I've got some rights back

As of today, Forest of Fenris and How About a Boyfriend? are no longer for sale. Out of print. This means I've got the rights back to them, and... now what? They're old stories, written way back in 2011 and 2012. I dread opening the documents to read through both stories! 

But I shall. Once my work-weekend is over. I want to republish them myself, so I have to see if they're good as they are or if I need to change stuff or rewrite them all together. 

I do have plans for Forest of Fenris. I want to rewrite it The Huntress too, as well as Desert Fire. But I have to wait till I get my rights back to Desert Fire first... So, until then, I thought perhaps I should just republish it as it is. Once I've got all the rights back I'll pull them all and redo them, then republish them again. 

and change a pen name, because I want that story to be meant for a younger audience. That goes for

As for Boyfriend?... I'm considering rewriting it into first person POV, but we'll see what I feel after I've read through it. Maybe it's good as it is. I don't know. I haven't so much as glanced at that story since it was published. 

It's very exciting, though, to get he rights back! Now I can make my own covers. I now have full control and can do whatever I please with them. Exciting, indeed! 

Free read: A Day In the Forest

As mentioned in my last post, I'll be posting a couple oneshots that has so far only been shared on my livejournal. This one I wrote for holidaysmut last summer; I cannot really believe it's been that long. It features two minor characters from my first published story, Forest of Fenris. This is, as might be obvious from the challenge I wrote it for, one long smut scene. Definitely NC-17.

Tord gets quite the pleasant surprise while going through his drills.

A Day In the Forest

There was no warning.

One moment, Tord was going through his drills in his usual, small clearing, the next he found himself on his back, tree roots twisting around his arms and legs, keeping him perfectly trapped. Leaves that were twisted together came down to cover his eyes so that he could see nothing.

He was lucky he had cleared the clearing off all but the soft grass, else he wouldn't be nearly as comfortable as he was right now. Or as comfortable as he could be when he was pinned down by trees.

"Lor, what are you doing?" Tord spoke up, knowing it could be no other than Lorcan doing this to him. No one else had the kind of magic that Lorcan had, or the complete control to pull off this stunt.

Soft laughter reached his ears, then a familiar weight settled atop him, startling a quiet gasp from him.

"I am playing." Lorcan's lips chased across Tord's cheek, down his jaw, over the other cheek, then finally settled on his lips. Tord kissed him back, going with whatever it was Lorcan had planned for the day. He wouldn't get out of it before it was done, so it was always best to just let Lorcan have his way.

Hands ran down his chest and started pulling his shirt up, until it was bunched against his arm pits and his torso bared to the warm summer afternoon. Lorcan used his nails when running his hands up Tord's chest again, then flicked his nipples, causing Tord to groan. He loved it when Lorcan tortured him like this, relishing in the feeling in-between pain and passion.

Lorcan bent down, his long hair tickling Tord's sides, but when Lorcan's mouth closed over his nipple, the tickling was quickly forgotten. Lorcan sucked hard and Tord knew he would have a mark there whenever he was allowed to see again. His other nipple was thoroughly sucked too, and Tord bucked his torso up, wanting more.

"Calm down, lover," Lorcan chuckled, pressing his chest back down to the ground. "You just lay quiet and enjoy."

"What brought this on?" Tord asked, his voice strained.

"It has been a while," Lorcan replied in a whisper as his fingers moved down to Tord's pants, pulling them down over his hips. "You are such an amazing man, Tord. I just want you to feel good, without you having to redo the favor. This is all for you, who have stood by me through it all. I cannot ask for a better man." Lorcan punctuated it with a hard, hot and deep kiss, his tongue rubbing against Tord's.

He broke the kiss as soon as he started it though, but what happened next was just as amazing as kissing the witch. Lorcan's mouth engulfed his cock, and Tord moaned loudly, not able to help himself. It had been awhile since Lorcan had done this to him--lately it had only been Tord sucking Lor off, before fucking him.

Tord felt his release begin to rise, but Lorcan knew Tord's body perhaps better than Tord himself, and he pulled off. Tord breathed heavily, wanting nothing than to have Lorcan's mouth back, but he knew it was futile begging for it. Lorcan did everything his own way, even when they had sex.

The sound of clothes rustling reached him, and he licked his dry lips. Lorcan sat down atop him again, his bare skin warm against Tord's own. His hips moved, rubbing their cocks together sensually. Tord had a hard time breathing. No matter how many years they'd been together, how many times they'd been intimate during those years, he never stopped desiring Lorcan like this, like he had their very first time together. The passion never faded--and it never would. They were bound body, heart and soul.

Lorcan's hips stopped and he rose up a bit, only to slowly lower himself down on Tord's hard, leaking cock. Their moans mingled in the quiet forest, nothing else could be heard but their bodies joining together.

"Lor, let me see you," Tord groaned, "let me touch you ..."

Lorcan didn't reply, just kept riding Tord's cock, his pace going faster and faster in time with his breathing. Tord was resigning himself to being completely immovable when the roots retracted, leaving him free. The leaves fell away from his eyes and he blinked against the light.

His eyes soon fell on Lorcan, so slender and beautiful where he sat atop him. His black hair fell loose down his back, some of it falling over his shoulder, hiding his pert, pink nipples from view.

Tord had to catch his breath. He reached out, gripping Lorcan's hips, wanting to feel his lover's skin. A fine sheet of sweat covered them both, a testiment to their activities. Tord started bucking his hips up in time with Lorcan pushing down, gaining a perfect rhythm.

Lorcan's eyes closed and he was biting his lip, a testament to how close he was to release. Tord swallowed the lump stuck in his throat, then surged up to kiss Lor passionately, wanting them to be joined in every way possible when they released. His arms wrapped around Lorcan's torso and Lor's hands came up to slide around his shoulders, gripping him tightly.

Lorcan's speed faltered, became erratic, and he spurted his release over Tord's abdomen, his seed warm and sticky. Lorcan's release caused him to clench around Tord's cock, and Tord gave himself over, releasing his own seed into Lorcan's body. When he was spent and empty, he fell back to the soft, grassy ground, Lorcan falling with him as they had not let each other go.

Tord moved one hand down to cup Lorcan's bum, kneading lightly. Lorcan's head rested in the spot where Tord's neck met his shoulder, his breathing hot against Tord's skin.

"That ..." Tord tried forming words for what he felt at this exact moment. "... was amazing." He simply could not come up with anything more original than that. Not at this moment, right after such mind-numbing sex and with Lorcan pressed down atop him.

"It always is between us." Lorcan pressed a soft kiss to Tord's neck, obviously to lazy at the moment to do more than that. "It always is."

And Tord wrapped his arms tighter around him, knowing that this particular witch would forever be his.

end.

Fantasy Maps

When it comes to fantasy stories, I quite enjoy making maps of my worlds. I made maps for my Legend & Lore series, posted both on live journal and deviantART, and I made a map for my Thralldom series, which hasn't been written yet. 

I also hand-drew a map of the village Mist On the Moor takes place in, which you can see to the left here. It is a tiny village and the setting of the whole book. 

I love maps in any form; hand drawn, photoshopped, landscape maps. I love to see how authors picture their world, how they've set it up, what they've done with it, how much more they have to play with in it. 

This map for MOtM is a sketch. I will draw it bigger, not on a page in a notebook, and color it. I quite like it hand-drawn. When it comes to world maps, I like to make them in photoshop with my pen and tablet. 

For the Legend & Lore and Thralldom maps I only drew the outline and roads and rivers with the tablet, and used some brushes I downloaded for trees and city marks. When I do the world map for MOtM, I will try to draw it all myself. I quite like the way I did trees in this sketch, it's better than using a single drawing of a tree, I think. What I'm going to be struggling with though is the mountains. I'm never ever happy with the mountains. 

Usually, in famous fantasy mass-market books the maps are in one of the first pages of the books. That's cool to show it off like that before the story actually starts. What I thought was brilliant though, was the covers for Megan Derr's The Lost Gods series. The maps are a part of the cover and I simply LOVED all of those five covers. It gives me an insight to where the borders between the countries lies, what form the country has and the mountain chains. 

These things interest me, and I squee in delight when an author has a map of his or her fantasy world. I squee in delight as I make my own maps. I don't know if anybody else cares about maps, but I do. I love making them too, and if I read a fantasy story without a map, I have this urge to make one. I have never actually done it, because I really have no idea about the surrounding land, but I sure want to sometimes! 

Do you, as a reader, like to see maps of the fantasy world you read about? Do you, as an author, enjoy drawing maps of your world or commission someone to do it? 

Thursday Trivia: Desert Fire

For those of you who have read Desert Fire, the sequel to my first published story Forest of Fenris; I have some trivia to share. When Brand started to nag me for his own story halfway through FoF, he told me his hero would be Kamoor.

Fine, I said. It's your life. Have it your way. 

But as I started writing the story Khatlah happened. They decided they'd be a threesome. I'd never done a threesome before, but if they wanted to be together, then who was I to stop them?

Kamoor was kind of a jerk through the whole story. Brand didn't much care for him. They just wouldn't come together. So when I was starting in on the end of the story they promptly told me that this wasn't working. 

No shit, I said. Like I didn't already know that. 

So the story was back to being a twosome. Not between Brand and Kamoor, as was first planned. But between Brand and Khatlah, the character I didn't see coming until he entered that dungeon.

Legend & Lore

Forest of Fenris was the first fantasy story I ever wrote -- and the first story I had published. It all started with a prompt, then a second prompt, and a third, and soon I had the whole story in my head. I was pretty damn pleased with the story, if I do say so myself. I managed to actually finish a story -- a fantasy story even! -- and have it published.

Now, it's been out since September and I've read some feedback on it. Most people agree that the story ended too soon; in a WTF kind of way. I don't know ... maybe it did? That's where it wanted to end when I wrote it. 

If I were to write it over again ... I would've done things a little different. Would've delved deeper into it and prolonged it. As for the ending ... The guys want to have a sequel, they're just very tight-lipped about what they want to happen in said sequel.

The sequel I did write was Desert Fire. It's Brand's story, he was first introduced in FoF. That is a story I am PROUD of. It flowed so well, even if the characters didn't stick to my outline at all. 

Brand was actually going to be paired with Kamoor, can you believe that? But then Khatlah entered the picture, and they were supposed to become a threesome. Only Brand and Khatlah had such good chemistry and Kamoor was a jerk. This was revelead to me when I wrote the last chapter. Had to do some rewriting after that info, but it's was all good. 

People that have read it also commented that they thought it was too short. I obviously like to write short stories. I'm trying to write longer stories, but I tend lose interest when new idea pop up if they're too long and so I put them on hold. If I were to write DF again though, I would try to expand it.

Now Kamoor has plans, though he's still being a jerk about it. He's getting his story eventually, I just have to be in the mood to write it. And I need a plan -- not a tight-knit one or anything, but at least a red thread that I can follow. Two other characters from FoF, Lorcan and Tord, also want their story told. They're going to have to wait though, because they're not giving me any clue about their story.

The third story I wrote in this 'verse is The Huntress, which is a part of the Vixen femslash anthology. I liked that story, I did, but again I would try to expand it if I were to write it again. Maybe drag the end out more. 

I didn't do much worldbuilding for this world. I made a map, but other than that I made stuff up as I went. It was fun to just make things up as they appeared; but next time I come up with a fantasy world I will do worldbuilding. It's a bit simpler with worldbuilding in place. 

But for my first fantasy world, I think the Legend & Lore series is good. It's a world I want to delve into again in the near future, when I have finished my neglected WIPs.

And isn't the print cover just fantastic? Just looking at it makes me want to write more L&L stories.