick fixes anymore. Though that classic peanut butter and jelly sandwich from childhood is still okay in a vegan diet and a definite plus.

In my book How to Make a Carrot Cake (MLR Press, forthcoming 2014), the two men find themselves in a similar position to myself and my roommate. Nate wants to get to know Billy and one of the ways to do this is to get him into the kitchen. After meeting in a grocery store, Nate invites Billy back to his apartment where they make an impromptu dinner with stuff around the house (soy sauce and peanut butter make a good base for a stir fry). Later on, as their relationship progresses, the two of them learn how to (obviously) make a carrot cake. That’s the recipe I’ve provided here – along with some really, really great recipes for vegan gingerbread cookies for the holidays as well.

When you get into veganism, you pretty much hear two names over and over: Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Sarah Kramer. They are great chefs, but both tackle very different types of cooking and food preparation. Kramer is all about time, ease of access, and the ability to make meals for two or fewer people. She’s the pragmatist, while Isa is the artisan. I still haven’t touched all the recipes in Isa’s massive book Veganomicon, but the ones I have touched are utterly beautiful and awesome.

Smell is extremely tied to our memories. Marcel Proust (who wrote the seven tome epic Remembrance of Things Past and was a delightful gay man) knew this about our brains and spent most of his literary career devoted to the subject matter. Food also marks a place in our memory through its uses in rites of passage. Laura Esquivel’s Like Water For Chocolate displays this fact by retelling a family history through the dishes they used for weddings, holidays, and birthdays. Cooking is always a process of creation. Veganism, I have always liked to think, is just another type of expression. (Just to note for those who are curious: I am not vegan or vegetarian, but man, I do love tofu.)

With the rising amount of eggs and milk allergies and people becoming more socially conscious (even Bill Clinton, Jay z and Beyonce have all announced vegan diets at some point), it can be good to have some other options. Just don’t look at vegan cooking as giving up something you love. It’s more than health or ideology. Think of it as another chance to make something different and bring some yummy goodies to a vegan or egg-allergic friend who may have to excuse themselves from most holidays’ festivities. And more importantly, enjoy!

Vegan Gingerbread Cut-Out Cookies*

1/3 cup canola oil
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup molasses
1/4 cup plain soymilk
2 cups whole wheat pastry flour or all-purpose flour (or a mix of both)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

Spice blend:
1/2 teaspoon each ground nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
In a large bowl whisk together oil and sugar for about 3 minutes. Add molasses and soymilk. Sift in all of the other dry ingredients, mixing about half way through. When all of the dry ingredients are added, mix until a stiff dough is formed. Flatten the dough into a disk, wrap in plastic wrap and chill for an hour or up to 3 days in advance. If you chill longer than an hour you may want to let it sit for 10 minutes to warm up a bit before proceeding.

Preheat oven to 350 F. Lightly grease your cookie sheets or line with parchment paper. On a lightly floured surface roll the dough out to a little less than 1/4 inch thick. Cut out your shapes with your cookie cutters and use a thin spatula to gently place on cookie sheets. Bake for 8 minutes. Remove from oven and let them cool for 2 minutes on the baking sheet then move to a cooling rack. Wait until they are completely cool before icing.

Makes about 16 cookies (depending on the size of your cutters).

*Recipe originally from Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s cookbook Veganomicon, with certain instructions and ingredients tweaked.

Vegan Carrot Cake*

• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup soy milk
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup oil
• ¼ cup of applesauce (to be used as an egg replacer)
• 1/2 cup carrot, finely grated
• 1 tsp fresh ginger, grated

Preheat oven to 350F. In a large bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt. Add remaining ingredients and mix gently until just mixed. Pour into lightly oiled 9-in cake pan and bake for 25-30 minutes, until a toothpick or knife inserted in the centre comes out clean.

*Recipe originally by Sarah Kramer and in her Vegan A-Go-Go cookbook, with certain items tweaked slightly.

Nate Reid never considered veganism until he meets Billy Lawson, a skinny, quiet kid who works at the local grocery store. With Billy’s help, Nate slowly learns what he can and cannot make during the beginning months of their relationship until a family secret from Billy’s past threatens their bond. Will their conflicting desires in the kitchen make an exciting partnership or will Billy’s refusal continue to isolate him? Nate searches through cookbooks, his best friend Marlee’s advice, and his favourite novels from his college years in order to find answers for both of their futures.

Excerpt:

“I brought you something, too,” Nate finally confesses. He pulls out the container and slides it across the counter. Jake and the man in front of him continue to talk and there is no one else in line. Billy does a quick sweep of the area before he undoes the top.

“It’s carrot cake,” Nate says after a moment. “Well, carrot cupcakes.”

Billy laughs a bit, and then lowers his brows. “I see that. It’s even from the nice bakery around the corner. This friend must be very special.”

Billy slides the treat aside for a moment, as he helps a man who suddenly appears and must obtain a pastrami sandwich before the afternoon is over. Nate waits patiently to the side, his breath knocking around in his lungs. When Billy’s eyes return to him again, his knees wobble. He wonders if he already has a sugar rush from Marlee’s insistence on baked goods before lunch.

“That’s not vegan, you know,” Billy finally says, motioning with his chin towards the package. His tone is not accusatory, not like the way Nate’s old boyfriend would get angry at waitresses for not understanding his dietary requirements. It is clear, from the way that Billy laughs and rolls his eyes after his statement, that he is kidding in the same breath that he’s declining the dessert.

“Really?” Nate says, leaning forward. “But carrots!”

Billy shakes his head. “It’s really nice. But I’ll have to pass.”

“No worries,” Nate says. He takes the package, and his sandwich meat under his arms, tipping from side to side on his nervous toes. “You’ll just have to show me what’s vegan, then.”

“I guess so.”

Billy sweeps his eyes around the aisles again. In a lowered voice, he says over the counter, “My shift is done at ten. Does that work for you?”

“More than you know.”

“Great. See you then.” Billy smiles.

* * * *

Francis Gideon is a fiction writer, essayist, and editor. He has appeared in Microscenes’ Monster Issue, Gay Flash Fiction, and JMS Books. His new novel entitled How to Make a Carrot Cake is due out on MLR Press in 2014. He lives in Canada with his partner and their dog.

On the web: www,thedovekeeper.com and paintitback.tumblr.com

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Lynley’s latest release is A Life Interrupted, which came out from MLR Press on November 22. Keep reading for more information about the book, and how you can win an e-book copy for yourself.

Lynley’s Bio

Lynley Wayne is the pen name of a thirty-something female living on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. When not writing, she can usually be found reading and thinking up creative ways to avoid housework. She is married to a very understanding husband who doesn’t complain when she spends hours in front of the computer and he ends up having to fix supper on occasion. Or when she asks random off the wall questions. Or when she talks for hours about whatever story she’s working on. Yeah, basically he’s vying for sainthood.

It is her hope that one day society will be able to look past the labels and see the person behind it. That they will realize we are all the same. Until that time comes, she will continue telling stories of a love others may believe is wrong, but she thinks is nothing short of beautiful.

The Interview

What is the last book you read? Did you like it, why/why not? I just recently finished reading Debora Geary’s, A Modern Witch Series. It a seven-book series, with a couple of spin-off series. I haven’t gotten to those yet, but I will… eventually. I enjoyed them very much. They were a mix of sweet and funny with a great cast of diverse characters. The underlying message throughout the series was about acceptance. While it deals with a group of witches, it’s less about the magic and more about the family, the community and the love that they share. I would recommend it to anyone who is looking for a series to fall in love with.
What is the most challenging aspect of writing? For me, that would be finishing a book. I have no problem starting one, but I seem to have difficulty finishing one. I currently have around fifteen manuscripts sitting in my WIPs file, that are between 30k and 65k words. Each and every one of them is sitting there, unfinished, because I’m stuck and I can’t seem to figure out where I went off the tracks. Every few months I pull them out, hoping for some clarity.

What is the most difficult aspect of publishing? Besides the waiting? I’d say the marketing. Before I got published I wasn’t one to be online. I had a Facebook account that I’d posted on twice in the three years I’d had it. So doing the social media stuff is something that I’m still learning and I admit there are days when I have to force myself to get online. I’m getting better about it, but I don’t think I’ll ever be one of those people who likes surfing the net for hours.  I’d much rather be writing.

Have you ever had a day when you wanted to give up writing?  Yes. I foolishly decided to check out Goodreads a day or two after, Scars was released. One of the first reviews was a DNF (did not finish). I was devastated. This was a book that I had worked on for years and while it may not be my best work and there may be issues with it, things I’d probably change now, to have someone dislike it so much that they didn’t even finish it… well, that shook my confidence. After Scars came out, I didn’t write for about three months. I would sit down at the computer and all I could see was that DNF and I really thought about giving up. The four and five star reviews that I got later, sadly, were overshadowed by that one bad one.  Eventually I remembered that I write because it’s something I enjoy. It’s something that fulfills me and I wasn’t going to let one person’s opinion change that. The fan emails I got really helped as well.

What is the most surprising book/scene you’ve written? (Surprise in that it ended up very differently from expected, or that it touched on a topic/event you had never imagined you would write about)
Are the names of the characters in your books important and how you do choose names? For my main characters I don’t. Not really. When I get an idea for a character he usually comes already named. It’s sort of like they pop into my head and introduce themselves. Occasionally, I might hear a cool name and write it down for later. For the secondary characters I use different things; my old yearbooks, a baby naming app on my phone, and The Writer’s Digest Character Naming Sourcebook by Sherrilyn Kenyon.

Which is your least favorite thing: choosing a title, writing a blurb, or reading reviews? Why? With each book it’s different. With Scars I had no trouble writing the blurb, but I hated having to write the synopsis. With Rocky’s Road I had a heck of a time writing the blurb and after I learned that there was an ice cream with a similar name, I debated changing the title but couldn’t come up with anything else that fit. I don’t usually read reviews. I appreciate those who take the time to not only read my books but to write a review and if someone sends me one then I will read it, but I try to stay away from them for the most part. Reviews tend make me a tad bit neurotic, which isn’t good for anyone. Trust me.
Do you use personal experiences in your books?  I’d have to say, Yes and No. Every writer puts a bit of themselves into their books. Some books, some characters more than others. In Scars, Jace suffers from PTSD, which manifests itself mainly in the form of panic attacks.  While I don’t suffer from anxiety disorder, I have people close to me who do and I’ve seen them have an attack and I used that in my book.

Anyone who knew me as a child and has read my YA short story, Family, can tell that Emily is very much me when I was younger. The scene at the wedding where she embarrasses her dad was definitely something I would’ve done, and probably did do, in my younger days.

I think our experiences in life shape our characters whether intentionally or not.

What is the craziest thing you have researched for your writing?  Well, so far I’d have to say BDSM. I wasn’t expecting to write a book with BDSM elements, so it was unexpected and there were something things that I learned while researching that might be categorized as crazy by some.

Describe a typical writing day for you.  Hubby works nights, so I try to get up about the time he gets home so I can spend some time with him before he goes to bed for the day. We eat together and then he goes to bed and make a cup of chai tea and head to my office. I usually start by checking and responding to email, then I check out Facebook and Twitter, which can take anywhere from twenty minutes to an hour or more. Then I disconnect from the internet, light a candle and get busy writing. I write until it’s time to wake hubby up for work and then I fix supper and spend some time with him, which is usually spent watching some of the recorded shows from the night before. Then after he leaves, I either go back to writing or I chill on the couch and read until it’s time for bed.

The New Release

A Life Interrupted

Dan and Travis met in college, the unlikeliest of pairs, and then became friends and lovers.  For the past twenty-two years Dan’s lived his own version of happily-ever-after, with Travis by his side. Then tragedy strikes and life as they know it ceases to exist. Will they be strong enough to find their way back from a life interrupted?

 While Travis fights for his life, Dan can’ t help but relive all those little moments that made up their life. All those things that he took for granted at the time. Those very same events may end up being all he has left of the man who is his entire world.

The Contest

What question would you like to ask Lynley Wayne that I didn’t? Leave a comment with your question and we’ll choose a winner on Friday, Nov 29.  Plenty of time to think of a good one while you’re recovering from Thanksgiving dinner!

Please thank Lynley for stopping by with a comment about anything. Thank you!

We don’t celebrate Christmas. Mixing up a card-carrying pagan with a die-hard atheist means that we came to an agreement long ago. Celebrations start at the Winter Solstice and go right on through to New Year.

Before you start booking me into your local de-tox clinic, no, we don’t get off our faces every day but my partner goes out weeks before and stocks the house with masses of treats that we don’t normally get during the year and hides them. So every day during our holidays, he brings out another surprise. It might be a special drink or different fancy nibbles to go with our aperitif.

The main feast meal which would probably equate with Thanksgiving or Christmas, is the Solstice when we celebrate the days becoming longer again, the return of the sun, the shorter nights and the hope that the harvest, both agricultural and personal, will be rich this year.

We live in France where the tradition is to get all the family around the table on Christmas Eve and eat… and eat… and eat, starting about 10.30 pm and going right through to the early hours. We don’t have family over here so we play a game – each year we try to have something new for our feast. We go out together and choose. Obviously with only two people a turkey is out of the question, even if the two dogs would help out enthusiastically with any leftovers!

This year we found something fabulous – roti de porc Orloff. Our local butcher, Sebastian, is a wizard. He knocked up this creation which is boned, rolled pork joint, stuffed with ham, cheese and tomato. We’ll have it like all traditional feasts with roast potatoes and all the fresh veg, followed by Yule Log, which is the French version of Christmas cake – heavy, tooth-destroyingly sweet and very, very rich. I never knew a sponge cake could kick me so hard. It’s always decorated with darling little gift parcels, champagne bottles etc and I save those to put on our home made British Christmas Cake …here is this year’s offering. I believe in recycling … my Scottish upbringing rejoices at not wasting things.

MY GIVEAWAY is CANCEL CHRISTMAS – Leave a comment by January 10, 2013 for a chance to win! (contest extended due to technical difficulties.)

Buy at MLR Press  or Amazon.com –

My blog is  http://www.cameron-lawton.com/

I volunteered to prepare the turkey. I was excited to be in charge of the star attraction, but didn’t know the first thing about cooking one. All I knew was that you had to get up at the crack of dawn and slave over a hot turkey baster all day, then you got to be a big hero when you brought it to the table

“It’s easy,” my new co-worker Anita assured me.

“Easy?” I said. “It takes forever. And isn’t there, like, a neck? It sounds elaborate.”
She shook her head and sipped her one millionth daily ounce of Mountain Dew. “No, see, what you do is…”

And she gave me her foolproof turkey recipe. And what do you know, she was right: we had a tiny, unreliable oven, and I didn’t know how to cook much in those days, but together, that oven and I, we were able to pull off Anita’s two-ingredient recipe (three ingredients, I guess, if you count the turkey), and what turned out to be our First Annual Friends Thanksgiving was a triumph! (Due, in no small part, to the fact that one of the two ingredients was Kahlua, at which we’d been sipping in our coffee since about 8 a.m.)

My job, of course, is “open” 24/7/365. There are thousands—some estimates say tens of thousands—of airplanes in the air at any given time, and they are not (alas) grounded so that their crews can run off and cook turkey dinners. In Kiss Me, Straight, Our Hero Todd spends a Thanksgiving, as I once did, at a Shanghai chicken joint with roller skating waitresses and a girl whose only job it is to keep your beer glass full; when my airline career and I were young and glamorous, I’d often spend the actual holiday aloft, slinging plastic dishes of turkey and gravy in the aisle and then supping, perched over the galley trash can, on the leftover coach pasta, and we’d celebrate Friends Thanksgiving the Saturday before or the Saturday after actual Thanksgiving. But celebrate it we did, and without fail.

Some years it was just a few of us; other years friends invited friends who brought along friends and the gang of us ate on the floor. For weeks before, we’d pass around the most recent Thanksgiving issue of Bon Appetit magazine, and then whip up side dishes and salads and get super creative with pie. There was always plenty (and I do mean plenty) of wine, one year to the rather heroic tune of three bottles per person. (The same year, come to that, that the boy I was crushing on turned to me—after consuming his allotted three bottles of wine—and disclosed in a whisper that he had hepatitis.) And—if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it—the turkey was my domain. I would eventually go on to brine them and spice them with chiles and stuff them with every combination of garlic and fruit imaginable, but for years, Anita’s turkey was our much beloved Thanksgiving tradition. I consider Kahlua on Thanksgiving non-negotiable even still, after almost twenty years, and I haven’t made Kahlua turkey in at least ten.

As happens, our friends became our family; the No Drama rule was fervently embraced and strictly enforced, but the No Family rule faded into obscurity as we started collecting partners and in-laws and babies. Eventually, of course, some of us moved, to places like Panama and Colorado, and we no longer gather every year in each others’ living rooms to eat turkey and guzzle wine and sing old camp songs during hilariously mis-named “talent” shows, but Friends Thanksgiving lives on as my favorite holiday. Like Kiss Me, Straight, my life is a celebration of the joy and the power of friendship, and of the curative and unifying wonders of good food, and to me, these things will always taste like turkey.

Anita’s Can’t-Miss Kahlua Turkey

1 Turkey, prepped for roasting
Equal Parts Kahlua and Apricot Jam

Whisk Kahlua and jam together and slather it all over the turkey, being sure to add plenty of Kahlua to your Thanksgiving morning coffee. Cook the turkey per package/store/Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything’s instructions. Brush every 30-45 minutes with Kahlua/jam mixture. Tent the turkey with foil if its starts to brown too fast. Turkey is done when a meat thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the breast registers at least 165 degrees. Gravy made with the drippings from this turkey is sweet and delicious; when Tabasco is added, it is the Best Gravy Ever.

Michael’s latest release is Kiss Me Straight:

Beijing, Tokyo, Sydney — these exciting cities are standard fare in the life of flight attendant Todd Eisenbraun, and he chases a romance with sexy-but-straight Josh through them all.

Closer to home, a new neighbor in his San Francisco apartment building has a huge crush on Todd. His friends — Katie, a flight attendant-turned-small appliance repairwoman, and Marzipan Q. Thespian, a man-dangling local philanthropist — think Todd should at least give Chris a shot. Sure, he’s overweight, but he’s also handsome, a hilarious playwright, and a great cook … what’s not to love?

Todd and Chris become quick friends, but Todd’s idea of the perfect man is skinny and straight, and Chris is decidedly neither. Josh may have a fiancée and a teenaged son, but Todd just knows he’s “the One.”

But if Josh is straight, the road to love is not; Todd is jostled by internalized homophobia, body image issues, exotic locales, the glamorous world of sewing machine repair, and a community theater musical salute to the life of Judy Garland before he arrives at the realization that he’s been looking way too hard for something he may have already found.

Here’s a blurb for “Into the Deep” and, later, we get to know a little bit about the author:

Sparks fly at the 2012 Olympic Games when platform diver John Sloane meets Blake Gallagher, a local bartender.  After a chance encounter at Blake’s London pub, fate brings them together once again as John prepares for his debut on the Olympic stage.  Will these unlikely lovers realize they’ve found a winner in each other or will the pressures of competition keep them apart?

Warning: Contains wet Speedos, gratuitous toplessness, a cheeky redheaded Brit who might be a tad unsure of himself, and an American sports god who wants him just the way he is.

Intrigued? You just might find an excerpt at the end of this interview. Just sayin’…

Q:  What do you like most about the Olympics? Do you have a favorite sport you like to watch?

NJ:  To me, the Olympics are about two things: unity across nations and people performing to the best of the human body’s ability in a variety of sports.  It’s awe-inspiring to see so many athletes who are, literally, at the top of their game.  I definitely have a case of “admiring that which I cannot do.” I’m totally NOT an athlete in any way. I can’t ride a bike (seriously), am a disaster on skates (of any kind), and can barely tread water.  I can bowl (according to ESPN, bowling’s a sport, I swear!), but um…last time I checked, it’s not an Olympic sport.

I have so much respect for the Olympic athletes who have the discipline, drive, and talent to do what they do at the world-class level that they do it.  My favorite sport to watch would probably be anything water-related.  Whether it’s the swimming relays, diving, or water polo, I’m just fascinated by their ability to thrive so naturally in an environment that, for me, is so foreign.  The viewing opportunity for Speedos doesn’t hurt, either. *winks*

Q:  Have you participated in the sport you wrote about? (If not, what inspired you to choose that sport?)

NJ:  Ha!  I wrote about a 10m platform diver, so no…definitely not.    Before writing this story, I knew next to nothing about diving other than that I thought it was really beautiful and looked insanely difficult.  I chose to write about it because I figured any man who could succeed in such a demanding sport (and look amazing in a Speedo, too!) would make a fantastic romance hero.

 Yay, Speedos! No, the story is not about Tom Daley, but trust me – my diver John has just as many adoring fans.

Q:  How long have you been writing and what inspired you to start?

NJ:  I’ve been writing since the night of February 27, 2012, and all thanks to the Goodreads M/M Romance group.  Sort of on a whim, I took part in their big Love is Always Write writing event, in which members submitted pictures and letter prompts for authors to choose as inspiration for a story.  There was a football picture and prompt that nobody had claimed after a couple of days.  You know what people say about plot bunnies?  Well, yeah…a cute little bunny started twitching its nose in my head and refused to go away!  The group and members were incredibly supportive, so I figured it was the perfect place to give writing a try.  So I just jumped into writing with both feet, and now there’s a freebie out there (and now a sequel, too!) with my name on it that I’m proud to call my own.  After that, I saw a call for submissions for a certain Olympics-themed anthology, and the rest, so they say, is history.

Q:  What books or authors inspire your own work?

NJ:  Almost anything and everything inspires me.  I’ve been a reader all of my life, but I’ve been reading romance since high school, when I happened to pick up my mom’s traditional Regency romance novel.  I was sitting in the car while waiting for my mom to run an errand, and I’d just finished my own book (a bestseller along the lines of John Grisham or Stephen King).  With nothing to read (the horrors!), I started flipping through my mom’s book (The Scandalous Wager by Olivia Fontayne) and was sucked in right away from page one.  Even before that, though, I realize now that I couldn’t help but focus on whom Stacy or Claudia was dating in The Babysitters Club series or what was going on in Elizabeth and Todd’s romance in Sweet Valley High.  So, yeah, romance has always been on my reading radar, and nowadays, romance (of many many varieties) is pretty much all I read.

Within the m/m subgenre, some of my favorites are Hot Head by Damon Suede, Handyman by Claire Thompson, Discreet Young Gentleman by M.J. Pearson, and my latest finds, free online fictions like Drunk Text by seventhswan (yes, that’s the title!).  I also love J.L. Merrow’s unique and extremely British narrators, especially Al in Muscling Through.

Q:  What interesting thing would readers be surprised to find out about you?

NJ:  I love karaoke. Loooooooooove it. I have an entire iTunes playlist called “Karaoke Jamz.”  To me, karaoke isn’t about being the World’s Most Super Awesome Number One Singer; rather, it’s about loving the stage and having fun.  I have no shame, and I freely admit it. *shameless grin* In recent years, my go-to karaoke song has been Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl.”  However, I’m also partial to crowd-pleasers such as “Sweet Caroline” by Neil Diamond, “Since U Been Gone” by Kelly Clarkson, “More Than Words” by Extreme, and “Umbrella” by Rihanna.  If you’re in NYC, let me know and you can join our next unofficial Karaoke Club outing. Warning: Be prepared to sing Oasis’s “Wonderwall” loudly and sans microphone with a huge group of people. *evil grin*

Workin’ the microphone like a champ…a Karaoke Champ!

Q:  What are you writing now or what upcoming releases do you have scheduled?

NJ:  I juuuuuust finished up the sequel/follow-up to my Love is Always Write story.  I was super nervous about my LiAW story since I’d never released any writing “into the wild” before.  When some of the folks started asking what happens next, I was incredibly flattered by the interest people took in the characters and figured “hey, I know what happens next, so I may as well write it, too.”

Now that I’m done with that?  Well, so far, I’ve only written about sports and athletes (oh, the irony, since I’m such a non-athlete!), so maybe it’s time to branch out into something different.  That said, I have my eye on a submission call, and a plot bunny started nibbling at my ear that pairs a questioning-his-sexuality college jock with an out-and-proud art student. So, yeah…we’ll see where that inspiration leads me.

Nico Jaye thinks reading is awesome and may or may not have a cat named “Nico” from whom she borrowed this pen name.  You can visit them online here:

Website: www.nicojaye.com

Twitter: @nicojaye

Goodreads: Nico Jaye

*****

You can find a sneak peek of Into the Deep, showing us the day John walks into Blake’s life, here on Nico’s blog, and pick up your copy of Going for Gold today on MLR Press, Amazon, or All Romance eBooks!

To say I have experience in figure skating in the same sentence as my Olympic contender, Kevin, in the Going For Gold anthology is like saying I’ve been a rock star because I had a few guitar lessons.

But at some point in time – in a galaxy far, far away – I was a figure skater.

I grew up in a hamlet in southern Ontario that had a church and a general store. The nearest urban area of any note was Burford, population 2,000, and this is where I figure skated.

I started when I was about seven because my friend did it. My friend was two years older, so whatever she did, I did too. I gave up Saturday morning cartoons to spend a season with a kids’ bowling league. She went to a Baptist Bible camp one summer, so I went to a Baptist Bible camp. She figure skated, so I figure skated.

I am not athletic. I can still remember my meager sports accomplishments. I once caught a fly ball in a recess softball game. I once placed third in high jump during my grade school track and field day. I was about that successful at figure skating.

I skated three evenings a week and got to leave school 10 minutes early because of it. For 15 minutes an evening, I had a private lesson with a coach named Sandy, who had better things to do.

Some of Sandy’s rules seemed arbitrary. When we left the ice to use the washroom, she’d bellow at us if we took too long. “If our parents are paying for our lessons,” I told my friend, “what difference does it make to her if we f*ck the dog?” But this was a teachable moment – a way to turn us into responsible young adults – and I suppose I have figure skating in part to thank for that.

This is someone with a scribe, which we used for compulsory figures, also known as “patch.” You used it to make figure eights, although you could also swing it and knock over everyone in a seven-foot radius. Image: Jo Ann Schneider Farris, figureskating.about.com

There were compulsory figures then. You were given a patch of ice and used an instrument called a scribe – or more ideally, your own God-given circle-making instincts – to make a figure eight. Then you started in the middle of the eight, pushed off and did things around the circles. Half turns. Quarter turns. Going from forward to backward on one foot, or backward to forward. Rows of youth lined the ice as they learned different ways to skate in circles. It was so quiet that you could hear the hum of the fluorescent lights. I’d look up at the scoreboard clock and see the minutes drip past. I hated figures.

The names of other jumps seemed strange to me. There was the salchow, which we pronounced sow-cow, when there was no cow to be found. There was the flip, and its more complicated cousin the double flip, which caused the older girls to send dangerous chunks of ice flying as they chopped the slippery surface with their toe picks. Most boys who skated dropped off by puberty. The ones who didn’t seemed sexless somehow, creatures of a sterile white world who had no girlfriends – or boyfriends – to speak of.

Much like I described in “The Quad,” there was a pecking order in our small-town skating club, and from what I have heard and experienced, there always is. Figure skating is not a sport for the hard-done-by. It’s a sport of kids with money and doting parents, and like wanna-be rock stars, all of them hold that dream of stardom deep in their hearts. This dream exists for all Canadian parents who wake at the crack of dawn to drive their kids to rinks.

Those who seem closer to the dream get the good solos in the winter carnival. They get the good bench space in the dressing room. They get more attention from the private coaches, and the ability to skate through the rest of us with a sense of entitlement and pride.

Kevin has lived in my head for a few years, lodged in my cranium like an imaginary friend. I’d hear an ornate piece of instrumental music and imagine it was Kevin’s solo music, and daydreamed of him leaping and spinning in time. I liked the idea of someone unaffected stumbling into that world and kicking ass in spite of himself.

This is not the end of Kevin’s story. He grows stronger, leaner and meaner, and eventually prevails. I can’t bear to think otherwise. I like the idea of world-class athlete who quietly gets on with it without realizing he’s remarkable, even though he is.

Kevin continues to be my imaginary friend. If you’ve read the story, thanks for hanging out with us. It’s easy to tell us apart. He’s the one with the good bench space.

*****

Get a copy of Going for Gold at Amazon or at MLR Press

Kelly Rand | Goodreads | Twitter

I wrote a story about shooting, since I grew up shooting skeet. This is what happens when there are no boys in your family—and state shooting champions in your pedigree. I never got good enough to shoot competitively (and I’m competitive with almost everything, even if it’s only with myself). I do remember the smell of gun powder and broken clay pigeons, the pressure of ear protectors on my head, and the way the world looks jaundiced when you’re wearing yellow-tinted glasses. The weight of the gun, the spent shells, and the weird smell of the shooting vest.

Oh, I wish I had been good enough to be an Olympic-caliber athlete. Or had been to see the Olympics. Instead, I contented myself at home, writing an Olympic-themed story. I daydreamed about being in London, walking through Olympic park, seeing world class athletes from over two hundred nations—some scantily clad. Indulging in the humidity and excitement at the aquatics center. Inhaling the scents of chalk dust, resin, and carpet at the gymnastics competitions. Seeing world-class performances.

And then there’s London itself. Riding on a double-decker bus. Eating fish and chips. Seeing the changing of the guard, and seeing for myself if those guys really don’t flinch.

I’ve watched the Olympics on TV for years. I mean drop-everything-stay-up-all-night-watching as many different events as possible. It’s like dark chocolate—an addiction. A craving that must be sated, lest the sufferer go into withdrawal.

When it was over, I did go into withdrawal. (This is where dark chocolate comes in handy). Eighteen months until the Winter Olympics in Russia. Four years until Rio. Until they come ‘round again, I’ll be in my office, eating dark chocolate.

~*~ Please check out my story “Shoot for Gold” in the MLR Press Anthology, GOING FOR GOLD!

www.whitleygray.com

BLOG: http://whitleygray.blogspot.com/

GOING FOR GOLD anthology: Buy from MLR, Amazon, Paperback

I knew as soon as I saw EM’s call for submissions that I had to do this anthology and that I wanted to do a swimming story. I’m a lifelong Olympics nut–I remember watching the Los Angles 1984 Olympics as a kid on my family’s first color TV, and I haven’t missed an Olympics. For me, the thrill is in watching people wrestle (sometimes literally!) with their own limitations to become something greater than they ever dreamed possible. Few things compare to the high of watching an underdog triumph to surprise even seasoned commentators–whether it is running, biking, martial arts, or swimming.

There’s something special about the aquatic events though–and it’s not just all that exposed flesh on glorious display. It’s similar to flying in that swimming is at its base man vs. physics. And way back in the middle ages, possessing the ability to swim was enough to get one tried as a witch. These days, most kids learn the basics, but there’s still a sense of wonder as one learns to defeat the water: how to breathe and float and kick and not drown. And doing it at an Olympic level means daily conquering of man’s innate limitations.

Olympic swimming wasn’t always a man-candy fest–it used to be performed outdoors, in shapeless suits, and at frigid temperatures. Then came the glory days of the speedo suits  and smooth bodies. Mark Spitz made swimming sexy in the 1970s and the sport hasn’t looked back since. For me, my love of swimming started with Matt Biondi–long before Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte, this 6’7″ American dominated the pool–and his iconic good looks (and teeny tiny suit!) made a permanent impression on my childish fantasies.

Now we have the age of the high-performance suits that cover athletes from their waists to their knees and swimmers like Phelps and Lochte achieve near rockstar status. For me, though, I’m more fascinated with the less popular events: the breaststroke, the backstroke, and the long-distance swimmers.

I chose a long-distance swimmer for my story in part because I wanted to create a character apart from the current crop of headline grabbers, but also because I’m fascinated by the guys who put in hundreds of hours of training for one of swimming’s most grueling, thankless races. These swimmers hang out on the fringes of  one the summer Olympic’s marquee sports.

And my hero likes it that way. He likes that his race doesn’t often make prime-time broadcasts and that he can leave the press to the hotshot swimmers who like the limelight. But what happens when an attention-hating hero ends up unexpectedly in the spotlight? Swimming the Distance is my answer:

When denial turns to deception, love may not be enough to keep Kyle and Bodhan’s relationship afloat. Hours before leaving for the Olympics, Kyle Christopher discovers that his long-time boyfriend, an Olympic long distance swimmer, has done an interview where he denied being gay. Despite sharing a home and a dog with Kyle, three-time Olympian Bodhan Petrov  isn’t ready to come out publicly. After Bodhan’s lies start stacking up, Kyle’s not sure he can keep waiting quietly in the shadows. When their estrangement takes a toll on Bodhan’s performance, both must decide where their priorities lay once and for all.

Want a sneak peek at Kyle and Bodhan? Here’s an excerpt from their flight to London:

“You still mad at me?” Even bathed in shadows, Kyle could make out the sheepish expression on Bohdan’s face. His hand kept up a steady massage of Kyle’s knee.

“A little.” Each pass of Bohdan’s strong hand chased away more of Kyle’s anger.

“You know, I met you in a gay bar.”

“You did indeed.” Heat spread though Kyle at the memory. Bohdan seemed to have something to prove, but Kyle didn’t know what. Maybe that he wasn’t a complete closet case. Or that Kyle was being unreasonable. “When was the last time we went out?”

Bohdan scowled and removed his hand. “It’s easier when it’s not an Olympic year. The press ignores me.”

Kyle shook his head and went back to staring out the window at nothing. He wasn’t sure exactly when things had shifted. They’d fallen into a relationship with the kind of ease Kyle had never experienced — things went from fucking to cooking dinner together and falling asleep watching Discovery Channel marathons to let-me-clear-space-in-the-dresser-for-your-socks ridiculously, wonderfully quick. But sometime after Bohdan won his first World Championship, after most of his clothes lived at Kyle’s house, after they’d vacationed together, rehabbed the bathroom, and talked about the future in not-so-vague terms, Bohdan’s paranoia had crept in. Winning his second Worlds and the “Olympic Year” push had only made things worse.

“Maybe once this blows over, we can go back to Blue Moon. Make a night of it — get a hotel room downtown and everything. Wanna pretend we’re strangers and pick me up?” Bohdan’s whisper interrupted Kyle’s sulk.

“I seem to remember it working differently last time.” God, that had been one of the biggest rushes of Kyle’s life, coming off the dance floor and colliding into an intense, muscle-bound stranger who seemed to step straight out of his fantasies.

“Yeah. You’re pretty irresistible.” Bohdan returned his hand to Kyle’s thigh, giving him a squeeze. “I saw your red hair from across the bar and then you shook that ass…I was toast.”

The plane bounced again, hitting another turbulent patch. Kyle flinched. Bohdan’s hand moved from Kyle’s thigh to grip his hand, rubbing in gentle circles.

“We’ll be okay.”

Kyle knew Bohdan meant more than just the flight, so he squeezed back. “Yeah.” Or at least, I hope so.

“You should try to rest.” Bohdan tilted his head, concern in his eyes. The only light was the emergency strip along the floor.

Everyone else in first class seemed to be asleep. Kyle flipped up the armrest between their seats. He could almost pretend they were on their couch. Only at home he’d have his head on Bohdan’s chest with his strong arms draped around him. Whereas here he settled for hand holding, knowing it might be Bohdan’s most daring act for the next two weeks.

“That feels nice,” he whispered as Bohdan massaged the fleshy spot between his thumb and forefinger.

“Yeah?” Bohdan scooted closer so their thighs rubbed. He wasn’t quite cuddling, but he’d definitely crossed the straight-guy-personal-space boundary. “I bet I could help you sleep.”

*****

Get a copy of Going for Gold at Amazon or at MLR Press

Annabeth Albert |Annabeth’s Blog | Goodreads

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When I say that I had always yearned to be an Olympian, what I of course mean is that I am ass-over-teakettle nuts about jocks, and my life’s primary ambition has long been to fuck as many Olympic athletes as possible.  The first time I ever clapped eyes on Michael Phelps’ extraordinary body in nothing but a Speedo, I knew that world-class athletes were my sexual destiny, and I set my sights on the Olympics at an early age.  The shortest distance between two points being a straight line, I figured bunking up in a dorm full of them would provide me the easiest possible access to the Hottest Guys in the World.

A foolproof plan, you’ll agree, save for one detail: I was nowhere near a World Class Athlete.  In any sport.  Certainly not swimming, which—a bed full of broad-backed Aquamen being my primary target—I naturally tried first.  I was fit enough, and at 6-foot-3 I would eventually grow flippers for feet, but I never had the shoulders, and why does everybody act like swimming pools all go dry at ten o’clock in the morning?  If I have to roll out of bed while the neighborhood rooster is still sawing logs and get shirtless and wet before the damn sun comes up, I am unlikely to excel at any pursuit.  Swimmers are hot-bods, to be sure, but I figured I’d have better access to them in the Olympic Village cafeteria than in the pool, anyway, and I hung my Speedos out to dry after one unremarkable summer-club season.

Wrestling was no more of a success story.  It occurred to me that if my objective was physical proximity to jocks, a sport that required me to intertwine with them during the course of competition might be the ticket.  I cut an encouragingly sexy figure in the singlet, but I was still growing like kudzu—taller this week than last, skinnier tomorrow than yesterday—and I couldn’t muster the coordination to do much more than hump every boy they put underneath me.  Which suited me fine, but didn’t jive with the sporting objectives of most of the rest of the team, and my season was cut short when I came in my singlet during a particularly frictional exhibition match against the star of the all-boys Catholic high school from across town.

Steve Lundquist consoles his friend, rival, and teammate John Moffet at the end of his Olympic journey. You see how man-on-man Olympic erotica kind of writes itself?

Thus do we meet Beau, the handsome young hero of “Hot Shots,” my story in EM Lynley’s new Olympic-themed anthology, Going for Gold.  I have long been a rabid fan of all things Olympic, a passion that, like Beau’s, was sparked by the sight of a swimmer in a Speedo.  Because of a heart-wrenching injury suffered during prelims, John Moffet failed to medal in 1984, but because he was gorgeous (and maybe a little bit because he cried), he had me glued to the TV for two weeks that summer, and, at age 12, two things became clear to me:  1. I was officially and irretrievably gay, and 2. The Olympics were a moving, inspirational, and surprising spectacle for another fling with which I was scarcely convinced I’d be able to wait four long years.  When 1988 rolled around, I was enthralled with Swiss skier Pirmin Zurbriggen, and in 1992 I was so caught up in the rapture of love with Christian Laettner that I actually watched Olympic basketball.  By the time the Thorpedo was wowing the hometown crowd in Sydney in 2000, the first Olympics I actually got to go to, I was a drooling junkie for the biggest quadrennial Hot Guy Pageant in the world.

I was on a swim team and all that—State Champs my senior year in high school, thank you very much—but I knew I didn’t have the drive or the dedication to Sport to ever go to the Olympics as anything other than a spectator.  OK, I had occasional fantasies of sitting supportively next to my sun-tanned and toothsome jock husband in the Olympic Village while NBC interviewed him about his meteoric rise to the top of his sport (swimming, skiing, basketball, I didn’t care—beggars can’t be choosers), and of smiling demurely and cracking a suitably-understated-yet-hilarious joke when he glowingly heaped praise and credit for his success onto me in front of millions of viewers, but that was the closest I ever even dared to dream I would get to Olympic Glory, and when in Real Life I flipped for a 350-pounder, even those dreams were put to rest with some finality.

I had other dreams, though, and one I pursued hotly was to travel the world as thoroughly as my time here in it would allow.  It happens, more by accident than by design, that I have visited every city that has ever hosted a modern Summer Games, Sydney and Hong Kong (which hosted Beijing’s equestrian events in 2008) while the games were actually under way.  Hot guys doing amazing things with their incredible bodies is, yes, a major selling point of the Olympics for me, but the modern Olympic Ideal of the pursuit, not just of shiny medals and leafy crowns, but also of enhanced cross-cultural understanding and Brother (and Sister-) hood of Man appeals greatly to the World Citizen in me.  My career with a goliath international airline is a learning experience on many fronts, but the one lesson it never tires of driving home is that, when people meet each other face-to-face, as individuals, we seek common ground and understanding with much greater fervor than we do opportunities for conflict and strife.  In the face of language barriers and wildly disparate cultural expectations, we still often smile and laugh and gesture hopefully, if indecipherably, to express a need to find a train station, a willingness to help, or our universal distaste for airplane food.  While exacting and exalting extraordinarily high levels of dedication and achievement, The Olympic Games also embody—and highlight on the World Stage—a spirit of fellowship and equality that is otherwise too-often lacking as people consider their place in our world.

South African swimmer Chad Le Clos is a particularly colorful example of the kind of athlete that motivates Beau.

In a way that I never did—partly because he’s 6-foot-3, gorgeous, and cocky in a way that I never was—Beau sets out to see that his fantasies of world class sex with world class athletes become his reality.  After repeated attempts at more traditional athletic pursuits disappoint, he comes to find himself in his mother’s native Luxembourg, utterly smitten by suave, sexy Marcel, a three-time Olympian who can lay claim to two bronze shooting medals, and Beau’s last best chance at a crack at the Games—and their players.  What I knew about shooting before Beau and Marcel came along wouldn’t have sloshed out of a thimble, but writing this story gave me a new respect for the event.  Less physically rigorous than, say, swimming or gymnastics, it nevertheless requires the same level of concentration and degree of skill and dedication as other sports, something that Beau does not at first appreciate, but that Marcel will see to it that he understands.  Distracted by his mad passion for jocks and his complicated relationship with his coach, Beau doesn’t realize that in yearning just to qualify for a spot on an Olympic team—any team—with little hope of winning a medal or any acclaim, he exemplifies, if unwittingly, the spirit of the Games.  For as no less an authority than the Olympic Creed proclaims, “The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well.”   But when he fights too well with Marcel, will Beau still get to take part?  Or has he conquered his own chance at realizing his Olympic dream?

Want to know more about me and my forthcoming novel?  Visit misterstewardess.com or follow me on Twitter @MrStewardess.

My guest today is the amazing Sarah Madison! Not only is she a contributor to my Olympics anthology, in which she writes about two men who are passionate about Three-Day Eventing and each other, but she’s an accomplished equestrienne herself. Read on to find out why you don’t want to miss her story “Lightning in a Bottle.”

You know, not everyone has the ability to turn dreams into reality. Most of the time, no matter how badly we want something, it doesn’t materialize. Sometimes, we don’t have the resources, time, or the talent to achieve our dreams. Face it; if you want to be an Olympic gymnast and you’re built like a runway model, well, it’s not likely to happen.

But in truth, most of us give up. Once, one of my friends seriously pissed me off by telling me that I must not have wanted to be an actress badly enough because I gave up on the idea when I entered college. I’d been heavily involved in theater in high school, winning every award possible and performing in eleven plays in three years. It wasn’t a matter of not wanting it badly enough, I told her. I was being realistic. I was a big fish in an extremely small pond. I knew that high school talent didn’t translate to a career on the stage, and that I wasn’t pretty enough for Hollywood.

You must not have wanted it badly enough.

Those words burned within me. No, I insisted. I wanted it, very much so, but I was being smart. I knew I didn’t have what it took, that I wouldn’t have been able to deal with the constant rejection, an industry so weighted on appearances, the forever-scrabble between jobs to make ends meet. I put my dreams of being an actress behind me when I graduated, and I returned to my earlier interests of animals again. I worked very hard to achieve my new goals, and though the odds were stacked against me, I succeeded in getting my degree and entering my profession of choice.

But my thoughts kept coming back to my friend’s words.

I was one of those horse-mad girls as a child. Despite living in the suburbs with no access to a stable, I collected model horses, I watched every horse-related event on television, and I wallowed in the horse stories of my childhood. The Black Stallion. Summer Pony. Misty of Chincoteague. I wrote a highly popular serial (at least among my friends) starring young girls solving Nancy Drew-like mysteries out of a stable. My parents used to jokingly say that if they only got me a pony, they would never have to set an alarm clock for me again because on riding days, I was up when the first pink streaks of dawn painted the sky, doing my chores so I would be ready to go to the barn. I rode my bicycle five miles each way to get to the barn after school, where I earned rides in exchange for cleaning stalls. I caught rides when I could, sometimes going months without riding at all, while my friends took lessons weekly and showed their ponies on the weekends.

I finally realized that though my parents spoke frequently of buying a farm, getting me a horse, and settling down to raise German Shepherds, this was never going to happen. While in college, I bought my first horse for eighty-nine cents a pound, and got my first German Shepherd shortly afterward. I still have that first horse, by the way. He’s retired now. At twenty-seven, he’s having trouble keeping weight on and is gimpy with arthritis, but he will always and forever be my first horse.

I was once told by an instructor that I was a terrible rider and I had no business ever getting on a horse again. If I’d had enough confidence at the time, I would have told her that if she was any kind of instructor, she could teach even me. Instead, I took her words to heart, and for almost a year, I didn’t ride at all. Still, I couldn’t stay away, and found myself hanging around barns again.

I went to the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games specifically to watch the equestrian events in Conyers, GA. Sure, I knew I was never going to ride at that level. I knew with the demands of my profession, I couldn’t even compete extensively in the local circuit. It was enough for me to go to one or two events a year–and have my competition curse because I’d just threatened their chances of winning that day. When I heard that MLR Press was looking for stories for an Olympic themed anthology, my sport horse story practically wrote itself.

My sport horse horse was purposely bred for my sport of choice, eventing. It’s an intense sport often referred to as the triathlon of horse sports because of the three difficult phases: dressage, cross-country, and stadium (or ‘show’) jumping. Each phase requires very different skills and abilities to perform them. It is challenging to find a horse that can do all three well, even with diligent training.

I chose my mare’s parents. I was there every moment of her life, from conception to the time she first appeared on the ultrasound screen to the moment of her birth. She is the child I will never have. Though I have not been able to compete her as I’d hoped, I am still riding her, despite a severe car accident and long stretches of time off due to life events for both of us over which I had no control. I was told after the accident to give up riding; that I would never be able to do so pain-free and that I would make things worse for myself.

Screw that, I thought.

I continued to ride through pain that stabbed with every breath. Over time, the pain lessened, and eventually it became something I could manage. I rode even though I had no hope of every being any good at it. I rode when everyone told me to quit, when I couldn’t afford it, when people made fun of my meat-market horse. At the end of his final competition before his retirement, he was the reserve champion in his division that day, proving that sometimes, sheer hard work can beat out natural, but undisciplined, ability.

It occurred to me recently that I’ve had the same push-me pull-you relationship with writing. I wrote frequently as a child. I reveled in fanfic as a teenager. But somewhere along the way, I decided I needed to put aside the childish things of my youth, and writing was one of them. It was only as an adult, when I was introduced to some characters that I fell in love with, that the urge to write became irresistible again. The next thing I knew twenty years of repressed creativity came burgeoning out of me. I had no choice but to write. It would not leave me alone. If you’d asked me as a teenager if I wanted be a writer when I grew up, I would have said no because I wouldn’t have believed in myself enough to pursue that treasured goal. But deep down, that desire to be a writer lay dormant under a frost-covered field. It might have taken twenty years for spring to arrive, but it came in the end.

I realized the other day that my friend was right. If you give up on your dream, it’s because you didn’t want it badly enough. Because the want is not an active thing that you pursue. No, it’s the other way around. It’s a drive that compels you. You simply have no choice. You might take a long hiatus, pretend you’ve moved on, tell yourself that you’ve given up your foolish dreams, but if you cave in to the voice of self-doubt permanently, you really didn’t want it badly enough.

Sarah Madison is a veterinarian, a horsewoman, the owner of a large dog, and a writer of M/M romance. Her latest novella, Lightning in a Bottle, is part of the Olympic themed anthology, Going for Gold, to be released by MLR Press on August 31, 2012. She draws upon her lifelong love of horses and her competition history to tell this story of the dangerous and exciting equine sport of eventing. You can find her stories at SarahMadisonFiction.com

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