The Wine-Dark Sea
I am so pleased to announce that The Wine-Dark Sea,my new M/M Tale set in Paris, the city of love.
This has been an incredible odyssey for me since it was three years – almost to the day – that I sold my first book Phantom Lover to eXtasy Books and began my path to writing gay erotic romance novels.
I have worked hard, often late into the night on a daily basis and have been ecstatic to make so many friends online and in person through my stories – and theirs.
Last September, editor Kelli Collins tweeted me and asked if I would like to submit a book to Ellora’s Cave.
I almost fell over I was so ecstatic. We emailed back and forth a few times and she was so lovely.
That she found me at all is entirely due to romance author Nicole Morgan who urged Kelli to contact me.
I wanted to write something special for EC. To be honest, I was petrified. I’d written and had published about 50 books at that point, but this was EC!
I took my time, working on my story and it all fell into place. I was determined to submit the book before New Year’s Day 2010 and got it in to her on December 31.
Kelli told me it would take three to four weeks to read and I settled in for a long panic as I mulled over my story.
As with many of my books, parts of this are based on my actual experiences.
I dated a man much like Alain in this story and was stunned to reconnect with him long after we split and discovered he was undergoing gender reassignment, just like the character in the book.
Gender reassignment is a fascinating topic to me because I keep meeting more and more men and women who feel they were born in the wrong bodies.
My friend on whom Alain is based, is still not happy, even though now he is officially a woman, but that’s another story.
My main character, Daniel, is a man pretty much like me, who wants one true love. He does find it, after quite an adventure-filled search.
I was ecstatic when Kelli contacted me several weeks after I submitted my full-length novel to her. I was confident I had a good story but was overwhelmed when she said some of the things she wrote in her email. She has told me and many of her authors, her den, that EC has never published a book quite like this.
I hope it is a success for all of us.
I have found Kelli has challenged me love of ellipses, my spelling, my…everything. Sorry, I couldn’t resist an ellipses for old time’s sake.
What shocked me more than anything was how much she ‘got’ Daniel’s story and loved him, Francois and Daniel’s ultimate true love (who shall remain nameless since I don’t want to spoil the surprise), in spite of all their flaws.
She even wrote my book blurb, selected the excerpt. I trust her and my publisher at EC one-hundred percent. I am a multi-published author who still has so much to learn and I thank Goddess Pele for introducing me to Kelli Collins, Jaid Black, Raelene Gorlinsky, Nicole Morgan…and to the woman who inspired Alain.
I love you all.
For more info on The Wine-Dark Sea, please click this link:
http://tinyurl.com/28lyvsh
Aloha oe,
A.J.
