Illustrating ElvenSword, DemonThrong and AngelFire

I saw this image in my Twitter feed by artist William Kenney.  I liked it so much I asked him whether he'd like to illustrate my Tapestry of Life trilogy when it's published.  And he said he might do it.

Now I just have to get my trilogy published!  I've written nearly 60,000 words of AngelFire, the third volume in the trilogy. I'm about halfway through.  I had hopes that I would have finished it by now, but I've had a few spells of writer's block.  I'm working on it again now.  And I have completely revised and rewritten DemonThrong and ElvenSword, so they're ready to go as soon as AngelFire is finished.

You can follow William on Twitter, here, and on Instagram, here.

Chapter 13 of ElvenSword

I've just uploaded chapter 13 of ElvenSword to my website.  You can read it here.

ElvenSword Chapter 12

Capture and betrayal and .... love.

Read it here.

The strangers who have babies together

A fascinating look by the BBC at "platonic parenting".

In 2014, Charly Bourne, a then 43-year-old nurse living with his husband in Philadelphia in the US, started to think seriously about having kids. At first, he considered adoption. But after hearing about ‘platonic parenting’ from a colleague, he decided to set up a profile on Modamily, a website that helps connect people who want to start a family. As traditional notions of family get redefined, people like Charly are choosing to raise children as platonic partners.

See the video here.

Over the last few decades, the constraining straitjackets of gender identity have been progressively loosened.  First came the pill, then came easier divorce, then gay rights, then gay marriage.  Step-by-step the old identities and relationships, which seemed immutable, have shifted and changed.

In my writings, I have bisexual men who love both their women and their men, and at some point, I'm going to have to think how they will parent children, and how it will all work.  But all I know is that things will be different.  Just how, I don't know.  I have talked about this broad topic before, here and here.  And in ElvenSword, DemonThrong and AngelFire, I specifically created a society where these relationships are more complicated and subtler than the heterosexual marriage that the ChrisTaliban insist is the only way.

The Sword, again

The next chapter of ElvenSword.

Wizard!

ElvenSword, chapter 10.

In which Fluin is accepted into the convocation of white wizards, living and dead.

ElvenSword, chapter 9

In which Fluin starts his training as a wizard, but nevertheless worries about his future.

Read it here.

ElvenSword, chapter 8

Art by Kirasanta 

I've just uploaded another chapter, here.

Enjoy.

ElvenSword chapter 6

Revelations.

In which our two heroes get to know each other better.  Fluin is attracted to Steppan, but also to the Khedha of Carnia's daughter and heir, while Steppan, who has never loved a man, finds himself bonding deeply to Fluin.

ElvenSword

I've started posting the rewritten version of my novel, here.  It's a story about a world where bisexuality is normal, where women have the leading roles in society, where omnia vincit amor ( loves conquers all) and where the fight against evil is as vital as it is in our world.

I'll be posting a new chapter every week.

My main character, Fluin, looks like this.

My Writing

Source

I've been writing a lot over the last couple of weeks, although I haven't yet achieved my target of 1000 words a day, which equals 3 novels a year of  roughly 120,000 words each.  Although I have high hopes of reaching that target soon, as I settle down to retirement.  Even what I have written does mean that I have been able to post a new Majorca Flats episode almost every day.  It's gratifying to see my readers returning.  You've been very patient.  Thank you.

I've almost reached the end of Majorca Flats.  Perhaps another 20 episodes, and then we will have the climax that I've been planning since quite early on.  Not that there aren't several strands to the story--my characters insisted--but this was an important thread.  A gay serial killer, driven to his crimes by internalised homophobia and rape as a boy, entering, and never really leaving the lives of my people.  I wanted to write a story where even those who suffered most from life have hope and find someone to love.  And I wanted it to be convincing.  Happy-ever-after stories need to have the angst and sorrow and suffering but they also need to have convincing pathways out of these situations.  I don't know whether I've done that.  I suspect I will change a lot when I rewrite it.

It will be very strange finishing the tale of these friends and their families in and around a late 19th century Melbourne Victorian Terrace.  When I write, the characters in my novel become my friends, my acquaintances.  I know them.  They tell me in no uncertain terms, no, I'd never do that, or are you crazy? or c'mon, give me a break!  So I shall miss them.

I might go back to do a second volume, but not yet.  I have so many other stories, some requiring rewriting and some requiring just writing--the first draft isn't even done!  I think I will start with ElvenSword.  That was the first novel I wrote, and they say you should write your first novel and then throw it away, because it's with your first novel that you learn the basics of your craft.  I didn't throw it away and perhaps I should have.  Anyway, it needs intensive rewriting, more than any other of my novels.

Here is a list of my novels, some completed, some unfinished, and some needing rewriting:

ElvenSword
DemonThrong
AngelFire
I Get No Kick From Champagne
Footy
Zing Went The Strings Of My Heart
Majorca Flats
The Music Of Love
Dragon's Gift

Nine altogether.  I had no idea I'd written so much, even without counting the short stories.

As I redo each chapter of ElvenSword and DemonThrong, and as I finish AngelFire, I will post the new or rewritten chapter to my website (the WordPress one).  I'll let y'all know here on this blog, and on my website, and on my groups when I do post a new chapter.

One thing I've worried about is whether I have too much sex in my stories.  To be honest, sex scenes are hard to write, at least for me. The pathway between being turned on and finding it silly or risible or just dull is narrow.  However,  sex is a central part of our lives.  Not writing about it is to accept the religious narrative that it is somehow wrong or dirty, and it most emphatically is not.  It's OK to write about murder (Dorothy Sayers or Agatha Christie or Ngaio Marsh, for example) but not about sex.  Yet we all have sex, often (well I hope we all do!) but none of us has murdered any one.  Sex and sexual attraction is a central part of our lives.

I knew that my sex scenes, especially the gay ones or threesomes would consign my books to one small shelf in the bookshop, even the virtual one, but I felt it would go against my principles not to write them.  Yet recently I read C S Pacat's trilogy--Captive Prince, Prince Rising, King's Gambit--which received rave reviews and were satisfying reads.  The sex in this trilogy is explicit and gay, and she's been published by Penguin, no less.  She's also a Melbourne writer like me.  So I've decided that my sex scenes will be fine.  Things have changed a lot since I began writing, fourteen or fifteen years ago.  The little niche I inhabited hasn't quite expanded to a cavern.  But it's surely bigger than it was.  Even so, I shall probably write less explicit sex scenes in future if only because they take much longer than anything else.

Anyway: there you are.  I'm writing, and I will be writing more.  Thank you all for being so patient over the last five years.

Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn

ElvenSword, chapter 18

Fluin just grinned at him.  Steppan was friend and brother and lover all rolled up into one.  He felt happy, despite the fix they were in.

That night, as they lay in bed together, Fluin clung to Steppan like a long-lost brother, and Steppan was glad of it.  He could feel the tickle of Flu’s breath on his shoulder, and the soft thud of his heart, as if they were twins in the womb together.  The blood-bond lay coiled between them like a safety rope, secure and comforting.  As they approached an unknown fate at the hands of the king, they drew what comfort they could from each other.  The presence of their guards, sleeping on the floor, did not concern them one jot.

You can read the rest here. 

[The pic comes via the website of another Ozzie m/m author, Meredith Shayne] 

ElvenSword Chapter 17

I've just uploaded it here.

Here's one of my drawings to go with it.

ElvenSword chapter 13

They laughed, relief that they could laugh making the laughter louder than it would have been.  Steppan looked at Fluin, his eyes alight with love and desire.  Fluin’s eyes reflected his, like stars on a summer evening.  For a moment, Fluin forgot the throb of his broken fingers and the lump on his head—and the pain in his heart of his betrayal of Steppan.

That night they made love again.  Already, as is the way, it seemed utterly right and meet, this congress of bodies and souls.

You can read the rest here

ElvenSword chapter 12

“I have tortured people.”  The body on the bed stiffened.  “Yes.  It’s a shameful confession.  I did it because I had to have the information, and there was no time to get it any other way.  Some nights I wake up sweating for what I’ve done.”

“What do you want me to do?  Forgive you?  I forgive you.  Now go away!”  Fluin was angry and bitter.

“No-one can absolve me,” said Steppan sadly.  “It’s something I had to do.  And I did it.  It’s too late, now, to go back.  What I wanted to say, was, that to torture is much worse than letting slip some secret.  Much, much worse.”

“Betrayal, you mean!” said Fluin in a hard voice.

Steppan shook his head.  “You didn’t do it for money or prestige or influence.  Or even love.”  He wasn’t sure of the last in that list.  He had been with Fluin while it happened.  “You did it because you were tortured.  It’s not your fault.”

“I should have been strong enough to withstand him.”

“He would have gone on, breaking finger after finger, and then hands, and arms, and finally your face, if you hadn’t told him.  I know.  I’ve done it.”

Fluin was looking at him, his face like stone, the grey gone from his eyes, which were now a radiant demonic black.  “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because my .... because the wrongs I have done are infinitely greater than anything you have done.  Because I forgive you a hundred times over.  Because you might be—you will be— Panthron one day, and I want back the man I met, one who’s forgiven himself, and may perhaps one day forgive me.”

“That man will never come back.”  Fluin’s voice was bleak, bitter.

“No.  Maybe not.  But there are many paths forward, and I want you to choose the right one, the one that fits you, the most honourable and the best and the most innocent, not the darker path of self-hatred, the bleak country where love is absent.  Forgive yourself, I beg you, even if you never forgive me.”

“Why does it matter to you?”

“Need you ask?”

“Answer, anyway.”

“We are blood-brothers.  You are my friend, my brathion.  In this house are the three people in the whole of the Goddess’s creation who matter to me.  I can’t afford to lose you.  And I’m not going to give up.  I’ll keep on at you until you agree.”

Fluin gave him a shadow smile, the first since the morning.  “Go away, big brother,” he said lightly.  As Steppan was going out the door, Fluin said, “Oh, by the way ...”  Steppan paused, with his hand on the doorway, and looked inquiringly over his shoulder.  “ .... I love you, too, darsha bratha[1].  I love you too.”

Steppan stared at Fluin for a moment or two, then he came back into the room and closed the door.  He knew what he had to do.  He knew, too, that it was what he wanted.

---

[1]           Big brother

You can read more here.

Elvensword, chapter 11

Revised, rewritten and (finally) re-uploaded, here.

Silently, Fluin passed the sword to Harith, for his inspection.

“Beautifully balanced,” was his laconic comment. 

“What must we do with it?” asked Steppan, turning to Fluin, “It’s yours, now.”

“Mine?” said Fluin, sharply, suddenly concerned, “I don’t want it!  I don’t want to be king!”  He thought of how he’d been the happiest since he could remember over the last few days.  He thought about his new-found powers, of the simple pleasures of singing and meditation and magic—and love.  He didn’t want to wear a crown.  He didn’t want to be alone again, and somehow he knew that a king is always truly alone, unable to uncover his true friends out of the entourage of hypocrites and sycophants.

“I don’t want it!” he repeated, “I’m not the bearer!”  He was angered by his sense that he was wrong to avoid his duty, that he truly had no choice, if the empire was to be spared disaster.

Lthon?

Actually, his name is Marlon Teixeira.  But I imagine Lthon from ElvenSword to be this beautiful, with dark eyes and dark curly hair and a slim dancer's body.

Pics from Hunk du Jour.

I'm working on Wilde Oats

I'm working on Wilde Oats and I'm pretty busy.  So for the next coupla days, you're prolly not going to see anything substantial from me.

Meanwhile, I thought you'd like some eye candy.

Normal programming will be resumed in a day or two, and I'll be posting then new chapters of Footy, ElvenSword and I Get No Kick From Champagne, as well as new episodes in the ongoing drama of the boyz and girlz  from  Majorca Flats.

New chapters for ElvenSword

See more great images by aneley here.

ElvenSword 5, 6 and 7 have been uploaded to my website.


Chapter 5 -- On the road
Chapter 6 -- Release
Chapter 7 -- The Sword of Fanuiloth

An obscure figure, veiled as if by magical mists and vapours, a feregni in full battle dress, leather armour and silver greaves, approached the altar, from the doorway. His helm was silver, chased with gold and copper scrolls and curvetting lines, and he wore a sword, which was sheathed in a scabbard, beautiful to behold, decorated with runes and a crest. His cloak was decorated with amethysts sewn into the folds, and turquoise opals, and he wore an apple-jade brooch. He turned to look at them, and with a shock, Steppan thought he recognised Fluin. But, muddled though he was in this dream, he knew that Fluin was asleep next to him. Then he realised that the man merely had the look of Fluin about him, with golden shoulder-length hair, streaked with grey, tied back in a warrior’s queue, and blue eyes. There was something else, though, a way of carrying himself that was very reminiscent of Fluin, a quiet confidence and grace. He became aware that in this dreamscape, Fluin stood next to him, as awed as he.

Looking all the time at the two of them, the feregni drew his sword from the scabbard. The sword was even more beautiful than the scabbard, its blade shimmering with power. The figure turned back to the altar, and placed the sword upright against the north-facing central column. He knelt in front of the altar, and said a short prayer. Steppan felt the buzz of future-change, and the beginnings of a vision-headache. The figure bowed to the altar, and looked at them again, with those farseeing, penetrating blue eyes, and nodded, as if satisfied with what he had engineered. Then he abruptly vanished.