Cinco de Mayo and another free book for joining #newsletter this month #newslettersignup #freebook #queerscifi #LGBTQ+

For the month of May, Coil Me Up is part of the freebie giveaway if you sign up for Queer Sci Fi’s Newsletter. They are all speculative fiction, fantasy, paranormal, science fiction, and the like.

Coil Me Up is the the second story I wrote, about a year after Charon’s Dilemma, for the M/M Romance Goodreads group. Thank you to the group for having the platform for the story prompts then and now, and to Aden, who unfortunately no longer writes, for the assist with this story. I was struggling to finish it on time for publishing in the group and they jumped in when I needed the help. It was a lot of fun and I hope that I can collaborate with them again in the future.

It’s been almost 10 years for this story and I’m looking forward to revisiting it and the universe. Perhaps I will finish a sequel. I do like mythology, especially of the Greek and Roman kind, and had started an outline for a second book, with notes for a possible trilogy or continuation of a series. I hadn’t quite gotten that far in the planning/thinking, but you’ll see what I mean when you read it. If you like it and want to see more, feel free to let me know here, in email, or on the various social media platforms.

For the M/M Romance Goodreads group, maybe I will look at the group posts again and see if there are other story prompts to inspire. I’m still a member but it has been many years since I’ve read anything there, nor selected a prompt to create. We’ll see how it goes. I did get my website in order so who knows, perhaps this is the year I put a few more stories out.

~Eloreen

Welcome new blog subscribers from Queer Sci Fi’s March 2024 Sign up #newslettersignup #newsletteronly #blogpost

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It’s almost the end of April and another free book for joining #newsletter #newslettersignup #freebook #queeromanceink #LGBTQ+ #epilogue

This month, I have Together as part of the freebie giveaway if you sign up for QueeRomance Ink’s Newsletter. These stories are more towards romance with MM characters and Gay literature.

Together is the first story I wrote and published with Amazon and was part of a people of color charity anthology back in 2017-2018 originally called Beautiful Skin. I was proud to be a part of it because stories about people of color, or written by people of color, are beautiful and make the work richer. The anthology is out of print now, but the story is still available. A couple of years later, I wrote a flash fiction ficlit, an epilogue of sorts, as part of a blog tour I did August 2020. Thank you again to Sharita for the idea so many years ago. You will need to read Together in order to enjoy the vignette below.

While re-reading it for this post, I did a little more editing on it so it would flow a bit better. This is version two of the teaser that hasn’t been published before. -wink- Eventually, I will re-release Together with the epilogue. Perhaps I can get my act together this year. 🙂

~Eloreen

Saturday Night Date Night

Victor

It was Saturday morning and my turn to pick what we were going to do for our date night tonight. I thought making plans for two people for semi-regular dates was nail-biting. Try planning a date for three people regularly. We all have such different tastes and personalities that it can be a challenge. Luckily, we took turns choosing. If I had to do this every time, I’d go crazy and probably flail.

“Whatcha doing?” Enrique Cruz, my little writer said faintly but rapidly getting closer, startling me slightly. I quickly closed out of the browser I was looking at so he wouldn’t find out my plans and ruin the surprise. I had set things up to do this thing a few weeks ago with my best friend and business partner, Angela Carter, since I was neck deep on some major software updates that we’d rolled out for our mobile game we had first released a couple years ago. This Saturday night date night was special and too important to not have help. It was the one-year anniversary of myself, Enrique, and our other partner, Miguel Armenta, finally getting together as committed partners to each other. If the three of us could legally marry, I would have popped the question a while ago.

When he got close enough, I turned around in my chair and quickly pulled him into my arms and lap for a quick peck on the lips as a distraction. Except, it wasn’t quick. At all. He deepened it and claimed my mouth like it was going to disappear. Silly man. I wasn’t going anywhere.

Someone moaned. Might have been me. Then I felt another set of hands sliding down my naked chest as I had just gotten up from our bed earlier and didn’t bother to put a shirt on to finish the plans.

I gasped a mumbled explicative as my senses fired up when Miguel’s hands found my nipples and started rubbing them just like I like them. Something was nagging at me though. Something important.

Suddenly, I wrenched my now swollen lips away from En’s assault and placed my hands on El’s to stop his movement. I panted a little while I waited for my brain cells to get online and thing again. Fuck, we didn’t have time for round two.

“Stop.”

They tensed, stilling instantly.

“Sorry, nothing’s wrong, loves.” I kissed En first to reassure and then turned my chair, vaguely noticing that at some point the screensaver had kicked in and my chair was sideways. Someone must have moved me to get to me, the little minx.

“Mornin’,” I gave El a kiss on his impish lips to reassure him as well. They both relaxed and then I had a double lap full of my men. Good thing I had splurged for a high-weight computer chair.

“I’m sorry, my dears,” I started after they settled. “While I would love to go back to bed, we need to get ready for tonight’s date.”

Miguel glanced at the clock on the screensaver. “It’s only 11 am.” He turned back to me, confusion in his blue eyes. Then they cleared and narrowed. “What did you plan?” He stood up to get a better look at my facial expressions.

I was so close. I really couldn’t hide anything from El. Both of them really, but especially El with his sharp litigator mind. It’s why I had Angela make the arrangements in the first place. I was about to see the details of said plan when En came into the room.

“Nothing,” I said innocently. Not really, and it wasn’t working for either of them if their disbelieving expression where anything to go by.

“Uh, huh,” En said flatly, and stood up too. Yeah, that didn’t work either. En was a sharp observer too. They put their crossed arms on their equally naked chests nearly at the same time. That was hot.

I broke down. “Ok, there is something going on with tonight’s date night, but I actually don’t know what the details are yet.” I looked at them sheepishly. Out of habit when I got embarrassed about something, I looked down pulling my dreads forward and tried to hide behind them.

“Look at me,” El said with love and reassurance in his voice. I felt his hand gently lift my chin so I would look at him. When our eyes met, he continued. “I love you. You know we will love anything you have planned for us.”

“Yes, but I wanted it to be a surprise,” I sighed. “It’s why I had Ang make all the arrangements with my contingencies in case there was something on my initial list that wouldn’t work.” I had several options and back up plans to keep this particular date a surprise that I had to keep myself in the dark too.

En interjected, “You are fine, honey. I love you, too.” He put his hand on my neck and his forehead to mine. I closed my eyes content as they both returned to my arms and lap.

Speaking of lap, we needed to get moving if we were going to get started on this afternoon’s activities. “Let me up,” I said as I gently pushed them to their feet.

“There’s stuff starting in an hour or two and we are ending at The Melting Pot downtown.” I said the last thing absently missing the expressions on my men’s understanding faces as I went back to the computer.

“Fuck me, he’s proposing,” En blurted out at the same time El sucked in a breath shocked.

I paused from logging in. Damn, they really did know me well.

New Kindle Together #promotion and #newsletter, #writing, and #socialmedia updates

Apologies everyone who was a newsletter subscriber and it stopped and faded away fall of 2022. I just found the emails that Mailchimp had sent then that they deleted my account when it went inactive for 24 months. Oops!

Partial view of two Dell monitors with text and images on them  on a white desk with a coffee mug in the middle below them, a black pen and mousepad with a partial picture of a mouse, and what looks like an Apple keyboard below the coffee mug and papers to the left with scribble notes
Photo by Picography on Pexels.com

I’m working on recreating my newsletter with Mailchimp and re-adding what I had before. I believe I’ve relinked my Mailchimp account so my blog should post to it again. Not that I have any subscribers anymore. Oh well. Such is life.

Mailchimp changed a bit so I’m trying to figure out what I should do. Being out of pocket in writing and online presence in general for the last four years is tough. Covid fog is a thing. I’m slowly coming out of my self-induced online isolation as I slowly come out of the offline one. I’m an introvert (most everyone who knows me in person will know this) and so not being social is the norm most of the time. I do like to see people on occasion, and I live in a polyamorous household, but I do have to retreat to my bedroom to recover from socializing. I’m hoping that I have enough spoons to see this through.

If you are one of those that would like to be back on the newsletter, feel free to email me and I can add you again. I believe I have a signup form back on my blog but it might be pretty bare bones as I get everything setup in the next week or two. As always, if you do signup up and want to opt-out later, feel free to do so. Previously, I provided a free copy of one of my earlier works for signing up called Charon’s Dilemma via the automation of Mailchimp but I don’t quite have that updated yet. If you would like it, sign up for my newsletter and let me know to send it to you and I’ll manually send it in whichever format you prefer. I have EPUB, MOBI, and PDF. If you are like me and like all formats, I can send that too. 😀

Stay tuned to the blog and I will follow up as things progress.

Top-down look at a white coffee mug with coffee in the center, a Kindle tilted 45 degrees to the bottom right with a red and green small-leaf succulent and a larger large-leaf succulent immediately to the right and above the Kindle on a white background.
Photo by Adrienne Andersen on Pexels.com

To celebrate getting back into things with writing and online presence, I’m running a book promotion for the US Independence Day (July 4th) weekend July 1st through 5th since the 4th is on a Tuesday for my eBook of Together on Amazon.com worldwide where you can purchase it for free. It’s on Kindle Unlimited as well but I thought I would see if others who don’t have Kindle Unlimited would like it too. If you would like the book, please purchase during this time and consider doing a review on Goodreads and/or Amazon and sharing on social media. I’m most everywhere even if I’m not active on the platform specifically currently. I’m trying to get back into the social media game. 🙂

Along those lines, I will potentially do a second version of the book to include the short story I wrote for a blog tour I did for Together as an epilogue a few years ago. Some of the people who had read it before then wanted more about my characters. I appreciate my readers especially those who give me feedback as well. Really, Really, please let me know how you like it especially if this is the first time you have read anything of mine. If there was something you didn’t like, or formatting issues, let me know directly with feedback from here or directly to my email that’s posted on my About Eloreen Moon page. I’m still pondering and may look into do some editing of both before publishing them together for the first time. It may or may not have a new cover (I really like my cover) but refreshing covers is something that is done in this industry. I will have to see after I do edits and figure out costs for all of it.

Drawing of lightbulb on yellow Post It note pinned with a red thumbtack to a background of a corkboard.
Photo by AbsolutVision on Unsplash

For those that want more writings from me, I do have flash fiction published in a few anthologies (details in About Eloreen Moon page here and Goodreads.com) on topics across all LGBTQ+ and genres. I’m working on a few new projects and will probably edit and re-publish other writings I did in the beginning, including Charon’s Dilemma and Coil Me Up. It’s one of those things that I will start somewhere one word at a time. It’s a little daunting being out of the loop for so long and starting up again. It’s almost like starting over but different. -wry smile-

Speaking of Coil Me Up, I talked with Adan recently and she’s given permission to re-edit and re-publish it fully under me again. She had helped me with writing a few chapters to get it finished for the the contest that inspired the story when it was originally published in October 2015 and hasn’t had motivation to write for quite awhile. I hope that we get to collaborate on something new as it was a lot of fun working with her. It is about snake shifters and if that’s not your thing, feel free to pass it up.

I think I will close with a picture of my favorite flower that’s about to bloom this year: Oriental Stargazer Lilies. I used to have Starfighters but I think they died out several years ago and these have been going strong for at least 4-5 years now. I’m not 100% sure but I think the ground-cover plant below them are baby strawberries from another pot elsewhere on the porch…

Valentine’s Day Book Fair! #Giveaway #Amazon #Romance

 

So, I joined a Valentine’s Day Book Fair and to celebrate, I’ve changed the pricing for Together on Amazon. It’s now $1.99! It’s on Kindle Unlimited but I’m thinking to take it off when it expires and publishing on other retailers. Stay tuned though, I will be creating a print version for those that like to have the physical book in your hand. Click on the link in the picture above to sign up for a chance for two Amazon Gift Cards.

In other news, I was part of the #FreeBookFriday at #RLFblog on 2/1 (Charon’s Dilemma) and 1/25 (Together). If you sign up for my newsletter, you can get Charon’s Dilemma for free. Click here if you would like to sign up. If you don’t get an email to get your free copy of Charon’s Dilemma from Prolific Works (formerly known as instaFreebie), contact me.

The Day Job (TM) is kicking my butt. So, I haven’t been posting, writing, or on social media much for the last month. I hope that will change soon. I plan on writing more and getting more stories out. We’ll see how that goes. GRL 2019 is coming up for registration in a couple of weeks. I’m going to attempt to sign up as a reader because I still do not have the minimum requirement for Supporting Author. I plan to have that this year, but not in time for GRL possibly. We’ll see.

I have a few collaborations, the paranormal POC anthology, and reediting Charon’s Dilemma with maybe a sequel to it I want to write this year. I’m not sure I’ll get to all of it, but I’m going to try. Perhaps I will get another new story from my WIPs completed too. That would be nice. One of them is a MM romance retelling of Grimms Cat-Skin. I just need to have the time to finish it.

With the advent of my print version of Together, I did a poll contest in my Moon’s Mob groups on Facebook and the naughtier version on MeWe. If you would like to join my group, sign up at the links below.

Facebook Moon’s Mob | MeWe Moon’s Mob

I plan to send Newsletter only information for my subscribers sometime soon. Probably will include a free copy of the print version of Together once I release it. It will be a Newsletter only contest so you will need to subscribe for a chance to win. More information will be sent when I get there.

Since text converted emojis from my blog do weird things to my newsletter, I’m going to try to avoid them. We’ll see how this goes. I’m going to have to get better at finding clip art. *smile*

And on a purely random note, how about a kitty picture with two of the 11 (yes, 11) cats that live in my house at the moment. This is Buster on the left (she’s one of two girls) and I think that’s Espurr on the right. They belong to my daughters. They are doing a good job being a ying-yang symbol. Ignore the power wire they are under…

Eloreen

General election today #Vote #GeorgiaVote #musings

I voted. Polls close at 7 pm EDT.

I am working on a #NaNoWriMo18 #LGBTQwrimo #NaNoLanta story. I’ll update on the next day or two. All the things.

I do have a question: Would you like to see a newsletter on your inbox of future releases, ARCs, and a freebie story? If so, comment here. I’m looking into setting one up monthly, possibly as frequent as weekly.